Blood Runs Cold

Chapter Eight

With the adrenaline out of his system, the bite on Stiles' throat seared in pain. It had been easy enough to ignore the fact that, oh yeah, a fucking deranged alpha werewolf tried to rip out his throat and so he was either gonna die or become a werewolf. Really cool, great, fantastic.

The pain was made worse by the clear tension in the car as Peter sped down back roads towards Beacon Hills. Chris was laid down across the back seats of his SUV and he looked terrible. The bite might have saved him from the poison killing him, but the wound on his side leaked cloudy, dark liquid and his skin was clammy and pale.

Stiles was still steaming mad but the way his neck and entire body ached made the anger harder to focus on. With the shock wearing off, it was only the pain and his anger that kept him awake. As it was, he found it hard to focus and his mind kept drifting, only to be brought back to his body in a wave of pain when Peter hit a rough spot in the road or turned too fast.

He zoned out again, eyes foggy in pain. He came to when Peter snapped a finger in front of his face. "Don't fall asleep, Stiles."

"I'm not falling asleep," Stiles responded. He made the mistake of shaking his head slightly and he felt the gouges in his neck twist painfully.

"Don't fall asleep," Peter repeated. His eyes were firmly on the road and Stiles noticed that his grip on the steering wheel was white knuckle tight. Whether he was worried about the safety of Stiles and Chris as people or just investments that were very close to falling through, Stiles had no real idea. He had a feeling that it was more of the latter but Peter was an impossible man to read. Especially when on an adrenaline crash mixed with getting bitten by a nutso werewolf.

Stiles flipped Peter off and tried to move his head as little as possible as he stared out the window of the car. His vision kept blurring in that hazy unfocused way that was more than a little concerning. But every time he started seeing double, he'd just blink and force himself to correct his eyesight.

The bonus of staring out the window came when he noticed Peter wasn't going the right way to get back to his apartment. At first he wondered if it was the blood loss that made him feel like Peter should have made a left turn like a mile back. And then they were headed in a direction significantly less downtown than Peter's place was.

"This isn't your apartment," Stiles said as they passed an old warehouse.

"Wow, I could have sworn I lived just down the street." The sarcasm in Peter's tone was laid on so heavily that it made Stiles strongly consider breaking his fist by punching his face.

Peter flicked his eyes towards him, "My complex has security cameras and plenty of people at all times. For some reason the three of us — or two of us, I suppose — walking into it might raise some eyebrows. We're going to Derek's loft."

That was a surprisingly reasonable answer. Stiles was covered in blood, both his and the caster's, Peter was half naked (an upgrade over his previous nude state thanks to finding an extra pair of jeans in the trunk of the SUV), and Chris looked only moderately better than a corpse. Stiles wondered how they'd explain themselves if they got pulled over. Yeah, he knew all the deputies but Peter didn't exactly have a stellar reputation and the amount of blood was a bad look.

"Okay yes but Derek." For some reason, Stiles had a feeling that Derek wouldn't take spectacularly well to seeing Chris and Stiles with wolf bites and Peter with glowing eyes. Also the whole yeah we kept this whole plan a secret from you and did all of this behind Scott's back and I guess it turned out that Peter used this as a scheme to become an alpha again thing would probably go over even worse.