Chapter 6

Stiles' has spent most of the holidays working on it, but it's finally done, and as he closes the file on the last of the assignments Grimm gave him, he feels a kind of relief. That's one class, at least, where he's prepared for the time he's going to have to take off school.

With the folder in his hand, he turns away from the desk, looking for his backpack. He doesn't find it, because the thought disappears from his mind as soon as he sees the figure standing in his open doorway.

The file folder flies into the air as Stiles jumps. Sheets of loose paper rain down around him, stapled assignments crack as they open up and flutter to the floor, and Stiles barely sees them as he stares, open mouthed and frozen. "Derek," he says. "Derek?" He rushes forward, but stops half-way across the room. "You're back. Are you back?"

"I'm back." Derek closes the space between them, reaches out, and his hand comes down on the back of Stiles' neck.

"God." Stiles leans into Derek's hand. "How is your skin so soft? Don't werewolves ever get calluses from running around on their hands and feet? But if everything heals, I guess not. God, I'm so relieved. You're back. You have no idea how much—" He stops, pressing his lips tightly together. "Hey," he says.

A slow smile spreads over Derek's face. "Hey." He pulls Stiles into a hug, arms wrapped tightly around Stiles' back, holding him as if he'll never let go. "God, you smell good."

"I what?" As the shock fades, Stiles starts to feel his body react to Derek holding him. "Scott and Peter said I smell like you."

"That's probably it." Derek releases him, holds him at arms length and looks him up and down. "You've lost weight."

"Throwing up almost everything you eat will do that."

Derek's face falls. "Is it bad?"

Stiles shakes his head. "It's getting better." He fights the urge to squirm in his jeans, because he's hard, and while his erection is covered by the oversized T-shirt he's wearing, it's getting uncomfortable. "Other things, not so much."

Derek leans just a little closer and his nostrils flare. Then he smirks. "All the time?"

Stiles lets out an exaggerated sigh and lets his body relax, slumping under Derek's hands. "All the fucking time. If you thought being a regular teenager was bad, try being a pregnant one." He claps his hand over his mouth and looks at Derek with wide eyes. "Dad doesn't know," he whispers.

"I figured, since he didn't shoot me when I asked if you were home." Derek keeps his voice low, barely loud enough for Stiles to hear. "When are you going to tell him?"

"Not until I absolutely have to. At some point, he won't take much convincing." Stiles looks down at himself, and his hand hovers over his swelling abdomen. He makes a fist and drops it to his hip, then flicks his eyes up again.

Derek's got a look on his face that's like wonder and longing. He drops his hand from Stiles' shoulder, and like Stiles' before it, it hangs in the air, the backs of his knuckles barely brushing the fabric of Stiles' T-shirt. "Can I?" he asks, looking back up. "Stiles?"

There's a lump in Stiles' throat and his eyes tingle. He swallows and nods. "Yeah. Sure."

Derek lets out a heavy breath and drops his eyes again. His knuckles brush gently over Stiles' belly, his touch so light Stiles can barely feel it, Then he lifts his hand and sets it down again, palm flat, wrapped around the side of Stiles' waist, thumb stroking over the taut flesh.

Stiles can feel it now, can feel the reverence in the way Derek touches him, in the slide of Derek's palm over his rounded stomach. "Derek, I—" he begins, but the words get lost as his throat closes over. A tear rolls down his cheek, falls onto Derek's hand.

Derek looks up, his eyes wide. "Stiles."

Stiles looks away. "I'm okay," he insists, but his voice is shaky. He wipes his cheek with the back of his hand.

"Stiles." Derek holds Stiles' chin, turns his head to face him. "You're not gonna die."

"That's not—" Stiles blinks. "You found something?"

"I think so, yeah." Derek lets go of Stiles, goes back to the doorway and picks up a bag off the floor Stiles didn't notice until now. It's a leather satchel, and Stiles wants to call it a messenger bag, but it's too old, too antique looking to warrant that name. Taking it to the desk, Derek pulls out half a dozen old books. Really, really old books, with crumbling leather covers and embossed spines. "My life isn't worth living if these get damaged," Derek says, looking pointedly at the scattered paper all over the floor.

Stiles takes a step back. "Noted." His heart is beating fast, hard, and his breathing is quick and shallow. He watches as Derek opens a book to a marked page and lays it open on the desk. "Give me the CliffsNotes version. I don't think I can handle the suspense."

Derek nods. "This book? History. Records kept by the pack I was with in New York—"

"You were in New York?"

"Yeah. This whole chapter deals with—"

"Huh. A pack in New York." Stiles feels a little sick. "How was the weather?"

Derek frowns, looks up at Stiles. "Snow."

Stiles nods. "Huh."

Derek looks confused, concerned, but eventually looks back down at the book. "It's an old pack. They came over from Ireland in the 1800's, but they go back way before then. In the first few years of the 1600's, the Alpha had a male mate." Derek looks up at Stiles, as if he's waiting for something.

"Who he knocked up," Stiles says.

"Yeah. The pack had been hunted, almost to extinction. They were the only two left of the entire family—"

"Excuse me? They were...family? And also a couple? Isn't that a bit—"

Derek grins. "Royalty used to do it, marry their cousins, strengthen alliances, protect the bloodlines. Why wouldn't werewolf packs do the same?"

Stiles still shudders. "Go on. Hunted to extinction, etcetera."

"The pack would have died out, Stiles. Some packs, they don't turn betas." Derek's cheeks flush a little, and Stiles wonders if that had been the case for his pack, for his family, before most of them died in the fire. Derek's certainly never given any indication that Laura gave anyone the bite in the six years before Derek became the Alpha. "It was like nature stepped in to save the pack."

Stiles' heart stops cold. "What?"

"You're carrying the next Hale Alpha, Stiles."

.

Stiles' sat on his heels, his knees spread wide apart. One hand rested on the back of Derek's neck, the other—slick with lube—slowly pumped Derek's cock. That was the extent of his ability to coordinate himself because the two thick fingers in his ass, the hand on his dick, and the tongue in his mouth, completely removed his ability to think.

"Ready?" Derek asked, his voice strained, rough. He pressed another finger to Stiles' hole, and it slipped in easy alongside the others. "Yeah, you're so ready. Put your hands on the wall, Stiles."

Stiles did as he was told, pressing against the brick with his palms. "God," he whispered. "Oh my god."

"You're okay," Derek said, gripping Stiles' hip with one hand, lining himself up with the other. "I'm not gonna hurt you, I promise, but if you want me to stop, just say so."

Then there was pressure, so much, and it burned as he was stretched open, and Stiles couldn't think, didn't care that he lost his erection as Derek pushed inside, it was all just too much.

With his hips against Stiles' ass, Derek stopped, dropped his head onto Stiles' shoulder. "You feel so good, Stiles. So good, I can't even—"

Then he started to move, fingers pressing bruises into Stiles' hips.

.

Stiles peels off his T-shirt and jeans and gets in the shower. Under the warm spray he slides his hands over his stomach and wonders what's going to happen next. Derek never got to that part. Stiles' dad called up the stairs to ask when he was going out, and that reminded Stiles that he was meant to be at Lydia's New Years Eve party, and Derek gathered up his books and left.

He gets it, now, why Derek was so determined. He'd heard about what he'd done for Cora, had taken note of the fact he hadn't sent Peter away or killed him after he came back. Stiles understood Derek's desire for family, knew why it was so important to him that any child of his own was born. This, though, it's so much more.

Stiles has been around werewolves long enough to understand the importance of the Alpha. Sure, Scott went without one and he was fine, but Scott's a whole different thing—he was destined to become one himself, for a start—Derek, though. He's different. He should never have been an Alpha in the first place, should never have had to shoulder that kind of responsibility.

Maybe it was the same 400 years ago, for that other Alpha. Stiles figures that if the survival of your pack depended on the usual method of procreation and if it was as important as Derek makes it out to be, you'd choose a female mate. Stiles is aware that it's not that easy for some people, not like it is for himself, but if they go to such lengths as to pair off with cousins then they'd take the sex of the mate into account when thinking about breeding.

It must have been the same. A beta never meant to lead the pack had leadership thrust upon him, and the result was a pregnant dude.

Stiles is still half-hard, and he gives his dick a couple of casual tugs because that's all it takes to get him fully hard. He closes his eyes and puts his other hand on his belly, imitating the way Derek touched him, imagining the look on his face while he did it. There's probably something badly wrong about getting a sexual kick out of Derek's emotion over his unborn kid, but weirder things have turned Stiles on lately.

Stiles turns his back away from the water, drags body wash and bubbles down to his dick, and lets himself remember how badly he wanted Derek to kiss him then, how right and inevitable it seemed. Maybe it's some kind of pregnancy thing, but the relief he felt when he saw Derek was almost painful in its intensity. It's like Stiles needs him, more than to save him from dying when this kid is born, and it hurt all over again when Derek took his prehistoric messenger bag and disappeared out the door.

He hopes Derek shows at Lydia's tonight.

Stiles puts one hand on the tiled wall of the shower and leans forward as he strokes his dick faster. There's a memory he sometimes draws on, of the moments after Derek first got inside him the first time, how full he felt, how it wiped his mind clean of anything else except for the desperation in Derek's voice when he told Stiles how good it felt.

Right before Stiles comes, the muscles in his stomach contract and he can almost feel Derek's baby inside himself. The thought amplifies his orgasm, and the intensity of it almost brings him to his knees.