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Stiles couldn't understand how he'd gotten into this standoff. Well he could, but that wasn't the point. Being the only real human in a wolf pack was hard- he didn't think hunters counted as true humans. Stiles was the one with the responsibility of researching, working mountain ash, keeping the pack fed after training... and being the scape goat in pretty much any situation.
Like right now for instance.
He looked up at Derek and cowered back almost instantly when the alpha bared his fangs and roared in his face. Stiles's racing heart was already alerting every werewolf within a hundred metre radius of his fear, so it would have been pointless to stand his ground and pretend that he wasn't afraid. Also, it was probably gonna be over quicker if he submitted, so he took a step away from Derek and turned his eyes to the ground.
Behind him Stiles could hear the others whimper at their alpha's rage, even if it wasn't directed at them, he could see how it might be terrifying for a werewolf. Isaac was probably curled into someone's side, Scott was most likely in the edge of his seat, ready to back Stiles up if Derek got too rough.
"Dude seriously? Let's not do this..." In front of them, he meant to finish but was cut off when Derek wrapped a hand around his throat and shoved him into a wall.
"You disobeyed my direct order. Thanks to you, Isaac was almost killed." The alpha growled around his ridiculously large fangs.
Stiles tried to shove him away but was unsuccessful. "If I'd done what you asked we'd all be dead, Derek!"
And it was true, if he'd done what he'd been instructed everyone, including himself probably, would be lying dead in a where-house with their intestines painting the walls. Because, yes a circle of mountain ash around the lair of their opponents might have worked if it was a rival pack threatening their territory. But it had quickly became apparent that their enemies were in fact witches and not werewolves, so the barrier wouldn't have worked. All it would have done was trap the pack in a crumbling where-house, with a bunch of pissed of women who could flay the pack with their minds.
And Stiles wasn't going to let that happen...
Even if it had meant hiding the bag of mountain ash from Derek.
Stiles was pulled out of his thoughts when claws dug roughly into his shoulder. Derek was still standing over him with murder in his glowing red eyes.
Forcing himself to stand straighter in the alpha's grasp, Stiles tried to give his best glare but was shot down.
"You know what?" Derek growled, "This was the last straw. Leave, you're out if the pack."
All of the anger drained out of stiles in an instant as he processed what he was just told. But then it returned as blind furry, giving him the strength to push Derek away.
"You can't do that!" He yelled, flailing his arms in the alpha's face. "If I'm not around your stupid plans are going to get everyone killed! I mean, how many times have I saved everyone's lives?"
That only made Derek more furious. He grabbed hold of Stiles's shirt and threw him across the room.
Luckily Stiles landed across the couch. His head hit the pillows and he huffed out a sigh of relief that he had't collided with a wall.
But that relief didn't last long though because Derek was already on him again, pulling him up to eye level.
"Are you calling me incompetent?" Derek hissed in his face.
Normally stiles would have been terrified by the show of aggression, but he was too busy being pissed off. "No Derek, I'm not calling you incompetent. What I'm actually saying that if you thought about things a little more, maybe things would go your way once in a while."
Instead of replying, Derek simply carried Stiles to the door and threw him out into the concrete before slamming it shut with enough force to bend the metal.
And that was the end of it.
Two weeks later and Stiles hadn't seen or spoken to any of the pack since- not even Scott (alpha's orders apparently).
It had been hard at first, to loose all of your friends in a matter of minutes, but Stiles couldn't bring himself to regret his actions. It was Derek's fault and he wasn't going to take the blame himself for the dull ache in his chest.
After a while of not speaking to anyone, he'd tried to move on, hanging out with Danny and even Greenberg at one point. But even then he still felt empty- like something was missing that he couldn't replace. It ate away at him until one night he decided to do something about it.
Stiles had an agreement with his dad, that if he was going to drink (which at the time was an eventuality rather than a possibility), he was going to do it safely and not in some seedy bar where his drink could be spiked. So, as a compromise, there was always a bottle of Jack in the cupboard under the sink that was replaced every couple of months if it wasn't still there. This was how Stiles was planning to get over his lost friends and he had everything planned out.
He packed his tent and sleeping bag into his jeep and told is dad he and Scott were going camping up at The Point.
The Point didn't actually exist of course. It was 'bro code' for, I need some time alone, cover for me if a parent asks. (Although... since the whole werewolf thing started, The Point had become more of a 'alibi so we won't end up in jail' thing that Mrs McCall had been brought in on.) So Stiles knew his cover story would be backed up if his dad decided to start asking questions.
He was going to camp out in the woods for two nights. The first he would get blind, stinking drunk, and then the second he would spend sweating off his monster hangover.
It was fool proof.
There was a moment though, when he arrived at his usual camping ground, that he thought about all of the times he'd gone up there with Scott. His best friend had always been the one who took the bottle out of his hands when he'd had enough. Stiles didn't have much of a gag reflex so drinking didn't make him feel sick. Once or twice he'd almost ended up in the hospital from almost drinking too much...
He brushed the thought off. He'd be fine. Stiles had enough confidence in himself to get through one night of alcohol consumption without Scott present. Hell, he'd probably have to get through the rest of his life without his now ex-bestfriend there by his side if Derek got his way. They'd been practically brothers, but he figured even the closest families break apart.
After setting up camp and getting a fire going, Stiles sat down and unscrewed the cap on the bottle of Jack, taking a long swig before lowering it back to his lap. He knew how sad he must have looked in that moment but he didn't care. Stiles had had his whole life plan ripped to shreds by a grumpy werewolf who couldn't admit when he was wrong.
The full moon rose steadily over the horizon and Stiles wondered idly whether or not it was a good idea to be out that night. Being so deep in the preserve was probably not the best place to be when there was a bunch of hungry werewolves running around...
It didn't matter, Stiles reasoned, he was probably drunk enough to fail a sobriety test if he was caught driving so leaving was out of the question.
Bringing the bottle to his lips again he took a long couple of gulps and swayed slightly at the burn. Stiles could feel his thoughts beginning to slow, dropping below even normal levels of thinking capacity. That was actually a bad sign, usually Stiles's mind raced a thousand miles an hour- even when he was drunk. And it had been like that a minute a ago, hadn't it?
Looking down at the bottle was an effort that seemed to leave him exhausted, but when his eyes fell on what remained he realised exactly what was wrong.
Easily three quarters off the bottle had gone.
There was a moment of fuzzy panic as he tried to work out if there was still enough time to call for help. Stiles knew the facts, a full bottle of Jack was enough to kill a man of alcohol poisoning. But Stiles was as thin as a twig and a lightweight to boot, three quartets of a bottle was most likely way more than enough to do the job.
He'd been freezing since the fire had died down but now he wasn't shivering, if he'd been in his right mind he would have been concerned about that, but in that moment the Jack decided to kick in. He'd had a large lunch, it'd absorbed enough alcohol to delay the effects slightly, but now they were hitting him with a vengeance.
The forest around him spin at an awkward angle, confused, Stiles tried to straighten out but his body wouldn't obey his commands. Even breathing was quickly starting to become a chore, each breath was exhausting. And he could have sworn that he felt his heart stutter as he started to slip in and out of consciousness.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered what was happening but he couldn't bring himself to care too much. Everything thought seemed too thin to hold on to...
Stiles floated in the darkness not really thinking anything. He could feel each breath getting shorter, his heart struggling to beat in any kind of rhythm, any last remaining consciousness slipping away until...
A jerking movement shook Stiles briefly back to earth. He blinked at the blurry figure over him for a moment, briefly recognising Derek's features but not being able to process that information before he blacked out again.
The next time he came round, stiles felt more... aware. He tried to focus on something, anything that might tell him what was going on, but he still seemed to be considerably drunk. Which was odd because stiles should have been considerably dead by now.
He flopped back on the sleeping bag he'd been placed on and closed his eyes. Wait, he thought, realising where he was. Stiles was in the tent. He was pretty sure he hadn't been in the tent when he'd passed out, which meant that someone had moved him.
From somewhere deep in the recedes of his mind, stiles managed to dig up a blurry memory of Derek standing over him.
The thought of Derek being there was shocking, but not enough to keep him from slipping back into unconsciousness...
When Stiles finally opened his eyes, feeling almost 100% sober, it was dark again. His head pounded and his mouth tasted like bile but somehow he was alive.
He snapped upright in the tent, wincing as his head throbbed, and scanned his surroundings.
It was dark, but the flickering light of the fire that filtered through the side of the tent was more than enough to see by. In fact he could see perfectly, which was about as odd as the fact that he could also smell EVERYTHING.
The fire, the woods, his own (old?) scent... and also Derek.
Scrambling out of the tent, Stiles almost tripped over a branch, but miraculously managed to save himself before he fell flat on his face.
Derek simply sat by the fire and shot him with wary glance. If stiles hadn't known better, he would have said the alpha looked concerned. He slowly moved to stand near the heat, circling the werewolf carefully.
"What happened?" He asked, although he already had a pretty good idea what had transpired.
Instead if looking up, Derek simply sighed. "What were you thinking Stiles? If I had been a minute later, I would be handing your body to your father. Is that what you wanted? Were you really trying to drink yourself to death?"
"No Derek, I... it was an accident... I... Scott always used to be here to make sure I... but he wasn't. And you know why he wasn't?" Stiles's voice filled with an anger he didn't know he'd been feeling. Well, he knew he was angry, but this was a whole new level of rage. He didn't care if the words stung him as they passed his lips, "Scott wasn't here because of your stupid order. In a way this is all your fault Derek, you took away my friends, my family, the future I was building... Hell, you ruined my life!"
Even though it had been building up for weeks Stiles was surprised by his outburst. He hadn't been able to stop him self. It was like someone else had taken control- like an animal was snarling inside his head.
"You.. I'm a..." Stiles stuttered, trying to voice it out loud what he'd known since he'd woken up.
Derek nodded, "Looks like you were right, someone was in danger when I kicked you out, but it wasn't us. Welcome to the pack Stiles, or, should I say... welcome back?"
"I'm a werewolf." Stiles finally managed in little more than a whisper. "You bit me."
"I had no other choice, you were almost dead when I arrived. There wasn't time to call for help." Derek said, actually sounding sorry.
Stiles didn't know what to do for a full few minutes. He simply stood and stated at his hands, as if he expected claws to slip from his fingertips any second.
His life was pretty much over as far as he was concerned. Not only had he broken his dad's 'drink responsibly' rule, but he'd also broken the promise he'd made to never become a werewolf. And it was the combination of those two that were probably going to put him in the ground. In his opinion, there was nothing more deadly than his father with a vendetta.
Plus, on top of that, there was the fact that HE WAS A WEREWOLF. Stiles could here and smell everything that was going on in the forest around him, the fire played havoc with his senses and the feeling of an alpha- his alpha- so close was doing strange things to his instincts. He wanted nothing more than to curl up beside Derek and bare his throat.
Derek managed to drag him back to the world of the living though, by standing and pointing at the tent, "Pack everything away, we're leaving."
Stiles blinked, "What?"
"Just do it Stiles!"
When they finally made it back to the loft, after a practically painful car journey, Stiles almost didn't want the pack to find out. He wondered briefly if it would just be better to become an omega, before Derek slid open the door and motioned for him to enter.
The loft was filled with the different scents of the pack, it was confusing but also comforting at the same time. If he concentrated, he thought he could smell a subtle undertone of his old human scent- he decided not to longer on that.
In the corner Peter sat reading a book but looked up when they entered, eyes widening in surprise.
"You know," the elder werewolf hummed, "when you said you were taking care of a new beta that needed to heal, this isn't what I was expecting."
Derek shrugged, "I'll explain when the others get back from school."
Stiles's stricken expression didn't go unnoticed by either of the other werewolves.
He'd been out a lot longer than he'd originally thought. But instead of filling him in on his time unconscious, Derek threw him a towel, a change of clothes and told him to shower. Apparently Stiles smelt like a brewery.
The first to arrive was of course Scott, who straight away wrapped Stiles in a hug that would have cracked at lease three ribs if he'd still been human. Scott didn't ask Stiles to explain, he was more than content to just sit pressed up against his side and wait for the others to arrive.
Next came Erica, Boyd and Isaac, who had shared a car straight from an after-school detention. They took terns hugging and scenting Stiles before either finding a spot on the sofa or sitting around Stiles's legs.
Of course Lydia was the odd one out. Someone must have pre-warned her, because when she strode into the loft, with Jackson at her heels, she went straight for Stiles and slapped him across the face. Her nails left quickly fading pink scratches across his cheek.
"What the hell did you do Stiles?" She hissed.
Stiles tried to flinch away but Erica was pressed against his back so he wasn't going anywhere.
"I... uh..." Was there any good way to tell someone that you accidentally, almost drank yourself to death? Stiles didn't think there was.
"He almost killed himself." Derek announced, breaking the silence that had been brought on by Lydia's arrival.
Scott's jaw dropped as he recognised the scent of Jack on Stiles's clothes. "Dude, you didn't..."
Stiles was about to answer but Lydia slapped him again.
"You tried to kill yourself?" She cried, the tears flowing freely now, "Why would you put me through that Stiles?"
His eyes widened as he realised. Lydia was a banshee, she'd probably known something was wrong from the moment he'd started drinking.
What was that? Three days ago?
"I'm sorry," Stiles manage to say, his throat tight, "I, I didn't mean for this to happen. It was an accident..."
Jackson frowned, "How the hell do you accidentally almost yourself?"
"Stiles was drinking and he doesn't have a gag reflex." Scott supplied helpfully.
Peter chuckled from his seat in the corner. "Good to know."