Looks Like Prey

[marmolita]

Teen Wolf, Derek/Stiles, Peter/Stiles, Derek/Peter/Stiles, NC-17. Written for the TW Reverse Bang challenge, given this lovely art prompt by ktown01:


Also at AO3. This is part of my omega Derek universe, but it's not necessary to read any of the other fics to get this one.

WARNINGS: Non-con, non-con, I'm not joking, seriously, there is straight-up rape in this fic. Also, dub-con, underage (15-16), past underage dub-con, present underage dub-con, underage non-con. Am I making myself clear? Also, non-consensual pack bonding, violence, panic attacks, references to torture, references to people burning to death, and one scene involves choking. Hopefully I have warned for everything here, but if you find something I missed that you think needs a warning let me know and I'll add it.

Notes: I don't really know anything about panic attacks. Don't take my description of talking Stiles down from a panic attack as what you should actually do if someone you know is having a panic attack.



***

Stiles leaves his window open. You asked him why, once, and got a reply about family finances and saving the environment, but you think the real reason is that he doesn't want to put the effort into coming up with a plausible excuse for what you are doing at his house.

Stiles is laying on his bed when you arrive, tossing a lacrosse ball up in the air and catching it over and over. You know he heard you coming long before you made it through the window, but he doesn't move. Stiles hasn't been the same since the night that Kate died. You amend that thought: to you it is the night that Kate died, but to Stiles it is the night that Lydia Martin was attacked. You weren't there, of course -- while Peter was digging his claws and teeth into Lydia's body, you were chained in the basement of your family home with Kate Argent licking patterns into your skin and whispering filth in your ear. Still, you can guess what happened on the field that night. When Stiles and Peter had come to free you, the shame rolling off of Stiles had been palpable, and when he opened his mouth to speak, Peter's scent was strong on his breath.

"The full moon is coming up soon," you say, leaning against the windowsill. Stiles catches the ball and rolls up to sit, looking at you.

"Lydia is still in the hospital."

"I know."

"She's not healing like us, but she's not dying either."

You raise an eyebrow at Stiles, but reply again, "I know."

"How is that possible? Is she immune to the bite? Can you have immunity to something like that?" You shrug; you don't actually know the answer, so there's nothing to say. "You know what that means, right?" Stiles asks you, and you shrug again. "If she's immune then that means there's some kind of werewolf antibody. That means there could be a vaccine. Or maybe a cure."

"Do you want there to be a cure?" you ask. It's a silly question, and you didn't need Stiles's eye roll to tell you that. Of course Stiles wants there to be a cure, wants to be cured. He doesn't know what it's like to have a good pack, to have an alpha who loves you and takes care of you. All Stiles has is you and Peter, and Peter is not a nice alpha.

"It might not work for someone who was born to it like you," Stiles says, rolling the lacrosse ball between his hands. "It's probably got a genetic component. Maybe it's like a retrovirus or something, like HIV, that messes with your DNA."

"Stiles," you say, cutting off his rambling. He licks his lips as if he can catch the extra words with his tongue and draw them back in, then looks up at you. "I came to talk to you about the full moon."

"What about it? Is Peter planning another murder rampage? Because I thought I could just, you know, get Scott to chain me up and stay in my house or something. The whole killing spree thing is so last month." Stiles stands up and starts moving around the room as he speaks, throwing dirty clothes in the hamper, straightening the textbooks on his desk. He goes over to his laptop and sits down; he hits the refresh button on his email three times, then glances back at you as if he's surprised you're still there.

"The people responsible for the fire are dead," you say flatly. Somehow you still have trouble saying Kate's name out loud, so you work your sentences around to avoid it. "He's not going to murder anyone. You're part of a pack now; you need to spend the full moon with us. If you try to stay away, you'll just end up coming back to Peter anyway. It's instinct."

"What are we going to do, run around in the woods and kill rabbits?"

You grit your teeth in frustration. This isn't going the way you planned it. You came here to talk to Stiles about his place in the pack and what that means, but he keeps sidetracking you. There's no easy lead-in to this discussion, no simple way to say what needs to be said, and you need Stiles to focus and listen. The temptation to use physical violence to get his attention is strong, but that's not what you're here for. "Listen," you snap at him, feeling guilty and relieved when his eyes immediately spring to yours. "A pack has a hierarchy. Someone has to be at the top of that hierarchy."

"The alpha," he says, and you nod.

"Someone has to be at the bottom of the hierarchy," you say, not letting yourself break eye contact. Stiles presses his lips together into a thin line. "That's you. There are no equals in a pack. It's all based on strength."

"I watch the Discovery Channel," Stiles says irritably. "I know how wolf packs work. The one at the bottom is the omega, right? Pack punching bag."

"We're not wolves," you say, even though Stiles is right.

"Good, because the nature shows are always full of the rest of the pack mounting the omega, so I really hope that we don't do that." Did you flinch? You're not sure, but Stiles is narrowing his eyes. "We don't do that, right?" His voice is slightly hysterical, and you remember Peter's scent on his breath that night and think that he knows the answer to his own question, even if he doesn't want to believe it.

You sit down on the edge of Stiles's bed, picking up the lacrosse ball he left there and squeezing it. "The role of the omega is to be an outlet for tension among the other pack members." It sounds like a dictionary definition, because it is, because your parents home schooled you when you were little and you learned these things practically in a classroom. "All kinds of tension, including sexual tension." Stiles's hands and mouth twitch; his knee starts bobbing up and down rapidly. "Especially on the full moon."

"Are you telling me that you and Peter are going to fuck me during the full moon? Are you seriously telling me that? Because this werewolf pack business is some fucked up shit, Derek, but that really takes the cake."

The lacrosse ball looks small in your hands, white rubber pale against your skin. "I'm not going to fuck you." You chance a glance up at Stiles, whose cheeks are red in -- outrage? embarrassment? -- and add, "Unless he makes me." Stiles's mouth opens and closes several times without any sound coming out, so you take the opportunity to force out the rest of what you came here to say. "I was an omega. I can teach you how to do this."

Somehow, that distracts Stiles's attention from himself long enough to stop gaping like a fish. "You were an omega," he repeats. You stare at him and try to give nothing away. "You, with those giant muscles, were the weakest person in your pack?"

"I was a scrawny kid," you say, forcing your voice to be casual. "After the fire, it was just me and my sister, and she was the alpha. Look, do you want my help or not? Because Peter's not going to care what you think, he's going to do whatever he wants to you. It could be beating you up instead of sex, but I doubt it." The angry flush on Stiles's cheeks spreads. "I think he's already given you a hint of what he wants, am I right?"

Stiles stands up abruptly, claws extending and eyes flashing gold. "Get out," he says. "Get the fuck out of my room." You don't have to do what he wants, but you climb out the window anyway, glancing backwards at him before you jump down to the street.

"You have my number," you say quietly as you climb into your car. The window slams shut.

***

"Get out of the way," you snap at Stiles before charging at Peter, hoping to God that he listens for once. Your uncle, your sister’s murderer -- Peter is the alpha and you’ve suspected since Stiles told you about the spiral on his car window but you didn’t want to believe it. Stiles ducks out of the way, and you catch a glimpse of him shifting in your peripheral vision. Whatever else he may be, the kid isn’t stupid. You think you can trust him to let you handle this, but can you trust yourself?

"You think I killed Laura on purpose? My own family?" Don’t listen to him, he’s lying, don’t listen to him you tell yourself, but Peter’s heartbeat says otherwise. Laura is dead in any case, and your family is gone, and so you lunge at Peter. Peter is an alpha, and there’s no way you can win but you have to try.

"My mind, my personality, were all burned out of me," Peter says as he grabs you by the throat and drags you down the corridor. "I was being driven by pure instinct." You try to listen to his heartbeat, but you can’t pick it out over the rabbit-quick beating of Stiles’s and the pounding of your own. Peter turns away to look in his nurse’s pockets and you get to your feet and throw a punch.

"You want forgiveness?" you ask. The sharp pain of Peter’s head ramming into your own knocks you backward, and you stagger.

"I want understanding," Peter says as he kicks you and you fall back to the floor. Peter is not asking for forgiveness; he knows that what he did to Laura is unforgivable, and somehow that makes you less sure of yourself. "Do you have any idea what it was like for me during those years? Slowly healing cell by cell, even more slowly coming back to consciousness?" There’s a growl and your gut clenches as Stiles launches himself at Peter, fangs and claws first. You thought he would stay out of this entirely, thought he wouldn’t risk himself; then again, Stiles knows that Peter wants him in his pack, and maybe Stiles is betting on that to keep him safe. You haven’t told him about what’s required to form a bond between alpha and pack, that until the bond is made there are no instincts to protect.

Peter roars at Stiles, mouth growing obscenely into half a snout; the force of an alpha is behind it, and you resist the urge to cower and bare your throat. Stiles has no such strength, and he falls back, reverting to human form, frightened and confused. Peter turns back to you, smiling a little at the expression on your face. "Yes, becoming an alpha, taking that from Laura, pushed me over a plateau in the healing process. I can't help that."

Laura, you remind yourself, He killed Laura, and it gives you the strength to lash out again with your claws. Blood from your nose drips onto your lips and you let the coppery taste fuel your anger, but Peter is stronger. Peter was always stronger, back when you were a child, back when you still had your family. Back when he was part of your family. He crushes your hand in his fist, breaking the bones of your fingers; you can’t stop the cry that escapes you. "I tried to tell you what was happening. I tried to warn you," Peter says, grabbing you and throwing you through a pane of glass.

The shattered glass digs into your elbows and legs as you crawl along the floor, drawing Peter away from Stiles and away from the entrance where anyone could walk in and see what is happening. Your nose is bleeding both onto your lips and back into your throat, and you choke on the blood and cough as you pull yourself up and turn to face Peter. "I was going to wait for dramatic flair, but..." Peter flips a mirror and the light flashes on his face as the burn scars recede into nothingness. He always did like to make a show of things. "When you look this good, why wait?" He turns to look at you, and says, "Derek, you have to give me a chance to explain. After all, we're family."

There it is, that word again. You don’t want to listen to him, don’t want to hear what he has to say, because he killed your sister -- he killed Laura -- and that is unforgivable. You can’t fight though, you’ll only lose worse than you already have, so you let him talk. You let him tell you about how the fire damaged him so badly he couldn’t heal at a normal rate, how the wolf in him retreated from his body but pushed the human out of his mind. How his thoughts were the thoughts of an animal, and how on the first full moon when he was able to move he escaped through his window into the woods. He tells you how he killed a deer and carved a spiral into its side, and how when he found Laura in the woods all he knew was that killing her would help him. Peter tells you how he dug his claws into the back of her neck and let her share his memories, his pain and anguish, the unbearable memories of the screams of his wife and children. He tells you how her eyes changed, and she gave him back her own memories, what she had discovered about the fire, what she knew. She didn’t fight when he tore her apart with teeth and claws. Did Laura sacrifice herself, so that Peter could regain his sanity? Did she sacrifice herself so that he could get revenge for all of them? Or was she so horrified that her own uncle was attacking her that it didn’t even occur to her to fight?

You listen to Peter’s heartbeat. You know that he’s not lying, even though he may not be telling you the whole truth. "So you just decided to start killing people?" you ask.

"I don’t want to kill all of them," he replies, "just the responsible ones." You know your heart is racing, and you know he can hear it. The responsible ones. You don’t need Peter to tell you what Laura found because she had called to tell you herself. You know she was close to tying Kate Argent to the fire. You know that when she found out about Kate she would have known what you did. Peter is going to kill the responsible ones, the guilty ones, and you are so guilty, so very, very, guilty.

There’s only one way to survive Peter finding out about your guilt, and that’s to become part of his pack. If he bonds with you, if he becomes your alpha, the wolf in him won’t let him kill you. You can’t forgive him for Laura, just like he won’t be able to forgive you for your part in the fire, but you need to live. You need to live, and so you crawl onto your knees and grab the bottom of Peter’s shirt, pulling until he leans down close to you. "We’re family," you say, averting your eyes. "Family means pack." You bare your throat to him, and he snarls and digs in his teeth. It’s like a hook digging into your heart and pulling it out through the punctures in your neck, like Peter is devouring you whole, then making you new. The sense of safety that comes with being part of a pack, with having an alpha, fills the hole that’s been there since Laura died.

Peter licks over the bite once, smearing blood on your skin. You can see the red tint of it on his lips and tongue as he pulls away. "Good boy," he says. "I knew you’d understand."

There’s a sound in the doorway; Stiles is hovering there uncertainly. The expression on his face says that he heard everything. "So what, you’re on his side now? He killed your sister, Derek, not to mention all those other people." You climb to your feet and step in between Peter and Stiles.

"You heard what he said. It was a mistake. Those people? They locked my family in the basement and burned them alive. There were children in that house, Stiles. There were normal humans." Stiles’s heart is still beating fast, and you can practically hear his thoughts racing. "You don’t have to be part of this pack, but--"

"Actually, I think you do," Peter says from behind you, and before you can move he’s grabbed Stiles and closed his teeth on Stiles’s throat. Stiles screams, and you can’t help growling at this violation of everything your parents taught you, this forced pack bond. You’re too late to stop it though; you were too late to help Laura, too late to help your family, and you’re too late to help Stiles.

***

You keep an eye on Stiles. You keep your distance and you're not sure if he knows you're doing it or not, but you hang around his neighborhood sometimes, or around the school, and you keep an eye on him. You don't know what Peter does with his time and you don't want to know, but you feel responsible for Stiles and so you watch him. He's a smart kid, and he's handled the change well for the most part. He realized what was happening to him quickly, and even on his first full moon he tried to keep himself under control, getting Scott to come to his house and chain him up. In retrospect it's lucky that Scott had decided to go out with Allison instead of staying with Stiles, because Stiles broke out before the moon's zenith and if Scott had still been there he might have died.

That first full moon, Stiles had been drawn out to the woods, drawn to look for the one who bit him. You found him instead. He didn't trust you, and you don't blame him. You didn't react well to Stiles and Scott digging up Laura's body, or to being arrested. Despite all that, Stiles agreed to help you find the alpha in exchange for you teaching him to control his shifting. He had his own ideas about control, and between his judicious usage of a heart rate monitor and your advice that he find an anchor to bind himself to, Stiles learned control quickly. He also understood from the first that he had to keep this a secret and never did anything in school to indicate that he had superhuman abilities.

So originally, you kept an eye on him to make sure he wasn't going to reveal anything about you. Since Peter's claiming, you've kept an eye on him to make sure he's safe from the hunters, and from Peter. You know you couldn't really fight off Peter, but sometimes he listens to reason, and you have a lot of experience dealing with the old Peter, the Peter from before the fire. This new Peter is harder, crueler, but still has some of the same habits and weaknesses.

You're not an omega anymore, but you can be a barrier between Peter and Stiles.

You're hanging around the school, watching Stiles sitting in his car messing with his phone, when you get a text from him. It just says, "ok 2nite." You walked to the school rather than driving, so you go ahead and walk into the lot and climb into the passenger seat of the Jeep. Stiles eyes you sideways and asks, "Are you stalking me?"

"I was in the area," you say, shrugging. It's technically not a lie. You don't talk during the drive.

You follow Stiles in the front door of his house, because his dad is working the second shift and has already left. Stiles digs through the refrigerator and grabs a baggie full of carrot sticks, offering you a Diet Coke. You don't usually drink diet soda, but you're thirsty, so you take it anyway. The crunch of the carrots in Stiles's mouth is loud in your ears as you follow him up the stairs to his room.

Stiles tosses his backpack on the floor and sits down on his bed. You sit in the chair at his desk and turn it to face him. "So," he says, crossing his legs. "The full moon is in two days." You take a sip of your soda and nod. "You offered to teach me," he prompts, as if you don't know why you're there. You stretch your neck, listening to the bones pop and crack.

"When I was a kid," you begin, but the taste of ash clogs your throat so you take a drink to wash it away. You can tell that you have Stiles's complete attention; he knows you don't often talk about the past. "When I was a kid, we had a big pack. Parents, aunts, uncles, cousins. My aunt was the omega, and I learned by watching her. Most of the time, she would sense two people about to start arguing, and just talk to one of them and distract them enough that they forgot what they were upset about. Sometimes, if someone was really angry, she'd take them and they'd go off into another room and shut the door, and when they came out again things would be better." You close your eyes for a moment, remembering the scent of your aunt's perfume. "Sometimes she'd come out smelling like sex; sometimes she'd have cuts and bruises, but they'd heal fast enough. You have an instinct to protect your alpha, and your alpha has an instinct to protect you, but sometimes the omega is there to keep everyone else from killing each other when the alpha's not around."

"You must have had some family picnics," Stiles mutters. You ignore him.

"Laura was always my alpha, even before she was an alpha for real. Some of my cousins were part of her pack too, and I was their omega. Sometimes, if my aunt wasn't around, I was the omega for everyone." You finish off your soda and look at Stiles. "There are only three people in this pack. It won't be as bad. I know how to handle Peter." There is sympathy in Stiles's eyes, and you look away.

"I think that's the most you've ever said to me at once," he says, and your lips twitch in half a smile.

"You're doing it already," you say. "You're a natural. Look, I'm not good with words."

"I noticed," Stiles interrupts.

"I'm not good with words," you repeat, irritated. "I had more luck with sex."

Stiles snorts and his eyes wander over your body. "No surprise there," he says. "Are you even gay? Or bisexual, or whatever?"

"Stiles, we're werewolves, it's not about love; bodies are bodies and would you just--" you bite off your words in frustration. "I'm trying to tell you that you're better with words than I am. Most of the time it will probably be enough to deal with Peter, but not on the full moon. You've been through a few moons now. You know how it affects you, you know what it makes you want. I had to deal with Peter during the full moon a couple times, when I was your age -- a little younger, actually. He's going to want to fuck you and he's not going to be nice about it, so you need to be ready."

"What does that even mean?" Stiles cries, throwing his hands up in the air. "How are you supposed to be ready for someone to rape you?"

You dig in the pocket of your jeans and pull out the tube of lube you've been carrying around, waiting for Stiles to take you up on your offer to help. "You practice, and you prepare."

Stiles blinks at you, cheeks reddening slowly. "You want to have sex with me so that I'll be ready to have sex with Peter? Since when did I become so attractive that all the werewolves want my body?"

You roll your eyes and throw the tube at him. "I'm going to show you how to prepare yourself. With your fingers. That way it won't hurt as much when he does it." Stiles has a strange expression on his face. His cheeks are flushed and he won't look you in the eye. He looks almost -- disappointed? He mumbles something, but his words are so slurred that even with your enhanced hearing you can't make it out. "What?" you ask him.

"I didn't want all of my sexual firsts to be non-consensual with a man twice my age," he says. You can see the muscle in the corner of his jaw working.

You're not good with words. You're not good with words, but you're good with your body, so you get up and sit on the bed next to Stiles, shoulders and knees touching. "I can't fuck you. Peter will know, and it'll be bad for both of us. But anything else you want . . . If you want it." You can sense the tension in Stiles's body. He'll never be able to relax enough to learn like this. You put your hand on his knee, and he jumps a little and turns his head to look at you. He looks hesitant, like he can't decide what he wants, or he's not sure what he's allowed, so you lean in and kiss him. You keep your mouth closed and just press against his lips for a moment before pulling back, then you wait.

"Okay," Stiles says eventually, red spots high on his cheekbones. "Okay," and he reaches for you and pulls you in for another kiss, longer this time. His lips part a little, like he's not sure what to do, so you open your mouth and touch your tongue to the inside of his lower lip, teasing your way into his mouth, then pulling back. Your lips make a wet sound when you pull apart and you can hear his heartbeat speeding up. You spend a while like that, teaching Stiles to kiss, guilt crawling through you because you couldn't stop Peter from forcing the bond on him, so he doesn't get to have these firsts like a normal teenager. You don't think about your own firsts; they weren't "normal" either, but at least they were with other kids.

Stiles isn't going to make the first move, so you slide your hands under his t-shirt. He shivers and you think it's nerves, so you kiss him again to put him at ease and hold him steady. "Can I take your shirt off?" you ask him. He doesn't answer, but he lifts his arms over his head and you strip the shirt off him, then take off your own. Stiles is biting his lip and watching you, so you tell him, "You can touch me, if you want," before you press him back into the bed with your hands on his sides and your mouth on his neck. Stiles's hands come up to your back hesitantly, a feather-light touch that almost tickles as he traces your ribs and your spine. You kiss the side of his neck and suck his earlobe into your mouth, and Stiles gasps and writhes beneath you. The wolf in you likes this, likes having him submit to you, acknowledging your place in the pack, but you rein it in. You're doing this for Stiles, not for yourself.

You don't want to scare him by taking things too fast, but holding yourself up this far is uncomfortable, so you slide one of your legs between his and lower yourself down to your elbows, letting the length of your bodies touch. Stiles's hands tighten on your back when your thigh brushes his groin, and his lips work their way up your jaw to your mouth. He's already hard; he is only sixteen, after all. "Your stubble is really sharp," Stiles says when he pulls away, "I'm probably gonna have, like, beard burn or something." You can't help smiling a little, and you rub your cheek against his just to watch him squirm.

You shift your weight to the side and trace your hand down his chest. His skin is pale and freckled, but there are lean muscles underneath. It reminds you a little bit of your own body when you were his age, before you filled out. You brush your fingers over his nipple, then down his stomach, tucking the tips of your fingers under the waist of his jeans before coming to rest on his hip. "Okay?" you ask him; he looks uncertain, but nods and kisses you again, so you move your hand over to press against his erection through his jeans. You can hear the rapid increase in his heartbeat, and his sharp intake of breath is loud in your ears. "Okay?" you ask again.

"Yes," he says this time. "Yes, fuck, Derek, Jesus." You squeeze and stroke him through his jeans a little more, mouthing along his neck and shoulders and listening to him panting, then open the fly and reach inside. You've barely even gotten your hand on his dick before he's crying out and coming all over his stomach. You work him through it, until he slumps back on the bed and mutters, "Wow." He looks good this way, chest rising and falling fast while he catches his breath, lips wet and shining. You can almost see the moment his brain reboots, just before he starts talking again, babbling out some kind of apology for being too fast, or -- you're not really sure what he's apologizing for.

"Stiles," you say, then repeat it louder when he doesn't shut up. "You're fine. It's fine. Relax." You kiss him again because you think that might make him calm down, and it works. You pass him some tissues from the bedside table to wipe himself up, then reach down to adjust yourself where you're stuck at an awkward angle in your jeans. Before you can do it, he catches your wrist, and reaches for the fly of your jeans himself.

"Can I?" he asks, and you nod. You help him open your jeans, and you pull them off along with your underwear. Stiles strips out of his own remaining clothes; he still looks a little uncomfortable being naked, but he climbs up close to you on the bed and you lay on your back and let him curl into your side. He touches you hesitantly, wrapping his hand around you and tugging lightly. It feels good, and you tell him so to encourage him. You let him continue on like that for a little while, but his hand is dry and it starts to chafe; you pull his hand away and bring it to your mouth, licking across his palm in broad swipes and sucking his fingers into your mouth, until his hand is dripping. You like the way his eyes are riveted on your mouth and tongue, how he licks his own lips watching you.

When you bring his hand back down to your cock, you cover it with your own, and show him how you like it. More pressure, a twist on the way up, thumb rubbing over the head. He gets the rhythm quickly, then when you've closed your eyes and are letting sensation take over, you feel his lips on your shoulder, moving across your collarbone, latching onto a nipple and sucking, then licking back up to your neck. You aren't particularly noisy by nature, but you want to let Stiles know that he's doing fine so you hum in satisfaction. He surprises you then, by bringing your hand up to his lips and sucking your fingers into his mouth, swirling his tongue around and up and down. Your eyes snap open and you find yourself fascinated by the shape of his lips around your fingers as they disappear into his mouth. It sends a jolt of pleasure straight to your cock and your hips twitch, pushing up into Stiles's hand. He speeds up his pace and it doesn't take long before you're over the edge, making noises you're pretty sure you will be embarrassed by when you remember them later.

Your fingers slip out of Stiles's mouth with an audible pop, and he licks his lips and says, "Well that was the hottest thing I've ever seen." Maybe it's the post-orgasmic haze, but you find yourself laughing so hard that Stiles can't help joining in. When you catch your breath, Stiles kisses you again, then hands you some tissues to clean up. You sit up and look around on the bed for the tube of lubricant you know is around somewhere, finding it finally down by your feet. Stiles freezes up when he sees it; you realize he must have forgotten what you came here for.

You put your hand on his thigh, and lean in to capture his mouth with your own before he can say anything. "Relax," you tell him. "I'm not going to hurt you." You press him back into the bed and kiss a trail down his chest and stomach, dipping your tongue into his navel to make him squirm. He spreads his legs to let you settle between them, and you nudge his half-hard cock with your nose. Stiles's scent is stronger here, and you breathe it in deeply. You open your mouth to take him in, but pause less than an inch away. "I'm going to suck your cock," you tell him, "unless you tell me not to."

"Fuck," Stiles breathes. His erection goes back to full strength so fast you think he's probably dizzy from the blood leaving his brain. You take that as a yes and suck him into your mouth, teasing your tongue at his frenulum while you slick up your fingers. Stiles is mumbling nonsense, and you wait until you've got him down as deep as you can take him before you brush your finger against his entrance. He quivers against your touch, and you move your mouth and tongue to distract him as you push in. You pull off and lick him from base to tip while you work your finger in all the way, then mouth at the side of his cock, glancing up at him.

"Doing okay?" you ask. He tenses around you, but nods. You take him back into your mouth while you start moving your finger in and out, until he's relaxed enough to add a second finger. It goes in easier than you thought it might, and you press up while you slide your fingers in, searching for his prostate. When you find it, Stiles cries out and his whole body jerks. His cock hits the back of your throat and you have to pull back to avoid choking. You brush his prostate a couple more times, then go back to working him open, gently stretching him until you can slip in a third finger. You focus on sucking him off while you gradually slide your fingers in and out, going a little further with each thrust until you're in up to your knuckles and Stiles is gasping for air, his thighs trembling on either side of your head. You search out his prostate again then, rubbing against it over and over while you bob your head up and down until he arches up off the bed and fills your mouth so fast you have to swallow twice to keep up.

You pull your fingers out and wipe them off, then crawl back up the bed to lay next to Stiles. You don't say anything while he recovers, but when you hear his heart rate return to normal, you say, "Do it at least once tomorrow, and at least once on the full moon. If you get stretched out right before you come to the house, it won't be so bad when he does it." The sun is getting low in the sky, so you climb off the bed and start getting dressed. "I can't stop him, but I'll be there."

"Derek," Stiles says, when you're almost out the door. You turn around and look at him, still spread out naked on the bed. He meets your gaze, then looks away. "Thank you."

***

You're not sure exactly how long Kate has had you chained up, but the muscles of your arms are aching with the strain and your fingers have gone numb by the time she leaves to get reinforcements. Kate was always one step ahead of you, then and now; the fact that you kept your mouth shut while she tortured you told her more than you could have with words. A beta has an instinct to protect their alpha and you've always been loyal to your family, so when she asked if you knew about Peter's disappearance from the hospital, or if you knew who the alpha was, and you couldn't answer -- that told her everything she wanted to know.

Sweat and saliva are cooling on your body from her attentions, and you shiver a little in the cold of the basement. Kate has set up a nice, tight ending to her story, leaving you as bait in the same basement where your family burned to death. It's a fitting place for you to die, and if she gets back with Chris and the others before Peter and Stiles find you and get you out, that's exactly what's going to happen. You hope Stiles is smart enough to remember that you took his phone and use the GPS; you know that Peter is too smart to locate you by howling and give away his position to all the hunters in town.

You twist your hands around in the chains and shift your feet to keep the blood flowing, trying to track time by the moonlight coming through the window well, but it's too hard to concentrate with the electric current that's still running through you from Kate's machinery. It could have been five minutes or fifty by the time you hear the scuffle of feet outside, so you're not sure whether to be grateful that your pack has found you or afraid for their lives when you catch Peter's scent. There's a cry and a thud as the guard outside the door is taken down, and then Stiles is rushing into the room, tripping over his own feet when he catches sight of you. His cheeks are flushed and a tangle of emotion is flooding off of him; when he opens his mouth to call your name, his breath smells like Peter.

He's tugging at the cuffs in seconds, and when your arms are free you have to bite your lip against the pain of circulation rushing back into your hands and all your muscles cramping up. Peter stands in the doorway, blood on his hands. What's one more hunter dead to him? "We have to go," you tell them, tugging your shirt back on. "She went for reinforcements, she knows you're coming."

"We're not going anywhere," Peter says, running his claws along the burn marks on the wall. "I came here to kill the person responsible for murdering my family, and if she's going to come to me that just makes things easier."

Stiles glances back and forth between the two of them. "Do you have to kill her?" he asks, gesturing wildly. "Can't you just, I don't know, turn her in to the police or something?"

"Evidence," you say, looking at Peter. "I have evidence. We can get her locked away for life."

Peter raises an eyebrow. "What evidence could you possibly have now that you didn't have before?"

You hold up Stiles's phone. "I set it to record before she took me. I can testify against her." This is it. You're laying it all out on the table now but no matter how much you hate Kate, no matter how much you want her to pay for what she did, you know that killing a human will just make things worse for all of you. You slide back the timer on the recording and press play, and the sound of Kate's laughter fills the room, followed by your own voice, hoarse from screaming.

"Are you gonna torture me? Or are you just gonna talk me to death, huh?"

"Oh, sweetie, I-- I don't want to torture you. I just . . . wanna catch up. Remember all the fun we had together?"

"Like the time you burned my family alive?"

"No, I was thinking more about the hot, crazy sex we had. But the fire thing, that was fun too."


You press stop before the recording can continue, before you're forced to listen to the sound of Kate's tongue on your skin, or more of your own screams. Stiles is staring at you in shock, but you're not worried about him. You barely have time to put the phone down before Peter is on you, shoving you to the floor, eyes glowing red and claws digging into your ribs. "I knew she had to have gotten information somehow," he growls. "I should have known it was you." Your heart beats hard in your chest, but you know he's not going to kill you. He can't kill you -- he's your alpha -- but he can hurt you, and he will. You deserve it. His fangs are extending and his claws drawing back to strike when Stiles grabs Peter's arm and pulls him off of you.

"What are you doing?" Stiles shouts. "They're coming back, they could be here any minute, and you want to fight each other?" It may be true but it's the wrong thing to say, because Peter is not in his right mind, hasn't been in his right mind for years, and right now Stiles is just getting in his way. The scuffle is short but bloody, an alpha putting a troublesome pack member back in line, and when it's over Peter stands in the middle of the room, looking idly down at his nails. Stiles crawls to the staircase and you squat down next to him. There's a rapidly fading bruise on his eye and a long gash still bleeding on his arm, and his heart and lungs are working so fast you think he might pass out from hyperventilation.

"Stiles," you say, taking hold of his shoulders. His eyes dart around the room wildly, but he doesn't respond, and you recognize the symptoms of a panic attack. Now is not the time, not with the Argents coming, not with Peter simmering with anger behind you.

Peter brushes past you on his way up the stairs, pausing for a moment without looking back. "Deal with that," he says. "We have business to attend to. I'll take care of you later." Then Peter is gone, gone up the stairs and you're left alone with Stiles.

You try to remember everything you've ever heard about panic attacks and climb over Stiles so that you're blocking out his view of the rest of the room. You take his chin in your hands and turn him so that he has to look into your eyes, and say, "Breathe." When you take a deep breath in, hold it, and let it out, he starts to focus on you. You keep breathing, a steady, slow pattern, and eventually Stiles starts to match you. It hasn't been that long, only a few minutes, but it feels like a lot longer before Stiles says he's okay and starts to get up. You help him up the stairs and through the side tunnel, and then you're in the woods.

You've barely gone anywhere before an arrow comes out of nowhere and pierces your shoulder, followed rapidly by another in your thigh. You fall to your knees and shout at Stiles to cover his eyes, because you know Kate and you know Chris Argent and you know that a flash bolt is coming next. Stiles doesn't react quickly enough, and stands there stunned and blinded while you rip the arrows out of your flesh. You can hear them coming for you so you grab Stiles by the back of his shirt and start pushing and dragging him toward the front of the house.

You stagger as your muscles try to knit back together, and shove Stiles ahead of you. "Run!" you tell him, but the idiot looks at you like he can't possibly leave you behind. Leaves crunch under Kate's boots and you barely have a chance to roll onto your side before she shoots you in the chest. The bullet rips through you, leaving a trail of agony in its wake, but you can feel that it's a through-and-through and your body is already starting to heal. It's going to take time though, before you're able to get up, before you can do anything to help.

For a moment, you're glad. You might die tonight, but you know Peter. You know he's going to kill Kate, and you're glad you're out of the action, because you know you could never do it yourself.

Out of the corner of your eye you see Kate raising her gun to aim at Stiles, who is frozen in fear. "Kate!" It's Chris's voice, Chris who stops her, with three other hunters flanking him. "He's just a kid, what are you doing? We go by the code."

You can hear Stiles swallow and take a deep breath, and he surprises you by saying, "Yeah? I don't know what your code is but I have a feeling Kate wasn't following it when she burned this house down."

Chris chuckles. "I know they've always blamed us for that, but it wasn't us."

"Oh yeah?" Stiles asks. He's digging in his pocket, and he pulls out the phone you'd given back to him and presses play on the recording. Each time your secret is revealed to someone new the shame digs deeper, and the fact that you can smell how much Kate enjoys hearing it makes it worse.

"I did what I was told to do," Kate insists when the recording finishes.

"No one asked you to murder innocent people. There were children in that house, ones who were human. Look what you're doing now, you're holding a gun on a sixteen year old boy with no proof he's spilled human blood. We go by the code. Put the gun down," Chris says, shooting over Kate's shoulder, "before I put you down."

The delay has given your body time to heal, and while there's still an agonizing ache in your chest, you think you can move again. It's just in time, because the door of the house is creaking open and Peter is making his entrance. Peter's in his full alpha form, and he takes down Chris's backup before you can blink. He disappears, then comes back for another pass, knocking Chris and Stiles both to the ground. You push up onto your hands and knees to see Kate spinning wildly, gun cocked. "Come on!" she yells, "Come on!" and then Peter is there, in human form, breaking her arm and tossing her by the throat into the house.

You get to your feet and see Stiles doing the same. Chris is moving too, so you haul him to his feet and trap his hands behind his back to neutralize him, then you and Stiles follow Peter into the house. Peter has his claws to Kate's throat, has her completely at his mercy. You ignore the tiny part of you that's screaming out against this, that sixteen-year-old child inside you who still loves her, despite everything she's done. You let the hate wash over you instead, the hate that you've drawn around yourself like a cloak these past six years. Stiles stares at Peter, breathing hard, and you lock one arm around Chris's throat while the other holds his hands.

"Apologize," Peter says to Kate, voice soft and calm despite the miasma of anger swirling around him. He turns her to face Chris. "Say that you're sorry for decimating my family, for leaving me burned and broken for six years. Say it, and I'll let him go."

"I'm sorry," Kate chokes out. You can hear the irregular beat of her heart and know she's lying, and something inside you breaks a little bit more. Peter's claws move, slicing through her throat, and Kate's blood splashes out across the room, arterial spray coating all of you and splattering the burned walls.

"I don't know about you, Chris," Peter says conversationally, "but that apology didn't sound very sincere." He moves fast; you see him coming, but you don't do anything to stop him, and he hits Chris hard enough to knock him out. Chris slumps in your arms and you lower him to the floor.

"Are you going to kill him, too?" Stiles asks. "He tried to stop her. He didn't know anything about what she'd done."

Peter idly picks at a bit of flesh caught under his fingernail. "Only the responsible ones," he says, eyes glowing red and piercing straight through you.

***

You come to the house early in the day on the full moon, so that you can have some time alone. You haven't been back since that night, spending your days keeping an eye on Stiles and the Argents and your nights in the extended stay motel room you still haven't moved out of. You're pretty sure that Peter is living in his nurse's apartment and driving her car; you don't know what he's done with the nurse and you don't really want to.

The entryway is still splattered with the dried-up remains of Kate's blood. You can see tracks where animals have been through, licking at it. Somehow it seems fitting that your childhood home with always smell like ash and like Kate. You spend a while just walking around the house, around the property, looking for any boobytraps the hunters may have set for you. You find a few and disarm them; Peter is careful enough to avoid them, but Stiles would probably end up getting caught in one otherwise.

Eventually you make your way down to the basement, where you know you're going to end up sooner or later. It's always been where your family spent full moons, because it's where all the equipment is to restrain the kids who haven't learned to control themselves yet. Kate's scent is long gone from the room, and you're too far to smell the blood upstairs, which is a small mercy. Still, you can't forget that this is where your parents burned to death, your cousins, your aunts and uncles. You can't forget that the last time you were here Kate had you strung up by your wrists, laughing while she tortured you.

The basement is actually a subterranean complex of rooms, some of them with windows and chains like this one, some of them with solid rock walls and bars. When you were little your parents would stay in with you, physically restraining you with their own hands. Once you were older, you got the chains. And when you had control of yourself -- by then, you were Laura's omega, and you and she and your cousins would get shut in one of the rooms with bars together, as if that somehow gave you privacy, or maybe it gave the adults privacy. You wander down the hallway and look into one of the rooms; it's the one you were in the time that your cousin Conner was mad at you for borrowing his Xbox without permission, and he beat you so badly it took twelve hours to fully heal. The one on the other side of the hall is the room you were in when Conner and his sister Evelyn were practically crawling out of their skins and snapping at each other, and you decided to make things easier on everyone by just stripping off all your clothes as soon as your parents were out of sight and getting in between them.

Not all of the memories are bad ones. Some moons you just sat around and traded stories all night; sometimes you played cards or board games in the dim light from the hallway. Even on the bad nights, things were always better in the morning. No matter what happened during the full moon, your family loved you -- your pack loved you -- and Laura was always there, even if sometimes she pretended she was too tough to care.

You're lost in memories, running your fingers along the bars, when Peter arrives. "Ellie died in there, you know," he says. "I could hear her from down the hall, crying out, 'Daddy, Daddy,' coughing from the smoke." It's like claws digging into your gut and twisting; you can't bring yourself to look at him, so you stare down at your feet instead. "Lisa tried to cover her with her body to protect her. Did you know that they laced the gasoline with wolfsbane?"

"Did you know that Laura was engaged?" you ask, still not looking at him. "She'd moved on. She was going to get married and start a new pack. You probably didn't even ask before you ripped her apart."

You're deliberately goading him so it's no surprise when Peter's hand is suddenly around your throat, pushing you up against the bars. His claws are out and pricking into your skin, and there's a tiny line of heat where blood drips down from the punctures. "You know, Derek, I'd like to move on too," Peter says. His voice is level, not even angry. "All I wanted was to punish the people responsible for what happened to me -- for what happened to us."

He throws you across the room and your head cracks into the stone wall. "What, not going to protest your innocence? No, 'I was just a kid,' or 'I didn't know what I was doing' or 'I was tricked by her pretty face?'" You get to your feet and rush him, but he grabs your arm and twists you to the ground. "You're the one who can't move on, it seems." He kicks you in the ribs before you can stand, then kicks you again, this time catching your cheek with his heel. You lunge for him, but he catches you and holds you back. "Is this what you want?" Peter's claws dig into your ribs, and he throws you again. "You want me to punish you? You've always been good at taking a beating."

He stands over you and steps on your throat, constricting your airways. There's a pebble stuck in the sole of his shoe and its jagged edge slices into your skin. "Did you let her beat you too? Did you roll over for Kate just like you did for everyone else? Because I have to say, Derek, if there's one thing you excel at it's fucking." You can't get enough air, and you claw at his leg to try to get him to move, scrabbling your feet to get leverage. If you concentrate hard enough on trying to dislodge him, maybe you won't have to think about what he's saying. Peter presses his foot down harder, and you begin to see stars.

"Hey, stop! What are you doing?" Stiles's voice breaks through the rush of blood in your ears drowning out sound, and Peter takes his foot off, kicking you in the ribs again for good measure. You draw in a breath and choke on it, coughing while you struggle to your hands and knees. Stiles is standing near you, eyes wide and yellow. You can tell the moon is affecting him; he's fidgeting more than usual, and his claws are out already.

Peter looks at Stiles appraisingly, and says, "I see our omega is taking to his role quite naturally." You get to your feet, then hesitate. If you were still an omega, you would be putting yourself between them. You do want to protect Stiles from the worst of it, but you can't go back to being that again -- it's selfish, and maybe it makes you a bad person, but it's no worse than the other things you've done. Peter won't kill Stiles.

It's nowhere near as bad as the other things you've done.

"Oh shit," Stiles mutters, backing up and twitching under Peter's intense stare. Peter smiles and advances on him.

"You know, Stiles, I enjoy a challenge," Peter says, still smiling. "I think you're going to be quite challenging."

"Who, me? Oh no, I'm not challenging at all. See, this is me, not challenging you." Stiles holds his hands up in surrender, but Peter grabs him by the wrists and presses his back into the wall, sniffing at Stiles's neck. "What-- What are you doing? Are you going to-- Jesus Christ, that's a tongue, that's definitely your tongue." Stiles looks at you, eyes pleading you to intervene, as Peter licks a long stripe up his neck. You don't move. It's the moon itching under your skin, you think, that pushes a rush of heat through your body, that makes Stiles look like prey.

Stiles flinches and you realize your eyes must have changed. He lets out a high-pitched squeak when Peter presses against him; his rapid heartbeat is loud in your ears. "Okay, can we talk about this, please? Because I know things are different for werewolves than for humans but there's got to be some way I can convince you to, you know, not rape me." You make an abortive move forward when Peter growls and throws Stiles to the floor, but stop yourself before you can interfere. Peter shoves Stiles's face into the floor and rests his weight on Stiles's back.

"Yes, quite challenging," Peter murmurs before digging his fangs into the back of Stiles's neck. Stiles screams, and you approach slowly and sink to your knees beside them. You wonder if you looked so vulnerable when you were an omega. You wonder if you looked so vulnerable to Kate. Peter pulls back and licks at the wound, then looks over at you. "Help me get his clothes off," he tells you, so you start untying Stiles's shoes.

"Please," Stiles mumbles against the floor. "Derek, please." You take his shoes off and move up his body to rub a soothing hand over his hair while Peter strips off his jeans. You guide Stiles up to his knees, then strip off his shirt. Peter kneels behind Stiles and runs a hand down Stiles's naked back, claws leaving a bright line in their wake. Peter's control is excellent, so you know the claws and the red eyes are intentional, probably to remind Stiles exactly how little power he has in comparison to an alpha.

Peter opens his pants and shoves them down to his knees along with his underwear. He's only half hard, but he leans forward and rubs himself against Stiles's ass, pushing Stiles down with a hand between the shoulder blades. You shrug off your jacket, fishing out the bottle of lube from your pocket and sliding it across the floor to Peter, then you pull Stiles's arms toward you and he grabs onto your hips, pressing his face against your side. He's shaking, and there's heat and moisture against your skin where tears are wetting your shirt. Stiles has given up on trying to talk his way out of this, but his body is still thrumming with tension, both from the full moon and from the stress of the situation. You rub his head and back to try to relax him and he takes a shaky breath.

His breath is cut short, turning into a cry, when Peter abruptly pushes into him. "I see you've been teaching him," Peter says to you, and you nod. Stiles is gasping and sobbing against you, so you just keep rubbing his shoulders. Peter begins moving his hips in short thrusts, and between the moon's itch and your memories of what it felt like to be on the receiving end, you find yourself getting hard and have to take a moment to reach into your pants and adjust yourself. You crotch is uncomfortably close to Stiles's face.

"He's tighter than you were, Derek," Peter is saying, "but then you were no virgin the first time I fucked you." You're not sure what to say to that so you don't say anything at all. For a while you just listen to the slap of flesh on flesh and Stiles's sobs, which gradually fade away into heavy breathing. His grip on your hips doesn't loosen, though, and you shift your weight between your knees to get comfortable. Peter notices and raises an eyebrow at you. "You're not an omega anymore," he tells you. "Stiles has a mouth. You should use it."

You shouldn't. You know you shouldn't, but it's almost like you were waiting for permission, and you find your hands fumbling at the opening of your jeans anyway, then stripping off your shirt when the hem falls into your lap. You sit back on your heels and pull Stiles up for a moment, long enough to press a bruising kiss to his mouth and wipe the tears from his eyes. "Sorry," you say, but you guide him back down anyway. He doesn't fight it when you press your cock to his lips, and he keeps his teeth out of the way and his fangs retracted, but his mouth is slack around you. It doesn't matter, though, because you're not the omega anymore and he is and something about that and your alpha and the full moon makes you feel powerful. You roll yourself forward into his mouth and wonder if this is what it felt like for everyone else when you let them all use your body.

Peter's movements start to get more violent, and his thrusts push Stiles down onto your cock until he's practically choking. His hands grab at your hips to try to stay steady, but Peter is slamming into him harder and harder. You try to hold back so Stiles has some room to breathe, but the scent of sex is overwhelming and you want to come, you need to come right now, so you grab his hair and hold him steady while you fuck his mouth until the tension breaks. Most of your come spills out of his mouth when you pull out, and he coughs and spits out the rest. Peter follows after you with a groan, claws digging into Stiles's hips, then he backs away and tucks himself back into his pants.

Peter rolls his shoulders to stretch them out, then shoots a glance at you, his eyes back to their normal color. "I'm going to make sure there are no hunters around. You two stay here." He disappears up the stairs, and you're left alone with Stiles, who has curled up in a ball and is shivering and trying to pretend he's not crying. You reach for him but he flinches away.

When you were sixteen you'd done this many times, with just about everyone in your pack. But Stiles? Stiles was a normal human up until a couple months ago, and while some of this has got to be instinct for him, most of it is just overwhelming. You fasten your pants and pull your shirt back on, then gather Stiles's clothes and place them on the floor near him. "I'm sorry," you say. You're not sure if you're apologizing for your participation, for not volunteering to be the omega, for Stiles being part of Peter's pack, or for Stiles being bitten in the first place.

You reach for him again and this time you pull him closer to you when he tries to move away, and eventually he gives in and clutches at you, sobbing into your shoulder. You rub your hands over his back until he quiets, then let give him space so he can sit back. He's still naked, and he shifts awkwardly to try to cover up his erection, cheeks flaming red. "It's the moon," you tell him, because it's obvious he thinks he shouldn't be aroused.

Stiles glances up at you, then lowers his eyes again. "If it was just us," he says, then stops. He rearranges his legs to a more comfortable position, clears his throat, and tries again. "If it was just us, and you were the alpha, would you have done it?"

You know he wants you to say no, but you know he'll be able to tell if you're lying, so you tell him the truth. "Not like that." He jerks slightly in surprise, and you add, "I'd make it good for you. You'd want me to do it."

Stiles is looking over your shoulder, but there's only a blank wall there. "More like it was the other day?" he asks. His eye flicker to yours for a moment, then away again. You eye his crotch, and think maybe there is something you can do to make up for earlier.

You move forward into his space, and Stiles's eyes jump back to your face, startled. You put a hand on the side of his face and kiss him, slowly, gently, until he starts to respond, then you lower him down to the floor. His skin is hot when you slide your hand down to his hip, even though the basement is chilly. You mouth at his neck, a thrill running through you at how easily he submits, then cup your hand around his erection. "Do you want me to take care of this?" you ask him, nipping at the flesh below his ear. You feel more than see him nod, and it makes you smile. This is something you're good at; this is something you can do without screwing anything up.

Stiles is wonderfully responsive when you work your way down his body, twisting and arching into your touch. The extra prickle of the full moon burns away any embarrassment he had left, and even though you know it will be a long time before he can accept what Peter did to him, for now he can retreat into his animal side. You take your time going down on him, teasing him with your tongue and lips until he's falling apart under you. If he claws at your face when he loses himself, you don't stop him.

Afterward, when Stiles's features are fully human again, he reaches for his clothes. You think about stopping him, because you know that they'll be off again soon. You think about passing him the lube and telling him to spend this time getting ready. On the other hand, Stiles is cold and tired, and you're not sure he's really capable of thinking about round two right now, so you let him get dressed and go to sleep. The moon's not yet at its zenith; he'll be awake again soon. If he's lucky, he'll wake up before Peter gets back.

You think he's asleep and you've almost drifted off yourself when he whispers under his breath, "I wish it was just us."

***

You can't kill Peter.

You can't kill Peter, because the pack bond makes you instinctively protect him. Even if you weren't pack, you wouldn't be able to, not on your own -- if you could have, you would have done it that night in the hospital. If it was just you and Peter, you wouldn't even seriously think about it. Peter wanting you dead for your role in the fire, you wanting him dead for killing Laura, neither able to kill the other -- it's what you both deserve.

It's not just you though, and it won't be just you and Stiles for long either. You know Peter's going to want to grow his pack, and for someone newly turned, being part of the kind of pack that Peter runs is a hard life. You're pretty sure that if he builds a pack and gets stronger he's going to want to expand his territory, and that means fighting other packs. He's probably not above sharing out his pack for alliances either. Your family never did things like that, but after the fire things were different. Laura never grew your pack beyond the two of you, but she had to make alliances, and you wish you didn't know what that was like.

This is what you are thinking about when you run into Chris Argent at the grocery store.

He's alone, cart half-full of oatmeal and canned soup. When he sees you, he reaches into his jacket to put his hand on his weapon. A gun? A taser? Maybe even his crossbow? Chris won't start anything here, you think -- too public, too crowded. Still, you take care to be more aware of your surroundings, to be ready to run if you have to.

You nod at him and take a box of Cheerios off the shelf, placing it in your cart between the milk and the apples. "Picking up supplies for your pack?" Chris asks gruffly. You raise an eyebrow at him and say nothing. "They here with you tonight?"

"Trying to decide whether to call for backup?" you ask. "I'm just here to buy some groceries." You take a few steps closer to him, reaching for a box of shredded wheat. It brings you within arm's length, but he doesn't back off. Your gut clenches with nerves at how close he is, but Chris has always followed the code, even when the rest of his family didn't, and if you can bring yourself to say what you want to say to him, you don't want anyone overhearing.

"We're watching you," Chris says. "Peter's spilled human blood -- a lot of it, and you know I don't just mean my sister's."

"He killed my sister too," you remind him. A woman turns onto the aisle then, one child in the cart and one following behind, and starts browsing the shelves. Chris pretends to be deciding between Post and Kellogg's raisin bran, but he watches you out of the corner of his eye. You turn the box of shredded wheat and start slowly reading the nutritional information. The woman and her kids leave the aisle when you've gotten down to riboflavin.

"He killed your sister, but he's still your alpha," Chris says, putting both boxes back and taking the store brand raisin bran.

"You know how this works," you tell him, keeping your voice low. "If I find out you're planning something, I'll have to stop you. If I'm there when you come for him, I'll fight you." His brows draw together and his eyes narrow, as if you're threatening him. You suppose you are. "Don't let me find out your plans," you say, to make yourself clear.

Chris's eyes widen in surprise, but he nods. He begins to back away from you, but you force yourself to add, "Stiles needs an alpha to protect him and keep him out of trouble. If I were to find Peter dying, and there was no way to save him -- I'd put him out of his misery. Do we understand each other?"

"Perfectly," Chris says.

You spend a long time staring at the cereal after he leaves. You remember begging your father to let you buy Cocoa Puffs when you were a kid, and Uncle Peter taking your side when your dad said no. You remember fighting with Laura about who ate the last good bowl of raisin bran and left only the crumbly bits in the box.

You think you'd be a pretty poor alpha, but there's only one way to find out.

***





Thanks to quigonejinn and destronomics for beta and encouragement!