High Infidelity [Midnights #2]

chapter 13

Lydia was crying again. And she'd been crying since the moment she'd snapped herself out of whatever stupor she'd fallen into in the middle of their annual gift exchange. But the crying was totally valid. She had led them, once again, directly to a dead body that was currently cooling a few yards in front of Stiles. Honestly, at this rate, she was going to go into full-blown Victorian-style hysterics at any minute. But Stiles had no idea how to help her besides hold her. And he was already doing that.

It just didn't feel like enough. Nothing did anymore.

She wanted answers. And more than that, she needed them. Fuck. They all did. And this situation hadn't provided that. Just another dead body. More problems for them to clean up. Okay, more problems for Derek and Scott to clean up because no way in hell Stiles was touching a dead body, and they were the two who had volunteered to check it out with their werewolf Spidey senses and do an impromptu autopsy without actually touching anything.

Actually, that wasn't entirely true, now that Stiles thought about it a second. They had some answers.

First, Lydia Martin was not a werewolf. They had discovered at least that much when Stiles had locked her up during the last full moon and nothing had happened. Well, nothing werewolf-y had happened. Other things had happened. Namely that she had yelled and cussed and pouted to try and get him to let her out, but nothing bad had happened. And that was important. Granted, they were no closer to discovering what she was, but they had managed to cross off one possibility on what felt like a never-ending list.

It wasn't fair, though. None of this was, damnit.

"It's not Peter," Derek declared after another silent moment, only interrupted by Lydia's sniffles. "But a werewolf killed him."

"And he's a werewolf too," Scott tacked on.

"The rogue?" Jackson asked.

Derek shook his head sadly. Ugh. More questions.

"A pack fight?" Isaac offered.

Derek sighed, shaking his head again, hands on his hips now. "Other packs can't come this close. We can't have two Alphas in the same area for too long. They'll kill each other. We all have our own territories for a reason. The nearest one to here is, like, 85 miles away or something."

"Why does this keep happening to me?" Lydia interjected next, her voice muffled by Stiles' shirt. "I just wanna be normal again."

Stiles snorted derisively. "Girl, we're about four werewolves past normal."

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, turning to peer up at him, never fully leaving the warmth of his arms. "Yeah, but I'm not a werewolf. And it's bullshit that no one knows what's going on with me."

She hiccupped between every other word, only breaking his heart further. Stiles wanted desperately to give her what she deserved. But as he'd suspected in the beginning, he had uncovered absolutely nothing new. And most of that had to do with the fact that they had no direction to point him, causing him to come up empty at every turn.

Just like Deaton had.

Just like Derek had.

Everyone else remained quiet as they continued to peer down at the motionless body in front of them, lost in their own thoughts. After another second, Derek and Scott forced their claws out and began to dig a hole, and when they were finished, they unceremoniously dumped the body inside without a word.

Once he dusted himself off, Derek stood and pulled his phone from his pocket, placing it on speakerphone as it started to ring. He'd made a habit of this lately, likely tired of having to repeat himself after every conversation.