His blood boiled, looking at the printed image in his hands; his daughter had explained, at length, what it was, what it did (what it had done to her) – a spell.

Derek had come with her, unwilling, as ever, to leave her side so long as he could prevent it – John wondered when, or if, the young man would ever act on the broadcasted emotions that were apparently obvious to everyone but the intended target. But then, Stiles had always been somewhat oblivious concerning all those things of good nature that would fall into her lap.

(She was very much like her father in that regard.)

And while personally she had been somewhat hesitant to talk in detail about her reaction to the supposed graffiti, the werewolf had had no such inhibitions: he'd informed the Sherriff about the incident of that afternoon while admirably ignoring the poignant glares of his daughter. John knew that she didn't want him to worry, but he was her father, her only parent, and he was in law enforcement.

"Look, I can file this as public vandalism and have my Deputies keep their eyes out for it." He soothed, hoping to alleviate both her worry and her indignance towards the young man. "We'll be able to cover it up more quickly and none of us will have to worry about The Supernatural getting stuck in the middle of the road – I honestly think that's a plus."

She'd huffed, of course, but hadn't argued.

Naturally, however, the perpetrators themselves hadn't come up; while his department dutifully scanned the town and communicated the located graffiti, they'd never had chance to find one in the making – and if he was completely frank it made him uneasy.

Because considering the fact that his daughter had, not too long ago, been targeted by a warlock and this was a spell- In his experience as a Sherriff two plus two equalled four and it really wasn't that much of a stretch; which is why he invited himself – and the rest of the inaugurated adults – to one of the pack meetings to voice his suspicion.

Surprisingly enough, he earned himself nods of agreement.

"I considered the same thing." The Martin-girl, Lydia, spoke up, fiddling with a beaded bracelet around her wrist as she chewed her lip. "When The Flittering Fellow was inspected before closure Phanes was nowhere to be found…"

Stiles groaned, plopping her head onto the backrest of the couch, dropping her forearms onto her face. "His head was bashed in." she groaned empathically. "Do you even know the kind of power it would require to return him to his former glory?"

The pack looked uneasy; his daughter lowered her arms, staring at the grey ceiling.

"There would have to be a group of them. At least three and a power source strong enough to restore a life." She hesitated for a moment. "And for that, the source would have to be fed life…"

"Quid Pro Quo." Allison Argent muttered; face paler than usually (if Isaac huddled closer to her side the pack acted as if it went unnoticed).

Again silence settled over the small crowd, the parents included; John took up the parole, gathering intel and putting it into action – a trait disciplined by his work.

"So there's a group of sickos that obviously want someone to be stuck permanently – or at least temporarily enough for what: capture?"

Stiles nodded. Derek sighed.

"Can we just assume that we should protect the pack to the best of our current abilities?" he suggested then, feeling the unease of the parents. "We don't know what we're up against, but as a conglomerate of supernatural creatures maybe we should-"

"It's not the supernatural creatures." Stiles interrupted, sitting up – his daughter had been struck with a sudden epiphany, he could tell; so he stopped. "Remember," she continued, "the pack was able to move freely."

At this, the youths nodded. "But I was stuck." -again: nods. Stiles continued: "Also, neither of The Supernatural who passed the graffiti on the street were as stuck as I was, as proven by Parrish."

His second, one of the patrols who'd been busy finding and eliminating the accursed graffiti, nodded hesitantly.

Derek, apparently catching up to his daughter glared at the picture in their middle. "It's not targeting Superanturals." He concluded. "It's targeting you."

Stiles hung her head. "As much as I dislike it, that would seem to be the case."

"So what?" Scott snorted, half-heartedly trying to cover up his nerves. "We lock you up and be done with it?" – Stiles shot him a look, but, unable to reach him, contended herself with watching as Cora thumped him on the back of his head.

"That might be precisely what they want." She countered. "I'd be a sitting duck. Not to forget the fact that I'd miss school for an indefinite period."

Her best friend pouted, eyes growing to heighten the effect of a full-blown McCall-puppy-look – Melissa shook her head at her son. Stiles rolled her eyes.

It was Derek who plunged into planning a security rotation around Stiles, which wasn't debated by anyone – not even Chris – and because his daughter was a little Geek they conceded on a double-helix-system for a password; he was amazed at how quickly she found a solution and came to the conclusion that she must have thought about it for a long time just in case a situation like this would come up; she'd always liked to be prepared for the oddest moments.

"It's easy." She'd beamed. "We go forwards in the alphabet, and repeat once 26 letters have been gone through, and change every few days going say: by prime-numbers."

Even he had to think for a moment.

"So what: day two is B and day three is C and then?", Derek tried to clarify, making an effort to wrap his head around the way that Stiles' brain sometimes seemed to jump from one place to another.

"And day five is D, day seven is E, et cetera.", his daughter elaborated enthusiastically and so they'd agreed to it (although he was convinced that the pack would be coming to their Alpha for clarification later).

He'd have scoffed at it, if it hadn't saved her ass mere days into their protective rotation.

Chris had come to fetch both Allison and Stiles for school, effortlessly giving the right answer when questioned about the Double Helix – Derek was convinced that Stiles' Mystery Aficionado had come through and danced a little jig every time she could ask The Question – and had been off with his two pack-members with a nod towards him.

Derek even had to admit that, while his wolf still demanded he be as close to his ma- anchor as possible throughout the day, it was mollified by the cloak-and-dagger approach, the slyness of their m- pack-member and the decoy; it felt a little more secure.

Until Stiles didn't return.

"Hey Stiles." Melissa looked harried in her usual scrubs, the keys safely encased in her loose fist waiting in front of the old Sedan. "I'm sorry to stress you, but there was a pile-up on 115 – I have just the time to drop you off; you okay with a short-cut?"

She nodded because: of course she was okay with that. Melissa had always been a much-demanded nurse at the hospital and she was damn lucky that there had been someone to pick her up when Harris had mysteriously fallen ill that afternoon; leaving the pack to find an impromptu chauffeur amongst themselves.

Melissa was already pulling out of the parking lot when Stiles' brain caught up with her: "What's the Double Helix?" she asked casually as she snapped her safety-belt across her chest.

"A helix or spiral consisting of two strands in the surface of a cylinder that coil around its axis; especially: the structural arrangement of DNA in space that consists of paired polynucleotide strands stabilized by cross-links between purine and pyrimidine bases."

Stiles' heart stopped.

Because not only did Melissa – or whoever impersonated her – look and act as if that was the actual answer, that was also the verbatim definition of the double-helix, courtesy of Merriam-Webster and the high-schooler knew she was screwed, corkscrewed, duck-vagina-screwed.

She swallowed. "Oh,", she tattled, hoping to keep the nerves out of her voice, "I just wondered. Finstock was honestly exhausting today, kept on jumping from one subject to another."

At this, the alleged nurse smirked a little, shooting her a lookthrough the rear-view-mirror. "Sounds familiar."

And that was that; this was proof, Stiles thought darkly – because while the implication was correct and Stiles herself sometimes jumped from one subject to another, babbling without filter, Melissa would have never called her out on it; never had and probably never would.

Forcing herself to calm down, Stiles reached within herself discreetly starting to tug at the strands that her Spark emitted, collecting it towards her centre and balling it up – she didn't have an actual plan when it came to this; they hadn't assumed that someone would try to outright kidnap Stiles, but she had a vague idea about what she wanted to do.

It was dangerous, because while she'd read about it, she'd never before even attempted it. The literature was a little bit vague about the practice, too, which, seriously, did not help at all – but: hypothetically, she knew what she was doing.

"Yeah,", she agreed instead, smiling a little depreciatively, "you know me. Big mouth gotta be good for something."

'Melissa' didn't answer to that, and made a show of concentrating on traffic that, would they have headed down-town, they would have never encountered – if Stiles would have been waiting for it, this would have been Strike Three, but the imposter had already been outed by Strike One, because Stiles liked her life and didn't necessarily want to put it on the line.

Her spark sizzled within her core, burning brighter than it had in a while, all bunched up inside her – it was waiting, quite literally too, for the magic to happen because all that Stiles had to do now was say the word and it would.

But she wasn't quite ready yet, forced herself into a deep-breathing-mechanism instead, the breath of fire, as it was called in yoga, fuelling her spark just that little bit more – seeing it enlarge in front of her inner eye, believing in it.

Taking one last breath, she clutched her school-bag to herself, envisioning her father's front porch – it was closer to where they were currently situated and, with a decisive, mental nod, she closed her eyes.

Trag mich fort

The ball of light within her exploded blindingly outwards, uncoiling from within and siphoning through her pores in a mad rush that left her dizzy and unfocused for the blink of a second before she regained her mental facilities and pictured, with the inborn stubbornness of the Stilinski family, her family home – the doorway that needed a new paint-job, the porch that was practically overgrown by herbs no one had tended to ever since the demise of her mother, the windows to their kitchen.

"Stiles?"

She awoke to the feeling of gravel underneath her, stones digging into her cheek and hands, dirt cloying up her airways – bleary and still dizzy, she willed her eyes to open, glad beyond words to be welcomed by the worried face of her father. Her suicidal plan had worked out.

As the pack flooded through the door to the Stilinskis' home, Derek didn't even bother to regulate the spike of worry ricocheting through their connections, bouncing and looping back through the small group. Stiles was perched onto the couch in the living room huddled into a camel-hair blanket looking as pale as the day they'd managed to pluck her from Phanes' fingers.

Neither Lydia nor Isaac waited to greet the Sherriff before they dropped their bags and poured onto the couch, next to Stiles – he wasn't surprised to hear his Beta's whine; nor when the rest of the pack followed swift, leaving but him and the Sherriff to look on.

Despite the fact that he felt the need to be as close to her as possible as acutely as any other member of the pack – maybe even more so (because she was his) – he stayed where he was; today had been too close for comfort, and John Stilinski, too, was pack. The extended version, maybe, but he still was and it was Derek's mission to soothe him just as it was his obligation to let the pack soothe each other in Stiles' presence.

He didn't ask the man if he was alright – he didn't need to, in order to know that he really wasn't.

Stiles was everything he had and after his daughter had been missing for a month, she'd almost been kidnapped despite their common efforts to avoid such a situation.

"They took Melissa's shape." The Sherriff informed him quietly – Derek didn't doubt that the pack was listening in, but right now he didn't focus on them; he turned to look at John. "I've sent Chris to the hospital; he's found her drugged up in a supply closet. She's alright and I've asked them to get over here – don't really want them apart right now."

As a wolf, and an Alpha, he could sympathise with the feeling of duty – knew, too, that the Sherriff felt responsible for the safety of those he could protect, namely the parents; and especially Melissa. Chris Argent was a hunter and had experience with these kinds of things, knew how to wiggle out of a tight spot, but Scott's mother was a nurse, always had been, and for her to be in danger meant a red flare on the Sherriff's warning board.

Scott mumbled something akin to Thanks, but didn't dare to move from where he'd curled around Stiles' feet.

That night, for the first night, Derek allowed himself to join the pile-up on Stiles' bed. The mattress was barely large enough to fit them all, but the pack was determined and, after a lot of shifting around – this including the bed itself – the seven-head-worth of Betas had managed to somewhat comfortably arrange themselves in the tight space.

Wanting in on the action without taking away too much space – which he would have as a human, given the fact that he was indisputably the tallest – he shifted into his lupine form, shuffling underneath their heads in favour of the pillows which were promptly evicted.

(When the parental triumvirate checked later through the open door, they forewent any comments on the pack's positioning – John Stilinski even went as far as to close it behind them.)

Could he have gotten away with it, Derek would have constantly orbited around Stiles following the incident; he would have made himself the Sputnik to her earth – but he knew that either Scott or Lydia would have a stern word with him, if the Spark in question herself didn't zap him a hundred ways from Thursday first.

So instead of giving in to the howling and chafing of the wolf in the back of his mind, Derek ran – if he just so happened to patrol her way to school, or even the surroundings of her house, or Scott's, or the hospital's… well, they were all within pack-territory and as a good Alpha it was his duty to uphold security within the boundaries to the best of his abilities.

The graffiti stopped turning up randomly and instead appeared more often than not strategically placed at spots Stiles would frequent on a regular basis: the corner of the grocery shop with the regional produce where she bought the ingredients for meals with her father, the door to her favourite diner with the allegedly best curly fries in the whole county, the bleachers of the field where she attended Lacrosse-practice at least three out of six days a week – the possibilities, it turned out, were just as endless and unpredictable as they had been before; with the difference that she was now a lot more susceptible to fall for the trap.

Not, granted, that it had happened.

After two close calls, the woman in question had adapted the rather inconvenient, but effective, method of sending her friends out to scout the perimeters and report back to her whether or not it would be safe for her.

Despite its' efficiency, however, it did not lessen the aggravation caused by the spell: it came to a head when Stiles had to restrain her bladder for a whole day due to said strategically placed graffiti being found at each and every lavatory – needless to say the Spark was livid.

On his part, Derek turned to delivering her preferred produce to her door, some from the grocery shop, some directly from nearby farmers; transforming her lonely evenings of Netflix and Chips into almost-pack-nights with at least Scott and Lydia present, joined irregularly by either Isaac or Allison, sometimes even himself. When they found the graffiti on her jeep after a day at high school he took to picking her up from home and getting her safely to school – Scott usually an additional fixture in the Camaro (the pack's Spark was clever enough to not enter a car alone again).

All in all, he came close to orbiting around her and his wolf seemed to think that his behaviour got (dangerously) close to courting. He had to, repeatedly, explain – to himself! – that this was not the time for such things, that there was danger around them.

And while the animal within him agreed – could smell the tenseness in his ma- anchor and could feel, much more acutely than his human side, the malicious intent that swept through the dark streets of Beacon Hills at night, snarling with the night like a pack of ill-bred Hounds – it was yet convinced that Stiles needed stability, and that they would be the perfect pillar of strength for the spark.

Derek never disagreed, he just… couldn't – not now, not with the way things were.

She still woke from nightmares of her time at The Flittering Fellow and, sometimes, even ignored the calling of sleep altogether.

It was a Tuesday when they attacked.

A horde of cloaked ghouls swept from the top of Beacon Hills High School like ink-drops – no regard for the non-supernatural, no care for the rest of the world; bottomless pits where their faces should be, barely surmountable in a fight.

Scott swiped panicky at a cloak coming too close to Stiles, placed behind him in a triangle completed by Allison and Isaac, who threw around spells like it was candy, setting aflame those that stood far enough away and pushing those that came close too quickly for either of her defendants to react in an appropriate time-frame away in a gust of wind and power. Derek had swooped in the moment he'd seen the first cloak spill from the roof of the school, but even he was overtaxed with his offenders coming at him three at a time.

Desperately he tore at the cloth, hoping to find a clue in the frenzy on how to unravel the creatures that seemed to multiply by the second.

Steht

Around them, the world froze – the pack included – and Derek couldn't help the frantic uptake of his heartbeat when he realized that, while the ghouls themselves, too, were tied to the spot, Stiles was now alone in the midst of a horde of people, mostly consisting of enemies.

"What is it you want?" she ground out, hand fishing for something in the duffel-bag hanging her side.

Derek had made her carry it in case she needed some of her more extracurricular ingredients while out of the loft – he was very glad, now, he'd imposed his will on her on that point; it might be impractical to carry both duffel and backpack, but she could have her quick fix whenever she needed it.

A dry rasp broke through his reverie and the Alpha was horrified to find that the scraping noise hurt his ears.

We need. -came the answer.

Stiles pulled a disgruntled face, obviously not finding what she was reaching for, but unwilling to tear her head away from her opponents. "Fine then, what do you need?" she spat – her rummaging turned slightly violent.

Need the town's Chosen.

"Ugh!" the young woman groaned and didn't even bother to hide her exasperation as she threw both hands in the air. "What is that supposed to fucking mean?!"

A pause in the dialogue suggested that the speaker was not used to this kind of employed language – but then, this was Stiles, she'd grown up at the station surrounded by a well-meaning but ultimately rough crowd; if she really got into it her language could obtain colours that made sailors blush with envy.

The Nemeton has chosen.

That he understood – finally – and, yes, it made sense, sort of, that the sole magical creature tied to Beacon Hills sought out what it considered the only other magical source of the place. And while Deaton might have been stronger as a Druid, he was not tied to Beacon Hills; not since the Hale Fire and consequent demise of Alpha Talia Hale, as well as the passing of Alpha Laura Hale.

Stiles hand, once again vanished in her duffel, clenched around something, muscles bunching almost inconceivably.

"So you need me to- what? Talk to a tree? Walk on water? Make it rain men?"

Derek flinched, his face forced into a stony façade by the spell that Stiles had hastily put them under – the spark tended to put herself into situations with her acid tongue; despite the fact that it, too, usually enabled her to suss out a lot more intel from Big Bads than either of their pack could. Something about her tone continuously challenged people, as if she were questioning their whole existence, that made them defensive and – thereby – rather talkative.

We need the chosen to unlock the Nemeton.

The spark did not answer and Derek couldn't turn his head to see her face clearly; he thought he could see a furrow, although he couldn't be certain – but he knew, had been told, endlessly, that the Nemeton's powers were not to be trifled with; that there was a reason it had been given to the forest to protect, and not to humanoid creatures.

Finally Stiles found her voice again. "Yeah… well, what do we say to Death?" she paused, pulling a handful of vials out of the duffel-bag. "Not today."

With as much drama as she could muster, she flung the vials out, one into every direction she could see a cloak whipping in the wind.

Geht frei -the pack moved.

"So, correct me if I am wrong – and I cannot tell you how much I pray that I am – but the Nemeton is the local power source?" Stiles pulled her hands through her hair. "It's the reason why Beacon Hills actually is a beacon to supernatural creatures, because that stupid fucking tree is putting up Neon-Signals like it's out of style."

The Alpha's mouth pulled tight as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "The Nemeton also sustains the regional eco-system." He defended. "Its mere presence lowers the likelihood of societal instability, infertility or child-death as well as schizophrenia in humanity alone, just to name a few. And that is ignoring the well-fare of the flora as well as the fauna surrounding Beacon Hills."

Stiles threw her hands up into the air, tilting her head in frustration. "Yes! Forgive me for overlooking the stellar CV of a tree that lives of dead people!"

Her screech almost hurt – almost (he had grown accustomed to a certain noise level from Stiles by now). She looked sheepish all the same when he flinched – abruptly halting her tirade and, by proxy, deflating; the wind out of her sails.

"Look, I know it's largely a good thing that somewhere in those woods there's a tree that feeds of the… unalive and severe degenerates of our society -societies, and I also know that it's a good thing that Beacon Hills can be a haven for supernatural creatures. I just-"

"-don't want to be the go-to-person for the carnivorous guardian you have had no idea about until four hours ago?"

The Spark smirked half-heartedly, nodding softly. "Something like that." She answered as she kneaded her fingers through her hair, again. It was getting longer, almost bordering on shoulder-long by now and she'd been whining about getting it cut in the near future – personally he thought it befit her, not too short to look boyish, but not too long to be considering a girly-girl (just the perfect mixture of Stiles).

He shrugged – always bad at comforting people – "It's not that bad." He tried and promptly provoked a cocked brow asking him silently how it could possibly be worse – Derek floundered for a second. "You could already be caught with no idea what's going on." And yeah, that was weak but… it was also true.

The Spark shook her head, turning her head to stare at the far-away ceiling of the loft. "I don't know." She resigned. "This is one serious clusterfuck that we've found ourselves in – once again I might add. I don't… I don't want this… this twisted kind of attention. I'm really fine with fighting on the side-lines…" her sentence tapered off into nothing, leaving Derek with an air of helplessness that he wished he could erase from her; that left him wishing he would not be such a coward and just embrace her; just-

"What's that saying: You can't have your cake and eat it too?"

Stiles snorted – always a weakness for cliché and therefor ultimately bad come-backs; she was surprised to hear one from him (she had rubbed off on him admittedly). He raised his shoulders in a Gallic shrug a 'What-can-you-do'-mine on his face, fighting the urge to initiate some – any – kind of physical contact.

Stiles dove into research like a woman possessed, Lydia – ever loyal – by her side and came up with-

"Nada. Zilch. Bloody, fucking well nothing." The Spark growled, close to tearing her hair out judged by the forceful grip she had on her locks.

He'd held back for what felt like years now so he didn't even bother to check himself when he reached up to untangle her fingers from the mess that she'd made of her hair, smoothing it over and keeping one of her limbs in his. He wanted to tell her that she needed to be patient, that the Nemeton was an old creature that had been forgotten ages ago. He also knew that this would not help however and so he just squeezed her hand.

"It's like… everything about it has been swallowed up."

Which-

"Actually kind of makes sense." The petite continued, looking at Derek without entirely seeing him; it was, he'd noticed, a unanimous trait the women in his pack shared whenever a case-breaking thought caught their attention.

Her eyes re-focussed. "Because if I were a bunch of megalomaniacs trying to unlock a power-source I had no business tampering with I'd want to keep possible adversaries as blind, dumb and deaf as possible."

Derek sighed, his frustration tainting the sound with a growl – Stiles offered him a commiserating, if half-hearted, smirk.

"We're probably lucky your mother bothered to tell you about it in the first place."

Had it been anyone else, the wolf would have felt odd at the mention of his mother, but Stiles… she had a special place, a pedestal that she'd managed to smuggle through his defences and plonked down in the centre of his everything as if she'd been part of the Sextet to raise the American Flag on Mount Suribachi (he did feel a little conquered). He couldn't complain even if he'd wanted to.

(Not that his wolf had any desire to protest against who it considered its' mate…)

He hummed in response, rubbing his thumb over the raw backs of her knuckles. "Your father called, by the way." He started. "Apparently he hasn't seen neither hide nor hair of you for the last four days…"

And while he held back the 'Care to explain' he knew that she could hear it in his voice – proven right when she pulled a guilty moue, her shoulders pulling up. (But her hand still in his)

"This was kind of… priority?"

She didn't even sound too certain – Derek shook his head, reluctantly letting go of her hand, chasing the warmth of her touch involuntarily. "Your family should be priority, Stiles. You know that."

The thing was – she did; back when he'd brought Cora along despite her not really fitting in with Beacon Hills the back-then-not-yet-spark had been the only one to tolerate the Beta, even if she didn't get along with the abrasive nature of his sister. But never once had she tried to tell Derek off for allowing Cora in.

So… yeah, he was pretty certain that she was the only one who knew of the utmost importance of family, the only one who could comprehend his insistence on it.

Stiles didn't even bother to hide the waft of embarrassment emitting from her as she hunched her shoulders even higher.

"Can't really stay away from the pack either." She answered so softly he wasn't certain he could have picked it up weren't it for his super-human senses.

Well… put like that…

"How about pack-breakfast at yours tomorrow." He proposed then. "I'll buy."—added hastily. "And your father and Melissa and… Chris if he… wants to… can come by too."

The Spark smirked a little brazenly at him. "That hurt didn't it?"

"Shut up."

Derek made good on his promise and, at the ungodly hour of seven o'clock – sharp – on a freaking Sunday (mostly Stiles' words) knocked on the red front door of the Stilinski home, arms filled with paper-bags.

Stiles was the one to open, dishevelled bedhead, Superman-shirt and sleep shorts complete with woollen over-the-knee-socks indicating that she'd just stood up herself – if the cup of coffee itself wouldn't have sufficed for clarification. She ushered him in without a word, herding him towards the kitchen as if she were the one with canine tendencies instead of him – Derek had learned to know better when it came to a barely-awake-Stiles Stilinski than to attempt anything else but to adhere.

Which was how he found himself turning pancakes not thirty minutes later; the still mostly mute Spark beating the batter while the pack assembled around the table – the parents included, but equally silent. It struck him then that this was… nice.

He hadn't had a morning like this in ages; a calm morning preparing breakfast for his pack, all of them assembled, their scent mingling and permeating – he'd missed this.

The window explodes.

Stood at the stove he barely even has the time to react to the shards sailing through the air, before a shrill, deafening, sound forces him on his knees – hands over his ears. He can't stand the sheer volume of it and it feels as if the glass was trying to get under his skin, into his blood.

But when he forces his eyes to open, he sees that while the pack fares similarly to him, even the humans seem to be impaired – differently maybe, for they are stuck to their seats, frozen mid-movement as if Stiles had commanded them.

His eyes whizz over the crowd, ice settling in his veins and over his heart – because Stiles is nowhere to be seen.

Double Helix
www. merriam-webster dictionary/ double %20 helix

Trag mich fort: German for 'Carry me Away'

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