Curled Up

[spookymiscreant]

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Day one: Alpha Peter or AND Creature Stiles

 

 

“Uncle! I’m home!” Cora sang as she loudly barged into the once quiet house.

“Ah my favorite niece has returned from prison.” Peter said with faux cheer making Laura elbow him hard in the gut.

“I don’t know why you expected for that to go over well.” Derek chuckled from the dining room table.

“I am your alpha and this is how you treat me? I never!” Peter crooned, a hand placed dramatically over his heart.

Saturday nights with nieces and nephew around him and a book in his hand was not the way he had envisioned spending his adult life, but Peter wouldn’t trade his boring life for anything. His parents had died when he was twenty-three leaving him an alpha, and his sister a grieving mess. Talia had handled her grief by hitting the road; her husband had left to go find her, yet neither had returned. Laura had been six at the time and the only one that still has memories of Talia and Joseph. Every year the kids got postcards and presents for their birthdays and Christmas, but each year the gifts only seemed to highlight the emotional and physical distance between them and their parents. Peter considered himself a great surrogate father, but those first few years had been incredibly hard. Laura had blamed him for Talia and Joseph’s absence; Derek asked every morning and every evening when his parents were coming home, and Cora had been just a baby at the time. Peter had only thought vaguely about having his own children when he suddenly had three to take care of all on his own.

Looking back now, past all the struggles and hardships, Peter was almost glad Talia and Joseph had left him with the precious gift of their children. These kids had changed him into a much kinder man, one that lived a quiet happy life, and Peter was forever in their debt for the joy they gave him.

“Oh cool a snake!” came Cora’s excited voice from the patio, alerting Peter that he had approximately two seconds before Derek and Laura were going to freak out.

Peter clapped his hands to his ears and shot off the couch in time to miss Derek’s full bodied tackle and Laura’s ear splitting scream as she too launched herself in the direction of where Peter had been sitting.

“Now children! Calm down!” Peter shouted over the yelps of the eldest Hale children as he sent soothing thoughts down their pack bonds.

“Oh shit. Uncle come here! I think it’s hurt!” Cora’s voice was frantic, yet wet like she was already about to cry.

His sweet, kind hearted bad ass niece couldn’t stand when animals were hurt and it made his heart warm and break everytime she cried over an innocent creature. He left the quietly panicking young adults and made his way out to his brave Cora-baby and the wounded snake.

He froze as his eyes adjusted to the light and he saw that the snake was curled in Cora’s lap and blood was covering her legs where the poor thing was laying.

“I’ll call Deaton. Can you tell what type of snake it is?” Peter said calmly.

“Uncle, I think he’s a shifter.” Cora breathed.

“What do you mean he’s a shifter?” Peter asked as her stepped closer to sniff the air around his niece and the snake.

“He isn’t acting like a normal snake. He let me pick him up and look at his wounds, he came out of the woods and headed directly for me. He hasn’t hissed at me once. And the way he’s looking at you makes me think he knows you’re an alpha.” Cora’s words were calm and her body didn’t move at all just in case she was wrong and really did have a wounded animal in her lap.

Peter yelled for Laura to call Deaton before crouching down to look the snake in the eye, “Can you flash your eyes at me, sweet thing?”

Peter had never met a weresnake before and so he expected either beta orange or the more yellow-orange of the only other shifter he’d met who was a coyote, instead he was greeted with a gold like burnt honey. He gasped in the face of that bright beauty before he collected himself and slowly reached a hand out to touch the snake’s small body. The wounded creature did not move away or try to strike out, but instead slowly, painfully, lifted its head to meet his hand. Such a beautiful, strong little thing. Peter felt himself drawn to the strength and intelligence he saw in the snake’s gaze.

“It’s called hypermelanism.” Cora’s voice jarred Peter from the almost trance like state he’d been.

He made a questioning sound as he finally gently placed his hand on the beautiful scales and started drawing out the poor thing’s pain.

“His scales. I have been searching the internet while you two were communicating or whatever, and I’m pretty sure he’s a chocolate morph California Kingsnake with hypermelanism. The chocolate scales with only a splash of copper on his belly that gives him that metallic look is very distinct so it didn’t take long to figure it out.” Cora explained.

Peter hummed an agreeing sound, too caught up in the tidal waves of pain he was draining to speak.

You can read the rest over on Ao3