Fangs ⊰ d. hale ᴮᴼᴼᴷ¹

⊰fourteen⊱

"Stiles?"

I knocked on my brother's bedroom door early on Monday morning. It had been like four days since the school incident. Since then, my brother went out with Scott and came stumbling back home shit-faced drunk after midnight. Thankfully, Scott drove him home and then bailed.

He was lucky that our dad was out that night, because he would've been in hot water with our dad. I was lenient because I got shit-faced drunk when I was his age.

Of course, my best friend had just died and I had become a hot, badass werewolf overnight. Before that, I was a round-rimmed glasses wearing nerd who liked comics and other books. Captain America was the love of my life, next to Spider-Man, and Paige was my only friend. 

"Yeah?"

I opened the door and found him pulling his backpack onto his shoulders.

"You ready to go back?" I asked him, standing in the threshold of his bedroom. 

"Yeah, I'm good," he answered. I could tell he wasn't lying, which made me feel better. "I'm just worried about Scott, ya know? He and Allison broke up and tonight's the full moon—" he cut himself off mid-sentence to tilt his head at me. "Hey, you're okay, right? You don't have any feelings of ripping into my beautiful face, do you?"

I laughed and shook my head. "No, Stiles," I assured him with a shake of my head. "I gained control like five years ago."

"How'd you do it?" he asked. 

I leaned against the threshold of his door and bucked my head. "Let me drive you to school and we can talk about it," I offered. 

He laughed and nodded his head. "Yeah, okay. Sure."

He dropped the keys to his Jeep on his desk and then walked over to me. I nudged his arm with my elbow and the two of us walked downstairs. I pulled my keys from the pocket of my shorts and locked the front door. 

While Stiles and I climbed into my MG. "I still love this car," Stiles gushed as he buckled into the passenger seat. 

I laughed. "Top down?"

His eyes widened and a big grin appeared on his face. "Hell yes!"

I laughed and turned the key in the ignition. As the car rumbled to life, I pressed the button to roll the black soft top down. 

"Okay, so, to answer your question," I started to explain, backing out of our driveway, "werewolves have to find something to focus on, something to keep them tethered to their human-side. That's how we can keep in control on the full moons, or in general."

"Well, what do you use?" he asked me. 

I sighed and glanced over at him as I drove down the road. "Mom," I answered him gently. "And Paige."

He frowned slightly and nodded his head, "Yeah, well, that makes sense."

"Scott just has to find something that he can use to keep him in control," I explained, trying to change the subject before I really upset my little brother. 

"He said that Derek's been trying to teach him to use anger."

I shook my head. "That's not going to work," I explained. "The anchors are different for everyone and Scott's not an angry person. That's why he doesn't want to listen to Derek," I said. 

"How do you know so much about this? Like, how did you learn?"

I shrugged my shoulders as I rolled up to a stop light. We weren't far from the school by then, which was a good thing, I suppose. "Trial and error. Someone from college found out the truth and he helped me learn. And, I met another werewolf during my freshman year of college. He taught me quite a bit."