Chapter 34: The Beta List
[Derek's Loft — Wednesday, November 2, 2011, 6:15 PM]
Three names on a whiteboard. Derek's handwriting — sharp, angular, each letter pressed into the surface with the economical force of a man who wrote like he spoke: minimum strokes, maximum clarity.
Isaac Lahey. Erica Reyes. Vernon Boyd.
Jackson stood in front of the board with his jacket still on and the Nemeton's pulse steady behind his sternum. The loft smelled of paint marker, Derek's coffee, and the particular ozone of an Alpha whose eyes had been red since Jackson walked through the door. Derek stood by the window — his position of choice, the one that let him watch the room and the street simultaneously. Scott sat on the couch with his backpack still slung over one shoulder, his leg bouncing, the restless energy of a teenager who'd driven straight from lacrosse practice.
"No," Jackson said.
Derek's jaw tightened. "I didn't ask a question."
"You're going to bite three teenagers in the next two weeks. I'm telling you it's too fast."
"My pack. My decision."
"Your pack currently consists of a chimera who lost control and hissed at you ten days ago, and a beta who's been a werewolf for two months." Jackson's voice was level. The argument wasn't emotional — it was strategic, delivered in the register of the adult mind assessing risk. "Adding three new betas while the chimera — that's me, by the way — is still stabilizing, while Gerard Argent is circling, while Allison is learning to shoot—"
"Three betas make the pack stronger." Derek's eyes pulsed red — not a threat display, the involuntary assertion of an Alpha whose instincts were driving the conversation more than his logic. "I'm an Alpha with two pack members. That's not a pack. That's a target."
He's right. And that's the problem — he's right for the wrong reasons. In the show, Derek bit Isaac, Erica, and Boyd out of desperation. He was isolated, traumatized, and operating from a deficit of everything: experience, support, emotional stability. The betas he created reflected that desperation — they were given power without training, purpose without structure, loyalty without trust. Two of them died.
But this Derek isn't that Derek. This one has allies. A support network. An alliance that killed Peter through coordination instead of chaos. This Derek is biting from strength, not weakness. The question isn't whether the bites will take — it's whether the downstream effects change when the Alpha giving them is different.
And I can't answer that question without revealing that I know what happened to them in a timeline that no longer exists.
"Who are they?" Scott asked. His voice carried genuine curiosity — not the resistance Jackson was offering, but the openness of someone who understood what the bite had given him and was willing to believe it could do the same for others.
Derek turned to the board. His red eyes dimmed to human green as he shifted into briefing mode — the Alpha as commander, presenting his operational assessment.
"Isaac Lahey. Junior. His father—" Derek stopped. The pause was loaded. Whatever Derek had learned about Mr. Lahey was bad enough to make a man who'd watched his family burn choose his words. "His father hurts him. The bite heals. It also gives Isaac the strength to leave."
"Erica Reyes. Sophomore. Epileptic. The seizures are severe — grand mal, multiple per week. The bite would eliminate them."
"Vernon Boyd. Junior. No medical condition. No abuse. Just..." Derek looked at the window. "Alone. The kind of alone that makes a person invisible."
Three profiles. Three broken teenagers. Three futures that Jackson had watched play out on a television screen in another life — Isaac's abuse escalating until the freezer, Erica's seizures humiliating her in public, Boyd's isolation calcifying into something harder than loneliness. Derek's instinct was correct: these three needed help. The bite could provide it.
But the bite also made them targets. In my timeline, all three of them suffered for it. Isaac was manipulated, used, traumatized further. Erica and Boyd were captured, tortured, and Boyd was killed. The Alpha Pack treated Derek's betas as objects — leverage against an Alpha they wanted to break.
And I can't say any of that.
"I want to meet them first," Jackson said.
Derek's eyes flicked to him. The assessment was visible — what are you calculating, and why.
"You said my pack, my decision. Fine. But I'm the one who sits next to these people in class. I'm the one who has to maintain cover while three freshly bitten werewolves learn to control themselves around four hundred humans. I want evaluation access."
Callback: the alliance briefing in the Whittemore study. I laid out the organizational structure — Derek as military, Scott as field, Stiles as intelligence, myself as strategy. The same framework applies to pack expansion. If Derek is the general, I'm the one who vets the recruits before they're given weapons.
"Evaluation." Derek tasted the word the way he tasted most words longer than two syllables — with suspicion. "You want to interview my beta candidates."
"I want to sit with them. Talk to them. Make sure they can handle what's coming." Jackson met Derek's red gaze without flinching. The sire bond between them transmitted the Alpha's irritation as a warm pulse in Jackson's chest, and underneath it — deeper, harder to read — something that might have been gratitude for the pushback. Derek Hale was learning to be an Alpha, and part of that education was having someone who argued back. "You're not asking permission. I'm not asking permission either. I'm telling you I'm going to meet them this week, and then I'll give you my assessment."
Five seconds. Derek's jaw worked.
"Fine." The word dropped like a stone. "But Isaac first. And soon."
"Why Isaac first?"
"Because his father broke his arm last week and the hospital believed the story about lacrosse practice." Derek's voice was flat. Controlled. The kind of control that covered something volcanic. "Isaac Lahey does not have time for your evaluation schedule."
The room went quiet. Scott's leg stopped bouncing. The restless energy drained from his body, replaced by the particular stillness of a person hearing something that rearranged their priorities.
Jackson stared at the whiteboard. Isaac's name. The letters sharp and black against the white surface. A boy whose arm was broken by his father, whose story was believed because people wanted to believe it, whose suffering was visible to anyone who looked and invisible to everyone who didn't.
I knew about the abuse. The show showed enough — the freezer, the bruises, the flinching. But a broken arm that the hospital bought as a sports injury? That's worse than the show ever portrayed. That's a system failing a child, and the system doesn't have supernatural senses or meta-knowledge or a chimera's protective instincts.
"Okay," Jackson said. "Isaac first."
---
Outside the loft, the November air was cold — forty-eight degrees, the chimera's enhanced thermoception reported. Jackson leaned against the Porsche in the parking lot while Scott mounted his bike.
"You fought hard against it." Scott's voice was quiet. Not accusatory — curious. The genuine puzzlement of someone who wanted to understand. "You know what the bite did for me. Asthma gone. Strength. A pack. Why would you fight against giving that to people who need it?"
Because I've seen what happens to them. Because Isaac Lahey becomes a kanima in my timeline instead of a werewolf, or doesn't — the timeline has shifted so far that I don't know anymore. Because Erica Reyes dies in a bank vault. Because Vernon Boyd dies with Derek's claws in his chest. Because the bite isn't just power — it's a target painted on their backs in a town that's about to get very dangerous.
"Because I'm cautious," Jackson said. "And because power without control gets people killed."
Scott looked at him. The brown eyes were steady — not the supernatural gold, the human brown, the color that meant Scott was seeing with his heart instead of his wolf.
"You sound like you've already seen it go wrong."
The sentence hung in the parking lot air. Scott McCall — earnest, open, the boy who processed through feeling — had stumbled onto the truth with the casual precision of someone who didn't know he was being precise.
"Just cautious," Jackson repeated. Started the Porsche. The starter caught on the second try.
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