Beacon Hills: Happily Ever After

Beacon Hills: Happily Ever After (5)

Stiles.

The scent of Stiles was beginning to overwhelm Derek's senses. He was getting closer, he knew, but he was bubbling over with emotions.

He was anxious to see HIS Stiles again, but he was growing more and more worried with each step that he took. He could smell infection, sex, blood, tears, sickness, and fear. What scared him the most was the scent of oncoming death.

He searched and searched.

Until he found him.

Lying on the cold earth, curled into an overly large t-shirt was a boy. Derek could not see the boy's face, but by the crop of hair that showed, he knew it was Stiles.

He howled into the air, a heart-wrenching cry that would tell his pack what he'd found and where he was at. Then he took back to his human-self. A whimper escaped his lips as he fell to his knees before his boyfriend.

"Stiles?" He asked pathetically. There wasn't a response. Very carefully, he turned the limo body onto its back. A miserable whimper escaped chapped lips, but the boy remained unconscious.

Derek searched the boy over.

Scars. There were scars, burning bright white, across the pale skin. The same skin that was much paler than it typically was. The scars started on the boy's forehead and disappeared beneath the neck of the shirt, only to appear again, instantly, where the fabric ended on the boy's thighs. They went down to his feet.

Gushing wounds.

He was still bleeding in manat areas: somewhere beneath his shirt, on his abdomen. There was more blood pooling around his left ankle.

Infection. Dried blood.

Other open wounds littered the young man's body, not deep enough to continually bleed like the others. His lip. His knuckles. His forehead. His right knee.

Bruises.

The poor boy was covered in bruises, and it was hard to tell where one bruise started and another ended. He was a mass of yellow, black, purple, and blue flesh.

Derek choked back a sob. He knew it was probably worse than this. This was just the front half of the boy's frail, human body. Gently, he turned him over, resting the boy's head in his lap.

More scars. The source of the bloody ankle found in the form of a cut, rubbed raw, on his Achilles. Dried blood, indicating infection, on his right shoulder blade, causing the old baggy t-shirt to stick. More bruises, everywhere.

Derek knew he needed to check on the injuries on the back and abdomen, but he could smell the sex... the rape. The young man was naked beneath that shirt, and Derek couldn't defile him more. Not here.

Derek was hit with the realization that the beaten, bloody, dying boy before him was Stiles Stilinski - his boyfriend, his mate - when the boy began coughing and sputtering into his black shirt. Instantly, Derek turned the boy back over and locked eyes with him. He grasped Stiles' face in his hands.

Stiles was crying. "Da-Derek?" His voice cracked, weak and uncertain.

"Everything is going to be fine now, baby. Stiles, you're going home now," Derek said, letting a tear slip out.

The couple embraced, Derek carefully cradling his injured boyfriend in his lap. His headache was ever-present, but he couldn't care less in this moment.

His mate was safe.

__________________________

When the broken howl hit the pack's ears, Isaac and Scott were the first ones to react.

"He found him," Isaac breathed, releasing a sigh of relief.

"Stiles!" Scott's voice broke, and he fell into a heap in Isaac's arms, bawling.

"What's wrong?!" Allison screeched, jumping out of her seat. "Why is Scott a mess if Stiles has been found?"

Cora stood up beside her friend. "He's hurt. Badly. That's what's wrong."