Chapter Text
Stiles had always been told werewolves were monsters. It was always a something people told him. Casually, like they were making friendly conversation. They didn’t love, they slaughtered, they destroyed. Stiles never realized how true that was until he came home to the bloodied body of his father. He strolled into the house and was greeted by silence, rather than the caring voice of his father. He found his father face down on the kitchen tiles, his blood staining the dull white to the colour red. Claw marks trailed down his back, claws that ripped through his father’s clothing and through his flesh. Deeper and deeper until they had reached his bones.
He barely was aware of himself throwing up to the side until he felt someone patting his back. Hunters.
His father had no idea what he did in his free time. Didn’t understand the magic that ran through his veins. Never saw the iron mask under his bed that was shaped like a fox’s muzzle or realized his baseball bat was made with something far sturdier than regular wood. The hunters helped him put away the monsters before they got to anyone innocent.
But he was never enough. He wasn’t strong enough to save his mother, and now he had lost his father. He wondered if his dad would still be alive if Stiles had told him about everything. Or would the only difference be that he could see what was coming before it killed him. It was sad, Stiles thought, to be killed by something you didn’t realize existed, to stay so innocent until your last moments.
If only he protected his father better.
He was pulled into the body of someone. Soft curves hiding firm muscles and a cunning mind. No matter where she went or how much perfume she put on, she always seemed to smell like wolfbane and gunpowder underneath like it was a part of her scent. Kate.
“I’m so sorry sweetie. We tried, oh god how we tried, to come in time. We followed them here, but they broke off. There was no way of us stopping them from getting here.” She said as she stroke the back of his head.
“Who?” Stiles questioned.
“I don’t think…”
“WHO?!” Stiles screamed. The house shook at his anger, the magic pulsing through him, seeking blood and revenge. He would not be sated until they were all dead.
“The Hale-McCall pack.” She whispered and pulled him in tighter to hide him from curious eyes. “We don’t have enough proof yet, but when we do, I’ll let you be the first to know.”
Stiles shook his head but said nothing. He fell into the soft embrace of Kate and listened to the uneven pulses of his magic. His dad had been his limiter, the one thing to anchor his magic so it wouldn’t burst out of control and attack anyone around him, whether they were good or bad. Without his father, his magic would be uncontrollable, and with the anger seething through him it would always seek our death decay.
Stiles joined the hunters to protect the innocent and if that meant destroying everything and anything supernatural then so be it. Even if the last one to be killed would have to be himself.
Deep inside the embrace of Kate he missed the smirk painted on her face as she watched everything unfold. She would always have her way. Stiles had always been a puppet to her and she planned on using him until he was battered and torn and all his strings broke. She knew Stiles would go and find out a verdict of those stupid mutts. He wouldn’t act until he found a weakness and proof they had killed his father, he follows the code after all, even if it was foolish of him. But she could also force evidence if needed. Anything to rid the world of those pests.
Stiles was gone in a few hours like everyone expected. His room was empty minus the array of pictures of his family, all smiling without a care in the world, and snapshots of individual faces connected by string to the centre of his bed. Pinned to the bottom of the pictures was a note written by Stiles for the hunters he left behind, with the words ‘They will feel the loss they have given me.’ written on it.
Everyone had left the house quickly, knowing that the house wasn’t going to last much longer. Stiles would erase anything left of his previous life, the pictures left near his bed were a clear sign of that. They were all sure as soon as they left the house it would go down in flames, burying the body of a dead father and covering the tracks of a broken boy.