CHAPTER 18

He rolled on his bed as his body felt extremely uncomfortable that he threw away his blankets and fell off the bed.

"Scott, open up! Let me help!" Someone banged on the door but his entire focus was hazed that all he wanted to do was vent but he didn't know how to.

The banging on his door continued but it was drowned in everything else he was currently feeling. He felt… restricted. The room… the room was uncomfortable.

He picked himself up off the floor with great effort and used the windowsill to pull himself up as vertigo overrode his perception acuity. He managed to get up his feet only for him to see a transparent reflection of himself on his window. 

Glowing golden eyes, overgrown sideburns, elongated ears… and fangs. Honest to goodness predatory fangs. 

He brought up a pair of shaky hands to feel his face only for him to catch sight of his hands, more specifically the claws that had extended out to a lethal height. 

A monster. 

That was the first thing that came to his mind as he took in his appearance that resembled something between a human and a bloodthirsty wild predator. He shook on his feet to the point that they felt too weak to hold his body up. 

His focus was momentarily shifted to the banging door. "Scott, open the damn door or I'm breaking it!" Worry and panic laced Stiles' voice that Scott moved on instinct to get the door but saw his hands that had claws and then turned a bit to once again see his current look. 

"Scott, just fucking listen to me please! I'll get you through this, I swear. Please, just please, open the door and let me in, Scott." Stiles hit the door softly this time and pleaded with a shaky voice. 

Scott took in a deep breath and contemplated answering but at that moment, the small pool of clouds that covered a part of the moon floated away and made the full clear moon bathe Scott in his luminescent light. 

As if reacting to his direct exposure to moonlight, his semi-calm mind was once again flooded with high unfettered emotions that he found hard to process due to how overwhelming they were which left him with only one way to react to them, instinct. Bestial instinct. 

His fangs and claws grew a few millimeters while his face distorted and scrunched up to form a wild expression that complimented his golden eyes, fangs, facial hairs and ears. 

He felt unbearably hot so he ripped off the sweater he wore and looked once more at the moon which seemed to call him. 

With the last bit of rationality in his eyes that faded the very next moment, he pushed himself off the window of his room that was on the second floor and landed on all fours like an animal.

He looked up and saw a pair of blue eyes that triggered danger instincts he never knew he had looking at him from a distance before it moved away at inhuman speeds which prompted Scott to follow despite not knowing why. 

Up in Scott's bedroom, the door was forcefully pushed open by Stiles who rushed in with a bag on his back as he quickly surveyed the room and noticed Scott's apparent presence or lack thereof before noticing the opened window and shredded shirt near it which made his worry become more pronounced. 

He looked through the window and apart from the indentation on the soil from Scott's deducted landing, he had nothing else. "Fucking hell!" He cursed in anger and rushed out of the room to get his car and look for his best friend. 

… 

Meanwhile with Scott… 

He pursued the running man into the woods, not losing a trail of him thanks to his improved enhanced vision acuity and night vision. 

At this moment, the young innocent former asthmatic lacrosse player was gone and in his place was a beast of untamed emotions leaking through on an auspicious night like that of a full moon. 

He got closer to his prey as their speed decreased and with the achievement of a successful hunt in sight, he followed his instincts and lunged at the man with claws at the ready and fangs ready to tear his flesh apart only for him to be to be caught midair and slammed against the ground in an impressive show of speed and strength. 

"Knock out of it, Scott." A young man pinned the wild teenage boy on the ground and restrained most of his wild movements. 

"Stop. You're going to get yourself killed if you can't reign in your emotions." Derek Hale, the young man who held the young Beta down, and also the younger brother to the girl whose body was found in the woods, and also a werewolf, cursed as his hearing picked up hasty movements in the forest. 

'Shit, Hunters. They just had to be patrolling on a full moon.' 

He drew the flailing Scott off the ground and feeling the Hunters hurrying towards them, he contemplated his choices. 

First of all, if he left the boy to himself, it wasn't exactly guaranteed that they would let him live, not with the sporadic animal killings going on recently, and the boy didn't help his case as he was rabid. 

Secondly, he needed the boy as the boy was clearly a recently turned beta and very soon whoever sired him would likely put out a call for a hunt and wanted to meet the Alpha who likely killed his sister. In other words, he needed the boy in his reach more than in the scope of the Hunters. 

Seeing he was out of options and they were dangerously near, he resorted to the most practical option that would benefit their situation. 

"You better thank me later, kid." Not caring for Scott's threatening growls and the few scratches he gave him, he held one of Scott's hands and applied a considerable amount of force.

SNAP!

"Argh!!" Scott's glowing eyes turned back to their normal brown as clarity returned to him with the pain of having his arm forcefully broken, though he still maintained a partial transformation. 

"There! There! I see them." 

Seeing their close proximity with the Hunters, Derek turned to the whining Scott. "Run now!" He dragged him by the hand to give him a tug, making the still out of it Scott to narrowly escape an arrow from skewering through him. 

The missed arrow brought Scott back to focus as his body automatically activated his flight response making him follow Derek unconsciously only for his legs to go faster as an arrow swooshed past him and impacted a tree which resulted in a small explosion that he couldn't bring himself to focus on. 

"Run faster dammit!" Derek barked and increased his speed since he was purposely slowing down to keep Scott in his range but now they needed to lose the pursuing Hunters. 

Scott didn't react to Derek's rebuke in any way except pushing his legs to take him out of this damned forest of death faster. 'Who the hell hunts people with bow and arrows in the middle of the night?' He cried inwardly. 

Thankfully for them, the Hunters slowed down their pursuit as the two werewolves made their way deeper into the woods, a natural habitat for any wild predator. 

They continued running for a while to make sure they had lost the group of Hunters before they started slowing down to catch their breaths. 

Scott crashed into the ground as the physical and mental fatigue of everything that had happened in the last hour hit him with full clarity. 

"What the hell is this? Why are there people trying to kill me?" His frustration bled out and morphed into fear and then anger. 

He was just a normal 16 year old wet-behind-the-ears high school sophomore and he almost lost his life in just one night to some strange arrow-shooting group that just opened fire without even asking any questions. 

Derek supported himself against a tree as he released measured breaths as opposed to Scott's panic fueled large gulps. 

"Hunters." Derek said. "The kind that have been hunting us for centuries."

Hearing Derek's words and knowing what the 'us' implied, he flipped at the man a few years older than him righteously vexed. 

"Us? You mean 'you'! You did this to me!"

"Is it really so bad, Scott? That you can see better? Hear more clearly? Move faster than any human could ever hope? You've been given something most people would kill for." He stared intently at Scott to get his point across. "The bite is a gift."

Scott didn't hesitate to refute his words. "I don't want it."

"You will. And you're going to need me if you want to learn how to control it."

He bent down to Scott's eye level and put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly in a way that suggested no turning back. 

"So you and me, Scott? We're brothers now." He then turned around and left Scott who slumped further into the ground with a long sigh as profound exhaustion over the recent events and widened world view washed over him. 

… 

Scott trudged along the side of the road in only his pajama pants in the early hours of morning after he had spent hours maneuvering through the forest with caution in order not to come across the hunters and risk death by a bow just hours after he managed to escape. 

An old sky blue jeep pulled over next to Scott and drew his attention to see his best friend's face light up in relief. 

Stiles kicked the door open and urged Scott to get in before handing him a jacket since the after-winter mornings were still cold. 

"You good there, buddy?" Stiles asked in concern, seeing his best friend's defeated look as he cushioned his neck on the headrest and stared unblinkingly ahead. 

"I'm a werewolf." Scott muttered blandly. 

"I know. How freaking cool is that, am I right?" Stiles' hypermood at Scott's revelation plummeted as he saw the unflattered look Scott gave him. 

"So maybe not revel in the awesomeness of you being a werewolf yet." He quipped awkwardly. "So what happened, man? You just jumped out your window and ran off to God knows where."

Scott grimaced as he tried bringing up memories of the unpleasant night he just survived. "Don't remember much, but what I remember is being pinned to the ground by Derek-"

Stiles interrupted. "Derek? Like Hale fire Derek Hale?"

"Yes, Stiles. He's the one who bit me and turned me into a… this." All Scott wanted to do at this moment was take a dip in his tub for the next few hours. 

"Oookay… That's not morbid at all. So what happened after that. Did he like teach you some werewolfy secrets like not ripping someone's throat off at the game or how to not turn into an animal every full moon?"

"Hunters.. There were Hunters with bow and arrows who tried to kill us." Scott said in a very dead tone as if he was describing the most useless experience in his life. 

"Wait, Hunters? Like Van Helsing?... What? I've been reading up on a lot of things in the past few days." Stiles defended his prized knowledge at Scott's stare. 

"So what now? Are you on the radar of some secret family that has a creed to slay every werewolf on Earth?" Stiles asked in legitimate concern. 

"I don't know man. This shit is stressing me up real bad. God!" Scott had another breakdown as finally started thinking of the implications of his new status. 

"Hey hey, don't worry. I'll make sure we get through this, okay? I'll chain you up on every full moon myself and feed you live mice." Stiles nodded assuredly but only earned a mix between flabbergasted and disbelief looks from Scott. 

"I had a boa once. I could do it." Stiles drove them both to Scott's house while brainstorming ways to help his friend live a semi-normal life and also ways to preserve his life.