This became much more introspective than I had originally intended but I really hope you guys like this chapter. Will be the last one, and probably my last TW fic. Never meant to write one but this idea came to me and I always have wanted to write a one shot like this and feel like I've accomplished it. I am an aspiring author, so if you want to follow me in the real world too, my info's down below.

Ugh. Just saw how some of my formatting won't keep. That's annoying. Too annoyed to fix it right now, but might eventually come back in and polish it up. It's not the end of the world. If you're curious you can find this story also over on AO3 under the same name and author name. It was just some paragraph breaks that didn't come through.

Theo wasn't an idiot. He heard the whispers like anyone else in the small town of Beacon Hills as soon as he got there. Scott and the rest of his pack all thought they were being subtle about the secret they kept, but really the entire town knew, they were just too loyal to tell anyone.

Or so Theo had learned.

He had first thought that the town only used Scott. They knew that they needed him because things were weird in Beacon Hills—just like Scott McCall was. And while they were too scared and weak to do anything themselves, they knew that Scott would. Every one of them went running to Scott the moment that something scary happened.

They knew that if they snitched on Scott McCall and his friends they would have no one to run to anymore. It wasn't loyalty. It was simply logic. The town needed their warrior to keep them safe.

Theo's first impression of the town was negative. The second more positive. But what stayed the same was the same feeling of jealousy that Theo got when he thought of Beacon Hills because Scott was needed in a way that Theo never would be.

No one looked at Theo and worried if he didn't show up one day. He was a means to an end despite how desperately he tried not to be. First to the Dread Doctors. Then to Scott and Liam themselves, who only needed him for information on Stiles and what he knew about his creators. Even after he helped them because he wanted to and not because he had to he wasn't under any delusions of his position in Scott's pack.

He remembered the first time he had seen someone come to Scott for help. Back when he had first been a part of Scott's pack. Before the truth had been revealed. They hadn't even come to Scott, but Malia, one of the prickliest members of Scott's pack and one Theo would have avoided if he hadn't known any of them himself. He'd been confused when Scott immediately sent Stiles and Malia to help despite the overlying threat of the Dread Doctors. Theo had heard the rumors already and known they were true, but he hadn't realized that meant—that Scott would be helping all the time, no matter what situation they were in at the moment. As Stiles had explained with a laugh before he left with Malia, there was always something happening in Beacon Hills.

Theo had pushed the encounter and feelings of jealousy from his mind and promised to himself that he would do even better when Scott McCall was no longer in the picture. He just needed his pack first. After all, what was an alpha without his pack?

Theo hadn't been able to contain the self-satisfied pleasure the first time that someone came up to him asking for help. It meant that no matter what the rest of the pack felt, the rest of the town saw it. They saw his presence with Scott and his friends and assumed he was one of them. They grouped him together, and like they needed Scott and his pack, they needed Theo.

It was good to be needed and it was a feeling that he thrived on each and every time someone came to him for help and he was able to do just that.

The unexpected side effect was with how each time he helped, Scott and the pack trusted him more and more. He should have realized it sooner that the way into Scott's pack wasn't through the pack itself—but through the town that they had all became a pack for.

Outside forces were always attacking Beacon Hills more often than not. Individuals or groups going after the True Alpha and his young pack, who gained a more and more formidable reputation with each win. They challenged the pack and worried the pack. Each challenge questioned their loyalties and brought them all closer together knowing that they had each other.

But nothing cemented the pack like the town. Each win in the town was a success. But each win for the town—for the people that asked for help—was a victory.

Theo had been stupid to ever think it was another way.

Derek frowned as he ducked into an alleyway. Someone had been following him for the past few blocks and weren't doing a very good job at it. The only reason that he'd let them go this long was because the wind was blowing towards him and he'd been able to identify right away that the person was human and scared. Hunters were never scared and anyone else following him wouldn't be human.

At least he had thought.

Derek jumped out and pulled the purple hooded figure into the alleyway with him, making sure to shove her further in but still keeping plenty of distance. He was blocking her exit but making sure that she wasn't overly intimidated. His actions were proof enough that she had better tread carefully but something about her told him that he needn't be worried for himself.

The girls hood had fallen when Derek had shoved her revealing a head of bleached curls that might look trashy on someone else but looked beautiful and edgy on her. She looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes. "Sorry!"

Derek frowned again, crossing his arms over his chest. "Why don't you not apologize and tell me why you were following me."

The girl took a step back, taking a moment to eye up the alleyway, clearly noticing that her only way out was threw Derek. "You're from Beacon Hills right?" the girl finally said.

Derek raised a brow. Those were the last words he expected coming out of her mouth. He had left Beacon Hills a little over a year ago though he'd been back a few times when Scott had needed his help, which seemed to be more often than not. He felt bad sometimes about leaving the younger man to himself but the True Alpha was doing incredibly well for himself. Living up to his name.

"I recognized you," the girl continued, Derek's silence enough for the girl to draw the conclusion that she was correct. "Derek Hale, right?"

"We don't get many transplants over on this side of the coast," Derek replied. It was true enough. Beacon Hills was small and while most people wanted to get out to a big city, they normally stayed on the same side of the country. Even if they did end up in the Big Apple, chances of anyone running into each other was slim.

Until this girl.

The scent of relief grew strong on the girl, only slightly dampening the ever present stench of fear.

"How can I help you?" Derek found himself asking. He had a feeling of what this was going to be about and wasn't sure if he was dreading her reply or proud of what he had left back home.

"I" —the girl wrung her hands together— "is it true what they say? That if you have a problem that you take it to Scott McCall?"

"It is," Derek replied, choosing not to analyze the emotion that swam through his veins, "though I'm not Scott McCall."

"But you can help like he can, right?" She took a step forward, eyes burning with anticipation and dread. "That's what everyone said back home and I don't know what to do! Didn't. And then I saw you walking down the street and I know that we're not in Beacon Hills anymore but I don't know what's happening and I think that maybe you'll be able to help."

"What's the problem?" He might not be in Beacon Hills and he might not be a local member of Scott's pack, but he was still pack and he would uphold the unwritten rule.

"It's not me, it's my friend," the girl began, visible relief clear on her face. "We were at a party the night before, just a small thing where everyone knew everyone but then—"

Derek nodded his head as he listened to the story, already mapping out the steps he would take and analyzing how involved he would need to be.

Derek had always had a pack, that much was true. But even his family was nothing like the pack the Scott had created. He would miss his family every single day, that much was true. Would hate the fact that they were gone and he had to live on without them, a member of a pack full of stragglers. Full of all different types of supernatural creatures and full of emotions the way that the young could be. But a pack stronger than Derek ever could have expected. A pack that he was proud to be part of.

Scott McCall was a better man than Derek would ever be. He hadn't known that right away. He had met the boy and been unimpressed. A kid who didn't appreciate what he got. He thought that Scott was spoiled and wasteful. The only thing Scott had wanted back then was to get rid of the burden of being a wolf. Something that Derek had never understood, even after everything that had happened to him.

Scott was the one that had taught him that being a werewolf was a gift, but it was also a burden and one that he needed to carry ever so carefully. He had watched as the scared boy had evolved into a capable young man who had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but knew that he didn't have to carry it alone.

Derek was sorry that he couldn't be there every day to help hold that burden. He knew it was selfish of him. But he would help in any way that he could. When Scott called he would come. When someone needed help he would help. And on the rare occasions that Derek needed help himself, he would ask.

After all, if you had a problem, you took it to Scott McCall.

Isaac had been angry at Scott for the longest time despite knowing that everything that had happened wasn't Scott's fault. He hadn't asked for it. In fact, Scott was probably the most innocent one of all of them. All of Isaac's first pack mates had chosen where they were except for Scott. Isaac had chosen to be bitten while Scott was forced—a single night of rebelliousness changing his entire life.

That hadn't stopped the anger. It wasn't until the requests started that the fury began to dim—and then fade all together.

The first one had been a girl studying abroad in France. She wasn't staying in Paris, but another city a few hours over, who had traveled all the way to Paris just to see Isaac. She hadn't even been from Beacon Hills herself but a neighboring town, yet they had still heard the whispers.

It was when she first showed up with her request and explanation that the flames of Isaac's anger finally started to wane.

The next one hadn't even been human, but another wolf who had heard of the True Alpha from Beacon Hills. It was one of the first things that people asked Isaac when they found out where he was from. It was part of the reason he didn't tell anyone what specific city he was from in California.

Didn't.

Until he did.

Soon he was helping people he didn't even really know, all because of a pack that he hadn't claimed to be part of in a while. He might have mistakenly chosen his first pack. A nightmare of circumstances that had led to it in the first place. But his second pack—Scott's pack—that had been all choice and he had never regretted it.

Forgotten that fact, yes, but never regretted. He was a part of Scott McCall's pack and always would be, no matter how many miles were between them. Scott had looked out for Isaac when he wasn't even asking, and had made sure to always make him feel welcome.

Scott looked after the little guys, after the ones beaten down and always made sure that they could get back up.

There was a reason that Scott McCall became the True Alpha.

Not everyone had seen it at first—but they had learned.

Scott McCall would always be a boy in Chris' eyes. He could never see him any other way. When he saw Scott McCall he saw the kid who had showed up on his doorstep with glee in his eyes because he had won to heart of Chris' daughter. When he saw Scott McCall he thought of how Scott would grow old in a way that his daughter would never be able to.

When he saw Scott McCall he was almost grateful for it.

Every day of his life Chris would mourn the passing of his daughter just as he did his wife, and even his father and sister. Allison had been so young and full of life, only to have it stolen from her because of the world that they lived in.

It was not that knowledge that filled him with guilt. Not because he introduced Allison to the world of the supernatural. That was inevitable whether he liked it or not. The supernatural were a part of the world that everyone was living in and he couldn't change that fact. Chris had always been a believer that it was better to know what one was facing than to be oblivious to it. He was grateful that Allison knew what had killed her. He'd rather her die with that knowledge than in any other way.

The guilt that stayed with Chris was the thought that maybe, just maybe, Allison was better off. Scott McCall would still grow and age and be a part of the world. Would still live and fight in the world. For the rest of his life—whether that be short or long.

Chris was a hunter. It was what he had been born to do. Protect those that could not protect themselves.

As much as it was a gift it was also a burden. Chris had the ability to protect in a way that many others didn't, but he also knew what it was like to lose just as deeply. He remembered losing his first comrade. The pain. The sorrow. The guilt.

It hadn't been his first and it wouldn't be his last. Each time was easier and that fact made it harder. Was Chris not the worst monster of them all that he could get used to losing people? People he loved and cared about? Chris was never incapable of emotions; they had always come easily to him. The ability to love and cherish, to feel fear and anger. But with that came the knowledge of just how easy it was to lose. And each time he lost, it became just a little bit easier. He always felt it, he wasn't that broken, but he knew how to handle it. It was his job after all.

Allison would have been fine. Allison would have flourished and thrived in the world. Chris always knew that. But there was that ever present guilty little side of him that was grateful she didn't have to.

Every day he missed his daughter, but every day he ached at the deeply buried part of him, the part that had never wanted children in the first place, that was grateful Allison was at peace before she knew too much pain.

Scott McCall would grow old and die alongside his friends and pack members. He would feel more emotions in a single week than most people would in their entire life. That was the life meant for Scot McCall. He did not envy him. He helped him when he could. Stood by him as he made his decisions and saved countless more lives. As Scott gained even more respect from the people following him and the people he saved and helped.

Yet all Chris would see was the little boy who had stood next to his daughter, as untainted as the rest of the world and wonder what had become of him.

"I can't help you," Aiden said, "but I know someone who can."

Malia never liked helping people. She was a daughter of the forest, maybe not born there, but allowed to run within it wild and free for half of her life. She had never wanted to be anything more than a coyote—until she was. She had hated it at first. Ached for the dirt between her paws and fresh blood of a kill on her tongue. Slowly, slowly, she had learned that maybe the forest wasn't everything. That there were good things outside of it too. There was Stiles. Scott. Lydia. An entire pack that kept her safe and she kept safe in return.

They weren't normal. They never would be. They were a pack full of random matches of people from a lightning kitsune, a banshee, a few bitten werewolves, even born ones, a human, and whatever else fit into their odd little group. That, she had liked more than she realized. She was a werecoyote, something that most people hadn't even heard of. She didn't fit in anywhere, except that she did because when it came to Pack, no one fit and that meant that they all did.

Malia didn't like helping people but she would. At first it was because it was expected of her. She'd help though she never really understood why. Then it was because everyone else did. She was a part of Scott's pack and that's what Scott's pack did, so she did too.

Then… Then it wasn't that Malia liked helping people. Her first reaction would always be to help herself and the people—her pack—she was closest to first, and then help others. She didn't think her reactions were wrong. Pack came first and she would never feel guilty for putting them above everyone else.

That didn't mean that she didn't see the reason to help. When someone gave her a smile in the hallway because of what she'd done, an emotion went through her unlike any else that she had felt before. It was more than just simple pride—something more—something that let her know she had helped someone and expected nothing in return. She had helped because she could and it was the right thing to do.

So Malia would never like helping people—but she always would. It was what her pack did and therefore what she did. She never would have started on her own, that's not how coyotes worked. But she would always be grateful for the knowledge she had gained by helping.

Lydia was the popular girl. Or at least she was. Now she was something else, but couldn't find it in herself to be mad about it. She was something else in so many ways, not just her simple biology. Being a Banshee was not the fairy tale creature that little girls fantasized being about at night, not that Lydia had ever been that type of girl.

Lydia was a woman of logic. She liked things to make sense. High school had always made sense. She understood the hierarchy and knew exactly how to play it to be in the position that she wanted, which was of course, the top.

Then things had started to get weird. A body had been found in the woods. Scott showed up at lacrosse tryouts seemingly without any asthma that had kept him glued to the bench the previous year. The mysterious Derek Hale showed up out of the blue from wherever he'd gone after all of his family had died in a fire back when they were pre-teens. Then things started getting weird with Jackson and her.

Especially her.

Soon logic was the last thing dictating Lydia's life and she had to learn a whole new way of living while trying desperately to fit her old with her new. She realized quickly that there was no reason to try. She was different and it was about time she learned what she was and who she was.

Lydia had always been popular. Had always had the towns attention. What she hadn't had, hadn't even realized that she was missing, was the towns loyalty.

Her reputation had gone to shit along with the rest of the towns. What had once been known as a peaceful, small town now had one of the largest murder and disappearance rate of all towns with similar populations. They even beat cities. Didn't leave for a good tourism industry, not that Beacon Hills had ever been thriving.

Reputation was the last things on Lydia's mind as she rushed around to save her friends one after the other, none of them—herself included—ever capable of staying safe for long. It was simply the way their new world worked and something they all adjusted to pretty quickly.

It was disturbing sometimes to think about how quickly they had adjusted to constantly fighting for their lives. The TV and movies liked to make it seem normal. It wasn't. It never would be. Lydia and her friends were supposed to be worrying about midterms and school dances, not whether or not the latest fairy tale they heard was fact or fiction or some horrible combination of the two.

Lydia wanted her life to go back to normal but at the same time she could never actually wish it. She loved who she had become. She loved her group of friends. She loved her town. She loved the loyalty they felt not just for each other, but the town that they had grown up in or learned to call home.

Lydia helped because she knew what it was like to be on the other side. She knew how confusing and desperate one could get when they had no idea what was going on around them or to them. Scott McCall wasn't Scott McCall when everything with her was happening. She would never be angry towards him about that. He was just as lost and confused as her.

If she could be, even a little bit, for someone else what she had needed originally, what Scott had needed originally, then she was happy. She would never willfully put someone through what she or any of her friends had gone through.

That was her own promise to the town.

All Stiles had ever wanted was friends. He was the kid with ADHD who talked too much and had no idea what personal space was. Scott was his first friend. First real friend. The friend who taught Stiles what it meant to be a friend and to have a friend in return.

It was the reason Stiles had almost hunted down the Alpha wolf and demanded to be bit as well once he found out what had happened to his friend. Not because he wanted it, but because it was his brother and anything that Scott went through, Stiles was going to go through too. What had stopped him wasn't his desire to or not to be a werewolf, but the simple fact that Scott needed him the way he was. Scott needed at least a little bit of normal, a little bit of human, in his life when everything else was going crazy and Stiles could be that for him.

Stiles helped because he would have anyways. He goes along because he would have anyways. That's the thing between him and Scott. They were brothers. If one was going to get into trouble than the other one would too. Scott might not have wanted to come out that fateful night, but he would have anyways, even if Stiles hadn't said anything. It was the way they were. It was the reason that Stiles was always going to be following Scott into whatever trouble he'd gotten himself into.

That's the way they were.

Scott was never meant to be special.

It was something that he reminded himself late at night when he was laying there in bed. It wasn't often, but when he did, it was on the normal nights. On the nights when he'd just gotten back from helping Liam with his homework, or practicing lacrosse with Stiles. It was on the nights when he'd had dinner with Kira and her parents or stayed in doing his homework.

Scott was meant to be normal.

It was something that he'd known about himself for most of his life. He wanted to go to school and get good grades. Not great grades, but good ones. He wanted a girlfriend who he loved and would eventually marry and to be surrounded by the people he loved. He never needed it to be a big group, he knew better than most how sometimes small was all you needed.

It was just him, his mom and dad. Then it was just him and his mom. A family of two, just like his best friend, though they had become that way through very different circumstances. Simple was what Scott's life was. Normal. That's all it was ever supposed to be.

Until it wasn't.

Sometimes he stayed up late at night thinking about all the people out there in the world who could be hurt. About who could be dying at that very moment as Scott laid peacefully in his bed. Terrified that he wasn't doing enough. Terrified that he was doing too much.

He watched his mother help people all the time. She was a nurse, that's what she did. Except that she didn't stop helping people there. She did absolutely everything she could, just like she did everything she could for Scott. He would never doubt his mother's love for him.

He learned even more how far she was willing to go to help after he became a werewolf. After she found out he was a werewolf. It had been a terrifying moment in his life, but was the best thing that could have happened. It brought them closer in a way that they had never been. He was able to see his mom who was willing to do anything, even when it meant that it wasn't quite legal, to help. She helped and she protected.

Therefore, it was no surprise that Scott emulated this in every aspect of his life.

She was the one who taught him to help. She was the one that showed him how much it hurt when that help wasn't enough. That sometimes the good people lost, even though it was the absolute last thing they deserved, but that's just the way that the world worked. That losing someone, even a stranger, hurt just as much because they died under your hands. Your hands that couldn't do enough.

So yeah, he was terrified, but he would help. Just like his mother.

Scott was never meant to be special, but he was. And just like his mother he would do everything within his power to help those that needed it.

He would protect the town like his mother protected him.

Protect his pack like she protected him.

And his pack would protect him like he protected his mother.

If that meant letting a small rumor float around the town, then so be it. It was after all, just a rumor, no one could prove anything.

"Will you help me?"

"Please tell me I'm not crazy."

"Yeah, of course."

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