A/N: This fic was inspired by the tag 'there is no lycan review board' used by moirariordan. Because there should be! Really!

In any case, this fic can best be summed up thusly: the alpha pack doesn't think a human can be an alpha. Shit goes down.

Chapter One

Stiles eyes are fixed on the clock in the chemistry classroom, which is not particularly unusual, but it has added weight today. It's the last day of school. He finished his final exam five minutes ago, although Scott and Isaac are both still scribbling. Lydia is examining her nails. Erica is popping her gum and occasionally filling out an answer; he hasn't been able to convince her to care about her grades very much. Allison is playing with her hair. Jackson is staring out the window. Stiles takes a minute to rejoice in the fact that he won't have to see Jackson for at least two months. There are eight minutes left of class. Eight agonizing, eternal minutes. Harris won't let them leave after they're finished, like almost all the other teachers do, and he won't let them take out their phones or books in case they're helping someone else cheat. In short, Harris is being a douche, and Stiles is buzzed on Adderall because an entire day of tests is something akin to the fifth level of hell for him.

He wants out of the room so badly he can taste it. The windows are shut, despite the fact that it's a gorgeous day, again because Harris is a douche. He doesn't like being in rooms with closed windows. He wants out, wants to go to Derek's and run in the woods, play lacrosse and just generally behave like a maniac. The full moon is approaching, and he's feeling the effects.

Finally, after an eternity, the bell rings. "Pencils down," Harris snaps, as if everyone wasn't already trying to flee the room, done with their test or not. Scott heaves a gusty sigh. He's managed to bring his grade up to a B minus, but he still has a lot riding on this final.

They turn in their papers as they file out of the room. Stiles looks directly at Harris, gives him a huge smile, and says, "You have a great summer, Mr. Harris." He loves creeping the chemistry teacher out. It's one of the highlights of his day.

The pack congregates on the front steps of the school. Jackson shoulders past them, scowling on his way out to his sporty little car. Stiles is not at all perturbed by this, because he finds Jackson hilarious these days. The guy just doesn't take disappointment well. He and Scott have a private goal to become co-captains of the lacrosse team next year and unseat Jackson entirely. If they're lucky, his head will explode.

"So, what's going on this summer?" Erica asks, twining her fingers through Stiles' as they walk through the parking lot.

"I'm going to be working some extra hours," Scott says. "Dr. Deaton's going to put me on full shifts four days a week." He sounds excited, which is good. If they get his grades high enough, his dream of being a veterinarian isn't too far away. He's already the unofficial pack medic.

"I'm working, too," Isaac says. "Part-time doing construction down at the new elementary school they're building."

"Careful with a job like that," Stiles says. "Don't get too wolfy."

Isaac nods. "I'll be careful. What about you, are you working?"

"Psssh, no," Stiles says. "Got to enjoy these halcyon days of youth!"

"You know, originally," Lydia says, "halcyon days meant 'days without storms', so in saying that you've probably jinxed us for the entire summer."

"It can't be a jinx if I didn't know about it," Stiles says.

Lydia just raises her eyebrows at him.

"Aw, hell," Stiles mutters, slumping.

Allison clears her throat and says, "My dad is talking about taking a two-week trip to visit France in July," she says, "but other than that, I don't have any plans."

"That'll suck," Erica said. Allison nods and shrugs a little, because there's not much she can do about it. "Well, my goal for this summer is to seduce Stiles," she says.

"What are you going to do with the other twenty-three hours and fifty-eight minutes of the day?" Stiles asks, swinging their hands back and forth.

Erica laughs and bumps her hip against his. He slings his arm around her shoulders as they make their way over to his Jeep, which is parked next to Allison's car. "See you guys back at Derek's," he says, getting behind the wheel. Lydia climbs into the back. Scott and Isaac ride with Allison. There's the usual wait to get out of the school parking lot, and then they're home free.

The last day of school/first afternoon of summer demands celebration, and Lydia is very good at planning celebrations. She's already talked to her parents about having friends over that evening. Her mother is going on a day trip to Los Angeles and seemingly couldn't care less. Lydia's is the best place for a party because she has a pool. So does Derek's apartment complex, but it's always crowded with people. But Lydia's mother isn't leaving until six, so they've decided to hang out at Derek's for a little while first.

Scott and Isaac are always hungry, so they raid Derek's fridge and play Diablo and argue about who gets the controllers. They're so invested in it that they almost don't hear the knock on the door. Derek gets up from where he's sketching and goes over to answer it. The minute he opens it, Stiles fumbles and drops his controller, his head twisting around to see what's upset him so much.

The woman standing there is tall, with dusky skin and long dark hair. She's beautiful, gorgeous even, and carries the confident sexuality that only a werewolf carries. "Well, well," she says, in a low, throaty voice, almost a purr. "If it isn't baby Hale. It's been a while, Derek."

Derek's back is ramrod straight, but his voice is even. "Kali, isn't it?"

"You remembered." She gives him a toothy smile. She's flanked by two identical young men, strong and muscular, with dark blonde hair cropped short. Their faces are absolutely expressionless. "This is Ethan and Aiden," she adds, and they both give a quick nod. "But you aren't who I'm here to see, are you? I thought it would be you, but it isn't. Aren't you going to introduce me to your pack?"

Derek takes a breath, then lets it out. "Come in," he says, and shuts the door behind them. Even if his discomfort wasn't physically obvious, it's reverberating through the pack bond, putting all of them on edge. The television has been silenced, and everyone is standing now, in a loose V shape with Stiles at the front. Derek swallows; they can see his Adam's apple go up and down with the motion. "Kali," he says, with a note of formality to his voice, "this is my alpha, Stiles. Stiles, Kali. She's a part of the alpha pack."

"An alpha pack?" Stiles asks, clearly surprised. But he leans forward in cautious greeting, extending his hand, not sure if a wolf greeting or a human one would be appropriate.

"I'm the leader of the alpha pack," Kali corrects, and Stiles feels Derek flinch. Kali leans in, pressing her cheek against his and inhaling deeply in a show of almost obscene intimacy, and then draws back. The look on her face is complex, and Stiles isn't sure what to make of it. Disgust? Anger? Confusion? Maybe some of all of them. She looks at Derek and says, "You've got to be kidding."

Derek's jaw is so tight that it looks ready to shatter. "No," he says.

"That," Kali says pointedly, "is not an alpha."

There's a low growl to Stiles' left. It's Scott, who really doesn't sound happy with Kali's tone. Stiles doesn't need to look around to know that Allison's hand is on her bow. He's got to get a handle on this situation, fast, which is going to be difficult since he has no idea what's going on. "Somebody want to tell me what I'm missing here?"

"He doesn't even know," Kali says, disgusted.

"He doesn't know because I didn't tell him," Derek says. "Not everyone is born a wolf."

"Which would matter, if he was a wolf," Kali says. "But he's not." She shakes her head. "I'm beginning to think that the whole Hale family is just full of cowards. Laura chose to duck the trial on a technicality, and now I come all this way to find you licking the boots of some human boy – "

She gestures sharply to Stiles, and his temper snaps. As her wrist comes within arm's length, he grabs it, twisting it around so suddenly that she's caught off balance and he's able to force her to the floor with it pinned behind her. She makes an outraged noise as Stiles digs his knee into her back, pressing her other hand against the floor to try to gain some leverage. "This human boy trained with Gerard Argent," he snarls, "and I may not give a shit what you think of me, but you will not walk into our den and start insulting my pack."

One of the twins takes a step forward, a low growl emanating from his throat. Before he can move further, Allison's got an arrow nocked and pointed right at his throat.

"Stiles," Derek says, his voice approaching panic, "you shouldn't – "

"Don't, Derek," Stiles says, his eyes flaring crimson. "Just don't."

Derek shuts up.

"Now," Stiles says, "how about someone tells me what the fuck is going on?"

Derek lets out a breath. "The alpha pack," he says slowly, "comes to evaluate a new alpha and decide whether or not they're worthy of the position."

"Okay," Stiles says. "Was that so hard?" He gets off Kali, letting her up.

She whirls on him. "You'll pay for that insult, boy."

"My name is Stiles," he says. "One syllable. It's not that hard. Try using it. So. You want to evaluate me or some shit like that? Okay, let's get it over with."

Now Kali's lips curve in a cruel smile. "You can't possibly pass the trials," she says. "They're designed for wolves."

"You'd be surprised what I can do with a little creativity," Stiles tells her. "So, this is like a basic quest? You give me goals to accomplish and if I can manage them, then I'm judged worthy and you guys get the hell off my territory? Is that how this works?"

"If you'd rather, I could just kill you now and save you the agony of failure," Kali suggests, her smile turning vicious.

"Sweet pea, I don't fail," Stiles says. "And I'm not afraid of you."

"You will be," she says, turns on one heel, and marches out of the apartment. The twins follow her silently. The door slams shut behind him.

"Man, I'd hate to see what she's like at certain times of the month," Stiles says. There's a ripple of nervous laughter, but the tension doesn't really ease out of the room. He turns to Derek, raises his eyebrows and says, "Okay, so, how about you start at the beginning?"

Derek, who's a little paler than usual, sits down on the floor with a heavy exhalation. After a minute, the others all sit too, arranging themselves in a loose circle. It takes Derek a minute to gather himself before saying, "I met Kali and her pack when I was a teenager. They came to evaluate Laura, who had just turned into an alpha upon the death of my parents. But they couldn't, because most of the tasks focus around an alpha and his or her pack. Laura didn't have a pack. She just had me. So as long as she never became a pack leader for real, they had to leave her alone."

"So that's what they meant by 'ducking the trial'," Lydia says.

Derek nods. "Laura didn't do it to get out of the trial. She didn't want a pack, for . . . for the same reason I didn't, for a long time. It . . . would have hurt too much. But Kali didn't really see it the same way. She wasn't the leader back then, just a part of the pack, but a mouthy bitch anyway."

"The entire pack is alphas?" Scott asks, and Derek nods. "Shit, that . . . that could be bad."

"Theoretically, they should play by the rules," Derek says. "If they were going to try to kill Stiles or fail him just for being human, they would have done it already. But they'll rig the trial against you. The leader has broad discretion in what sort of tasks she picks."

Stiles just shrugs a little.

"What . . . what happens if the alpha fails the trial?" Isaac asks hesitantly.

Derek lets out another breath. "The alpha is killed and the pack disbanded. I've heard rumors that they've killed entire packs, when they don't . . . handle the verdict well. Most of them do all right. Most packs aren't bonded as tightly as we are, so the loss of an alpha, while a big deal, isn't . . . isn't something that breaks them. They'll drift apart and find new packs to join."

"Shit, Derek, why didn't you warn us?" Scott asks.

"I had hoped they wouldn't notice Stiles because he's human," Derek says. "I didn't know what to do if they showed up, so I just . . . hoped they wouldn't."

"Would've been nice of them to show when Peter was alpha," Lydia says, a dry note of bitterness to her voice.

"As you can see, it can take them a while to get around to it," Derek says. "They travel the whole world. And sometimes alphas come and go so quickly because of internal pack struggles, that they don't rush to get to new ones."

"That's nice of them," Allison says, rolling her eyes slightly.

Stiles stands and stretches. "Well, hey, are we having a party tonight or what?" he asks. The others all stare at him. "What?" he asks. "Am I supposed to hide under the table and wait for them to go away? Fuck that. How long before I get the first task?"

"Probably a couple days," Derek says. "They'll let us stew that long."

"Okay. And we have no idea what it will be. So why worry about it?" Stiles sees their looks and says, "Guys, this is going to be okay. Because I am going to kick the ass of this stupid trial. I'm going to send that bitch running back home with her tail between her legs. And if they try to fail me?" He gives a little shrug. "Nobody is splitting us up. Period."

"There are seven alphas in the pack," Derek says quietly.

"Hey, cool," Stiles says. "One for each of us."

Derek just shakes his head. But Allison and Scott are both nodding. Erica looks like she's relaxing a little, and Isaac has taken a few deep breaths; he's evening out. Lydia looks just as unconcerned now as she did before the alphas showed up. Stiles kneels down in front of Derek and takes a hold of his chin, making Derek meet his gaze. "I play dirty," he says, "and I don't lose. Not when there's this much at stake. Nobody is taking my pack from me."

After a moment, Derek nods. "Okay," he says, and leans into the circle of Stiles' arms.

"Okay," Stiles echoes. "Let's go have a fucking party."

Despite some initial resistance, they get into the party before long. They're teenagers, so if they can push the doom and gloom into the back of their minds, there's still pizza and caffeine and a pool party to be had. To Stiles, at least, there's something strangely exhilarating about the sword of Damocles currently hanging over their heads.

So they mess around in the pool and drink about a billion gallons of Coke and have contests over who can make the biggest splash or who can jump the furthest or which guy can look at Erica in her bikini for the longest without blinking. Derek is still brooding, of course, because that's what Derek does. Stiles lets it go. Eventually, if they have fun around him long enough, he'll get drawn in.

They eat and play Risk and make popcorn and watch X-Files reruns until they all fall asleep in a pile on the floor of Lydia's living room.

It's not a good night for any of them. Derek never wakes up from his nightmares, but grows restless, growling and kicking in his sleep. Stiles has to soothe him back into sleep multiple times, and finally wakes up gasping from one of his own bad dreams. It's dawn; he can see the dim light around the blinds on the door outside. He huddles underneath the blankets, curling loose fists into Derek's fur, and eventually dozes off.

He's still up first, which is good because Scott is supposed to be at work at eleven, and nobody thought to set an alarm. Lydia's house is one of the few places where he doesn't need to bring his own groceries. He makes a huge batch of scrambled eggs and French toast. The kitchen has an espresso maker, and he employs it. The smell gets everyone out of bed. Scott bitches cheerfully about how there isn't any bacon. Lydia says there's turkey bacon in the fridge, and he shuts up.

Derek is still quiet and unhappy, but everyone just tries to let that go, because he's Derek. The others talk about their summer plans until the food is gone, and then Stiles says, "Okay, I've got some things to do and people to see."

Erica immediately stands and says, "I'll go with you."

Stiles opens his mouth to protest, then looks around at the faces of his pack and realizes that resistance, as the Borg would say, is futile. "Okay," he says. "In fact, I'd prefer if none of us went out on our own for a while. Scott, you work today?" he asks, and Scott nods. "That's okay. You're probably safer at the clinic than anywhere else in the city. What about you, Isaac?"

Isaac takes a drink of his coffee and says, "Construction doesn't start for another two weeks. I'm free until then."

"Good." Stiles lets out a breath. "Anyone else have any obligations I should know about?"

Nobody does, at least for the next week.

"Okey dokey," Stiles says. "Allison, Lydia, if you could drive Scott to work and deliver him safely into the hands of Dr. Deaton, thank you. Scott, while you're there, see if he knows anything. Well," he corrects, because Dr. Deaton always knows something, "see if he'll tell us anything."

Scott nods. "Yeah, I'll see what I can do."

"Derek's apartment will be our home base during this," Stiles says, "because I'm not sure if they found us there by smell or werewolf senses or if they just looked Derek up in the phone book. Point being: they may not know where any of us live and I'd prefer to keep it that way, so if they're smelling us, let's keep ourselves located where they've already been. Once Allison and Lydia have dropped Scott off, everyone can head back there."

"Where are you going?" Derek asks him.

Stiles grimaces a little and says, "Down to the station to talk to my dad." He doesn't keep secrets from his father, not anymore, and he has a feeling that this is not going to stay small. His father will know sooner rather than later, so he might as well come clean and at least avoid a lecture on hiding things. "I'll meet you back at Derek's this afternoon."

Everyone is in agreement with this plan except Derek, who wants to go with Stiles. Stiles doesn't want him to because he wants Derek to stay with Isaac. Derek points out, reasonably enough, that Isaac could go with the girls when they drop off Scott. Stiles points out, also reasonably, that they only brought two cars from Derek's house, and Allison's car won't fit five people, at least not comfortably. Also, if Derek doesn't plan on letting him out of sight for the next week, they will throttle each other. Derek obviously wants to protest that he'll be fine on his own, but knows exactly how far that will get him, so he subsides, but grumpily. Isaac looks somewhat apprehensive about being left in his presence.

He's deep in thought, chewing on his lower lip, as he and Erica walk out to the Jeep. She's respectful of his silence. As much as she often just opens her mouth and lets whatever she's thinking fall out, she also knows how to be quiet. Of course, when Stiles takes an unexpected turn on the way to the station, she can't stay quiet through that. "Why are we going back to Derek's?"

"I need to get something," Stiles says.

"Uh huh." Erica seems unimpressed.

"It might not pan out," Stiles adds.

Since Stiles obviously doesn't want to talk about it, Erica doesn't ask any more questions.

They had left Derek's apartment not long after his tussle with Kali. He's hoping that the area is relatively undisturbed. Erica watches him in silence as he roots around in Derek's cupboard and comes out with a canister of cocoa. "Really?" she says. "You just had a hankering?"

Stiles ignores her, walking into the living room. "I was standing here," he murmurs, "so she went down here . . ." He leans down and begins to drop spoonfuls of cocoa onto the tile floor, blowing onto it to smooth it out. "Bingo!" he says.

Erica looks down. "Fingerprints?"

"Yep. Go see if Derek has any packing tape or anything like that in his art stuff." Stiles studies the patch of floor. Kali left an absolutely beautiful handprint, with four clear fingerprints, when she tried to lever herself up off the floor. It'll do for a start.

"Why bother?" Erica asks, tossing him a roll of tape.

"Because we don't know anything about these people," Stiles says, "and knowledge is power. Know the enemy. Sun Tzu said that."

"Sun Who?"

"No, Sun Tzu," Stiles says, grinning at her.

She lobs a cushion at his head.

He presses the piece of tape with its dusty cocoa-flavored fingerprints onto a stiff sheet of paper, also provided from Derek's art supplies. Then he wipes up the cocoa and they leave the apartment. It's only a short drive down to the station. "Hey, Sandy, is my dad in?" he asks, breezing past the front desk with Erica in tow.

"He's in his office," she calls after him, which is where he was headed anyway.

Sheriff Stilinski looks up when they come in. He looks a little surprised, and somewhat apprehensive, to see Stiles. "Hey, you. Hi, Erica."

"Hi, Papa Stilinski," she says.

"Got a sec?" Stiles asks, and his father just gives him one of those unimpressed looks over the rim of his reading glasses. "Right," Stiles says, and plunks his butt down into a chair. Erica sits down next to him, reaching over to twine her arm through his, and Stiles launches into the story. He downplays the encounter the tiniest bit, but doesn't leave anything out.

By the end of it, his father is frowning. "What sort of 'trials' do they put you through?" he asks.

"Beats me. I'm in information-gathering mode right now," Stiles says. "But I figured I would let you know what was up, and now I plan to call a bunch of people and pretend to be you."

Stilinski looks like he has a headache. "Son, if you need me to call people – "

"Two words, Dad: plausible deniability."

Those two words sit in the air between them for what feels like a long time. Sheriff Stilinski hates them, because they've had this conversation before. The conversation about how some of what Stiles does isn't exactly legal anymore, and he does what he has to do to protect his pack. The conversation about how he won't always tell his father about these things if he doesn't need to know, because if Stiles ever gets caught, he wants his father to keep his job. The conversation about how he doesn't know how long he can keep pretending that he's a normal teenager, that someday he and his pack might have to leave regular society and live on the fringes, the way most werewolves do.

And this isn't exactly their first rodeo, even discounting what had happened with Peter Hale and Gerard Argent. There had been another werewolf pack trying to take their territory not long after they had turned Erica. And not long after that, a group of faeries had moved in and started abducting children. Stiles and his pack had wound up working with Chris Argent and his guys to take care of them. Chris had not been particularly happy with this, but over the course of the misadventure, he and Stiles came to a rather grudging sort of understanding. Which is to say that he still hates Scott for sexing up his daughter, but is getting over the whole 'werewolf' thing. As much as he still very much lives by the code, he knows that Stiles isn't the enemy.

Finally, Sheriff Stilinski gets to his feet and says, "Well, I hear I have some sheriffing to do. Will I see you tonight?"

"Don't know. I'll text you. Can you have some fingerprints run for me?"

"Fingerprints?"

"Yeah. Of the head alpha."

"Okay." Stilinski ruffles his son's hair as he takes the sheet of paper from him and leaves his office. Stiles immediately goes around his desk and sets down his laptop. After several minutes of typing, he picks up the phone.

"This is illegal, you know," Erica says, pulling out her cell phone and preparing to occupy herself.

"What's a little class A misdemeanor between friends?" Stiles asks, dialing. There's a beat, and then he speaks again in a slightly lower pitch. "Yeah, hi, this is Sheriff Stilinski. I need to get your security cam footage for yesterday. Just the exterior cameras." There's a pause. "Uh huh. Okay. 'Preciate it."

"What do you want security cam footage for?" Erica asks, putting her feet up on the sheriff's desk.

"To find their car." Stiles starts whistling as he types away on his laptop.

"Why else," Erica says, amused. She shakes her head and goes back to her game. Stiles continues to type. "Won't that take a while?"

"It could, but it probably won't. Ah, here's the file." Stiles types in a few commands and begins to sort through the footage. "I'm guessing that they were going off their wolfy senses, not actual information. Which means that they would have parked in the lot closest to Derek's apartment. That's only monitored by . . ." Click, clack. "Two cameras. And I doubt they sat around waiting all day, so we know the approximate time that they showed up. Pulling up the footage to that point . . . and voila. There they are."

Erica gets up and leans over his shoulder to see the silver sports car pull into the lot. "What is it with wolves and sports cars?" she asks. "I gotta get me one of those."

"Work on getting your license first, babe," Stiles says. She sticks her tongue out at him. "Zooming in, and hey, a plate number!" He spun around to use his father's computer again, and two minutes later, has the car's information pulled up. "It's a rental. Cool."

Another five minutes later and the rental car company is faxing over the information. Stiles is grinning, enjoying himself now. Erica's not sure why. It's fun to watch Stiles in action, but she has no idea what he's trying to accomplish. So they rented a car. Big whoop. It doesn't tell them anything about the trials he's going to have to pass.

"So, Kali isn't the one who rented the car," Stiles says. "That was a guy . . . guy? . . . named Ravinder Chandrasekhar." He stumbles a little over the name.

"Yippee," Erica deadpans.

Stiles whistles to himself as he continues to type. Sandy sticks her head in a few minutes later. "Stiles, why are people faxing things to you?"

"Just chasing down a lead or two for my dad," Stiles says, with a guileless look that Sandy clearly does not believe for an instant. She hands over the sheet of paper, then a manila folder.

"The fingerprints," she says.

"Sweet! You're a doll." Stiles dives into the new information. "Check this out!" he says, and Erica leans over his shoulder to see what she assumes is a mug shot of Kali. It's hard to tell, thanks to the white flare coming off her eyes, obscuring the photograph almost completely. But Stiles isn't talking about the photograph; he's talking about the words next to the name. "Breaking and entering, harassment, assault, look at this list of priors . . ."

He turns back to his father's computer and pulls up the dossier. "A person of interest in two deaths," he continues, "never charged. Oh, check that out, both deaths were eventually ruled to be animal attacks. Hey, she's from California too. Last known address is in Los Angeles. She seems like that kind of gal . . ."

"Was she ever arrested?" Erica asks.

"Yeah, several times, but always for the minor charges. There are open warrants for her, though. That may come in handy if we really need to get her out of the way, if only for a little while. She skipped bail at least once, so there's probably a bail bondsman after her ass somewhere, too." Stiles hums to himself and clicks on 'known associates'. "Derek said she wasn't the . . . alpha-alpha?" He stops typing, baffled. "What do they call the alpha of the alpha pack?"

"How the hell should I know?" Erica asks.

"Could it be the alpha-alpha?" Stiles wrinkles his nose. "God, say that five times fast. Soon I'll just be calling her alfalfa."

Erica howls with laughter. "I double dog dare you to call her that to her face."

"Now, now, you're supposed to be encouraging me to behave responsibly." Stiles grins at her. "Okay, uh . . . let's just call her the alpha pack leader. APL for short. Everything always sounds more official with acronyms, right?"

"Right."

"So she wasn't the APL ten years ago when they went to test Laura. I bet it was this guy." He taps the screen, which is now displaying the mug shot of a young man with similar lens flare problem. All you can really see are his bulging arm muscles. "He's obviously a werewolf, and he's also dead."

"What killed him?" Erica asks.

Stiles pulls up the incident report. "Two bullets right to the chest."

"Can that kill an alpha?"

Stiles bites his lip. "Not sure. It could kill a beta, especially if it was large caliber. But I don't know about an alpha. If it was a hunter that got him, the bullets might have been laced with silver or wolfsbane. That would kill an alpha." He looks thoughtful for a minute. "If one werewolf kills another werewolf, is that an offense punishable by execution under the code?"

"Dunno," Erica says. "You want me to text Allison and ask her?"

"I'll ask her later," Stiles says. "Anyway, if they've killed entire packs, odds are good they've killed a human or two somewhere along the line. That would put them under the gun."

"So . . . where is this getting us?" Erica asks.

"You never know what'll come in handy," Stiles says, and Erica resists the urge to throw herself out the window. "Hey, you wanted to come with me. You only have yourself to . . . hello, what's this?"

He leaves her hanging. She's pretty sure it's deliberate. She lasts about four seconds before demanding, "What, what is it?"

"One of those charges about harassment against Kali? That was filed about nine years ago in New York City . . . by Laura Hale."

Erica blinks. "So . . . Kali really didn't like her ducking the trial."

"So it would seem. But the charges were dropped, so there isn't a lot of detail. Let's see. Laura reported that she was getting constant phone calls from someone who was, er, 'interested in her' is how it reads in the file."

"She made it look like a stalker?"

"Well, it's hard to explain 'alpha werewolf pack' to the cops, so my guess is yeah. Threatening notes, being followed, et cetera . . . but then it seems like it suddenly stopped and Laura just dropped the charges when Kali couldn't be found. I bet the alpha pack moved on and dragged her ass with them."

"Why against Kali specifically, though?" Erica wonders. "Why not against the . . . the APL?"

"Kali might have been his enforcer," Stiles suggests. "Doing the dirty work. It seems likely that her pack standing was pretty high, since she's the pack leader now. Or it might have been personal. We won't find out unless we ask, I don't think. My bet is that even Derek doesn't know. I bet Laura shielded him from all that as much as possible."

"Nine years ago, he would've been . . ."

"Fifteen," Stiles answers absently.

"Damn," Erica says.

"Yeah," Stiles agrees.

"How much older was Laura?"

Stiles frowns. "I'm not sure exactly. I know she was at least three years older because she was a legal adult. She got custody of Derek after the fire. I think she might have been as much as five years older, but I'd have to ask Derek to be sure. He doesn't . . . talk about her much. And I could look stuff up about her, but . . . she's kind of the one topic I've never researched, you know? It's always seemed wrong somehow."

Erica gives a little nod. Stiles goes back to typing. "Funny thing, though, is that most of Kali's arrests or charges stem from, well, violence. Assault, assault and battery, B and E, assault . . . it's only when Laura got involved that she got these stalking complaints."

"So maybe it was personal," Erica suggests.

"Maybe," Stiles agrees. He taps the space bar idly a few times, thinking. Then he starts typing again. "This Ravinder guy doesn't seem to have a record. I'm guessing there aren't a lot of guys by that name in this country. So he's a dead end, unless . . ."

"Unless?" Erica prompts.

"Well, the car rental company sent over his payment information." Stiles holds up the fax. "So I have his credit card number. I could pull financials . . ."

"Can you do that?"

"If I can run fingerprints and get security cam footage, I can pull financials," Stiles says. "And I'd rather do that than try to hack his credit card by myself."

"You could call Danny."

"He was going on vacation to Hawaii; he may be gone already. Besides, I don't really want him involved in this. He's been teaching me some of the basics, but . . . nah, this'll be easier. Let me go chat with Sandy for a minute."

"If you say so," Erica says, thinking about how Sheriff Stilinski is probably going to have harsh words later about what exactly Stiles means when he says 'I'm going to make some phone calls and pretend to be you'. She does not think that his permission extended to pulling financial information on someone with no criminal record and, so far, no connection to any crime.

Stiles comes back with it a few minutes later. "Guess what," he says, grinning.

"What?" Erica asks.

"This credit card was used last night at the Plaza Inn in our sweet city of Beacon Hills."

Erica's eyes widen. "Oh no," she says.

"Oh, yes," Stiles says with a triumphant smile. "Let's go pay the alpha pack a surprise visit."