Blood Runs Cold

Chapter Seventeen

Stiles knew something was different as soon as he heard silence. It's not like the grove had been loud exactly, but the hamadryads and satyrs were constantly talking in their low voices and the dryads themselves had conversed in their language that sounded like wind through leaves. But on the morning of the third and final day, all conversation stopped.

He looked up from where he was sitting against a tree, tearing grass from the ground and shredding it into thin fibers. The dryads were standing in a circle and Stiles' brows drew together as he watched them. They weren't talking but they were doing something , he just wasn't sure what that something was.

The bored, ADHD goblin part of his brain was thrilled by the fact that something was different. The more reasonable part of his brain — and the less reasonable canine part — was less thrilled. Different wasn't good. Different meant change and change wasn't what he needed. Not with beings whose logic he didn't understand.

Claws sprang free from his nails and he dug them into the dirt. It didn't take long for his mind to draw a connection to it being the final day that had been given and the sudden change. He still hadn't figured out a surefire way to take down the dryads but if they were about to do something to hurt his friends and the rest of Beacon Hills, he was going to at least try to stop them.

Stiles watched cautiously as one of the dryads, Ilara, the one who had captured him initially, broke free of their circle and approached him. They took slow steps and Stiles held back a shiver. The way the dryads moved still unnerved him deeply. There was just something about it, watching as unmarred bark behaved like flesh with the unnatural way the dryads moved. It was just so wrong that it just filled his stomach with dread.

Stiles had seen werewolves and werecoyotes, kitsune and oni, druids and darachs, so many supernatural beasts yet somehow none of them were able to invoke the same apprehensive, gut twisting feeling that simply watching a dryad move invoked in him. He thought back to the Nogitsune and wondered what would have happened if it had entered into a conflict with the dryads. The Nogitsune, it had been a damn near unstoppable force of pure, primal chaos and darkness, yet the dryads seemed like primal chaos as well, just on the side of the light and nature.

"Son of the wolves," Ilara said in their whispery, wind through reeds voice. They bent down and extended a single wooden hand. Lichen and moss crawled up their arm and draped down like a long, flowing sleeve. "Join Ilara as they have something that you must see."

Stiles stared at the extended hand and then turned his eyes to where antlers grew from the dryad's eye sockets and glared. "And if I refuse?"

Ilara tilted their head and knelt down next to him. "What of the appearance of the children of the trees is it that bothers you?" They placed a hand on Stiles' shoulder and he shuddered, unable to stop himself. "Ilara and their kin have seen the way you seem pained when you look at us. We would never hurt you, not when Cerys has claimed you as she has."

"That's really reassuring," Stiles said dryly. "I love being claimed by a fucking horse and its psychotic moving statues."

Stiles' words had no effect on Ilara. Just like every other time he had insulted or tried to slight any of the dryads, they didn't even seem to parse what he said. "Would it make you more comfortable if Ilara glamoured themself?"

"It would make me more comfortable if you'd just leave Beacon Hills and let Cerys treat that as her favor to my pack."

"Stiles Stilinski, you know that is no option. Cerys has claimed this territory with the Nemeton as hers to protect. None would protect the sacred tree as well as a unicorn and her guard of dryads." Their hand moved from Stiles' shoulder to rest on his cheek, bark rough fingers stroked at the soft skin. "Corruption has touched the Nemeton and now it's only a shade of its former self but Cerys and Ilara and their kin will make things right."