Hidden Monstrosities {WOLFSTAR ROYALTY AU}

Prologue - Remus

Remus thought that the more time that passed, and the more he became used to being a werewolf, he would come to dread the full moon less and less.

This was proving to be less true by the month.

All through the day, Remus could feel the moon's pull tugging at him, twisting his insides, even though it was hours before nightfall. He spent the day hunting, and also, in the back of his mind, tracing out a route that would quickly take him as far away from his family as possible when the time came. He was already so familiar with the woods that hardly needed to do this, but it made him feel better solidifying the plan in his head.

He was twitchy all through dinner. He knew his parents could see it, but, like always they didn't say anything about it. His fingers rapped along the table, over and over, and his knee was perpetually bouncing up and down, occasionally hitting the underside of the table and causing the plates to clatter. He could feel the hunger growing, the need to run, to tear, to bite-

He pushed away from the table, suddenly, unable to handle it any longer. Silently, grabbed a bag and shoved the rest of his barely-cooked meat in it, along with some water and a change of clothes.

"Remus-" his mother began. Remus stopped halfway out the door, and turned.

"Be... be careful," she finished.

Remus didn't say anything in response, just turned back around and bounded into the woods, sprinting along his carefully mapped route.

I'll try. He thought.

I always do.

~~~

He just barely made it.

Not a second after he stepped foot in the clearing he always went to and set down his bag, he felt it begin. The night was a cloudless one, and the trees had shadows in the bright moonlight.

It started in his back, his spine arching upwards, tearing through his shirt. Then his hands, elongating into claws, turning grayish and hairy. His jaw flared with a burst of pain as his nose and mouth extended into a snout, razor-sharp teeth suddenly poking his tongue. His eyesight changed, sharpened, and his nose was suddenly filled with scents of the forest a human wouldn't be able to pick up: A group of deer that had been resting here hiding nearby, the meat still in his pack, the gassy tint of the forest floor. He could feel the frame of his body enlarging, hunching over, and it was agony, ripping through him in waves. A guttural howl escaped him, all wolf with no human voice left in it. The tattered remains of his clothes fell off his back.

Rational, human thoughts left him quickly after that. He tried to hang on, to some tiny human part of him that still remembered who he was, who still cared. Each time he thought he managed to hold on longer and longer, but he never could, in the end. His brain morphed to an animal's, instincts overriding everything else. His fear replaced with hunger, and his agony replaced with a vicious, desperate need to kill-

~~~

It was the crack of dawn when Remus came back to himself.

It happened slowly, first in his mind, as full sentences began to form his thoughts instead of vague feelings, and memories of himself and who and what he was came back to him. Then he could feel his bones shrinking, condensing, his spine straightening and his snout flattening back into a slightly crooked nose. His claws became fingers, his skin returned to its pale, fleshy color. Every part of him ached, every muscle, even ones he didn't even know he had, was sore and stiff.

Remus lay in the dirt on the forest floor, watching a spider weave a web between two trees with half-closed eyes. He gradually started moving, clenching and unclenching his hands, wiggling his toes, turning his head from one side to the other.

And that's when he saw them.

He didn't know what he was looking at, at first. His mind couldn't comprehend it, his scattered thoughts jumbling together into two words:

My parents.

His mother and father lay sprawled a few yards away from him. His mother was facedown in the grass, her hair splayed in all directions. His father, on the other hand, was faced upwards towards the sky, his unseeing, dead eyes open to the morning light. Their skin was pale and ashen colored and the blood-

It was pooled around them, a small red lake spilled from gaping wounds in their chests. Jagged cuts raked across his father's torso, and Remus could only assume that his mother's wounds were the same. The blood was still coming, and there was so much of it; he could hardly believe it had all come from them.

Remus gagged, rolling onto his knees and dry heaving until his throat burned.

No, no, no, no, no, no-

He looked again at the bodies in front of him, the stiff limbs tangled together as if they had been gripping each other in their final moments, his father's face twisted in horror. Remus stumbled towards them, feeling as if he were dreaming.

It couldn't be real.

No, this couldn't have happened. He wouldn't have...

He couldn't possibly have...

Killed them?

But the evidence was right in front of him. Remus gingerly turned his mother over, to find that he had been right, that her chest had been clawed open even more grotesque than his father's, her tunic just bloody rags clinging to her back. His hands shook as he brushed her hair from her face, the strands clumped together and hardened with blood. Her eyes were open, too, and closed them first with trembling fingers, then his father's.

How did this happen?

He was so careful. He always made sure they were as far away as possible, that they knew to never come near him because he wouldn't know it was them, he wouldn't know the difference between them and anyone else that might happen to cross his path.

He was so careful, and yet...

He had killed them.

He had killed his parents.

Remus's whole body began shaking then, and he found himself rocking back on forth, then pounding his fists on the ground, then screaming and screaming and kicking and pounding until he didn't have anything left in him anymore.

What he did next was a blur. He remembered picking himself off the ground. He remembered walking back towards his house, relying on the muscle memory in his legs to take him there while his mind was in a daze. He remembered slumping on his pathetic cot that was mere feet from the kitchen and staring at nothing, with no desire to move or get up or eat or even open the windows for light. He remembered the stiff, sticky feeling of the blood coating his hands, and how he didn't have the will to get soap and water to wash it off.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, only that when full reality dawned on him, when everything came crashing down and was suddenly real, when his mind cleared and the events of that night were more than just a nightmare, he bolted upright.

Remus scrubbed the blood off his hands, picking it out from under his fingernails. He ripped off his bloodstained clothes and put on clean ones. When those two things left him feeling dizzy, he shoved some stale bread and cheese in his mouth and gulped down several mugs of water. The whole time he only had one train of thoughts, clear and bright and ringing through his head:

I killed my parents. It's my fault they're dead. I have to go somewhere where I can't hurt anyone else.

So he did. He ran.

He didn't know or plan where he was going, he just ran. And when he couldn't run anymore, he walked. He walked and walked and the whole time he had one goal:

Get away from here.

He didn't know how far he had gotten when he collapsed suddenly, too exhausted to find food or water or do anything but pass out curled against a tree.