Chapter Text
“Lydia – please,” Jackson says, getting up quickly from his seat in the cafeteria and following after her.
Stiles watches, intrigued, as the red head ignores him and continues to walk past the table she would have sat at before Peter sunk his claws into her. Curiously, it looks like she’s headed for Stiles and her table with the Betas.
Jackson seems to make the connection himself and reaches out to stop Lydia by grabbing her elbow.
Despite it being a gentle stop to Lydia’s movement, her mouth pulls into a hard frown. Stiles stands at that, readying herself to intervene if she gets so much as a whiff of Lydia’s discomfort about what’s about to go down.
“You can’t be serious – you’re gonna sit down with that weirdo and her circle of freaks?” He asks, his disbelief clear from across the hall.
Erica and Isaac rumble their disapproval quietly between them, even as they pretend to continue eating. Boyd just raises a taunting eyebrow, a smirk lingering at the corners of his mouth.
“Those freaks and weirdo were the only ones that didn’t treat me any differently, and they certainly didn’t pretend I was suddenly beneath them.” Lydia replies, mouth now curled sharply as she looked up at him.
“Just – let’s just talk this out, please?” Jackson asks, stepping in close, trying to minimise the peanut gallery around them.
“You cannot be serious right now.” Lydia repeats his words, disbelief thick in her voice. “You ignore me for months on end, refuse to answer any of my calls or texts, didn’t even visit me in hospital, break up with me with a bullshit reason, but now you wanna talk this out?”
“I –” Jackson seems stumped, mouth gaping.
“I’m sorry, Jackson, but if you think you’re going to get away with treating me like this, think again. I’m not going to go back and forth with you anymore with these petty fights – I almost died, and the only person that seemed to care outside of my parents and Allison, is the girl I’m going to go sit with. You might not like that due to your little restraining order, so maybe take the time to reflect on why I’d rather sit with her, than you.” Lydia murmurs between them. She tilts her chin up and tugs her arm still held in Jackson’s grip. “Now let me go, before I get Erica to turn you into ribbons.”
Erica, at the mention of her name, looks at Jackson and grins, crimson lips stretching over sharp teeth.
Jackson swallows, then nods and lets go quickly. “Sorry.” He mutters, before taking a step back and then another, before turning away completely to make his way out of the cafeteria.
No one moves after that, especially Lydia, and from where Stiles is standing, it looks like it’s taking everything inside the redhead in stopping herself from chasing after him.
She walks over to Lydia, her hand gentle as she grabs her wrist in a light hold. “Come sit, Lydia.”
She nods absently, eyes still focused on the door Jackson left through.
Stiles sighs and decides to just gently pull her over to the table. Lydia doesn’t resist, following after her meekly and lets Boyd and Isaac bracket her comfortably.
“Alright, show’s over!” Stiles snaps out loud, standing by the table, to everyone still staring. “Go back to your usual programs!”
The cafeteria is quiet for a few more moments before chatter begins to pick up again. By then, Lydia’s shoulders are by her ears, and her head is downcast.
Boyd nudges her lightly. “You weren’t as harsh as you think you were.”
Lydia pauses in her staring contest with the mystery meat of the day, to glance up at him. “You think?”
From Lydia’s other side, Isaac reaches over and steals one of her chicken nuggets and pops it in his mouth. As he chews, ignoring her half-hearted glare, he nods, “I think he needed to hear that.”
“Maybe not as publicly as that, but yeah.” Stiles adds, now seated in front of her. Under the table, she hooks her ankles with Lydia’s. “You’ve set a boundary, one that can be changed or amended later, but you’ve set one. No more back and forth.”
“And if he doesn’t like that, I’ll make him.” Erica pipes in, grinning.
It’s slow, but the smile that pulls Lydia’s mouth moments later is the most genuine one Stiles has ever seen on the red head. It warms Stiles that the other girl is beginning to understand what being a part of a Pack means.
“So, what’s the plan?” Lydia asks, straightening out her shoulders and lifting her chin up with a determined tilt.
~
The gist of it is, there is no plan.
With Jackson aware of his scaly extracurriculars and his refusal to see what Stiles was trying to do, both she and her father were being put under a microscope, their every move watched.
And that wasn’t even by Gerard and his lackeys – it was by the entire town, who by now had heard of Jackson’s “kidnapping.” Something the geriatric dinosaur revelled in, if the smarmy grin that was on his face most days when faced with Stiles, was any indication.
“We need to find out more on the Kanima.” Boyd says, setting the table for dinner.
They had to buy a larger table with more chairs for the dining room, the once four seater no longer able to seat everyone comfortably. John had been impressed they’d managed to thrift it, especially it being new and void of any wear or tear. He had sighed exasperated three days later, when Boyd and Isaac had left claw marks in the varnished wood after a very tense game of snap, before telling them each to put a dollar in the “fix furnishes” jar.
Derek hums in reply, following after him with the cutlery, finding a lull in the repetition of placing a fork, knife and spoon beside the plate at each chair. He conveniently moves one of the plates to hide the claw marks Erica had put in the wood last week, still undetected by John. Derek had put ten on John realising at the weekend mark.
“I’ve translated all of the texts Stiles gave me,” Lydia adds, thoughtfully, head tilted as she thought about it. She’s been hanging out more and more at home when she didn’t feel like being by herself at her house, her scent is beginning to stick to the furniture and the cycle of laundry. “We need more.”
“You think Deaton could help?” Isaac asks from his spot in the lounge room, laid out on the couch directly opposite her. He’s got a book in his hands, one that looks suspiciously like Stiles’ journal that they all shouldn’t know about.
Before Derek can growl at him to put it back, Erica pounces on him from behind the couch, and while he gasps for breath at the sudden weight of an annoyed, aggressive she-wolf landing on his spleen, she rips the book from out of his hands.
“Don’t give her a reason to bite your face off,” she warns, leaning in and nipping at his nose, before getting up and going upstairs to hopefully put the book back in its original place.
“I wasn’t reading anything bad, just the gross stuff about Der –” Isaac begins, rubbing at his nose disgruntled.
Derek, from his place near the table, has full view of where Lydia throws the tv remote at Isaac’s head, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“Don’t give me a reason to bite your face off.” She says, with a glare.
Boyd, like him, quickly hides a grin from the redhead, turning their heads away so Lydia wouldn’t see their amusement and deem them her next target.
It had only been a short three weeks that Lydia’s world had been unceremoniously rocked with the news of the supernatural, but she had taken the news like a duck to water, even finding her place fairly quickly and where she stood in the Pack. No one’s really told the redhead who ranked higher than her in the Pack, she clearly figuring that all on her own, but it was fascinating to watch the other wolves figure it out too.
Isaac noticeably pouts while now rubbing the spot in his curls where the remote landed.
“We should sign you up for the softball team,” Isaac snarks, “We might actually win a match then.”
Lydia grabs the second remote in warning and Isaac, wisely, slinks out of the room and over into the kitchen, where he should have been, waiting for the homemade biscuits to stop proofing.
Remote still in hand, Lydia’s grin has a satisfied note to it.
“If Stiles can find any more texts, I can translate.” She says, bringing up their previous discussion, looking at Derek in deference.
“I’ll let her know.” Derek agrees, though a frown takes over his features a moment later. “The only texts we know of, are from Gerard’s bestiary and I don’t want Stiles anywhere near the Argents and Allison’s tendency to shoot to kill first, ask questions second.”
He realises his mistake too late when Lydia’s face falls.
“I just meant – ” He goes to say.
Lydia shakes her head at him, though there’s a sad, understanding smile on her face. “I get it. Allison and her family have done things to you, your family and this Pack and I can’t ask you to forgive them as neatly as you can tell me to cut Allison off.”
Everyone had been a little upset that Lydia would split her lunches with them or Allison when the Huntress deemed to turn up in the cafeteria, but a stern look from Stiles had kept all the comments silent. Derek understood, remembering Stiles and Lydia’s conversation about Allison the night she found out about werewolves. He didn’t necessarily agree that Lydia keep Allison in her life, but who was he to warn her away? He couldn’t even heed his own warnings back when he was younger and more stupid, he had no right to ask that of Lydia.
Not knowing what else to say to that, Derek just nods.
“I’ll let her know.” He repeats and leaves it at that.
~
Stiles clambers up the stairs one at a time, careful with her cargo. When she gets to the front door, she tilts her head, assessing the house and making sure its occupants are awake, satisfied when she hears movement somewhere in the kitchen, the sounds of dishes being washed.
She pushes the bell and waits patiently, hearing the tap turn off and hurried footsteps coming to the front door.
When it’s opened, Stiles smiles at Camillia Boyd and shakes the casserole dish she has in her hands in a hello.
“Hi, Mrs Boyd!” She chirps. “Hope you’re well.”
She’s given an indulging smile in return, bemused around the edges, but she doesn’t take offense. Stiles is used to it, she knows she tends to steamroll right over people and their protests to things and is only half certain it’s because of her Alpha tendencies. Her father claims it comes from her mother’s side, but she isn’t so sure. She’s seen the faces of the people when her father is in action, and it shares a similar look to the one Mrs Boyd is wearing right now.
“Hello, Stiles.” Mrs Boyd replies, wiping her hands on the dish towel she has in her grasp. “I’m fine, thank you for asking.”
She hands over the dish. “From my house.” Stiles explains, patting the tin foiled cover lightly. “Beef stew with rice. If you wanna reheat it, just pop it in for twenty minutes on one fifty.”
Mrs Boyd shakes her head. “You know you didn’t have to, Stiles. It’s bad enough my son is over at your house nearly every week eating your food, I don’t know how you can afford the groceries.”
Stiles shrugs but isn’t upset about it. “It’s been no issues and besides with Boyd helping dad with all the roof fixing and stuff, we’ve got the money to spare.”
A look of disappointment flashes over her face and Stiles feels immediately guilty. This was why she didn’t want to expand the Pack, notably with people who weren’t already in the know of the Supernatural world. The constant lying Boyd and Erica had to do with their families hurt her wolves, especially after Gerard abducted them and kept them hostage for three weeks.
Both the Reyes and Boyd family had rightfully lost their minds at the stunt their children had pulled, Mrs Reyes vowing to lock Erica away in her room and throw away the key. Boyd had gotten the same look Stiles was just given and coming from a child being raised by a single parent, that hurt more than anything said parent could have done in regard to doling out punishments.
Her father had stepped in, calming the situation down and offering up a community service gig, that way they were punished but also under the watchful eye of the Sheriff. Boyd “helped” with the home renovations between his job and the rink and Erica got to pester her father at the Station while doing mundane things around the office, while also making sure no sweets or fried foods passed her father’s lips.
“Still, you tell your father that when he wants that money for Vernon, all he has to do is ask.” Mrs Boyd instructs, giving her a stern look.
Stiles smiles and shakes her head, repeating her father’s words back to her. “You keep that money for when Boyd goes to college, he’ll need it then.”
Camila Boyd shakes her head back, smiling herself before moving the casserole dish to one arm and reaching out with the other. Stiles accepts the hug readily, chest aching dully at how similar her hug was to her own mother’s.
“He’s a good man, your father. No matter what Whittemore is spewing nowadays, you just ignore it, you hear me?” Mrs Boyd murmurs into her hair.
Stiles just hugs her tighter in response.
~
“I need to talk to you,” Lydia murmurs, grabbing Stiles in the middle of the school hallway. It’s Tuesday, and Stiles is trying to decide if seeing Harris for her last period is worth the torture.
Confused, and accepting the out Lydia is giving her, she nods her head and follows Lydia to an empty classroom, slips through the door before closing it behind her.
“What’s up, you okay?” She asks from her spot on a random desk, watching Lydia put her bag and books down on Mr. Stephenson’s desk and begin to pace in front of it.
“I’m having dreams. Weird ones.” Lydia begins, looking haunted. Her hands are held out in front of her, like she’s trying to use them in her explanation. Instead, she just stands there frozen, eyes seeing things Stiles can’t. “Ever since I got out of the hospital, it’s been the same dream but with different elements to it. I thought it was just because – because of all the trauma my body went through, but now I think this is related to you.”
Stiles is a little concerned, never seeing the red head this unsure of herself, the day in the cafeteria where she told Jackson they were done, notwithstanding.
“What are they about?” She prompts, trying to grab Lydia’s attention. “The dreams?”
Lydia shakes her head, like she doesn’t believe it herself, but begins to talk.
“I’m walking in the Reserve, and I find this house in a clearing, this huge house and it’s beautiful, there’s lights on and it looks so inviting, and there’s someone calling my name from inside, telling me to come in – so that’s what I do, I go in. When I do, it’s different on the inside. Everything on the inside is burnt, completely scorched to ash. And every time I ask if there’s anyone there, I hear growls that chase me down corridors and through rooms –”
Lydia’s beginning to panic, her pulse beginning to stutter, and so Stiles moves over to her, her hands reaching out to grab hers and stop them from their panicked movements.
“Lyds, Lyds!” Stiles says, giving her a shake. When wild eyes connect with hers, she makes a show of taking a deep breath in, holding it for a few seconds and then exhaling. “It’s just a dream, a very pointed one, from what you’ve learned the past few days, but I wouldn’t be too worried.”
“You’re not listening!” Lydia snaps, yanking her hands out of Stiles’ grasp. “When I’m running from whoever is chasing me, I run into this guy, the same guy every time, and he tries to calm me down by giving me these purple flowers –”
Stiles starts, “Purple flowers?”
“Wolfsbane,” Lydia says, breathing in deeply. “I looked it up.”
Despite Lydia not knowing the actual harm that wolfsbane could do to a werewolf, Stiles knows Lydia knows it’s not a coincidence, that out of all the flowers in the world that could appear in her dream, it was that particular one.
“Who’s the guy?” She asks, now starting to worry too.
“I don’t know, but he’s familiar, his eyes…I’ve seen his eyes before.” Lydia whispers, before she shakes herself and spins round, digging through an art folder. “I drew this, I couldn’t – I couldn’t stop.”
She pulls out a sketch from multiple she’s drawn, of this man with short, styled hair, a straight nose and piercing eyes.
“I wouldn’t be as worried if he was only staying in my dreams…” Lydia mutters, looking down at the sketch in her hands.
Stiles looks up at her in alarm. “What – what do you mean if only?”
Lydia swallows and looks at her. There’s pure, raw terror flashing in her eyes when she holds out her other hand.
“This was left on my pillow when I woke up this morning.”
In her hand, was a perfectly preserved wolfsbane flower.
~
Derek’s hands shake as he picks up one of the sketches Lydia had placed in front of them.
“You drew this? From your memory of your dream?” He asks, staring Lydia down.
She fidgets, looking small between Stiles and Melissa. She nods though.
“I’ve never seen that house before but it’s beautiful. My brain is amazing, but the attention to detail I could come up with is terrifying.”
“You didn’t make this up, Lydia.” He shakes his head, trying to figure it out. “You drew my house. You drew my house, before the fire.”
Stiles looks stunned, same as Melissa and Lydia, the latter shaking her head in denial.
“I’ve never been to your house before the fire, hell even after! How could I know what it looks like?” She asks, gaze staring down at one of her sketches.
As she picks one up to gaze over, Derek sees a portrait of a man underneath it and despite the fact he’s facing Derek upside down, he recognises who Lydia has sketched.
“What, what is it?” Stiles demands, noting his spiked heartrate, and his shaky breathes as he reaches over and grabs it to face him upright.
He’s younger, but he looks so much like his mother, from the straight nose and left dimple in the cheek, the pain Derek feels in his chest ricochets against his ribcage.
“Because he showed you,” Derek sighs, feeling a mix of dread and defeat. He glances up at Stiles, then Lydia. “My uncle Peter showed you.”
~
“I don’t think you understand what’s going on here,” Lydia yells, panicking. “I have a dead guy attached to me who’s showing up in my dreams and giving me wolfsbane flowers, and now you’re telling me it’s Peter Hale?!”
Melissa reaches out to grab Lydia’s shaking hands to stop her from jumping to her feet. “We don’t know what’s going on, but overthinking this, isn’t going to help.”
“I have every right to overthink this, he used me like a chew toy!” Lydia snaps, jumping to her feet anyway. “You have no idea what he did to me, what scars he left!”
Stiles sometimes see the pretty silk dress Lydia had worn to prom in her dreams, how torn and bloody the material had ended up under Peter’s assault. If she hadn’t had smelt blood on the wind, she doesn’t know how long Lydia would have laid there in the Lacross field, bleeding out. She’s still furious that she hadn’t been there to stop Peter from attacking her, furious at Jackson for disappearing from the gymnasium that prompted Lydia to go looking for him, and furious at herself for letting Lydia go in the first place.
“He murdered my sister, he tried to kill Stiles, Scott and me,” Derek replies coolly from the other side of the table, still seated. His hands are clenched, but Stiles can see the minute shakes he’s trying to hide. “He threatened Melissa, he threatened the Sheriff. He even threatened your best friend Allison and your boyfriend Jackson in that movie store.”
That seems to stop Lydia’s panic, her terror.
“You don’t get to monopolise what Peter did to you, though what he did was horrible. Just remember, he left scars on others too.” Derek says, before he gets up and leaves, and then heads upstairs to his own room.
Stiles is silent, heart heavy enough that she wants to run upstairs after him, to soothe the ache she knows is flaring in Derek’s chest. Instead, she looks at Melissa, and the older woman understands immediately, getting to her feet and following silently after Derek.
Keeping an ear on Melissa soothing Derek upstairs, his hitched breathes, she reaches out to pull Lydia back down into her seat.
“I didn’t mean – ” the redhead begins to say.
Stiles shakes her head. “We know,” she murmurs, smiling sadly. “Unfortunately, you, Derek and Mel are right. What he’s done to everyone is horrible, but we do need to figure out how Peter is skulking around and why. Panicking about it, isn’t going to help us.”
Lydia nods, before closing her eyes and taking a deep, slow breathe in. For a few moments, it’s silence around them, save for Melissa’s soft murmurs upstairs and Derek’s shaky replies, an occasional car passing down her street.
“This might be a good thing,” Lydia says, after a while, with a look of dawning realisation.
Stiles looks at her weirdly.
“I can try and find out how and why.” She explains, a steely sheen taking up behind her emerald eyes, her mouth turning into a determined slant. “He’s not going to use me, not this time. Not again. Whatever his plans are, I’m going to find out and tear them to absolute shreds.”
Stiles is only slightly afraid and turned on.
“Okay, I’ll bite.” Stiles says, nodding in agreement. “How are you going to do that?”
~
Mr Reyes was a kind man, with even kinder eyes, same can be said with Mrs Reyes. The moment Stiles had turned up one random Friday, with one lasagna and shepherd’s pie dish, Morena Reyes had yanked her inside a cramped three bedroom house, fussing over her unruly curls and beat up Converse.
It seemed like there were kids in every room, though Stiles knew from Erica she only had four younger siblings, two of them a set of twins that were just as mischievous as Erica. It was why Erica stayed over most nights, wanting a bit of breathing room from sharing a small bedroom with her two younger sisters, happy to curl up between her or Isaac’s ribs, or under Boyd’s arm.
“How’s your father?” Morena asks, running a palm through her curls one more time, before catching one of the many Reyes children tearing through the room, and gently directing them to the backyard. “You’re looking after him?”
“Always, Mrs Reyes, and he’s good. Just busy at the Station, what with everything going on.” Stiles replies, reaching down to pick up some toys left in the hallway and putting them back in what looks like a chest overloaded with other toys.
“And my daughter didn’t help. What we’re gonna do with her, I don’t know.” Julian mutters from the kitchen, after taking the baked macaroni and cheese dish she handed over today. She can hear him unravel the dish and inhale, humming happily to himself as he then began talking about other dishes that could go well with it, to himself.
Stiles winces. She hadn’t meant to bring that up.
“It’s nice of you to volunteer to help tutor her,” Mrs Reyes says, not hearing her husband, though the frown that takes over her delicate features shows she’s thinking the same thing. “I know she’s struggling with catching up on all her schoolwork, now that the new medication Melissa introduced seems to be working.”
The medication Erica was taking was just the average orange gummy for vitamins that got stuck in her teeth, but her parents were still unaware that she’d basically been cured of her epilepsy the moment she’d turned into a werewolf.
“Oh, she’s tutoring me just as much as I’m tutoring her,” Stiles says, smiling sunnily at Morena, trying to help Erica’s standing with her parents. “Besides, it’s nice having her at the Station so she can keep an eye on my dad and his eating habits.”
Mrs Reyes’ face goes soft. “I’m glad she has you and your family. It’s been hard for her.”
Like with Mrs Boyd, Stiles feels guilty. Despite Erica and Boyd assuring her that the life they have now, was better than the one before she sunk her teeth into their hips, it still ricochets in her chest to have her wolves lie to their family.
A text notification goes off on her phone and while smiling apologetically, she grabs it and looks at the screen.
It’s from Erica, and all it says is ‘SOS.’
Dread begins to pool in her stomach. The she-wolf was with her father at the Station today.
‘Protect Dad.’ She texts back, hands shaky.
“You okay, baby?” Mrs Reyes asks, looking at her with a look of concern. “You just went white as a ghost.”
She musters up another smile as she pockets her phone. “Didn’t realise my battery was dying, but I’m okay. Dad forgot some files at home and wanted me to bring them in. I’m sorry I can’t stay longer and chat, but I promise I’ll stay longer next time.”
Stiles only feels mildly bad that she hightails it out of there and to the Jeep.
~
John was having a perfectly normal Saturday. He had woken up a little before seven, had a hot shower, accepted the turkey bacon and egg bagel from Stiles, the coffee mug filled to the brim from Derek, kissed her forehead and ruffled his hair, before he made his way to the cruiser.
He had picked Erica up at seven thirty, let her take a bite of bagel and slurp of his coffee with little to no complaint, the both of them listening to the radio in comfortable silence. He hadn’t really planned on working today, despite there being a few things he had to address as Sheriff of the County but had had the thought, that he could push it to the side for just another day.
John was in the process of having the idea of taking Erica to the hospital to pick up Mel to go have lunch, when the sound of a gun being fired, goes off in the Department.
He’s up out of his seat and out of his office by the time a second round goes off, the lights of the entire office go out, and by that stage, Erica, who had been in the archives’ room in the back of the Department was by his side, a low growl emitting from her chest.
It was a slow day today which meant there was skeletal staff on, Kumar, Pointing and Stewarts were on patrol and probably wouldn’t be back for another hour, Bowland stepping out to head home for lunch, due back any minute and Bethany at the front desk, manning the phones.
“Pretend to be human,” he mutters, his own gun drawn. “And don’t you dare jump in front of me.”
“I have higher orders, sorry, Sheriff.” She grins at him, fangs dropped and eyes golden. She holds up her phone, showing a text thread of an “SOS” message being sent out, a reply of “Protect Dad” sitting underneath. “Nice try, though.”
To prove her point, she snarls out in warning before she’s shoving him to the side, just as a third gunshot goes off. He lands hard on the floor, hard enough to knock the wind out of him and the gun out of his hand, as he watches with blurry vision as Erica takes said shot to the chest.
Scrambling to his own feet, he slides over to her and his dropped gun. He doesn’t reach for it though, instead reaching out for the young she-wolf as she falls, helps her lay on the tiled floor, his hands pressing into the wound in her chest. It’s for two reasons, one to staunch the bleeding, but it’s more importantly to find out if the bullet was laced with wolfsbane, the wound fever hot to the touch, if that were the case. He had found that fact out the night Claudia had died, her body running hotter than a werewolf’s ought to be. As Erica struggles to breathe, he sighs in relief when he realises it’s a regular bullet, one that wouldn’t harm a werewolf, but would definitely kill a human.
“Pretend to be a human that got shot in the chest,” he whispers when he hears quick footsteps from behind him. “Pretend to die.”
Erica goes to protest, but orders be damned, he bares his teeth at her and her body automatically hunches, recognising that a person of high authority, despite them not being his daughter, was pulling rank.
He’s ripped away from her moments later and pulled to his feet, a gun now pointing at his chest, a kid, no older than Stiles, behind it.
John takes a moment to collect himself, to curb the anger that’s flaring in his chest and burning his lungs at seeing Erica’s blood on his hands, on his uniform, making it tacky to his ribs.
“Son, what have you done?” He asks, holding his hands up.
The kid is pale, sweaty and twitchy. His eyes are wild from behind the gun, but there’s a flash of indignation behind them at his question.
“I did what I had to!” He screams, waving the gun in his face. “No one would listen, no one did anything! So, if no one wasn’t going to do anything, I was.”
John’s confused but tries not to show it. “I don’t know why no one listened before, but I’m listening now. Tell me what happened and I’ll help you, I just need you to give me the gun first.”
“I don’t need your or the police’s help. Not anymore. Like I said, I’m dealing with it since no one else wanted to.” The kid smirks, seemingly proud of himself, before the smirk disappears, now replaced with a frantic look of worry. “No, I don’t need your help, but I do need your daughter’s help.”
John’s heart drops into his stomach. “What does my daughter have to do with this?”
“She’s a freak, and only a freak would know what this means,” He answers, before reaching down and lifting up the bottom of his shirt and pulling the material up to reveal his torso. It’s not all smooth skin though, there’s a massive stretch of dark green, almost black scales, that start from his right hip and expands up his ribcage, and from how the kid cups the scaled hard skin for a moment with a grimace, it must be painful.
“My daughter wouldn’t know what that is, son,” John says, trying not to react to the ‘freak’ comment or the fact that the kid was a whole lot more observant than he originally thought. “You need medical attention.”
“Don’t treat me like an idiot!” He snaps, stepping forward. John immediately puts his hands up, placating and taking a step back, a step back to stand in front of Erica’s prone body, just in case. “I know she’s something, I know she knows what’s happening to me, because she’s seen what this turns into!”
“We can talk this through, son.” He says, an inkling beginning to form in the back of his mind. “You really don’t have to do this. No one else needs to get hurt.”
Before anyone can say or do anything else, he sees quick movement from behind the kid on the opposite side of the window he’s standing in front of, sees crimson eyes and then there’s the sounds of glass smashing and the sounds of a body hitting another.
He yelps out in surprise, diving for Erica and covering her body from the spray of glass as he hears Stiles’ furious snarl from somewhere behind him, then an answering hiss in reply.
John looks over his shoulder and sees the Kanima, all dark green, black scales, sharp angular teeth and venom dripping claws, curling at the kid’s feet.
“Hi Stiles.” He’s grinning again, even more madly than before. “I did say you were going to regret this.”