Archive of Our Own

Derek Hale had built Hale Biotechnologies out of grief, stubbornness, and the kind of ambition that people liked to praise only after it made them money. Business magazines called him a visionary, a billionaire CEO, and one of the most powerful innovators in medical technology. His company developed trauma-monitoring implants, surgical robotics, prosthetics with nerve-response feedback, and emergency field-care devices that had already saved thousands of lives.

What the magazines did not know was that Derek had built the company because his family had once burned, because survival had left him with money he did not want, a name he had to rebuild, and Alpha’s instincts sharpened by loss. Hale Biotechnologies was not only a company, but it was protection, legacy, control, and at times, a fortress with glass walls, private elevators, and security systems that could detect a heartbeat through reinforced steel.

Derek was rich, successful, respected, and feared in the way quiet men with too much money often were. He could command a boardroom without raising his voice. He could close a deal with a stare and a few carefully chosen words. He could intimidate investors, calm surgeons, and make competitors regret underestimating him.

Then he went home alone.

That was the part no magazine wanted to print. There was no elegant headline for the fact that Derek Hale, billionaire CEO and, privately, an Alpha werewolf, lived in a house too large for one person and ate dinner at a table meant for twelve. There was no flattering profile angle for the way he sometimes paused in the doorway at night, listening to the silence of his own home, because an Alpha’s body was built to know the sound of the pack nearby.

The silence was worse because of what he was. Humans could call it privacy or independence. Derek felt it as absence. No second heartbeat in the kitchen, no familiar scent tucked into the hallways, no sleepy voice asking him why he was still awake at two in the morning. His wolf had territory, wealth, power, and safety, but it did not have the one thing it wanted most, a mate.

What he wanted, more than the company, the money, the territory, or the perfectly controlled life he had built, was someone to come home to, someone whose presence made the house feel like a home instead of a monument to survival.

Peter Hale knew the shape of Derek's loneliness before Derek ever said it out loud. That was the problem with family and wolves and men who had survived the same fire by different exits. Peter had spent years turning his own grief into sharp edges. Derek had turned his into discipline. The world saw the difference and called Derek healthier, nobler, easier to admire. Peter knew better. Derek had simply learned to bleed in private.

Officially, Peter was Hale Biotechnologies' Chief Security Officer, a title that made investors feel comforted and made government contractors stop asking why Derek's uncle was allowed into every restricted floor without signing in. Unofficially, Peter was the wall between Derek and everyone who had ever wanted a piece of him. He managed executive protection, physical security, cyber threat analysis, travel routes, background investigations, and the quieter supernatural threats that never appeared in quarterly reports. He was the reason Derek's mansion had pressure sensors beneath the gravel drive, reinforced glass in every window, and a panic room on each floor, each hidden behind shelves of medical journals Derek pretended to read when he could not sleep.

Peter believed in exits, redundancies, concealed weapons, encrypted phones, and not trusting anyone who smiled too long. In that, he and Derek were alike. The difference was that Peter had accepted the uglier truth first: safety could become another kind of cage if a person started mistaking isolation for control.

That was why Peter did not laugh when the network called. He requested the contract, read the offer, and spent two nights tearing apart the production company, the parent network, the insurance structure, the mansion lease, the contestants' preliminary profiles, and every public scandal attached to the franchise. He found incompetence, opportunism, several nondisclosure agreements that were too broad to be enforceable, and one assistant producer with three sealed complaints in Los Angeles County. He also found something Derek had not been able to find on his own: a controlled excuse for Derek to meet people who had been vetted before they ever stood close enough to touch him.

So, Peter brought the idea to Derek not because he trusted television, but because he trusted Derek's loneliness to do more damage if no one interrupted it.

When The Bachelor first contacted him, Derek laughed once and told his assistant to decline. When they contacted him again, he ignored the call. When they contacted him a third time, Peter showed up at his office, dropped into the leather chair across from his desk, and looked far too pleased with himself.

Derek did not look up from the contract in front of him. “No.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“You were going to say something irritating.”

Peter Hale crossed one leg over the other and smiled. “I was going to say that you are lonely, emotionally constipated, and terrible at dating like a normal person.”

Derek finally looked up. “I was right. Irritating.”

“You’re thirty-two, rich, gorgeous, and somehow still coming home to an empty house because you think every person who flirts with you is either after your money, your company, your reputation, or access to your security clearance.”

“Most of them are.”

“Some of them are,” Peter corrected. “Not all of them. But you never stay long enough to find out.”

Derek leaned back in his chair, jaw tight. He hated it when Peter said things he could not easily dismiss, especially when he said them with the smug patience of an uncle who had known him before he learned how to weaponize silence.

Peter’s expression softened. “You want a partner, a mate. You want a pack. You want someone who chooses you, not the company or the Hale name. This is ridiculous, but ridiculous does not automatically mean useless.”

“It is reality television,” Derek said flatly.

“It is also a controlled environment with background checks, contracts, and cameras everywhere. Honestly, for someone with your trust issues, it might be the safest dating situation possible.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It was not meant to be comforting. It was meant to be accurate.”

Peter's voice lost its teasing edge. “You think I am doing this because I enjoy watching strangers compete for your attention while America decides whether you smile enough? I am not. I hate this idea. I hate the cameras. I hate the network. I hate that some intern with a headset will try to hand me a latte and call me Pete. But I hate that house of yours more.”

Derek's eyes narrowed. “My house?”

“That mausoleum with imported stone and no fingerprints on the kitchen appliances,” Peter said. “You built yourself a fortress and then forgot people are supposed to live in houses. Every hallway smells like polish, security equipment, and you pretending you are fine.”

Derek looked away first. That, more than anything, told Peter he had hit bone.

Peter leaned forward. “You deserve someone who wants you in the ordinary ways, Derek. Not the CEO. Not the Alpha. Not the survivor people whisper about. You. Someone who complains that you leave wet towels on the floor or that you drink coffee like it is a medical necessity. Someone who makes you explain your bad mood instead of letting you disappear into work for sixteen hours.”

“I do not leave wet towels on the floor.”

“No,” Peter said. “Of course not. That would require you to be careless in a way that proves you live somewhere.”

Derek's mouth tightened. The anger in it was easier for him than the hurt, so Peter let him have it for a moment.

Then Peter said, quieter, “Your mother would have wanted you to find a mate.”

The office went still. Derek's face closed like a door with twenty locks sliding into place. “Do not.”

“I know,” Peter said, and for once, there was no mockery in him. “I know I do not get to use her name whenever I need you to listen. But she would have. Your sisters would have too. They would have wanted more for you than survival with good lighting.”

Derek said nothing for a long time. Outside the glass wall, assistants moved through the executive floor, phones rang, and Hale Biotechnologies continued to function with the perfect precision Derek demanded of everything he could control.

At last, Derek asked, “And if this goes wrong?”

Peter smiled without warmth. “Then I ruin people.”

Derek’s fingers tapped once against his desk. He hated the idea of cameras in his life. He hated the idea of producers turning his loneliness into a season-long narrative arc. Most of all, he hated that a small, wounded part of him wondered what it would be like to have people arrive with the stated intention of knowing him.

Peter watched the exchange with a stillness that looked almost gentle, though no one who knew him would ever be foolish enough to say that aloud. “You do this, you do it on your terms, no one else’s.”

Derek narrowed his eyes. “My terms.”

“You’re bisexual. They want a handsome billionaire bachelor. Fine. They get all of you. An equal number of men and women. No hiding it. No, making it a gimmick. No, treating your sexuality like a twist.”

Derek considered that. “They would turn it into a media circus.”

“They are already a media circus. At least this way, you control the shape of it.”

Derek called the producers back the next morning. He agreed on conditions so strict the network lawyers had to schedule three additional meetings. An equal number of male and female contestants. No exploitative storylines about his sexuality. No forced trauma confessionals. No contestants with extremist affiliations, violent histories, or backgrounds that Derek’s private security team could not verify. No access to his company labs, private residences, or family land without Hale security present.

Peter attended every meeting after that, not as family but as security. He sat beside Derek with a tablet full of annotated contracts and a face that made junior attorneys forget their own names. When the network's lead counsel tried to explain that contestants could not be subjected to “unusual invasive screening,” Peter opened a folder and slid a printed copy of the show's injury liability history across the conference table.

“Your last six seasons included two restraining order disputes, one contestant with an undisclosed violent misdemeanor, a stalker incident at an airport, and a production assistant who sold hotel locations to a fan account,” Peter said pleasantly. “Do you want to discuss unusual risk, or do you want to discuss why my screening protocol is the only reason my nephew is still considering this circus?”

The lawyer stopped smiling. Derek stared straight ahead and pretended he was not enjoying it.

Peter's additions were not theatrical. They were practical, which made them worse. Contestants would surrender their cell phones and undeclared electronics. Bags would be checked by private security before entering any film residence. Food service vendors would be changed to companies already cleared by Hale Biotechnologies. Crew access badges would contain active tracking chips. No prop weapons, no antique silver, no pyrotechnics, no surprise nighttime visits to Derek's room, no unauthorized drone shots, no unannounced “emotional twist” involving family members, and Derek would do absolutely no hidden-camera confessional ambushes in bathrooms, bedrooms, or common areas.

“You realize this is a romance show,” one producer said faintly.

Peter looked at him over the top of his glasses. “Then romanticize his boundaries.”

Derek signed only after Peter finished building a security architecture around the season so dense that the network complained it felt like filming inside a diplomatic summit. Peter took that as a compliment.

Peter added a final private clause that the network never understood. Hale security retained authority to stop filming, remove a contestant, isolate a location, or evacuate Derek without producer approval if a credible threat appeared. The clause was buried under language about executive safety, but Peter wrote it for silver, wolfsbane, hunters, and the old enemies that still crawled out of history whenever a Hale began to look happy.

Derek read it twice. “You think I will need this?”

“I think happiness can blind you,” Peter said. “It makes them want to trust, and it makes everyone around you forget how much protection you still need.”

Derek signed anyway.

There was one more condition, buried deep in the language of personal safety and private screening. Every contestant would undergo an additional background review conducted by Derek’s own people. The producers thought it was billionaire paranoia.

Derek knew better.

The first surprise came during a private production meeting two weeks later, when the executive producer, a sharp-eyed woman named Erica Reyes, waited until the room emptied before closing the door and looking directly at Derek.

“You can drop the heartbeat monitoring language from section twelve,” she said. “It reads like you are checking whether contestants are human.”

Derek went very still.

Erica’s mouth curved. “Relax, Hale. I am not a hunter.”

Derek’s claws pressed briefly beneath his skin. “What are you?”

“A werewolf,” she said, calm as anything. “Born, not bitten. My family runs south of Santa Fe. I left pack politics for television because it is somehow less dramatic.”

Derek stared at her for a long moment, listening. Her heart stayed steady. Her scent was carefully masked under coffee, perfume, and the sterile chill of studio offices, but beneath that, now that he knew how to look, he caught it. Wolf. Controlled, younger than she looked, and watching him with the weary competence of someone who had managed too many disasters.

“You should have told me before I signed,” Derek said.

“Would you have walked?”

“Yes.”

“Exactly.” Erica folded her arms. “Look, I know what you are. I know what this could risk. I also know that the network wants history, the audience wants romance, and you want someone who does not make your wolf feel like it is dying in a marble mansion.”

Derek’s face hardened. “Careful.”

Erica inclined her head, not submission, but not a challenge either. “I will protect the secret. Yours, mine, and every other wolf who has to exist in a world that still tells stories about silver bullets. But I am also here to make a show, and if you agree to continue, you need to understand that the cameras will catch what you forget to hide.”

“I do not forget.”

“Everyone forgets around the right person.”

Derek hated that the sentence followed him back to the hotel. He hated more that Peter agreed with it. When Derek told him Erica Reyes was a wolf, Peter's first reaction was not surprise. It was irritation.

“Of course she is,” Peter said, pacing Derek's suite while two Hale security analysts waited silently near the door. “I knew there was something wrong with her file. Too clean in the wrong places. No one climbs that fast in unscripted television without either blackmail, supernatural stamina, or a willingness to drink network coffee after midnight.”

“She says she will protect the secret.”

“She says a lot of things. Wolves also lie.”

Derek looked up. “So do Hales.”

Peter's mouth went still. It was an old wound between them, older than the company, older than the polished version of their family tragedy Derek gave the press. Peter had lied after the fire because lying had been the only language he still trusted. Derek had forgiven him in pieces, never all at once, and never in a way either of them talked about.

Peter sat down slowly. “Yes,” he said. “We do.”

For a moment, Derek saw the man beneath the armor: older, tired, more frightened than he liked to admit. Peter had survived by becoming useful, dangerous, and impossible to ignore. He was still those things. He was also the only living Hale who knew what Derek's nightmares sounded like when he stopped trying to swallow them.

“I need you to watch her,” Derek said.

Peter nodded. “I was already going to.”

“And Peter?”

His uncle looked at him.

“If this becomes dangerous, I need you to protect the contestants, too. All of them.”

Peter's expression sharpened, as if Derek had asked for something obvious and impossible at the same time. “Your instinct will be to run toward the threat.”

“Yes.”

“Mine will be to remove you from it.”

“I know.”

Peter sighed. “Fine. I will protect the pretty idiots as well as the brooding one.”

“They are not idiots.”

“They signed up to date you on television,” Peter said. “My professional assessment stands.”

Derek should have withdrawn from the show that day. Instead, he stayed, partly because Erica was right and partly because Peter Hale had already threatened to sign him up for three charity galas and a matchmaking dinner with a cardiothoracic surgeon if he backed out.

****

Across the country, Stiles Stilinski stared at the application Lydia Martin had pulled up on his laptop and said, “Absolutely not.”

Lydia sat at his kitchen counter like she was not actively trying to convince him to publicly humiliate himself. “Absolutely yes.”

“No. Hard no. Concrete wall no. Ancient cursed tomb sealed from the inside no.”

“You write supernatural mystery novels for a living and complain constantly that dating apps are a wasteland and full of men holding fish. This is an opportunity.”

“This is public humiliation with formalwear.”

“This is television history.”

“This is me getting eliminated on night one after accidentally insulting a billionaire’s eyebrows.”

Lydia tilted her head. “That was oddly specific.”

“Because I know myself.”

Lydia looked him over with the same ruthless precision she usually reserved for magazine spreads and people wearing counterfeit designer shoes in public. Stiles slouched in the kitchen chair, wearing an oversized red-and-black flannel over a faded Beacon Hills High lacrosse shirt that had survived on pure spite. His dark-rimmed glasses were sliding down his nose because one side had been bent months ago, and he kept forgetting to fix them. His jeans were loose around the legs, worn soft at the knees, and his socks did not match. He looked like a man who belonged in a cluttered office full of folklore books, not in a mansion full of cameras and contestants chosen by the cheekbone committee.

Stiles was husky in the kind of way television rarely allowed men to be without turning them into a joke. He was broad through the shoulders and thick through the waist, soft around the stomach in a way that made him deeply self-conscious whenever he stood next to people who looked sculpted out of protein powder, personal trainers, and inherited confidence. He was not delicate or sharp-edged. He looked warm, comfortable, real, and unfortunately, reality television did not usually reward real unless it could package it as comic relief.

Lydia tilted her head. “You know they are going to cast people who look like luxury watch advertisements.”

Stiles pointed at himself. “Exactly. Look at me. I look like I got lost on the way to an indie bookstore.”

“You look approachable.”

“I look like I own six cardigans and unresolved emotional issues.”

“You do own six cardigans.”

“Seven. One shrank.”

Lydia ignored him with the practiced ease of a woman who had survived years of Stiles Stilinski as a friend. “You are funny, smart, successful, and single. You are also kind, observant, and physically incapable of being intimidated by anyone for longer than twelve seconds.”

“That is because my survival instincts are broken.”

“No,” Lydia said. “It is because you talk too much to stay afraid.”

Stiles sighed and leaned back in his chair. The movement pulled his flannel tight across his stomach, and instinctively, he tugged it loose again before Lydia could say anything. He hated that reflex. He hated that he had learned it so well, the automatic smoothing of fabric, the careful angles in photographs, the jokes made before anyone else could make them first.

Lydia noticed anyway. Her expression softened just slightly. “Stiles.”

“I know,” he muttered.

“You do not have to apologize for taking up space.”

“That is easy for you to say. You look like a Vogue revenge fantasy.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “And you look like someone people trust after five minutes. Do you know how rare that is?”

Stiles snorted. “Trust does not usually win dating competitions.”

“Maybe Derek Hale is tired of people performing perfection around him.”

Stiles laughed weakly. “Or maybe he takes one look at my baggy flannels and decides I’m the emotional support contestant.”

“You are interesting,” Lydia said.

“I am a warning label in ten-year-old flannel.”

“You also need to stop assuming everyone who likes you is making a clerical error.”

Stiles pointed at her. “That is not rude because it is accurate.”

“Then apply.”

“Derek Hale looks like he was carved out of marble by people who understand bone structure better than God. I write books about fictional werewolves and once sprained my wrist opening a jar of pickles. We are not compatible life forms.”

Lydia leaned forward and clicked the application button. “Let him decide that.”

****

Three months later, Stiles stepped out of a black limo in front of a mansion dripping with lights, flowers, champagne, and the faint smell of expensive anxiety. Lydia had forced him into a burgundy suit after a tailoring appointment that involved three arguments, one emergency coffee run, and a sales associate learning that broad shoulders and a soft stomach required actual craftsmanship. The suit fit better than Stiles expected, but he still felt exposed without one of his oversized flannels acting as armor. His dark-rimmed glasses caught the camera lights every time he turned his head, and he kept pushing them up his nose while trying not to trip on the front steps.

The mansion glowed beneath layers of expensive lighting and impossible floral arrangements. Every surface looked polished. Every contestant looked airbrushed into existence. Stiles felt the difference immediately, sharp as a hook beneath his ribs. He was used to being husky, used to being the loud one, the funny one, the guy people underestimated because he dressed like comfort mattered more than presentation. What he was not used to was having that difference recorded by six cameras before he even said hello.

What Stiles did not see was the security corridor behind the fantasy. The mansion had been dressed in roses, candles, and impossible lighting, but behind the hedges, Hale security moved in dark suits with discreet earpieces. Peter stood inside a temporary operations room converted from the mansion's old billiards lounge, watching twenty-eight live camera feeds that had nothing to do with romance. Facial recognition flagged arrivals. Audio filters tracked panic spikes, whispered threats, and the metallic click of anything sharper than a champagne flute. A medic with supernatural clearance waited in the garage. Two wolves from an allied pack patrolled the perimeter pretending to be production drivers.

Peter Hale watched Stiles Stilinski step out of the limo and immediately tilted his head. “Who is that?” he asked.

A security analyst checked the arrival list. “Mieczysław Stilinski. Goes by Stiles. Thirty, author, three New York Times bestselling supernatural mysteries, no criminal record, no weapons license, father is a sheriff in California.”

“Red flags?”

“Still lives with his father.”

Peter watched Stiles look at the mansion, then at the camera crew, then at Derek. The young man's pulse spiked hard enough for the monitoring system to flag him red for anxiety, but not deception. His hands shook, his mouth moved too fast, and his eyes flicked toward every exit before landing on Derek as the rest of the world had blurred.

“Interesting,” Peter murmured.

The analyst glanced at him. “Threat?”

“Unknown.”

On the monitor, Stiles opened his mouth, said something Peter could not hear through the production delay, and then visibly wished for death. Derek's face changed by half an inch. Peter leaned closer to the screen. Derek almost smiled.

The microphones caught the contestants before Stiles reached Derek. One woman near the champagne table looked him up and down with poorly hidden disbelief and whispered, “Seriously? He looks like somebody’s IT guy.” Another contestant laughed quietly and said he looked like the funny best friend in a romantic comedy, not someone Derek Hale would actually choose. A male contestant glanced toward Stiles’s stomach before muttering that there was no way he made it past the first night.

“He does not match Derek at all,” someone else said, soft enough to pretend it was private and loud enough to wound. “Derek Hale dates models. This guy looks like he buys flannel in bulk.”

Stiles heard enough to understand the shape of the room. Years of existing in public while husky had taught him how to recognize the tone, the quick assessment of his body, his clothes, his glasses, his softness, and the immediate decision that he was unserious because he did not look expensive. He pretended not to hear because sometimes pretending was easier than handing strangers proof that they had hit something tender.

Derek heard every word. His wolf reacted instantly, not with confusion but with a low, territorial anger that pressed against his ribs. The comments smelled sour with smugness and insecurity, and Derek had to force himself to keep his claws under his skin. He had spent years mastering control, but control felt thin when Stiles looked up at him, nervous and bright-eyed, trying so hard not to appear intimidated.

“Ah,” Peter said softly. “That kind of threat.”

The cameras did not do him justice. They caught the obvious things: the tailored black tuxedo, the jawline, the dark hair, the devastating eyes, and the broad shoulders that made Stiles briefly forget the concept of language. They did not catch the weight of him. Derek stood too still, like the world moved around him but did not touch him unless he allowed it.

Stiles noticed that immediately because he noticed strange things. He noticed exits, shadows, odd turns of phrase, the difference between a rehearsed smile and a real one. It made him a good mystery novelist and a terrible person to surprise.

Derek’s eyes landed on him.

Stiles opened his mouth. “You have eyebrows,” he said.

Derek stared.

Stiles closed his eyes for one full second and wished for a sinkhole. “That was not the sentence I planned. I had a whole introduction. There was a medical technology joke, very tasteful, no malpractice references,” Stiles took a deep breath, then started again. “Hi.  I am Stiles Stilinski, supernatural mystery novelist, anxious public embarrassment, and your eyebrow commentator for the evening.”

For one horrifying moment, Derek said nothing. Then the corner of his mouth twitched. “Nice to meet you, Stiles,” Derek said. “I will try not to let the eyebrow commentary affect my decision.”

“Great. Very merciful.” Stiles walked into the mansion convinced that he had destroyed his chances before the first commercial break.

The other contestants looked like they had been selected by a cheekbone committee and then polished by a luxury branding team. Braeden was a former U.S. Marshal turned private security consultant, elegant, sharp-eyed, and calm in a way that made Stiles immediately trust her and fear her. Allison Srebro was blond, glamorous, and camera-ready from every angle, with a smile that made Stiles think of knives wrapped in silk. Jackson Whittemore was polished, beautiful, rich, and somehow able to make standing near a fireplace look like a competitive sport. Those three stood out immediately, and Stiles caught his own reflection in a window between them: dark-rimmed glasses, soft stomach beneath an expensive jacket, nervous hands, and the unavoidable truth that he looked like he had wandered in from a different genre of television.

“Competition,” he whispered to himself, then immediately regretted it when a contestant nearby smirked.

Stiles spent the first cocktail party near the snack table, eating tiny crab cakes and trying not to say anything that would become a meme. He failed within forty minutes after explaining to three contestants and one confused camera operator why the mansion’s layout was “romantically lit but tactically indefensible.”

Unfortunately, the snack table did not protect him from people with too much confidence and not enough kindness. Jackson Whittemore appeared beside him while Stiles was reaching for a crab cake, immaculate in a fitted charcoal suit that probably cost more than Stiles’s monthly mortgage payment. His eyes flicked briefly toward Stiles’s plate and then toward the soft curve of his stomach beneath the burgundy jacket.

“Careful,” Jackson said lightly. “Wouldn’t want wardrobe needing emergency alterations halfway through filming.”

The comment landed with surgical precision. Stiles froze for half a second, then forced himself to smile because that was what he always did when people tried to make his body a public conversation.

“Good point,” Stiles said. “Tragic loss for reality television if my emergency backup flannel doesn’t make it on screen.”

Jackson looked faintly surprised that Stiles answered back at all. Another contestant, a woman with perfect hair and an expression of practiced sympathy, stepped closer and lowered her voice as if she was doing him a favor. “Honestly, I do not get why they cast you.”

Stiles blinked. “Historically, that sentence has never led to a positive experience.”

She ignored the warning. “No offense. You are funny and everything, but you do not really match Derek.” She glanced across the room toward Derek’s tailored tuxedo, his stillness, his expensive watch, and the controlled power in every line of his body. Then she looked back at Stiles with his glasses, his nervous hands, his broad frame, and the jacket he kept tugging into place. “He is all that, and you are...”

“A public-school budget?” Stiles supplied.

The woman laughed, relieved he had made the joke for her. That somehow made it worse.

Derek appeared beside them before anyone could continue. The shift in the atmosphere was immediate. Even the human contestants straightened when Derek Hale entered a space, though most of them did not understand why. Derek’s gaze moved from Jackson to the woman, then to Stiles, who was still holding his plate too tightly.

“Am I interrupting?” Derek asked quietly.

“No,” Jackson said smoothly. “We were just getting to know Stiles.”

Derek’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Wolves understood tension differently than humans did. Derek could hear elevated heartbeats, smell embarrassment, anxiety, and cruelty. Stiles smelled hurt beneath his forced humor, and underneath that hurt was humiliation so familiar that Derek wanted to tear something apart.

Instead, he looked directly at Stiles. “Would you walk with me?”

Every head in the room turned. Stiles blinked behind his dark-rimmed glasses. “Like... right now?”

“Yes.”

Jackson’s expression tightened. The woman beside him looked irritated. Stiles set down his plate and followed Derek toward the balcony, trying to look casual and failing because casual had abandoned him somewhere between the crab cakes and the body shaming.

The second the balcony doors closed behind them, the noise of the party dulled. Stiles exhaled shakily and shoved his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunching like he could make himself smaller by habit alone.

“I heard that,” Derek said.

Stiles laughed weakly. “They were not subtle.”

Derek leaned against the railing, eyes dark beneath the moonlight. “They were wrong.”

Stiles looked over, surprised by the certainty in Derek’s voice.

“You do not have to look like everyone else here to belong in this room,” Derek said.

Stiles swallowed hard. “That is easy for you to say. You look like a billionaire magazine cover came to life.”

“And you look like someone I’d like to get to know better.” Derek’s eyes flicked briefly toward Stiles’s glasses, his broad shoulders, and the suit jacket he kept tugging self-consciously into place. “That matters more than you think.”

For a moment, Stiles forgot how to breathe. Inside the mansion, several contestants watched through the glass doors, and one of them muttered that there was no way Derek actually liked him. Derek kept looking at Stiles like he was the only person at the party worth paying attention to.

A little later, after they drifted back toward the balcony doors and Stiles had recovered enough to start talking again, he found himself mid-rant about the decorative suits of armor. Derek glanced toward the nearest display and said, “Those are fake.”

Stiles turned sharply. “I know they are fake. That is the problem. If you are going to commit to ominous mansion décor, commit. Do not give me decorative betrayal.”

Derek looked at him for a moment. “Decorative betrayal?”

“Absolutely. It promises weaponry and delivers fake royalty vibes.”

Derek’s mouth twitched again. “You say everything like you are building a legal case.”

“I am a novelist. All I do is build cases and then ruin fictional people’s lives.”

“Do you always narrate rooms like this?”

“Only when I am nervous.”

Derek tilted his head. “You are nervous?”

Stiles gestured around them. “I am on a dating show surrounded by people who look like they’re in GQ ads, and you are standing there looking like you personally own the moonlight. So yes, Derek, I am a little nervous.”

Derek’s expression shifted so quickly that most people would have missed it. Stiles did not. Surprise, pleasure, and something wary moved across his face, like Derek was not used to being complimented in a way that did not feel polished.

“You think I own the moonlight?” Derek asked.

“Lease it. Billionaire tax purposes.”

Derek laughed. It was quiet and startled, like it had escaped before he could stop it. Stiles stared because the laugh changed his whole face. For a second, Derek Hale did not look untouchable. He looked young, tired, and unexpectedly warm.

Across the room, Allison watched them with a smile that did not reach her eyes.

Peter saw Allison watch them, too. He had disliked her file before she arrived. Allison Srebro came with too many sealed gaps, too many addresses attached to family trusts, and too much charm in her casting interviews. She had told the network she worked as a private security consultant. Peter had checked every listed employer and found technically true answers, but something about her made his wolf unsettled.

Now, on the monitor, her smile sharpened when Derek laughed at Stiles.

Peter tapped the screen once. “Track her movement patterns separately.”

“She has not done anything,” the analyst said.

“That is rarely when dangerous people announce themselves.”

On another screen, Stiles retreated toward the snack table like a man surviving a social apocalypse. Derek's attention followed him for one second too long. Peter sat back, unsettled. He had expected contestants to want Derek's money, his body, his company, or the narrative victory of softening the impossible billionaire. He had not expected a loud, anxious novelist in a burgundy suit to make Derek look like someone had opened a window in a sealed room.

That made Stiles valuable. It also made him vulnerable.

The first rose ceremony came after hours of champagne, whispers, and strategic flirting. Stiles expected to go home. He had already mentally composed three versions of the story for Lydia, one dignified, one bitter, and one involving a dramatic retelling of the crab cakes.

Derek called his name near the middle. “Stiles.”

Stiles walked forward, heart pounding so hard he wondered if the microphones could pick it up. Derek offered him the rose, and when Stiles took it, their fingers brushed. Derek inhaled too sharply, and Stiles felt something flicker beneath the moment, something too quick to name.

“Thank you,” Stiles said quietly.

“Thank you for staying,” Derek replied. Then he took Stiles’s hand and kissed the back of it. Derek did not do that with any of the others he chose.

The internet decided Stiles was funny before it decided anything else, and then the internet did what it always did: it turned a real person into a debate. Clips of him went viral within hours. There was Stiles muttering that a chandelier had murder energy during the cocktail party. There was Stiles staring in horror at a ballroom dancing group date. There was Stiles accidentally calling Derek “Lord Broodington” in a confessional and then pleading with the editors not to use it.

They used it, of course, because reality television had never met a private embarrassment it did not want to turn into a promotional clip.

Some people loved him immediately. They called him chaotic, adorable, unfiltered, and painfully relatable. Other people were cruel in the casual, effortless way strangers became cruel when they could reduce someone to a screenshot. There were entire threads about whether Stiles “fit” Derek Hale, as if romance were a matching set of expensive luggage. Commenters picked apart his glasses, his old flannels, his baggy downtime clothes, and the soft curve of his stomach whenever the cameras caught him sitting instead of standing at the right angle.

Derek Hale could literally date anyone, and he picked the guy dressed like a substitute teacher.

Stiles looks like he buys flannel in bulk.

Why is the funny fat guy still here?

Jackson and Allison look like power couples.

Stiles looks like he got lost on his way to Comic-Con.

Other people defended him viciously, which somehow made Stiles feel both grateful and exposed.

Actually, Stiles is the only contestant Derek looks genuinely relaxed around.

You all are so weird about body types.

Derek smiles more around Stiles than literally anyone else.

Not everyone wants a polished Instagram model.

One clip went viral after a group date where Stiles appeared in an oversized green flannel layered over a thermal shirt during downtime between filming. The comments exploded in two opposite directions: half the internet mocked him for looking like an exhausted grad student, and the other half decided that the flannel probably smelled like coffee and emotional safety. Stiles saw all of it because he had poor impulse control and access to the internet during filming breaks on the phone the network provided each contestant.

****

The second week of filming, Peter arranged what he called an informal risk interview and what Stiles later described to Lydia as “being psychologically frisked by a werewolf murder uncle, except I did not know the werewolf part yet.” The request came through production as a standard safety check. Stiles arrived in a small conference room wearing a loose gray cardigan with ink on one sleeve, an old black t-shirt beneath it, jeans that had given up on looking respectable, and dark-rimmed glasses that made him look more like a sleep-deprived graduate student than a reality television contestant. He carried himself with the wary expression of a man who expected to be eliminated by paperwork.

Peter sat at the table with a folder in front of him. “Mr. Stilinski.”

“Stiles,” he said automatically. “Unless I am in trouble, in which case I would like to speak to my lawyer first.”

Peter did not smile. “Do you often use humor when you are nervous?”

“Only when I am awake.”

“You have written extensively about secret societies, ritual killings, and monsters hidden within human institutions.”

Stiles blinked. “Wow. Most people start with, 'I liked your books.'”

“I read all three of your best-selling novels on the flight from New York.”

Stiles stared at him. “You read three novels on one flight?”

“I am a fast reader.”

“That is either impressive or upsetting.”

Peter opened the folder. “Your research is unusually specific.”

Stiles's humor faltered for the first time. “I use folklore archives, court records, old newspapers, academic sources, and the occasional deeply weird message board run by someone named HawaiianMoon06. I do not break laws, if that is what you are asking.”

“I am asking whether anyone has ever contacted you because of what you write.”

“Fans contact me.”

“Not fans.”

Stiles looked at him more closely. He had clever eyes, Peter noted. Too clever for his own peace. “Once,” Stiles said slowly. “After my second book. Someone sent a letter saying I should stop writing about things I did not understand. No return address. Old-fashioned paper. Smelled like something expensive. Lydia and couldn’t decide what it was.”

Peter kept his expression blank while something cold moved through him. “Do you still have it?”

“My dad kept it because sheriff instincts. Why?”

“Because people can become strange around stories,” Peter said.

Stiles laughed once, uncertain. “You are very comforting. Has anyone told you that?”

“Repeatedly and never sincerely.”

The interview should have ended there. Instead, Stiles shifted in his chair and said, quieter, “Is Derek okay?”

Peter looked up.

“I know that is not my business,” Stiles said quickly. “Or it is, because I am technically here to date him, which is such a weird sentence that I want to leave my body. But he seems... guarded. Not camera guarded. Hurt guarded. Like people keep reaching for the wrong version of him.”

Peter closed the folder with care. “Why does that matter to you?”

Stiles swallowed. “Because I know what it feels like when people decide your role before they know you.”

For the first time, Peter understood why Derek kept looking across rooms for him.

Fans called him chaotic, adorable, unfiltered, and hilarious. Some people loved him. Some people thought he was too much. Everyone agreed on one thing. Stiles was comic relief. And would not make it to the end.

I love Stiles, but Derek is not picking him.

He gives best friend energy.

They cast Stiles for comedy, not romance.

Derek needs someone on his level. Jackson?

Allison is obviously in the final four.

Stiles told himself it did not bother him. That was a lie, but he had told himself worse lies and survived. The strange thing was that Derek did not treat him like a joke. Derek listened when Stiles talked. He remembered that Stiles hated champagne but liked coffee with too much sugar. He noticed when Stiles got overwhelmed by the noise and found excuses to walk him into quieter rooms. He did not laugh at Stiles so much as with him, and even that laugh seemed like something private Derek kept forgetting to hide.

That was how Stiles first noticed the pattern. Derek heard things he should not have heard. At first, Stiles wrote it off. Some people had good hearing. Some people were observant. Derek was a CEO, and CEOs were corporate predators with better suits. But the incidents kept piling up.

During a group date at a charity hospital event, Stiles stood across the room and whispered to Braeden, “If one more donor says innovation ecosystem, I am going to fake my own death in the coat closet.”

Derek, ten feet away and speaking to a surgeon, smiled. Not a polite smile. A real one.

Stiles narrowed his eyes.

Later, during dinner, a server dropped a tray behind a closed door. Derek flinched a fraction of a second before the crash. Stiles noticed because Stiles was already looking at him, which was becoming an increasingly inconvenient habit.

Then there was the silver. At a formal dinner date, the contestants were seated around a long table set with expensive plates, crystal glasses, and antique silverware that the mansion staff had apparently dragged out to impress everyone. Derek sat down, reached for his fork, and went completely still. His face barely changed, but his shoulders locked, and his hand pulled back before his fingers made full contact.

Erica Reyes appeared from nowhere with the expression of a woman preventing a catastrophe. “Production issue,” she said smoothly, clapping her hands once. “We need to reset the table. Props put out the wrong flatware, and it is catching too much reflection on the camera. Everyone take five.”

Stiles watched as the silverware vanished and was replaced with modern stainless steel. Derek did not look at Erica, but his jaw flexed once. Erica looked at him for half a second, then moved on.

Stiles felt the back of his neck prickle.

Peter watched the silverware incident from the operations room and swore so violently that one of the human guards took a step back. “That was not on the prop inventory,” Peter said.

Erica's voice crackled through the secure line in his ear. “I am handling it.”

“You are replacing forks. That is not the same thing as handling it.”

“Lower your volume, Hale.”

“Find out who ordered the antique set.”

“Already doing it.”

Peter turned toward the analyst. “Lock the kitchen corridor cameras for the last four hours. Pull staff access, delivery logs, and any contestant movement within twenty feet of storage.”

The analyst moved fast.

On-screen, Derek's jaw flexed once, barely visible. Stiles noticed. Of course, he noticed. Peter saw the exact moment the novelist's mind grabbed the clue and refused to let it go.

“Damn it,” Peter muttered.

He had spent years keeping the supernatural world out of Derek's public life, and now a man who wrote monster stories for a living was looking at a fork as if it had just confessed motive. Peter should have considered Stiles a liability. Instead, against his better judgment, he felt an unwilling flicker of respect.

Most people looked at Derek and saw money, beauty, silence, or power. Stiles looked at him and saw evidence. He knew silver mythology. Every supernatural mystery writer knew silver mythology. It was basic monster lore, which meant it was useless in real life except that Derek had reacted like touching the fork might hurt.

That night, Stiles lay awake and stared at the ceiling, mentally building a case he wished he could unbuild. Enhanced hearing. Unusual stillness. Strong reaction to silver. Erica is covering for him. Derek’s private security is avoiding certain phrases. The way Derek sometimes smelled the air before someone entered a room.

Stiles whispered into the dark, “Nope. Absolutely not. We are not doing this. We are not deciding the hot billionaire is a werewolf because he has good hearing and cutlery trauma.” But Stiles was a mystery novelist, and mystery novelists did not survive by ignoring clues.

****

The next clue was Allison.

Stiles had disliked Allison from the beginning, which was inconvenient because Allison was very good at making dislike look unreasonable. She was charming on camera and sharper off it. She touched Derek too casually, asked questions that sounded intimate but felt invasive, and watched people in a way that reminded Stiles of the villains in his books who smiled while setting traps.

Then Stiles saw the necklace. It happened in the hall outside the interview room. Allison was leaning toward a mirror, adjusting her lipstick, and her blond hair shifted enough to reveal the pendant tucked beneath her dress. It was small and silver, shaped like a stylized silver arrowhead/fleur-de-lis, a hunter emblem. Stiles would not have noticed it if he had not spent three books researching weapon symbolism and hunter folklore.

Argent. That was the Argent crest. Argent meant silver in French. And in Polish it was Srebro. The word snapped into place so violently that Stiles almost tripped.

Allison Srebro was a false name; it had to be. Stiles retreated to his room, considering that Argent was also the name of a fictional hunter family in one of the oldest folklore collections he had used for his second novel. He had borrowed pieces of the legend, changed names, and turned it into a secret society that hunted monsters across Europe. Real hunters were not real, obviously. Werewolves were not real either.

Except Derek might be.

Allison caught up to him before he reached his room. Her smile sharpened. “Something wrong, Stiles?”

“Nope,” he said too quickly. “Just admiring the murder jewelry.”

Her eyes cooled. “Excuse me?”

“The necklace. Very dramatic. Gives off a strong ‘family curse and a locked weapons cabinet’ energy.”

Allison tucked the pendant away. “You have an active imagination.”

“Pays the bills.”

“I imagine that must be nice,” she said. “Making monsters up for a living.”

Stiles felt the words land with too much precision. He smiled back. “Better than becoming one.”

For a moment, Allison’s pleasant mask slipped. It was barely there, but Stiles saw it. She was angry, and worse, she was suspicious.

After that, Stiles started watching her with the same quiet, obsessive focus he usually reserved for unsolved plot holes, suspicious folklore footnotes, and villains who smiled too easily.

Allison watched Derek like prey and prize at the same time. She asked about his family’s old properties. She asked whether he still spent time near his family home in Saranac Lake. She asked about Hale Biotechnologies’ security systems and whether his company ever worked with genetic anomaly research. She laughed when Derek deflected, but her scent, if Stiles could have smelled it the way Derek could, would have been sharp with frustration.

Erica noticed Stiles noticing. The producer found him two nights later in the library, where he had hidden with a notebook and a plate of cookies stolen from craft services. She closed the door behind her and stood between him and the cameras in the hallway.

“You are either writing your next best seller, plotting a murder, or figuring out something you should not know,” Erica said.

Stiles looked up slowly. “All three are plausible.”

Erica’s expression did not change. “What do you know?”

“That is a very ominous question for a dating show producer.”

“And yet you are not answering.”

Stiles looked at the closed door, then at her. “Why did you change the silverware?”

Erica did not blink.

“See, that is not a normal reaction,” Stiles continued, voice low. “A normal person would say, ‘What silverware?’ or ‘Because of camera glare,’ but you went very still. Derek does that too. It is a whole thing. Extremely suspicious. You all have terrible poker faces.”

Erica moved closer. “Stiles.”

He swallowed. “Is Derek a werewolf? Are you a werewolf?”

The room went silent.

Stiles had expected laughter. Denial. Confusion. Security escorting him out because accusing the bachelor of lycanthropy was bad for ratings.

Erica only closed her eyes for half a second.

“Oh my God,” Stiles whispered. “Oh my God, that was supposed to be impossible.”

Erica opened her eyes. “Lower your voice.”

Stiles clapped both hands over his mouth, then immediately dropped them because silence had never worked for him. “Werewolves are real. Derek is actually a werewolf. You are a werewolf. Is everyone here a werewolf? Is the mansion a werewolf? I need boundaries.”

“You need to breathe.”

On the other side of the library door, Peter listened through a security feed he had absolutely authorized himself to access. The audio was clean enough to catch Stiles's heartbeat doing a frantic little drum solo against his ribs.

Peter should have intervened. That was protocol. A civilian had discovered the existence of werewolves, a producer had confirmed it, and Derek was somewhere across the mansion, unaware that his most unpredictable contestant had just stepped through the door of their world. But Peter did not move. Because Stiles was afraid and still asking the right questions. Because Erica was not lying. Because sometimes secrecy protects the wrong person.

Erica sighed. “Yes. Derek is a werewolf. Yes, I am a werewolf. No, everyone here is not a werewolf, and no, the mansion is not a werewolf. Although at this point, the mansion may have absorbed enough emotional damage to qualify as haunted.”

Stiles stared at her. “Allison is a hunter.” Then Stiles whispered, “I think her real surname is Argent.”

Peter's hand closed around the back of his chair hard enough for the wood to creak. There it was. The word he had been hoping not to hear.

Erica’s face hardened. “What is your evidence?”

Stiles spoke cautiously, “She has an Argent pendant; she asks about Derek’s family like she is planning a crime. Also, she looks at him like she wants to kiss him or kill him. Possibly both, which is upsettingly on brand for this franchise.”

Erica leaned back, eyes sharp. “How do you know the name, Argent?”

“I write supernatural mysteries. I research folklore. I thought it was folklore. Apparently, I have been putting classified supernatural history in airport paperbacks.”

“Not classified,” Erica said. “Buried. Distorted. Turned into legend because humans are very good at explaining away things they do not want to face.”

Stiles rubbed both hands over his face. “Does Derek know about Allison?”

“He knows something is wrong, but Allison’s background check was clean. Too clean. Argent cells are difficult. They hide behind shell identities, old money, and private security contracts.”

“You let her on the show?”

Erica’s jaw tightened. “That was not my call. If I had known, she would never have passed the first screening.”

Stiles looked toward the door, panic pushing at his ribs. “She is here to kill Derek?”

“She may be here for information,” Erica said carefully. “Or access. Or revenge. The Hale name carries…history.”

Stiles thought about Derek, lonely and careful, standing under studio lights because he wanted someone to love him. Then he thought about Allison smiling at him with silver at her throat. His hands curled into fists. “What do we do?” he asked.

Erica studied him for a long moment. “You are handling this better than expected.”

“I am one bad camera angle away from screaming into a decorative pillow, but thank you for noticing.”

“You do nothing alone,” Erica said firmly. “You do not confront Allison. You do not tell other contestants. You do not tell production assistants. You stay close to people when cameras are down, and if Allison approaches you privately, you leave.”

Stiles narrowed his eyes. “That sounds like instructions for a fragile civilian.”

“You are a fragile civilian.”

“I am a successful fragile civilian with three bestselling novels and a deeply underappreciated survival instinct.”

Erica almost smiled. “Then use that survival instinct.”

The door opened before Stiles could answer. Peter Hale stepped inside with the expression of a man who had decided privacy was an overrated human custom.

Stiles jolted. “Oh, good. The intimidating one. I was worried this emotional crisis did not have enough villain energy.”

Peter looked at Erica. “You told him.”

“He asked directly,” Erica said.

“And naturally, you rewarded the civilian for guessing monsters are real.”

Stiles lifted a finger. “In my defense, the clues were loud.”

Peter's attention snapped to him. It felt less like being looked at and more like being assessed for structural weakness. “Do you understand what happens to humans who know too much and then panic in public?”

“They get podcasts?”

“They disappear,” Peter said coldly.

Stiles went pale.

Erica's eyes flashed gold. “Peter.”

“No,” Peter said. “He needs reality, not gentle onboarding. Hunters kill werewolves and witnesses. Wolves kill threats. Humans monetize secrets until someone bleeds money. If you tell the wrong person, write the wrong note, or say the wrong word near the wrong microphone, you will not only endanger Derek. You will endanger yourself, your father, and everyone who ever appears in one of your acknowledgments pages.”

Stiles's mouth opened, then closed. For once, no joke arrived to save him.

Peter hated himself a little for that. Good. It meant he had not finished becoming a monster.

Stiles looked down at his hands. “My dad?”

“Yes.”

The fear in his voice was smaller when he said, “I would never put him in danger on purpose.”

“I know,” Peter said, and that was the first kindness he gave him. “That is why I am telling you how easy it is to do by accident.”

Erica folded her arms. “Peter is right about the danger and terrible at bedside manner.”

“I am excellent at preventing bedsides from becoming deathbeds,” Peter said.

Stiles inhaled slowly. Once. Twice. He looked up again, and the fear was still there, but now there was steel beneath it. “Then teach me what not to do.”

Peter did not answer immediately. That was the moment he began to change his mind about Stiles Stilinski.

****

Stiles did not confront Allison. He did, however, begin investigating her with the kind of focused obsession that had once helped him solve a murder plot hole at four in the morning using only coffee, spite, and a map of London sewer tunnels.

He watched her hands. He watched what she touched. He watched where she went when the cameras were not rolling. He noticed the small leather case she kept in her luggage, the way she avoided Erica, and the way she became irritated whenever Derek chose to spend time with Stiles instead of her.

What Stiles did not expect was that Derek would notice him investigating. It happened after a group date in the woods, because apparently the show’s idea of romance was to put people who were more comfortable in formal wear in places with ticks. The date involved staged survival challenges, dramatic campfire lighting, and far too many opportunities for Allison to make pointed comments about instincts and hide her tracks in the woods.

Stiles fell behind on the walk back, partly because the terrain was uneven and partly because he had seen Allison tuck something beneath a loose rock near the campsite. When the others moved ahead, Stiles crouched and lifted the rock carefully. A small packet sat underneath it. He opened it with a stick because he was curious, not suicidal. Inside was a dark powder mixed with something metallic and sharp-smelling. He did not know what it was, but every instinct in his body said poison.

A hand closed around his wrist. Stiles nearly jumped out of his skin. Derek crouched beside him, eyes not human in the shadows. They glowed faintly, red and furious, and Stiles should have been terrified. Instead, some ridiculous part of him thought, “Well, at least I got the gorgeous eyes part right in my books.”

“What are you doing?” Derek asked, voice low.

“Investigating,” Stiles whispered. “Poorly, according to Erica.”

Derek’s eyes snapped to his. “Erica told you?”

“I figured it out, then she confirmed because I asked directly, and apparently my life is now a supernatural crime procedural.”

Derek’s face went blank in a way that hurt more than anger. “You know, about Allison,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You should have told me.”

“I was going to, but there were cameras and Allison and your whole emotionally guarded wolf billionaire situation, so the timing was difficult.”

Derek looked down at the packet. His nostrils flared. His expression sharpened into something Stiles had not seen before: pure predator. “Mountain ash and wolfsbane,” Derek said. “You burn it, and it creates a death trap that wolves can’t escape.”

Stiles went cold. “That is real, too?”

“Yes.”

“Of course it is. Why would my week become less insane now?”

Derek took the packet with the corner of the stick, avoiding direct contact. “This could have killed me if someone burned it.”

Stiles’s stomach dropped. “Allison, She has an Argent necklace, she keeps asking about your family, and she is too comfortable in the woods for someone wearing boots that expensive.”

Derek’s jaw tightened. Derek stared at him. He said, “You should not be involved in this.”

Stiles laughed once, sharp and disbelieving. “Too late.”

“Stiles.”

“No. Do not use the serious voice on me. I am already in this because I am here. After all, Allison knows I noticed her, and because you are apparently a werewolf on a dating show, is being hunted by a woman with murder jewelry. Also, minor detail, I like you, so I am not going to stand around pretending this is normal.”

Derek went still.

Stiles realized what he had said a second too late.

The forest seemed to be quiet around them. “You like me?” Derek asked.

Stiles looked away. “Obviously. But not the main point.”

“It is a point.”

“It is a point to discuss later.”

Derek’s expression softened, but the danger did not leave him. If anything, it deepened into something more protective.

“I am going to get you out of here,” Derek said.

“No.”

Derek blinked. “No?”

“No, because if I suddenly leave, Allison knows something is wrong. If you send her home without proof, she disappears, and maybe she comes back later when there are no cameras, no Erica, and no me being accidentally useful.”

“You are not bait.”

“I did not say bait. I was thinking more like chaotic surveillance.”

“That is worse.”

“That is branding.”

Derek dragged Stiles back toward the secure service path where Peter waited with two guards, a medical kit, and the precise expression of an uncle who had predicted disaster and was furious to be correct.

“Why do you have a wolfsbane and mountain ash mix?” Peter asked.

“I found it,” Stiles replied.

Peter looked at Derek. “Where did you find wolfsbane?”

“Allison planted it,” Stiles answered. “And I saw her do it.”

“Clearly. We will believe the human witness.”

Derek's eyes flashed. “Peter.”

“No, by all means, continue turning a dating show into a hostage negotiation with roses. It is doing wonders for my blood pressure.”

Stiles lifted his hand halfway. “Can we table the family dysfunction until after someone explains how deadly the evil plant powder is?”

Peter's gaze cut to him. “Very deadly. Depending on strain, concentration, and method of exposure, it can weaken, paralyze, poison, or kill a wolf. It can also make humans violently ill if mishandled.”

Stiles looked at the packet Derek carried. “So, when I opened it with a stick, that was...?”

“Smarter than touching it. Stupider than leaving it alone.”

“That feels fair.”

Peter moved in front of him then, close enough that Stiles had to look up. “Listen carefully. Curiosity is not courage. Investigation is not immunity. You get one body, and it is inconveniently fragile.”

Stiles's jaw tightened. “I know what fragile means.”

Something in the answer made Peter pause.

Stiles swallowed hard. “People keep saying that like I don’t already know. Like, I haven’t spent half my life learning exactly how fragile I am. Panic attacks. Hospital waiting rooms. My dad’s face after my mom died. Doctors using careful voices because something was growing inside my skull when I was still supposed to be worrying about homework and lacrosse practice.” His voice shook, but he did not look away. “I know I’m human. I know I can break. I’ve known that longer than most people think. But that doesn’t mean I’m useless, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean I’m going to stand aside while someone tries to kill Derek.”

Derek went silent.

Peter's expression shifted, just a fraction. “Fine,” Peter said at last. “If you insist on being useful, you will be useful under supervision. My supervision.”

Stiles blinked. “Is this werewolf witness protection, or am I being drafted?”

“Yes.”

“That was not a yes-or-no question.”

“It was for me.” Derek looked like he wanted to shake him or kiss him, and Stiles was not emotionally prepared for either option in a forest with wolfsbane nearby.

Erica took the packet and handled the next part with terrifying efficiency. She shut down filming for the evening under the excuse of weather conditions, moved security teams without alarming the human crew, and had the trail swept before midnight. The camping trip, complete with s'mores, that Stiles was looking forward to, was cancelled.

Allison remained on the show, not because Derek wanted her there but because Erica believed they needed to know what she was planning.

For the next week, the romance and the danger folded together so tightly that Stiles could not separate them. On camera, the show continued. Derek went on dates. Contestants gave interviews. Producers asked leading questions about jealousy, vulnerability, and whether people were “ready for forever.”

Off camera, Erica watched Allison like a hawk. Derek’s security team quietly replaced food, checked rooms, and removed every piece of antique silver from the mansion. Stiles carried a notebook that looked like he was writing notes for his next novel, but was actually a suspect board in shorthand.

Peter turned Stiles's accidental involvement into a protocol because Peter Hale processed emotional disasters by giving them forms. Stiles received a secure phone with only four contacts: Derek, Peter, Erica, and an emergency line answered by someone named Boyd who sounded like he could deadlift a sedan. He received a list of phrases never to say near cameras, including werewolf, hunter, Argent, wolfsbane, full moon, bite, pack, claws, silver, Hale fire, and the phrase “murder jewelry,” which Peter underlined twice.

“That seems personally targeted,” Stiles said.

“It is.”

Peter taught him how to identify cameras that were actually recording and cameras that were only props for blocking. He taught him where security blind spots were and then told him never to use them unless fleeing for his life. He taught him the difference between theatrical danger and real danger, which Stiles summarized as, “If the producers are excited, it is probably fake; if Peter looks bored, I should run.”

“Close enough,” Peter said.

One night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Stiles found Peter alone in the operations room watching old footage of Derek standing by himself on a balcony. “He looks lonely even when the cameras are off,” Stiles said softly.

Peter did not startle. “He has had practice.”

“Do you think this is a mistake?”

“I think every decision Derek makes near his heart becomes a security problem.”

“That was almost an answer.”

Peter paused the video. “I think he has been alone so long he no longer recognizes loneliness as pain. You make him recognize it. That is dangerous.”

“For him?”

“For both of you.”

Stiles looked down. “I am not trying to hurt him.”

“No one ever is at first.”

The bitterness in Peter's voice made Stiles look back up. Peter did not explain. He did not tell Stiles about the choices he had made after the fire or the years when Derek could barely stand to look at him. But he said something that felt like a confession anyway.

“I failed him once,” Peter said. “Not in a way the courts would understand. In a family way. A wolf way. I survived, and then I made survival ugly for everyone around me. Derek paid for some of that.”

Stiles stepped inside. “Does he know you think that?”

Peter smiled without humor. “Derek knows everything except what people are willing to say directly.”

“Then say it.”

Peter turned. “You have known us for five weeks, and you are giving me family therapy?”

“I am a novelist. I cause emotional damage professionally.”

For the first time, Peter laughed. It was quiet, sharp, and unwilling.

Derek kept trying to keep Stiles away from danger.

Stiles kept refusing.

****

Their first real argument happened in the library, two nights before the final four rose ceremony. Derek found Stiles cross-referencing Allison’s fake employment history with old Argent shell companies on a production laptop Erica had definitely not officially given him.

“You need to stop,” Derek said.

Stiles did not look up. “That is a terrible opening argument.”

“This is not an argument.”

“Everything is an argument if you are stubborn enough.”

Derek shut the laptop.

Stiles looked up slowly. “Rude.”

“You are human.”

“Wow. Nothing gets past you.”

“You can be hurt.”

“So can you.”

Derek’s eyes flashed. “Not like you.”

Stiles stood, anger rising fast because fear had been sitting in his chest for days with nowhere to go. “You do not get to decide that my life matters more because I am easier to break.”

“That is not what I said.”

“That is exactly what you meant. You think that because you are stronger, you have to stand between everyone else and the damage. Very noble. Very tragic. Extremely on brand. But I am not asking you to let me fight Allison with a decorative cheese knife. I am asking you to let me help with the thing I am actually good at.”

Derek’s breathing changed. “And what is that?”

“Seeing patterns,” Stiles said. “Seeing what people miss because they are too busy assuming the loud guy is just there to be funny.”

Derek looked at him then, really looked, and some of the anger drained from his face.

Stiles swallowed. “Everyone thinks I am comic relief. The fans, half the contestants, and probably some of the crew. Allison thinks it too, and that is why she keeps slipping. She does not think I am a threat because she does not think I am serious.”

He looked down at himself with a bitter little smile, taking in the rumpled shirt, the cardigan Peter had once called a security blanket with sleeves, and the body everyone seemed to think made him less believable as Derek’s choice. “They see the flannel, the glasses, the fact that I do not look like Jackson, and they decide they already know the story. They decide I am here to make jokes until the real romantic leads take over.”

“I know you are serious,” Derek said quietly.

Stiles’s voice softened despite himself. “Then act like it.”

Derek was silent for a long moment. Then he opened the laptop and turned it back toward Stiles. “What did you find?”

Stiles pulled up an Argent family picture. In the center were two women: one with long dark hair and one blond woman who looked exactly like Allison Srebro. “The two women in the middle,” Stiles said. “The younger one is Allison Argent, who died six months ago. The other is Kate Argent.”

“When was this taken?”

“Two years ago.”

“Are you saying Allison is actually Kate?”

“Yep, add identity theft to her list of crimes.”

Peter arrived ten minutes later with Erica and a folder thick enough to qualify as a weapon. He did not scold Stiles for being on the production laptop. He only placed the folder beside him and said, “Everything I could find about Argent Arms on such short notice.”

Erica opened the folder to a list of shell companies, property transfers, legal aliases, and a photograph of the real Allison's father standing beside a man Peter identified only as Gerard. The room darkened around that name. Derek's breathing changed. Stiles noticed Peter move half a step closer to him, not to restrain him but to anchor him before the old grief could pull him under.

“This is bigger than Kate wanting access,” Peter said. “Argent-linked entities have been circling Hale assets for years. Most attempts looked like nuisance litigation or corporate espionage. This is the first time one of them has put a person inside Derek's private life.”

“Because the show gave them a door,” Derek said.

“Because we opened one,” Peter corrected, and for once, he did not protect himself with sarcasm. “I missed her.”

Derek looked at him.

Peter held his gaze. “I missed her, and I am sorry.”

The apology sat in the room like a lit match. Stiles saw Derek's fingers curl against the table. He saw the instinct to dismiss it, to move past pain because pain made him vulnerable.

Then Derek exhaled. “You did not put the blade in her hand,” Derek said.

“No,” Peter replied. “But I am responsible for the doors.”

“Then help me close this one.”

Peter nodded once. It was not forgiveness, not exactly. It was work. It was trust offered in the only shape Derek could manage that night.

Stiles exhaled. “Kate’s private security work traces back through three companies. One of them has ties to an old consulting firm that bought land near Saranac Lake after the Hale fire. I think she came here for access to you, for either your family land or your company’s genetic research.”

Derek’s face went cold. “That research is to find a way to utilize our healing abilities to help humans recover from illness and injury faster.”

Stiles hated that expression. It looked too much like a door closing. “Derek,” he said carefully.

“My family did not die in an accident,” Derek said.

Stiles’s heart twisted. “I know,” Stiles replied.

Derek looked at him sharply.

Stiles shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “Only the details I could find on your Wikipedia page. Also, I just know how grief sounds when people talk around it.”

For a second, Derek looked younger. Less like a CEO, less like an Alpha, and more like someone who had been carrying the same wound for too long.

Stiles reached across the table and covered Derek’s hand with his.

Derek stared at their hands.

“I am sorry,” Stiles said.

Derek’s fingers turned under his and held on.

That was the moment something between them changed. It had been an attraction before. Curiosity, chemistry, warmth, and the strange comfort of being seen. After that night, it became trust.

****

The hometown dates came with the final four: Braeden, Allison, Jackson, and Stiles.

Braeden’s family was direct, honest, and full of people who asked Derek difficult questions because they loved her. Derek respected her deeply, and when she pulled him aside after dinner, she looked at him with the steady gaze that had made her one of the only contestants he never underestimated.

“You care about me,” Braeden said.

“I do.”

“But you are in love with someone else.”

Derek went very still.

Braeden smiled sadly. “You do not have to say it. You look for him every time he leaves the room.”

Derek did not deny it.

Braeden touched his arm once. “Then I won’t stand it your way, but I’d like to be your friend.”

***

Kate’s hometown, where they still filmed under Allison Srebro’s name, was polished, wealthy, and wrong. Everything about it was too controlled. Her “family” consisted only of Gerard Argent, who smiled like a man already planning the next move. He shook Derek’s hand as if strength could be proven by crushing bone.

At dinner, the conversation stayed pleasant on the surface and guarded beneath it. Gerard kept several pills beside his water glass, and Derek used the opening to ask what they were for.

“I was diagnosed with lung cancer last year. They gave me six months. I’m still here. Still fighting.”

“I hear your company is making advancements in cancer research.” Allison (Kate) said, “Can any of that research help my father?”

Derek took a drink of his water, “No. We are not ready for human testing yet.”

“What about off the books?” Gerard asked

“Hale Biotech does not do illegal human testing and never will.”

“Pity,” Gerard said. “I suppose we will have to find another way.” He said that with a wink to his daughter.

Allison returned to the mansion, furious that Derek had not stayed the night.

**

Jackson’s family home was all marble floors, sharp suits, and parents who discussed Derek’s company valuation like marriage was a merger. Jackson wanted Derek in a way that was real enough but tangled up in ambition, image, and victory. Derek understood him better than he wanted to, because there had been a time when Derek also believed success could patch the holes grief left behind.

After dinner, Jackson cornered Derek. “Look, I know I’m not what you are looking for, but I am what makes sense. I’m a Harvard-educated lawyer, and I will not upstage you. Your other options are a writer, an ex-marshal, and the heir to an arms company. Do you really want them pulling you down?”

“Braeden already placed herself in the friend zone, and Allison is complicated. Stiles… Stiles is…”

Jackson sighed, “I had to try. Be good to him.” Jackson patted Derek on the chest and walked out of the house.

*

Then Derek went to Beacon Hills.

Peter went too. Officially, he remained with the security advance team, arriving six hours before Derek to sweep the Stilinski house, check sight lines, walk the street twice, and quietly terrify one neighbor who had only come outside to water begonias. Unofficially, he wanted to see the place that had produced Stiles Stilinski.

The house surprised him. Peter had expected clutter and human sentiment, and he found both, but he also found a kind of stubborn warmth that made his wolf go still. Family photographs. Scratched floors. A porch light that looked like it had been replaced by someone who cursed at hardware. Books stacked under windows. The ghost of grief in the walls, not hidden, not polished, just lived beside.

Sheriff Stilinski met him in the driveway with one hand near his belt and the other leaning on a cane. He had a stare that Peter respected immediately.

“You Hale security?” the Sheriff asked.

“Peter Hale. Derek's uncle and Chief Security Officer.”

The sheriff's eyes sharpened at the name. “Uncle first or security first?”

“That depends on the threat.”

“Hm.” The sheriff looked him over. “You always sweep houses before dates?”

“Only when my nephew is a billionaire public figure with a complicated threat profile.”

“Complicated how?”

Peter smiled. “The nondisclosure agreement version or the version that lets you sleep?”

The sheriff did not smile back. “I have a son who writes about monsters, anxiety, and people hiding knives behind good manners. I stopped sleeping normally years ago.”

Peter liked him despite himself.

The Sheriff stepped closer. “If Derek hurts my kid, I do not care how much money he has or how many security people you hide in vans.”

“I would expect nothing less,” Peter answered with an impressed smile.

“And if someone else hurts my kid because of Derek?”

Peter's answer came without humor. “Then they answer to both of us.”

The sheriff held his gaze for a long second, then nodded. That was not trust. Not yet. But it was the beginning of a working alliance, and Peter had built empires of survival on less.

Stiles met him at the airport wearing loose jeans, battered sneakers, dark-rimmed glasses, and a blue flannel so oversized that the sleeves nearly swallowed his hands. He looked more relaxed than he had in the mansion, but his panic was still so visible Derek could practically taste it. This was Stiles in his own clothes, soft and broad and real, and Derek felt the familiar pull in his chest when he realized he preferred this version to every polished suit that production had forced him into.

“My dad is normal,” Stiles said immediately. “Normal adjacent. Sheriff normal, which means he may look at you like he is deciding where to hide your body, but that is just parenting.”

Derek’s mouth twitched. “Should I be worried?”

“Only if you hurt me.”

“I will not.”

Stiles blinked, clearly not prepared for the simple seriousness of the answer. “Okay. Wow. Great. Starting strong.”

The Stilinski house was small, warm, and alive in a way Derek’s mansion had never been. There were books on tables, old photos on the walls, coffee mugs that did not match, and a dent in the kitchen table from what Stiles described as “a lasagna incident best left unexamined.” The Sheriff shook Derek’s hand firmly and insisted that he call him Noah. Then he looked at him with the tired, assessing eyes of a man who had spent decades reading danger in human faces.

“So,” Sheriff Stilinski said, “you are the billionaire dating my son on national television.”

Stiles made a strangled noise. “Dad.”

“Yes, sir,” Derek said.

“You hurt him, your lawyers will not save you.”

“Dad.”

Derek held the Sheriff’s gaze. “I understand.”

The Sheriff studied him for another second, then nodded. “Good. Dinner is ready.”

Dinner should have been awkward, but it was not. Stiles and his father bickered over seasoning. Lydia arrived with wine and immediately began interrogating Derek about his intentions, emotional availability, and whether Hale Biotechnologies’ philanthropy arm was genuinely useful or just reputation laundering. Derek answered every question, and Lydia looked increasingly annoyed that he was doing well.

After dinner, Stiles showed Derek his office. The room was cluttered in a way that made Derek’s wolf settle instead of recoil. There were corkboards covered in plot threads, folklore books stacked on every surface, sticky notes in five colors, and a whiteboard with the words MOTIVE? TEETH? CURSE?? written in red marker.

Derek picked up one of Stiles’s novels and read the dedication.

For my dad, who taught me monsters are not always scary.

For my mom, who taught me the power of stories.

He closed the book carefully.

Stiles watched him with nervous eyes. “That one is personal.”

“It is beautiful,” Derek said, looking directly at Stiles.

Stiles’s mouth parted, and the scent of his surprise filled the room. Derek stepped closer before he could talk himself out of it. He lifted his hand slowly, giving Stiles every chance to pull away, and touched his cheek.

Stiles did not pull away.

The kiss was careful at first, because Derek had spent years being careful with everything he wanted. Then Stiles made a small sound and pressed closer, and Derek’s control slipped just enough for his wolf to go quiet with recognition.

“Mine,” it whispered, not as ownership, but as wonder. Derek pulled back before his eyes could flash.

Stiles looked dazed. “That is going to be deeply inconvenient for my emotional stability.”

Derek smiled. “Only yours?”

Stiles stared at him, then laughed softly. “Oh, that was smooth.”

The hometown episode changed everything. The audience saw Derek relax in Stiles’s house. They saw him laugh at the dinner table. They saw him look at Stiles in the office like the rest of the world had gone quiet.

The internet erupted.

Did you SEE Derek at Stiles’s house? That man breathed for the first time all season.

Stiles is not comic relief. Stiles is the emotional core.

Everyone else wants CEO Derek. Stiles wants lonely Derek.

I thought he was just funny, and now I am crying.

****

Allison saw the shift, too. Two nights later, she cornered Stiles near the pool when the cameras were down, and the mansion had gone soft and blue beneath evening lights. Stiles was wearing one of his baggy flannels over a faded t-shirt, his glasses pushed up into his hair while he scribbled in the notebook Peter had already threatened to confiscate twice. The outfit made him feel almost like himself again, which was probably why Allison chose that moment to strike.

“You know he is not picking you,” she said.

Stiles looked up from his notebook. “No warm-up? Just straight to emotional assassination?”

“I am being kind.”

“Historically, people who say that are not.”

Allison smiled. “You are fun. That is why people like you. You make good television. You make him laugh. But men like Derek do not choose people like you in the end.”

Stiles’s throat tightened despite himself. “And what kind of people are people like me?”

Allison looked him over, not cruelly exactly, but dismissively, which was worse. Her gaze touched the flannel, the glasses, the softness of his stomach beneath the shirt, and the notebook clutched in his hand. “Comfortable people. Funny people. People viewers root for because they know you are not actually the competition. You are sweet, Stiles, but you and Derek Hale do not match.”

Stiles closed his notebook slowly. “Wow. You practiced that in a mirror, didn’t you?”

“Look at him,” Allison said, voice still gentle enough to bruise. “Then look at yourself. Derek belongs beside someone who understands power, elegance, and legacy. Not someone who dresses like a college dropout hiding from laundry day.”

Stiles felt the words land in all the places he hated admitting were vulnerable. He could handle being underestimated. He had built a career on being underestimated. But there was something different about someone saying out loud the fear he had been carrying since the first night, the fear that everyone else saw what he saw in the mirror on bad days: too soft, too loud, too ordinary, too mismatched for a man like Derek Hale.

Allison leaned closer. “You are expendable.”

Stiles closed his notebook slowly.

Allison leaned closer then, her voice dropping so low only Stiles and maybe Derek, if he was nearby, could have heard. “You should go home before you find out what kind of world he really belongs to.”

There it was.

Confirmation.

Stiles smiled even though his hands were cold. “Funny. I was about to say the same thing to you.”

Allison’s eyes sharpened.

Stiles stood and stepped around her. He did not run, because running would look like fear, and Stiles had learned from writing monsters that sometimes the worst thing you could do was let them know they had scared you.

Derek found him on the balcony ten minutes later. “What happened?” Derek asked.

“Allison threatened me in a very elegant, emotionally damaging way.”

Derek’s entire body went still.

“I am fine,” Stiles said quickly. “Annoyed, but fine. She called me expendable, which was rude and also thematically lazy.”

“You are not expendable.”

Stiles looked at him.

Derek stepped closer. “Not to me.”

Stiles tried to make a joke. He really did. But Derek was looking at him like the words mattered, like Stiles mattered, and humor tangled somewhere behind his ribs. “I do not fit your world,” Stiles said quietly.

Derek’s expression softened. “Maybe I do not want someone who fits the world I built when I thought I had to be alone.” His phone rang before Stiles could answer. Derek glanced at the screen, tension returning to his face, and stepped away to take the call.

Stiles’s breath caught.

Before he could call Derek back, Erica appeared at the balcony doors with a face like thunder. “We have a problem,” she said.

Allison had gone through Derek’s private luggage. Peter found the disturbance before Derek did. He knew the exact angle of every zipper, the weight of every garment bag, and the position of the false bottom in Derek's case, because paranoia was simply memory applied professionally. The luggage looked untouched to anyone else. To Peter, it screamed.

He did not call Derek first. He called Erica, locked the floor, and stationed two guards at every staircase before walking into Derek's room with gloves on and fury arranged into perfect calm. Stiles arrived thirty seconds later because he had apparently developed a supernatural talent for appearing wherever he had been told not to be.

“No,” Peter said immediately.

Stiles stopped in the doorway. “You do not even know what I was going to say.”

“You were going to ask what happened, then ignore the answer when I told you to leave.”

“That is hurtfully accurate.”

Peter opened the suitcase and pointed. “Someone searched this. Carefully. They knew enough not to be obvious but not enough to know I photograph Derek's travel kit before every move.”

Stiles stared. “Do you photograph his socks, too?”

“I photograph potential evidence.”

“Those can be the same thing?”

Peter gave him a look.

The humor drained out of Stiles as he understood. “Allison.”

“Almost certainly.”

Stiles stepped closer. “What was she looking for?”

Peter's mouth tightened. “Access codes, family records, company credentials, medical data, anything that could open a locked door elsewhere.”

“Did she get anything?”

“Derek usually keeps his master access card with him at all times, but for the flight back, he had to store it in his bag. I know Derek just dropped the bag and went to find you. The card’s missing.” Peter paused, “That card can get into any of the Hale Biotech facilities, including the one with the advanced medical research.”

Stiles nodded once, as if accepting a responsibility no one had formally given him. “Then I will go with you when you tell him. He does not need Alli…Kate’s blood on his hands.”

Peter almost said that it was not Stiles's place. Then he remembered Derek on the balcony, Derek at the Stilinski table, Derek laughing with fries in a hallway because Stiles had permitted him to be ordinary.

“You being there will help,” Peter said.

Stiles stared at him for half a second, clearly waiting for the insult, the warning, or the carefully phrased reminder that he was human and inconveniently breakable. When it did not come, his face shifted into something smaller and more serious.

“Okay,” Stiles said. “Then I’ll help.”

Peter looked toward the hall. “Do not make me regret that sentence.”

“I make no promises.”

Peter almost smiled. Almost.

They found Derek in the private sitting room off the east wing, standing too still beside the dark window with his phone clenched in one hand. The room smelled like rain, polished wood, and Derek’s anger held so tightly it had nowhere to go. His eyes lifted when Peter and Stiles entered. They were human, but barely.

“What happened?” Derek asked.

Peter closed the door behind them. “Allison searched your luggage.”

Derek’s face went empty in a way Stiles had come to hate. “What did she take?”

Peter did not soften it. “Your master access card.”

For a moment, Derek did not move. Then the glass in his hand cracked.

Stiles flinched, not away from Derek, but toward him. Derek noticed. Of course, he noticed. His expression twisted with guilt before the anger could hide it.

“I left it in the bag,” Derek said quietly. “For the flight. I was going to secure it after…”

“After you came looking for me,” Stiles finished.

Derek looked away.

Peter stepped forward before Derek could fold the blame into himself and lock it behind his ribs. “This is not useful. Kate got past us because she is trained, because the Argents have spent generations making themselves invisible, and because the network handed her a legitimate door into your life. She used all of that. She will not win because you wanted one quiet moment with someone you care about.”

Derek’s jaw flexed. “You missed her, too.”

“Yes,” Peter said.

The answer landed hard because there was no sarcasm in it, no polished cruelty, no performance. Just the truth. Peter held Derek’s gaze. “I missed her. I missed the false identity. I missed the family ties because I was looking for obvious hunter markers, and she knew it. That is on me.”

Derek’s anger faltered.

Stiles stood between them, looking from one Hale to the other like he could see the entire shape of the wound beneath the argument.

“Okay,” Stiles said carefully. “Personal confession hour is important, and I support emotional honesty in emotionally constipated wolf families, but Kate has Derek’s access card. She went through his things. She knows we’re onto her. So, either she’s already running, or she’s moving to the next part of the plan.”

Peter’s eyes sharpened. “Exactly.”

Derek looked at him. “Her room.”

Peter nodded once. “We search it now.”

Derek was already moving toward the door when Stiles caught his sleeve. “Derek.”

Derek stopped.

Stiles’s hand stayed curled in the fabric of his jacket. “Do not go in there ready to kill her.”

Derek’s eyes flashed red.

Stiles swallowed, but he did not let go. “I know what she is. I know what she tried to do. I know she threatened me. I’m not asking you to forgive her or give her a sternly worded warning with rose petals in the background. I’m asking you not to let her turn you into the version of yourself she thinks you are.”

Derek stared at him.

“She wants the monster,” Stiles said, quieter now. “Do not give it to her.”

Peter watched Derek’s face with uncomfortable stillness. He had said versions of that before, sharper and colder, because that was the only way he knew how to say fear. Stiles said it like an anchor being offered instead of a command being issued.

Derek covered Stiles’s hand with his own. “Stay behind me.”

Stiles let out a shaky breath. “That is not the same thing as agreement, but I will accept it as emotional progress.”

Peter opened the door. “Touching. Moving.”

Allison’s room had already been cleared of the human crew. Two Hale guards stood outside with Erica, who had changed out of production black into something that looked far more suited for running, fighting, or burying evidence. Her eyes flicked to Stiles, then Derek, then Peter.

“She is not in there,” Erica said.

Derek went still. “You checked?”

“I checked. Bathroom, closet, balcony, adjoining room. Gone.”

Peter cursed under his breath and gestured for the guards to open the door. The room looked normal at first. Too normal. A careful mess of expensive clothes, open makeup cases, a suitcase half-unpacked for the cameras, heels placed near the bed, a silk robe draped over the chair. It had the artificial intimacy of a room designed to tell a story about the woman who lived there.

Stiles stepped inside and immediately frowned. “No,” he said.

Peter looked at him. “No?”

“This is staged.” Stiles pointed to the suitcase, then the makeup, then the robe. “This is what people think messy looks like when they have never actually panicked. She wanted anyone searching the room to start here. She wanted the obvious things to look personal.”

Derek’s gaze moved around the room. “Then where?”

Stiles turned slowly. His eyes landed on an antique storage trunk pushed beneath the window, half-hidden by a folded throw blanket. It was dark leather with brass corners and a small decorative lock.

“There,” Stiles said.

Peter moved first. He crouched in front of the trunk without touching it. “Everyone back.”

Stiles took one step back. Derek took one step forward and put himself between Stiles and the trunk.

Peter glanced up. “Predictable.”

“Open it,” Derek said.

Peter pulled a compact tool from his jacket and disabled the lock in under ten seconds. The click sounded too loud in the silent room. When he lifted the lid, even Erica went still. The trunk was not full of clothes. It was full of hunter tools.

Silver knives lay in fitted slots beside narrow glass vials filled with dark liquid. Bundles of mountain ash were sealed in zip-lock bags. Wolfsbane powder sat in labeled tins. There were cuffs lined with silver, a collapsible crossbow, garrote wire, syringes, burner phones, folded maps, and a small black case containing several carved bullets that made Derek’s entire body go rigid.

Stiles stared at the trunk, color draining from his face. “That is not a normal amount of murder supplies.”

Peter picked up one of the burner phones with gloved fingers. “No. It is a professional amount.”

Erica opened the maps on top of all the murder supplies, “These are the mansion service routes.”

Peter lifted another sheet. His expression turned lethal. “And Hale Biotechnologies floor plans.”

Derek’s voice came low. “She is going to the research facility.”

A guard stepped into the doorway, face pale. “Mr. Hale. Perimeter just reported a stolen production SUV missing from the south garage. Security badge used at the gate seven minutes ago.”

Peter closed the trunk with a hard snap. “Kate.”

Derek turned toward the hall.

Stiles grabbed his arm again. “Derek.”

“I have to find her.”

“I know,” Stiles said. “And I’m coming with you.”

“No.”

The word was immediate and absolute.

Stiles’s eyes narrowed. “We have done this scene. I hate this scene.”

“She threatened you.”

“Yes, and now she’s missing with hunter weapons, your access card, and maybe plans to raid your company’s supernatural medical research. So, forgive me if I do feel safer with you than sitting in the library like a damsel in distress.”

Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. “For the record, I hate both of you.”

Erica’s eyes flashed gold. “We need pairs. No one searches alone.”

Peter looked at the map already unfolding in his hands. “Kate will avoid the main road. She knows we can track the vehicle. If she has any sense, she dumps it near the north tree line and cuts through the wooded service trails toward the old access road.”

Derek’s nostrils flared. “I can track her.”

Peter nodded. “You take Stiles.”

Derek turned on him. “No.”

Peter did not blink. “You take Stiles because he sees things you do not when you are angry, and because if I leave him here, he will escape through a window and somehow make things worse.”

Stiles opened his mouth.

Peter pointed at him. “Do not deny it.”

Stiles closed his mouth.

Erica looked at Peter. “You and I take the western trail.”

Peter handed one of the guards the key to the room. “Lock this down. No network staff. No police until I say so. If Gerard Argent or anyone claiming to be family calls, you route it to me and only me.”

Derek’s hands were curled into fists.

Stiles stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I will stay behind you. I will listen. I will not touch suspicious plants, powders, weapons, ropes, symbols, creepy boxes, or emotionally charged murder jewelry.”

Derek stared at him.

“I’m not trying to be reckless,” Stiles said. “I’m trying to be with you.”

That did what orders could not. Derek’s anger shifted, not gone, but steadier. He nodded once.

“Beside me,” Derek said.

“Beside you,” Stiles agreed.

Peter tossed Stiles a small flashlight and a panic button. “Press that if you are separated.”

“What happens if I press it?”

“Everyone with claws comes running.”

Stiles swallowed. “Comforting and horrifying. Great.”

****

The mansion disappeared behind them within minutes. The woods beyond the property were black and wet from the earlier rain, the kind of dark that swallowed camera lights and made every branch look like a reaching hand. Derek moved through it as he belonged to the shadows. Stiles followed as quietly as he could, which meant not quietly at all compared to a werewolf, but quieter than terror wanted him to be.

Derek paused near a broken patch of brush. He crouched, fingers hovering over the ground. “She came through here.”

Stiles pointed his flashlight lower. “How can you tell?”

“Broken stems. Tire mud. Wolfsbane.”

Stiles froze. “Wolfsbane?”

“Trace amounts.” Derek looked back at him. “Do not touch anything.”

“I was not planning on licking the forest.”

Despite everything, Derek’s mouth twitched.

The moment was small, but Stiles held onto it. Derek could still almost smile. That meant Kate had not taken everything from the night yet. They followed the trail deeper until the trees opened near an abandoned maintenance shed half-covered in vines. The stolen SUV sat beside it, engine still ticking softly. Its driver-side door hung open.

Derek raised one hand, stopping Stiles behind him.

“Derek?” Stiles whispered.

Derek’s eyes burned red in the dark. “Stay close.”

They circled the SUV. Stiles looked around, panic and calculation fighting across his face. “Then she knows you would come this way. She wanted you here.”

A twig snapped behind him. Stiles turned his flashlight, stopping on Kate.

Kate stepped out of the dark with a silver knife in one hand and a gun in the other. Her blond hair was loose now, her pretty television makeup smeared at one corner, her face stripped of every soft thing she had pretended to be. Stiles immediately put his hands in the air, the flashlight dropping to the floor.

“Smart boy,” she said.

Derek moved, but Kate lifted the gun toward Stiles.

“Take one more step,” she said, “and I shoot him.”

Derek stopped so suddenly that his boots slid in the mud.

Stiles’s breath caught. The barrel was not aimed at his chest. It was aimed at his head.

“Kate,” Derek said, voice low and deadly.

She smiled. “There he is. The Alpha. The survivor. The monster pretending a suit and a tragic little love story make him civilized.”

Stiles’s hands were up, “For someone who hates reality television, you are really leaning into the dramatic monologue.”

Kate’s eyes flicked to him. “Still joking?”

“Mostly involuntary at this point.”

Kate moved before Stiles could finish speaking. One second, he was standing behind Derek with his hands half-raised, trying to look calm instead of terrified. Next, Kate had him. Her arm hooked around his throat and dragged him backward against her chest, while the edge of a silver knife slid beneath his jaw.

Stiles froze.

Derek did too.

Every part of Derek went violently still, like the whole forest had become a loaded gun pointed at the center of his chest. His eyes burned red in the dark, claws sliding from his fingers before he could stop them. A growl rumbled out of him, low and dangerous enough that the leaves seemed to tremble.

Kate smiled against Stiles’s ear. “There he is,” she said. “The Alpha. The monster under the suit. Do you understand how dangerous they are? How inhuman? He could kill you right now, and he would call it an animal attack. The cops would believe him. He’d get away with it because werewolves aren’t real.”

Stiles swallowed carefully. The blade was cold against his skin. “Have you read my book? No, you should. The monster in those books is always human.”

Kate’s arm tightened. “Still talking?”

“Not really by choice. It’s more of a neurological emergency response.”

“Let him go,” Derek growled in a clam of a voice he could.

His voice was quiet. That made it worse. Stiles had heard Derek angry. He had heard Derek irritated, protective, exhausted, and afraid. This was something else. This was Derek holding himself back by a thread because Stiles was the thing on the other end of the blade.

Kate noticed too. Her smile widened. “Gerard was right. The fastest way to control a Hale is to put something fragile in front of him. Worked with Peter.”

Derek’s claws flexed. Derek’s jaw clenched so hard that Stiles could hear his teeth grind.

Stiles met his eyes and shook his head as much as the knife allowed. He carefully patted his pocket where the panic button was, trying to convey to Derek that he had already pushed it.

Kate pressed the blade closer. A thin sting opened beneath Stiles’s jaw, followed by the warm slide of blood.

Derek made a sound like something was breaking and shifted on his feet one step closer.

“I said,” Kate warned, “don’t move.”

Derek stopped with one foot already shifted forward.

Stiles breathed through his nose, trying not to shake, trying not to give Kate the satisfaction of feeling how terrified he was. He could feel her pulse against his back. Fast, but not panicked. Excited. She liked this. She liked having Derek trapped between violence and restraint. That scared Stiles more than the knife.

“Here is what is going to happen,” Kate said. “Derek is going to come with me. Quietly. No claws. No heroic Alpha nonsense. He is going to open the doors I tell him to open, hand over the research files I came for, and if he behaves, maybe I'll let his little comedian keep breathing.”

Stiles’s stomach dropped.

“You are not taking him anywhere,” Derek said.

Kate laughed softly. “You are not in a position to argue.”

“No,” Stiles rasped, forcing the word past the pressure on his throat. “But I am. And honestly, this plan has too many plot holes.”

Kate’s mouth brushed close to his ear. “You should stop talking.”

“I have been told that before. Frequently. By people with better hair and fewer murder hobbies.”

The knife dug in again.

Derek’s eyes flared.

“Kate,” he warned.

She leaned her chin against Stiles’s shoulder and looked at Derek like he was a puzzle she had already solved. “You care about him. That is almost sweet. Pathetic, but sweet.”

Stiles tried to keep Derek’s attention on him and not on the blood. “Hey. Derek. Look at me.”

Derek did.

“I’m okay,” Stiles lied.

Kate laughed. “No, you are not.”

Behind Kate, the darkness shifted.

Stiles did not see it, but Derek did. Derek’s eyes flicked past him for less than a second, but he did not move. He did not react. He did not give anything away.

Kate never noticed.

Jackson came out of the shadows behind her without a sound. His face was pale, set, and furious. His expensive jacket was torn at one shoulder, mud streaked across his pants, but he moved with a kind of controlled purpose. No performance. No arrogance. No sharp comment meant to cut the tension. Only intent.

His eyes flashed reptilian yellow. A long, dark, scaled tail snapped out behind him and struck Kate at the back of the neck before she could turn, before she could tighten her grip, before she could cut deeper.

Kate gasped. Her whole body seized. The knife slipped from her fingers. Kate collapsed into the mud behind them, paralyzed but conscious, her eyes wide with helpless, furious shock.

Stiles stumbled forward as her arm went slack around his throat. Derek caught him instantly, dragging him against his chest and turning his own body between Stiles and Kate before the blade even hit the ground.

For one stunned second, the forest went silent. Then Stiles looked over Derek’s shoulder at Jackson.

Jackson stood several feet away, breathing hard, his tail still extended behind him, the dark tip curved and gleaming faintly in the wet moonlight. His eyes were still yellow, inhuman, and bright.

Stiles stared at him, shaking against Derek’s chest. “Okay. Not to make this about me, because near-death experience, very rude hunter, lots to unpack, but… You have a tail.”

Jackson’s tail curled once before slowly retracting. “Yes,” Jackson said tightly.

Stiles swallowed. “You knew?”

Derek’s jaw flexed. “Yes.” Derek still had one arm locked around Stiles, but his eyes were on Jackson. “How long?”

Jackson looked away. For the first time since Stiles had met him, he looked less arrogant than ashamed. “Since high school,” Jackson said. “I learned to control that side of me with my best friend's help.”

Peter stopped short. His gaze landed on Jackson. “Well,” Peter said after a beat. “That explains several inconsistencies in your medical file.”

Jackson glared. “You read my medical file?”

“I read everyone’s medical file.”

“That is illegal.”

“So, is being a venomous supernatural reptile on a network dating show, and yet here we are.”

Stiles, still shaking, let out a breathless laugh against Derek’s chest. It came out half-hysterical.

Derek’s arm tightened around him. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“It’s going to need stitches.” The words came rough and wounded, like the sight of it had done more damage to Derek than the knife had done to Stiles.

Stiles softened immediately. He turned as much as Derek’s grip allowed and touched Derek’s wrist. “Hey. I’m here. She didn’t win.”

Derek looked at the thin line of blood under Stiles’s jaw, then at Kate’s paralyzed body in the mud, then back at Stiles. “She almost did.”

“But she didn’t,” Stiles said. “Because Jackson apparently came with a secret venom tail.”

Jackson crossed his arms. “You are welcome.”

Stiles looked at him, still pale, still trembling, but sincere now. “Thank you.”

Jackson’s expression flickered. It was quick, but Stiles saw it. So did Derek. Jackson had expected shock, fear, maybe disgust. He had not expected gratitude.

“Whatever,” Jackson muttered. Jackson looked furious all over again, but now it seemed aimed at the word itself. “You’re annoying. Loud. Weirdly observant. Terrible at staying out of things. But I couldn’t let you die.”

Stiles’s smile trembled. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Do not make it a thing.”

“Oh, it is absolutely becoming a thing.”

Peter crouched beside Kate, careful not to touch the silver knife near her hand. “Kanima venom?”

Jackson nodded once. “She will be paralyzed for a few hours. Conscious, though.”

Kate’s eyes burned with hatred.

Peter smiled down at her. “Excellent.”

Erica signaled two guards forward. “Kate first. Iron restraints. Bag every weapon. Peter, I need transport that does not involve network security, local police, or anyone with an Instagram account.”

“Already arranging it,” Peter said, poking at his cell phone.

Derek finally looked at Jackson. “You saved him. I am in your debt.”

Jackson’s jaw tightened. “Yeah, well. Don’t make it weird.”

Stiles let out a shaky laugh. “You paralyzed a hunter with your secret lizard tail to save me. It is going to be at least medium weird.”

Jackson glared at him, but there was no real heat in it. “I heard her call you expendable.”

Stiles went still. There was some hidden meaning behind that word for Jackson, but now wasn’t the time to dig that out of him. Jackson looked uncomfortable, as if sincerity was physically painful. “No one is expendable.”

Kate was lifted from the ground with her wrists secured behind her, fury trapped in her eyes because the rest of her body would not obey. Peter leaned over her once, his voice low enough that only the supernatural ears and Stiles, who was unfortunately right there, could hear.

“You came into my family’s life wearing a dead girl’s name and carrying tools built to make wolves suffer,” Peter said. “The only reason you are leaving this forest alive is that I want your father’s head on a spike. Also, Derek doesn’t want his mate to see you die.”

Kate’s eyes flicked toward Derek with hatred.

Peter smiled without warmth. “Remember that when the tribunal asks why a human had to be saved by a Kamina.”

Kate was taken away into the dark.

No cameras caught it. No dramatic music swelled. No producer whispered about ratings. There was only the rain, the mud, Derek’s arms around Stiles, Jackson standing apart with his secret suddenly breathing in the open, and Peter Hale looking like he wanted to lock all of them in separate reinforced rooms until the world became reasonable.

By dawn, the mansion was quiet in the false, brittle way places became quiet after violence. The official explanation was that Allison Srebro had been removed for violating production security rules and attempting to steal proprietary material from Derek Hale’s company. The human crew believed enough of it not to ask questions. Erica rewrote the production schedule with the calm of a woman who had built an entire career on lying to cameras without blinking.

The show continued because contracts were powerful, television was absurd, and Erica Reyes had apparently decided that canceling the season would raise more questions than finishing it.

But everything changed.

Derek told Stiles the truth properly that night, not in fragments or emergencies but in the quiet of a room with the cameras off and Peter guarding the door like a threat in designer shoes. He told him about werewolves, hunters, the Hale fire (the parts he was able to talk about), Alpha power, anchors, packs, and the cost of surviving when the world did not know what had been taken from you.

Jackson was there too, sitting stiffly in an armchair with his arms crossed and his face arranged into practiced boredom. It did not work. Not after everyone had seen the kanima. Not after Derek had looked at him and said, “You are not a monster,” with the same certainty Stiles had used on Derek in the woods. “If you are willing, I would like you to join my pack.”

Jackson had looked relieved at that. Then he said, “We will talk when this circus is over.”

Stiles listened to all of it. He asked questions because, of course, he did. Some were practical, some were emotional, and some were so strange that Derek had to stare at them.

“So, full moon. Actual issue or folklore exaggeration?”

“Actual issue, but not like the movies.”

“Silver?”

“Painful. Not instantly fatal unless used in a lethal spot.” Derek pointed to his heart.

“Wolfsbane?”

“Poison.”

“Kanima tail?”

Jackson groaned.

Stiles pointed at him. “You paralyzed a woman in the woods with a secret murder tail, . I get one question.”

“One,” Jackson snapped.

“Can you control the paralyzing venom? ”

Jackson hesitated. “Yes”

Stiles looked at him expectantly.

“You asked, I answered. I don’t need to elaborate.”

“Fine.” Stiles looked at Derek. “Can you talk to dogs?”

Derek blinked. “No.”

“Shame. That would have been useful. My neighbor's dog barks constantly.”

Derek stared at him for another second, then laughed. It broke some of the fear in the room. Stiles smiled, and Derek felt something in his chest loosen so abruptly it almost hurt.

***

The final rose ceremony took place at the edge of the ocean just before sunset, because reality television loved symbolism almost as much as it loved emotional devastation. The producers had chosen a cliffside estate wrapped in white flowers and candlelight, all soft gold and carefully staged intimacy. Cameras moved quietly behind the scenes while waves crashed far below against dark stone.

Derek exhaled slowly before speaking. “Braeden… you are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. You make a room feel safer just by standing in it.”

Braeden’s expression softened; she already knew where this was going.

“I care about you,” Derek continued quietly. “A lot. But not in the way you deserve from the person standing at the end of this.”

Braeden looked down briefly before letting out a soft breath that almost sounded amused. “You know, for a guy who barely talks, you’re pretty obvious when you love someone.”

Derek’s mouth twitched faintly, but the guilt stayed in his eyes. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

“You didn’t,” Braeden said honestly. “Disappointed isn’t the same thing as hurt.”

Derek stepped closer then, more seriously. “I meant what I said before. I trust you. I respect you. And if you’d let me, I’d like to be your friend.”

Braeden studied him for a long moment before smiling softly. “Friends.”

“Friends,” Derek agreed.

She pulled him into a hug before stepping back. “Good. Because honestly? Your life is too structured, and you need a little disaster to keep things interesting. Also, somebody to keep you laughing.”

Derek laughed quietly, and for the first time that night, the goodbye didn’t feel entirely sad.

“Do not mess it up with him.” She said, kissing his cheek.

Jackson Whittemore walked toward him in a perfectly tailored black suit with the calm confidence of someone who had spent his entire life learning how to look composed even while bleeding internally. The ocean wind barely touched him. He looked polished, expensive, untouchable.

Derek understood that kind of armor better than anyone.

Jackson stopped a few feet away and looked at him steadily. “So,” he said lightly, “this is the part where one of us gets emotionally destroyed for ratings.”

Derek’s mouth twitched faintly, but the guilt stayed heavy in his chest.

Jackson noticed immediately.

“Ah,” Jackson murmured. “Right. That expression usually means bad news.”

“Jackson…”

“No, it’s okay.” Jackson exhaled slowly and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Actually, no, that’s a lie. It’s not okay, but I’d rather you tell me the truth than try to soften it.”

Derek nodded once. He respected him too much to insult him with vague language.

“You’re extraordinary,” Derek said quietly. “You’re intelligent, driven, and capable of handling pressure in ways most people can’t.”

Jackson huffed a laugh. “Still sounds like a performance review.”

Derek looked down briefly before meeting his eyes again. “You know what I realized with you?”

“What?”

“You make sense.”

Jackson frowned slightly.

Derek gestured vaguely between them. “The image. The lifestyle. The expectations people have for me. You fit into that world perfectly.”

“That’s supposed to be a bad thing?”

“No,” Derek said honestly. “But it made me realize I was choosing based on what looked right instead of what felt right.”

Jackson closed his eyes briefly, and for the first time since Derek met him, the perfect composure cracked just enough to reveal the hurt underneath. Not anger. Not humiliation. Just disappointment.

“Wow,” Jackson muttered softly. “The internet’s going to lose its mind.”

Despite everything, Derek almost smiled.

Jackson shook his head slowly. “You know, when this started, I thought he was comic relief too.” His mouth twisted faintly. “Guess that says more about me than him.”

Derek stayed silent.

Jackson laughed quietly under his breath. ““Stiles still walks into rooms expecting people to decide he doesn’t belong there.”

Something painful flickered across Derek’s face because he remembered saying almost exactly that.

“I was one of them. I’m not going to make that mistake again. He does belong, more than me,” Jackson admitted. “Look me up in New York, maybe we can all get lunch together.” “Jackson looked at him, studying him carefully. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled. Small. Sad. Real. “I really did want this to be me,” Jackson admitted, then walked away.

That left Stiles. Stiles stood in front of Derek in a deep blue suit Lydia had clearly chosen, his hair wind-blown and his hands visibly shaking.

Derek noticed the shaking. Derek noticed everything about him now.

“So,” Stiles said, trying for lightness and only partly succeeding. “Big day. Very normal. Just us, the ocean, several cameras, and the knowledge that if I trip right now, I become a gif before sunset.”

Derek took his hands.

Stiles stopped talking.

“I came here because I was lonely,” Derek said. “I thought maybe letting the world watch would force me to stop hiding from the fact that I wanted someone.”

Stiles’s expression softened.

“I met people who impressed me. Challenged me. Protected me. Surprised me.” Derek’s eyes flicked briefly toward the crew line, where Jackson stood beside Peter with his arms crossed and his sunglasses on despite the setting sun. “But you saw me before you knew the truth. Then you saw the truth and stayed.”

Stiles swallowed hard.

“You made me laugh when I had forgotten how. You made silence feel safe. You saw patterns everyone else missed because they were too busy assuming you were only there to be funny.” Derek’s thumb moved over Stiles’s knuckles. “The world thought you were comic relief. They were wrong. You were the heart of the story.”

Stiles’s eyes filled, but his smile trembled into place. “That was very good. Devastating, actually. Deeply unfair of you to be romantic while I am being filmed.”

Derek smiled and picked up the final rose.

“Stiles Stilinski, will you accept this rose?”

Stiles laughed wetly. “Yes. I accept the emotionally significant plant.”

Derek handed him the rose with a chuckle, and Stiles stepped into him, one hand curling around the back of Derek’s neck as he kissed him. The cameras caught the ocean behind them, the wind, the rose, and the kind of kiss that made producers congratulate themselves on good television.

They did not catch the way Derek’s eyes flashed for half a second when Stiles pressed closer.

They did not catch Peter watching from behind the camera line, arms folded and expression sharp with relief.

They did not catch Jackson muttering, “Finally,” under his breath.

They did not catch Stiles whispering, “I choose you too,” against Derek’s mouth.

The finale broke viewing records.

The internet exploded.

He picked stiles.

The comic relief was the love interest all along.

Derek Hale really said, " I do not want perfect, I want someone normal.”

Stiles was never a joke. He was the plot twist.

#NotComicRelief

Lydia sent Stiles screenshots of the trending tag for three straight hours.

****

Epilogue

About Four Months Later

The final episode had not aired yet.

Four months had passed since filming ended, but the world still did not officially know who Derek Hale had chosen. The network had wrapped the ending in nondisclosure agreements, security protocols, and enough legal threats to make even Peter briefly satisfied. None of it stopped the internet from turning the season into a national investigation. Viewers paused trailer footage, analyzed Derek’s body language, and built entire theories around the way his eyes followed Stiles whenever Stiles crossed a room.

Half the audience still believed Jackson was the safer choice. The other half had collectively decided Derek Hale looked at Stiles Stilinski like a starving man discovering warmth for the first time. Stiles had stopped reading the theories after someone created a twenty-seven-post thread about his flannel collection and what each shirt supposedly revealed about Derek’s emotional growth.

Meanwhile, far away from all of that, Stiles was moving into Derek’s mansion in New York. The house already sounded different. Cabinet doors opened and closed upstairs. Cardboard boxes sat in the foyer with Stiles’s handwriting scrawled across the sides: books, more books, ominous research, emergency flannels, do not let Derek organize this. Music drifted faintly from a phone speaker somewhere in the kitchen, and Stiles had left three paperbacks stacked sideways on Derek’s marble counter within twenty minutes of arriving. Somehow, that small disorder made the entire mansion feel more alive than it had in years.

Derek stood in the doorway of the bedroom and watched Stiles unpack flannel shirts onto new hangers and cargo pants into drawers that had previously held nothing except neatly folded loneliness. Stiles wore loose jeans, battered sneakers, and an oversized green flannel over a soft black shirt. His dark-rimmed glasses had slipped down his nose while he worked, and every few minutes he pushed them back up with the back of his wrist because his hands were full of books, socks, or some object Derek could not identify, but Stiles insisted was essential.

“You know,” Stiles said, holding up a hoodie and looking suspiciously into Derek’s closet, “your closet is aggressively organized. It feels judgmental.”

Derek crossed his arms. “My closet is efficient.”

“Your closet looks like it has opinions about tax brackets.”

Derek’s mouth twitched.

Stiles smiled automatically at the reaction, then looked away too quickly. Derek noticed immediately because Derek noticed everything about him now: the way his shoulders tensed when silence lasted too long, the way he tugged at his shirts when he felt exposed, and the way he still seemed half-convinced that if he stood too comfortably in Derek’s life, someone would come in and tell him he had misunderstood the invitation.

“What?” Derek asked.

“Nothing.”

“Stiles.”

Stiles sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, surrounded by half-open boxes. Without the cameras, without producers, without contestants whispering comparisons behind his back, he somehow looked even more vulnerable to Derek. He looked soft, real, warm, and tired from trying to make a place for himself in a house that had been built by someone who once believed no one would ever stay.

Derek walked closer. “You have been doing that all afternoon.”

“Doing what?”

“Looking away when I look at you too long.”

Stiles swallowed. “That obvious?”

“To me.”

For a moment, Stiles only stared down at his hands. Then he pushed his glasses higher up his nose and laughed weakly. “I keep waiting for this to feel temporary.”

Derek sat beside him immediately. “It is not.”

Stiles nodded once, but his fingers still twisted together anxiously. After a long silence, he said, “You know the really stupid thing? I used to think the glasses made me impossible to love on television.”

Derek frowned. “What?”

Stiles gestured vaguely at himself. “The whole package. Husky guy. Flannels. Anxiety. Glasses. Not exactly reality TV heartthrob material.”

“You are aware millions of people are currently obsessed with your flannels.”

“That is still deeply upsetting.”

Derek did not smile this time. He reached over and covered Stiles’s restless hands with one of his own. “Tell me.”

Stiles went quiet. The room seemed to soften around them, the late afternoon light settling over the bed, the boxes, and the life they were slowly unpacking together. When Stiles spoke again, his voice was smaller than Derek had ever heard it.

“The glasses started because of a brain tumor.”

Derek turned toward him instantly, every protective instinct in his body going sharp and cold.

Stiles kept staring downward. “Sophomore year of high school. It was pressing against my optic nerve. That’s why my vision changed so fast. That’s why I wear these now.” He tapped the side of his glasses with one finger and forced out a small laugh that carried no humor. “Very dramatic. Ten out of ten for trauma backstory.”

Derek’s hand tightened around his.

“There were multiple surgeries,” Stiles continued quietly. “Recovery. A lot of hospital rooms. A lot of people using careful voices. My dad trying not to look scared and failing because I know his face too well. The tumor was removed, but the damage to my vision was not fully corrected.  At least it didn't leave me blind, that was always a possibility. So, glasses.”

Derek’s wolf reacted to every word like it could still find the threat and tear it apart. Tumor. Optic nerve. Surgeries. Hospital rooms. Stiles had spoken about fragility before, but now Derek understood the shape of it. Stiles had learned young that his body could betray him in ways no joke could completely cover.

“You never told me,” Derek said softly.

“I know.” Stiles looked at him then, vulnerable in a way cameras had never captured. “I did not want you looking at me differently.”

Derek’s expression tightened almost painfully. “Stiles.”

“I know it’s stupid.”

“It is not.”

Stiles blinked hard behind his glasses.

Derek lifted one hand carefully to the side of his face, thumb brushing lightly beneath the frame. “You survived.”

Stiles’s breath caught.

Derek rested his forehead gently against Stiles’s. “You survived,” he repeated, softer this time, like something sacred. “I am not going to love you less because I know more of what it cost you to get here.”

The tension in Stiles’s shoulders finally loosened. He leaned into Derek slowly, carefully, and then all at once, like he had been waiting four months to believe this was real enough to collapse into.

Derek held him in the middle of the half-unpacked room while the mansion settled around them with new sounds: cardboard shifting, music still playing faintly from downstairs, and Stiles’s heartbeat steady against his chest. For the first time in years, the house no longer felt empty.

****

Across the country, Noah Stilinski sat across from Peter Hale inside a small steakhouse that smelled like grilled onions, baked potatoes, cheap beer, and decades of regular customers. It was not fancy. There were no white tablecloths, no valet, no menu items described as deconstructed, and no wine list presented like a sacred text. There were paper napkins, wooden booths, a chalkboard advertising ribeye specials, and a waitress who called Noah “Sheriff” even though he had technically told her twice that he was in the process of retiring and Noah was fine.

Peter looked deeply offended by the laminated menu.

Noah watched him over the rim of his water glass. “You’re glaring at the steak options.”

“I am trying to determine whether the phrase cowboy butter is a sauce, a threat, or a cry for help.”

Noah laughed before he could stop himself, and Peter’s expression shifted with the smallest flicker of satisfaction. The dinner had started as a practical conversation, or that was what Noah told himself when Peter had called and said he was in California for Hale Biotechnologies business. It had become something else sometime between the appetizer and the second time Peter made a dry comment that nearly made Noah choke on his drink.

They talked about Stiles first because they always did. They talked about Derek because Peter pretended not to worry and failed at it spectacularly. They talked about work, Beacon Hills, New York, bad coffee, worse television, and the strange experience of raising boys who saved people while making every adult around them age prematurely.

By the time they stepped out into the cool Beacon Hills night, the tension between them had softened into something warmer and far more dangerous.

Noah walked beside Peter toward the parking lot, hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket. “You want a drink?”

Peter glanced toward him.

“At my place,” Noah clarified. “Unless the terrifying billionaire security detail gave you a curfew.”

Peter smirked faintly. “I outrank the terrifying billionaire security detail.”

“Of course you do.” Noah shook his head, but he was smiling when he unlocked his car. “Come on, then.”

The Stilinski house was quiet when they arrived, the kind of quiet that still felt strange with Stiles gone. Peter noticed Noah pausing in the doorway for half a second, listening to the absence of his son’s noise. The house smelled like old coffee, laundry soap, paper, and the lingering memory of Stiles’s life there: books stacked unevenly, a mug abandoned near the sink, a pair of shoes by the door that Noah had not moved even though Stiles was now across the country unpacking into Derek’s mansion.

Noah moved toward the kitchen. “Beer?”

“Yes.”

Noah tossed him one from the fridge, and Peter caught it easily. For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. The silence was not uncomfortable, but Peter knew the conversation had been waiting since the show. Since the first time Noah had looked at Peter like he could tell every elegant lie in the world and still be expected to answer honestly when it involved Stiles.

Peter set the beer down carefully.

Noah noticed. “Does your next sentence you are about to say usually end badly?”

Peter’s mouth curved without humor. “In this family? Frequently.”

Noah leaned against the counter. “Peter.”

Peter exhaled slowly. He could have softened it. He could have led Noah there through half-truths, careful metaphors, and reasonable explanations. He did none of those things because Noah Stilinski had raised Stiles, had already survived more than most men could name, and deserved the respect of a direct answer.

“Werewolves are real,” Peter said.

Noah stared at him.

The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere outside, a car passed slowly down the street. Peter waited, still and watchful, expecting anger, disbelief, fear, or the sharp bark of a lawman demanding proof.

Noah closed his eyes for one long second. “Of course they are.”

Peter blinked.

Noah opened his eyes again, tired and grimly amused. “My son writes about monsters, dates, and survives a reality show hostage situation, and suddenly moves into a mansion across the country. Werewolves being real is somehow not the strangest part of my year.”

Peter’s smile came before he could stop it. “You are taking this rather well.”

“I am taking this like a man who has had thirty years of practice pretending not to panic until after the crisis is handled.” Noah folded his arms. “Derek?”

“Alpha werewolf.”

“You?”

“Also, a werewolf.”

Noah’s eyes narrowed. “Stiles knows?”

“Yes.”

“And you waited until now to tell me because?”

Peter did not look away. “Because secrets are dangerous, and because your son is safer if you understand the world he has stepped into. Also, because I wanted to tell you myself rather than letting Stiles panic-explain it over the phone in a way that involved seventeen metaphors and possibly a PowerPoint.”

Noah stared at him for another long moment before rubbing both hands over his face. “God help me, that is exactly what he would do.”

Peter’s expression softened. “He is safe with Derek.”

“That was not what I asked.”

“No,” Peter said. “But it is what you needed to hear first.”

Noah studied him carefully. “And is he safe with you?”

The question landed with more weight than Peter expected. Not because he did not know the answer, but because Noah asked it like a father, like a sheriff, and like a man deciding whether the person standing in his kitchen could be trusted near the one piece of his life he would burn the world to protect.

Peter answered without sarcasm. “Yes.”

Noah held his gaze. “Good. Because if your world hurts my kid, I will not care how many claws anyone has.”

Peter’s smile turned sharp, but not unkind. “That is one of the things I find most appealing about you.”

Noah stared at him.

“Peter.”

“Noah.”

The warning in Noah’s voice should have ended the conversation. It did not. Instead, the space between them changed in a way that had nothing to do with werewolves, hunters, or secrets. It was quieter than that. Warmer. More dangerous.

Noah reached for his beer and shook his head like a man who knew perfectly well he was making a questionable decision and had decided to do it anyway. “Sit down,” he said. “You are going to explain everything. Slowly.”

Peter picked up his beer and moved toward the kitchen table. “Everything?”

“Werewolves first,” Noah said. “Then whatever the hell is happening between you and me.”

Peter sat down, pleased despite himself. “That seems reasonable.”

“Do not look so smug.”

“I would never.”

Noah pointed at him. “That is a lie.”

Peter laughed then, quiet and genuine, in the kitchen of a house that smelled like Stiles and grief and stubborn love. Across the country, Derek’s mansion was becoming a home. In Beacon Hills, Noah Stilinski was learning that monsters were real, that not all of them were threats, and that Peter Hale might be the most dangerous complication he had invited inside in years.

He looked forward to the next chapter in his life, even if it was with a paranoid man like Peter Hale.