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She doesn’t mean to stare.
Stiles remembers the way people looked at her mother – too thin and bald, with bright red rashes against her too-pale skin – and the way those stares had made her mother curl into herself. Stiles remembers how the shame and the self-hatred had torn her mother’s already flagging will to live into tiny shreds. The cancer had eaten away at her, and what the cancer hadn’t taken, the chemo had, and Claudia had not taken the stares of people well.
So, no. Stiles doesn’t mean to stare. It’s rude, for one, and insensitive for another, and while she may not even be remotely a good person, Stiles likes to think that she’s not so vain as to be appalled or disgusted by physical factors completely out of someone’s control.
The right side of Peter Hale’s face is a twisted mass of scar-tissue, his ear half-melted into the side of his head, the scars so dense no hair will grow. The corners of his lips are mangled, twisted into a horrible rictus smirk. If she’d been any other teenage girl, she’d be sickened by the sight of him.
But that’s not why she’s staring.
It’s his eyes.
His eyes are a pale, winter blue with a strong, dark ring of slate-grey on the edges. They are perfectly formed, both equally framed by thick, dark lashes. They are shockingly beautiful.
There is nothing human in those eyes.
Peter Hale stares back at her, gaze keen and intense, clearly calculating some unknown plan or plot or variable in regards to her and the knowledge she’s recently gained of his alpha status, but there is nothing human about it. It’s a predator who looks at her now, a teasing half-smile curling at the good side of his thin lips, bright eyes never blinking. He’s pale and a little on the thin side, but he’s not weak.
Only a fool would think him weak.
Stiles can’t look away.
She should be terrified, she knows this.
She knows what Peter Hale is and what he’s done. But Stiles knows also what was done to him, what he survived. He survived the monstrous by becoming a monster, and how could she do anything other than admire that?
Peter smiles fully then, tilts his head, eyes gleaming a bright, liquid red. His teeth grow, sharp and deadly.
He moves.
And all Stiles can think is that he is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. It’s like looking at a train barreling down the tracks, staring into the bright headlights, hearing the echoing horn as it blares at you, and being unable to move. You can’t even find it in yourself to fear your coming death, because something about that train is mesmerizing.
And so too is Peter.
She welcomes her coming death as if hypnotized, not making even a token attempt at screaming, unable to tear her gaze away from him, watching as he stalks towards her, his clothes shredding beneath the change. He doubles, triples even, in mass, bulking up to massive proportions, black as night with eyes that nightmares are made of. One massive paw-like hand reaches out, claws gleaming in the harsh lighting of the long-term care ward and she sucks in a breath and closes her eyes, anticipating the blow that will likely be her last.
It never comes.
Instead, there is a light scratching sensation against her neck before that massive paw-like hand is tilting her head to the side, baring her neck further. Confused, she opens her eyes again, meeting the gaze of the monster that Peter Hale’s become.
They both still. She waits for terror, fear, or even hatred to fill her; instead, she is lost within that burning gaze, something in her gut twisting even as her heart starts to pound triple-time. She waits for Peter to break her neck or rip out her throat.
Instead, the monster huffs, a distinct sparkle of amusement in those carmine eyes, before he slams her head against the wall and everything goes black.
=
She wakes slowly, head throbbing.
Stiles blinks and lets her eyes adjust to the low light, taking in the sights of a living room that she’s never been in. She sits up, slowly, noting curiously that a thick afghan puddles around her lap as she does. She takes in the bookshelves with the neat rows of books in classy leather bindings, the complete lack of an entertainment center, and the clearly expensive coffee table in front of her.
Definitely not the nurse’s place.
“You’re awake,” Peter says, leaning against a door-frame behind her that leads to where she does not know, appearing like he’d popped out of thin air. She suspects he’s been there the entire time, watching her.
He moves then, as she watches him, all languid, predatory grace. He’s looking much better today – tonight? – than he had in the hospital, not nearly as gaunt. His burns are gone as well. He’s wearing black slacks without even a hint of a wrinkle in them, and a deep v-neck shirt that shows off the tantalizing thickness of his neck.
Stiles gulps, feeling that nameless something in her gut tighten and twist yet again. Stiles doesn’t say anything, can’t say anything, not with her stomach in knots and her heart in her throat.
He kneels before her, and oh aren’t his eyes simply beautiful.
=
Peter smiles as the girl loses herself in his gaze again.
Meeting the eyes of any supernatural being is a strange and decidedly unwise thing for a human to do – it’s why so many tales caution against it. Meeting the gaze of an alpha and holding it, well. This girl is lucky that he finds her so fascinating.
More than fascinating, if he were to tell the truth. He’s not …whole. Not yet. His mental facilities aren’t quite working the way they should, the alpha, the animal in him still very much present. There’s enough of him that thinks like a human to recognize that she’s very young, too young almost, for what the alpha in him wants of her, but not enough to care.
No, wrong choice of words. He cares. He cares enough to know he wants her consent, and that he wants it to be good for her. But he also really doesn’t. He doesn’t care that she’s barely sixteen. He doesn’t care that what he wants is illegal.
His head hurts and his thoughts are still too muddled to think clearly.
He knows that she can help him think.
“Stiles,” he says, and has the pleasure of watching her attention focus entirely on him. “I need you to tell me how much you know, what you’ve guessed.” He keeps his voice low, soothing, not wanting to startle her out of her calm, mesmerized state. He takes her hands into his own, internally marveling about how small and delicate they are in comparison to his large, thick ones.
=
Stiles breathes shakily as she continued to look at those pretty blue eyes. “I know that you killed Laura, that with the help of your nurse hiding you, you’ve been running me, Scott, and Derek ragged looking for you. I know that you bit Scott to have a pack, but that you’ve basically left him to fend for himself. I know that you tried to get him to kill me and the others so that he would have no one to turn to but you.” She recites her knowledge to him the way she once told her therapist about the details of her day – as if they’d happened to someone else, as if she was completely removed from it. “I know you are steadily killing anyone you suspect to have been involved in the murder of your family. I know you won’t stop until the final body hits the floor.”
“Do you know who the final one is?” he asks, and she knows that he doesn’t need that knowledge, because he has his endgame already planned out. No, this is a test of sorts, and for whatever reason, she means to pass it.
“Kate,” she whispers, and there’s not a drop of remorse in her when she gives the name. She knows perfectly well what Kate has done, who she used like so much trash to get the information she really needed. She knows the names and ages of everyone who died that night.
She knows the sounds Derek made when he woke from nightmares freshly drawn up from the depths of his mind.
“Good girl,” he croons, squeezing her hands before releasing them. One of those hands moves to grab her right wrist, fingers obscenely large and dark against the thin paleness of her wrist. The other hand moves up and grasps the back of her neck, pulling her forward until her face is so very, very close to his, their breaths intermingling.
That nameless something in her stomach twists again, and something like heat is rising in her veins.
=
He can scent her confused arousal. He’s not surprised by it. It’s not the first time he’s scented it on her. He has her in his den, in his grasp, and her heartbeat is simply divine to listen to as it runs rampant the closer he gets to her. The alpha in him is salivating, and it’s all he can do not to simply take. “I would have you,” he says, voice pitched low, almost a purr breathed against her lips. He watches her pupils dilate, watches the heat rise within her cheeks, scents the growing wetness between her thighs.
“I can’t,” she whispers back. But she can; she will. He thinks he has the perfect leverage.
He watches her for a long moment, and then he smiles. “I’ll give up on Scott,” he tells her. “I’ll leave him and his darling mother alone. All you have to do is say yes.” He knows he guessed right when he sees the way her gaze sharpens, hones in on him, something dark and unnerving rising in challenge.
“You swear it?” she asks him, and there’s a stillness to the air after she speaks that tells him his catch may not be as human as he’d first thought.
But he doesn’t care. The alpha is already roaring it’s triumph in his head because he has her. “I swear it,” he tells her, and for once in his miserable life, he speaks the truth. It is an easy promise to make, because with a loyal and willing mate, who needs an unwilling beta? The stillness in the air is deafening, all sound being leeched out until all he can hear is white noise and static. He holds her gaze through it all, watches as that sharpness studies him.
"Done," she says, voice ringing through the emptiness like a clarion bell, and the stillness pops and shatters around him.
Her eyes grow hazy again, her face relaxing into that sweet softness that comes from not being entirely aware of her surroundings.
Peter smiles.
=
She's not entirely unaware, but it's like catching small glimpses of a movie you've never seen while being distracted by something else. She keeps loosing time, coming too in flashes:
Here she's being picked up by Peter, feeling safe and content when she knows she should be terrified.
Here she's pressed against a wall moaning shamelessly as he kisses her, one hand under her shirt cupping one small breast, his thigh between her legs, giving her something to rut against.
Here she's laying on a soft bed, writhing against the sheets as Peter suckles at her breasts, large hands holding her securely down, teeth playfully nipping, sending shivers of electric pleasure down her spine.
Here she's gripping Peter's shoulders as tightly as she can, head tucked into his throat, gasping at the feel of him inside of her, almost too large, stretching her wider than she'd ever imagined.
Here she's caught in the maelstrom of her own body's making, pleasure and pain so entwined that she's not sure which of the two sets her off, screaming into Peter's skin as her entire body clamps down and then spirals out of her control, muscles spasming, stars behind her eyelids.
Here she's watching in something not unlike awe as Peter looses control of himself, muscles rippling as his entire body almost triples in size, as fur black as pitch grows in thick and full, as blue eyes turn crimson, as teeth become pointed and sharp, as the base of his cock grows and grows and grows, as she screams in symphony with his triumphant roar.
And then she knows nothing but darkness.