He wakes up and everything feels sharp. Feels bright. Feels wrong. He’s used to this feeling. To the feeling that there’s something wrong with the world. Something wrong with him. But… Something feels more wrong than usual today. Or maybe a different kind of wrong. He feels the phantom stroke of a gentle hand in his hair. Can almost scent Laura in the memory. The gentle warmth she’d always given him because that was the strength he needed....
Use Your Words “Oh my god! You’re here. In a grocery store. Shopping,” Stiles cackled with glee. Derek was instantly annoyed, “I do eat you know.” “Yeah, but I always assumed you just hunted down Thumper or whatever,” Stiles waved a hand. Derek rolled his eyes. He was pretty sure that Scott and Stiles would never see him as an actual person. With feelings. He just turned to walk away....
When Stiles turned eighteen he, to the surprise of everyone, turned into a dragon. He wasn’t quite a were-creature since dragons were more magic than anything else. How else could he shift mass into something significantly larger? He could definitely do partial shifts with claws and scales and such. Everyone was happy since with the scales he was very damage resistant and he healed quickly. Derek was happy for Stiles. He was....
Stiles stirs out of sleep because he needed to pee like five minutes ago. Of course, Derek is wrapped around him like a fucking wereoctopus so it takes him five excruciating minutes to extricate himself. He stumbles into the bathroom and doesn’t bother turning on the light. He leaves the door open enough to let some light in. Doesn’t want to fuck up his night vision and wake himself up more....
“I thought you said this was a pack meeting?” Erica said with a sharp edge to her tone. It grated on Derek’s nerves. He knew he only had himself to blame—he’d bitten teens and now he was responsible for them. At least until they were adults and he could drive them out of his territory. Whenever they wondered about his short temper and harshness, it took everything in him to tell them it was because they weren’t pack but he was still responsible for them and, thus, had to tolerate them in his territory....
1 Derek can honestly say that he’s the happiest he’s been since the fire. He has a draconic mate who thrives on making him happy and a pretty okay pack. There’s certainly more teasing than he thinks is strictly necessary but he bit a bunch teens who turned out to be unruly and sassy. So, basically, he turned a bunch of teens. He only has himself to blame. Being with Stiles has mellowed him out....
When Stiles is eight he learns that nothing will be the same. It isn’t because his mom dies. (Although it changes everything, it’s still mundane. A terrible and boring tragedy.) His dad comes home one day after work and sits Stiles down for a talk. He explains that werewolves and all the monsters are real. They’re real and not hiding under anyone’s bed anymore. That they aren’t really monsters but nice people like the Hales....
1 After seeing the wreck his father turned into after his mom’s death, Stiles Stilinski decided that soulmates were bullshit and he didn’t want to have anything to do with them. The fact that he lived in a world where they were an actual thing irritated him to no end. The whole thing was bullshit! You could be going about your perfectly ordinary day, cross paths with some stranger, and—bam!—you just met your fucking soulmate....
If I’m allowed to toot my own horn, I’d have to say that one of the key aspects of my stories is trope inversion or subversion. Being irritated with a commone fandom trope is most often what motivates a particular story. Not all of them, sure, but a lot—possibly even most. On some tumblr post about romance novels and why they’re Totally Valid, someone mentioned a frequent aspect is someting called ’the grovel’: wherein the love interest expresses sincere remorse over a harm done....
(Inspired by Holding On Too Tight by Green & ohfeelya) It’s only days after Derek gave up his alpha spark to save Cora that the last part of him breaks. Kate cracked him open. Peter killing Laura broke pieces of himself. Killing Peter killed something in him. He’d already killed so much of his family but he’d never had their actual blood on his claws. Being forced to kill Boyd, his own beta, crystalized his self-hatred into an unbreakable stone....