Human is Just a Word 8/?
Chapter 8
Seeing Stiles and his dad together, Derek just wanted to take it all back. Break the bond and let Stiles go on with his life as if this night had never happened. But he couldn't do that. Breaking the bond would break Stiles as well.
Derek also wanted to give them more time together but he was an alpha in another alpha's territory who wasn't exactly happy about him being here. And on top of that he had a new pack member who still needed to adjust to the bond.
The only thing Derek could do, was to give father and son a moment before he took Stiles on the road with him.
They were upstairs in Stiles' room and Derek tried to give them some privacy but he couldn't help but listen in to them. What he heard turned his stomach. He had thought that Stiles knew by now that getting claimed didn't make him his human pet.
But it wasn't just Stiles, his dad, the sheriff who really should know about these things, had the same misguided idea about human members of a pack.
Derek clenched his fists and was about to go and find Peter to punch him in the face, when the door opened and Stiles and his dad came down the stairs.
He couldn't go after Peter, that would be insane, but he could tell Stiles and his dad that of course they would see each other again. And that they didn't need Derek's permission to do so.
They didn't believe him, he could hear it in their heart-beats, but over time they would understand. At least Derek hoped so.
"I'm ready." Stiles said, his heart skipping over the lie but Derek didn't call him out on it and just followed father and son outside.
Derek wasn't surprised when he found two werewolves hiding not far from the house. He couldn't see them but he heard their heart-beats and since they hadn't been smart enough to mind the wind, he could smell them as well. Or they wanted him to know that they were around. Either way, Derek got the message, they weren't welcomed here any longer.
Stiles and his father hugged one last time before Stiles rather abruptly opened the passenger side door and got in the car.
Over the roof of the car Derek's and the sheriff's eyes met but neither man knew what to say.
"Don't make me regret this." The sheriff finally said, hand on his gun.
"I won't."
The first few minutes in the car were quiet. Stiles didn't say a word and Derek pretended to be too focused on the road for a conversation. If he was honest, he had no idea how to break the silence.
"Where do you live?" Stiles asked when they reached the town limits. "I mean, where am I going to live? Do you have a mansion like Peter? You grew up there, don't you? Before the fire?" Stiles started to babble but when he mentioned the fire, he snapped his mouth shut. "Sorry."
"It's okay." Derek said and tried really hard to not think about Kate. "I have an apartment. I live in the penthouse and my pack has the apartments on the floor right under that."
"And I'm going to stay with you?"
"At least for a little while." Derek answered. "While the bond is still forming you'll feel better with me close by."
"Are there other humans?" Stiles asked, shifting in his seat until he could look at Derek with his good eye without craning his neck too much. Derek could smell the pain coming from him in waves along with what he figured was the bond. It was confusing, a stream of different emotions that made Derek's head spin and he wasn't even the one experimenting it first hand.
"You're the first I have ever claimed." Derek said. Maybe admitting that would make Stiles feel better. They were figuring this out together. "Here, take my hand."
Derek held his hand out but for a moment it didn't look like Stiles would take it. Then he intertwined their fingers and Derek started to take the pain away. The swirl of the bond abated and Stiles relaxed in his seat.
"That's a handy thing." He said with a little smile. For a moment he just let Derek drain the pain from him but Derek could tell that he was thinking about something.
"If I'm your first." He started. "How do you know that it will settle soon or that I'll feel better with you around?"
"The bond with you is not that different from the bonds to my betas." Derek answered. This was easy, nothing personal, just some much needed information. Stiles knew surprisingly much about werewolves but on the other hand he knew scaringly little.
"Okay." Stiles said, clearly filing the information away.
"I remember when my mom claimed my sister." Derek said, the memory of his mother and Tara now clearly in his mind. "She was fussy for about a week or so. More fussy, she used to be a fussy baby in general."
"Your mom had sex with your baby sister?" Stiles blurted out, yanking his hand from Derek's.
"What? No!" Derek almost drove into a ditch but had the car under control again a moment later. "What's wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with you?" Stiles shot back. "You just told me that your mother used to molest little babies."
"I didn't say that." Derek still tried to figure out where Stiles was coming from. "I said she claimed her, the betas wouldn't have accepted her otherwise."
"She claimed her." He made a gesture as if that was proving his point. "How can you be okay with her doing that to your baby sister? That's disgusting. The thought alone makes me sick. Werewolves are just sick."
"Whoa, whoa." Derek brought the car to a halt on the shoulder of the road before they ended up in a ditch for real. "Claiming has nothing to do with sex."
"I don't know what you call what we did last night but in my world people call it sex."
"We didn't have a emotional connection so we needed a physical one." Horrified Derek stared at him. Did he really think that claiming always meant sex? That werewolves abused their own children to integrate them in the pack? Was that how the world saw them?
"What do you mean?" Stiles looked at him as if he tried to make sense out of his words.
"My mother and my sister already had an emotional bond." Derek tried to explain. "Mother and child, that's the strongest bond there is. She didn't need anything else to make the claim. Just the will and the symbolic bite. That's it."
"That's it?" Stiles flailed around as if this was some epic revelation. "Why didn't you do it like that with me?"
"I don't know you." Derek yelled at him. "We don't have a connection whatsoever, the physical connection was the only way to make it work. Hell, I still know next to nothing about you."
"Same here." Stiles huffed but settled back down in his seat. "So your sister, was she the only human in your pack?"
"No." Derek eased the car back on the road. "My dad was human and there was an aunt. And other human husbands and wives but they didn't live with us. In our house we were only the closest family, our pack was way too big for one house." Lost in memories Derek let his thoughts drift back to happier times when his mother had still been the alpha of the pack and they had been strong enough to hold the area with one pack.
Nowadays there were only him, Laura and Peter left, each of them with their own pack and territory but none of them strong enough to rule alone. Not that Peter wasn't trying. He had the biggest pack and the heartland of the old Hale territory. If Derek had given him an opportunity last night by trying to get Stiles out, he probably would already have declared war on him. And with an incident like that Derek couldn't have hoped for Laura's help.
No, this had been the only way. Derek glanced over to his new pack member who was still mulling over the new idea of what claiming meant.
They didn't have breakfast so around ten in the morning Derek went to a drive through. Stiles proclaimed that he wasn't hungry but Derek bought something for him as well. And a large coffee which Stiles took with delight.
With Stiles' mauled face Derek hadn't even considered eating inside. Instead he drove over to a little park where they sat down on picnic benches to eat. The weather was nice but the park was surprisingly empty. At least they could eat in peace without people staring at Stiles.
Once he had started with his bagel, Stiles' appetite was back and he basically inhaled the whole thing.
"Hungry?" Derek asked and offered him a second one.
"More than I thought." Stiles admitted and Derek could smell his nervousness. "Usually I can't eat when ..." He made a gesture with his free hand, almost knocking over his coffee.
"When your life gets turned upside down?" Derek offered, he had one or two of those moments in his life before. They always sucked.
"Something like that."
"Tell me about Scott." Derek changed the topic. "You said Peter bit him?"
Stiles chewed on his bottom lip for a moment and Derek was about to tell him that he didn't have to talk about it if he didn't want to but then Stiles started to speak.
"We were out in the preserve." He said, picking little bits off his bagel. He didn't look Derek in the eye. "Then Peter was suddenly there, full on alpha mode, man, he's a huge wolf. He attacked Scott and then he was just gone. Left him to die or something. I don't think he wanted to turn him, he just wanted to kill something. But Scott survived."
Derek forced himself to stay silent, he didn't want to interrupt Stiles, but he felt his teeth grinding at that thought alone. Biting somebody without consent, that was one of the worst things a werewolf could do. And if Scott had been Stiles best friend chances were good that he'd been a minor as well. There were laws against that, more effective ones than the humans had set in place since werewolves had come out to the public. However, you needed an alpha to carry out said laws and the only alpha strong enough for that around here was Peter.
"Scott went to Peter." Stiles continued, his bagel now a mess of crumbs on the paper bag. "He needed a pack and he needed an alpha."
"What did Peter say?" Derek prompted.
"He had conditions." Stiles spat the word out as if it was something disgusting. "He said that Scott had to get rid of his old pack first." Now he looked up and met Derek's eye. "Peter wanted him to kill his mother, me, my dad, everybody who meant anything to Scott."
"That's not how it works." Derek said helplessly.
"I know." He let out a sigh. "Scott refused but without an alpha he couldn't control himself. He nearly killed his mother. That's when he tried to run. He didn't even make it out of town."
Derek thought about that. "Where did he try to run to?"
"You." Now there was a small smile playing on Stiles' busted lips. "He hoped that you would accept him in your pack. Without conditions."
"I would have." Derek agreed. He wouldn't have turned down a scared teenager.
"I know, big guy. I know."
The look Stiles gave him made Derek think for the first time that this could actually work.
Chapter 9
Masterpost