Chapter Eighteen

"I mean he's ripped himself in half to keep you safe. I know you were hurt, but all you had to deal with was a breakup. A fucking breakup, Stiles. And Derek had to go on like he didn't care, like he didn't love you, while you fell to pieces. He had to know that when you started hating him, started spewing all this venomous crap, that it was his fault. Do you think that's been easy for him? And he keeps taking it. He's taken it all without fucking flinching, because he loves you so much that he'll let you shit all over him if there's even a chance that it will keep you out of harm's way. Because he's that terrified of losing you."

"Whoa, hang on—"

"I'm not done," Isaac snapped. "I'm not saying what we did was right, and I'm not saying how you feel is wrong, but you let it make you bitter and then you take it out on everyone else. Look, I know what happens when you let your hurt twist you into something mean. Do you think my dad used to lock me in a freezer when my mom was still alive?"

Stiles felt like the breath had been punched out of him. There was too much going on, he couldn't follow what Isaac was saying, but his stomach rolled sickeningly as Isaac said his piece and Stiles struggled to keep up.

"He was a good guy and then gradually he wasn't, because he let his pain control him. Don't let this do that to you. And I don't just mean you. God," he broke off, frustration evident in the taut lines of his body, "I'm not excusing Derek. He was stupid to think he had a right to make decisions about your safety just because he was so afraid to lose you. And he was a total fucking idiot to think that lying would make this easier on you—the truth was always going to come out eventually, so now's as good a time as any because I'm sick and tired of dealing with your collective crap. You've said and done horrible things to each other because you cared so much. And maybe that's a reason but it's not an excuse, not for either of you. It's time for you both to start acting like adults and deal with your damn problems." Isaac gave a disgusted shake of his head. "Marcus is still out there and I'm not going to let the two of you keep helping him destroy this pack."

Stiles was still trying to form some kind of response as Isaac made his way to the corpse of the nameless Beta, hoisting it up over his shoulder and striding out of the courtyard. Jackson glanced apprehensively between Stiles and Scott before he grabbed Aiden's body and hurried after Isaac.

"Derek… still loves me? But I don't—I don't understand." The creeping sensation of nausea rising in his stomach told Stiles that maybe he did. Swallowing against the sour taste in his mouth, he turned slowly to face Scott, and the stricken look of guilt on Scott's face told Stiles everything he needed to know.

"You lied to me?" Stiles took a step forward, outrage flattening his voice. "You could lie to me about something like this?"

"We—I—thought it was for the best," Scott licked his lips. "I didn't want to hurt you, Stiles, but I didn't want you to get hurt either."

"And so lying to me was your solution?" Stiles knew Scott had lied to people before. Other people. He'd lied to Allison about what had happened to her mom, trying to protect her from the truth. In this case though, it wasn't the truth that would have hurt Stiles. And this wasn't… Stiles wasn't just anybody. "I'm supposed to be your brother, Scott."

"You are," Scott insisted. "You are, I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" Stiles laughed, but it broke halfway through into something more resembling a sob. "I knew Derek couldn't be telling the truth. I knew he couldn't just leave me like that. Do you remember?"

"Yeah, Stiles… I remember." And Stiles knew they were both picturing the scene in Stiles's bedroom, Stiles turning to Scott with angry, disbelieving eyes and asking him to trap Derek in his lie. Except it hadn't just been Derek's lie.

"Who knew?" Stiles asked, sudden and sharp, though almost before the question left his lips he knew the answer. "Nevermind. Isaac was there, he'd have heard. And I'm sure Jackson and Peter got a nice informative text or whatever."

"It wasn't like that!"

"Then what was it like?" Stiles was shouting now, tears burning hot and angry at the corners of his eyes, but he didn't care. "Was it like the one person I trusted to tell me the truth letting me down? Because that's sure as hell what it feels like."

"Stiles—"

"Fuck you, Scott McCall. If this is you being an Alpha and a brother and trying to protect me, you don't know the first thing about leadership and you don't know the first thing about love."

"Look, I—"

"I don't want to hear it! I'm done, okay? I'm done with you. The Scott I knew—the Scott I thought I knew—would have cut off his right arm rather than lie to me. So I'm done with this, and I'm done with you." Before his voice could break again Stiles turned and walked away, taking the opposite path from Isaac and Jackson.

He needed some space to think—to recalibrate his entire fucking worldview, since the last four months of his life had been centred around a lie. Right now his brain was moving too fast, his head and his heart a whirling mess of confusion. He needed to get out and get away before he could even begin to sort through what Isaac's revelation meant. For him and Scott, for him and the pack… for him and Derek.

Peter lounged easily against the counter of Derek's kitchen, listening as Marcus and what remained of his pack made their way up the stairs. They'd been squatting at Derek's for as long as Peter's nephew had been out of the city and the state they'd left Derek's normally pristine loft in had made Peter shudder with distaste when he'd let himself in. Derek was a thoroughly boring righteous do-gooder but he did have a modicum of taste, and if there was one thing Peter loathed it was the careless destruction of beautiful things.

Derek's granite countertops were scarred with the unmistakable gouges of claws, his cupboard doors had been torn off their hinges to hang drunkenly open or left to fall to the floor. There was a single barstool left standing at the island, though it was missing half a leg and Peter doubted it would remain upright for much longer. The free-standing wooden wine rack that Peter had given Derek for Christmas last year lay on its side, shelves torn out and now-empty bottles lined up along the top. The TV and couch in the living room had escaped the destruction, presumably because the Oakridge pack had realized they'd want some form of entertainment while most of the Beacon Hills pack was in Terrace Bay. Peter had yet to venture further into the loft to see what had become of Derek's bedroom and bathroom but he could only imagine the ruin continued.

Marcus, for all of his attempts at bettering himself, was just as crass as the rest of his pack.

And, speak of the devil… with a loud crash that had the door to Derek's loft slamming doorknob-first into the wall, Marcus, followed a moment later by one of the twins and his female Beta, stormed into the loft. Peter tried to suppress a wince, picturing the dent he was likely to find later.

"What are you doing here?" Marcus asked bluntly. If he'd been surprised to see Peter he gave no sign, just stood glaring at the smaller man with his arms crossed menacingly over his chest. The effect was ruined by the pair behind him—both wolves head-hangingly weary and covered with blood that certainly appeared to be theirs. Marcus was equally bloody, his dress shirt and slacks torn open and ragged with claw marks. While his pair of wolves had begun to heal their wounds, Marcus's were still raw and oozing fresh blood—as always, wounds inflicted by an Alpha took more time to heal. Peter wondered if it had been Derek or Scott who'd done the most damage.

"I heard you had yourselves a bit of a brawl," Peter raised an eyebrow. "And that you came off the worse for wear. I thought I'd offer my condolences," he reached to the counter beside him and held out a thick crystal tumbler, three fingers of whiskey gleaming warmly in the kitchen light, "And we could discuss our next steps."

Marcus's jaw clenched tightly and it looked for a moment like he would rather knock the whiskey out of Peter's hand than knock it back, but after a moment he gave a short nod and walked forward to take the tumbler.

The two Betas moved numbly towards Derek's couch where they sank down without a word, the twin turning to the woman and burying his head in her shoulder. Peter took his apparent grief as welcome knowledge that his little shit of a brother hadn't survived the fight.

Peter raised his own tumbler to Marcus and took a sip, savouring the hot burn of the whiskey down his throat. Marcus, of course, didn't bother appreciating what was, for the record, an obscenely expensive whiskey, and downed his in a single swallow. The warm glow in Peter's chest grew—and not just because of the second sip he took to hide his grin.

"I told you going after the two of them at once wouldn't work," Peter remarked, setting his whiskey back down on the counter. He'd been very clear, in fact, that Marcus needed to separate Derek and Scott—needed to drive the two of them as far apart as possible, and then attack. When he'd found out that Marcus had done the exact opposite, Peter had rather lost his temper.

Then, after he'd discarded the glass that he'd shattered (and the table he'd broken in the process), he'd come to the decision that it was time to end the farce. He should have known if he wanted this done right he ought to have done it himself. But it had seemed like such an easy plan, and best of all, had kept him from getting his own hands dirty.

Best laid plans and all that, though, so here they were.

"I know what you said. But I was tired of cat-and-mousing them. I'm a wolf, Peter, not a kitten."

"Then," Peter let the anger he was feeling leak into his voice, "You should know better than to have attacked your prey when they were together and at their strongest."

"You told me to stop going after the human, the Betas." Marcus set his own glass down on the island.

"I didn't mean fight them head on," Peter snapped. "For someone who keeps claiming to be a wolf you don't seem to know much about hunting. You need to pick out your prey and separate it from the herd. Then you need to run it down until it is so exhausted it has no other option than to turn and fight. And that is when you kill it."

Marcus's eyes flashed red to match the blood that was still running down his skin and he took a menacing step towards Peter—and stumbled, barely managing to catch himself on the lip of the island. Confusion slid over his features, his large brow furrowing as he lifted the hand that wasn't supporting him up to his face and saw the trembling of his fingers.

"What's…" He swayed unsteadily on his feet, the hand gripping the island going white-knuckled with the effort of keeping him upright. "What's happening?"

"Now that would be the wolfsbane." Peter reached for his tumbler and took another sip of whiskey.

The sheer horror on Marcus's face was almost comical as he grabbed at the vicious looking claw marks down the side of his neck. "The Alphas, they had it on their claws?"

Peter chuckled. "No, no I'm afraid this wasn't my nephew's brain child."

"Then…" Realization had Marcus trailing off and he lurched forward again, this time swiping out with a clawed hand. "You!"

Peter nimbly leapt aside from Marcus's clumsy attack, pleased that he'd avoided sloshing any of the whiskey over the side of the tumbler.

On the couch, Ethan and the woman were watching with wide eyes, their faces paling even further as Marcus tried again to attack Peter only to fall clumsily into the lone barstool.

"Me," Peter confirmed. "Since you've managed to completely fuck up this entire endeavour it seemed time to take matters into my own hands."

"Why?" Marcus was struggling to speak now, sweat breaking out to bead on his face and mingle with the blood that still seeped from his skin—blood that seemed to be darkening ominously as it slid faster from Marcus's wounds.

"'Why?'" Peter gave a full-throated laugh. "For power. Of course."

"G… get him," Marcus wheezed, lifting his head up to entreat his Betas. "Kill him."

On the couch the two Betas shared an apprehensive look, but Ethan rose to his feet with a look of bleak determination. Apparently he'd decided that if he couldn't live with his brother, he'd die with him. A second or so behind him, the woman stood as well and they both advanced towards Peter, who merely raised an eyebrow and spread his arms in invitation.

"Come on, Chelsea," Ethan sunk down into a crouch. "There's only one of him." Peter thought that last part might have been more convincing if Ethan hadn't sounded a tad regretful, as though Peter wouldn't alone wasn't enough to assure him of his impending death.

Peter would happily prove him wrong.

Snarling, Ethan charged at Peter, with Chelsea a beat behind him. Both wolves bared fangs and claws and Peter ducked their first blows as his own features began to twist from human to wolf. The two Betas closed in on him again, but they were still tired from the fight before and when they should have been working in sync they each attacked separately so that it was almost too easy for Peter to send Ethan crashing over top of the island and then turn to meet the woman as she came for him.

Her resolve was even more lacking than Ethan's. It was if she was paying lip service to the fight—attacking to appease her Alpha without any drive of her own. If Peter were a different person he might have felt badly about the ease with which he drove her into the ground and, before she could even recover her breath, thrust a clawed fist into her chest to rip out her heart.

From behind Peter, Ethan made a choked noise of protest and flung himself at Peter's back. Peter dropped the still pulsing organ and raised his bloodied claws up to sink into the meaty flesh of Ethan's shoulders where the other Beta clung to Peter's back. With a roar, Peter yanked his arms forward, ducking his head and lunging forwards so that Ethan flew out in front of Peter and landed hard on his back.

Again, Peter wasted no time letting the Beta recover. He leapt over the body of the woman, grabbed Ethan's shoulders again to hold him down, and closed his teeth around the wolf's neck where his pulse beat wildly against his skin. With a quick, almost perfunctory shake of his head, Peter tore out the other wolf's throat.

Rising up, with a slight wince at the burn in his side where Ethan's claws had hit their mark, Peter stepped casually over the bodies of Marcus's pack and made his way back around the island where the Alpha lay sprawled on his back, his chest heaving as he fought to breathe.

"You see," Peter crouched down, spoke conversationally, "You were supposed to make this easy for me. You and your pack were going to come in, kill Scott and then Derek, or Derek and then Scott, the order wasn't really important, and then I was going to kill you. That last part, actually, is going like I thought it would. I never could have bested you in an actual fight so I was always planning on using wolfsbane." He sighed, rocking back on his heels as Marcus tried to turn and crawl away. "It would have been all nice and neat if you'd just managed to hold up your end of the bargain. But I suppose asking for competence was always too much to expect."

"That's alright though," he gave Marcus's calf a reassuring pat. "There's still plenty of time to salvage this. This way, at least, I'll have the element of surprise on my side. After all the work I've put into making this pack trust me, who would suspect poor uncle Peter? Especially since he's only a Beta. Oh, and about that—" Peter dug his claws into Marcus's leg and dragged the werewolf back towards him. "I'm fairly sure dosing your whiskey with wolfsbane would do it, but let's not take any more chances at this stage in the game." With one swift movement, Peter brought his clawed hand down and ripped open the flesh of Marcus's neck. The werewolf's body shuddered and then went limp, but Peter continued to tear at Marcus's throat until the bones of his spine gleamed wetly in the kitchen light.

There was a split second where Peter thought maybe it hadn't worked—maybe he'd waited too long, maybe Marcus had been dead from the poison before Peter had torn out his throat, but then power burst to life in the centre of Peter's chest, rushing hot and liquid through his limbs as his eyes blazed with the bright, unmistakable red of an Alpha. Peter threw his head back with a roar, arms spread wide as he felt it flow through him, imbuing him with strength and the intoxicating knowledge that he was finally returning to the embrace of the mantle he was born to wear.

Rising to his feet, he flexed his muscles, appreciating the power coiled within them. Reaching into his front pocket he pulled out a handkerchief and began to wipe the blood from his hands, then his face, before turning back to the kitchen counter. Peter took a long swallow of whiskey and then picked up his phone.

Clearing his throat, he scrolled down to Derek's name on his contact list and hit 'call'.

"Derek," Peter began once Derek answered, projecting enough fear into his voice that it shook ever-so-slightly, like he was scared shitless and trying not to let it show. "I don't know what you did but it pissed Marcus off and now he's coming for me. I can't fight him—them—on my own. Please, I need—"

"Where are you?"

"Your loft, I thought—"

"We're on our way."

Peter waited until Derek hung up and then slid the phone into his pocket, once again leaning back against the countertop and reaching for the bottle of whiskey. He felt he deserved a top up.