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The first text Stiles got came about a month after the Berserker-shitshow in Mexico. There were no words in the message, just a single uncaptioned image. It was a photo of a spectacular sunset: oranges and blues and glowing golds against a mountainous backdrop that could have been just about anywhere in the world. Stiles had no idea who the unknown-number sender was. He’d considered messaging something back to indicate that, but then a random monster-of-the-week tried to kill one of the Pack, he can’t remember what or where exactly, and he didn’t end up hitting send.

He forgot about it until another month later when he received the second text. This time it was a picture of a huge basket of curly-fries set on a table in a retro-styled diner. There was a big, neon-pink Route 66 sign hanging on the wall. Stiles had spent most of that night—the Sunday of his actual birthday—with his dad, and they had made a pact to leave their phones behind, which meant Stiles had not seen the message until after midnight, an hour or two after it was sent.

The photo had two words as its caption: Happy Birthday .

Stiles probably should have freaked out, then and there, at the fact that it was a not-so-random somebody sending him texts. A somebody who knew his date of birth. He didn’t, though. He made an in-Stiles’-brain-executive-decision and chose to remain composed. He also decided to keep it to himself.

He loaded the sunset image as the background on his phone. He saved that pic, and the big-basket-of-awesome-fries one, to a folder synced with his laptop and two different services in the cloud. It wasn’t until after he’d done those few things, finished his chemistry homework, jerked off, and had a post-midnight snack, that he allowed himself to admit that he knew exactly who it was who’d sent him the messages.

Five or six pictures and a Happy Fourth of July later, Stiles saved the number into his contacts list as M.W . Everyone in the Pack had their noses in everyone else's business, so it was nice to have something just for himself. No one but Stiles needed to know about his newly nicknamed Mystery Wolf .

A few days after making the contact-list commitment, Stiles sent his first reply. He managed a fairly decently angled image of the bandage covering the small tattoo he’d travelled a couple of towns over to get.

He was worried at what M.W.’s response might be. He didn’t send a shot of the actual ink.

There was no comment, but the texts kept coming.