Chapter Text
Early April in Northern California is a strange time of year, faintly springy, and yet fog clings to the windows and the forest smells more of dirt and dead, wet leaves than of new life. Even as far from the woods as Derek's loft, Peter can taste on the air the chill that's dug into the trees' bones and is only now thawing out, and wishes it would stay frozen. The house burned in summer; he does not look forward to the slow turn of the season to another anniversary.
From a corner, Isaac watches him with unconcealed wariness, though Peter knows it has more to do with Derek's distrust of him than with anything he himself has done to the little beta. Peter looks his direction and offers a bland, non-threatening smile, but it only makes Isaac recoil. The beta stands, quickly, and crosses the loft's main room to retreat up the stairs. He peels his lips back to show his teeth as he goes, apparently unaware of how a former alpha will see such a gesture.
It's not the threat he thinks it is.
Honestly, it just makes the boy look like a frightened creature, ripe for the pouncing and ripping. But Peter won't kill Derek's beta; for now, he's no match for Derek in combat, much as that galls him. He's weaker even than he'd been when first he recovered, when first the world beyond his eyes stopped being a meaningless mass and regained shape, color, scent. He will not survive Derek's wrath, should he harm anyone else Derek is attached to, and there will be no second resurrection.
Peter spares the time to enjoy the silence of the loft. Derek has retreated upstairs to continue his obsessive exercize routine in private and relative peace. He must have suspected that Isaac would only remain downstairs, near someone Derek openly distrusts and dislikes, for so long.
Now that he has privacy, Peter retrives his laptop and starts it up. If the alpha pack is truly coming — and he doubts they would leave their symbol if they weren't already circling — then he will need to make Derek look like a decent alpha, at least temporarily. There's certainly no chance of the alpha pack approving of Peter, a kinslayer and man-killer, becoming the next alpha in Beacon Hills. But neither will they approve Isaac, who is little more than a child, and little better than a frightened one, at that.
If Derek doesn't seem in control of Beacon Hills, and if Peter doesn't at least seem reformed and thoroughly obedient to the Hale alpha, then Peter's life is as forefeit as Derek's.
That Derek and Laura were content to subsist so far away from the family's land, were content to let vengeance gutter out, burns inside him, bright and cold. Derek will be punished for it. But Derek will not be punished by outsiders, and Peter will not yield Beacon Hills to whatever puppet the alpa pack chooses.
He'll have to find a way to help Derek, and he thinks better when he types things out, when he has a database of creatures and favors at his fingertips.
The shrill chime of Derek's cell phone — a new tone, not connected to Isaac, Scott, or Stiles — interrupts Peter's thoughts. He looks up, sharply. The sounds of Derek's movements cease, then change to a riotous pound down the stairs. Derek and his thundering heartbeat appear only shortly after. He doesn't bother with the last five steps, instead simply vaulting over the staircase's handrail and landing with bent knees.
He moves toward his worktable and snatches up the phone.
"This is Derek Hale," he grumbles into the mic. He turns to shoot Peter a look; Peter raises his hands and heads up the stairs. What will Isaac do, if Peter blocks the exit? But as Peter goes, he hears Derek suddenly snap, "Four pediatricians? No, Laura's —" The alpha's heart thuds even faster for a moment, before he says, a little softer, "Laura died in January. What? She never gave me your number; how was I supposed to tell you? No, I don't have email."
How does his twenty-two year old nephew not have email? That certainly explains Derek's blank incomprehension at Isaac's insistence he purchase a cable internet connection.
And why on Earth would Derek care about pediatricians?
When Peter reaches the second floor, Isaac has crept toward the stairs. The boy gives him an irritated, mulish look, before he rolls his eyes and curls his long, gangly limbs into a semblance of order. It leaves room along the top stair, and Peter takes a seat next to him. There's no preventing the brush of their shoulders, but Isaac doesn't seem to notice.
The wolf instincts have taken enough root in him that he craves contact, then. Good to know. It might be useful.
"No," Derek is saying. "Laura would have wanted me to take her. Where are you? Thea said you left New York. Yeah, Thea Rossi."
Thea Rossi, alpha of the New York Rossi pack? Curioser and curioser.
"No, I didn't put her up to it," Derek snarls. "Look, just — where are you? Is she with you?" A pause, and Derek says, "Fine. I'll be there in twelve hours. Text me your address."
Just after Derek has slammed his phone back down on the table and begun to pace, it rings again. When he answers it this time, Derek says, "Yes, Thea, I know they're in Chicago. No, I'll go get her. You let him go through four pediatricians without explaining anything?"
Isaac looks over at Peter. Peter looks to Isaac.
When at last Derek has begged off the phone from Thea Rossi — with a snarled mention of needing to be in Chicago in twelve hours or less — Derek dials a sequence of numbers. Isaac and Peter listen to the beeps, Isaac clearly confused, Peter calculating.
Laura's child, clearly, but left with a human? That seems vastly unlikely. Surely Laura wouldn't be so irresponsible. Surely no human would voluntarily attempt to rear a werewolf child?
"Stiles?" Derek says. "I need some plane tickets. And a ride back from the airport. Might as well give me a ride to the airport."
Isaac's heart races.
When Derek's rattled off his credit card information, and Stiles has apparently ceased his protests, Derek flicks his gaze up at the staircase and says, "You might as well come down here and let me explain."