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Stiles was too tired to flinch when he heard his window slide open. If Gerard was coming after him again, Stiles doubted he would use the window. Doubted he even could, with how much black blood had trailed out of the warehouse.
“Go away,” Stiles muttered into his pillow, with no intention of moving a goddamn muscle right now, not even to check who had just entered his room.
He was hurting all over, driving the jeep through a wall and into a supernatural creature on top of being beaten had not done him any favors and it had taken him almost an hour to find a comfortable position. Well, comfortable-ish. His ribs were still killing him.
“Why are you alone?” Peter asked, and Stiles could hear the frown in his voice.
He was distantly aware that maybe he should be worried about having Peter in his back, but then again, Peter had been the only on in this whole mess so far to respect his autonomy. He had listened to him when Stiles had said no, even though the guy had been verifiably insane at that point.
Anyway, Stiles wasn’t nearly as worried about Peter in his bedroom as he should be. There were scarier people out there.
“Dad’s at work,” Stiles slurred out and he could hear Peter huff.
“Why is Scott not taking care of you?”
“’Cause I’m not a baby and I don’t need to be taken care of,” Stiles snapped and then hissed when the cut on his lip broke open again.
“Clearly,” Peter deadpanned, and Stiles tensed all over when he carefully wrapped his hand around Stiles’ ankle. Stiles couldn’t believe how gentle Peter was with him right now.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Stiles demanded to know and then went boneless against the mattress when the pain suddenly left him.
“Taking your pain,” Peter told him. “But just the pain, I can’t do anything about the injuries,” he explained and almost sounded regretful.
“Can every wolf do that?” Stiles asked, exhaustion crashing over him now that the pain wasn’t strong enough to keep him awake any longer, but his need to know was stronger. For now.
“Yeah,” Peter said lowly. “And if you were a wolf then you’d be long healed,” he added, fingers caressing Stiles’ skin as Stiles huffed into his pillow.
“But I’m not.”
“And isn’t that a pity,” was the last thing Stiles heard before he drifted off.
~*~*~
Stiles wasn’t happy. Derek wasn’t listening to him, Scott was ignoring him for Allison, Isaac barely spared him a glance and Peter was way too up in his business. This was a mess and Stiles did not understand why he should even be at these ‘pack meetings’. Not that there was a lot of pack all around.
Erica and Boyd were still missing, and Scott was still so very adamantly against being in Derek’s pack that it was a wonder he had shown up at all.
Derek was trying to teach Scott and Isaac something, and even though Peter was with Stiles at the sidelines, Stiles felt distinctly left out.
There was a lot of talk about using their senses and feeling certain things, and while Stiles understood all of that, he didn’t understand because he was lacking the special werewolf senses this training clearly required.
“You could be there with them,” Peter said from beside him and Stiles briefly wondered when he stopped meticulously mapping every step the man took.
Stiles turned his head a little bit into Peter’s direction, signaling that he was listening, without actually taking his eyes off Derek, Scott and Isaac.
“You just have to ask Derek for the bite,” Peter explained, sounding almost wistful, and now Stiles did look away from the others.
“I don’t want to be a wolf.”
“Your heartbeat is still telling me that that is a lie, dear boy,” Peter told him gently, just like he had all those months ago in the garage.
“It’s not,” Stiles said, even though he damn well knew that it was. “I don’t want to be turned.”
“Maybe so,” Peter allowed though he still clearly didn’t believe Stiles, “but you do want to be involved, included. And there are certain limitations to that as long as you’re human.”
Stiles narrowed his eyes at Peter, hating how he was right and hating just a little bit that Peter was the only one to have noticed it. It should have been Scott, but he wasn’t paying all that much attention to Stiles anymore. And Peter was paying way too close attention to him these days. Not that Stiles really minded.
Stiles knew that Derek wasn’t doing it on purpose, but Stiles was never completely included. Derek was focused on Isaac and Scott more than on Stiles and Peter, because they were new to this whole werewolf business and needed to learn a lot. Peter wasn’t new, knew everything about being a werewolf already, and Stiles had no need to know everything. At least from Derek’s perspective.
But Stiles wanted to know everything, wanted to know how to expand his senses, open them up and use them to his advantage, and it irked something in Stiles to see Scott disregard Derek’s lessons so completely.
Derek wasn’t a bad teacher. Stiles could tell, because apart from actually getting to practice what Derek taught, everything made sense to Stiles. And he could see the same in Isaac. He was improving with every lesson that took place, so clearly, it wasn’t Derek’s fault that Scott didn’t pick up a basic survival skill like listening to someone’s heartbeat.
Stiles just wished he could do it too, sometimes.
“Derek bit enough people already,” Stiles said, clearly surprising Peter with his delayed answer.
“Not if Erica and Boyd are really gone,” Peter mused out loud and Stiles remembered that an alpha needed three betas.
If Derek managed to convince Scott to join his pack, for real, then he would still be one beta short if those two didn’t come back.
Stiles imagined it, only for a second. Asking Derek for the bite, turning into a werewolf; but it felt wrong somehow. Derek wasn’t supposed to be his alpha.
“He would turn you,” Peter muttered against Stiles’ ear and Stiles had to suppress the shiver that crept up his spine.
“I don’t want him to turn me,” Stiles said, forcing himself to move away from Peter for now, and this, at least, must ring true for him.
Stiles didn’t want Derek to turn him.
~*~*~
“You know, if you would just take the fucking bite already, like we both know you want, then I wouldn’t have to get my claws dirty every other week,” Peter panted as he stood over the slashed open corpse of the harpy that had taken Stiles.
“But I am so into the concept of being a damsel in distress,” Stiles snarked back, not mentioning how it wasn’t just himself who wanted him to take the bite. Peter was just as much, if not more, invested in Stiles’ decision and it would be funny, if Stiles’ wasn’t in so much pain right now.
“Besides, I know you want to be my knight in shining armor,” Stiles went on and could feel heat spread in his belly when Peter’s eyes flashed blue at that, but he dragged his gaze away and instead carefully prodded at the claw marks in his shoulder.
The harpy had taken him off the trail, wrapping her clawed foot around Stiles’ shoulder and lifted him clean off the ground, and Stiles was in absolutely no rush to move his arm any time soon.
“Let me see,” Peter demanded harshly, but Stiles knew him well enough by now to know that he was hiding his worry behind his rough tone, and Stiles rolled his eyes at him.
“I’m not made of glass,” he growled out.
“But you’re breakable, now give it here,” Peter immediately snapped back and somehow carefully manhandled Stiles into a position where he could check out the injuries without hurting him further.
“If you were a wolf—,” Peter started but Stiles was tired of hearing this same argument over and over.
“I would heal, I could protect myself, yadda yadda yadda. I will not ask Derek for the bite, Peter, goddamn it, be careful, that shit hurts,” Stiles called out and Peter huffed, clearly displeased by his inspection.
“You need to go to the hospital, I think she might have torn something.”
“Awesome,” Stiles muttered, already dreading the bill he would get for that.
Peter could clearly read the thought right off his face, because he carefully wrapped his arm around Stiles’ middle, taking both his pain and his weight, but also pulling him protectively close to his body.
“I’ll take care of it, don’t worry. But if you would take the bite, you wouldn’t have to worry about hospital bills ever again.”
“Would you fucking drop it,” Stiles grumbled.
But he knew Peter was right, knew that if he would heal like the others, his dad at least would never have to worry about those bills again.
“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even be in this mess. And I would be happier for it,” Stiles told Peter, though they both knew it was half-hearted at best.
Stiles loved being involved with the supernatural. And he definitely loved having Peter around.
“Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart,” Peter said with a small smile as he led Stiles towards his jeep.
~*~*~
Stiles hated being human.
“Derek, for fuck’s sake, let me come!” Stiles yelled, but Derek wasn’t even listening to him anymore.
“Scott, tell him, I can help,” Stiles tried next, though that only got him an apologetic shrug from Scott.
It was Isaac who finally said what everyone was so clearly thinking.
“Stiles, you’re just human. You’re weak and breakable and you’d only get in the way or get hurt. We can’t afford that.”
“Without me you wouldn’t even know where to look or what was going on!” Stiles tried, but it fell on deaf ears.
“And that’s exactly why we can’t bring you,” Derek spoke up. “We need you here, doing your thing.”
“And you’ll do your thing?” Stiles scoffed. “No offense, dude, but your rescue missions tend to go sideways all the damn time.”
“It’s a pack of alpha’s, Stiles. You’re not coming.”
Stiles turned to Peter as his last hope, but Peter was looking steadily at him, arms crossed in front of his chest, and Stiles didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what he wanted to say.
If you had taken the bite, you would be allowed to come. You would even be asked to come along.
“Fuck you,” Stiles hissed at him, but Peter only seemed amused by Stiles outburst, which infuriated him even further.
“Do not come crying to me when this whole thing goes to shit,” Stiles yelled over his shoulder as he walked out of the loft.
Stiles wished he would be wrong for once in his life, but of course the rescue mission was a trap and instead of getting Erica and Boyd back, Isaac and Derek nearly died.
And no one even thought to inform Stiles; he had to find out when he walked into the loft after a whole day of no messages.
“Holy—” Stiles trailed off there, because no curse or exclamation could properly describe the gruesome scene in front of him.
Isaac was still bleeding, and Stiles didn’t even want to think about the white bits that poked out of his chest, and Derek looked like death warmed over, even though he was in objectively better shape than Isaac.
“What happened?” Stiles wanted to know as he rushed to Derek’s side, propping him up when he tried to sit up and promptly listed sideways.
“The alphas are stronger than we thought, and there are five of them,” Peter said from the kitchen, and even he seemed more ruffled than usual. “If you had come with us as you are now, you’d be dead,” Peter told him, and Stiles could hear the underlying worry in his voice.
Stiles could see a bandage peek out from under Peter’s shirt and he fought the urge to rush to his side, to check him over. It was clearly not that serious, since he was on his feet and coherent.
“Where’s Scott?” Stiles asked and accepted the wet washcloth Peter handed him, dragging the tips of his fingers over Peter’s wrist for a second.
“He went to see Allison,” Peter told him, with a small frown, and then carefully wiped down Isaac, while Stiles did the same with Derek.
“If you had more people—” Stiles started, and Peter pierced him with his gaze.
“We could have at least escaped unscathed,” he agreed, and Stiles worried his lip between his teeth. “If you’d been a wolf and with us, our chances would have been better.”
“You really don’t pull any punches,” Stiles muttered, though he knew that Peter was only worried about him.
Stiles might not be allowed to fight alongside the pack, but he was still associated with them, and that put him in danger. Stiles stared at Peter in contemplation for a second but when Derek groaned in pain, he quickly redirected his attention.
“You should accept the bite, once he’s healthy enough to give it. We need all the help we can get against five alphas,” Peter said when Isaac and Derek had been bandaged up again and dragged his hand along Stiles’ neck; a warning for other wolves that this human was claimed.
Stiles wasn’t sure how well that would protect him if the alphas came after him.
“Yeah,” Stiles distractedly said, his mind whirring, though not in the direction Peter probably thought.
~*~*~
Stiles did wait until Derek was mostly healed up to start his plan. Not because he really had to, but because he was a contrary bastard and Peter deserved to stew for a little while.
“I’m ready to take the bite now,” Stiles declared five days later as he barged into the loft, certain that only Peter was home right now.
“That’s wonderful,” Peter said, though he sounded anything but happy about it, “but Derek’s not here.”
“I’m here to take the bite from you,” Stiles told him decisively, and he watched in fascination as pure want flashed over Peter’s face, before he snarled at Stiles.
“You’re about five months too late for that, Stiles,” he hissed out, and Stiles could see how much it pained him to admit that, how much he still wished he could be the one to change Stiles and how much it angered him that he had missed his chance.
“Oh, but Peter,” Stiles crooned as he slowly walked up to him, tilting his head to expose his neck and displaying his bare wrists. He smirked when Peter’s eyes flared blue at the display. “There’s a whole pack of alphas in town.”
“Stiles,” Peter warningly said when Stiles stopped right in front of him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that a little bit of murder might be in order, alpha.”
It was mesmerizing to see just how affected Peter was by that little word, and Stiles vowed to use it often.
“They always travel together,” Peter slurred out, speech hindered by the fangs in his mouth and Stiles tilted his head a little bit more, allowing Peter to lean close and scrape the tips of his fangs over the delicate skin there.
“They don’t when they think they’re up against one measly human.”
“What did you do?” Peter demanded, and Stiles shrugged, shuddering when that motion brought Peter’s teeth to his skin again.
“I’ve been experimenting with mountain ash,” Stiles admitted, and Peter stared in wonder and pure want at him. “I’m adept enough to trap an alpha with it.”
“What are you saying,” Peter growled out, and Stiles grinned wolfishly at him.
“I trapped Ennis and I want you to kill him.”
“Oh, sweet boy, what wonderful presents you give,” Peter said, his breath ghosting over Stiles’ neck and Stiles couldn’t help the small groan when Peter pressed a kiss to his pulse point.
“Better make quick use of it, alpha,” Stiles breathed out and Peter growled in anticipation.
Stiles didn’t expect this to take long. Peter was properly motivated after all.
~*~*~
Stiles hadn’t expected to be this nervous. He had thought about this often; about Peter bringing his wrist up to his mouth like he had in the garage, but this time, he would bite down, and it would be so good.
But now that it was about to happen, Stiles couldn’t help the nerves that crept up his spine.
“What if it doesn’t take? What if I turn into something else?”
“It will,” Peter said with utmost surety. “And no matter what you will turn into, you’ll be mine.”
“Yeah,” Stiles whispered, because he would be. No matter what.
“This is your last chance, sweetheart,” Peter said lowly.
His eyes were glowing red, more beautiful than even before, and there was pure hunger on his face. Stiles couldn’t believe that Peter was still offering him an out.
“Do it.”
Peter gently wrapped his fingers around Stiles’ wrist, bringing it up to his mouth, just like Stiles had always fantasized. Peter’s gaze flicked up to Stiles’, one last question if he was really sure, and Stiles nodded.
He wanted Peter to be his alpha, he wanted to be pack and to belong.
Peter kissed his wrist before he sunk his teeth into the skin. There was some brief pain, but Stiles saw the black lines trailing up Peter’s arm, letting him know that he was pulling most of it from him.
Peter licked over the sluggishly bleeding wound and Stiles couldn’t help but stare at the imprint of Peter’s teeth in his wrist.
“You know what this means,” Peter said, still licking some blood from his teeth and Stiles nodded.
“I’m pack now. I’m yours.”
“Mine,” Peter agreed. “But you know what this means,” he said with a pointed stare at the bite on Stiles’ wrist.
Stiles couldn’t help but smile at that, because of course he knew what that meant. It was the first thing he had researched after Kate had been killed.
“Mate,” was all he said, and then Peter was there, claiming his mouth in a hungry kiss.
Stiles could still taste the blood on Peter’s lips and he groaned into his mouth.
He would have never wanted this from anyone else.
~*~*~
Stiles made a magnificent wolf.