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thisdiscontentedwinter · 6 years ago

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Stella and the Wolf - Chapter 18

You can read if here on AO3 or find the Tumblr Chapter Index here.

Everything freezes in this moment.

When Stiles feels the press of the barrel against the back of his head, his limbs lock and his heart forgets to beat. A part of him wants to close his eyes, but also this might be the last time he gets to look at Dad’s face. It’s a careworn face, both somehow stern and open at the same time usually, but it’s stricken right now. Pale and stricken in the moonlight, as though he’s looking at Stiles and already seeing a ghost.

Stiles can hear Kate panting for breath behind him.

A droplet of sweat slides down the back of his skull, close to where she has the barrel of her firearm pressed.

Stella, peering out from behind Dad, is wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and Stiles wants to tell her to close her eyes, but words are beyond him right now. He can’t even breathe, so words are beyond him.

Kate sucks in a breath. “Nobody mo—”

But Dad already is.

He’s already pulled the gun out of Stiles’s waistband, and he’s lifting it even as Stiles realizes what he’s doing and somehow finds a way to unlock his frozen limbs and drops heavily to the ground. The report is loud, and leaves Stiles’s head ringing. Leaves him lying there, gasping, and wondering if he’s still in one piece.

“Move!” Dad yells at him. “Move!”

And Stiles grabs Stella by the wrist and drags her around to the other side of the granite memorial. He looks back to see Dad following, crawling as best he can with his wrists and ankles cuffed.

Kate Argent is on the ground, but she’s still moving too. She’s climbing to her feet, swaying like a drunk, one hand out for balance, and one still clutching a gun.

And Derek is running for her, roaring.

Kate pivots on her back foot, fires, and Derek hits the ground. Stiles can’t tell if it’s a dive or a fall.

And then Stiles can’t see anything at all, because Dad is here, and he’s shielding him and shoving him at the same time. Stiles hits the back of the granite memorial, one arm wrapped around Stella, and one hand clutching at Dad’s shirt.

He glimpses a flash of silver between the headstones. Lydia’s dress.

“Stella,” Stiles says. “There’s Lydia. Can you get to here? Can you run?”

“No!” Stella shakes her head, her face wet with tears. She clings to Stiles. “No!”

And then Stiles sees the darker shape moving towards them between the headstones. This is the second time tonight he’s been stunned to see Jackson Whittemore. Like, at some point he might even have to reevaluate his low opinion of the guy or something.

Jackson reaches the last of the headstones, and then breaks his cover, running towards the Hale memorial.

Stiles, with more strength than he even knows he has in him, pushes Stella towards him, and Jackson scoops her up and darts away with her. Kate rounds the back of the memorial, her gaze drawn to the movement, and Dad kicks both legs out at her, making her stumble backward a step before she regains her balance.

It’s enough.

Jackson and Stella are away.

Kate stares down at Stiles and Dad, and lifts her gun.

Stile’s heart stops beating.

“No.” The word is sharp and articulate, and so very strange to hear coming from the jaws of a beast.

Peter.

He’s rounded the other end of the memorial.

“It’s me you want, not them,” he says. “The Hale Alpha.”

Kate shoots him, and he barely flinches as the bullet hits.

He shows her his fangs. “Is that all you’ve got, bitch?”

He steps back, and back again, and Kate follows him like a fish caught on a glimmering line. She steps past Stiles and Dad, and that’s Stiles’s signal to move.

“Go,” Dad mouths at him. “Go.”

Stiles shakes his head.

He can’t. Not without Dad.

And then he looks up to see Derek.

They have her now, he thinks wildly. She has a gun, but they have her between them. The piggy in the middle.

Whatever happens, she won’t be walking away from both of them.

Derek crouches down, and grips the shackles on Dad’s ankles. Snaps the chain as easily as if it’s made of paper, and then does the same for his wrists. His eyes are glowing, and his fangs are showing, and there’s a low rumble in his chest that’s a growl waiting to burst forth, and he’s as beautiful like this—strong and powerful—as he is in his human skin.

Stiles takes Dad’s hand, and they scrabble down the hill towards the cover of the headstones.

And then, gasping for breath, Stiles turns to look back at the Hale memorial.

***

The Hale memorial is black granite, but it shines silver in the moonlight, a beacon on a hill. Peter and Derek stand at either end—one a beast, and one not quite a man, and Kate stands between them. Her back is to Derek, but there’s a readiness in her stance, a coiled anticipation, that says she knows he’s there. Her gaze might be fixed on Peter, but she’s not ignoring Derek.

She’s a hunter. She knows predators. She must know they’re circling her now, trying to divide her attention, to force a misstep. She must know they’re looking for a weakness. And Kate Argent doesn’t seem like the type of person who will give them one easily.

“She came hunting an Alpha, Peter. She’ll be prepared,” Chris Argent said earlier tonight.

Stiles’s stomach swoops as Kate reaches into her jacket pocket with her free hand.

“Hey, Peter.” Her voice carries clearly on the cool night air. “Burn in hell. Again.”

She draws her arm back—

Derek moves toward her a fraction of a second too late.

—and throws.

The object hits Peter square in the chest, light flashes, and Peter howls and rears back as he is suddenly engulfed in flames.

From somewhere nearby, Stiles hears Stella scream.

***

Kate turns on her heel, laughing, her arm extended, and shoots Derek in the chest.

He stumbles back.

She fires again.

And then Peter is lunging towards her, grabbing her from behind and tackling her into the ground. They struggle, and the flames continue to burn, and Kate is screaming, or maybe both of them are, and Derek is there, trying to pull Peter off her, trying to save his uncle, and then, as quickly as it began, it’s over.

The screaming stops.

***

When Mom died, they used to come here a lot. Stiles remembers Stella, a little fat toddler, wavering on unsteady legs between the headstones. Dad would sit by Mom’s grave with Stella on his lap and Stiles at his side, and talk to Mom about things that were happening in their lives now that she was no longer with them. And Stiles tried to do the same, but it was weird, and it was wrong, and he couldn’t look around and see all the pretty trees and flowers and think that this was a nice place. Not when there were all those dead people underneath him, slowly rotting away.

Not when one of them was Mom.

He thinks of Mom now, and of the Hales, and of the thousands of others of dead here, and it doesn’t scare him anymore, but it aches.

Everything aches.

Derek’s howl isn’t quite like a wolf’s. It’s a man’s too, and it’s full of despair and disbelief and heartbreak.

Stiles climbs to his feet, drawn to that sound like it’s a siren song.

“Stiles,” Dad says, and tries to catch him.

Stiles dodges out of his reach and hurries up the slight hill towards the memorial. Dad follows. So does Lydia, a strange fae creature in her silver dress in the moonlight, her stole fluttering on the breeze. Jackson, still holding a crying Stella, stays back.

Good.

Good, because Stella shouldn’t see this.

Nobody should see this.

Chris Argent is on his feet again now, leaning against a headstone like he’s just crawled out of a grave. He makes no move to join them. Maybe he doesn’t want to see his sister’s body. Maybe he doesn’t want to see Peter’s. Or maybe he’s bleeding out slowly and doesn’t have the energy to move.

Stiles isn’t sure where he finds his, and he wasn’t even shot. But Derek needs someone—maybe he even needs Stiles specifically—and there’s no power in the universe that can stop him from going to him.

Breathless, he reaches the memorial.

Peter isn’t a beast anymore by the time Stiles gets there. He’s a man, his body red and black with burns. His chest is rising and falling, but the sound of his breathing is wet and ragged. There’s an intent light in his eyes, desperate and piercing, and Stiles can’t bring himself to look away.

Derek has dragged him away from Kate’s body, and is kneeling beside him at the base of the memorial.

There are no individual names on this side. Just one word: HALE.

Peter lifts a shaking arm, his fingers no longer… no longer properly there, and touches the stone. When he drops his arm again, he’s left a bloody smear on the granite, as messy as a child’s finger painting.

“Peter!” Stella wails from a distance. “Peter!”

No.

No, it doesn’t end like this, Stiles thinks. It can’t. They beat the odds. They did, so it’s not fair that it ends like this. Peter isn’t the bad guy, and nobody deserves to burn like this twice. Peter can’t die. Not when he’s won. Not when he’s got his revenge. Not when—a strangled, crazy laugh tries to fight its way free of Stiles’s throat—not when he and Stella haven’t finished reading Matilda yet.

It’s not fair.

Stiles’s eyes sting as he drops to his knees beside Peter. His hands hover over his body, but he’s afraid to touch. He’s afraid it will hurt him, even though there’s probably nothing he can do at this point that would hurt Peter more.

Dad’s fingers dig into his shoulder.

“Peter,” Derek says, his voice as small as a child’s. “Uncle Peter.”

He’s not afraid to touch the way that Stiles is. He puts a hand on Peter’s chest—Stiles winces at the sticky sound it makes—and black lines, thick and inky, climb up the veins in his forearm.

Lydia kneels beside Stiles. Her face is pale, but her gaze is solemn and fierce at the same time. Her stole slips, baring her shoulders to the moonlight. She’s hurt, Stiles realizes. Her shoulder is bleeding.

She tugs her stole up again, shivering.

Peter’s blistered mouth quirks, but his breath stutters. It sounds as though he’s choking. He keeps his gaze fixed on Derek. “Do it,” he rasps. “Take it.”

Derek raises his hand and extends his claws.

Stiles closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch.

He still hears the moment Derek’s claws tear through what remains of Peter’s throat though, like wet Velcro ripping.

“Derek?” he asks, eyes still squeezed shut. “Are you okay?”

And Derek says, in a shaking voice, “I’m the Alpha now.”

#Stella and the Wolf #discontenetdwinter #sterek #my fics

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