Chapter 1: The Being and the End of Summer
10th Grade — Late Summer
---
The Stilinski household was a study in contradictions.
From the outside, it looked like any other house on the block—blue shutters, a porch that needed painting, a lawn that was mostly weeds. Inside, it was quieter than most people expected. Sheriff Noah Stilinski worked odd hours. His son Stiles filled the silence with chaos. And his daughter Emma? Emma was a ghost in her own home.
Not literally. Not yet.
Tonight, the silence was broken by the sound of heels clicking down the stairs.
Emma Stilinski emerged from the second floor like she was descending a runway. She was sixteen—one minute older than her twin brother—but looked nothing like him. Where Stiles was lean and fidgety with moles scattered across his pale skin, Emma was all sharp angles and confidence. Her dark hair fell in waves over her shoulders. Her outfit—a black crop top, high-waisted jeans, silver jewelry—screamed I run this school.
She was, in fact, the queen of Beacon Hills High. Popular. Untouchable. The kind of girl who could ruin your social life with a single glance.
Stiles sat on the couch, scrolling through his phone, pretending not to notice her.
"I'm going out," Emma announced.
"Didn't ask."
"I'm telling you so you don't call the cops when I'm not in my room."
"Dad's the cops. He'd just put up a missing poster with your worst school picture."
Emma smirked—a sharp, cutting thing. "Bold of you to assume he has a good one."
She grabbed her purse from the hook by the door. Lydia Martin's car was already idling in the driveway, its engine a low purr. The two of them were inseparable. Queen and her right hand.
"Curfew?" Stiles asked without looking up.
"Don't have one."
"Dad said nine-thirty."
"Dad's not here."
"He'll be home by ten."
Emma paused. For a moment, something flickered across her face—something that might have been affection or annoyance or both. Then it was gone, replaced by the mask she wore like armor.
"Then I'll be back by nine-thirty. Don't wait up."
She opened the door, then hesitated. "Hey, Stiles."
"What?"
"You're doing that thing with your leg. The bounce. It's annoying."
Stiles looked down at his knee, which was, in fact, bouncing uncontrollably. He forced it to stop. "Happy?"
"Ecstatic." She stepped outside, then called over her shoulder, "Don't burn the house down."
"Don't get arrested."
The door slammed. Lydia's car pulled away.
Stiles sat in the silence for a long moment. His knee started bouncing again.
---
The thing about Emma and Stiles was this:
They loved each other. Fiercely. Absolutely. The kind of love that came from sharing a womb, sharing a birthday, sharing a lifetime of inside jokes and midnight conversations and the unspoken knowledge that they were the only two people in the world who truly understood what it was like to be a Stilinski.
But they didn't like each other. Not publicly. Not anymore.
Somewhere around the start of ninth grade, Emma had decided to become someone else. Someone popular. Someone untouchable. She'd traded late-night movies with her brother for parties with Lydia Martin. She'd traded sarcastic banter for cutting insults. She'd traded them for her.
At home, she still bullied him—the way siblings did. Stealing his fries. Hiding his laptop charger. Calling him Mieczyslaw just to watch him cringe. But there was a meanness to it now that hadn't been there before. An edge.
And Stiles? Stiles took it. Because underneath the sharp words and the cold shoulders, he knew she still loved him. She just didn't know how to show it anymore.
They didn't talk at school. Most people didn't even know they were related. Emma walked the halls surrounded by her court, and Stiles walked them alone—or with Scott, when Scott wasn't busy being the star lacrosse player everyone adored.
It was fine.
It was whatever.
He was used to it.
---
Stiles checked the time on his phone. Seven-fifteen. His dad's shift ended in forty-five minutes. He could pick him up, grab some food, and be back before Emma got home.
He grabbed his keys and headed for the door.
---
The Jeep smelled like stale fries and desperation—which was basically the scent of Stiles Stilinski's entire existence.
He pulled into the station parking lot at exactly eight o'clock, right as Noah was walking out, rubbing the back of his neck the way he always did after a long shift.
"Hey, Dad. Hungry?"
"Starving. You buying?"
"I'm seventeen. I'm always broke. But I'm driving, so you're buying."
Noah laughed and climbed into the passenger seat. "Burger Joint?"
"You read my mind."
They drove through the late-summer evening, windows down, the radio playing something neither of them was listening to. It was comfortable. Easy. The kind of silence that didn't need filling.
Until Noah filled it.
---
"So, have you gotten around to telling her yet?"
Sheriff Stilinski asked the question like it was nothing. Like he was asking about the weather or what time the game started. Casual. Easy.
He looked over at his son, who was currently shoving a fistful of curly fries into his mouth while simultaneously trying to bite into his burger. A feat of adolescent engineering that Noah had witnessed approximately ten thousand times over the past sixteen years.
The two Stilinskis sat in Stiles' blue Jeep, parked in the driveway of their Beacon Hills home. They'd eaten dinner like this a hundred times—Stiles picking his dad up from the station, grabbing fast food, and debriefing in the vehicle because neither of them could be bothered to sit at an actual table.
Stiles chewed aggressively, his fresh buzz cut making his head look somehow both smaller and more angular in the fading evening light. He raised an eyebrow, speaking around a mouthful of fried potato.
"What are you talking about?"
Noah chewed his own bite of hamburger, shrugging with practiced nonchalance. "Sarah. Have you told her you liked her yet?"
The choking noise that erupted from the driver's seat was spectacular.
Stiles grabbed his soft drink, sucking down half of it as he coughed and sputtered. Cold liquid burned his nasal passages. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. It was, objectively, a disaster.
And Noah just sat there. Watching. Smirking slightly behind his burger.
He knows, Stiles realized with dawning horror. He's always known.
Finally, Stiles managed to recompose himself. He set the drink down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and refused to make eye contact with his father.
"Sarah? What do you mean? I don't like Sarah." The words came out too fast, too defensive. He scrambled to correct. "I mean, I like her. She's my best friend. I like her, but I don't, you know, like her."
"Stiles—"
"Okay! Fine!" Stiles threw his hands up, nearly launching a curly fry into the backseat. "Jesus Christ, Dad. Stop with the interrogation. I love her! Are you happy?"
Noah chuckled, shaking his head before sinking his teeth back into his hamburger. "I was just going to ask you to pass me the fries, but thanks for sharing."
He reached over and grabbed a fry, tossing it into his mouth with the satisfied air of a man who had just won a game his son didn't know they were playing.
Stiles rolled his eyes so hard he nearly gave himself a headache. He stared out the windshield at the house. His house. His room. His life, which his father was currently dissecting like a frog in biology class.
"How'd you know I liked her anyway?" he muttered.
Noah wiped his mouth with a napkin. "You're not exactly subtle, Stiles. Every time Sarah comes around, you have this look on your face like she's the sun and you're seeing her for the first time."
Stiles wanted to argue. He wanted to deny. But the words died in his throat because his dad wasn't wrong. He was never wrong about stuff like this.
"Okay, okay. I get it." Stiles sighed, defeated, and let his head fall against his hand, elbow propped on the car door. "Though to answer your question—no, I haven't told her how I feel. I don't think I ever will."
Noah's smile faded. His brow furrowed in that way it did when he was about to say something serious. "I think you should. What's the worst that could happen?"
"She could hear me!" Stiles flailed. "Besides, she wouldn't go for me. I'm her best friend. She couldn't ever fall for me. I'm just Stiles. The guy who asked her to marry him with a Haribo ring when we were four."
"And what did she say?"
Stiles shrugged, but a small smile tugged at his lips. "Well, she said yes."
"Exactly!" Noah leaned forward, pointing a fry at his son like it was a gavel. "If she said yes to a marriage proposal, then I think she would say yes if you asked her out on a date."
"Dad, we were four."
"Either way, you should go for it. I'm positive that she likes you, too." Noah nodded, confidence radiating off him. "I see the way you two look at each other when she's over. It reminds me of how two other people used to look at each other when we were your age too."
The shift was subtle. The mention of Stiles' mother. Noah's face softened, grief flickering behind his eyes like a candle struggling to stay lit. The crease in his brow. The down-turn of his lips.
Stiles felt it like a punch to the chest.
But underneath the grief, there was something else. Hope. His father was giving him hope. The idea that maybe—maybe—Sarah Green could love him back settled into his bones like warm honey.
He let himself imagine it.
Sarah, with her fair hair and freckles and the way she traced shapes on his palm when she was nervous. Sarah, who laughed at his jokes even when they weren't funny. Sarah, who put her head in his lap and let him run his fingers through her hair while they watched movies in his room.
He imagined kissing her.
Not a big, dramatic kiss. Just a small one. A hi, I love you kiss. The kind where she'd interrupt his rambling just to press her lips against his and make his brain go completely, blissfully blank.
His heart tightened. Not in a bad way. In a this could actually happen way.
His dad was right.
He had to tell her.
Stiles took a deep breath, lifted his head, and smiled nervously at his father.
"You're right. I need to tell her. I don't think I can go on much longer without her knowing. It's driving me crazy."
Noah grinned—victorious, proud, and just a little bit smug. "Then I'll get out of your hair!"
He grabbed his food, threw open the door, and hopped out. Before closing it, he patted the frame of the window and leaned down.
"Go get her, son."
Then he walked toward the house, leaving Stiles alone in the Jeep with a racing heart and a future that suddenly felt wide open.
---
Stiles didn't wait.
The Jeep roared to life, and he peeled out of the driveway like a bat out of hell. The engine screamed. The tires squealed. He drove too fast down streets he'd known his whole life, his hands shaking on the steering wheel, his mouth dry.
Sarah's house wasn't far. A few blocks. A few minutes. A few forevers.
He parked across the street, killed the engine, and sat there for a moment, breathing.
You can do this, he told himself. You've survived lacrosse tryouts. You've survived detention with Mr. Harris. You've survived Scott's terrible cooking. You can tell one girl that you're in love with her.
He got out of the car.
The walk up the path felt like a death march. Each step heavier than the last. His hands were clammy. His heart was trying to escape through his throat. The porch steps creaked under his weight like they were judging him.
He knocked three times. Gentle. Polite. Please-let-her-be-home.
The door swung open.
And there she was.
Sarah Green.
Not beautiful in the classical way—no flowing red curls or ivory skin, no piercing green eyes. She was taller than average, her fair hair piled into an up-do with a few strands escaping to frame her face. Ordinary, maybe, to someone who didn't know her.
But to Stiles, she was the sun.
A smile flashed across her face, creating dimples and creases that moved her freckles. "Stiles!" Her voice was warm honey, laced with happiness. "What are you doing here?"
He felt a smile crawl across his own face—soft, genuine, the kind he couldn't fake. "I just wanted to see you."
He gestured to the porch swing. "Can we sit?"
"Of course."
They sat. The swing creaked. The evening air smelled like cut grass and something floral from her mom's garden. Stiles' knee bounced. His hands wouldn't stop moving.
He took a breath.
Now or never.
"This is going to sound crazy, but I finally have the courage to tell you, so please just sit and listen." The words tumbled out, faster than he intended. "There are so many things about me that you do know. You know my real name is Mieczyslaw. You know my favorite color is blue. You know that my favorite Sour Patch Kid color is purple. You know that one of my guilty pleasure movies is Never Been Kissed. You know almost everything there is to know about me."
He lifted his head. She was watching him with full attention, a soft grin ghosting across her lips. Her green eyes shone like precious jewels.
"But there's one thing. One thing that I've never said for anyone to hear. Never even mumbled to myself. There's only one thing that I've kept to myself since meeting you when we were four and playing in the sandbox with Scott."
"Stiles, you don't know that I—"
HONK.
The sound cut through the evening like a blade.
Both of them looked up.
A black car was parked in front of Sarah's house. Stiles knew that car. He'd been in that car a thousand times.
Scott's car.
Stiles turned to Sarah, his brows furrowed. "Scott?"
She nodded slowly, her face falling. "Yeah. Yeah, I know it's a little weird for you, but... he asked me out. We're supposed to go out tonight."
The world tilted.
His heart didn't just sink. It dropped. Straight through his chest, through the porch floor, through the earth itself. A vile, crawling feeling crept up his spine and settled in his stomach like poison.
"A date?" His voice came out quiet. Foreign. "He asked you out?"
"Yeah. Earlier this week, when I was watching you guys at lacrosse practice." She bit her lip. Nervous. Guilty, maybe. "I can get rid of him. Let you finish what you were saying."
Stiles couldn't speak.
He just sat there, frozen, as Scott McCall—his best friend, his brother, the person he'd trusted with everything—got out of his car and started walking toward the porch.
Scott was going to hold her hand.
Scott was going to kiss her goodnight.
Scott was going to be her boyfriend.
And Stiles? Stiles was the guy who waited too long. The guy who was too scared. The guy who let the love of his life slip through his fingers because he couldn't say three stupid words.
It's all my fault, he thought. It's all my fault.
He cleared his throat, stood up, and forced a smile that felt like broken glass. "No, you should go. This wasn't that big of a deal anyway."
Sarah stood too. She saw right through him. She always did.
"It seemed like a big deal." She stepped closer, taking his hand in hers, smoothing her thumb over his skin. "You said you had something to tell me. And even if you were going to tell me you needed to use my phone charger, that would be more important to me than any date. You come before everyone else, you know that, Stiles."
He looked down at their hands. Her fingernails were painted black. A silver ring on her pointer finger. She was dressed up. For Scott.
The realization hit like a freight train.
Scott was almost at the porch now.
Stiles pulled his hand away—too quickly, too harshly. He saw the hurt flash across Sarah's face, and he hated himself for it.
"No, Sarah. You have a date tonight. So go." He shook his head, his voice hardening with finality. "I'm not gonna say it again. Please. Just go."
She sighed. Defeated. Nodded slowly.
Scott climbed the stairs, smiling charmingly at Sarah. "Hey." Then he looked at Stiles. "Hey, Stiles! What's up, man?"
"Scott."
Stiles forced a smile—a small, tight thing that didn't reach his eyes. He pulled his hand fully away from Sarah's, discreetly, like he was hiding a secret.
"Uh, I should be going now. You two have a good night."
"Stiles..." Sarah's voice was small. Pleading.
He didn't turn around.
He walked past them both—past Scott's confused expression, past Sarah's hurt eyes—and headed down the cement path. His head hung low. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his lacrosse shorts. Each step felt like snapping a string of his heart.
He didn't look back.
He couldn't.
---
The Jeep was dark and quiet.
Stiles sat in the driver's seat, the door still open, his legs hanging out. He stared at Sarah's house. At the porch. At Scott and Sarah talking, laughing. He could almost hear her giggle from here—that sound that was permanently etched into his memory.
He watched Scott touch her arm.
He watched her smile.
He watched his best friend take the girl he loved.
I should have told her, he thought. I should have ignored the date. I should have said it anyway. What if she kissed me? What if she said it back?
What if?
The question broke him more than anything else ever had.
He pulled his legs into the Jeep, slammed the door, and started the engine. He didn't go home. He couldn't look at his dad's hopeful face. He couldn't sit in his room and stare at the ceiling and think about what he'd lost.
He drove.
He didn't know where he was going until the pavement ended and the dirt road began.
The preserve.
The woods.
---
Sunset bled into darkness.
Stiles walked without purpose, without direction. His feet carried him deeper into the trees, past the familiar trails he and Scott used to ride as kids, past the old fallen log they'd pretended was a spaceship, past everything that reminded him of before.
Before he was too scared to confess.
Before he watched her walk away with someone else.
The rain started slowly at first—a few drops, then a drizzle, then a downpour. The sky opened up like it was punishing him. Mud sucked at his sneakers. Branches clawed at his arms. The cold soaked through his hoodie and clung to his skin.
He should have turned back.
He didn't.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Time lost meaning in the dark, wet woods. Stiles stumbled over roots, slipped on wet leaves, and kept moving. Always moving. Because if he stopped, he'd have to think. And if he thought, he'd have to feel.
And he didn't want to feel anymore.
That's when he saw it.
A human skull.
Cracked. Ancient. Half-buried in mud and dead leaves. It sat at the base of a gnarled oak tree, its empty eye sockets staring up at the rain like it was waiting for something.
Inside the skull, a dark red liquid shimmered.
It wasn't blood. Not exactly. It was thicker. Darker. It moved like it was alive, swirling in slow, hypnotic circles despite the rain falling into it.
Stiles stared.
And then he heard it.
A voice. Not from outside. From inside. From somewhere deeper than thought, deeper than memory.
"Drink."
He shook his head, backing away. "No. No, nope, not doing that. That's how horror movies start. I've seen Evil Dead. I know how this goes."
"Drink."
The compulsion wrapped around his mind like smoke. Soft. Persistent. Inescapable.
"DRINK."
Stiles dropped to his knees in the mud.
His hands shook as they reached for the skull. He tried to stop them. He really tried. His whole body screamed no, but his hands kept moving, lifting the skull to his lips.
"Please," he whispered to no one. "Please don't make me."
The liquid poured into his mouth.
It tasted like ash and copper and something older than the earth itself.
Then the world ended.
---
His body convulsed first.
Every muscle seized at once, locking so tight he thought his bones would snap. He fell sideways into the mud, his back arching, his teeth grinding together. Foam and black-red liquid bubbled from his lips.
Then his heart stopped.
Not slowed. Not skipped. Stopped.
Cardiac arrest in the middle of the Beacon Hills preserve, alone, in the rain, with a human skull clutched in his hands.
He vomited—black and red and wrong.
He shook—violent, uncontrollable spasms that threw mud in every direction.
His eyes rolled back.
His last thought wasn't of Sarah. It wasn't of his dad or Emma or Scott.
It was: I never finished telling her.
Then nothing.
---
He died.
But death wasn't the end.
He woke somewhere else. Nowhere. Everywhere. A void that stretched in all directions, infinite and empty. There was no ground beneath his feet. No sky above his head. Just... space.
And a woman.
She was beautiful in the way ancient things are beautiful—terrible and magnificent, like a forest fire or a collapsing star. Her hair was dark as oil. Her eyes held centuries. She wore clothes that belonged to no time Stiles had ever studied.
"You're dead," she said.
Stiles opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
"You drank the serum. It was not meant for you. But it chose you anyway." She stepped closer, and the void shimmered around her. "I created it. A long time ago. When the world was younger and so was I."
She told him everything.
100 BC. Her village. Werewolves. Destruction. Not just killed—erased. Everyone she'd ever loved, gone in a single night of claws and howls.
20 years later. She'd rebuilt. A new family. A new life. Then the vampires came. They called themselves "The Originals." They murdered her family for sport.
10 years after that. The humans. They called her a witch. They burned her. They killed her grandchildren while she watched.
She created the serum as a weapon. A forced evolution. Something that could kill anything—werewolves, vampires, humans, all of it. Something that would end the cycle of violence by being the most violent thing of all.
But she died before she could use it.
The serum waited.
Centuries passed.
And then Stiles Stilinski—heartbroken, terrified, desperately in love with a girl who chose someone else—stumbled into the woods and found it.
"You are in transition now," she said. "Your body is dead. But it can become something more. To complete the transformation, you must drink human blood within 24 hours of your death. If you do, you become what I designed—a true upgraded vampire. Stronger than any natural vampire. A predator built to end other predators."
"And if I don't?" Stiles asked. His voice echoed strangely in the void.
"Then you stay dead."
She reached out and touched his face. Her fingers were cold.
"You will be hungry. You will be strong. You will not feel guilt the way humans do. That is not a flaw—it is a feature. I did not create you to be kind. I created you to survive."
The void began to fade.
"Wake up, Stiles Stilinski. And feed."
---
He woke.
The rain had stopped. The clouds were breaking apart, letting slivers of moonlight through the trees.
Stiles sat up slowly, mud dripping from his clothes, leaves stuck to his face. He felt... different. Wrong. Right. Both at once.
He looked down at his hands.
Pale. Steady. Strong.
He heard something. Voices. Laughter.
Humans.
His head turned toward the sound like a compass finding north. His mouth watered. His fangs—fangs, he had fangs now—extended from his gums, and the hunger hit him like a freight train.
Oh, he thought. This is what she meant.
He found them easily. A campsite a quarter mile away. A husband and wife—Darren and Brooke, though he didn't know their names yet—sitting by a dying fire, drinking wine, laughing at something on a phone screen.
They looked up when he emerged from the trees.
"Hey, kid, you okay? You look—"
Stiles moved faster than he'd ever moved in his life.
Brooke screamed.
Darren stood up, reached for a camping knife.
Stiles was faster.
The first bite was... everything.
Blood flooded his mouth—warm, sweet, complex. Better than any soda. Better than any drug. Better than anything he'd ever tasted in his entire human life. The high hit him immediately: euphoria, perfect and pure, washing away the anxiety, the heartbreak, the what ifs.
His mind went silent for the first time in sixteen years.
He drank.
And drank.
And when Darren tried to pull him off, Stiles turned on him with eyes that weren't human anymore—bright red irises surrounded by dark, black outlines, intense veins stretching down his face like cracked glass.
Darren didn't stand a chance.
Neither of them did.
When it was over, Stiles stood over two bodies. Blood dripped from his chin. His hands were red. His hoodie was ruined.
He should have felt something.
Horror. Guilt. Remorse.
He felt... nothing.
Well, not nothing. He felt full. Satisfied. Pleasantly warm.
He licked his lips.
Best drink I've ever had, he thought.
Then he looked up at the moon, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and smiled.
"I'm still Stiles," he said to the darkness. "But I'm not just Stiles anymore."
He walked home through the woods, leaving two bodies behind.
And he didn't look back.
He never looked back again.
---
End of Chapter 1