Chapter Text
"You're not a pack, are you?" Kira blurts, too loud in the silence of the library. The question has been burning in her mind pretty much ever since she first saw them all together. Of course she's never been in a pack herself but she's learned some things about how they're supposed to work, the hierarchy, the structure. Their group has nothing like that. They're all equals, these girls, would all in equal measures die for each other, live for each other.
"Not ... technically," Lydia says, lingering over the words with a half shrug.
"We used to be," Erica adds, something like melancholy in her voice, which seems pretty at odds with the version of the story Allison had told her about Erica. But then again, melancholy is a liar with a penchant for blotting out the worse and highlighting the good.
"Right, Allison told me some stuff..." she trails off expectantly, hoping for someone to pick up the cue.
Lydia does.
"Yes. There used to be more of us. There used to be an Alpha."
"Scott," Kira fills in, remembering what Allison had told her at the end of the summer. About the True Alpha, a phenomena rare enough, and the spectacular boy behind the red eyes. About how kind and accepting and understanding Scott was and how he would surely let her join his pack if she wanted to. She did want to, it's why she came all the way to California with Allison.
"But at the end of senior year," Lydia goes on, "Derek took Boyd and his sister Cora back down to Mexico to Cora's old pack," Erica pulls a tiny grimace at the mention of Boyd's name, blink and you miss it, "and Scott took Stiles, Isaac and Liam and Mason," it's Hayden's turn to pull a grimace, her mouth curling into an unhappy frown, "off to go to college elsewhere."
"And then there were only five," Erica sing songs.
"So ... we're not a real pack, we don't have an alpha or anything. But we're still a pack," Lydia says, just a touch too defensive. "And we stick together."