Forest for the Trees – 8 – Hazel

Reading Time:
28 Minutes

**Animal Sacrifice.  Animals: dove, raven, hawk, and fox.  Specifically the positioning etc. of birds are described, please mind your triggers.**

Chapter Eight:

“Well that’s a bit bigger, isn’t it?”  The overall ritual working was not just bigger than the previous ones had been, it was markedly more complex as well.

Stiles held out a hand to prevent Derek from continuing into the clearing as he stared at it, trying to get an accurate picture of what had been done.  The clearing was somewhat illuminated by the third quarter moon, but the light was limited and much of the site was shadowed.

Derek let out an almost inaudible growl.  Stiles looked over and sent him a sympathetic smile.  “Just let me see if I can get a full picture here.  It’s a lot more intricate and I don’t want to fuck something up if we jump the gun, okay?”

Derek scowled but gave a short nod.

Stiles refocused on the clearing.  After the overall size and complexity, the next thing he noticed was the animals.  His stomach clenched.  He knew some magicals had little problem using the life force of an animal to help fuel their strongest spellwork, but mages at least were taught to work around such power requirements with longer term planning and incremental empowerment of storing crystals or other tools.

Obviously this druid either didn’t have the training – which considering this setup was unlikely – or they were more concerned with the outcome than the methods to achieve it.  Or just that desperate.  The escalating tactics certainly spoke to desperation.  As did the sharp increase in design and preparation that appeared to have been used in this working versus the last one they knew about.

“They must have started planning this a while ago.”

“The animals at least would have taken some time to find and trap.  Assuming they came from here in the preserve.”

“They most likely did,” Stiles agreed almost absently as he paced back and forth trying to get a clearer picture of the site.  “Since they seem to be trying to affect the wards here, the animals having grown up in the preserve would have made their energy more in tune and easier to use here.”

At first glance, it looked a little like the druid didn’t bother cleaning the clearing before setting up their ritual.  But what looked like forest debris was far more carefully placed than that.  In fact, it looked like the leaves, twigs, and bits of bark were all incorporated with the stones that had been used to form the large runes that took up most of the clearing.  If that were the case, they had been gathered over time from the area.  From the trees.

Or one tree in particular.  Stiles took a sharp breath.  “It’s from the Nemeton.”

“What?”  The question was a little sharp, but he could hardly blame Derek for being on edge since he wasn’t feeling much better himself.

“The sticks and leaves and bark.  I think it’s from the Nemeton.  There are no carvings in the trunk like the other spots, so at least they weren’t stupid enough to do that, but it looks like they gathered the bits from the tree that they could without damaging the tree itself and used them in the ritual.”  Which eliminated any possibility that the druid wasn’t trying to directly affect the sacred tree and probably the wards and territory as a whole.

“Fuck,” Derek said on an exhale.

“Yeah.  Not just using a powerful spot.  They are directly including it in the working.  They’re targeting the Nemeton as much as the wards.  Or maybe…”  Stiles slowly walked all the way around the clearing, weaving in and out of the trees to do so.  He quietly thanked Derek as he helped him make it around yet another tree root and returned to where they had started.  “Is it trying to utilize the power of the Nemeton or circumvent it?”  He tilted his head one way, then the other, mind whirring.  “Maybe redirect.”

Derek cleared his throat, apparently having reached the end of his patience.

Stiles rubbed a hand over his face.  “Sorry.  I totally don’t mean to ignore you, it’s just,” he sighed, “I don’t want to get this wrong and since it hasn’t even been a day, I obviously haven’t heard back from Professor Alden yet.”  He made a small noise of frustration.  “This isn’t exactly what I am trained for, you know?”

He may be a mage rather than the sorcerer the town assumed.  He may even be an archmagus, but he still hadn’t gone to school with any kind of intention to pursue ritual magic at this level let alone the forensic deconstruction of rituals that would best serve them in this circumstance.

Derek placed a hand solidly on his shoulder, squeezing slightly.  “I don’t expect any kind of perfection here, Stiles.  Just do your best.  It’ll be better than any kind of assumption I can make, and any insight could be really helpful.  If the Nemeton itself wants us here, I am worried that further escalation in this case is not going to be to our benefit.”

“Right.  Yeah.  No pressure.”

The hand on his shoulder wrapped around him, pulling him up against Derek’s side.  “Maybe talk it through.”

He sighed again.  Nodded.  Talking he could do.  And really, for him talking had always done him more good than just thinking stuff in circles.  “Okay.  Between the use of the tree bits and the positioning and the stones that looked to be placed all around the trunk, we can assume that the Nemeton is involved.  Somehow.”

“Right.  What about the animals?  And the other stuff forms some kind of symbol or runes, right?”

“Yeah, it does.  I couldn’t make it out at first, and honestly, looking at it from above would be easiest but from here there’s a straight line in the middle and diagonal lines at the top.”  He mumbled under his breath, drawing lines in the air with his finger to picture it better.  He walked as close as he could get in a few areas to snap pictures of the various stones with his phone to zoom in on anything that might be carved on them.

Derek wandered off at one point, then returned a few minutes later and handed him his phone with a photo pulled up.  It was the site from a slightly different angle.  And from above.  Kind of.  He looked over at the werewolf and he shrugged.  “I climbed a tree.”

Stiles blinked, then let out a soft, short laugh and fiddled with the zoom function on the photos Derek had taken.  “Thanks.  That actually really helps.  It looks like three basic runes.  What looks like a big ass arrow pointing towards the Nemeton, a circle at the arrow’s tip, and another inside the circle with what looks like a stone bowl inside that.”

He pointed at the picture, waited until Derek frowned at the various things he was talking about and finally nodded at him.  “Okay, so individually we have tiwaz, the arrow, which means courage, sacrifice and honorable action.  It’s associated with war and the sky and the god Tyr who is in turn associated with Fenrir.”

Derek narrowed his eyes, but slowly nodded and gestured for him to continue.  “Tiwaz is formed with what looks like smoky quartz, which is grounding, protective and balancing.  And citrine, which in this case is probably fire and protection.  The circle, a protection symbol, is formed from what I think is amethyst and parts of the Nemeton.  Amethyst is for healing, meditation and connection.  Air and water.

“Inside the circle is othala, legacy, home, foundation.  It’s formed with more of the Nemeton parts and moonstone, as is the bowl in the middle of that rune.  It looks like it’s got ash in it, so it was probably used to mix and burn incense.  Another symbol for the air element.”

He didn’t have to say aloud that moonstone linked closely with shifters, werewolves in particular.  Or that the rune for legacy linked with the moon almost certainly pointed to the Hale pack.  He could see in the grim acceptance on Derek’s face that he could figure that much out all on his own.

Stiles took a deep breath.  “The animal placed in the middle of the vertical line is a fox, which is associated with cunning, adaptability, and the element of fire.  At the end of each line are the birds.  Obviously they’re associated with the element of air, but the dove can also be linked with water because it symbolizes healing.  The raven is a double whamy for the element of air because it is also symbolic of intellect.  The hawk is considered a fire animal as well as one of air.  Three birds for air.  One bird plus the fox makes two for fire.  The number three is fire.  Two is water.  Three plus two is five which is the number of air.”

He fell silent, but Derek prompted one of the last aspects of the site with a monotone that said he was as eager to discuss it as Stiles was.  Because finding dead animals placed on runes or whatever was very different from what they were looking at here.  “And the way the birds are… positioned?”

Stiles took another deep breath.  “Right.  Each wing is pinned to the ground with wooden sticks, probably reinforcing the forced containment of their power.  Based on the color of the wood, the dove’s link with healing and the raven’s with intellect, I would guess willow and walnut wood since they have the same associations.  It goes with the overall use of the water and air elements.  The other element in this working seems to be fire.  Which is why I’d guess the larger sticks impaling the body of the birds are made of oak which links to protection and fire.  Again, three sticks each, nine total; both numbers for fire.”

They stood quietly for a minute, looking at the clearing.  Then Stiles waved a hand.  “So.  Air, water, fire.  Intellect, healing, protection.  Sacrifice, legacy, the moon and the Nemeton.”

Another period of silence followed before Stiles ran both hands through his hair.  “The only other thing I see here are some stones placed around the base of the tree.  I think there’s five and they look like turquoise, both of which have links with the element of air.  But I can see runes on both sides of at least one so I’d have to look closer at them to be able to say anything else.”

More silence.  A slow nod from Derek.  “Okay.  Let’s see about taking a closer look as long as we don’t mess with anything else.”

They made their way around to the side of the clearing closest to the trunk of the sacred tree and then carefully went from one chunk of turquoise to the next, carefully photographing several different angles until Stiles could make out the runes worked into each piece.

Two bound air with water.  The first had eihwaz for stability, the second wunjo for harmony.  Two bound air and fire.  They had ansuz for breath and laguz for healing.  Fire to air, air to water.  No earth.  No spirit.

A disquieting notion was building in his mind; one Stiles had been wondering about since the first time he’d connected the sacrifices with the wards.  But it didn’t quite fit, and he wasn’t sure if he was jumping to conclusions or not.  He’d really been hoping to talk to Professor Alden about it, but until then he hesitated to say it out loud.

He tried to shake off the thought, turning instead to the photos of the last piece of turquoise, though it honestly wasn’t a hell of a lot better.  He handed Derek the phone with the back side of the stone pulled up.

“Thurisaz.  The thorn.  It often stands for defensive force.”  He didn’t have to explain the last photo, showing the front of that stone.  It was a protective circle with a triskele inside it.  Derek froze for a second, then handed back the phone.  Stiles cleared his throat.  “Good news is all this shit is probably intended to protect and therefore benefit the pack.”

Derek stared at the Nemeton in front of them.  “Bad news is the druid doing all this is associated with my pack.”

Stiles grimaced, unsure what to say to that when the branches above them shifted more than one would expect given the barely-there breeze.  A faint tinkling sound echoed in the otherwise quiet night.  He looked up, took a few steps back.  “Is that a windchime?”

Derek followed his gaze then pulled out his phone and took several pictures.  Five strands.  Five things on each.  One had wooden pieces, another had turquoise.  Two had feathers.  Another had little cloth bags that probably contained herbs or plants.  He zoomed in to the images of the wooden pieces and the stones.  There were definitely runes on them but it took quite a few tries to get a look at what they were.  Ansuz and wunjo on the turquoise, eihwaz and the alchemical sign for mercury on the wood.

He tried his best to not let his voice sound as foreboding as the feeling in his gut as he explained.  “The black feathers are probably raven.  Since every other thing I can identify associates with air, I would guess owl for the others.”

The nod and the expectant expression told him Derek was waiting for more.  But Stiles didn’t really want to give it.  The picture in his head was getting clearer but he really didn’t like it.  He glanced away, wanting something else to talk about.  The sight of the small door gave it to him.  “Does the Nemeton have a cellar?”

The question drew Derek’s narrowed gaze back to the tree.  “You want to go in, don’t you?”

Want really wasn’t the word he would have chosen, but he nodded none the less.  Derek sighed and waved ahead of them, apparently willing to put off the rest of his questions for the moment.

When they’d made their way inside, they both shined their flashlights along the floor and walls.  Stiles really wished he could be surprised by what they found.  Instead it all fit neatly into the picture he was building and he still didn’t like it.

Wood and amethyst and aquamarine talismans with various runes for water or air on one side and harmony or binding on the other.  Feathers like on the windchime, wooden bowls with ash or lines where liquid had evaporated.  One bowl had tiny little bones that looked like they came from a fish.  Maybe salmon based on the other items.  Five larger turquoise pieces carefully carved with the rune for air and water linked by a binding rune.

But most importantly.  Not a single sign or sigil for the element of spirit.  Anywhere.

“Fuck.”

Derek turned at his whispered curse.  “What?  Stiles?  Are you okay?”

He held up a hand.  “Give me a sec.”

Derek nodded, frowning at him with concern.

Stiles leaned back against the wall of the cellar and for the first time he let his magic reach out, touch the ley lines connected to the telluric nexus that was the Nemeton.

When he was a kid, one of the first things his mother did to introduce him to magic once she realized his affinity for magecraft and telluric currents, was a version of hide and seek where he had to tap into the currents and follow them to where she was hiding.  At first she only hid along the strongest currents but as he grew, she moved to smaller and smaller ley lines until in his five year old mind he could connect to the magic of Beacon Hills and find his mother anywhere.

He’d avoided direct interaction since he returned to town because he didn’t know what kind of link Deaton had to the Nemeton and whether he would sense a powerful magic user dipping a mental toe into those rivers of territory magic.  With the sacred tree having reached out to him and Derek instead of Talia and Deaton, he figured he could risk it.  Besides, it looked like he’d have to confess the full breadth of his magical potential anyway.

The magic drifted and flowed through his other senses, his mind easily mapping the currents and lines through the town.  They were healthy, there weren’t any noticeable dams or obstructions.  But as he concentrated, he couldn’t feel that barely-there buzz on the edge of his mind that he’d always associated with the wards.  He had never touched the wards, but if he really thought about it, they’d always been just past his mind’s eye, just out of his magical reach.  Now they were gone.

Stiles took a deep breath.  He wasn’t tied to the wards.  Just because he couldn’t sense them didn’t mean they were gone.  Based on the tour of the preserve and ward anchors the day before he knew they were still there.  But they weren’t the same.  And knowing what he now did, suspecting what he now did, that worried the fuck out of him.

He let his head fall back and rest briefly on the root that was running along the dirt-covered wall and concentrated on a handful of words.  I see.  I hear.  I will bear your message.  He was an archmagus, but more, he was a mage attuned to the telluric currents of Beacon Hills.  If his power hadn’t been as prodigious, he would have been considered a Telluric Mage.  And a mage with such an affinity had a duty to those currents, that power.  And the Nemeta that ruled it.

Stiles walked to the middle of the cellar and sat, legs crossed.  He gestured for Derek to do the same, and once the wolf was seated in front of him, he spoke.  “What do you know about the magical ties of a guardian pack?”

Derek frowned and shrugged.

“Right,” he said with a nod.  “You know that seven of the nine Nemeta on Earth have a wolf pack that protects their territory and they are called guardian packs.”

“Of course.  The only two that don’t are in the middle of the ocean.  Doesn’t the Council of Mages have someone that travels between them on a regular basis and patrols the waters?”

He cracked a small smile.  Professor Alden had met the so-called pirate mage once and the dude was apparently the hilarious kind of crazy.  “Yeah.  But the seven Nemeta that are on dry land each have a guardian pack.  The most important role of those packs is to maintain the magical ties that create the territory wards around their Nemeton.  It’s a ritual performed for each Alpha in the pack and renewed every nine years.

“This ritual is performed by the alpha and emissary and it ties the components of the territory to each other.  Ritually speaking, each component is associated with an element.  The pack is earth which is stability, and the wards are fire which is protection.  The alpha is water which is healing, and the emissary is air which is intellect and knowledge.  The Nemeton is always the element of Spirit, the top point of the star, the connection point of the territory’s magic.”

Stiles set his hands on his knees, sternly telling himself not to bounce or jiggle his legs.  To stay calm and clear and do his best to explain a complicated ritual concept taught only to mages and druids who could or would function as the emissary to a guardian pack.  Other territory alphas may have an emissary, may even have territory wards if the magic user was powerful enough, but guardian pack wards were different because they incorporated a Nemeton.

He looked across at Derek, waiting for some kind of sign that he was following him so far.  When he got a small nod, he continued.

“The pack is bonded to the alpha who protects the Nemeton which feeds the wards which are cast and maintained by the emissary who in turn serves the pack.  Pack to alpha to Nemeton to wards to emissary.  Earth to water to spirit to fire to air and back to earth.”

“I once heard my mom and Peter talking about a ward loop.  Is that this ritual connection you’re talking about?”

“Yes, exactly.  The power and magic of the pack and lands cycle through this circular connection.  There’s a whole thing about balance and loyalty and cleansing and bonds and it takes like forever to explain.”  One arm flailed a bit in a dismissive wave. “The important part for us here and now, is the associations between the elements.  The sites that were out in the preserve, near ward anchors.  The repeating elements there were fire, earth, and air with a clear intent to link fire and earth.  The wards are fire.  But on either side of fire in the ritual loop is air and Spirit.  The wards don’t connect directly to the pack, they are the bridge between the Nemeton that feeds them and the emissary that casts and maintains them.  The emissary is meant to connect the wards to the pack.”

The look on Derek’s face said he was getting lost in the details so he waved both hands back and forth, then spread them wide to encompass the cellar and the Nemeton it was under.  “Okay.  Let’s look at it from this angle.  The Nemeton is the element of Spirit, right?  And it is connected on each side of the loop to the Alpha as water, and the wards as fire.  It does not connect directly to the pack or the emissary which are earth and air.  Water and fire, but not earth or air”

“But all the stuff outside was fire and water and air, right?  And the windchime you said was all air stuff.”

“Exactly.  And if this is all connected to the wards as the other sites indicated it would make sense for fire and air to both have been there, but not earth.  If everything outside has to do with the Nemeton as it concerns the pack it would make sense for fire and water to be here, but not air.”

“So both places have elements that shouldn’t be there.  Does that mean this whole thing isn’t about the wards or the loop or whatever?”

He ignored the second question and instead addressed the first.  “They have elements they shouldn’t but more important isn’t what’s there that shouldn’t be.  It’s what should be there that isn’t.”  Stiles swept both hands up towards the tree above them and gave Derek a second to think it through.

“Spirit.”

“Bingo.”  His hands flopped into this lap.  “No where in any of this is there a single representation of the element of Spirit, even though the Nemeton is clearly involved in this.”

There was a thoughtful silence.  “But doesn’t that mean this could all be about something else?”

Stiles rubbed both hands over his face.  “Any ritual working that included the Nemeton would have the element of Spirit represented in it somewhere.  Even if it’s not directly connected to the loop, which given the involvement of the wards is highly unlikely.”

“Okay, say this all is in fact, about the loop,” Derek said, head tilted and expression clearly saying not buying it.  “What would that mean?  You obviously have a theory, so net it out for me.”

“Right.  Okay.  Hypothesis is the ritual ward loop is involved because the wards are involved.”  Stiles nodded twice.

“First point, no representation or association with Spirit anywhere, even the ritual that uses literal parts of the Nemeton.  So if the Nemeton isn’t Spirit, what is?”  He pointed up.  “Point two, the chimes in the Nemeton are all related to air.  I could also see harmony and binding runes so logical assumption is the caster is trying to bind the element of air to the Nemeton and is trying to make them ‘get along,’ so to say.”

Stiles took a breath and swept both hands out wide, wincing when Derek had to lean back out of the way to keep from getting smacked in the face.  “Sorry.  But that leads us to point three.  If the Nemeton is supposed to be air, what is the emissary in this bastardized loop thing we’re dealing with?”

“Why do we have to be dealing with a bastardized loop?”

Stiles huffed.  “Hypothesis, Derek.  I’m netting it out.  Shush.”

The wolf raised both hands in a universal signal of surrender and wordlessly told him to go on.

“To recap, the Nemeton is not Spirit.  The Nemeton is air.  The emissary is not air.  Without Spirit, there are four elements instead of five.  The pack is still connected to the land so the loop still exists in some form.  So that leaves Nemeton, pack, wards, and only one more.  Either the alpha or the emissary has been removed from the loop.  The magic of wards still has to be cast, so the emissary must still be connected to the wards somehow.

“Plus,” he pointed sharply at Derek, “someone is trying to magically prop up the wards and the alpha couldn’t do that.  If the emissary was removed entirely the wards likely would have failed soon thereafter.  Based on the fact that this shit started like three years ago, that didn’t happen.  Ipso-facto, the alpha was removed and the emissary was not.  Which means the emissary is most likely water.  Which is supported by the obvious attempts to connect water and air in here.”

Stiles took a deep breath. Had he just talked completely in a circle?  He looked at Derek who still looked rather confused and a little impatient.

“The point being Deaton fucked up the ward loop and has been trying and failing to fix it and that’s bullshit.  He could have recast the damn wards entirely, put it all back the way it’s supposed to be but he didn’t.  He’s not acting in the best interest of the territory and nothing makes that more clear than the fact that the Nemeton brought us here tonight and not him.”

Derek pinched the bridge of his nose.  “I don’t like Deaton either, but just because this is a druid working on behalf of the Hale pack isn’t definitive proof that it’s him.”

“The person performing these workings is a druid.  An emissary, since they know so much about the ritual ward loop.  But to place this altered loop,” Stiles cleared his throat.  “To remove the alpha from the loop…. Derek, the alpha would have to be involved in renewing the ritual.  The alpha would have to know.  And be involved.”

There were several seconds of silence.  “You’re saying that not only is Deaton responsible.  So is my mother.”  Another beat of silence.  Then Derek’s eyes narrowed.  “Wait, it has to be an emissary because they know about the loop.  Only an emissary would know that?”

Stiles swallowed, looked away briefly then very clearly met his gaze.  “Or someone trained to be an emissary.”

“Sorcerers aren’t trained as emissaries.  Sorcerers can’t be emissaries.”

“No, they can’t.  Someone with no ability to interact with exterior magic isn’t capable of connecting to the magic of a territory.”  He took a deep breath and admitted what he knew he would have to tell Derek eventually if the thing between them continued past a certain point.  “But I’m not a sorcerer.  I’m an archmagus.”

Stiles watched closely, waiting to see how the wolf would react once he’d fully processed what had been said.  Derek paused, then started to nod.  Then he froze, eyes growing a little wide.

“You’re an archmage?”

He started to correct the term, an automatic response from the first few months with his magical tutor and his father when he was a kid.  Stiles bit his lip to keep back the unnecessarily pedantic response and just nodded back, shoulders tensing.

“That is really cool.”

Stiles blinked.  He stayed silent, because huh?  He had pictured a lot of ways that Derek might react to the news but ‘that’s really cool’ hadn’t been anywhere on his bingo card.

Derek narrowed his eyes a little, brows furrowing.  “So you’ve been hiding by just using some of your magic and pretending to be a sorcerer.”

Stiles kept from spewing a guilty ramble by virtue of saying nothing.  He nodded again, hands rubbing up and down his thighs restlessly.

“But why?”

The guy looked genuinely confused and not at all offended or hurt, which while great was rather weird in Stiles’ opinion.  He took a moment to think about how to respond, rubbing his face with a sigh.  “There are just 1,055 magic users in the US.  Fifty of those are mages and only two of those fifty are directly associated with a pack.  Those packs – and their alphas – are very well known and respected just for that fact alone.  And both of them are telluric mages.”

Derek winced, no doubt picturing his mother’s reaction to learning a mage was living in her territory.  As far as Stiles could tell, there was nothing Talia Hale liked more than being seen as the alpha of a guardian pack, and her arrogance preceded her into every room as it was.

Stiles took a deep breath.  “There are five total archmagus in the entire country, Derek.  I was ID’d fairly young and at the time, it had been 14 years since once had been found in the US.  There have been none identified since then.”

Both of Derek’s eyes fell closed and he pinched the bridge of his nose.  “The prospect of having you even loosely associated with her pack would make my mother…”

Lose her everlasting shit far more than thinking her son was hiding a boyfriend from her.  Stiles didn’t say it and neither did Derek, but they didn’t need to.

“Okay,” Derek said, rotating his shoulders.  “Okay.  So you’re an archmage.  That means you are like a runic, elemental, and telluric mage all in one, right?”

Stiles laughed a little, releasing the anxiety that had been building in him since he’d realized he was going to have to tell Derek his secret then and there.  “An archmagus has the power and ability to access those specialties but their skill in each is dependent on their training and they usually have outstanding talent in one of the three.  Like, I’m good at runes.”

He saw Derek touch the bracelet he’d given him the night before and Stiles looked away.  “I like working with them, which is one reason why I decided on runework for the shop.  And if I really worked at it, I could get as good as a runic mage, but my true specialty isn’t runes and it’s not what I got my degree in.”

Stiles heard Derek shift around a little where he sat.  “What exactly is your degree in?”

The question sounded curious and not accusatory or suspicious so Stiles shrugged and looked back over at his wolf.  “I uh, got dual masteries, actually.”  Derek’s brows rose, and he cleared his throat without waiting for the actual question.  “Magecraft.  And Telluric Science.”

The brows rose even higher, expressive enough to make up for the lack of any other emotion on Derek’s face.  There was a beat of silence before Derek leaned forward slightly, his curiosity taking a more intense edge.  “Does that mean that you could tell more about the wards here?”

More than what you said was unspoken but clear.  Stiles shook his head.

“Kinda, but not really.  I’ve avoided interacting with the telluric currents since I got back to town because I didn’t know how tightly Deaton and your mom were bound with the Nemeton.  The Hales have guarded this land for so long, it was entirely possible they’d notice that kind of thing.”  He looked around the cellar of the sacred tree.  “I can tell you for sure that the Nemeton called me here tonight and last time too.  I can make a really educated guess that it called you as well.  And I can say there has been a change since I last touched the ley lines a few years ago.  But I can’t tell you what the reason for that is exactly.”

Derek nodded, looking a little disappointed as he stared at the far wall of the cellar where several talismans had been hung on a protruding root.  “So not really anything else to go on as far as the investigation goes.”

Stiles licked his lips.  “As far as the BHSD investigation goes.”  Derek’s attention snapped back to him.  Stiles didn’t wait for him to say anything, just crossed his metaphorical fingers and hoped this wasn’t the point that fucked it all up for them on a personal level.  Because he really liked his hot werewolf boyfriend and not just because he was a hot werewolf.  “The thing is, as a mage – especially as a telluric mage –  I can’t just leave it here.  If this were a regular territory that would be one thing but this is a Nemeton territory and-”

“The Council of Mages has purview over Nemeta.”

Stiles nodded.  Waited to see if this would be thing that made the difference.  Shifter communities had their own hierarchy of ruling councils from the local level to the international, and by and large they took care of the Investigative Units that policed the supernatural world.  They were used to being the final say in law enforcement circles regarding supernatural law.

Sure, each type of magical user had a council that oversaw them, from the High Coven of sorcerers to the Druidic Circle and the Council of Mages.  Those three ruling bodies were in turn overseen by the Magical Order, which consisted of one representative from each and which handled matters of purely magical misbehavior.  But anything involving alphas or emissaries was almost always the bailiwick of the Supernatural Units of local and federal law enforcement.

Anything other than Nemeta.  If a Nemeton was involved any other authority was automatically superseded by the Council of Mages.  Sometimes it included the Magical Order, sometimes it didn’t.  But it always included the Council of Mages.

He could see the mental review of supernatural and magical law happening in real time on Derek’s face.  Could see when he acknowledged that he’d lost legal authority over his own case and his pack’s territory.  He expected irritation or resentment.  What he saw was a weary resignation.

“I’ll still need to wrap up the paperwork here and file everything with the state’s supernatural unit chief so I should get that started.  I assume you’ll want to include my report with whatever you send to your Council.  If we head back to the cruiser now, I can radio the station and get the ball moving on that right away.”

Stiles blinked.  Watched Derek stand and offer him a hand to get to his feet.  He took it, not entirely sure what was happening.  Not even his father took it well the few times another agency swooped in and claimed jurisdiction over one of his cases.  And wolves were usually more territorial than humans both personally and professionally.

“Derek, I’m really s-”

Derek cut him off, pulling him in for a soft kiss that had all the tension draining from Stiles almost instantly.  “None of this is your fault, Stiles.  Let’s just handle the immediate logistics and we’ll deal with the rest of it later, okay?”

Stiles nodded but as Derek turned to leave, he reached out and touched the man’s arm far more hesitantly than he would have even ten minutes earlier.  The wolf, his wolf, turned back and lifted a single brow.  Stiles swallowed.  “Are you…  Are we okay?”

The kiss had been relieving as fuck, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep from second guessing it later if he didn’t get a concrete answer.  Derek smiled, though the expression was tired.  He went easily when the wolf pulled him close again.

“Yeah,” Derek said on a sigh, his forehead resting gently against Stiles’ and drawing an echoing sigh from the mage.  “We are just fine.”

Stiles gave a hollow laugh, stepping even closer and tucking his face into the side of Derek’s neck.  Derek wrapped both arms around him, rubbing lightly up and down his back.

“I orchestrated an entire fake relationship to deal with my mother’s crazy.  I can hardly throw stones about you letting the town believe you were a sorcerer to avoid her completely predictable reaction to a known archmage in Hale territory.”  He turned his head, pressing his nose to Stiles’ hair and taking a deep breath.  “And honestly, having the rest of this mess out of my hands is kind of a relief.  Besides, it’s not like I could keep heading an investigation where my mother and alpha was one of the lead suspects.”

This time there was actual humor in Stiles’ laughter.  “Right.  Of course.  I think I kinda forgot that whole, conflict of interest part.”

Derek tightened his hold for a second, then pulled back and looked directly into his eyes.  “I promise you and me are okay.  Okay?”

Stiles looked back at him, searching for any indication that his wolf was unsure.  He found none.  “Okay.”