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The issue with Malia Tate is that she, although a Hale in blood, is a coyote. A werecoyote, to be exact.
Her mother was a murderer, and quite frankly an awful person, who left her daughter alone in the woods to suffer, stuck in her coyote form. It's honestly a miracle that they're able to find her in the first place.
Erica and Boyd had stayed behind with their daughter and Lucas, but the rest of the pack had come out to find this girl that the desert wolf had talked about before she died.
Stiles doesn't really know what to make of the situation, and years ago he probably wouldn't have even believed Peter. Chris however, he knew wasn't lying. He's been near desperate to find the girl since they've gotten back and had only then stopped from charging off into the woods head first when Derek practically demanded he stay.
It had been a long month of planning to find her and where she might be located, and longer still to figure out how they would help her change back. Derek still isn't sure that it was going to work anyways, but Chris and Peter were determined to at least try.
Which is how they ended up here, on the outskirts of the woods beyond the Nemetons reach, two counties over from Beacon Hills, staring down at a snarling and snapping coyote that they hope is Malia.
She feels weird and muddled when Stiles tries to reach out to her with his magic, and the feeling makes him nauseated. The pack has all tried to calm her down, but it's when she nearly takes a chunk out of Chris's arm that Derek snaps and roars directly in her face.
There's a flash of blue in her eyes, and a snap of her bones, and then there's a girl, no more than 5 years younger than Stiles laying on the forest floor gasping for breath. They watch as she stares down at her hands like there's something foreign about them, and when she shakes out her hands in front of her face, she screams; the sound is short and terrified.
"I thought this was a dream," She rasps from where she lays down on the ground, a hand grasping at her throat when she speaks. She feels terrified, and Stiles can't blame her.
"You've been lost for a while," Derek crouches beside her and doesn't flinch when she scurries away from him. "But we're here to take you home."
"Not to her. I won't go to her." Malia's canines extend and she half shifts where she's laying. Her words end on a snarl that raises even the hairs on the back of Stiles's neck.
"No, not to her." Derrick rumbles, putting enough Alpha force in his voice that Malia cowers in front of him again. "Never to her, not again. She's gone now, and we're bringing you home with us."
When she hears that her mother is dead, Malia seems to lose all fight and falls to the forest floor, curling up into a ball. Peter is the one who steps forward, who pulls a blanket from the bag on his back and drapes it over her. She curls up tighter, bringing the blanket up to her nose to inhale deeply, before she passes out.
Stiles sighs, the Golden light leaving his eyes. He'd had to put her to sleep, because he knew she was going to fight in the end. It was better this way, or so he told himself.
Peter looks a little disappointed, but he wraps the blanket as tight around his daughter as he can, and he picks her up and heads back the way they came with Chris at his side.
"Stiles," John sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. Neither he nor Melissa hide how disappointed they are with his choice, and Stiles shrugs helplessly.
"We couldn't risk her running now. Will take her home, and it'll be fine." It sounds like an empty promise to him as he says it.
--
The drive back is thankfully unavoidable, and Malia stays asleep for all of it. She even stays asleep for Melissa to dress her and to wipe off as much of the dirt as she could, and for Peter to lay her down in his and Chris's bed in their house on the outskirts of the Hale House.
In fact, Malia stays asleep for the next 3 days.
Stiles tries everything. He checks on her, and finds that she's more healthy than he thought she would be. It must be that her body is just exhausted from a change she hasn't gone through in close to 15 years. But the longer she sleeps, the longer he feels like it's his fault, and the more he feels Chris and Peter bristling when he walks into the house.
--
On the 4th day, Stiles goes to Chris and Peter's house and finds them sitting up with Malia, who is finally awake and who thankfully had not run out while they were sleeping. They had all heard him coming, but only Malia seemed to recognize the food in the bag, because she perked right up when he came into the house.
"Have you guys eaten yet?" Stiles send us what he hopes is a disarming grin their way, and starts to pull out the breakfast he had packed for the three of them. "I made food."
"Is it cooked?"
The sound of Malia's voice catches him off guard as it comes from directly behind him, and Stiles has to fight his gut reaction to swear and strike out at her. As it is he spins and clutches his hand to his chest, staring at her with wide eyes.
"Is it cooked?" Malia repeats herself, looking from the platter of scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage, back up to Stiles.
"I wouldn't feed you raw anything, I promise. It's cooked" Stiles steps aside and watches Malia reach for the food with bare hands. Peter coughs and her hands jerk to a stop, before she reaches for a serving spoon instead. She grabs it with two hands, like a broadsword or something, and ends up dropping half the eggs she scooped on the table before making it to a plate.
Stiles can practically feel her frustration.
"Why don't you sit down and I'll serve you guys?" Gently, Stiles takes the serving spoon from her hands and makes quick work of setting out four plates. Chris and Peter come over to the table and settle down and begin eating almost immediately.
It takes a while for Stiles to notice that Malia has a fork and a knife in her hands, and they're clutched so tightly that he can see the utensils bending. He remembers Peter and the not so subtle cue he gave her to not use her hands, so Stiles makes a point of setting his work down and picking up a piece of scrambled egg and popping it into his mouth.
Malia freezes from her spot next to him, and her eyes blaze bright blue when their gazes catch. Stiles stairs back at her and pops another piece of egg in his mouth, gesturing to her plate and grinning. That's all it takes for Malia to start actually eating, and though she grabs all of her food with her fingers, at least she's finally eating.
Peter makes a soft noise of disappointment, although it's cut off by the Swift elbow to the ribs that Chris gives him, and he quiets almost immediately. Malia doesn't pay him any attention and eats her fill, finally coming to a stop when there are no more sausages to eat.
Chris stands up with his plate and moves over to her side, and she stares up at him warily. He smiles regardless, and holds out his plate to her, which has six more sausages left on it.
"Do you want the rest of my sausage? I'm not hungry anymore." It's probably not even a lie, Chris has taken to eating like wolves, regardless of the fact that he's not one yet. He'd certainly eaten his fill, but Stiles had watched him take extra sausage once he realized they were Malia's favorite. It was probably for this exact moment.
Malia stares up at Chris for a second, her eyes flickering down to the meat on his plate, before she nods and looks at Peter. "Yes please and thank you."
Peter laughs, though it sounds pained, and he gets up from the table and leaves. Chris carefully puts his sausages on Malia's plate before heading off after his husband, leaving Stiles and Malia alone.
She eats slower this time, and pushes her plate away with three sausages left on it. Stiles doesn't really know if he should say anything, but before you wonder too long about it, Malia takes it into her own hands.
"Peter says that he's my father, and that I need to have better manners." Malia says matter of fact, like she doesn't see anything wrong with the phrase. It makes Stiles grit his teeth; manners are a lot to expect out of somebody who spent most of their life as a literal animal. "I don't think I remember what manners are."
"You will with time, don't worry about it. Peter will understand." Stiles reassures her, and he pulls out his phone and sends a slightly aggravated text to Derek about his uncle. "Do you want to learn?"
"I don't want to learn manners ." Malia turns and looks at him head on, no fear on her face at all. Her hair is still a mess, her body is still covered in dirt and she shrugs. "I want to learn to be human ."
It catches him off guard and he can't help; Stiles laughs. The sound makes Malia smile, though the look is a little uncertain and shaky, but that's fine, he can deal with that.
This, he can help with.
--
Little by little, Malia ends up coming to the pack house, and interacting with everyone. She hasn't been able to meet Elle yet, but she and Lucas are more often than not found together, tumbling in the dirt.
Derek ended up having to have a long chat with Peter about his expectations for her, and reminded him how long it took for Peter himself to come to terms with the fact that he might have been a bad person in the past, but that wasn't who he is now. Peter had gone back to his house and not been seen for nearly a week afterwards, and when he finally did come back, his eyes were red rimmed and he treated Malia kinder.
Slowly but surely they're bonding, and when Malia tackles Derek to the ground one day, she looks to Peter for approval and grins when he starts to laugh. That more than anything proves to Stiles that they were going to be just fine.
--
They teach her about everything she's missed, and sooner rather than later, Malia is texting the rest of the pack that she hasn't gotten a chance to meet yet. Her spelling is atrocious, and more often than not the texts she sends don't make any sense. But it's the thought that counts, and they're always happy to hear from her.
It's a weekday afternoon when Derek takes her by the shoulder and brings her outside, and asks if she knows what it means to submit to an Alpha. She frowns and her eyes flash, and she scuffs her feet against the dirt before looking back up.
"It's giving your power to somebody else." She answers, and practically glares up at Derek.
"Not at all." Derek smiles and gestures back to the house. "None of them gave up their power for me at all. Some of them got their power because of me, because of who we are as a pack, as a whole. I'm an alpha, but I don't make people do things they don't want to do, and I for sure do not take away anybody's freedom."
"So you wouldn't fight me or make me bleed or make me turn into a coyote even though I don't want to be?" Malia looks skeptical at best, not that anyone could really blame her.
"I do my best to never make you do anything you don't want to do." Derek reassures her, and the silence that follows is nearly deafening until Malia gives a small nod.
Derek wastes no time in letting his eyes go Alpha red, although instead of outright roaring like he had to do with Isaac years ago, and Erica and boyd, he lets a little warning growl out instead. Malia reacts beautifully; her eyes flash blue and she moves into the beta shift, and slowly but surely, her eyes flicker from Blue to beta yellow, and that's it.
She's one of them now.
Stiles can feel her settling in his chest, wild, and more than a little afraid, but she doesn't run from the connection. Malia embraces it, embraces the rest of the pack with a fierceness and protectiveness that none of them could have expected from her. She feels like she was always supposed to be there, and maybe she always was.
--
Elle adores Malia.
From the moment that Erica had placed her child in Malia's arms, the two have been nearly inseparable. It doesn't matter that the baby isn't even 6 months old yet, or that Malia's mentality is younger than her body is. They accept each other wholeheartedly, and can more often be found flicking their yellow eyes at each other than anything else.
Malia has started taking classes with Lucas, run by John, Melissa, and Chris. They teach her how to keep her emotions in check, how to keep herself safe, and how to keep her beta shift from popping out at any little inconvenience. They get paperwork from the school once Lydia gets in touch with her mother and asks her for copies of homeschooling paper. It helps a bit, and Malia is smart; she absorbs knowledge quickly, readily, and happily.
Stiles will sit in on some of her sessions, and help her figure out how she wants to word things. She latches on to him with stars in her eyes, and Stiles wonders what might have happened if they had met under different circumstances. He'd hate to think of her being taken advantage of because her mentality wasn't up with her age.
--
Things with Peter and Malia are tense; she never really seems to forgive him for expecting her to understand everything when she first arrived, and he never seems to forgive himself either. They interact with forced politeness for months, when it happens.
And Omega has made its way into hail territory, and while that is not unusual, it doesn't happen often enough for them to be ready. The nemeton has stopped offering in depth help when it comes to the pack and the lands, and there are days when Stiles doesn't really miss it, and then there are days like today where he wishes he had gotten a little bit of a heads up.
Peter had been on the outskirts of the pond in the back of the Hale House with Malia and Stiles when there was a snarl and the sudden scent of blood in the air.
Stiles had been focusing on the words around the pond; with both children young enough to potentially drown, he'd put up a barrier, and all his energy was focused on that and not on checking the area around them. So when Peter went down, the only one there to see it was Malia.
She'd shouted a warning too late, and Peter went down with a flurry of snarls and claws, and by the time he had kicked off the omega, he was looking worse for wear. He spat out a glob of blood onto the ground, and that was all Malia needed.
Before Stiles could gather his magic in a way that would help Peter or prevent the Omega from lunging again, Malia had shifted and launched herself at him. Stiles jogged over to Peter while the Omega and Malia snapped and snarled and wrestled each other across the ground, checked his wounds and once he was content with what he saw, he called to Derek, though he didn't even need to.
An Alpha's roar has Malia pulling back from the fight and standing in front of Peter with her hands on her hips. She looks pissed and rightfully so, and the only thing that stops the Omega from jumping at her again is Derek slamming his body to the ground.
In the end, Stiles strips him of his wolf and sends him on his way, battered, broken and bruised. He ignores the horrified look Malia sends his way, and heads over to Derek when Peter puts a hand on her shoulder. They walk off together, father and daughter, and both disappear into the edge of the forest.
Derek doesn't seem too worried, so Stiles stifles down his own thoughts and heads back to the house with his Alpha.
--
It's clear that something has changed by the time Malia and Peter have come back; they're smiling for one, looking more happy than anyone has seen them since Malia had arrived. Peter whispered something to her and she laughs, pushing him over and Stiles would swear that he heard her call him dad.
Weirder still, Malia is quick to rush to Chris's side, and to bury her face in his neck and scent him. She'd barely touched the man since she'd woken up, though they had definitely been closer than she and Peter had.
Chris is caught off guard but he covers it well by wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight. Peter heads over, wraps his arms around the both of them, looking over to Derek with a smile on his face.
They look every bit like the family Peter had wished for just months prior.
--
"I took her to the Nemeton." Peter admits to Stiles a few weeks later, when Malia is all smiles with everyone now, let alone her father and his husband. He looks sheepish when he admits it, but he shrugs his shoulders and stands tall. "It didn't feel her or whatever, I don't think she needs healing. But she needed to know how Chris and I felt, and that's exactly what it showed her. She knows that none of us want to take away her freedom, and that all we want is for her to be happy and free to be whoever she wants to be."
"I think that was a good choice you made." Stiles admits softly, leaning briefly against Peter in a moment of solidarity.
They watch Malia run around the yard with Lucas close at her heels, and Elle squealing in Erica's arms in a lawn chair not far from there. She's made a lot of progress since she's been here, and Stiles knows she's got a long way to go, but there's no doubt in his mind that she'll get there.
Malia turns on her heel and catches Lucas when he launches himself at her, and they topple back into a pile of leaves with a squeal of laughter that ends with both of them shifted and chasing after each other that way.
Yeah, Stiles thinks with a smile, she'll definitely get there.