#uh this is NOT a stydia fic! nothing against it but it's not my bag & its not what this fic is about so.

[kingcriccket]

Impulse Variability, Chapter 1

Read it on Ao3!

Stiles comes back from the station in a cloud of smoke and sulfur-- properly Biblical stuff, he thinks, very dramatic- and then his feet hit the pavement and his knees fold up like accordions, all those complex bones and tendons and muscles going awry all at once, the lazy jerks.

Stiles goes palm-down on the sidewalk and pukes his guts up. There is still the sound of horse in his ears, tack and hoof. (he remembers that running gag with Umbridge, in the Harry Potter movies, where the centaurs scared her so bad she freaked at hoofbeats forever, and Stiles's brain follows that thread for a moment, so the first thing he says to his best friends, after being pulled back into reality, is

"Man I hope I don't get like, horse trauma after this."

His voice is (ha ha) all hoarse from the puking. His face is a mess of snot and tears. Stiles looks up, slowly, from the sets sneakers all arranged around him, to the concerned faces peering down.

"Stiles?" Scott says. Not like he will, sometimes, when he isn't sure what Stiles is talking about but like.

Like a question. Like, " are you Stiles?"

"Hi," Stiles says. Tries to straighten up and just ends up on his haunches-- further away from the puke, at least.

The streets are rain-wet, all silver with it, and between that and the smoke still boiling away from wherever they pulled Stiles out of, it feels very properly horror movie.

But it's hard to feel too scared, with the pack all there around him. Their tired, dirty faces, the smile breaking across Scott's whole fucking body, and-- Lydia .

Lydia, who drops Malia's hand to step forward and help him up. Lydia who he lists into when she gets him standing.

She smells nice. She always smells nice, like perfume or something. Like girls smell.

And her cheek is all torn bloody and her hair's in tangles but her shoulder is strong, when she drapes his arm across it.

"Scott," Lydia says, "help me with him?"

And then Scott's taking Stiles's other arm, and Stiles barely has time to feel the warm fuzzies before he's passing out again.

He will remember, later, Lydia dropping Malia's hand.

Which meant she had been holding Malia's hand.

Which meant: ??

Mark that one red, for now.

Later, when Lydia saves him from the gun pressed up to his forehead in the locker room (deja vu, by the way, and so not the good kind), she will say--

She will say "I didn't say it back," her throat all raw from banshee scream.

"You didn't have to," Stiles says. Means it. He knows she loves him-- doesn't know when he realized it, only now it feels like something he's known forever, something fundamental. Right there in the marrow of him, producing blood cells and shit. Which-- okay, this metaphor’s gotten away from him, maybe, but the point is Lydia loves him. And she kisses him there, in the locker room, and this time Stiles isn't shocked and fish-lipped under her, and it feels good , and they love each other, and so that's how these things work out, isn't it?

Everything according to plan.

"I'm not saying it," Malia says. Peter is sitting on a train-station bench in front of her, reading the paper all peaceful. It's alien, really, seeing him do something so.... benign.

"Malia," Lydia says. Toes a book out of the way to step forward, put a hand on Malia's shoulder.

"I'm not!" Malia turns, this coyote-blue gleam waydeep down in her eyes. All around them, people sit and stare into middle distance and wait, as if Beacon Hills isn't collapsing in all around them.

This past month Lydia's felt like that, a little. Like she's been-- waiting for something, without quite knowing what. Waiting while the crucial infrastructure of her life all falls apart.

Stiles, she's sure. It has to be him. He loves her. And she loves him back-- of course she does. Memory or no memory. He must be what's missing. What she's waiting for.

"Malia," Lydia says, and the library/train-station shimmers all around them, the unreality of it.

Except-- she's real, isn't she?

And Malia is real. Her shoulder is warm under Lydia's hand, all her rangy coyote muscle, and she frowns at Lydia, brow creasing up the way it will when she's not quite sure how to be human. Her jaw tightens. And she puts her hand over Lydia's, for just a moment. Turns around.

"Dad." She says. Unconvincing.

"Like you mean it."

Malia turns back, again, and bares her teeth at Lydia, but Lydia knows when to be afraid of her, and this isn't one of those times. She bares her teeth back (it feels very silly, without those pointed canines). Malia rolls her eyes, and Lydia nods at Peter, unnatural calm on his bench.

Malia sighs. Squares her shoulders, like she's facing up to a fight, and Lydia sees the tension in her forearms, sees where claws threaten at her fingertips.

"Dad?" Malia's voice wobbles, in the middle, and Lydia's chest wrings out like an old washcloth.

But she has no time for the weird, tender feeling rising up in her, because Peter blinks, and stirs, and Malia says," Dad ?"

And Peter stands up and says, "Malia?" Incredulous, and then there is work, to be done.

But anyway the point is that they're friends, right, and friends feel things for each other. Right? They feel for each other.

Lydia remembers, before Alison had--

Well.

Lydia remembers Alison's little bedroom, her perfect white-washed windows and her charmingly out-of-date wallpaper. Remembers one day, in particular:

Lydia's sitting criss-cross-applesauce against Allison's headboard, absently tracing her fingers over the white-on-whiter pattern of the bedspread. Florals, she thinks. Can't identify the specifics.

She's trying her level best not to burst into the bathroom, where Allison has been barricaded for too long.

"Let me freshen up," she'd said, like a woman in an old movie. Lydia can picture the smell of perfume, heady, see the pearls tight around her throat.

She's always been good at that. At picturing people as they might be, might look-- it’s a type of problem solving. So: Allison, 'freshening up' in some smokey old restaurant. Not Allison, breaking down over the death of her mother.

It's as easy as that.

The bathroom door creaks open-- Lydia turns like her head's on a pull string. Like she'll always turn to look, for Allison, until one day--

Well. Until one day she won't.

Alison's red around the eyes, but she's put concealer over the blotchy way her cheeks get when she cries. Lydia can see a little swipe of slightly-darker peach where Allison hasn't blended, properly.

She thinks about the bedspread, white-on-white, a pattern she can't quite make out, and something goes funny in her stomach.

She holds out her hand, and Alison staggers across the space between them-- staggers . The bed dents under her weight, and Allison's face dents, too. Crumples up in the effort not to keep crying.

"Oh," Lydia says, soft, and reaches out slow as anything. Allison lets her. Leans into Lydia's hand, even, when Lydia blends the foundation in, with her fingertips.

" Lydia ," she says, voice all watery "It's just--"

"I know," Lydia says. Alison collapses forward against her chest. Collapses , and later Lydia will find black marks on her blouse, from Allison's mascara gone wet and runny on her shoulder.

"It's fucked ," Allison says.

There's not much to say, to that.

It is. It's fucked.

So Lydia just brings her arm up, and hugs Allison across her shoulders, tight as she can.

That's what she feels, looking at Malia saying the word "Dad" like it's hurting her, like the concept's scarier even than her mother, filicidal literal-monster that she is.

This weird, tender, mushy feeling, like all the vital insides Lydia knows the precise names for have stopped working like they should. Like her heart has impossibly skipped a beat, like her stomach has an impossible knot all tied up in it.

Her friends are in danger. It's how she should feel.

Lydia's had reasons enough to feel crazy, in her life, but surely this isn't one.

And this is what teenage friendships are like , she’s seen movies. She has braided hair and told secrets and this is what it is supposed to be like. She feels how she is supposed to feel.

Surely, surely.

And, anyway, it all works out, doesn't it? They save everyone, for once. Lydia is not left-behind-forgotten in a ghost town. No one dies. Not even the bad guy dies, and so they're getting better at this, apparently.

And that's good news.

Kind of unequivocally.

"Can I take you out for coffee?" Stiles says, his backpack hanging off one shoulder.

Lydia startles.

She never used to startle-- could always kind of tell when Stiles was around, but maybe un-forgetting someone isn't the same as not having forgotten them in the first place.

She closes her locker, turns. The school's last-day empty, deserted, and she has this horrible vision of it empty when the riders came through,  of the lights all hanging down from the ceiling, the creeping feeling they'd failed, and she's the last one left after all, until Malia comes out of the library and prods Lydia in the back and goes, "what are you looking at?" And the fear goes down like cough syrup. Leaves a bad taste in her mouth, but here, here's Malia helping her choke it down all the same.

"Lydia?" Stiles says, and Lydia snaps her eyes to him. Realizes she's been staring into the hallway, vacant, and she smiles as bright as she knows how (which is fucking thousand-watt, by the way).

"Yes?" She says.

"Is there-- I mean are you having like. A moment."

When he says 'a moment' he wiggles his fingers at her, like there should be spooky music alongside, and it makes Lydia laugh.

"No," she says. "Sorry. I was just thinking."

Stiles bobs his head. Tugs his backpack on all the way. "Great. No corpse to retrieve. Good news." He's gripping the straps, white-knuckled, & it makes his elbows stick out. Akimbo , Lydia thinks. It was a word on her vocabulary list in grade 6, but she never really knew what it meant until she got to know Stiles.

"So." He says.

Lydia gives him an expectant look.

"Coffee?" Stiles clears his throat. "Uh, us. Can we get coffee-- can I get a coffee, uh, for you?"

"Oh," Lydia says, and there is this weird, queasy flip in her gut. She smiles. "Sure. Saturday?"

Stiles blinks. "Uh, yeah. Yes! I can definitely-- do Saturday."

He's smiling. He has this awkward smile that makes Lydia smile, too, reflex, and she remembers kissing him and she thinks-- well, of course.

Impulse variability is when a person means to do one thing- in fact, believes that they are doing one thing- and end up doing another.

It's the cause of car crashes, sometimes. People hit the accelerator, and think they're hitting the brake, and so they go when they mean to stop. Panicking, they will press harder on what they believe to be the brake, and accelerate even faster, until-- well. They stop accelerating.

It's not negligence. These people really think- are really convinced- that their foot is on the brake, not the throttle.

Lydia Martin had never once in her life done something without meaning to, and then Peter used her to haul himself up from the grave, and everything went so fucking sideways she almost didn’t notice at first. Like something can go so completely wrong it nearly reaches ‘round to normal, again.

Lydia would go to bed and wake up the woods. She would think she was driving straight and end up making turns, circling the block till she ran out of gas.

Ever since, there's been this nagging-- well. She knows it doesn't make any sense. But ever since Peter, Lydia's had this nagging feeling like she's just being pulled along on a string.

Since before Peter, maybe, actually.

She is a pretty girl. She dates a handsome Lacrosse player. She excels in school but she isn't cocky about it. She applies to and gets into a prestigious college. And life's easy like that, isn't it? Like, lay out the track, and there she goes along it. Lydia Marten, the world's most complicated wind-up toy.

Stiles has always felt a little like that.

Inevitable.

Like no matter how things went, there they would be, together, at the end of it.

But, back when Stiles was gone, there is this:

Lydia sees the flash of Malia's long, long legs disappear around a corner, barely covered by some alarming bad-idea of an outfit. (Lydia admires that, and not in a passive aggressive, housewife-stereotype way. How she just wears whatever).

Lydia follows-- Malia's been unstable lately and Lydia wouldn't tell her this, of course, for knowledge of the bared teeth that would be her answer, but she's--

Well. She's worried.

She follows Malia down through the school, the halls bright-fluorescent, mismatched linoleum and that nagging sense of missing something.

They end up in the boiler room which-- like, okay, Lydia's watched Buffy, she knows what happens to people who end up in the boiler room.

But instead, there is Malia with one arm chained to a pipe, and she is holding the loose end of a second chain in the other hand.

"Someone used to do this for me," she says, and rattles the chained hand, and she looks at Lydia with just this complete, this absolute helplessness.

Lydia unsticks from where she's been hanging in the doorway. Crosses the room halfway and Malia growls , and then her face crumples entirely.

" Fuck ," she says. "Sorry. I don't--"

Lydia waits for Malia's teeth to pull back into their gums.

"It's okay," she says. Takes another step, and when that seems OK, she closes the distance between them.

"Here," she says, and reaches out her hand. Malia gives her the loose end of the chain.

"No-- Malia."

Malia tugs her chained hand as close to her chest as she can. Her eyes are huge-- are enormous, they are impossible not to see. They are welling up, wet, with tears. Such a pretty colour , Lydia thinks. Thanks god Malia doesn’t wear makeup, because with mascara Lydia wouldn’t- no one would- be able to look away from those eyes of hers.

"You can't," Malia says, and yanks at the chain. Lydia startles out of her tangent. "You can't . I don't want to--"

"You won't." Lydia means to reach for the chain but she sort of gets Malia's hand, instead, ends up with her fingers over Malia's fingers over Malia's heart, the manacle pressing up cold against her skin. "Malia, you won't hurt anyone."

And Malia takes this deep breath, shaky, and she says, "I was going to say you."

Lydia frowns.

"I don't want to hurt you ."

And-- well, what is there to do, with that? Lydia slams shut the door that opens up in her, stems whatever soppiness might've come leaking out.

“You won’t,” Lydia says. “Let me undo this.”

Malia looks at her a long time-- takes a deep breath, and the tension goes out of her forearm. Lydia feels it, the unflexing of muscle. Malia lets Lydia coax her hand away from her chest. Lets her unlock the manacle.

And then her legs kind of fold up under her, and Lydia goes down with her, so they’re both crouching there, on the cold and gritty concrete, some basement-dampness soaking through the knees of Lydia’s leggings.

Malia’s hand is still in Lydia’s, and her wrist is all ringed in blood, a bracelet carved in by the manacle.

“I hate this,” Malia says. Her voice has the edge, just the very edge, of a growl, and Lydia’s legs are bracketing hers, and Malia’s head is hanging forward, hair tickling Lydia’s collarbones, and it is all--

It’s very strange.

They never used to hang out, Lydia thinks. Just the two of them. She knows there was someone else, but when she tries to grab that thought it skates out of reach. It’s-- h mm. she’s not really used to not knowing things, to be honest. Or, rather, not really used to not being able to find something out, when she needs to.

“Me too,” she says to Malia. The concrete is digging divots into Lydia’s one hand, where she’s leaning on it, and it makes clear to her only how warm Malia’s skin is, in comparison.

[bananannabeth]

BITE: Chapter 9

percy jackson / teen wolf crossover i'm so sorry about the ridiculous wait!! i participated in the stydia big bang and that sort of took all of my fic writing energy for a bit. that fic is called colorblind, if you'd like to read it!! thank you for being so patient, and i hope you enjoy the update. 9/? - Stiles

“You couldn’t have this meeting outside?” Melissa said sadly, looking at the wet patches on her couch.

Everyone had gotten to their feet when she’d arrived, Scott and Stiles moving forward to greet her and everyone else hovering awkwardly in the lounge, trying to wring the excess water out of their hair with the towels still draped over their shoulders.

“I’m really sorry, Mom,” Scott said, almost pleading.

Stiles quickly came to his defence, gesturing to the bottom of the doorframe. “We couldn’t talk outside, we needed to be inside the mountain ash barrier.”

Melissa didn’t look comforted. Her gaze flickered over the group, lingering on the demigods - demigods! Actual, real live, half-gods standing in Scott’s house, Stiles could hardly believe it - before settling back on Scott. “What’s happened now? And who are your new friends?”

“Mom, this is Percy, Annabeth, Hazel and Frank,” Scott introduced, pointing to each of them in turn.

Annabeth and Percy smiled, looking about as welcoming and polite as Stiles had ever seen them. Hazel and Frank smiled, too, but they were clearly exhausted and overwhelmed. When Frank raised his hand in a small wave, Melissa frowned.

“What happened to your wrist?” she asked, dropping her bag onto the table and stepping over to him. Stiles could physically see the switch from annoyed mom to concerned nurse.

Frank flinched back, but Hazel and Percy both put a steadying hand on his arms. Scott rushed over, hovering by his mom’s side. “Frank, Mom’s a nurse. She can help.”

“I’m not sure how much she’ll be able to help with this,” Percy said carefully. The look he gave Scott made it clear that he wasn’t sure how much Melissa knew, and he didn’t want to overstep any boundaries. Stiles appreciated the respect.

“Trust me, I can help,” Melissa mused, eyebrows drawn together as she carefully turned Frank’s wrist over in her hands. “How did you get these wounds? It looks like you were chained…” Frank winced, and Melissa’s hands stilled. Her eyes flashed, and then her lips set into a thin line. She looked to Scott. “Tell me everything. Right now.”

Scott chewed his bottom lip. “Well -”

“Well, uh, so, things have… expanded, slightly,” Stiles said, waving a hand at Annabeth, who batted it away. “And there’s some new monsters in town -”

Melissa rolled her eyes, which was not quite the response Stiles had been expecting, but he thought it was fitting anyway. “Of course there are,” she muttered.

“- But these guys have fought them before and won, so everything’s fine, we’ve definitely got a plan and you have absolutely nothing to worry about,” Stiles finished, smiling brightly.

Melissa blinked at him before turning to Scott and asking flatly, “What are we up against?”

“We were just getting to that bit,” Scott said. “Hazel was about to tell us what she’d heard.”

Hazel shuffled her feet slightly against the carpet. “It’s not good,” she said warningly. “We have fought him before - well, not us, exactly, but our friends have - and they didn’t exactly win. They just sort of… survived.”

Allison folded her arms across her chest, pressing the wet towel down her front. “Who is he?”

“Lycaon,” Hazel said grimly.

“The first werewolf?” Stiles and Allison asked in shocked unison.

That was impossible. That couldn’t be true. Lycaon was ancient, he was a myth, he was - an all powerful werewolf, the original Alpha. When Scott had first got the bite, Stiles had done a lot of research. Lycaon had come up a fair bit, and nothing about him was good. Even back when he was a human, he was a nasty guy. It takes a sick sort of person to not only murder their own son but then to feed him to someone, especially to Zeus - Who was apparently real, if Annabeth and Percy were telling the truth?

Which they probably were, Stiles couldn’t see any reason for them to lie, and if they were going to lie this was a weird backstory to go with, pretty unnecessarily complicated. It explained Percy’s ability to manipulate water, and the fact that they were unfazed by Scott and the others transforming, and their weapons, and the way they’d known to take down that monster in the preserve…

But anyway, the point was, Lycaon was a dick, but he was also really dangerous. If he was in Beacon Hills, they were in trouble.

Scott rounded on Derek. “Did you know about this?”

“I had my suspicions,” Derek said quietly. He sounded genuinely remorseful. “I was hoping it wasn’t the case.”

“Are you sure it’s him?” Allison asked Hazel.

Hazel nodded, twisting her hands together in front of herself. “I’m sure. I never saw him, but I heard them talking about him, they called him by name.”

“Who are they?” Annabeth asked. Her expression was one of steely determination, her gaze far away, as though she was already mentally drawing up a plan of attack.

“His followers, his pack,” Hazel explained.

“Didn’t we just defeat an Alpha pack?” Isaac asked. “How could another one come to town so quickly?”

“This isn’t another Alpha pack,” Derek said sourly. “This is the first ever werewolf, the first Alpha. He’s worse than Deucalion. Much worse.”

“You said your friends had faced him before,” Stiles said to Hazel. “How did they survive?”

“Luck,” Percy said immediately. “Reinforcements arrived just in time, the first time, and the second time… well, no other demigod would have been able to get away.”

Stiles clapped his hands together. “So call them! Your friends who’ve fought him before.” Percy opened his mouth to protest, but Stiles barrelled on through. “Yeah, it might not have been the best fight, but at least they’ve met him before. They can tell us what we’re up against.”

“That’s what you meant, back at the loft,” Annabeth said to Derek, “When you said we might need reinforcements.”

Derek nodded. “I was really hoping it wouldn’t come to it, but if Lycaon is really in Beacon Hills, then our two worlds might finally have to meet.”

Percy shook his head. “I don’t want to drag them into this.”

“Perce, he’s trying to get to Camp Jupiter,” Hazel said. “If we don’t stop him here, he’s going to attack them.”

“It’d be better for him to try attacking the camp,” Annabeth said, turning on her heel and breaking away from the group. She started pacing across the lounge, fingers steepled in front of herself. “Their defences are better there, and Lupa would never allow him to pose a real threat.”

“Do you really think so? Camp’s pretty fractured after the war, Annabeth, I don’t know if they could stand another attack,” Hazel said softly.

War? Stiles shared a look with Scott, making a mental note to research that later.

Annabeth wavered. “We can’t face him here, we’re at a disadvantage. We don’t know the surroundings -”

“But we do,” Scott said, eyes flashing red. “We’ll help you. We’ve fought Alphas who thought they were stronger than us before, and we’ve won. We’ll do it again.”

“You don’t understand what you’re up against,” Annabeth protested. “Lycaon is dangerous, really dangerous. And none of this is a coincidence. There are plenty of different directions he could have come from to get to the camp, but he chose this town for a reason. He kept Hazel and Frank alive for a reason. He -”

Percy grabbed Annabeth’s hand, stopping her pacing. He spun her around to face him, holding her gaze. “Annabeth. We’re going to figure this out, just like we’ve figured everything else out. But for now -”

Annabeth’s fingers twitched in his hold. “But -”

“Right now,” Percy said firmly, “Frank and Hazel need ambrosia and rest, and we need to contact Reyna. We’ll talk to her and Chiron and we’ll figure out what to do with their help, okay?”

It took a few seconds before Annabeth nodded stiffly. “Okay.”

Percy went to let go of her hand, but she tightened her hold. He glanced down at their interlocked fingers, a surprised smile lighting up his face, and tugged her over to stand against his side.

Stiles glanced over at Lydia, who had sat back on the couch and was watching the exchange curiously. When she felt him looking she glanced up and met his eye, and Stiles knew that she was as intrigued by everything they didn’t know about these demigods as he was.

“You can stay here for the night,” Melissa said. “As long as you don’t mind sleeping on the couch, or mattresses on the floor.”

“You really don’t have to -” Annabeth started to say.

At the same time, Percy said, “That’d be great, Ms McCall. Thank you.”

Melissa nodded, and that was settled. “Just let me get my first aid kit, I want to put some disinfectant on your wrists before you go to sleep.”

Frank glanced up at Annabeth, as if checking this was okay.

“It can’t hurt,” was all she said.

Everyone started to move, sensing that the conversation had drawn to a close for the night. Isaac drifted towards Allison, the back of his hand brushing hers, and she turned to talk to him in a hushed voice. Scott winced and turned away, following his mom out of the room.

“Uh, Ms McCall,” Percy said, getting everyone’s attention. “Do you have a sink we could borrow?”

With a mirror, a flashlight, the kitchen tap and a coin, Percy and Annabeth had made some sort of mythical Skype call back to the demigod camp: Camp Jupiter, they’d called it. A girl with long, dark hair in a detailed braid and a stern face was talking to them, although it had taken a bit of convincing to get her to talk freely with everyone else around. Scott and Derek were in on the conversation, too, acting as Alpha and liaison, and Melissa was sitting at the kitchen table, tending to Frank and Hazel’s wounds with the care only a registered nurse could provide.

Stiles was leaning against the doorframe, arms folded over his chest, running through all of the information they had. Which wasn’t really all that much, the more he thought about it.

“We need to figure out what can kill him,” Allison said, coming to stand beside Stiles.

He glanced down to see she was holding her empty quiver. She must have lost all of her arrows in the flood.

“Wolfsbane?” Stiles offered. “That almost killed Derek.”

“Maybe Lycaon’s different, though,” Lydia said, coming around Allison’s other side. “All the myths say he can only be harmed by silver.”

“He can’t be hurt with our usual weapons,” Hazel offered from the table. Stiles was surprised that she’d been listening to them; her eyes had been locked on Frank the whole time Melissa had been treating him. “Celestial bronze and imperial gold don’t work against him. Silver arrows have hurt him, in the past.”

“Okay, so we try both silver and wolfsbane, then,” Stiles said.

“I’ll get my dad to help,” Allison offered. “I’ll go home now and start collecting bullets and arrows.”

“I’ll drive you,” Isaac said.

Stiles was glad that Scott was too engrossed in his conversation to see them leave, Isaac’s hand hovering just above the small of Allison’s back. He’d thought that Lydia would want to go with them, but she’d declined, saying that she wanted to get some more information before heading home. Once Allison and Isaac were gone, however, she didn’t move from Stiles’s side.

“Annabeth’s right,” she said, voice low. “This isn’t a coincidence.”

“Definitely not,” Stiles agreed, in the same tone.

“Stiles, Lycaon is the original Alpha. The bestiary says that he has powers other Alphas don’t.”

He tried to hide his alarm. “What do you mean?”

Lydia grabbed his elbow and dragged him around the corner. Once they were out of sight of the others she let him go, but neither of them stepped back, keeping their heads bowed close together.

“The bestiary says that he has control over all other werewolves,” Lydia whispered.

Stiles’s stomach turned to lead. “What? No, that can’t be - Are you sure you translated it correctly?”

Lydia glared at him.

“Okay, sorry, you translated it correctly,” he apologised. “So… so he can control other werewolves? And you think that’s why he came to Beacon Hills, to - what, to recruit more into his pack before attacking the demigods?”

Lydia licked her lips. “Not just more of them… I think he came here for someone specifically.”

Stiles’s eyes widened. He straightened up as her meaning sunk in. “You don’t think…?”

Lydia nodded solemnly. “Scott.”

Stiles swallowed thickly and turned back to peer into the kitchen, where Scott was standing with a straight spine beside Percy, deep in discussion about how to keep their homes safe. “Lycaon wants a True Alpha.”

.