The sheriff's house was unassuming at first glance. It was a small two-story house with a front porch and a two-car garage on the end of a cul-de-sac. The trees in the front yard had time and growth on their side, which meant they were probably planted at the same time as the house was built, or closely thereafter. There was a police cruiser parked in front of the closed garage, but Prentiss and Morgan had seen enough small town cops to know that such departments didn't much care whether the officers used their work cars as personal ones. Beacon Hills was, despite everything else going on, a somewhat typical in this one detail. As they stepped out of the SUV, they noted the waning light had passed over the crest of the highest point of the house's roof and the closest street lamp had flickered on with a slight whine of electricity. The near dark didn't hide the presence of bars on the windows or the arcane symbols carved into the weathered boards of the porch and the front door - of course, the agents were more observant than the usual civilian, so Prentiss wouldn't be surprised if others missed the details scattered amid the faded curlicues of the original design.

"Seems pretty strange for the sheriff of a quiet berg to have metal bars guarding his windows," Morgan commented as they walked up the cracked sidewalk leading to the porch. The light by the door turned on before they stepped onto the first step, and the sheriff was looking at them from behind the safety of a brand-new looking metal screen door a moment later.

"Howdy, Agents What brings you by?"

Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, as if the sheriff hadn't blown strange powder in their faces which put them to sleep.

Morgan found he wasn't nearly as sanguine as he pretended to be on the way over because he had his hand on the screen knob before he quite realized his body had stepped forward.

"Listen to me, you, your entire department, and your son are looking at some serious charges: kidnapping of federal agents, obstruction of justice, assault of federal agents.." he was interrupted by a dry chuckle.

"And you're going to prove this...how?"

The amused tone just served to stoke the flames of Morgan's righteous anger.

"My word! The cameras in your station will back us, and even if you erase the footage I have a tech genius who can find a mouse's fart in the wind."

"The very same cameras that were never replaced after the shooting that killed half my men? The county felt it would be too expensive to give us new ones when, other than the freak-out by a very disturbed individual, we've never had any use for the footage."

Stymied, Morgan looked at Prentiss who had a considering look on her face. It meant she was thinking with her profiler's brain and Morgan dialed down his anger at the sight; it reminded him there was a lot more at stake than just his own reactions to recent events. Besides, Hotch could bring down hellfire and damnation a lot better than he could.

"You don't look upset or even surprised to see us, almost as if you were expecting us to show up here. No, I think Stiles was right when he said he had no intentions of harming us. I'm sure there is a logical reason to why my team was taken from the station and split up between your partners -" a slight twitch at the word made Morgan think there was something else here they were missing - "but what makes me most curious is not how you answered the door, but why."

She didn't elaborate on her point, which Morgan knew was a trick to make the sheriff ask what she meant by "why." The sheriff, on the other hand, merely looked entertained as if they were putting on a show for his benefit. It would be to their benefit not to underestimate his intelligence just because of where he policed.

"I suppose it is better for you to come in," the sheriff invited, holding the door open in invitation. Both agents stood on the porch waiting and the older man huffed a little before turning his back on them and walking further into the house. Prentiss and Morgan waited an extra few seconds before venturing across the threshold. There was nothing about the foyer that screamed "enter at your own risk" but they were used to looking beneath the surface of seemingly normal facades to see the heart of the darkest truths. At first glance, the pictures on the wall seemed the garden variety you saw in most people's homes, at least until they looked closer and saw it was random shots of various people's profiles as if they had turned their heads at the last moment before the flash. In fact, the only people who smiled directly out at them were the sheriff, a dark-haired woman who must be his wife Melissa, Stiles, and his wife.

"This is ..."

"...so bizarre," Prentiss finished, her brows pulled together in a puzzled frown.

"Their eyes flare brightly and would destroy the illusion of their humanity," a wry voice commented. The agents looked up to see the sheriff standing at the end of the short hallway, a bright head leaning out behind his legs to stare at them.

"Pop-pop, why are they here?"

The little boy's hushed question wasn't as quiet as he probably thought it was. Sheriff Stilinski dropped a hand to the child and ruffled his hair.

"They need answers about what Daddy and Papa and the rest of the pack are doing."

Pack business seemed to mean something important because the boy stopped cowering behind his grandfather and shyly waved at them. His grandfather glanced fondly at the kid before beckoning the hesitant agents.

"Look, I'm sorry about earlier, but it was really for the best if you stay out of the pack's way until they resolve this. I know this goes against the grain of everything you believe in but trust me when I say there is nothing you can do that would help this situation. If anything, you've made this harder."

The grim cast to the older man's face underscored his words as did the worry and fear wending its way through his words.

"Will you tell us exactly what the hell is going on?"

Prentiss' exasperated anger firmly bucked her usual iron control, which normally would surprise Morgan, but the way their day had gone, it seemed justified.

"Oskar, it's ear muffs time so go watch "Frozen" in the living room until I tell you you can come into the kitchen, okay?"

Bright blue eyes that had steadily measured the agents turned towards older more faded blue eyes. "Really?" This was obviously a treat evidenced by the genuine delight crackling through Oskar.

"God help us all," the sheriff muttered before straightening and pointing a stern finger in the direction of living room. "Shoo."

"Yes Pop-pop!"

Sheriff Stilinski sighed and beckoned them to follow him. "Look, I'm sorry about the putting you to sleep and I promise I won't do it again. Okay?"

Morgan's curiosity had his feet moving before Prentiss, but he heard her follow a second later. They either had to trust their napping was the result of protectiveness - and nothing that happened since then had really disabused them of that notion regardless of the crackpot reasoning behind it - or run around without any true information and get killed that way.

"Fine but I reserve the right to hold onto my gun in case of any funny business."

Stilinski shrugged. "Okay, but not in view of my kid."

The agents followed the older man into a well-kept large open kitchen. The space was surprisingly modern with gleaming metal fixtures, a large island in the center, and an oven that wouldn't look out of place in a restaurant kitchen. The sheriff saw the surprise on their faces and chuckled.

"The kitchen is the center of the home, especially when you're feeding an army, so all of the pack houses are equipped like this."

Prentiss settled into a chair fit around a large round table, which looked like it could easily seat twelve people, and placed her gun on the surface before her.

"Why do you keep saying pack?"

Stilinski leaned against the counter across from them and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Look, I've been where you are: random deaths, facts that don't add up, and my kid smack in the middle of every mysterious event. I even arrested him a few times whenever his lying got so outrageous that I had to do something to break through his silence. I get it. I get it. But it doesn't change the facts. There is a vein of other that runs beneath the heartbeat of the world and usually people live in ignorance of it, except Beacon Hills is one of way points where the supernatural pools. It has to do with mystical energies following ley lines and the presence of a Nemeton, which can only grow in places of great magic." His hand dropped, and weary eyes peered at them, heedless of the scoffing impatience that greeted him. "My kid is, for lack of a better word, mated to the Alpha of Beacon Hills, and Warden of the land. He is literally bound to the earth and subservient to its needs. It is a long and strange story on how that happened, something we don't really need to go into, but suffice to say the weirdness started when Stiles and Scott went out to the Preserve to find a dead body, and Scott was bitten by feral Alpha."

"Bitten?"

"Bitten as in chomped on like a fat man at an all you can eat buffet." Stiles might have inappropriate humor at times, but he came by it honestly.

"You expect us to believe this load of shit?"

"No, but you were in the SUV with Stiles tonight and he's now gone to the forest. You can't tell me you didn't see him...transform."

Morgan knew he would see the image of ... that thing... for a long time whenever he closed his eyes. Unlike Prentiss, whose faith in God had become strained and severed over the years, he still went to church every Sunday they weren't working a case. He wasn't a man of science or the rational like Reid and Rossi, though he believed in both, because Morgan understood there was more out there as willed by their Creator. Who was to say there couldn't be werewolves - because that was obviously what the sheriff was discussing - if that was in His plan? Plus, it would certainly explain the hulking beast in the forest.

"What is Stiles?"

This was the most pressing question.

"An avatar of the Nemeton."

"What does that even mean?"

"It means he is the literal manifestation of the Nemeton's power and can tap into the earth. He's more than a druid and less than a mage."

The cadence of the words suggested he was quoting someone.

"My god, do you hear yourself? Avatars, werewolves..." Prentiss' outrage choked her.

"I don't expect you to believe me but understand this. There is nothing for you in this town and the sooner you leave, the better we all are."

"And who will be punished for the deaths? The rapes?"

"The deaths and the rapes have two separate causes. The deaths are caused by hunters capturing and putting down werewolves. Some of them legal kills, but a lot of them results of an ugly race war. The rapes, on the other hand, were caused by a being who came to Beacon Hill with the intent of creating the perfect body."

"Legal kills?"

"Wolves and hunters came to an accord about a century ago regarding rogue weres who ventured into human communities with the intent of maiming or killing. Hunters can take action then, and only then, though of course humanity being what it is, strays from hard fast rules with any hint of loopholes."

The Hale family fire suddenly made more sense. If Derek Hale was a werewolf, and if it was hereditary instead of a quirk of random genes, then his family would be comprised of wolves too; Kate Argent, who had a checkered past filled with arrests based on gun charges, must've been a hunter who decided to take the law, as it were, into her own hands.

Prentiss had latched onto another part of Stilinski's explanation.

"Being?"

"Being," was the dry response. "Tonight, Stiles will put a theory to the test to see if his hunch is correct about what paraded around in Dr. Creaver's skin."

Morgan dropped a hand to Prentiss' shoulder when he sensed her about to vibrate out of the chair with the force of her emotions.

"You're suddenly being very helpful; why didn't you tell us any of this earlier?"

The sheriff shrugged. "Half of my department are in the pack and I couldn't risk a scene, but now you know the dirty secrets in Beacon Hills." He straightened and nailed both with a hard glare. "Besides, everything is coming to a head anyway, so there's nothing you can to do avert it."