Brenner lived a happy enough life in a small vilage with his mother and father. His father was a travelling merchant, gone for months at a time throughout his life. Brenner spent most of his time playing in the forest, and he made his family laugh with the tricks he would teach to rabbits, squirrels, and anything else that lived in the woods.
On his 7th year, Brenner came home from a trip to the woods to find his father yelling at his mother, who was cowering with tears pouring down her face. Brenner was afraid, and hid outside his house so he could listen. His father was yelling something about a peddler who would come from time to time that had a special knack for getting rid of pests. Brenner understood little, but as the story came out, it became apparant his father was blaming his mother for cheating on him with the peddler, that Brenner's features were becoming more and more obviously similar to the peddler.
With the sound of his father's sword leaving its sheath, Brenner jumped up from his hiding spot near the logpile. He managed to make it inside just in time to see his father cut down his mother with a single sweeping swing of his blade. Brenner had never seen such anger on his father's face, and when his father approached him he knew he had to get away.
Spinning on his heels, brenner made it only a few steps before he felt a stinging sensation in his shoulder; a glancing blow from his father's angry swing. "Oh god, my son I'm...", his father only got out a few words before a piercing howl erupted from Brenner's lips. "Wha..", his father stumbled as several answering howls came from the forest.
Some of Brenner's newest friends, a pack of wandering wolves came charging out of the forest, where they had been waiting for some more of Brenner's treats. Brenner began running for the forest, even as Brenner's father stood in shock. With only moments to spare, his father turned and ran for his still open door. The last Brenner heard was the angry clawing of the wolves attempting to find their way into the house where his father hid.
...
Brenner grew up with the forest, travelling ever further with the pack of wolves. They had come back with blood on their claws and feet, but Brenner didn't give it any thought, the shock of seeing his mother killed had left him in a bit of a daze.
The next few years went by in a blur, with Brenner growing quicker than most youths his age, the few hunters and loners he came across thinking he was 14 or 15 rather than 9 or 10.
When Brenner was 12, he came across a woman screaming for help while a man held her down. With visions of his mother's face in his head, Brenner and his "packmates" swooped in with a savage cry. Wearing stretches of leather, wild hair, Brenner looked more animal than man as he savagely tore into the man. Unable to sufficiently wound the man with his small knife and release his rage, Brenner took a savage bite out of the man's outstretched hand. With the first rush of salty blood filling his mouth, Brenner's eyes glazed over with red.
The next he knew, Brenner was sitting in a pile of blood and body parts. His wolf friends were taking their fill from the bloody mess, when Brenner realized they were eating from both the man AND the woman. With a savage cry, Brenner attacked his only friends in the world, the wolves. With a savage strength belying his age, Brenner tore them apart.
Once again in a mindless daze, Brenner tried to push out images of the woman screaming under him, her cries for mercy. Brenner didn't notice when the mists closed in around him, or when the trees were suddenly replaced with a similar, though different, species of tree.
...
Brenner is now an adult, nearly 17 years old. He spends most of his time in a small city that he had never heard of or seen before the morning after entering the mists. He still has a talent with communicating to animals, though now he uses that talent with common city animals like rats, birds, and cats. He uses his talents to filch food, drink, and other things he needs. He has yet to be caught, though someone must know what he does sneaking along the rooftops late at night with his small pack of animals following him, because he woke up in his bed with an open invitation to join a shadowy organization called "the Night's Claw" for more rewards than he could dream of.
He avoids traveling on the nights of the full moon, he feels "funny", sometimes barely catching himself before a red rage takes over, accompanied by visions of the girl he tried to rescue. He has managed to rescue a few women since then, though he's more likely to send his animal companions than intervene himself, too afraid of what might happen.
A pack of wolves has taken to circling the city where he lives, he sees them on particularly clear nights, their yellow eyes glinting in the moonlight. He's afraid of them, afraid of what might happen if he were to rejoin them, but he longs to run through the woods, particularly on nights of the full moon.