Cora and Stiles

**The relationship between Human Stiles Stilinski and Beta Werewolf Cora Hale.**

The relationship between Stiles and Cora is one that started to develop the moment the two first met in Season 3. They initially seemed indifferent to one another, as Cora seemed annoyed by Stiles and Lydia and viewed Stiles and the McCall Pack as a bunch of stupid teenagers with no idea of what they were doing, while Stiles saw Cora as a younger, female version of her brother Derek, with whom Stiles also had an antagonistic relationship. However, as Season 3 progressed, the two became closer, working together in several situations in the Beacon Hills packs' fight against the Alpha Pack and the Darach and eventually developing a tentative friendship.

Although the two never progressed to romantic interest, there were hints of a slight attraction between the two. During Peter's story of how Derek acquired his blue Werewolf eyes, Stiles questioned him on his age, to which he replied to with a vague answer. Stiles then asked Cora, who answered with a clear-then-vague answer, prompting Stiles to abandon the topic, but she was briefly seen smiling at his confusion. Stiles first showed interest in Cora after he finished resuscitating her after she passed out due to her Mistletoe poisoning, with Stiles telling the unconscious Cora that she better be awake the next time their lips touched.

After Cora left Beacon Hills at the end of Season 3A, their current status remains unknown. However, it's likely the two still remain on friendly terms.

## Throughout *Teen Wolf*

### Season 3A

In *Chaos Rising*, after Stiles and Peter had discovered that the First National Bank vault, where they believed the Alpha Pack was holding Vernon Boyd and Erica Reyes captive, was built out of hecatolite, also known as moonstone, which scatters the moonlight and prevents Werewolves from feeling the effects of the full moon, Stiles called Scott and Derek, who had broken into the bank, to warn them of this fact. Unbeknownst to Stiles, Erica had been killed by Kali, and the other captive was Cora Hale, Derek's long-lost younger sister, who had been captured by the Alphas as well.

In *Currents*, when Cora confronted Lydia on Derek's behalf to tell her to stop dating Aiden, one of the members of the Alpha Pack, Lydia's retort caused Cora to grab Lydia roughly by the wrist. Just as Lydia was demanding that Cora let her go, Stiles appeared and repeated that Cora needed to let Lydia go, a demand that Cora reluctantly obeyed. Stiles went on to tell Cora and Lydia that Alan Deaton, a Druid Emissary who had helped the packs on numerous occasions, had been captured by the Darach, the three began working together to figure out where he was being held in order to rescue him.

Cora, Stiles, and Lydia then went to the science lab at Beacon Hills High School, where they use a variety of divination techniques in hopes that Lydia's yet-undefined powers could help them locate Deaton. First, Stiles brought out a Ouija board and asked the two young women to help him use it, reminding them that Deaton had "saved our collective asses on more than one occasion." After the three put their fingertips on the pointer, Stiles asked aloud where Deaton was, and after a moment, he looked at Lydia and asked if she was going to answer it. Lydia pointed out that she didn't know the answer and that she thought they were contacting some kind of spirit, Cora, following Stiles' train of thought, asked Lydia if she knew any spirits.

Next, the three tried psychometry, which involved Stiles taking Deaton's keys to the clinic and putting them in Lydia's hand in hopes that the tactile contact would trigger a premonition while Cora watched curiously. When this also seemingly failed to work, Stiles suggested automatic writing, which also appeared not to work after Lydia began drawing a tree. Frustrated, Cora asked Stiles if Lydia was really supposed to be "some kind of genius," Lydia, offended, pointed out that while she was, in fact, a literal genius, she was *not* a psychic. When she then suggested they should be talking to Danny Mahealani, who was targeted by the Darach but not sacrificed like the others, Cora, Stiles, and Lydia briefly split up so Stiles could question Danny himself.

After Stiles found a paper Danny wrote on telluric currents in Danny's backpack, Cora, Stiles, and Lydia went to the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic to meet up with Scott to try to finally figure out where Deaton was. Cora, confused, asked Stiles how "some kid's homework" was going to help them find Deaton, leading Stiles to explain that the paper was on the telluric currents, or geomagnetic energy that flows through the earth and can also be affected by lunar phases. Upon reading Mr. Harris' notes on the paper that suggested Danny find a new topic, they realized that Harris, who had been missing for a while now, wasn't just a sacrifice, but was killed because he knew something about what was going on. Cora and Stiles, along with Lydia and Scott, then began looking at the telluric current maps that they got from Danny and Chris Argent, respectively, and realized that there were a large number of currents in Beacon Hills, enough to make it an actual beacon.

Upon realizing that the sacrifice victims were kidnapped from one location on the currents and then had their bodies left in another location on the currents, they realized they were being sacrificed somewhere in the middle. When Stiles started to mark the half-way point between the animal clinic, where Deaton had been captured, and the next spot on the currents where his body would be found, Cora took his hand and slid it across the map to where the First National Bank was, grimly informing him that Deaton was being held in the same bank vault where the Alpha Pack held Boyd, Erica, and herself. Just as the group was about to leave to save Deaton, Cora received a text from Boyd informing her that the plan created by Derek, Boyd, and Isaac to try to kill the Alphas failed because they cut the power to Derek's loft, leading Scott to insist that Cora, Stiles, and Lydia go save Derek, Boyd, and Isaac while he went to save Deaton on his own. Stiles and Cora, accompanied by Lydia, then got into Stiles' Jeep so they could go to Derek's loft, where they were able to turn the power back on, though not in enough time to save Boyd from being killed by Kali and the twins. Stiles watched as Cora sobbed over Boyd's body while he also comforted Derek.

In *Visionary*, Stiles went to Derek's loft with the intention of talking with him about what he planned to do to deal with the Alpha Pack and the Darach in the aftermath of what happened in the previous episode. However, Derek had taken an informal sabbatical, leaving him with only Cora to talk to about it.

Cora explained Derek's mindset for going off the grid—in the Hale Pack, they are taught to hide and heal when they're evading Hunters, so Derek was doing something similar now. When Stiles asked her to clarify how long this getaway was going to last, Cora asked him why he cared, leading Stiles to exasperatedly retort, "Why do I care? Let's see... Because, over the last few weeks: my best friend has tried to kill himself; his boss nearly got ritually sacrificed; a girl I've known since I was three *was* ritually sacrificed; Boyd was killed by Alphas... I... Do you want me to continue? Because I can, all right? For, like, an *hour*."

Not amused, Cora asked Stiles if he really thought Derek could do anything about any of it, leading Stiles to argue that Derek, as the target of the Alpha Pack, had an obligation to do something. This caused Cora to become pensive and point out that Derek wasn't like this when she knew him as a child, and when Stiles asked her what he was like, Peter, who was eavesdropping from upstairs, came down to describe him as being like most teenagers, especially like Scott in his early Werewolf days—unbearably romantic, profoundly narcissistic, tolerable only to other teenagers, etc. Stiles, now curious, asked Peter what happened to change Derek, and Peter replied, "Well, the same thing that changes a lot of young men... A girl."

Stiles was skeptical that Derek would have changed that much due to a broken heart, but Peter reminded Stiles of something that he had forgotten about—the fact that Derek's Werewolf eyes were blue before he became an Alpha. When he asked Stiles if he knew *why* Werewolves have different eye colors, Stiles admitted that he had just assumed it was genetic, leading Peter to inform him that to understand what changed Derek, one needed to know what changed the color of his eyes.

Peter went on to tell Cora and Stiles a story about Derek as a student Beacon Hills High School, when he met a young girl practicing the cello named Paige Krasikeva, as Peter lived with the Hale Family at that time and he was privy to what was going on. Stiles, now knowing that he was a sophomore, asked Peter how old Derek was then before then asking how old Peter was, both then and now. Peter played coy, stating, "Not as young as we could have been, but not as old as you might think...", causing Stiles, frustrated, to turn to Cora and ask her how old *she* was. Cora replied that she was seventeen, which Stiles believed to be a reasonable answer until she added "seventeen in how you would mention in years," suggesting that Werewolves have a different way of measuring age.

However, Stiles decided to drop the subject and asked what happened with Derek and Paige. Peter told the story of when the two had gone to the Abandoned Distillery one night, one of their favorite spots to be alone and make out, and had a discussion about their feelings for one another. Suddenly, Derek caught the scent of blood and heard footsteps approaching, leading him to realize that they weren't safe and insisting that they had to leave. This ended up being a wise decision, as it was where a summit between four packs—the Hale Pack, Ennis' original pack, Kali's original pack, and Deucalion's original pack was located, and had also been the location where the Argent Hunters had tortured one of Ennis' Betas the night before, explaining the smell of blood.

Peter informed them that Ennis, when he did not receive the support of Deucalion or Kali's packs, carved a spiral into the corrugated metal wall of the distillery, which he stated was a Werewolf symbol of revenge. Stiles remarked that Werewolves took revenge to a whole new level, but Cora argued that it wasn't just revenge, as losing a member of a pack wasn't like losing a family member—it was more akin to losing a limb. Peter went on to claim that Derek took advantage of the fact that Ennis was in need of a Beta so that he could have Paige turned into a Werewolf so they could be together forever; however, it was seemingly revealed that it was actually Peter who encouraged Derek to do this, as he implied that Paige would break up with him once she found out what he really was.

The topic turned to the concept of Emissaries when Peter brought up the summit between Deucalion and Gerard Argent happening concurrently to Derek's relationship with Paige. Cora explained to Stiles that they were meant to keep Werewolves connected to their humanity, but that they're usually a secret that is only known by the Alpha, which was why neither she nor Derek initially knew that Alan Deaton was the Hale Pack's Emissary Peter also brought up Marin Morrell, Deaton's sister, who was the Emissary for the Alpha Pack. Stiles, once again exasperated, pointed out that this was something he should have known, since she was his guidance counselor and he shared some very intimate information with her. Cora, amused, asked him if she gave him good advice, and when Stiles admitted that she had, she and Peter explained that this was the Emissary's purpose, and that Deaton did this for Talia.

The three returned to the topic of Derek and Paige, with Peter revealing the details of the night Paige got the bite; she was lured to the high school after hours, where Ennis cornered her and attacked her. Derek had a change of heart when he heard her screams, so he tried to intervene, but Ennis was too large, and Derek was too late anyway, because she had already been bitten. Cora was curious as to why Derek would choose Ennis, but Peter reminded her that Ennis was in need of a new Beta to replace the one who was killed by the Argents, and that he agreed because he thought he was doing Talia a favor, which would earn her good graces. Stiles assumed that Derek didn't remember it was Ennis, and Peter agreed that if he did, he was keeping it to himself.

When Stiles asked if Paige ended up being turned, Peter seemed almost sad when he confessed that she almost did, and that most of the time, the bite will take. Stiles remembered that, when Peter offered him the bite, he had said "If it doesn't kill you," leading Peter to explain that sometimes, the bitten human rejects the bite, which is what happened to Paige. He went on to say that Derek brought her to the root cellar he and Derek had stayed in when hiding from the Argents, where Paige confessed that she knew that Derek was a Werewolf and that she loved him before begging him to kill her and end her pain.

Peter sadly finished the story by stating that he took Paige's body to the woods, where he knew it would be found and considered another in a long line of Beacon Hills animal attacks. Cora and Stiles, both near tears at the tragedy of a story they just heard, looked at Peter as Cora asked what happened to Derek, leading Peter to explain that Betas or Omegas who have taken an innocent human life have blue eyes to denote the fact that their soul has been darkened as a result, just like Peter's.

Afterward, Cora and Stiles sat on the steps in front of the front door to the loft, where Cora could obviously tell that something was bothering Stiles and asked him what it was; when Stiles asked her what look she was talking about, she retorted, "The kind of look that makes me want to punch you," causing Stiles to exasperatedly remark that Cora was *definitely* Derek's sister. Stiles then confessed that he simply didn't believe Peter, as he saw it like the main character of *Heart of Darkness*, Marlow, who was known to be an unreliable narrator—he didn't think they got the whole story. Cora bluntly asked him if he was really just going to ask Derek about the girl he fell in love with and mercy-killed to get the truth, and Stiles insisted that if he had to, he would.

In *The Girl Who Knew Too Much*,

In *The Overlooked*,

## Trivia

* Due to the number of scenes between the two, it likely that if Cora's actress, Adelaide Kane, hadn't left the show to star in The CW's series *Reign*, Cora and Stiles may have become a couple instead of Stiles and Malia.