Here's the full first chapter!

CHAPTER ONE

KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD

Lena hated the rain. It was cold and wet, and she liked to be warm and dry. She didn't think she'd ever find herself driving through Portland on one of the rainiest days in January, when she used to live in sunny and dry Arizona. But she couldn't stand Arizona either anyway. She was looking to make a fresh start after months trying to heal, and her Uncle decided to use the opportunity to convince her to move closer to him in Portland. He said he even found the perfect little house in the woods, so she could have total privacy.

So, she'd packed up her SUV with as little of the things that she owned as possible and took off for Portland as soon as she could quit work and get the house sold. She also had to sell all of her furniture as well as other junk. She was starting ever with as clean a slate as possible. It was difficult. She couldn't let some things go. And it took longer than she'd anticipated. Months even. She'd barely spoken to her Uncle in the time between, but they'd emailed back and forth, and he promised he'd have everything ready for her when she arrived.

But now, here she was, rolling into town in her weighed down car and almost out of gas. She pulled into the first station that she found. She got out to pump her own gas but was startled when an attendant jogged out to do it for her. She forgot that Portland didn't have self-service gas stations everywhere. But she calmly handed him the necessary cash and pulled back onto the road once he was done with his job.

The rain had teetered off by the time she reached her Uncle's shop. She knew he'd be in at this time in the afternoon, instead of his apartment. Her lips felt achy when she used them to smile for the first time in a long time when she saw the gold lettering on her Uncle's glass door – Exotic Spice & Tea Shop – and the little open sign hanging underneath it. The little bell rang as she pushed the door open and she could smell all the different aromas wafting through the air of it. She remembered Uncle Freddy giving her the tour, telling her what everything was and how to it was used and what for. She didn't remember much – she was little at the time. She hadn't been in Portland since she was seven.

When she settled her eyes on the counter, she was surprised to see a woman behind the counter. Here Uncle always manned the store himself. He used to joke about taking her on as an apprentice, but he'd never taken on an employee before. She always found that strange. It put a damper on his social life. But he told her that he didn't need one.

The woman was pretty in a domestic way. She was tan, average height, with dark brown hair to her shoulders and straight bangs across her forehead. She seemed kind as she smiled and greeted Lena, "Hi, how can I help you?"

"Um…" Lena hadn't planned to interact with anyone else. "I'm looking for Uncle Freddy. Is he in the back or something?"

The woman frowned with a mixture of confusion and, if Lena wasn't mistaken, grief. "I'm sorry… who are you?"

"Freddy's niece," she answered back. Wasn't that part obvious? "I'm Lena… you?"

The woman only seemed more confused, "I'm sorry but maybe you have the wrong place, or wrong Freddy. I'm his sister. We don't have any nieces…"

This time, Lena was the one who was confused, "He didn't mention any sisters to me either. But, um, I'm not his niece by blood. He was close with my father. Anyway, is he here?"

This time, without the confusion on the woman's face, there was only a touch of grief. "I'm – erm, sorry to have to tell you this, but… Freddy was killed in a store robbery a few months ago."

Lena wasn't ready to hear this. She wasn't prepared. She was never prepared for news like this. Such was obvious by the stricken expression taking over her face. But then it was crossed with confusion. "What? That's not possible."

The woman frowned deeply, seeming just as upset by the news, even though she knew beforehand. "I'm sorry, but it's true. Some junkies broke in for drugs and shot him. They've been caught and convicted since. I would have informed you, but I'm sorry, I didn't talk to Freddy very much, he never told me about you."

Lena wasn't really listening. "That's not possible…"

The woman noticed that she seemed unsteady all of the sudden and rushed around the counter to take her arms in her hands. "Why don't you sit down?" She led her through a door off to the left into another room and sat her down on a small bed. "Can I get you something? Some water?"

"Some real answers would be nice," she snapped. "Freddy told me to move here. He was all I had left. And we've been emailing the last few months about a house he found for me out here. So, if he's been dead, who has been emailing me?"

The woman seemed just as puzzled as she was. "I don't – I don't know. My brother has definitely been dead, that's why I came here and took over the shop for him." She paused and tried to put on a calming smile. "I'm Rosalee Calvert. You said your name was Lena?"

"Yeah," Lena replied shortly, her eyes unfocused on the floor.

"I'm sorry you had to find out this way," whispered Rosalee, laying her hands on top of Lena's on her knees. "I can try and look through Freddy's things to find out where this house is. But in the meantime, you're welcome to stay here at the shop."

Len scoffed, laying her head in her hands, "I have some jobs lined up. So, I should be able to find a place for my own."

Rosalee watched the younger woman closely as tears started to leak out of her eyes. She thought she saw a slight ripple underneath Lena's skin. And it felt colder in the room all of the sudden. When Lena pulled her face up to wipe under her eyes, Rosalee saw them glowing amber. The same color as hers when she woged. This woman was wesen. What kind, she didn't know. But she was.

"I know we just met, and you probably have no reason to trust me, but if you and Freddy were close and he was helping you, then I want to help you too," Rosalee said. Maybe her brother was protecting this woman from something. Maybe she was in danger. "Now, did Freddy tell you anything about this house, what area it was?"

Lena shrugged, "Secluded, in the woods somewhere. No address. That was better for me. But… if you say Freddy has been dead for months, it's possible that whoever said they found that house for me, wasn't Freddy. You said junkies killed him? That wasn't cover for something shadier?"

Rosalee nodded, "Yeah, I'm actually friends with the detective who worked the case. But, um…" Should she tell her about some of the things she'd found out about her brother? She sat up on the bed next to Lena and finally spoke, "My boyfriend, Monroe, and I did find some passports for him under false names. And Nick, our friend who's a cop, told me that Freddy had been mixed up in some illegal organ selling here at the shop. So… I really have no idea who could have been posing as him."

"Fuck," Lena cursed. "Great. He's the only reason I came to Portland."

"Look, I know we just met, but I don't have family here, or much family left," Rosalee told her. "And if you and Freddy thought of each other as family, then why don't you stick around in Portland and we can get to know each other?" She had to find a way to figure out what kind of wesen this girl was, and why Freddy considered her his niece. She didn't know of any close friend of her brother's enough to think of their kids as family. Freddy was always a bit of a loner. But if he was protecting Lena, then that's what she had to try to do too.

Lena had no idea what to think about this woman claiming to be her Uncle's sister, wanting to help and get to know her. She didn't know if she could handle more family after losing what she had lost. But she also didn't want to seem rude or ungrateful. And, it seemed Rosalee was grieving too. "I'd like that. But, I think I'll opt for a motel. I feel like this place might creep me out at night."

Rosalee chuckled, "I understand that. Did you have a lot to unpack?"

Lena shook her head, "I sold almost everything I owned. Just boxes of clothes and keepsakes in my car."

"Well, I can help you find a place," Rosalee offered. "Do you have any job prospects?"

"I'm a midwife," she answered. "I have a couple clients lined up. Word of mouth will kick in and business will pick up eventually."

"That's nice," Rosalee commented just as the bell rang at the door. She excused herself to go help the customer, only to see that it was Nick and Monroe walking in. She rushed to stop them from launching into some gory wesen talk so they didn't startle Lena. "Hi, guys, you should meet our guest."

Monroe frowned, "Guest?"

Rosalee nodded, eyes wide, trying to signal for them to be smart and delicate. She led them into the other room where Lena was wiping her eyes and gestured to the woman, "Lena, this is Monroe, and our friend Nick."

"Monroe Dietrich," Monroe put out his hand as Lena stood and shook it gingerly.

"Nick Burkhart," Nick quickly offered her his hand. He could tell that she'd been crying and was still upset over something. He tried to smile, open and friendly.

"Lena Kühn-Sato," Lena introduced herself shortly as she shook his hand.

He narrowed his eyes slightly when he noticed the gold ring on her left hand but figured that wasn't any of his business.

But then Rosalee asked, "Kühn-Sato? That's a unique surname."

"Used to be just Kühn, but I hyphenated it with my husband's name," Lena said curtly.

Rosalee furrowed her brow and peered out the window for a man she hadn't noticed, "Your husband…?"

"Passed away last year," Lena answered quietly.

Rosalee sagged, feeling so much sympathy for this woman, "I'm sorry to hear that."

Nick was watching Lena's face as she cringed at Rosalee's words and noticed some shifting under the skin of her cheek and forehead. When she looked up at him, her eyes were glowing amber.

Lena hadn't wanted to divulge so much to these strangers. But she knew the more secretive and defensive you acted, the more people pried. When she averted her eyes from Rosalee's sympathy, she inadvertently locked eyes with the guy, Nick. And when she did, she saw his eyes turn a deep and complete black, like two black holes that she could see her reflection in. if she remembered only one thing her father and Uncle had ever said to her, it was – if you see black eyes, run. They will kill you.

When she saw Nick's black eyes, she instantly recoiled in fear and indignation, "What the hell!?"

Nick shared a look with Monroe and Rosalee, and the store tender stepped between Lena and the men with her hands up defensively, "Lena, it's okay. Nick won't hurt you."

"Yeah, yeah, he's not like other Grimms," Monroe chipped in, having seen the changed in Lena's face too.

Lena looked at them with confusion and outrage, "Grimm? What the hell are you talking about?"

"Grimm, like the stories," Monroe babbled. "They're supposed to kill wesen, but Nick is different. He's a cop."

"Wesen?" Lena echoed. She had no idea what these people were talking about. They sounded crazy. And for all she knew, Rosalee was lying about being Freddy's sister. She had never heard about her before. She didn't know that she could trust any of them. "This was a mistake." She launched through them before they could react and was out the door without another word.

"Lena, wait!" Rosalee called out to her, following her out onto the street. But she wasn't fast enough and could only watch as Lena jumped into her car and drove off. She heaved a sigh as Monroe came up behind her and kneaded her shoulders.

Nick flushed as they walked back inside, "I'm sorry guys. I didn't mean to scare her."

"It's not your fault," Rosalee sagged. "She didn't even seem to know what Grimm and wesen are."

"Yeah, how is that possible?" Nick asked, having noticed Lena's confusion.

"I don't know, because I saw her start to woge," Rosalee explained. "Earlier, when I told her Freddy was dead."

"She knew Freddy?" Monroe asked.

"Apparently, he's was as good as her Uncle, being friends with her father," Rosalee explained. "He never mentioned her to me, but then again, we weren't close. She told me that Freddy convinced her to move here, but also said that he'd been emailing her recently. We all know that's impossible."

"Then who's been contacting her?" Monroe asked, frowning in worry now.

"Someone wanted to lure her to Portland," Nick thought out loud. "But why?" He thought for a moment to the altercation that had just occurred. "Is it possible that she doesn't know she's wesen?"

Rosalee and Monroe shared a look of equal disbelief, the blutbad answered skeptically, "I've never heard of that level of denial. It's not really something you miss."

"You can ignore it, you can try to suppress it," Rosalee added, thinking of the dark lengths she'd gone to in her youth to deny her wesen side. "But you can't grow up completely ignorant of it."

"I don't know, guys…" Nick trailed off. "She seemed genuinely confused by what we were talking about. But she saw that I was a Grimm. She just didn't seem to know the word."

"Well, it's scary enough to see a Grimm and know what you are," Monroe commented. "It might be pretty freaky if, hypothetically, someone didn't know what they are or what a Grimm is and see what you are without any knowledge of it."

"Wait," Nick cut in as something finally occurred to him, "how do wesen recognize a Grimm? I see them woge, but I don't woge and they still seem to know what I am when I see what they are."

"Dude, your eyes," Monroe shivered at the memory of the first time he'd seen Nick and knew he was a Grimm. "They go completely black. It's like staring into a terrifying void of darkness. It's the stuff of my nightmares as a kid."

"I can't believe I never thought to ask that before," Nick commented.

Rosalee was chewing her lip, "All of this positing can wait. We need to think about Lena. We have no idea why she was lured here, or why Freddy might have been protecting her. She has no one else, and I don't think she has anywhere else to go. We might need to explain things to her."

Nick scoffed, "I can't imagine she's going to react well to that conversation. You saw how fast she ran off."

"Yeah, but we may not have a choice if she is wesen and doesn't know it," Monroe said. "I don't know how that would be possible, but I can imagine it would be very dangerous."

"It's healthy for us to accept what we are and woge," Rosalee said. "Woging never, or too much, is very bad for someone like us."

"Okay, so what do we do?" Nick asked them.

Rosalee pursed her lips in thought. She had to find out more about what Freddy was doing for Lena. She had to find out what dangers could be following the woman. "Nick, I need you to try and track her down. Just so we know where she is and that she's safe. She has work here so she isn't going to skip town. She mentioned finding a motel to stay in until she finds a place. I'll go through Freddy's books and try to see if I can find some kind of record of his relationship with her and her father. Maybe there'll be answers about why he wanted her in Portland, or who else could have wanted her in Portland."

Nick hesitated. "Is it really best for me to be the one to find her? I mean, I'm the one that sent her running. Maybe Monroe can… sniff her out."

Monroe gave his friend an insulted look, "Dude – you're the cop. You can track her car or something, call motels and it won't be suspicious. I'll look like a creepy stalker."

"Please Nick," Rosalee plead sternly.

Nick reluctantly nodded and said his goodbyes before leaving the spice shop.

Lena drove around for a while, in circles. She had no idea what she saw. All she knew was that it was dangerous. His eyes turned completely, harrowing black. And she could see her face in them. It almost looked like… her eyes were glowing. But that wasn't possible. She just had to get away from them.

She pulled into the first motel she saw and checked in for a day or two stay. She hid her boxes of belongings under a tarp in the back of her car and brought in her small suitcase with her into the room. She had no idea what she was going to do. Hopefully Portland was big enough that she wouldn't run into those crazy people again. She would find a modest apartment, continue her practice and hope for the best. She really didn't have the resources to try and move again.

By the time night fell, her stomach was screaming at her to find something to eat. She hadn't had anything since her last pit stop that morning. She made her way to her car to get something at a drive-thru, but she paused at the door when she felt like eyes were on the back of her neck. It made goosebumps break out all over her skin. But when she turned to look, all she saw were empty cars in the dark motel parking lot.

When she saw no one, she got in her car and drove away.

What she didn't notice was Nick and Monroe picking up to follow her.

Nick had quickly tracked her car to its parking spot outside the Motel 6 just a few miles from his house. So, he dragged Monroe out of the spice shop to go stake out the motel and see what room she came out of. When they saw her walking out to her car, it was almost as if she knew they were watching. The way she looked around as they ducked down, she looked paranoid, scared. Maybe she knew someone was after her.

"Where is she going?" Monroe asked. "She looks worried."

"Maybe she's running," Nick said quickly as he started his car and made to follow her stealthily.

"Dude, what are we supposed to do when it comes time to stop stalking and start talking to her?" Monroe asked testily. He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. "I mean, we'll have to tell her everything. Especially if she doesn't already know." He was quiet for a moment as they silently followed Lena's car. Nick was concentrating on not losing her. After another moment, Monroe compulsively continued talking, "And I have no idea how it would be possible for her to get this far and just not know that she's wesen. I mean, she looks the same age as you do. We saw her eyes glowing, but just not the rest of whatever she is. She must have really good control."

"Maybe she does know she's different, she just doesn't know what to call it," Nick suggested. "That could possible, right?"

"I don't know any wesen parent that would be irresponsible enough to not explain it to her," Monroe said. "Maybe she really has no idea. I've heard of wesen in the foster system, have no idea what they are, and end up attacking people. But… they usually don't make it very far, age wise. And by what Rosalee was saying, Freddy's known this girl her whole life."

"Yeah, has she found anything yet?" Nick asked as they turned around a corner. Lena seemed to be driving a little aimlessly. Like she didn't know where she was going. Maybe she was running.

Monroe sighed and shook his head, "Not yet. Freddy wasn't really organized. And he hid the shady business. We still haven't found out more about those weird passports. Or why he needed them. We should just focus more on explaining what we do know to Lena."

Nick followed the car ahead of them with his eyes before he noticed she was pulling into a McDonalds parking lot. Guess she wasn't running. He pulled over into the parking lot and waited for her to make it through.

"Have you heard from Jessie?" Monroe asked. Jessica was Nick's cousin on the Grimm side. She was also half-vampire on her father's side. Nick hadn't even known she existed. She hadn't known about him either until she started finding out more about her biological parents, having been adopted as a baby when her parents were killed.

One night, out of the blue, he was preparing to propose to Juliette when some strangers burst into their house carrying Jessica, who looked like she was dying. One was an old woman named Sienna, who revealed she was also from the Grimm side of the family, distant cousin to his mom and Aunt Marie. The other was a young man named Alex, not a Grimm but aware of the weirder side of life. He called himself a Hunter, said he killed dangerous things.

They had explained that Jessie was his cousin and that she was half-vampire, but that she'd been attacked and was dying. The only way to save her life was to push her through the full vampire transformation. But she couldn't stay where she was. She was living in Beacon Hills, California. But it was dangerous for her to stay there while she transformed, so Alex packed her up, met with Sienna, and they drove straight to Portland.

Juliette had been beside herself with outraged confusion when they came in with a bleeding, dirty girl. But once Sienna started explaining about who Jessica was, Nick just tried to convince his girlfriend to help them and not call for an ambulance.

Then of course, some guy named Connor showed up the day after the others had. He claimed that his family were Guardians, who protected certain powerful beings with great destinies. He and his older brother, Gavin, were such guardians. But Gavin was guarding someone in California. Connor had been assigned to Jessica. When Nick asked who put out these assignments, Connor explained that their mother was a powerful Oracle, and decided who had important destinies and doled out assignments to her sons and other guardians like them.

When Jessica woke up, she almost attacked Juliette with bloodlust, being out of control. When Juliette saw her eyes glowing bright cobalt blue – vampires were the type of supernatural that anyone could see transformed – she lost it, and Nick was forced to tell her all about being a Grimm and wesen and everything.

She had then left. And he hadn't seen her since she came for her things, told him that he could keep the house, and to not call her or try to find her. He had been devastated.

But he had also been distracted by Jessie and her struggle. Alex tried to coach her through finding an anchor – he still had very little clue what that meant – but it hadn't worked. Her eyes were always glowing, her teeth were always sharp, and apparently vampires had telekinesis because she had uncontrollably rearranged the whole house almost every night. It was Sienna and Connor who helped in the end, by telling her that vampires could shut off their emotions in order to gain control of their abilities. From then on, Jessie was practically a robot.

But she took well to being told about wesen, only having experience with a whole separate branch of supernatural creatures like the classic werewolves. But that didn't matter much. She was resilient all of the sudden and readily absorbed all the information he threw at her, revealing her eidetic memory.

She even went out and helped him, Hank, and Monroe with wesen issues. Her and Alex. To Nick, it was rather obvious that Alex was completely in love with Jessica, and that she didn't feel the same way. He had gotten Alex to confess that he had met Jessie under duplicitous circumstances and fallen for her, but her heart always belonged to someone else.

Nick and Jessie had been able to form some sort of bond. As well as they could with her emotions locked away. She lived with him in the guest room for while in Portland, so they spent a lot of time together. She told him all about her friends who were werewolves and what they had fought in Beacon Hills. And about her mother who was from the Grimm family, and her father who was a descendent of Dracula. About how they were assassinated just for being together and having her, by her mother's family no less. He had told her all about his Aunt Marie's death and how he thought he was going crazy when he started seeing wesen. About all the 'adventures' since then.

Everything had kind of fallen apart when 'something' killed Alex while they were all out tracking a crazed lowen. Jessie had been beside herself, screaming her head off. The grief had triggered her emotions again and it took three days for them to coach her back into robot mode.

Soon after that, Jessie claimed she heard her friend Lydia scream. Apparently, she was a banshee, and with her vampire hearing, she picked it up even from Beacon Hills. Her friends were in trouble and she had to go back. Nick made damn sure she was okay first before he let Connor take her back to California.

He hadn't had much contact with her, like his mother. But she made sure to keep in touch and let him know that she was okay. Only recently, she had told him that there was a deadpool out in Beacon Hills with every supernatural person's name on it, and any assassin who got a hold of the list were gunning for them for the decent payout. And of course, her name was tied for highest payoff. She had contacted him to ask how blacklist wire transfers worked and if he could track down the Benefactor – the sicko who started the whole thing – through a cassette tape with instructions on it.

He had done what he could to get her information and pass it on, but he still worried. He had entertained taking some time off to go down and help her, but she had insisted she and her friends had it covered and that he needed to stay put in Portland unless he ended up in danger being in Beacon Hills as a Grimm.

That had been a week ago.

"Not since the last time," Nick finally answered as they saw Lena make it through the drive-thru and started following her back towards the motel. "If I don't hear from her in the next few days, I'll call Connor."

"Good," Monroe said. "Now we should really focus on what we're going tell Lena."

"Nothing," Nick said. "We're not telling her anything until we talk to Rosalee and see if she's found anything at all. We need to be smart about this. We don't want to scare her out of Portland if someone is after her."

"Right," Monroe murmured.

They followed her back to the motel and instead of parking, they kept on driving until they were back at the spice shop.

"There you are!" Rosalee called out from the side room when they walked in. "I found Freddy's computer and a journal he kept. The computer has all sorts of emails back and forth between her. Then I thought to search under her surname Kühn to see what else came up, and there was a man, Tomas Kühn. I think he was her father. But any contact with him stopped almost twenty years ago. And I couldn't find anything about a mother in there."

"Okay, what about the journal?" Nick asked.

Rosalee's face grew grim, "That's where it gets… weird."

"Weirder than a wesen that doesn't know she's a wesen?" Monroe commented.

Rosalee nodded slowly, opening up a leather-bound journal onto the table in the side room. Inside there were polaroid photos of a young girl that looked like Lena throughout pages of journal entries. "Freddy was friends with Tomas Kühn. They met when they were in High School. I don't remember him, but Freddy was a lot older than me. When Tomas had Lena, he knew she'd be in danger. He made Freddy promise to watch out for her if anything happened to him. Which it did. He was assassinated. She went into Foster care because Freddy didn't have any legal claim to her and wasn't approved as a foster parent. But he kept in touch, kept track of her." She flipped through the pages, "I can't find anything that says who is after her, or who killed Tomas, but…" she trailed off in fear, "he refers to Lena in the journal, as the hybrid."

"A hybrid?" Monroe guffawed in shock.

Nick looked between them, "What's a hybrid?"

Rosalee look at him, "The child of two different wesen. They're not all that rare nowadays, but back when she would have been born, they were unheard of."

"Her very existence was dangerous back then," Monroe said. "Even now, the wesen community has a lot of purists out there who believe wesen shouldn't intermingle and mix. She very well could have been hunted down as a child."

"That's why Freddy was protecting her," Rosalee said. "Tomas was a fuchsbau, like me. But Freddy makes no mention of what Lena's mother was."

"That explains her eyes," Nick said. "They glowed like yours, the same color and everything. And I could see something like trying to come out, but it didn't. Just her eyes."

"We don't know what her full form could look like," Rosalee said. "She's only half fuchsbau. We have no idea what the other half is or how it presents. And now I know that she genuinely has no idea what she is or that she isn't even human."

Monroe gaped, "How is that possible?"

Rosalee flipped to a page in the journal that held some sort of recipe on it, "Freddy has been brewing interius celare bestia."

Monroe seemed completely taken aback by this, and almost enraged.

Nick was just confused. "What is that, Latin?"

Rosalee grimly nodded, "Yes. It means 'to hide the beast inside.' It's a tea brew invented during the 1600s witchtrials by a group of hexenbeists to give to the younger wesen to suppress the woge. It's dangerous for the wesen, but it was a desperate measure for desperate times."

"Why is it dangerous?" Nick said. "If you could not woge, wouldn't that protect you from other Grimms over the centuries?"

"Woging is who we are," Monroe pressed. "Suppressing it is just downright unhealthy. A lot of the kids who took it ended up getting sick and dying before they reached their thirties. Luckily, the witch trials ended, and the tea wasn't standard practice. Some countries have even banned the use of it entirely. It borders on child abuse to a lot of people."

"If it makes wesen sick, then how has she been drinking it her whole life?" Nick asked. "She seemed completely healthy even if she was upset."

Rosalee was at a loss for the most part. "I don't know, but I think Freddy figured out how to give it to her safely. She must have been in real danger if he went so far as to give her interius celare bestia."

"That means that as impossible as it is," Monroe cut in, "she really has no idea who she is."

"And if Freddy hasn't been around to give her the tea, she could start woging out anytime," Rosalee said. "According to the journal, he made it into tea bags for her and sent it to her for Christmas every year. But she obviously didn't get any this year, and who knows how long she's gone without."

"So, we need to explain things to her and quickly," Nick thought out loud.

Rosalee nodded, "Did you find her?"

"Yeah, she's staying at a motel near my house," Nick said. "But she's not going to be safe there if she's in danger like you say she is. She needs to be somewhere we can watch over her."

"But where?" Monroe asked. "It's not like we have a lot of room and being surrounded by wesen may not be all that amendable to her once she finds out the truth."

"But…" Rosalee trailed off, looking over at Nick, "maybe a cop would make her feel safe."

Monroe caught on and started looking at Nick expectantly too.

Nick balked at them, "Guys, I don't know…"

"She has no one else, Nick," Rosalee beseeched. "She's a widow, an orphan, Freddy was the only real family she had. She doesn't know what's going on, and she has nowhere else to go where we can protect her like Freddy was."

Nick looked at Rosalee's pleading face and half-heartedly caved, "Fine, fine. I'll offer her my guest room, but we don't know if she'll want to stay with me. For all we know, once we show her the whole truth, she'll go running for the hills."

"We cannot let that happen," Rosalee determined.

Lena was meticulously cleaning up her food wrappers from the bed and dumping them into the plastic to-go bag and dumping that into the plastic trash can by the door. With a sigh, she pulled out a worn-out copy of Alice in Wonderland and started reading on the bed. She was just meeting the Mad Hatter when there was a knock at the door. She waited a beat, to see if a maid or the manager would announce themselves. But there was just another knock.

She slowly stood up and reached into her bag for a can of pepper spray before approaching the door. She peered through the small peephole and felt a chill of fear wash over her when she saw the people from the spice shop on the other side. Nick was at the front, raising his fist to knock again. She quickly opened the door and held up the spray, "One wrong move and I'll have you crying."

Nick blanched at the spray and defended himself, "We're not here to hurt you. We understand that you were probably very confused by what we were talking about earlier."

"We thought you knew already," Rosalee added.

Monroe stepped in, "And seeing Nick's eyes must have been pretty unsettling. It still gets to us sometimes too."

"His eyes?" This time, Lena's confusion was feigned. Maybe if she convinced these people she was clueless and didn't see anything, they'd leave her alone. "I don't know what you mean."

Nick gave her a look, "Yes, you do. We know you saw my eyes change."

Lena set her jaw tight, "I don't know what I saw. You need to leave."

"Please, Lena, we just want to talk," Rosalee plead. "We think someone pretended to be Freddy to lure you here and we're trying to figure out why. We need you to do that."

Lena withered at the suggestion that someone would pretend to be her dead Uncle to hurt her. "Well, maybe I should just leave Portland then."

"If, after all we have to tell you, you still want to leave, then we won't stand in your way," Nick promised. "But please just hear us out."

Lena looked between all of their genuine faces and finally relented, "Fine, come in." She opened the door wider and let them in. She made sure to leave the door unlocked in case she needed to make a hasty exit, but she also made sure to shut the curtains, so no one could look in. "What do you have to tell me?"

"You heard a lot of weird words earlier," Monroe began warily. "Wesen. Grimm."

"And saw something strange," Rosalee added. "Nick's eyes turning black?"

Lena fought as hiver as she remembered seeing his eyes turn into hollow black holes, and seeing her face in them, her own eyes glowing. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The three of them didn't look like they believed her. Rosalee sighed, "We know you do. But you don't have to be afraid. Nick isn't going to hurt you. That's just what his eyes do when he sees someone like us."

"Who is us?" Lena asked impatiently.

"Me," Rosalee gestured to herself and then Monroe. "Monroe. You. Though, we're not entirely sure what kind of wesen you are."

Lena scoffed, "I don't know what a wesen is, but I'm not one."

"Yes, you are," Rosalee said quietly. "Otherwise you wouldn't have seen Nick's eyes change. We all saw your eyes change. Like mine. Like a fuchsbau."

"A fucking what?" Lena asked.

"It's one of the many wesen types," Monroe explained. "Why don't you sit down? We'll explain everything."

And so, she did, and so they did. They ran her through all the pertinent information about what wesen were, what a Grimm was, and what Rosalee found out about her in her brother's journal.

Lena was at a loss for words, gaping jaw, staring between them but not matching eyes with anyone. "Let me try and get this whole story you've concocted straight… Wesen are parahuman beings that have been around forever pretty much. Grimms are weird people who can see what they are when they don't want them to and use that knowledge to hunt and kill them. But you," she gestured to Nick, "are different and a cop and don't kill wesen." She pointed to Rosalee, "You are a fuchsbau, and so was Freddy, and my father. But you," she pointed to Monroe, "are a blutbad, aka the big bad wolf? Did I get everything?"

"Well, we don't know what you mother was," Nick said. "Rosalee couldn't find much about her in Freddy's things."

"Surprise, surprise," Lena muttered sarcastically. "She was a spotty weekend parent until she finally walked out when I was four."

The others were a little quiet at the admission. Nick felt sorry for her. Monroe was sympathetic. Rosalee was too, but she was also thinking that that made it harder to figure out what the other half of Lena's form would be. Rosalee quietly shuffled her feet, "I'm sorry. And I'm sorry that we scared you earlier. But this is not a story, this is the whole truth, or as much as we think you can handle at once. And we can prove it to you."

Lena rose a brow at them expectantly, "You can prove it? How?"

"Well, we can woge," Monroe explained. "That's the term for changing our face into our wesen form. We can do it to show each other, usually when we're emotional. Grimms can see that too. We can also sometimes woge for normal people, for anyone to see, usually with a lot of anger, or-or not!" He rushed to reassure her at the end of his sentence when he saw her eyes widen at the word 'anger.'

"We're going to try the first kind of woge," Rosalee said. "Because if you see it, it proves that you are wesen too."

"According to you," Lena said smartly.

"Are you ready?" Rosalee asked her gently. "Just remember that it's still us. And we promise that we're not going to hurt you."

"Just do what you're going to do," Lena replied impatiently, standing up and crossing her arms in front of her chest. Nick stepped away from the couple and closer to Lena, in case she tried to run for it.

Rosalee and Monroe shared a look, and he nodded for her to go first. Rosalee faced Lena and took a deep breath before she curled her head fluidly and shook her chin, her face changing under the skin first as her fuchsbau form came out. When Lena saw the glowing amber eyes, sharp little teeth, fox nose, brown and white fur, and pointed ears poking out through her brown hair, she gasped and fell back to the bed.

Rosalee stayed in form long enough to say, "It's still me," before curling her head the other way and shifting back into human form. "I'm a fuchsbau, so was your father."

Lena didn't know what she was seeing. She looked over at Monroe expectantly, "And you?"

"I'm a little bit harder to absorb," Monroe warned.

"You're trying to convince me what you are – convince me," she retorted sternly.

Monroe sighed and gears himself up to woge. Lena watched with rapt attention as his head shook jerkily from side to side and then his face transformed into this darker, hairy wolf-like face with big glowing red eyes. He did look scary, and Lena couldn't stop the slight yelp as she launched off of the bed and bumped into Nick's chest. He steadied an arm around her shoulders to stop her from tripping and spoke up, "It's still Monroe. He's not going to hurt you."

"Right," Monroe added, but his voice sounded deeper, gravelly, monstrous. At Lena's fearful expression, he quickly woged back and said in his normal voice, "Right. It's just me. I'm harmless, really. I'm not even like other blutbad. I'm a vegetarian clock repairman."

Lena was panting a little in fright, nails biting through the fabric of Nick's shirt since he had not let her go. When she noticed, she jumped away from him and sat at the foot of the bed again. "So, I'm like you?"

"No, you're like her," Monroe gestured to Rosalie. "Or your dad was. So, that would make you half fuchsbau. But we don't know what the other half is."

"And Uncle Freddy was a fuchsbau?" she asked, tone riddled with still fresh grief.

Rosalee nodded, still flinching at her late brother's name, "Yes. And so was Tomas."

Lena was still understandably freaked out, but she had seen for herself that they were telling the truth. "And since I saw you just now… I'm like you?"

Rosalee nodded.

"When am I supposed to turn into…" she trailed off, waving her hand over her own face.

Rosalee shared a look with the two men in the room. That was a difficult question. "We don't exactly know. You should have woged already. Normally it happens around puberty or during our later teen years."

"I'm twenty-eight," Lena cringed. "Why haven't I…"

"Woged," Nick pronounced for her helpfully.

"Woged," she repeated, nodding at him.

Rosalee gave her an almost guilty look. She did feel guilty – if even by association to her brother – for Freddy's actions. "Freddy gave you this tea he made himself."

"Yeah…" Lena trailed off questionably. "The same Christmas present every year – this herbal tea. Only reason I ever drank it was because I could spike it with wiskey and he made a big deal about it being in the family for centuries, yada yada yada…"

"Well, it wasn't just tea," Nick quipped, wanting to get to the bulk of the situation. "It's really, um…" he couldn't remember what it was called.

"Interius celare bestia," Rosalee supplemented. "It's meant to suppress the woge. It was invented during the witch trials to protect wesen from getting seen and accused as witches. But it's illegal now, because it's dangerous for wesen to suppress their other side."

"So, for Freddy to have been dosing you with it your whole life, he'd have to pretty desperate to protect you," Monroe commented.

Lena's eyes widened, "I ran out of that tea two months ago. Freddy didn't send me another batch this year, obviously. Before… I figured that was because he was planning to give it to me when I arrived here."

"Then you may go through the change soon," Rosalee revealed. "But we're here to help you. We guide you through it every step of the way."

"If you decide to stay," Monroe added, earning a stern look from his girlfriend.

"I can't afford to try and set up a fresh practice somewhere new," Lena droned regrettably. "Guess I'll go apartment hunting tomorrow."

Rosalee shared a look with Nick, "About that…"

Lena looked over at her warily, "What about that? I can't live in this motel room or crash at the spice shop."

"It's not a good idea for you to live alone, unprotected," Rosalee said. "We have no idea who tricked you into moving here or why. We talked before coming here and we think it would be a good idea for you to stay with Nick."

Lena eyed Nick more warily than ever now, remembering the way his eyes turned black the first time she saw him. "I don't know…"

"I have a guest room," Nick chimed in. "You'll get your own space and everything. And this way I can help protect you from whoever lured you to Portland."

Lena was still eyeing him warily, but turned her eyes to his hip, "I don't like guns…"

Self-consciously, Nick's fingers felt his police issue firearm at his hip, "I'm Portland PD. I'm trained to use it and I don't wear it in the house."

She didn't look totally convinced or consoled by his words but she just wordlessly nodded, "Fine. It's better than looking for an apartment right now."

Things were tense and silent for a moment before Monroe finally spoke up, "Um, it's getting late. We can help you move your stuff in tonight?"

After Lena again reluctantly agreed, Monroe helped her with her bag while she checked out and she followed their cars to Nick's house. Lena kept pulling her lower lip into her teeth and biting on it awkwardly as the men got her boxes out of the car and brought them into the guest bedroom of Nick's house. As she looked around, she thought that the house looked like it had a woman's touch. But Nick didn't mention a wife or anyone else who lived in the house. But she also noticed a fine layer of dust over most of the flat surfaces, and some strange empty spaces between frames spotted around the home. Maybe the wife wasn't around anymore.

After getting everything out of her car and into the bedroom, Rosalee and Monroe decided to go back to their house. Rosalee promised to call first thing in the morning and offered for Lena to come see her at the shop so they could talk more. Monroe said he was always reachable as well if she wanted to know more about wesen and what being one meant. Lena felt they were more professing their availability in case things got too tense or awkward between her and Nick on her first night in his house.

And while it was awkward once they left, Nick was a hospitable host and helped her get the guest room ready and get most of her boxes out of the way before saying goodnight.

"I'm just down the hall if you need anything at all," he made sure to say. "Help yourself to anything in the kitchen if you're hungry or thirsty."

"I'm just tired," she cut him off. "But thanks. Goodnight."

He nodded. "Goodnight."

So, this fic has some catching up to do timeline wise with the Blood Series, since it starts and takes place between season four and five of Teen Wolf. Once they catch up, Blood for Hurt will start getting posted.

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RegalGirl94