9. Chapter 9

Chris wakes up on the drive back, but not by much. He smacks his lips and looks around. “D’it work?”

“Yes,” Lydia says through gritted teeth.

“Wha’—”

“Shut up and we’ll tell you when we get back. Oh that reminds me. Car? Call Scott.”

The dashboard lights up and the sounds of a call being put through fill the cab, and then Scott’s slightly panicked voice follows.

“Lydia! We’re almost there! Just hold on—”

“Turn around, everything’s taken care of.”

“ What ?”

“Everything is taken care of,” Peter repeats for her, his voice still sounding like he gargled shards of glass.

“Peter?” Stiles’s shouts down the connection. “You’re still alive?”

“Gimme that back! You’re driving!” Scott yells and there is what sounds like a slap fight on the other end before Scott comes back on. “Peter?”

Peter clears his throat and steels himself to reply. “Yes, I’m still alive. Lydia is alive. Chris is alive but barely coherent. We’re about an hour out, we’ll meet at Derek’s loft.” His voice fades out completely at the end, scratchy and painful.

“Oh, okay.”

“ What ?” Stiles screeches in the background. “What do you mean, ‘okay’? It’s not ‘okay’! What happened? Did it work? What—”

“We’ll meet you there.” Scott hangs up while Stiles is still shouting.

“They n’gonna be happy,” Chris slurs.

“Shut up and go back to sleep.” Peter snarls, flashing his eyes at Chris in the rear view mirror.

“Yes, dear.” Chris huffs out a laugh and Lydia smirks, but Chris is out again within seconds. Peter slumps in the seat and closes his eyes for a moment.

---

No one is at the loft when they get there. Chris is still stumbling around like a newborn foal but he pushes Peter’s offer of help away and somehow manages to walk on his own. Lydia prances in and heads for the coffee maker, which Peter approves of.

Peter goes up to Derek’s bedroom, takes a quick shower, and changes into clean jeans and a henley — both are Derek’s but at this point Peter is putting it under the heading of “pack resources” because it is that or sit around half naked in his old, bloodied and shredded sweatpants.

When he gets back downstairs, Chris is sprawled out on the couch with his eyes closed and Lydia is set up at the dining table with her coffee. Peter chooses to honor the silence, since talking still hurts anyway, and retreats to one of the lounge chairs after scoring his own cup of sweet, creamy coffee which he has totally earned .

Chris cracks an eye open and stares at him.

“What?” Peter grimaces at him over his mug.

“You aren’t pestering us with questions.”

“I believe you have confused me for Stiles. We look nothing alike, and I haven’t been a twink since I turned 25. I’m insulted.”

Lydia snorts then tries to look like she didn’t and continues to ignore them, scrolling on her phone.

“Peter—”

“What do you want me to ask? How Stiles manipulated the faked mate bond with that bracelet trick? How you channeled our emissary’s magic despite being the real world equivalent of a muggle? How—”

“ Stiles’s magic? Wait, what—”

“The important question,” Peter says, raising his ruined, scratchy voice as much as he can, “is why? Why bother?” He looks over at Lydia, who has put down her phone. “This was your chance to get rid of me. Don’t think for one second that I don’t know how much you’ve wanted to do that, sweetheart. I have smelled your hate for years.”

“Lately? For the last year or so? Have you ?” She sneers at him as eloquently as ever. “You really need therapy, Hale.” Lydia picks up her phone and her coffee and walks out to the patio balcony, slamming the door shut behind her.

Peter watches her leave with narrowed eyes, because the answer is one he had not even realized until she asked, and that answer is: no. He just assumed she had buried it, or come to terms with it. That her anger was still there, burning , was not something he doubted.

Until now.

He wonders at what else he’s missed.

Chris has sat up — a little, not much, but enough — and stares thoughtfully at Peter. “You honestly believed we were going to just leave you there.” He looks, and sounds, incredulous.

“Christopher, it may have missed your notice, what with your homicidal sister and father screwing around in Beacon Hills for years, but I’ve done very little that might endear me to anyone here. I don’t even blame them.” He shrugs.

“So why have you stayed? Why are you here?”

Pack , Peter’s brain supplies, along with family and regret and grief. Where else does he belong? He’s died here before, and he will die here again. He’s a Hale. There is nowhere else for him to go.

He sips his coffee while collecting his thoughts. “Whose idea was it to send you after me?”

Chris blinks at him for a moment, then lies back down. “You know what? I’m not going to answer that fucking insult of a question.”

Peter almost snarls at him, but just then the heavy sliding door is slammed open. Derek and Cora both fly through it like wild things and aim straight for Peter. Cora, as always ruled by her impulses, jumps onto his lap and tucks her face against his neck, scenting him. For the first time in years he feels the pack bond strengthen between them again, her bright, young energy like an electric shock to his soul.

“Don’t do that again, Uncle Peter,” she growls. “Don’t leave me again.”

Peter is too taken aback to reply. Instead he wraps his arms around her, resting his cheek against her hair, scenting her, filling his senses with her presence, and his wolf all but wallowing like a pig in the energy of their bond.

Derek, more reserved overall and (as he always was) unforgiving by nature, had skidded to a stop next to them and looks down at Peter. His eyes are wide and surprised, though, and he looks so scared, so much younger , for just a moment. “Peter?”

And it’s there, too, faded and timid and, yes, still hurt and angry. It’s not the pack bond they had, once, but it is more than anything Derek has been willing to share since Peter finally recovered his sanity (for whatever it’s worth, he figures).

“I’m okay, pup.” Peter croaks out the words and raises an arm in invitation. After a long moment staring down at his uncle, conflicted emotions openly warring over his face, Derek falls into it, crushing Cora between them. They all stay like that for a long moment, piled up on the chair, and Peter could almost believe that they are kids again, dog-piling on him as they demand to be taken for ice-cream. Except now their combined weight is closer to 300 pounds than 100...but Peter honestly doesn’t give a single damn about that.

“You smell like brimstone,” Derek whispers.

“I sound like it too.”

Cora laughs and gets up, pushing Derek off too. She reaches down and lightly thwaps Peter on the head before putting her hands on her hips and growling at him. “Did they hurt you?”

“Yes,” Chris says from where he is still sprawled out on the couch.

“No,” Peter counters swiftly. “Not much,” he corrects at the glares everyone present gives him.

At that point the rest of the pack comes in chattering and clattering, and Peter is struck by the fact that it is, indeed, the entire pack . He frowns at them. They frown back, although mostly it seems in confusion.

“He’s surprised anyone came for him,” Chris unhelpfully supplies. Lydia has reappeared, settling again at the dining table. Parrish trots over to her like the lap dog he is.

“What?” Cora looks hurt for a moment, then angry. “Why would you think that?”

“You were kidnapped,” Scott says with a shrug. “Of course we were coming for you.” His arm is slung over Kira’s shoulders like he doesn’t have a care in the world, as if everything working out perfectly with everyone still alive is totally normal despite all evidence and history to the contrary. Sometimes — rarely, but sometimes — Peter envies his boundless, mostly baseless, optimism.

On the other hand, Peter does not envy Stiles who is vibrating out of his skin and has obviously reached the end of his patience. “ What happened? ” Stiles shouts with extra arm flailing. Derek grabs his wrist and pulls him away from Peter.

“Shouldn’t I be asking that?” Peter snaps at him.

Stiles glares at him. “Uh, no? Because of course your pack and your mate would be coming to rescue you!”

Peter rolls his eyes. “The truth, please.” He looks at Derek. “You?”

Derek, too much his mother’s son not to roll his eyes right back at him, shakes his head. “I supported it, but no.”

Before Peter can continue the interrogation, Stiles breaks in again. “Answers! I need answers!”

Peter looks pointedly at Lydia. She sighs heavily and then begins at the beginning, unfortunately with additional visual aids as she pulls up the photo she took of Peter to share. Scott and Kira look horrified, Stiles turns a little green, and Chris refuses to look at it. Derek and Cora keep growling at it until Lydia demands her phone back before they break it and tells them that the alpha who did it is dead.

“Dead? Dead dead? How?” Stiles looks shocked, which in turn surprises Peter. What did the kid think his magic would do?

“The phoenix killed him with the knife.” Lydia nods.

“The phoenix?” Scott squints at her.

“The knife ?” Stiles yells at her.

She opens up the large tote bag she’s been carting around. “This knife.” She pulls out the magicked weapon and plops it on the table, still bloodied from where she, apparently, ruthlessly yanked it out of the dead alpha’s chest when no one was looking. Peter always did like her best.

Derek, Cora, and Kira cringe because they are the only supernatural creatures in the room with some common sense, but Stiles is on it immediately, cooing like it’s a harmless baby sloth or something.

“You stole the knife,” Chris says, his voice dry as a desert.

“I did.” She grins, smug and self satisfied, although Parrish looks horrified enough for the both of them.

“Hey, can we get back to the phoenix thing?” Scott breaks in, glaring his disapproval at the bloody knife.

“That was what manifested out of the bracelet,” Chris replies, then looks over at Lydia. “You certainly waited until the last moment to put it in play.”

“ It worked?!??! ” Stiles literally shrieks, making all the werewolves present cringe.

“Wait, did you think it wouldn’t work?” Scott asks, sitting up straight. “Dude! What—”

“I knew it would work , I just didn’t know...how? Exactly?” Stiles recoils when Cora snarls at him.

“That seems to be a repeating theme to your work as emissary.” Peter sips his coffee.

Stiles narrows his eyes. “All we needed was a big distraction to last long enough for the rest of us to show up. I figured it would, I don’t know, put on a light show or something.”

“And do what, precisely? Against the dozens of Viking berserker werewolves itching for a fight?”

Everyone shifts uncomfortably. Stiles shrugs. “Not sure. We were all kind of winging it.”

“Winging it? Why does that not surprise me?”

“Hey! It was that or have your mate string us up by our ‘nads.”

“I don’t even have ‘nads but he was scary,” Kira stage-whispers, dripping earnestness from every word, her eyes wide as she nods in agreement with Stiles.

Peter glares at Stiles. “Really. My mate . Need I remind you that it is a fake bond that you created?”

“Uncle Peter,” Derek says softly, and it’s that gentleness he should have tapped when he was an alpha because it makes everyone go quiet around them. (It reminds Peter so much of Derek’s father, who was the living embodiment of “still waters run deep,” that his heart literally aches with grief.) He looks over at his nephew, skepticism clear on his features he knows, and Derek nods at Chris. “He flipped out. Like that time Aunt Jess was in that car accident, remember? Uncle Carl lost his shit, you and Mom had to hold him down.”

(Carlton had gone feral over dinner, for no reason it seemed at the time, and Peter had worried that he would have to put his own brother-in-law down before dessert. Carlton managed to control himself enough to figure out what was wrong and get them all on the road looking for Jess’s car. They had found her before the police even got to the scene. Jessica Hale, human, who survived a catastrophic hit-and-run accident only to be killed two years later in the fire.)

Peter slowly turns his head to stare at Chris, who is looking back at him, blank-faced and with a steady heart.

“Did you, now?”

Chris nods. “I did.” He raises his chin, as if in challenge.

“Still kinda stuck on the phoenix thing,” Scott chimes in, waving a hand around.

“Oh! That was the manifestation of Chris’s mate mark,” Lydia answers while gently prying the knife out of Stiles’s greedy hold.

“But it was just a holographic thing, right? A fantastic light show?” Stiles asks with jazz hands, looking between Lydia and Chris.

“No.” Chris gives that much and no more, causing Lydia to sigh heavily.

“Oh my God, it was real? A real phoenix?” Stiles’s eyes light up.

“No,” Peter says, keeping his eyes on Chris. “It was not quite solid, not quite ephemeral. It was real, but it was not a phoenix. It was an...an ignis fatuus.” It seems the time for labels has arrived. Peter is not particularly happy about it.

“A wuh?” Stiles frowns as Derek and Cora suck in surprised breaths.

“Ignis fatuus. From the Medieval Latin, ‘foolish fire.’” Lydia nods in understanding.

“A fool for love,” Peter murmurs, and Chris finally looks away.

“Sometimes used to describe will-o-the-wisps; I’ve never heard it in this context before,” Lydia says, looking around expectantly.

“Our use of it pre-dates Medieval Latin,” Derek responds curtly, which is apparently enough for her.

Lydia nods. “Well. In any case, it channeled Chris’s voice and then did his will, you might say.”

“His will, as in, killing the alpha? Killing the alpha...for love?” Scott asks skeptically, exchanging a look with Kira. Everyone is very, very quiet after that, staring back and forth between Chris and Peter.

“Excuse me.” Chris gets up and walks out.