Hide and Seek

Chapter One- The Things We Left Behind

"It is possible that there's a little monster inside of all of us."

*TWO YEARS EARLIER*

Jensen Turner was a secretive person. He never really liked to admit when he was wrong, when he knew something, when he needed help- especially when he needed help. He guessed that was the reason he was standing outside of his house in the freezing cold rather than inside.

He could see them, his family, through the glass of the windows. They were sitting around the Christmas tree that they'd all gone to chop down in the first week of December, it was still looking healthy, as far as he could tell- but what did that matter? They looked happy, anyone who didn't know them like the back of their hand would say that they looked like a family in one of the Christmas posters that would be plastered outside of department stores advertising toys, furniture or whatever for the festive season- but he knew better. The tears were still visible in his mothers glazed over eyes, even though the outer corners were tilted upwards because of her smile. It tore him apart knowing that his family was just holding together by a sliver of glue.

Jensen looked down at wrist, the first gift he had received from them still there, a small, plaited leather bracelet. To anyone else, it probably wouldn't mean much, but to him? To him, that small strap meant the world. It wasn't in good condition anymore, not like it was when he had received it, anyway. It had been splattered with blood, stretched from his wrist, ripped as he was messing around with his family, cut when he was learning how to use scissors after they had taken him in. He loved the damn thing- almost too much for a material object- but it was the one thing he truly owned.

He used to have a home, with a split cycle air conditioner, a bedroom that had his very own queen sized bed- mainly because that was the smallest he could fit into comfortably- and a bathroom attached that he would shower in every morning. He didn't even need any of that, as far as he was concerned. All he needed was his family- his mother, Jocelyn, his father, Takoda and his little sister, Lila- the only problem was, they weren't his real family.

*

Christmas eve would've thought to have been a good night to drive along the freeway, but as fate would have it, thought wrong. People were frantically trying to get to their Christmas destination before the morning. Jensen wasn't a nervous driver, in fact, when he had taken the practical test for his license, the observer had noted how calm he was, even in some of the sticky situations that he found himself in while driving in the city. He didn't even know what being nervous felt like, but the way his fingers kept tapping on the steering wheel and how his breath kept hitching in his throat gave him a pretty clear idea that tension had taken over his body. He needed to rest, and he knew that, but he wanted to get as far away from pain as possible. He'd lived in that damn little town for seven years after his own father had told him to leave the pack he was born to when he had lost a fight to him over the abuse of his mother. One day he decided that enough was enough- and lost. That leads him to know a lot of things most don't, being a werewolf and all. He knows the loss, guilt and shame that come with it- the knowledge- he knows what it feels like to be beaten half- more like seven point nine eighths or 99.99% out of 100- to death, and the look of utter pain his mothers face would hold when she would have to sew him up with dental floss, a needle from her sewing kit dowsed in the whiskey that would be the antiseptic and his pain killer.

He knows the lingering taste of blood, the exhilaration that runs through his veins when he fights in his deadlier form, the difference in feeling of a trickle of sweat and a trickle of blood. He knows he's not a nervous driver, and he knows the motel he pulls into will be questionably abiding by health codes, but until he drives far enough that he feels his past wont catch up with him, and manages to land a job, he cant afford luxury. And on the plus side, the motel was right next to a diner which made his stomach growl considering he hadn't supplied it with fuel in around fourteen hours. His car was quick to stop, but the lady at the reception desk with skin slightly too tan made up for the time he had gained when he'd slid into pole position in the parking lot. Jensen didn't mind though- he had always been patient, even when he started living as a human- at least more human than animal.