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Wolves require anchors. It’s a well know fact — normally it’s thoughts, memories, something with enough emotional draw that it has the power to keep the raw, archaic side of the wolf in check.
An anchor doesn’t trap a werewolf and keep it contained like an animal, it merely acts as a reminder of the side that isn’t a wolf; an anchor is pure emotion, purely human, a piece of humanity all werewolves need.
Anchors keep you grounded; in control. That’s why they were called anchors; like the anchor of a ship. His dad used to make puns about anchors and ships and wolves. He had a list of them, overused and long since funny.
Derek anchor was anger.
It hadn’t always been anger. When he was a child it had been his mother, the sound of her voice when she sang him to sleep. As he grew it morphed; steadily his anchor had grown with him until it included his father’s laugh because it was booming and ridiculous and constantly shocking; Laura’s smile when she hang off her twin Mark’s shoulders; Mark’s smooth, honest encouragement when they wrestled; the way it felt when he held his infant sister Clara in his arms and she’d gripped his thumb. It included family barbecues with a touch too much meat and movie nights with lighthearted arguing.
After the fire those memories were tainted. Unusable.
He clung to Laura, horded every smile, every laugh, every moment that they had when they could pretend they weren’t living in immeasurable pain. Laura was his anchor, his safety net and his Alpha.
Then she was gone too.
So his anchor became anger because all he had left was his anger and his guilt and out of the two anger was the only one strong enough to keep the wolf from howling loud and running rampant, even though he really couldn’t find it in his heart to care anymore if it did. He had had somebody else’s mess to clean up and vengeance to gain then he could give in.
But… somewhere along the line things changed. There was problem after problem after problem and yes he was man enough to admit that some of those were probably his own fault. There were people who didn’t deserve to get hurt, who needed to be taught or who needed to be saved. There were people and then there was a pack, his pack, and they needed him and his knowledge, what little he could provide, and they were too young to have to deal with all this crap.
Somewhere along the line he became too busy, too attached and too responsible to just give in and anger just wasn’t enough.
He doesn’t know when his anchor changed and he wasn’t angry just to keep the wolf in line anymore. Somehow rage became fleeting smiles and light laughter and sarcasm in response to dry wit and helping with homework. It became explaining anchors to the pack as a whole and hearing Stiles make a ship pun that Derek’s father had used often, and listening to the mix of laughter and groans that followed. It became pack dinners with a thousand cartons of take away littering the table and movie nights with petty squabbling without heat.
To be honest, Derek didn’t even notice that his anchor had changed. It didn’t even register to him that, just like when he was a child, his anchor would shift and slide and move with him. He stopped being angry — it wasn’t necessary anymore, and the anger was drained from him.
Wolves require anchors, because anchors keep them grounded and in control. Anchors will keep a werewolf from going feral. All wolves need an anchor.
Of course, it’s not until this moment, this very second, when there is blood that isn’t his coating his skin and nobody left to respond to his howls that Derek is reminded, once again, with vicious and unrelenting force, that better than anything else an anchor does, the one thing they are guaranteed to do, is sink.