Stiles is staring at himself in his bathroom mirror. He's just peeled off his ripped and bloodied shirt in order to inspect the damage done to his poor torso. His pale skin is smudged with blood in many places, but at least some of it belongs to the alpha wolf who'd thought it would be cute to steal the Hale Pack mascot.

Stiles takes a close look at his reflection, checking his new scars, and sees how much his body has changed over the past 6 months since junior year started. He's grown more muscular, actually has abs now. He has definite chin stubble that needs to be shaved. There's muscle separation in his shoulders, which have grown broader and rounder. He's strong…and kinda hot, he realizes.

"When the fuck did that happen?" he asks himself softly, brushing a hand over the newly defined bumps along his abdomen. He'd been so busy lately; between looking after his dad, keeping Scott on a leash, acting as a mom to Isaac, Erica, and Boyd, a physical and emotional punching bag to Jackson and Lydia, and a smelly-dying-werewolf-chauffer-service to Derek, he's had no time to think about himself in nearly a year. Add the alpha pack that's been breathing down all of their necks since the end of last year, and Finstock's hellish lacrosse practices every day after school, and Stiles barely has the time to sleep with all of the running around he does on a daily basis.

Well, that probably has something to do with it, he thinks, looking down at his pecs. He has pecs now. It also probably has something to do with how he'd held his own against that idiotic alpha earlier. Stiles thought about the whole stupid incident.

Stiles was heading to his car in the parking lot of the grocery store, where he'd been picking up the fixings for a tasty but healthy dinner for his dad, when he was snatched up by a trio of leather-clad alphas. They had chattered all the way to the hideout, all about how angry the Hale pack was going to be that their pet had been kidnapped, and how cute their little puppy was. It had stung, but Stiles held his tongue.

They'd left him under the care of a lone wolf (ehehehe) and gone to announce their little accomplishment to the pack over at the Hale estate. The idiot they left him with hadn't expected Stiles to try to escape, so he hadn't even bothered to restrain him once they'd reached the alphas' hideout. That was his first mistake. Then, after he'd distracted the alpha with some grade-A trash talk (second mistake: not tuning Stiles out), Stiles sucker punched him, catching him by surprise. The alpha had gotten really angry then, and tackled Stiles, causing them both to crash to the floor of the abandoned factory building they were holed up in. It was actually a pretty close fight, though Stiles got scratched up a bit (claws and all that), until Stiles was able to get a hand in his pocket and pull out his taser. He'd been able to electrocute the s.o.b. in the side, and gain enough of an advantage to land some solid blows of his own, drawing blood from the alpha's lip and cheeks before the wounds healed up. Eventually he'd pressed the taser to the alpha's neck, which caused him to pass out long enough for Stiles to get back to his car and drive home and run up to his safe room with its secret store of wolfsbane dust.

And now here he is, taking a good look at the damage done, which isn't nearly as bad as he'd thought. He looks like a different person without the baby fat on his bruised face and with the added muscles on his frame. And yet, I still get treated like a child whenever I'm around my friends. Such bull. If there's one thing that Stiles can say about himself now, it's that he is no longer a boy. He's definitely giving off a manly vibe.

He decides then and there that he's not going to accept being treated like the red headed step child anymore. Now that he's taken notice of this change, he's going to make sure that his pack does, too.

After cleaning his cuts with antiseptic and covering them with large bandages (good thing his father always kept the first aid kit well stocked), he takes another look in the mirror. Yep, definitely hot, he thinks, before turning off the bathroom light and heading to his room to do some research.