Archive of Our Own ^beta

here in the heart (of my sanctuary)

“Shouldn’t Laura be sitting here instead?”

Derek shifts the large glass tank on his lap to stop the edge from pressing down into the meat of his thigh, adjusts the thick blanket covering the tank when it slips. He can hear an anxious sloshing come from under the blanket and he tries to still his movements and let the tank settle, says a quiet sorry as he gives the side of the tank a gentle, awkward pat.

The little one inside won’t understand him, probably can’t even hear him, but he feels awkward not saying it.

“Why? Because Laura’s the next Alpha?” his mom says as she turns down a dirt road in the preserve overgrown with thickets and bramble on either side that have grown so tall they’ve met back in the middle to form a long tunnel, patches of blue sky barely showing through the thick branches. “Laura isn’t on the Quick Response Team, you are. And you found the little one, so they’re your charge.”

This is a new directive. Until today, his mom has always been the one to take care of the refugee – as she dubbed them – alone, regardless of who came upon them first. She considers it her duty, as Alpha. And she’s never told the rest of the team where she takes them. To safety, she always says, then immediately changes the subject.

The call for aid came early this morning, passed on from a smaller pack right at the coast. Derek’s mom gets a lot of these calls, and created the QR team – composed only of a specially chosen, select group of pack members – to step in and provide assistance. Derek has been providing support and working for the team off and on since she started it about six years ago, but a few months ago she put her trust in Derek and made him an official, full-fledged member. So far he’s helped rescue two omega werewolves, a small group of brownies, a leprechaun with a badly damaged leg, and a group of dryads near death, trapped by wildfire.

Becoming a member is a huge honor, one even Laura hasn’t been given.

Strictly speaking, the QR team shouldn’t exist. There are rules about interfering in one another’s lives. Or one, anyway: a code set down by agreement between representatives of each of the major supernatural groups more than a thousand years ago that obliquely states the affairs and concerns of each group are best left to each particular group’s concern. Translation: don’t tell me how to handle my shit, I won’t tell you how to handle yours, and we’ll get along just fine.

Centuries ago, it was easy for groups to stay separate, and much easier to stay hidden from humans. But the world is changing, and those who can’t pass as human – the goblins and unicorns and dragons and brownies and centaurs and countless others – have watched as their lands and their homes have been increasingly encroached on by humans until they have nothing left, and nowhere to go.

And the governing council? They do nothing. Because, after all, the affairs and concerns of each group are best left to each particular group’s concern.

Your homes are being chopped up and felled? Sorry, Pixies. You’re on your own.

So a few years back his mom decided to stop playing by the rules, to ignore the code even though it went against centuries of law and even though it meant certain censure from the governing council. And when word got out that one of the country’s strongest Alphas – one of its largest packs, no less – had a team in place to help the displaced, the calls started flooding in. There were questions from the other members of the pack at first, concerns. Questions and nervous rumbling from outside packs too, from their allies. But his mom put her foot down, and stepped up to the podium at the Pacific Symposium and announced her intentions clearly, in case anyone still had any doubts.

Compassion is the highest form of strength, she’d said, head held high, and Derek had watched her from the audience bookended by his uncle and sisters, flush with awe and pride. That was his mother. That was his Alpha. Our brothers and sisters need our help, and I will not stand by and watch them suffer. Will you?

The moment his mother walked off stage, Derek immediately asked to help. No one deserves to feel powerless. No one deserves to feel like they don’t matter.

Talia accelerates through the tunnel, and Derek looks up, watches the light that makes it through the bramble dance and shift over the hood of the car as they drive, fingers gripping the sides of the tank. It’s beautiful, like a gateway to another world. He’s lived in the preserve his whole life, and he didn’t know this was here.

She glances over at him. “Laura won’t do everything when she finally takes over. As her second, some of the responsibilities will be yours. And I’ve decided this one will be yours. You’re the one who’s been working with the QR team for years and besides…it suits you better.” She smiles to herself as the car emerges from the bramble tunnel, comes out to a clearing on the other side. She stops in front of a dilapidated shack, puts the car in park, turns off the engine. “Not all the duties of an Alpha or a second are fun, Derek.”

“Right,” he says, like rote. “I know.”

There’s a lot of joy, a lot of community and love and life to be found within pack, his mom has always said. But it isn’t all easy. Being a leader means making tough choices sometimes, protecting the pack and its members, even from each other. And as Laura’s eventual second, it falls on Derek to back her up, to provide support, to fill in her gaps. Just like Peter does for his mom.

Derek knows that. Still, she’s been hammering this into him lately, constantly checking in to make sure this is what he wants for his future, reminding him it’s okay to step away from leadership and into a lesser role if this isn’t what he wants, reminding him that he used to talk about getting his masters, about living on the east coast. Reminding him that he had other dreams once, and that if he still has them then that’s fine, that’s okay. That he doesn’t owe them anything.

But he does. Especially Laura.

She saved them all once upon a time – she saved Derek – when he was too much of an idiot to see what was right in front of his face. If not for her…Derek doesn’t want to think about it. But sometimes he still dwells on the cans of gas they found in Kate’s trunk, at the way she’d grinned when she’d finally been caught and no one believed her lies any longer. Completely and totally unashamed. A sociopath to the core. And he’d fallen for her.

“But some duties are a lot of fun. And this one…this one is my favorite.”

She gets out of the car then comes around to his side, opens his door for him so he can get out, the tank in his arms.

“Or was, I suppose. Since starting now it’s your duty, not mine.”

The shack in front of him is the least impressive thing Derek has ever seen and he asks, incredulously, “This is your favorite duty?” He stares at the structure that looks like a gentle breeze might send it toppling and asks, “Why?”

She just laughs. “You’ll see.”

She walks past the front of the shack, rounds the side. Derek follows. They stop at a cracked, busted door and she knocks with three firm raps then steps back, waits. Derek can’t imagine what the hell could possibly be on the other side. Or who. The shack isn’t even close to livable.

He eyes some dead and dried out flowers in an overturned pot next to the stoop, wonders what kind of flowers they used to be.

“You know, being the second is a mostly thankless position. As the Alpha, Laura will get ninety-five percent of the respect, the honor, and the acclaim while you’re forced to stand there and let someone else call your successes hers.”

“I know, mom.”

He does. They’ve talked about this extensively. But Derek doesn’t want the spotlight. He wasn’t made for it the way Laura was, he doesn’t gravitate to it the way she does. He wants his family to be safe and he wants his pack to continue to thrive and if that means never getting any of the credit, he’s perfectly fine with that. He’s more than fine with that.

“Your uncle has flourished in it, made it his own, but he struggled a little in the beginning too,” she says, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Until he found his niche, and realized the lack of attention on him meant he was free to move about the way others couldn’t.”

Peter does love his subterfuge. Thankfully it’s always been focused outside of the family.

“Peter’s ability to communicate with those of all backgrounds both inside and outside our community has been an asset to us, to the growth and strength of our pack. If you’re going to commit to being Laura’s second-”

“I am, mom,” he says, like a broken record. “I’m fully committed.”

“If you’re going to commit to being Laura’s second,” she says pointedly and he ducks his head, chastised. “Then you need to learn how to foster important relationships for the pack outside of the werewolf community, like Peter does. The man you’re about to meet is the perfect first contact, the perfect practice run.”

Great. Another test to prove himself. This one with training wheels.

“I know it isn’t your comfort zone, Derek,” she says, not unkindly. “And-”

“And if I’m going to be the second Laura needs, then I need to practice.” He sighs. “Got it.”

She eyes him. “You should know this man is very important to me. I take the responsibility of his care and counsel very seriously. Handing him over to you…it’s not a small thing. Please keep that in mind.”

No pressure, then.

The door in front of them pulls open and Derek blinks, surprised, when a short man with a very long beard and a hooked nose steps in the doorway, frowns up at them. He’s dressed in a pair of dirty overalls and a faded maroon barn jacket, a gray knit cap on his head, work boots secured with laces wrapped several times around the ankle, the toe on one wrapped in strips of silver duct tape.

“What?” he asks, gruff and impatient.

This is him?

His mom smiles and bends at the waist to bow to him, one open hand pressed to her shoulder.

“Well met, Marley.”

He narrows his eyes at her, looks at the both of them a long time before he mutters a well met in response, turns and walks inside without another word, leaving the door open behind him.

This is the guy?

Derek shakes his head, enters the shack after he watches his mom enter first, twisting sideways to keep the tank in his arms from hitting the door frame. The moment he steps inside and the door swings shut behind him he stops, eyes going wide.

What the hell?

It’s warm inside, and the air feels thick and heady with spice, almost oppressively so. In front of them is a kitchen with tall cabinets and long wooden countertops, a scarred wooden table standing in the middle covered in open books, in bottles, in stacks of dried herbs and a deep copper pot, a knife stuck in the corner, wooden handle pointed up. Above them hang talismans, religious symbols, pieces of colored glass and metal from the tin tile ceiling, tinkling as they bump into one another, and in front of them leading into another room are gigantic, towering bookshelves overstuffed with all sorts of books, scrolls, figurines of creatures and gods, trinkets, and one darkened iPad, left on top of one of the rows of books. There are faded rugs beneath their feet – small swatches of beat up hardwood floors visible in the few spots where the rugs don’t overlap – and the walls have posters and charts and maps with curling corners and what looks like an anatomical study of a dragon, its massive wings spread, body parts named in Latin. In an alcove off to the side of the kitchen there’s a small table with mismatched chairs covered in stacks of papers, one stack topped by what appears to be an actual human skull, and on the walls behind the table are framed photos: one faded, sepia toned photo of a row of women in robes and pointed hats standing in front of a giant cauldron holding brooms and black cats, and another much more recent shot of a young family, the little boy perched on his dad’s shoulders, the mother’s face turned toward the little boy, face frozen in laughter.

There’s so much to look at that Derek could spend an hour standing in this spot and not fully take in everything. It’s close to overwhelming, and it makes his skin itch.

He can feel the magic in the air too. A lot of it.

“Is he home?”

Marley grunts and gestures somewhere toward another room, steps onto a stool in front of the wooden table and throws a few herbs into the copper pot, gives it a stir. Ignores them.

So…not him, then.

Derek follows as his mom takes the lead, walking around the bookshelves and into the next room which is filled with even more towering shelves stuffed with even more books, none of which are in any sort of order as far as Derek can see, though his eyes key in on a few titles, shelved haphazardly next to a crystal ball on a faded gold stand: a pristine hardback copy of Modern Witchcraft, a Chilton auto repair manual for a 1980 Jeep CJ-5 with oil stains and curled corners, and a mass market paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird with a creased and broken spine. Aside from the books one shelf is lit up with a light in the shape of Captain America’s shield, and above that there’s a small flat screen TV perched precariously on the top of one shelf, stacks of BluRay cases on the shelf below. As they reach the bend in the shelves they come upon an unmade bed tucked in the corner with an orange tabby curled up at the foot and an abandoned laptop with iTunes queued up, paused on a song he doesn’t know by a band he’s never heard of. The cat lifts its head, eyes them.

“Crookshanks,” his mom says by way of greeting, nodding to the cat.

The cat closes its eyes, tucks his head back down against the rumpled blue and white striped comforter.

“Crookshanks?” Derek asks.

“He’s a witch and he grew up on Harry Potter,” she says.

Who the hell is this guy?

From behind the last shelf a large poof of violet tinted smoke goes up, spreads out across the ceiling and dissipates. It makes the whole room smell like blueberries and clover. And sugared cinnamon?

“Oops!” a quiet voice says cheerfully from the other side of the shelves. “Note to self…finish eating Pop Tart before you start stirring the cauldron.”

When they finally round the last shelf they step into an open space with a fireplace in front of them. Just like the kitchen this space has a large wooden work table, but this one holds an open book and some partially empty bowls and open bottles, its top scarred with scattered scorch marks. Surrounding the table are shelves filled with jars and tubs and vials and bags of herbs and potions and liquids and god knows what else, all labeled, some a little smudged and hard to read, others unmistakable: a small bottle with a yellow tinted viscous liquid labeled kanima venom, a wooden box labeled asphodel, its contents hidden, and a large jar labeled eye of newt, half full with…sour gummy worms.

Derek shakes his head.

In front of them a man in a red plaid shirt stands next to a cauldron with his back to them, stirring the cauldron’s contents slowly with a long, roughly carved wooden spoon, light shining down on him through the panes of the multi-colored glass window above him, a piece of Pop Tart hanging out of his mouth, a tiny green and gold dragon perched on his shoulder. He lifts a hand, grabs hold of the Pop Tart in his mouth and takes a solid bite then sets it on a plate teetering on the mantle above him, wiping the crumbs on his fingers off on his jeans with a quick swipe of his hand. Without looking his fingers grasp a small piece of meat on a second plate on the mantle and he lifts his hand and feeds the dragon on his shoulder, who playfully nips at his fingers.

“Stiles,” his mother says, a warm smile in her voice.

The man – Stiles – looks over his shoulder, beams a smile at Talia. “Alpha Hale.”

“Stiles,” she gently admonishes with a tilt of the head, eyes crinkled at the corners. “It’s Talia. How many times do I have to say that? We don’t stand on ceremony.”

He just nods, waves his hand through the air as if they’ve had this conversation before. Derek’s eyes skitter back and forth between the two of them. He wonders how many times they have.

Stiles gives the liquid in the cauldron a few more slow stirs before removing the spoon, covering the pot, and finally turning to them.

He has an impish, puckish look about him, with his upturned nose and his scattering of moles, with his bed head and his easy smile and the mischievous upturn of his lip. The look of a troublemaker. And he looks young, much younger than Derek was expecting. In his plaid shirt and skinny jeans and Converse, he doesn’t exactly look like a seasoned witch. More like a college kid who happened into the wrong house and raided its cupboards and made friends with its inhabitants and thought it might be neat to stir the giant steaming cauldron and see what happened.

Still, looks can be deceiving. Derek knows that from experience.

“This must be the super star son I’ve heard so much about. Derek, right?”

Derek eyes his mother, who gives him an innocent look back. He shifts the tank in his arms, stares down at her. He may not have any real power over her, but at least he’s got one advantage: he’s taller. It makes staring down at her in judgment a little easier.

Not that she’s impressed in the slightest. She never is. She’s had a lot of practice.

“So you’re the strong silent type, huh big guy?”

Derek startles, looks over at Stiles who’s watching him with arms crossed, lips twitching. The dragon on Stiles’ shoulder gives him a judgmental little snort.

“No,” he says shortly, and frowns to himself.

Shit. He’s fucking this up already.

He isn’t good with people he’s just met. Not anymore. Not since Kate. Everyone think he’s moody or sullen or difficult, but he’s just…reserved. Careful. Slow to trust.

His sisters rag him about being too particular, about having standards that are impossible for anyone to meet, about keeping himself closed off from everyone, but he won’t sacrifice the pack again, not for anyone. Whether friend or lover, the right person will understand that. The right person won’t force him to choose. The right person will love his pack the way he does.

That’s non-negotiable.

They keep telling him he needs to go out and get laid, loosen up a little. But he doesn’t know how to explain to them that the thing that works so well for them – having a little fun, picking up someone in a bar for the night, going off of instant attraction and pheromones – just doesn’t work for him the same way. 

It’s never going to work for him the same way.

Until he does figure out how to tell them, he’s stuck trailing along after them to bars and clubs, stuck enduring the heavy, cloying scent of sex pheromones directed his way that he doesn’t want anything to do with.

It’s fine. He can endure it. For them he can endure it. He loves his sisters even if they are pains in the ass most days.

“No?” Stiles asks, a smile twitching his lips.

“Your house is a fire hazard,” he blurts out, and immediately regrets it. Laura wouldn’t have said that. Laura would have been politic and respectful. She would’ve talked about how impressed she was with the size of Stiles’ library, how cozy and homey his place was. She would’ve charmed him, she would’ve commanded his attention. A natural Alpha.

Derek just sticks his foot in his mouth.

“Yeah, it’s the worst,” Stiles says easily and laughs unashamedly and Derek immediately loosens his shoulders, relaxes.

Maybe he hasn’t totally fucked up relations just yet.

Stiles gestures to the tank in Derek’s arms. “I’m guessing that’s for me?”

Derek sets the tank down on the table after Stiles moves the book out of the way and flips it shut, taking care not to slosh the water or jostle its occupant. Derek briefly catches the title of the well-used book before it’s pushed off to the side: Principles and Practices of the Magickal Arts.

When Derek doesn’t say anything, Talia says, “We went to investigate a disturbance out by the ocean, and Derek found this little one alone in a cove by itself, struggling.”

“Was there a fight?” Stiles asks, all trace of humor gone from his voice.

“One that didn’t end well.”

“Which cove?”

There’s a long pause and then Derek feels a nudge against his arm. He looks over at his mom to find her looking at him, her eyebrows lifted pointedly. Right. He’s the one who’s supposed to be taking point, he’s the one who’s supposed to be talking. He comes back to himself, sputters out, “Uh…Smuggler’s.”

Stiles nods, lifts the fabric carefully off the top of the tank, makes soft, soothing sounds when he sees a frightened little face duck back against the corner of the tank, hands curled in front of its mouth, iridescent blue tail churning the water.

“Hi there,” Stiles croons, soft and sweet, and Derek feels his heart clench. He swallows and watches Stiles intently. “Hi there, little one.”

He follows that with low sounds in his throat and a series of soft clicks and smiles as he crouches down so his face is eye level with the little mer. He brings up a hand to pick up the dragon and sets it down on the table away from the tank as he holds the mer’s gaze with a reassuring smile and asks, “You’re sure there was no one else around?”

The little dragon walks across the tabletop, settles itself on top of a little pile of crystals in the corner with a tiny huff.

“We’re sure,” Derek says. He’d checked himself before he’d scooped the terrified little mer out of the water and into a bucket. But he’d seen the blood staining the rocks. There’d been so much of it, far too much for one mer. Or two, even. Derek hadn’t wanted to speculate on how many. “It was all alone, hiding in the seaweed in the shadow of a large rock. I almost missed it.”

“She,” he says with another reassuring smile at the little mermaid, following that smile with another series of soft clicks that have her floating across the tank and to Stiles, one tentative finger reaching up and over the side.

“She?” Derek asks.

“She,” Stiles confirms, this time sending a brief smile Derek’s way. “Our little orphan mermaid.”

He makes some more of those little clicks and soft noises and Derek asks, “What are those?”

At Stiles’ lifted eyebrows he gestures to his throat and says, “The sounds you’re making.”

“I’m talking to her, telling her she’s going to be okay. That we’re going to take care of her. That she’s safe. You know…the basics.”

Derek blinks. “You speak Mer?”

“Western Mer, yeah.” Stiles shoots a glance his way. “Haven’t managed to pick up the other Mer dialects yet, but I hope to one day. Asiatic Mer is supposed to be fascinating. Suuuuper easy to screw up and call someone a fish dick on accident though, so you know…I’d definitely manage to do that. I always seem to. Not call someone a fish dick specifically, but you get what I mean,” he says, and gestures sort of vaguely with one hand. “When I was learning Dwarvish I accidentally called Marley the offspring of a gardener’s trowel which is apparently an insult? I know better now.”

“How many languages do you speak?”

“Uhhhhhh…” Stiles narrows his eyes, wrinkles his nose as he thinks. “Like, at least a couple dozen? I haven’t counted.”

A couple dozen?

“Couldn’t she have family somewhere else?” Talia asks, and Stiles shakes his head, rising from his crouch and placing his hand on the top of the tank, smiling down at the mermaid as she lifts her hand slowly and touches Stiles’ hand, fingers spreading to show the webbing between them.

“No. A mer pod always stays together, all generations.”

“It’s not possible that she could’ve gotten away from her pod?” Derek asks.

He shakes his head again. “The mer are a super family oriented species, and she’s way too little to have been left alone. The equivalent to a human infant of like…nine months? She’s not even at speaking age yet. Her parents would’ve kept her close at all times. We’re talking baby leash distance.”

“So there’s no way to know her name,” Derek says, “or where she was from.”

He’d been hoping there was someone from her family still alive, that they could find them somehow. He watches her tail swish gently back and forth in the water, feels his stomach churn. She’s all alone.

“She doesn’t have a name yet. She’s too young to have one. But as for where she’s from,” he says, “I would guess somewhere in the Pacific Northwest originally?” He scratches the back of his head. “There are tribes there that exhibit similar coloring. Though she could be from one of the southern California tribes too. Hard to know without more testing.”

“How can she not have a name?” Derek asks, furrowing his eyebrows.

“Mer aren’t given a name…they name themselves. It’s their first rite of passage. Little known and closely guarded fact.” He smiles down at her again and this time she smiles back, tilting her head back to look up at Stiles. “Gives them plenty of time to figure out what name feels right. Until then her parents would’ve probably called her some sort of endearment.” He gives a series of clicks and a few soft sounds. “Something like that?”

“Which means?”

“Rough translation?” he says. “Treasured life.”

Derek frowns at the little girl in the tank. “What’s going to happen to her?”

Stiles shoves the rolled-up sleeves of his plaid shirt a little further up his arms and reaches further into the tank, holds out his hand. The little mermaid takes it, holds his hand, looks over at Derek and Talia and gives them both a smile. Derek relaxes into the hand his mom places on his shoulder, softens.

Stiles grins at him. “Do you want to see?”

At Stiles’ instruction Derek picks up the tank again and carries it and their little orphan mermaid because, as Stiles says with waggling eyebrows, what good is it having a big, strong werewolf around if you don’t capitalize on that shit?

Derek will deny to his dying day that he stumbled a little when he went to pick up the tank again, but there’s something about Stiles that he doesn’t quite understand, something that throws him off center.

He and Talia follow Stiles and the little dragon through a short back hallway past a bathroom with a massive tub and out the back entrance to the cottage, down some rough-hewn stone steps and into a sizable garden filled with climbing plants and herbs and vegetables, Stiles singing Part of Your World cheerfully and off-key. When Derek looks out past the garden, he can see the hood of their car, peeking out from behind Stiles’ house. None of this was visible when they drove up.

“How much magic is shielding this place?”

Stiles stops singing and lets out a delighted bark of a short laugh. “Uhhhh…like a shitload? The safety of my charges is more important to me than anything.”

“Your charges?”

Stiles shoots a knowing grin at Talia.

“You left the big reveal up to me, huh?” he says, and gestures with an open hand in front of them.

As he does a massive set of open ornate ironwork gates appear in front of them, and behind those, a wide, packed dirt path spreads out, curving in the distance. It resembles a Victorian zoo with occasional iron fences to match the front gates, with its lampposts spaced out along the path, with its benches placed back to back along the center, trees towering above them. Along either side of the path are trees and paddocks and pens and caves and creatures…more creatures than Derek has ever seen outside of their bestiary, some he can name, plenty others he can’t. His head cranes back in awe when a massive roc goes sailing by, over their heads.

“Welcome to the Sanctuary,” Stiles says proudly as they step through the gates. “Currently home to more than a hundred different species. Everyone who lives here is a little bit different or incapable of living out in the world or incapable of caring for themselves, so-”

“You care for them,” Derek says as the little mer peeks up over the edge of the tank, as a couple of unicorns walk past them, as Talia smiles and steps to the side to stroke the side of a positively massive horse called an Aavak, according to a placard outside its fence.

“I do.”

Closest to them, closest to the gates, are forested and wooded sections, and in one small forest section he can see the group of dryads he helped rescue last week dancing around a crop of oak trees, full of smiles and laughter. He nods in shock when they recognize him, wave at him cheerfully.

He catches his mother’s eye and she nods, just once. This is where she’s been taking the refugees, all this time. To the preserve. To Stiles.

“This is incredible.”

“Thanks,” he says, blushing, but he can’t hide the exhausted pride that shines through his eyes. Clearly he’s put a lot of work into this. The magic out here is strong, so strong Derek can feel it licking at his skin in warm, gentle waves.

“It’s a constant work in progress. Always evolving, depending on who needs me next. I just got word that there might be a Bujanga with a disabled wing who could use a home, so I’ve been working on a habitat for him over there,” he says and gestures to a thick jungle patch, full of trees and vines and low flora off in the distance a ways. “Not too much experience with Indonesian jungle dragons though, so it’s slow going.”

“And the little one on your shoulder?”

“Sabine, yeah. She came to me from an extremist wizard cabal. She’s the only one of her siblings that survived. I’d been hoping to use her for more security…you know, air surveillance over the grounds since she’s so tiny she’s basically always in stealth mode…but she doesn’t like to leave my side. She even sleeps on a little nest I made for her on a shelf next to my bed. I’d let her sleep on the bed with me, but waking up once with singed hair was enough. Plus she kicks. Dragon talons are murder on the skin, dude.”

“She’s never going to get any bigger?”

“Nah,” he says with disgust. “She was a genetic experiment. Teacup dragons.” He shakes his head. “Fucking wizards.”

Stiles gestures one way with his head and they start to walk down the main path close to the habitats on the left side of the Sanctuary, passing by a pair of Henkes, a positively massive hut belonging to a Giantess named Feyr, and a forested section containing a group of Keshalyi, who Stiles explains are beautiful, benevolent fairies from Transylvania who love to help him with his garden.

“I had no idea you were here, in the preserve.”

“Yeah, nobody’s supposed to. We’re safer that way. At this point it’s just my dad and your mom who know, who’ve been given my blessing – and they’re both good at keeping secrets. Well,” he adds, “you too now. Welcome to the club.”

“What Stiles does is incredibly important,” Talia says as she catches up to them. “I consider it an honor to have been a secret keeper of the Sanctuary’s location, and to have been entrusted with Stiles’ safety and care.”

Have been, because she’s now passing that responsibility on to Derek.

She gives him a regal nod from behind Stiles’ back and he nods back, a touch jerky, moved by her trust and faith in him.

“So don’t feel too bad you didn’t notice. Like I said, no one does. We’re the Bermuda Triangle: West Coast Edition. My magic turns people around and flips them upside down and by the time they get back home, they’ve forgotten they ever visited. Even the creatures who rehab here but don’t intend to stay couldn’t find their way back if they wanted to.” He gestures to a building off to the side, guarded in the front by a row of tall sugar pines, and Derek watches as Marley disappears inside an open door with a large bowl in his hands. “We’re pretty light in the rehab center right now, though. Just a couple omega werewolves and one werebear.”

“You help other weres?” he asks, eyebrows rising.

He nods firmly. “We help anyone who needs it. Anyone. We’re neutral territory.”

Derek looks over at his mom and Talia says, “It’s one of Stiles’ rules. He’s adamant about it.”

“I’m Switzerland, dude. I don’t take sides, but I defend my own with all my might.”

He gestures again and they make a turn into a section with streams and ponds and rivers and lakes, some that connect and some that don’t. Off in the distance he can see something large moving through water, its head and long, skinny neck protruding out of the water followed by two humps.

Derek stops, stares.

“Is that…?”

“Nessie?” Stiles grins. “Yep. She’s a sweetheart. Hates the spotlight though, and people were getting a little too close to spotting her for real, which is why she’s here now. Down this way,” he says as he gestures to a large body of water toward the end of the lane.

How did he manage to move a giant water serpent from a lake in Scotland all the way across the world to a lake in California?

Derek is dying to hear how he managed it – he’s sure there’s an interesting story there – but instead he asks, “How did this start?” At Stiles’ raised eyebrows, Derek adds, “You saving the supernatural world.”

He barks out another laugh, delighted at Derek’s playfulness, and Derek smiles to himself, feels the pride warming his stomach.

“Uh, Cliffs Notes version?” he says, reaching into his pocket for a tiny treat for Sabine, holding it out for her to snick from him. She does, rubs her head like a cat would against Stiles’ head in thanks and affection. He gives her a little scritch on the neck in return. “My best buddy got bit by a transient Alpha in high school which, you know…opened up this entire world for me? Until then I had no idea werewolves actually existed outside of fairy tales and horror movies. So finding out they did was just….unreal.”

Stiles uses his whole body when he talks, rolling his shoulders, bobbing his head. But it’s his arms and his hands and his long fingers that Derek can’t seem to stop watching twitch and move and gesture, like he’s hypnotized by them.

Derek gives an encouraging smile.

“It was this whole new world for me to learn about, and I couldn’t get enough of it. I got like zero hours of sleep the last couple years of high school, but I just couldn’t stand to sleep when there was so damn much to learn. And all of it was amazing.”

He pulls something out of his back pocket, steps into an enclosure, and sets it down in a shallow dish at the edge of the water before he walks back out of the enclosure, rejoins them.

“It was like an eight year old’s wet dream.” He cringes, immediately turns to Talia. “Sorry.”

She just laughs, her head thrown back and Derek blinks, surprised. He doesn’t see his mom laugh like that a lot. Being the Alpha, there just isn’t a lot of room for her to let go. It’s mostly in private moments with the immediate family, but even those are rare these days now that they’re all adults, now that she’s so focused on training them to lead the pack in the future.

But Stiles is different. Clearly.

Stiles takes a step closer to him, almost absentmindedly, and their arms brush against each other as they walk. Derek can feel the hair on Stiles’ forearm brushing against his own, and it sends a shiver up his arm. He takes a half step away.

“Or it was my particular dream scenario, anyway. For Scott, not so much. He hated it. From the beginning he hated it. And I got that, you know?” He looks to Derek for acknowledgment and Derek nods dutifully though he’s not sure he understands, not really. He can’t imagine hating his very nature like that. “It’s not like the dude gave him a pros and cons list called ‘The Journey to Becoming a Werewolf’ or anything. He didn’t get to choose. And that sucks.”

“And now?” Derek asks, sucking in a breath when Stiles steps closer again, when his arm drags against Derek’s. Derek’s fingers clench the sides of the tank in his arms.

Stiles shrugs. “I haven’t talked to him in a while, but I assume he’s doing alright. I haven’t heard otherwise, and his mom is really good about stuff like that. She would’ve let me know. We’re still pretty close. She makes me cookies sometimes. Sometimes enchiladas too, if she thinks I’m not taking enough time to eat.”

Derek frowns. “I thought you said he was your best friend.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, drawing the word out slowly as he steps over to the gate of an enclosure, knocks with a firm hand, calls out a chipper Afternoon, Garland! when a small green hand pops up from behind tall grasses and waves to them.

He walks back over, shoves his hands in his pockets.

“The key word there is was. I mean…we’re alright now, we’re friendly, but it’s never going to be the same again, not the way it used to be. Not after the falling out we had. Now he does his thing – taking care of animals in the human world and ignoring his werewolfy-ness – and I do my thing,” he says, gesturing to the Sanctuary around them, letting it finish the sentence for him.

“What happened?” When Stiles looks over at Derek, eyebrows quirking, Derek hastens to add, “Uh…if you want to tell me, of course. If you don’t…that’s…that’s fine.”

Stiles gives him an amused ghost of a smile, but if Derek has learned one thing from his years of therapy, it’s that consent is important. He’ll never force anyone to give him something they aren’t willing to give.

“It’s okay,” Stiles says kindly. “We were doin’ great…I was helping him with his shift, we were figuring out his control…and then six months after he got bit we had this massive fight over what I like to call a complete lack of supernatural decency, and what he likes to call me butting my human nose in where it didn’t belong.”

Derek lifts his eyebrows at the strained bite in Stiles’ voice, watches him, waits for him to continue.

He sighs, shoulders drooping, and kicks at a rock beneath his shoe, sending it skittering down the path ahead of them. “Scott has worked for this local vet for ages, alright? Doctor Deaton? I think you guys know him.”

Sure, they know him. He used to be their emissary until his mom broke their contract when Derek was a teenager. She never told them why, but he’s always assumed there was a good reason for it. His mom isn’t known for her rash decision making.

“So we were there one night at the clinic, late, when this wounded fox comes up to the back door. Scott is all set to help him – he’s got his gear out and everything – when the dude shifts. Turns out it wasn’t a fox, it was a werefox.”

Derek nods when Stiles looks over at him again. From behind Stiles Derek can see his mother’s lips thin, watches as she turns her face away.

“So Scott immediately backs away from this guy. Totally refuses to help him. Says he can’t. Deaton told him. It breaks the code, he says, and then he proceeds to rattle it off, like it’s supposed to mean something when this guy is bleeding out right outside the back door.” He shakes his head. “So I call Deaton, tell him what’s going on. I figure there’s no way this guy is going to refuse to help someone who’s dying, and besides…he’s a freelance druid, so no alignment right?”

“Sure. Of course.” Derek prompts.

Stiles nods along with him, waves a hand agitatedly through the air, nearly hits the side of the tank. The little mermaid watches him with wide eyes, scoots back to the other side of the tank.

“Plus he’s a vet, and it says right there in the Veterinarian’s Oath he was required to say to get his license…I solemnly swear I will use my scientific knowledge and skills for the benefit of society. Only Deaton refuses to help too, and he parrots that stupid code right back at me, even though it doesn’t actually apply to him, and Scott is standing there with his arms crossed looking all satisfied because he was right and I was wrong,” he rants, throwing up a pair of sarcastic air quotes with two flailed out hands, “and continues to refuse to help me no matter how hard I ask because apparently some code is way more important than a guy’s life, which is such bullshit and I…you know…snapped. I called them both out on their crap, and even though I knew next to nothing about saving anything and even though I was pretty sure I was going to faint just thinking about what I was going to have to do to this guy’s arm…I grabbed the werefox and somehow managed to get him in the back of my Jeep even though he couldn’t shift back and he was basically dead weight. I took him home and dragged him into the gardening shed while I stole my dad’s phone and called your mom, and even though she didn’t really know me and I could’ve been some stupid teenage punk pranking the shit out of her, she came. Right away.”

“It isn’t every day you get a panicked phone call from the teenage son of the sheriff telling you he has a dying werefox in his garden shed and he doesn’t know what to do,” she says wryly, but she smiles at Stiles fondly, proudly.

“Your mom totally disregarded any political bullshit to do the right thing. And because of that we saved Eddie.”

“No, Stiles,” she says, “you saved Eddie.”

Stiles’ shoulders curl in and he waves it off, shakes his head.

“Anyway,” he says, breaking up the silence. “Eddie was my first. That’s how it started. But I couldn’t really start the Sanctuary until your mom gifted me this land.”

“And Eddie? Where is he now?”

Stiles grins. “Still living in my dad’s backyard, in the den he built for himself. He and pops get along great. They’re Sunday morning football buddies.”

Sabine gives a tiny excited trill from Stiles’ shoulder, butts her head against his, and he scritches her neck and says, “Sorry, Beenie. No dad.”

She butts her head against his a little harder and gives a disgruntled little snort, and Stiles offers her a treat from his pocket in apology.

He turns to Derek. “She adores my dad. He calls her his granddragon. It’s disgustingly cute.”

He stops in front of the large body of water he’d pointed out earlier, letting out a complicated whistle-trill and crouches down next to the shore while Derek and Talia keep their distance.

With rocks rising out of the side, a few rocks in the center off at a distance, and gentle artificial waves lapping at the shore, Derek thinks this would be a nice place to live. If you were a mer, anyway.

Soon enough an olive-skinned mer with black hair rises slowly out of the water, smiles when he sees Stiles. His voice is deep, softly resonant.

“Hello, Stiles.”

Stiles smiles back. “Morning, Costas. How’s Diarmuid today?”

“Better,” he says. “Healed. Your work is excellent.”

Stiles waves that off as another mer rises to the surface, this one with ginger hair and pale skin. He gives Stiles a wide smile, shifts to show Stiles his back where Derek can see a deep scar cutting through his emerald scales, a piece of his fin missing. “Looking good, right?”

“Much better than when we met,” Stiles says, and reaches into his pocket, producing a vial he immediately hands over. “That should help reduce the scarring.”

“I don’t mind it,” Diarmuid says in his lilting, musical voice as he takes the vial. “It means I survived.”

Costas lets out a series of clicks and soft sounds – kin to the sounds Stiles had used earlier – but they sound different coming from Costas’ mouth. More natural, smoother. His voice slides warmly into all the sounds and Diarmuid gives him a soft smile in return, tilts his head.

Derek watches as Stiles ducks his head, as he presses a smile of his own into his shoulder.

He takes a moment, then lifts his head again.

“So I have something to ask of the two of you. A big favor. Like, you know…huge. You can say no,” he hastens to add. “There’s absolutely zero expectations here on you, so just let me know if this is too big an ask, okay?”

Costas and Darmuid swim close together, and Costas puts his arm around Diarmuid as they lean in close to Stiles. “What is it?”

“Alpha Hale and her son Derek rescued a little one from Smuggler’s Cove this morning. She’s an orphan-”

“Where is she?” Diarmuid asks, fingers gripping the edge of the shoreline, head swiveling to look around Stiles.

Stiles rises, backs off to the side and motions for Derek to step closer so they can see the little mer floating in the tank, her hands gripping the top edge, her little face peeking over the top.

“I know the two of you have talked about having a family and-”

Costas lets out a series of clicks and soft sounds directed at the little mer, and she brightens and reaches over the tank, reaches for him, strains against the glass box holding her. Diarmuid follows suit, repeating the same sounds as Costas.

Stiles looks up at Derek, mouths the words Treasured Life before he steps over, takes the little one in his arms, and then crouches down and hands her off to her new parents who proceed to bring her into the water with them, to cuddle her close, to surround her in their arms. Derek looks away to find his mom smiling at them through wet eyes, hands clasped together in front of her. His own throat feels a little thick and he swallows and looks at Stiles who is grinning as he watches them.

After a moment the three of them back away quietly and leave the little family to themselves, heading back the way they came, water sloshing back and forth in the tank in Derek’s arms now that he no longer cares about keeping it steady. When a phoenix flies overhead Stiles stops and smiles, leans his head back to watch it glide. Derek’s eyes immediately track to the unbroken line of Stiles’ long, lean neck.

“You weren’t born with magic.”

If he were talking to someone else, that might have been an impertinent thing to say. But Derek is learning quickly that Stiles doesn’t seem to mind, that he likes it when others are straightforward with him. The supernatural world is full of double-speak and vague answers and allusions – Peter is practically the king of that – but Stiles stands apart. At the edge, in his own little carefully constructed world. Involved, threaded almost invisibly into the fabric of their community, but still human. Achingly human. It’s refreshing.

Stiles returns his head to its normal position, looks over at Derek. “That’s part of the beauty of magic, man…no one is. You can have a spark like I do, and that helps things along, but everyone who knows and uses magic had to learn it from scratch. No such thing as inborn talent and instincts to a magic user, just a lot of hard work.”

Stiles doesn’t say and a shitload of determination too, but Derek hears it anyway. You’d have to have that to do what Stiles does, to be what he is. To choose the life he has.

“How did Diarmuid get injured?” Derek eventually asks.

Stiles slips his hands into his pockets. “He was attacked by some of his own kind.”

They begin to walk again, pausing briefly to allow a couple of centaurs the right of way. The centaurs give them each a nod of respect before stepping off the path and into a forested space, disappearing behind a copse of trees. One of the centaurs has had an arm amputated, the other has a severe limp, one hip joint rolling out of sync with the others.

“They took issue with the fact that he fell in love with Costas.”

“Because he was from a different tribe?”

They step through the iron gates, back into the garden, although now that Derek thinks about it, he realizes the gates couldn’t be iron. Not with fae living here. The gates and fences and lampposts and the frame of the massive greenhouse he saw out behind the rehab center couldn’t be either. Stiles must have just designed them to look like iron.

In front of them, a few small green fairies hop down from a planting bed and place their harvested vegetables in a waiting basket that’s already about half full, disappearing out of sight with a high chittering when they see Derek walk up.

“Because he’s male,” Stiles says and looks over at him again. “They wanted to punish Diarmuid for his unnatural urges.”

Stiles hops up the steps and enters the back door of the cottage. Derek tucks the tank under one arm and stops Stiles with a hand to the arm just inside the doorway.

“His family did that to him?”

“Dishonor means death, right?” Stiles says with mocking derision, as if repeating someone else’s less than palatable words. “Humans don’t hold the patent on being discriminatory shitheads to each other, you know.”

They weave their way back through the house – passing by the bathroom with its huge tub, plants hanging from the ceiling, shelves stacked with bottles, one dark blue towel hanging on a hook. They pass back around his unmade bed, Crookshanks still asleep at the foot in his comforter nest and walk around his disordered bookshelves – Derek wants to pore over them and pull books from them and put them into some semblance of order, and his fingers itch to touch the spines, to pull books from the shelves, to start stacking them up so he can read through them all, one by one, so he can know what Stiles knows. So he can speak to him in soft sounds and clicks. So he can understand when Stiles does.

Stiles’ place is…a lot. It’s like Derek can’t quite catch his breath inside. Still, he doesn’t want to leave. He wants to know if the air feels just as thick in the morning when Stiles wakes up, if it feels just as thick at night when he goes to bed. He wants to know if there’s any actual organizational system to his books and his herbs, or he just shoves things where he can find the room. He wants to know what all the things hanging above the kitchen island mean, if they do anything or if they’re just pretty. If he just likes the way they look, the way they sound.

He wants to know everything he can about Stiles.

Back in the warm kitchen he turns his head, looks back in the direction they came as if he can see the little mer on the other side of the wall, out at the edge of the Sanctuary, swimming happily in her new home with her new parents. He wants to see her again tomorrow. He wants to know she’s happy. He wants to know her name.

He’s never wanted so many things so desperately in his life, and it scares him a little. This is not Kate. Kate could never come close to this. This is something else. Something a lot bigger and a lot more terrifying. Something real.

“She’s gonna be okay,” Stiles says, and when Derek looks back he finds Stiles smiling at him knowingly, his arms crossed over his chest.

Derek ducks his head. He’s not sure he likes that he’s so easy to read.

“You can come back and check on her anytime you want, though.”

He looks up, eyes catching on Stiles’.

“Since it’s your job now and everything.”

“Right,” Derek says, voice a little thick. He clears his throat.

Stiles doesn’t look away. His head tilts just the smallest bit and then his grin grows, softens.

His mom thanks Stiles with a hand to the cheek, brings their foreheads together to touch, and Derek wonders if Stiles knows he’s being scented. Does he know that Derek’s mom considers him part of her pack? One of her own?

She squeezes Stiles’ shoulder as she leaves and Derek turns to follow her but halts when Stiles puts a hand on his shoulder. Derek looks at the hand, looks up into Stiles’ twinkling eyes, swallows when Stiles’ thumb touches bare skin, just past his collar.

“You almost left without getting blessed. Gotta make sure you can come back to me.”

“Right,” Derek says, hesitating on the word. “Do I need to do anything special?”

“Just stand there,” he says.

He lifts his right hand, fingers curled into his palm, thumb pointed up, and presses the pad of his thumb gently against Derek’s forehead, right at the hairline. Derek closes his eyes as Stiles runs a soft line from Derek’s hairline down to the tip of his nose, as he presses soft lines and dots and patterns into skin of his forehead, into his cheeks, into his eyebrows, pulling away after only a few seconds.

“That’s it?” Derek asks softly, eyes fluttering open.

“Yep,” Stiles says, voice just as soft. “Now you can always find your way back.”

“Right,” Derek says again, and Stiles’ smile grows.

“I’ll see you soon, Derek.”

At Stiles’ instruction he dumps the salt water out of the tank onto the ground outside, then loads the empty tank into his mom’s back seat and climbs into the car. He gives Stiles’ house one more glance before his mom puts the car in drive and pulls away, back through the tunnel of bramble and thorn, and finally sees the outside not as the run-down shack he saw before but as it really is, as only a few get to see it: a warm, well-kept home, smoke curling up out of the chimney, light streaming in through colored glass windows, a large garden peeking out from the back, Stiles and Sabine standing outside, watching them drive away.

No dilapidated shack in sight.

“That was…” He trails off.

Talia smiles to herself in the silence that follows. “I know.”

They’re quiet as she drives, as they exit the tunnel and turn back to the dirt road that will take them to their house. He isn’t far from them at all – just a few minutes by car – and Derek marvels at how close he’s been to them for years, without the rest of them knowing.

She pulls up to the house, stops the car, turns off the engine. Neither of them makes a move to get out.

“He’s different.”

“Than what you were expecting?”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, not really. Maybe nothing. But he definitely didn’t expect Stiles. He can’t imagine anyone ever expecting Stiles.

“How did he know to call you? That night with Eddie. It’s not like-”

“It’s not like most of the world knows we’re werewolves? It’s not like we advertise what we are?”

Yes.

“He’s never told me how he knew, but I’m not surprised he did. Our Stiles is resourceful, observant, and very, very clever. Once the supernatural world was open to him, I doubt it took him long to put the pieces together about us. After all, I’ve been working with his dad for ages. Since he was a little boy. He had to have heard some things over the years, things that started to make a lot more sense after his friend was bit.”

Our Stiles. Derek runs those words a few times over in his head, until they start to sound real.

Our Stiles.

He nods.

“Still...calling me that night, putting his trust in me…that was an incredible act of guts and bravery from a very human boy.”

“You admire him.”

“Yes,” she says and smiles. “Very much.”

“You love him.”

The moment he says it, he knows it’s true.

“I do. As if he were one of mine.”

Derek nods, considers that as he watches a shadow move behind the closed curtains in their living room window. “Does he know? That you consider him pack?”

“I would guess so. He is-”

“Clever and observant. Right.”

The corners of her lips tip up. “You did well today. It was a little…rocky…at the start, but you did well.”

“Yeah?” He laughs to himself, lifts sarcastic eyebrows. “So I passed the test then?”

“What test?”

She looks confused and he scoffs. “C’mon, mom. Ever since Laura asked me to be her second and I agreed all you’ve been doing is testing me, questioning me, second guessing me.”

She frowns, turns to him. “Derek, I-”

“I know you think I’m not sure, but I am. This is what I want. It’s not some kneejerk reaction or something I just decided at the last second or something I’m doing out of guilt. I know you think I am, but I didn’t decide to be Laura’s second because a psycho took advantage of me as a kid and I’m trying to work off some kind of debt I think I owe. This is my choice, and it’s not one I came to lightly. And I don’t know what else I can say or do to prove that to you, but I’m getting tired of trying. You believed Laura when she said she wanted to be the next Alpha. Why can’t you believe me too?”

His heated words rest in the stagnant air between them and in the silence after Derek swallows but doesn’t look away.

When Talia finally speaks it’s soft and low.

“I know you’re serious. I know you’re committed.” She lifts a hand and rests it on his cheek, leans in and says tenderly, “You’re my boy. You think I don’t know you?” His eyes fall closed and he leans into her hand, chases her touch. “Today wasn’t a test, Derek. It was a gift…a graduation gift of sorts. I’m proud of you, of your dedication to the pack and your family, of your dedication to yourself. I’m proud of the work you’ve put in to healing yourself after the abuse you suffered.”

His eyes snap open. To this day, she’s the only one who will say that out loud around Derek, the only one who puts a name to it while everyone else sidesteps around it, as if afraid to upset him. He hates that they do. It makes him feel like an outsider in his own pack, like something other.

“And it was a gentle reminder too,” she says, her eyes boring into his. “There will always be those who hate us for what we are, who would love nothing more than to burn us to the ground and salt the earth.”

“Mom-”

“But there are also brave, compassionate sixteen year old boys out there who grow into brave, compassionate men, who see us exactly as we are and think we’re beautiful and incredible. Who would do everything in their power to protect us, to keep us safe.”

He pictures Stiles’ easy smile, his mischievous eyes, the long line of his throat lit up by the midday sun. He hears the phantom sound of his delighted laugh, calls back the image of the little mer in Stiles’ arms, and Derek feels a little undone. 

He swallows hard, looks down at his hands as he says softly, “I like him.”

She strokes her thumb across his cheekbone, gives him a watery smile. Her voice is just as soft. “I thought you might.”

“Mom…”

“I know, honey.” She tilts her head. “I know.”

She’s the only one who would, the only one who could. The only one home for his first revelation two years into seeing Marjorie, his psychiatrist, that he’d been used, that he’d been abused. That what had happened to him hadn’t been his fault at all. The only one home for his second revelation too, years after the first, when he’d driven home in a daze after finally putting a name to something he’d suspected about himself for a while. A name that repeated over and over in his mind in Marjorie’s voice as he’d trudged up the stairs and straight into his mother’s office, grateful that she was the only one at home because she was the only one he’d wanted to see right then.

Demisexual.

It had been such a relief to tell her. And this, now? This is a relief too. For the both of them, he thinks. He knows she’s been worried about him for a while now. Her body language has been…telling, her words even more so. But he’d assumed it had been centered around his place in the pack, in his future. He’d misunderstood her.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done that with someone.

“Thank you. For trusting me. I won’t let you down.”

“I never doubted that for a moment,” she says, giving his cheek one more stroke with her thumb before pulling her hand away from his face. “Not from my big hearted boy.”

He ducks his head and they both slide out of the car. When Derek starts to reach for the tank in the back seat, Talia says, “The team is yours now. When the next call comes in, you take the lead.”

He sucks in a breath, mouth falling open. “Mom-”

She gives him a half smile. “You’re ready. You know you’re ready.”

He pauses. “Thank you.”

She nods.

He stows the empty tank back on its shelf in the QR trailer, locks the trailer up tight and follows his mom into the house, noise and activity practically exploding out the moment the door is opened. They exchange a look and wade back into the chaos, sharing nods with the other team members to indicate that the job is done, that the little mer is safe and out of harm’s way.

They’re back just in time for dinner, and his dad and aunt call everyone to the table as they lay down platters full of food, the littlest pack members crawling into whichever adult’s lap is the closest or most convenient. Derek ends up with four year old Stella who bosses him around and tells him imperiously exactly how much and what to put on her plate. He cuts up her chicken for her and shares a wry smile with Laura across the table, whose own lap is occupied by three year old Byron. Cora gives him a smug smile having escaped without a kid on her lap this time, but Derek doesn’t mind. The little ones don’t tiptoe around him the way the adults have a habit of doing. They use him as a jungle gym and chase him into the trees on a run and climb into his lap with a book that they know Derek will read to them. They accept Derek as he is, without worrying about what came before.

After dinner Derek volunteers to do the dishes and escapes the continuing chaos of the family room and the dining room for the quiet of the kitchen, loading dishwashers and scrubbing pots and losing himself in thoughts of Stiles’ beautiful sanctuary, in thoughts of his overcrowded shelves in his overstuffed house, in thoughts of Stiles himself.

He’s wiping his hands off on a kitchen towel when he spies a golden glow coming from the back window above the sink. He furrows his eyebrows and cranes his head to try and look further out the window but whatever it is, it’s hidden by trees at the back of the house. He tosses the towel down on the counter and makes his way outside through the back door, weaves around the chairs and garden at the back of the house to where the trees start, where he can finally see the glow up close.

He stops and blinks up at the glowing golden gates that are a perfect match to the ones at the entrance to Stiles’ sanctuary, a path beyond into the trees lit up with hovering golden lanterns. Atop these gates is an archway with the figure of a wolf, head thrown back in a howl, and below that letters shimmering and shining, just a bit brighter than the gates themselves.

Welcome Hales

amplectere spes vos omnes qui hic intrare

“I’m guessing he didn’t tell you about this entrance? He probably wanted it to be a surprise.”

This is a surprise, all right.

“It’s a little hard to miss, isn’t it?” she asks wryly.

“It’s like the Vegas version of the other gate,” Derek says, and his mom laughs.

“You’re not wrong.”

“How long has this been here?”

“Since the Sanctuary’s existed. So…going on five years now?”

Derek turns and looks back behind them, back at the house. His eyes train up to the second story and to the windows that overlook this area, the ones in the upstairs rec room. From those windows you have a perfect view of this area. Derek would know. There’s a great chair in front of that window, and he’s lost count of how many times he’s looked up from a book to see his mom down here in this stretch of backyard, walking away from the house and into the trees. At the time he’d just thought she was looking for a quiet place, a place to think, in the midst of an always chaotic pack house. He and his mom have always been alike in that way. They’re alike in a lot of ways.

“He changed the words on the arch.” Derek looks back and she motions up toward it with her chin. “This morning that said ‘Welcome Alpha Hale’.”

“I’ve seen you walking down here before, disappearing into the trees.”

She gives him a knowing smile. “I bet you have.”

“Were you doing follow-up visits? Checking on the refugees?”

“Sometimes, sure.” She eyes him. “But that’s not the only reason I went to see Stiles, and not the only reason this path exists. I told you I value his counsel.” She considers him a moment then says, “As Alpha it’s hard to admit this, but sometimes there are problems I don’t know the answer to.”

“And Stiles solves them?”

She laughs softly. “Every once in a while. But usually I come to the solution myself, even occasionally on the walk over. He’s just…” She stops, considers her words before continuing. “…he’s good at being there, when you need him. He has a different perspective that I find valuable. And he makes an amazing hot chocolate.”

Like an echo he hears some of her words from earlier ring through his head and he pauses, blinks, grimaces when he realizes how good he’s gotten at closing himself off, at not listening, at misunderstanding.

“You were talking about yourself.” She lifts her eyebrows at him and he says, “When you said earlier that not all the duties of an Alpha or a second are fun, I just…I ignored it because I thought it was just one more of the thousand reminders I’ve been getting lately. But you were talking about yourself.” He gives her an apologetic grimace. “You were trying to have a conversation with me, and I shut it down. I’m sorry.”

She says, “You know, I’ve never worried that being Laura’s second is what you want. I know you’ve given it a lot of thought. I’m just worried that you’ll think it’s the only thing that matters, that you’ll lose yourself in it. And honey,” she says, shaking her head, “that would be a shame.”

He nods, looks down at the ground. It would be easy – the easiest thing in the world, actually – to seal himself inside the pack and never come out.

But that would be a mistake. Pack is essential, pack is the blood running through his veins, but it isn’t everything.

He turns his eyes skyward, looks up at the glowing open gates in front of him.

“Did the Latin change too?”

Talia looks back over at the arch over the gates. “No. That stayed the same.”

“What does it say?”

“Embrace hope, all ye who enter here,” she says, a smile in her voice.

A bastardization of Dante.

Instead of the gates to hell, these are the gates to sanctuary. To safety. To some, that’s the same thing as paradise, the same thing as heaven.

It’s a gleeful, contrary middle finger. So perfectly puckish. Derek almost laughs.

He lifts his eyebrows at the pretentiousness of the Latin though, imagines Stiles laughing at the look on Derek’s face, imagines him saying he put it in Latin because he wanted it to have gravitas or something equally ridiculous. He doesn’t know him that well, not yet, but somehow Derek knows that’s right. That that’s exactly something Stiles would do, exactly something Stiles would say. Probably with a wink and a grin.

“Sometimes I like to just sit out here and look at the gates,” she says as she retreats to the group of chairs behind them, chooses an Adirondack and sits down, crossing her legs. “It’s comforting knowing that this is here, just behind us. It’s a beacon of hope, an obvious representation of what we’ve already accomplished.”

“All this time I thought you were just coming out here to escape all the noise inside,” he says as he sits down next to her.

She grants him a smile. “That too. I love our pack, but they are…”

“Loud,” Derek says, with feeling. “And everywhere.”

She chuckles softly. “They are.”

They sit there together in silence and stare at the gates and the longer he stares, the more beautiful they seem to get. They shine. And it occurs to him that there are only four people in the entire world who could sit here like this and see this exact thing: just Derek and his mother, and Stiles and his father.

“I was never supposed to be the Alpha.”

Derek blinks, whips his head to his mother to find her eyes fixed on the gates, lips tipped up in a smile.

“Your aunt Ellen was.”

His aunt Ellen who lives in Milwaukee, married a human, and adopted her two kids because she didn’t want to run the risk of them being born werewolves. His aunt Ellen who he’s only seen three times, who refuses to come back to California to visit them, who wears sweater sets and drives a minivan with a bumper sticker that says My Child is an Honor Student at Lincoln Elementary. Who sneered at Cora and called her a barbarian when she dragged dirt in her house after playing outside in her bare feet, as if that wasn’t a perfectly normal thing for any six year old kid to do.

That aunt Ellen.

Derek’s eyebrows rise to his hairline.

“She’s always been commanding; she has a presence about her. Good at projecting strength and confidence, good at shaking hands and kissing babies. But she’s stubborn and impulsive too, very stubborn. Just like Laura.”

Laura’s stubbornness is legendary. Derek has stories. They all do.

“I’m worried about her, Derek.”

It’s strange to be confided in like this, by his mother, when he’s always held her a little above everyone else. She’s his mom yes, but she’s also his Alpha. And that’s made parts of her a little untouchable for years, parts she’s finally allowing him to see tonight.

He can’t help feel like passing the test with Stiles earlier had a lot to do with that, even if she claims it wasn’t a test at all.

She trusts him now, in a way she didn’t before.

“She’s going to be alright,” Derek says haltingly. He’s new to this, but he thinks that’s the right thing to say. He clears his throat, says firmly, “She’s not aunt Ellen.”

Aunt Ellen who left one night at fifteen and only left a letter behind. Aunt Ellen who refused to speak to his grandparents for years. Aunt Ellen who denies who she is with every breath. Aunt Ellen who can hold a grudge like no one else.

Talia finally looks at him, tilts her head, smiles. “No, she’s not.”

Derek nods, turns his eyes back to the gate. He keeps nodding – to reassure himself, to reassure his mother, he doesn’t know.

“They really are beautiful.”

He looks down when he feels her place a hand on his arm then looks over at her to find a smile on her face, her eyes fixed to the gates.

“They really are.”

“Hey,” Derek says softly as he crouches down in front of the cage. “Hey there. You’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The creature inside gives a high pitched screech, bares its teeth, backs itself into the corner of its cage as it flaps its tiny wings. Derek doesn’t blame it in the slightest for being distrustful and aggressive. If he’d been bred for sport and locked in a small cage Derek imagines he’d feel the same way.

Derek pulls a tiny treat out of his pocket, holds it out through the bars of the cage and waits. Red eyes watch him but don’t move.

“Derek,” Gareth says as he comes striding up. “We’ve cleared out all the other rooms.”

“And?”

He shakes his head.

No survivors then. And they’d passed a room with dozens of cages.

Derek looks back down, laughs when he sees his now empty fingers, the treat sticking out of the tiny black and red dragon’s mouth. The little dragon watches him then opens his mouth, throws his head back and swallows the treat. Derek grins, offers him another treat as a reward for his cleverness, the little sneak.

Stiles is going to love him.

“Alright. Go ahead and do a final walk through and then pack up the trailer.”

“You need any help with him?”

Derek looks back down at the cage, at the dragon sitting within, watching him. He reads the placard on the side with the dragon’s name. Griffin. He smiles to himself.

“No, I’ve got this. Go ahead and finish up. I’ll see you back at the house.”

“You got it, boss.”

The big bear of a werewolf claps him on the shoulder and calls out for the others to finish their sweep, making his way back through the maze of rooms to the exit.

Derek opens the door to the cage, puts a hand down at its entrance, waits.

Griffin eyes the hand, eyes him. Derek continues to wait, listening as the others leave, as their sounds recede from the house until there’s nothing left but the two of them.

Finally the dragon walks forward tentatively, steps onto Derek’s hand and lets himself be lifted, stretching out his wings, flapping them. He makes a little trilling noise that reminds Derek immediately of one of Sabine’s and he smiles at the little black dragon with the red eyes and the red-tipped wings, the lone survivor of a breeding factory. Just like another little dragon he knows.

Derek reaches out a slow finger, gives Griffin a scratch on the neck. He preens under the affection.

“You want to take a ride somewhere with me?”

Griffin gives him another little trill and Derek sets him on his shoulder, feels Griffin brace himself.

He’s going to take that as a yes.

He takes the path behind the house this time – for the first time – stepping through the gates and following the orange-gold lanterns as they curl and carve their way through the trees, Griffin riding contentedly on his shoulder, stretching his wings occasionally as if testing their reach, as if he can’t believe there’s no longer a cage binding him. A few times he hops off Derek’s shoulder and flies forward and then comes gliding back to Derek, his little talons digging into the skin of Derek’s shoulder as he trills out a happy sound. Like a bird call, or a child’s laugh. Derek gives him a little treat each time.

He’s spoiling him, he knows, but he doesn’t care.

He takes his time walking, his hands in his pockets. He wants to savor this, his first time walking this path, his first creature saved. But it still doesn’t take long to walk from his house to Stiles, and as he turns the corner he can see the Sanctuary unfold right in front of him – the fences and the habitats and the gates and all his brethren – and at the side of the path Stiles, talking with a centaur, Sabine on his shoulder.

After a moment Stiles turns his head as if he knows he’s being watched, grin growing on his face when he sees Derek standing there, and Derek feels the smile growing on his own face to match. Stiles says a final word to the centaur then turns and starts walking Derek’s way. Sabine gives a delighted trill too, and Derek feels his smile grow as he walks toward them, as he gets closer. The open gates behind Stiles’ house in the near distance surround Stiles like a frame, and Derek thinks of the gates behind his own house, gates that connect Stiles and Derek to each other, gates that Stiles put there. And he thinks of the words written above them too, words that will pass over Derek like a reminder and a blessing every time he passes through on his way to Stiles, on his way to sanctuary.

Embrace hope all ye who enter here.

Embrace hope.

Yeah. He’s starting to.