#9 I still have trouble understanding what it means to be a good alpha.
They worked their way along the ridge, maintaining an easy gait. Tall grass waved back and forth in the gentle breeze, brushing up against their mounts' knees. Scott glanced up at the cloudless sky, and he was thankful he had resisted the urge to pass on the hat that Braeden had offered him earlier that day. He had felt embarrassed because he thought it would look like he was playing cowboy, but the wide brim of the hat sheltered him from the sweltering sun, as he suspected it was designed to do.
Derek had taken the lead in their task, riding a few lengths in front of him and looking as if he had been born on horseback. Derek hadn't, but life on this ranch seemed to appeal to him, because he behaved as if he had lived here all his life.
"Do you have an idea where we need to go?"
"Yup."
"I'm glad, because while this is cool, I can't shake the feeling I should be looking for rustlers."
The other werewolf glanced back with a huge smile. It was the same type of smile that Derek had given him at La Iglesias; one he had so seldom shown when in Beacon Hills. Without another word, Derek turned around in the saddle and kept riding.
Scott smiled at Derek's back. His brother was happy. Someone should be.
"A wolf can follow a scent trail for over a hundred miles in a day." Derek finally explained without turning to face him.
"So I've heard." Scott felt a little sheepish at that. How many people had he tried to find by scent and failed miserably? Stiles, twice. Their parents. Liam, twice. He could tell himself that he hadn't been properly trained, but it felt like an excuse.
Derek laughed at him. He had probably picked up his chemo signals. "It's a little easier in this case, because the calf wasn't kidnapped by assassins, evil druids, or mad scientists. Oh, and cows don't drive cars."
"Well, yeah. You're right."
He chuckled once again. "I had to be, eventually."
Scott pushed any negative thoughts about the past away and decided to enjoy this morning's ride. School was out for the year and there hadn't been any signs of Monroe or her hunters for weeks, so he had been able to accept Derek's and Braeden's invitation to visit. Derek had had an ulterior motive, of course. It was an old Hale family tradition that a beta would ask their alpha for permission to marry, though it hadn't been enforced as an actual rule for over a century. Scott had given his enthusiastic consent while Braeden rolled her eyes in the background.
It was the least that Scott could do for Derek.
Cora had woken him up this morning at seven, fed him breakfast, and then led him out to the stables, where Derek had saddled up a pair of horses. One of the calves was missing from the herd, and it was causing stress among the cows. Derek meant to ride out and find it, and he had asked if Scott wanted to go along. Scott had been surprised to find that they would be able to ride horses, given how most animals tended to react to werewolves, but Derek had quickly taught him how to sooth the beast in a few minutes.
Scott patted the side of Pie's neck. The sorrel stallion was named after the similar horse Jimmy Stewart had ridden for 22 years and 17 films. Derek had told him the story while Cora and Braeden giggled at him. He didn't get the joke.
From over the hill on their right, the low plaintive call of a wounded animal echoed. "Do you hear that?"
Derek grunted his assent, and they wheeled their horses in that direction. Over the next rise, a narrow ravine cut through the dirt and rock like a stab wound. The calf had fallen down into it and was struggling feebly where it was pinned against the sides.
They got down on their hands and knees on the edge of the ravine. The calf was frightened and injured; they could smell the blood.
"Looks like he's wedged in there," Scott said. "I don't see a way in." "Nope. We're going to have to go down from the top."
Scott reached out to touch the steep side, causing a rivulet of dirt to fall on the trapped calf. "I don't know if we can. Even with our strength, if we climb down we're not going to be able to get back up."
"It's not that deep. You can lower me down. Grab my ankles." "What? Are you sure?"
"Yeah. You have enough strength to hold me far enough out over the opening so I won't touch the walls and cause a landslide."
Scott imagined how that would work. It'd look ridiculous, and it certainly would be the best way to make sure that neither they nor the calf would get trapped, but it would certainly still be dangerous. "I don't know ..."
"I think you're strong enough; you're stronger than me. Just plant your feet. I trust you to do this."
A stranger happening across the scene would have found their behavior ridiculous. Derek performed a handstand so Scott could a get firm grip on his ankles, then he lifted him up bodily and lowered him down into the ravine. Scott began to sweat with nervousness, though it wasn't because Derek was too heavy. He'd read stories where people would get buried alive in situations like this.
Derek didn't rush, speaking gently to the calf. The words wouldn't mean anything to her; Derek was using the tone alone to keep the animal from struggling too hard. With deft fingers and careful determination, Derek felt around the calf, making sure she wasn't caught on anything. Carefully, he secured a good grip on the animal before signaling Scott to pull him back up. Scott surprised himself by being able to accomplish it without much trouble. Leverage or no leverage, he was able to pull both calf and man out of the hole without getting them trapped.
Every once in a while, he amazed himself with what he could do.
Derek didn't let the calf go once it got up; he held it still so Scott could take a good look at it. While it had a severely broken leg and some deep scratches from the fall, it didn't look like it was in danger of dying anytime soon.
"I think I can immobilize the leg enough so we can get back to the barn," Scott offered. "Do it."
Using his belt, Scott arranged a makeshift splint. It had to be uncomfortable, but the animal could have hurt herself more if she was allowed to move freely. Afterwards, Scott and Derek carefully slung it across the front of Derek's horse.
The ride back was done at a far less leisurely than the ride out. The calf was in pain, and while Scott caught Derek taking its pain several times, he was careful not to overdo it. It wouldn't do any good if he passed out and fell off his horse. They rode directly to the barn. Cora was waiting for them with all the equipment the Hales had on hand.
"How far have you got in your studies?" Derek asked after they had set the calf down on a blanket. "Not far enough to make the call. If you've got a vet, you should get them to come."
Cora looked at Derek who nodded an affirmation. She hurried back to the house as neither of the resident Hales tended to carry their cell phones on the ranch.
"With what you do know, what do you think?"
"Uhm." Scott sat back on his haunches. Derek watched him stroking the calf to comfort it. "You weren't going to keep it for breeding purpose, were you?"
Derek shook his head.
"To be honest? While you should really wait for your vet before making any decision, if her tibia is as broken as badly as I think it is, she could be in a cast for as many as sixteen to twenty weeks, and that's if she doesn't aggravate the injury by accident. She won't be able to walk with the herd, and she'll need almost constant supervision. If she were a beloved pet or she was intended to be a dairy cow or used for breeding, it might be worth it. But ..." Scott shrugged.
Derek looked at him and then looked down at the calf. "Do you think it would be cruel not to?"
"I don't know. It could be." Scott stood up. "I guess it depends it on why. Keeping her alive in discomfort and pain so you can kill her later when you can make more money off of it seems like it could be cruel, but killing her now to save time and effort seems callous."
He stroked her head and then asked, wistfully. "Are we having the old argument?"
"No." Scott shook his head firmly. "It's not the same thing. She's a cow, not a human being. I'm not a panicked sixteen-year-old in over my head and you're not a twenty-two-year-old in the middle of a crisis with no support system."
Derek smiled again but this time it was more wistful and sad. "I don't miss those days."
"I do."
Scott should have regretted saying that but he didn't. Instead he got up off the ground, dusted off
his pants in a futile gesture before walking over and sitting down on one of the old leftover hay bales, stacked carefully up against the wall. Derek watched him, but he didn't seem angry at all, simply confused.
"Back then, I still held onto the illusion that I could salvage some of who I used to be. Of course even then I wasn't silly enough to think that nothing would have to change. But I did think if I could just stop the bad guys and keep too many people from dying, there would come a point where I could ... go back to normal."
"Yeah." Derek dropped his eyes and stroked the calf's nose. "I know what that feels like."
"No one can really tell you that it won't, either, right? No one can possibly look you in the eyes and convince you that you're going to have to recreate ... everything. You can't imagine it until you have that moment where it all becomes clear. How did you deal with that?"
"Laura."
"But she wasn't enough, was she?"
Derek shook his head. "No one is enough. In the end ..."
"In the end," Scott finished for him, "you have to do it yourself. It's like a house after a tornado. All the furniture, all the memorabilia, all the parts of your life are present, but they're just a pile of rubble. You have to clear it all away and rebuild. My mom. Stiles. My dad. Alan." He burst out laughing.
A Hale eyebrow raised in silent question.
"I don't know how I managed to fuck up as much as I did and still survive."
Derek kept his hands on the calf, which was still lying on its side. "You really think that?"
"I'm not talking about doing the right thing. I'm talking about ... you can do the right thing in the sense of the greater good and still ruin relationships. You can still stand up for what you believe in and do it the wrong way."
"You look back at those first couple of years as a werewolf and as an alpha and you think that you screwed up?" Derek sighed. "I think you're being really hard on yourself, and I also can't help but being really insulted. Your pack didn't leave you, Scott."
"I'm not comparing you and me. I'm not comparing myself to any alpha. But I look back and ..."
"Well, all the answers seem simple when you look at them after the fact, when you know the whole story, when you have time to think about things without people trying to kill you. Do you think I haven't gone over every single decision I made and figured out what I could have done better?"
"Yeah. You seem happy, though." Scott tried to make his next statement sound light, but it wasn't. "How'd you do it?"
"I stopped."
"I can't really stop being alpha. There's too many—"
"No. I meant I stopped carrying the past. I learned the lessons that I needed from it, and I set it
down. It did help that I wasn't alpha anymore, but I don't see any reason why you can't do the same."
Scott looked at the tips of his fingers. He opened his mouth and closed it.
"Say what you want to say, alpha."
He tried but he couldn't do that. He couldn't look at Derek and tell him that the person he had given his family's legacy of protecting Beacon Hills to was still stumbling around in the dark without a clue. That he didn't still didn't quite understand what it meant to be a good alpha, that he might never understand, and that sometimes trying to be better made things worse. But he couldn't say that, because that would imply that he needed Derek's help, and Scott would never do anything to permanently drag his friend, his beta, his brother from the happiness Derek had so obviously found here.
"I guess it's just hard what with Monroe out there hunting people because of me. Because of what people did to protect me."
"Don't tell me I'm the first to tell you that Monroe's decisions are her own."
"No, you're not."
"And you disagree?"
Scott remained firm. He wasn't going to say anything to make Derek think Scott needed him to leave this place. "No. I guess I'm just tired."
"That's all right. You've been doing this a long time. Why do you think I asked you here?" "You missed your pack? I'm sure that the others—"
"No. I asked you and only you here. More than anyone else in your pack, you've bore the weight of all this, so you're here to relax. All your problems will still be there when you get back."
"That's — okay, Derek."
His eyebrows seemed to insist that it damn well better be okay.
They settled down to wait for the veterinarian to appear. Braeden arrived first with some lunch, and she started telling Scott about her recent missions. She could be a lot more selective now, joking that Derek had this tic when he didn't like a mission but wasn't going to try to persuade her not to take it. Cora joined them half way through and the spent the time until the doctor's arrival talking.
Scott laughed at their jokes, but he always felt Derek's eyes on him, searching to make sure he was real. And his hands never left that calf.