TW Fic: Form or Fall
Summary: The alpha pack’s final move forces all of them to choose what’s truly important. Alphas included. All along, it had only been Deucalion that had truly known what was going on and why. It had been just as much a test for his pack as for Derek’s. Spark!Stiles. Mild spoilers?
Author’s Notes: Not as polished as I’d like, but wanted to get this out there before it was blown out of the water by the premiere.
Things to know for fic: Deucalion is blind, but badass. Deaton and Morrell know more than they’ve ever revealed. Scott and Stiles had a pretty major fallout previous to this, which is based off their future canon fight that brought tears to the cast’s eyes. Aiden was assigned to keep tabs on Lydia, Ethan was told the same for Danny. Erica is dead (still sad) which Boyd was broken up over badly for a long time.
The alpha pack showing up is all about tests; the strength of Derek’s pack and how well they could come together when it mattered, the extent of Stiles’ potential as a ‘spark’ or more, Deauclion was even testing his own pack.
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Form or Fall
Aiden looked like he was struggling with himself. Lydia stepped closer.
“Just tell me. Whatever it is-“ She was in love, but she was strong too. “Dammit, Aiden, I swear-“
“They’re going after your friend.” He said it in a rush, eyes closed, forehead resting on hers, like a purge. He seemed torn, in pain, but committed. “He doesn’t know what he is, but they want him. And if they can’t get him on their side…” ‘They’ll kill him.’ He didn’t say but let hang in the air. Lydia was smart. So, so, smart in every way that made him love her, and she was miles ahead. She heard what he hadn’t gotten near yet.
“Stiles.” She told him, didn’t ask. “It’s Stiles.”
He doesn’t have time to nod before she’s spinning away, racing to her part of the relay of information. Aiden doesn’t regret it, this decision, knows his brother has already fallen in the same way he has for the other human, knows that’s marked them already anyway. He just hopes she forgives him-
Delicate hands grips the sides of his face and he starts into the hard kiss. Lydia pulls back, wide eyes on him, shining in tears, in gratitude.
“Thank you.” She breathes and she’s off again. Aiden finally breathes too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Derek is a second ahead of Scott and he breaks the door in, sounds of the others fighting behind them ebbing away in their focus. Derek chokes on a breath.
‘Late. Too late, again. Always too damn late.’ Loops through Derek’s head, flashing back to Erica in the morgue, Boyd broken down from the loss, Issac screaming in pain, Stiles slashed and still and bled out on a fuckin’ alter in the middle of a magic circle with two alphas standing over him.
Kali stands over him with a certain edge to her already feral expression, lips quirked in satisfied triumph. They don’t have time, Derek or Scott, to call out when her hand presses to Stiles’ forehead.
And nothing happens.
Nothing.
The surprise and confusion on her face is satisfying, but never enough to make any of this worth it.
Deucalion just smiles in that knowing way of his at the lack of response, unseeing eyes perpetually hidden behind dark glasses.
“What’s-“
“Power can’t be stolen,” He inclines his head a bit to where he seems to still be looking down at Stiles, but clearly speaking to Kali. “From a true Red.”
Kali’s shock morphs to rage quicker than usual, roaring at the head alpha, but her fangs, her claws are turned to the boy still beneath her.
But Derek and Scott had already heard his heartbeat in the interim of confusion. They felt it and they’ve already moved. Derek lunges and slams her back, both barreling into the solid cement wall, pulling her as far away as he can so-
“Grab him!”
He didn’t need to say it, it just came anyway. Scott was already bowed over Stiles, wolfed out and almost mindless with rage. Whatever difficulties the past few months had put between them, normal growing pains and manipulations of supernatural origin, it was nothing to what they were to each other when it really mattered. Derek knew that. And he knew Scott couldn’t have been any more vicious, any more eager to hurt and punish and watch something bleed than if it had been Allison lying there so still.
The golden-eyed pseudo alpha put his body all into it as he blocked the unnaturally quick attack of Deucalion, took every bit of the blow and rolled with it, making sure to bring the man with him. ‘Away, away, get him away’, seemed to be the common thread between Derek and Scott at the moment. Good. It was more, it was better, than anything Derek had hoped for in the last few years of dealing with the teenagers. They were completely on the same wavelength.
“I’ll kill you!” Kali seemed too off balance, too confused by recent revelations to come up with her usual, admittedly intelligent, banter. That was fine with Derek. He grinned at her, all teeth, and said nothing as they rushed one another.
Deucalion was, predictably, quiet as Scott raged at him. He rolled and bit and rebounded again and again, herding the man back, away from Stiles. It went on. Issac and the other were occupied with the throw away lackeys of the alpha pack out front. It was just the two of them in this fight and they knew it. Up against two full alphas…
Scott screamed in pain, getting Derek’s attention back on the beta now crouched low on the ground, metal pipe through his midsection and scrambling to pull it out, to get up just one more time as Deucalion approached. The older wolf sighed, seeming almost disappointed, but he had claws poised all the same.
Cement dust and building bricks fell around Derek and it took a moment for him refocus on Deucalion while still making sure not to be gutted by Kali. The blind alpha had been thrown clear to the other end of the room, away from Scott, and embedded in the wall. Large glass fragments littered the alpha’s torso, pipes from behind the façade of the building bent in around him. The caved area around him was the perfect impression of a body, something out of Looney Tunes. It was almost comical, the humor in the violence. It was a signature personality trait that Derek knew. Derek blinked blood out of his eyes and looked to the center of the room.
Stiles crouched as low to the ground as Scott, blood still flowing freely from slashed veins, hand shaking where it clenched on the cement, holding himself as upright as he could. Stiles’ face was bloodless, his breathing stilted, eyes wide.
It wasn’t the first time Derek was struck speechless by the human, but it was the first time he was truly afraid. Whatever that was, Stiles had done it.
“Stiles.”
Scott had ripped the pipe from his chest and was slowly moving toward his friend. Deucalion was older though, and a true alpha. He was faster. He had ripped himself out of the impression in the wall and was barreling toward Scott, intent on the kill.
Stiles tried to run to Scott like his legs could still support him, but he just couldn’t, barely holding onto consciousness as it was. He collapsed back to his knees with a panicked cry, useless hand outstretched.
The oldest, strongest alpha Derek knew, stopped, head yanked to the side, dark glasses knocked away. Slash marks opened the flesh on his face, he wasn’t even healing yet as he turned scarred, sightless eyes to Stiles.
Struggling to hold his head up, to not just collapse in his own blood, Stiles stared him down. Deucalion smiled slowly, advancing on the teen.
Derek made an aborted attempt toward them before Kali shook off her own shock and was on him again, clawing at him wherever she could reach. She was all wrath, little finesse now, nothing like before and Derek could win. Except he was going to lose. He could kill her, but Deucalion was going to kill Stiles and Derek would lose.
Stiles was gasping in short breaths. Half-lidded eyes caught Derek’s for only a moment, message clear as Scott screamed and scrambled toward him in blind panic. ‘Get them. Take care of them. Lead them. Don’t let this destroy you.’
Derek roared and turned to Kali. He shook her off, pushed her back, and attacked. This tragedy was happening again because he was too late and he could at least do this. His world narrowed down to one painfully human, taking in every last defiant beat. ‘Don’t watch. Don’t make me watch’.
Derek flung Kali against the wall without giving her time to regain her footing. She slashed deeply into his side, bit into his neck and he flipped her onto her back where he had the advantage he needed. Derek slashed her throat in an even less satisfying parody of his uncle’s first death before she could utter a single word.
He didn’t want to turn around, not for anything. But though he may be condemned to be a failure, he would not be a coward. Turning, he stood in cautiously optimistic shock.
Scott was beside Stiles, grabbing his shoulders, touching his face and calling out; trying to get the teen to focus even as his head lolled against the solidity of the alter behind him and Scott’s own wounds still bled freely.
Deucalion’s head was tilted as he regarded the tall “vet” standing between him and the children.
“Alan.” He had the same infuriatingly knowing smile on his face that had always been, and remained, mirrored on Deaton’s. “I thought you were content to be an observer in these proceedings.”
“Oh, I think you and I know that certain recent…changes have altered that role.” Deucalion’s smile didn’t waver as Morrell appeared behind him. Her expression was more serious than Deaton’s. Though she had no weapon, was not poised to attack, she seemed somehow more dangerous than either of the men. Deucalion moved just enough to signal that he noticed her, but nothing more.
The wolf nodded at the vet, slashes across his face knitting together slowly. Very slowly.
“You’ve gathered the information you desired about your pack, haven’t you? You’re done here?” Derek was tired of being surprised, numb to it. He thought the alphas had been here to recruit him, to pit him and Scott against one another and take back the pick of the litter. But that didn’t seem to be it at all. Deucalion sighed.
“I have.” He tilted toward Kali’s cooling body. “Much went as expected.” He shook his head reproachfully. “Though some…did not.” Only then did Derek notice Ethan at the door to the warehouse. He could sense Danny near, behind him, every line of the younger wolf’s body tensed and ready to defend. Deucalion smiled and it was the first one that Derek didn’t take as a threat or a vengeful promise.
“So with all your goals met…”
“I’ll leave. There won’t be anymore interference from us.” Deaton waved his hand purposefully and Allison, having appeared beside Danny, lowered her bow. Derek noticed the hunters poised in the shadows around them.
Allison had proven herself to them as a capable leader as of late and they would not go against her decision. She was closer than was necessary or safe for an archer. But, a bit older and much wiser, she had complete control over herself to the degree that, had Derek not known that she was vibrating with the desire to run to her lover and his best friend, he never would have noticed.
Deucalion seemed to spare Derek and the boys behind Deaton hardly another thought, not even glancing over as Derek moved closer to his downed pack.
“They’re young. They’re uncoordinated and poorly trained. You have your work cut out for you. Good that you’re not alone.” He wasn’t talking to Deaton anymore and Derek knew it, he just didn’t care. He had moved beside and slightly behind the vet, eyes on Deucalion, but reaching back for the boys pawing through their own blood. “Fire isn’t always something to be feared, Derek. Sometimes, it is necessary. Integral to our very core”.
Deucalion turned to the exit of the warehouse, reaching out his hand for the dark glasses Morrell was handing him and putting them back in place. He nodded at Ethan as he passed, at Aiden who had appeared beside his brother. He stopped for only a moment.
“You are no longer alphas…”
“We’re okay with that.”
“…Good”. And he was truly pleased, no lie in his tone. “You’ll do well.” The last alpha of the invading pack walked out. Past former enemies and new lovers. Past hunters fighting, bleeding for the creatures their kind preyed upon. Past those who’d had their world ripped away and come back stronger for it. He walked away from old bonds and newly discovered strengths. He walked through all of them, calmly, contentedly, through the new pack that would prove stronger than all of them, he was sure.
Pain, loss, made people see things differently, focus on ties that would have been ignored in everyday life. Letting the possibility of who these children could be would have been the true tragedy, to let this potential flare out and die so quickly.
Smiling still, Deucalion liked to think he’d had a hand in preventing that waste of talent. What they made of it now, well…
(The beta with the capacity, but never the desire, to be an alpha’s panicked tone mingled with the steadier, but insistent words, of the true alpha, both calling out the same name.
The name rang out again as a blur of beige and fear ran past Deucalion, gun still smoking in his hand.
He heard the woman, Morrell’s, voice as she worked her way in next to the downed human with all the calm that would surely infuriate their little group time and again.
The twins stood together, watching their humans and trying to work out their role in this new place, their new lives.
The huntress and her father, the tested and battered, but not broken, betas, even the once-dead false alpha, stood firmly between Deucalion and the goings on inside the warehouse; some watching him, some turning inward.
He felt Deaton’s eyes on his back. The man would be playing a new role now, it seemed. Finally gone from guide to teacher now that he’d clearly seen the aptitude, the power in that boy. The wolf thought it about time.
Hands pressed over wounds, unsure and cautious. Dazed eyes lolled to meet red and the fumbling hands turned steady and sure. There was a huff of breath, words too light for even Deucalion to hear if they’d even been truly spoken at all. But it must have been heard by the one it was intended for as the alpha huffed right back at him, something in him loosening.
Fingers covered in the blood of the slain, covered over again in the blood of the one between them all, connecting, curled around a human-fragile neck, settled over a pulse point, settled down, just settled.
Deucalion was not ashamed of the shiver he felt along his spine as the spark flared into a fire that would become so much more, the wolf surged forward, renewed to protect and defend with everything he had. The pack formed and curled and began to overlap in such a way that nothing could slither in between them, into gaps of trust that could have been their downfall before, but simply weren’t there any longer.)
The rest was their business.
Author’s Notes: Not as polished as I’d like, but wanted to get this out there before it was blown out of the water by the premiere.
Things to know for fic: Deucalion is blind, but badass. Deaton and Morrell know more than they’ve ever revealed. Scott and Stiles had a pretty major fallout previous to this, which is based off their future canon fight that brought tears to the cast’s eyes. Aiden was assigned to keep tabs on Lydia, Ethan was told the same for Danny. Erica is dead (still sad) which Boyd was broken up over badly for a long time.
The alpha pack showing up is all about tests; the strength of Derek’s pack and how well they could come together when it mattered, the extent of Stiles’ potential as a ‘spark’ or more, Deauclion was even testing his own pack.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Form or Fall
Aiden looked like he was struggling with himself. Lydia stepped closer.
“Just tell me. Whatever it is-“ She was in love, but she was strong too. “Dammit, Aiden, I swear-“
“They’re going after your friend.” He said it in a rush, eyes closed, forehead resting on hers, like a purge. He seemed torn, in pain, but committed. “He doesn’t know what he is, but they want him. And if they can’t get him on their side…” ‘They’ll kill him.’ He didn’t say but let hang in the air. Lydia was smart. So, so, smart in every way that made him love her, and she was miles ahead. She heard what he hadn’t gotten near yet.
“Stiles.” She told him, didn’t ask. “It’s Stiles.”
He doesn’t have time to nod before she’s spinning away, racing to her part of the relay of information. Aiden doesn’t regret it, this decision, knows his brother has already fallen in the same way he has for the other human, knows that’s marked them already anyway. He just hopes she forgives him-
Delicate hands grips the sides of his face and he starts into the hard kiss. Lydia pulls back, wide eyes on him, shining in tears, in gratitude.
“Thank you.” She breathes and she’s off again. Aiden finally breathes too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Derek is a second ahead of Scott and he breaks the door in, sounds of the others fighting behind them ebbing away in their focus. Derek chokes on a breath.
‘Late. Too late, again. Always too damn late.’ Loops through Derek’s head, flashing back to Erica in the morgue, Boyd broken down from the loss, Issac screaming in pain, Stiles slashed and still and bled out on a fuckin’ alter in the middle of a magic circle with two alphas standing over him.
Kali stands over him with a certain edge to her already feral expression, lips quirked in satisfied triumph. They don’t have time, Derek or Scott, to call out when her hand presses to Stiles’ forehead.
And nothing happens.
Nothing.
The surprise and confusion on her face is satisfying, but never enough to make any of this worth it.
Deucalion just smiles in that knowing way of his at the lack of response, unseeing eyes perpetually hidden behind dark glasses.
“What’s-“
“Power can’t be stolen,” He inclines his head a bit to where he seems to still be looking down at Stiles, but clearly speaking to Kali. “From a true Red.”
Kali’s shock morphs to rage quicker than usual, roaring at the head alpha, but her fangs, her claws are turned to the boy still beneath her.
But Derek and Scott had already heard his heartbeat in the interim of confusion. They felt it and they’ve already moved. Derek lunges and slams her back, both barreling into the solid cement wall, pulling her as far away as he can so-
“Grab him!”
He didn’t need to say it, it just came anyway. Scott was already bowed over Stiles, wolfed out and almost mindless with rage. Whatever difficulties the past few months had put between them, normal growing pains and manipulations of supernatural origin, it was nothing to what they were to each other when it really mattered. Derek knew that. And he knew Scott couldn’t have been any more vicious, any more eager to hurt and punish and watch something bleed than if it had been Allison lying there so still.
The golden-eyed pseudo alpha put his body all into it as he blocked the unnaturally quick attack of Deucalion, took every bit of the blow and rolled with it, making sure to bring the man with him. ‘Away, away, get him away’, seemed to be the common thread between Derek and Scott at the moment. Good. It was more, it was better, than anything Derek had hoped for in the last few years of dealing with the teenagers. They were completely on the same wavelength.
“I’ll kill you!” Kali seemed too off balance, too confused by recent revelations to come up with her usual, admittedly intelligent, banter. That was fine with Derek. He grinned at her, all teeth, and said nothing as they rushed one another.
Deucalion was, predictably, quiet as Scott raged at him. He rolled and bit and rebounded again and again, herding the man back, away from Stiles. It went on. Issac and the other were occupied with the throw away lackeys of the alpha pack out front. It was just the two of them in this fight and they knew it. Up against two full alphas…
Scott screamed in pain, getting Derek’s attention back on the beta now crouched low on the ground, metal pipe through his midsection and scrambling to pull it out, to get up just one more time as Deucalion approached. The older wolf sighed, seeming almost disappointed, but he had claws poised all the same.
Cement dust and building bricks fell around Derek and it took a moment for him refocus on Deucalion while still making sure not to be gutted by Kali. The blind alpha had been thrown clear to the other end of the room, away from Scott, and embedded in the wall. Large glass fragments littered the alpha’s torso, pipes from behind the façade of the building bent in around him. The caved area around him was the perfect impression of a body, something out of Looney Tunes. It was almost comical, the humor in the violence. It was a signature personality trait that Derek knew. Derek blinked blood out of his eyes and looked to the center of the room.
Stiles crouched as low to the ground as Scott, blood still flowing freely from slashed veins, hand shaking where it clenched on the cement, holding himself as upright as he could. Stiles’ face was bloodless, his breathing stilted, eyes wide.
It wasn’t the first time Derek was struck speechless by the human, but it was the first time he was truly afraid. Whatever that was, Stiles had done it.
“Stiles.”
Scott had ripped the pipe from his chest and was slowly moving toward his friend. Deucalion was older though, and a true alpha. He was faster. He had ripped himself out of the impression in the wall and was barreling toward Scott, intent on the kill.
Stiles tried to run to Scott like his legs could still support him, but he just couldn’t, barely holding onto consciousness as it was. He collapsed back to his knees with a panicked cry, useless hand outstretched.
The oldest, strongest alpha Derek knew, stopped, head yanked to the side, dark glasses knocked away. Slash marks opened the flesh on his face, he wasn’t even healing yet as he turned scarred, sightless eyes to Stiles.
Struggling to hold his head up, to not just collapse in his own blood, Stiles stared him down. Deucalion smiled slowly, advancing on the teen.
Derek made an aborted attempt toward them before Kali shook off her own shock and was on him again, clawing at him wherever she could reach. She was all wrath, little finesse now, nothing like before and Derek could win. Except he was going to lose. He could kill her, but Deucalion was going to kill Stiles and Derek would lose.
Stiles was gasping in short breaths. Half-lidded eyes caught Derek’s for only a moment, message clear as Scott screamed and scrambled toward him in blind panic. ‘Get them. Take care of them. Lead them. Don’t let this destroy you.’
Derek roared and turned to Kali. He shook her off, pushed her back, and attacked. This tragedy was happening again because he was too late and he could at least do this. His world narrowed down to one painfully human, taking in every last defiant beat. ‘Don’t watch. Don’t make me watch’.
Derek flung Kali against the wall without giving her time to regain her footing. She slashed deeply into his side, bit into his neck and he flipped her onto her back where he had the advantage he needed. Derek slashed her throat in an even less satisfying parody of his uncle’s first death before she could utter a single word.
He didn’t want to turn around, not for anything. But though he may be condemned to be a failure, he would not be a coward. Turning, he stood in cautiously optimistic shock.
Scott was beside Stiles, grabbing his shoulders, touching his face and calling out; trying to get the teen to focus even as his head lolled against the solidity of the alter behind him and Scott’s own wounds still bled freely.
Deucalion’s head was tilted as he regarded the tall “vet” standing between him and the children.
“Alan.” He had the same infuriatingly knowing smile on his face that had always been, and remained, mirrored on Deaton’s. “I thought you were content to be an observer in these proceedings.”
“Oh, I think you and I know that certain recent…changes have altered that role.” Deucalion’s smile didn’t waver as Morrell appeared behind him. Her expression was more serious than Deaton’s. Though she had no weapon, was not poised to attack, she seemed somehow more dangerous than either of the men. Deucalion moved just enough to signal that he noticed her, but nothing more.
The wolf nodded at the vet, slashes across his face knitting together slowly. Very slowly.
“You’ve gathered the information you desired about your pack, haven’t you? You’re done here?” Derek was tired of being surprised, numb to it. He thought the alphas had been here to recruit him, to pit him and Scott against one another and take back the pick of the litter. But that didn’t seem to be it at all. Deucalion sighed.
“I have.” He tilted toward Kali’s cooling body. “Much went as expected.” He shook his head reproachfully. “Though some…did not.” Only then did Derek notice Ethan at the door to the warehouse. He could sense Danny near, behind him, every line of the younger wolf’s body tensed and ready to defend. Deucalion smiled and it was the first one that Derek didn’t take as a threat or a vengeful promise.
“So with all your goals met…”
“I’ll leave. There won’t be anymore interference from us.” Deaton waved his hand purposefully and Allison, having appeared beside Danny, lowered her bow. Derek noticed the hunters poised in the shadows around them.
Allison had proven herself to them as a capable leader as of late and they would not go against her decision. She was closer than was necessary or safe for an archer. But, a bit older and much wiser, she had complete control over herself to the degree that, had Derek not known that she was vibrating with the desire to run to her lover and his best friend, he never would have noticed.
Deucalion seemed to spare Derek and the boys behind Deaton hardly another thought, not even glancing over as Derek moved closer to his downed pack.
“They’re young. They’re uncoordinated and poorly trained. You have your work cut out for you. Good that you’re not alone.” He wasn’t talking to Deaton anymore and Derek knew it, he just didn’t care. He had moved beside and slightly behind the vet, eyes on Deucalion, but reaching back for the boys pawing through their own blood. “Fire isn’t always something to be feared, Derek. Sometimes, it is necessary. Integral to our very core”.
Deucalion turned to the exit of the warehouse, reaching out his hand for the dark glasses Morrell was handing him and putting them back in place. He nodded at Ethan as he passed, at Aiden who had appeared beside his brother. He stopped for only a moment.
“You are no longer alphas…”
“We’re okay with that.”
“…Good”. And he was truly pleased, no lie in his tone. “You’ll do well.” The last alpha of the invading pack walked out. Past former enemies and new lovers. Past hunters fighting, bleeding for the creatures their kind preyed upon. Past those who’d had their world ripped away and come back stronger for it. He walked away from old bonds and newly discovered strengths. He walked through all of them, calmly, contentedly, through the new pack that would prove stronger than all of them, he was sure.
Pain, loss, made people see things differently, focus on ties that would have been ignored in everyday life. Letting the possibility of who these children could be would have been the true tragedy, to let this potential flare out and die so quickly.
Smiling still, Deucalion liked to think he’d had a hand in preventing that waste of talent. What they made of it now, well…
(The beta with the capacity, but never the desire, to be an alpha’s panicked tone mingled with the steadier, but insistent words, of the true alpha, both calling out the same name.
The name rang out again as a blur of beige and fear ran past Deucalion, gun still smoking in his hand.
He heard the woman, Morrell’s, voice as she worked her way in next to the downed human with all the calm that would surely infuriate their little group time and again.
The twins stood together, watching their humans and trying to work out their role in this new place, their new lives.
The huntress and her father, the tested and battered, but not broken, betas, even the once-dead false alpha, stood firmly between Deucalion and the goings on inside the warehouse; some watching him, some turning inward.
He felt Deaton’s eyes on his back. The man would be playing a new role now, it seemed. Finally gone from guide to teacher now that he’d clearly seen the aptitude, the power in that boy. The wolf thought it about time.
Hands pressed over wounds, unsure and cautious. Dazed eyes lolled to meet red and the fumbling hands turned steady and sure. There was a huff of breath, words too light for even Deucalion to hear if they’d even been truly spoken at all. But it must have been heard by the one it was intended for as the alpha huffed right back at him, something in him loosening.
Fingers covered in the blood of the slain, covered over again in the blood of the one between them all, connecting, curled around a human-fragile neck, settled over a pulse point, settled down, just settled.
Deucalion was not ashamed of the shiver he felt along his spine as the spark flared into a fire that would become so much more, the wolf surged forward, renewed to protect and defend with everything he had. The pack formed and curled and began to overlap in such a way that nothing could slither in between them, into gaps of trust that could have been their downfall before, but simply weren’t there any longer.)
The rest was their business.