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There's no relief. There's no room for him to acknowledge that he has once again survived. There is only a little healing as he crosses off a few more tasks on the list.
There is nothing to calm him, nothing to be satisfied about, because they are his Pack, and he has done things to them that he was never prepared to do, and had used skills he had hoped never to need. He’s had to use force on them, force that would kill anyone else. He can’t remove the extra sting that comes from being an Alpha from his claws as he digs them into his sister. He can’t give an inch when he digs into Boyd’s darkest shadows and rips submission from him. There is no room for mercy when he drags jugular veins out with his teeth, with the desperate hope that the extra pull of the moon will bring the healing, and this blow that would be the end for any normal person, and would probably take out most werewolves, is not the one that spells the end for the dwindling remains of his two broken Packs. He has to believe in it enough to make sure they are out until the sun chases away any remnants of the night, but awake again to heal.
There's no joy in a win. He’s had to bring himself to the deepest animal within him, to lose himself in it in order to win this. He’s become the man his mother made him swear he’d never be – animalistic, single-minded, lost. He doesn’t deserve to touch the wolves he failed. He owed them his duty. He should have known Cora was still alive. He should have felt it.
And he should have been able to help Boyd before this. Should have listened to Scott just a few hours ago. Should have washed Erica’s blood from his body, which would only rile up Boyd further.
He should have been better.
He can’t touch them. He won’t. Even his baby sister, who he hasn’t laid a hand on in nine years, save to injure to as close to death as he can render her, is mere inches from his blood-soaked fingernails, and he won’t touch her. There is Pack near, and they will take her. They will make her safe for him (from him). They know Boyd, and they will tend to him – he is their own Pack, after all.
There is still more work to do. A human’s terrified heartbeat calls from somewhere behind him. He has text messages and missed calls from Stiles, and he knows he’s needed at the morgue, because Stiles only calls when something terrible is going on. Peter is somewhere lurking about town, with the idea in his head that there ought to be more werewolves, when Derek’s own family are laying right here in front of him with their veins trying desperately to hook back up to one another. Erica’s body is still in the bank with Derek’s fingerprints now all over her, because he truly could not leave her lying in a supply closet – she was sixteen years old, and had deserved the world, and Derek had served her up on a platter. Deucalion is hunting him, with a team of beta-alphas who as individuals are allergic to shoes, kidnap werewolf kids from hospitals, and fist together to make a sumo sized wolf, and as a whole, frighten the shit out of him in general. The guidance officer’s scent was all over the bank for some reason, and Allison Argent now hates him more than ever, and he put a bow back in her hand, with a matching one for her father, who has taken to hunting wolves again like an alcoholic to a glass of whiskey.
He has still-healing wounds littering his body, and blood everywhere that he knows, from experience, will only look more terrifying if he tries to wipe it away. He has a Pack to sort, an inconspicuous Toyota to fetch parked fifteen miles from the school. He is already immeasurably exhausted, feels his wounds knitting together, his subconscious trying to handle the scale of the attack he has produced. The scale of things to come. There is a lot to do, and dawn is coming.
Deep breath. Get up. Follow the heartbeat. It calls for a reason.