Name: Jacob Xiao

Age: 18 years old

Species: Therianthrope; Kitsune

Faceclaim: Cai Xukun

Good: Mischievous, Playful, and Caring Bad: Loud, Moody, and Arrogant

At only sixteen Anastasia Bae was the youngest person in her high school to have a baby. She was a young Kitsune and it didn’t help that her parents hated her boyfriend; Alec Xiao (another Kitsune) and wanted to disown him every chance they got. Anastasia was tired of this and ran away from home, buying two plane tickets with the money she had saved up for her senior trip and only took the bare minimum of what she would need. Alec’s family supported them completely, so they bought the young parents a house in Honolulu and traveled there just in time for Anastasia’s baby to be born. Jacob Michael Xiao was born on a warm February night to a very relieved mother and father. He was a happy little bundle of joy that rarely ever cried, loved snuggling and stuffed foxes. Jake’s mother knew that he would grow up fast and would eventually find his grandparents that never supported his birth in the first place, so she cut off all contact with her parents and removed any sign of them from the house. As Jake grew up, he never once questioned why he never saw his other grandparents, because the Xiao’s made sure to spoil him non-stop with gifts and toys and weekly trips to the beach so he could see the “fishies” as he called them.

Growing up on the beach was an amazing experience for Jake as he loved swimming and climbing the palm trees in their backyard. He also loved pineapple a lot, so it was a part of his daily diet. He was only three when he first discovered a luau and has loved it ever since. There was something about the way the fire-breathers swallowed fire and then huffed it back out, something about how the pork tasted as it had just come out of the ground, and something about running around barefooted in the warm sand afterward, that was the majority of his memories from the time he spent with his father and mother when he was a little boy.

When he was seven, his parents decided to go on a road trip to his grandparent’s house in Evermore, Colorado. Jake was excited about this trip and bounced around the house all night, while his parents packed clothes into suitcases and readied the plane tickets for the next morning. It would be Jake’s first time on a plane and his first time traveling to a different state. When the next morning came, the little boy practically launched himself into the car and did not sit still the whole way to the airport, on the plane and in the rental car on the way to the Xiao’s. He had been so excited that he hadn’t even noticed when his dad reached back to grab something and his mother who was driving looked up into the rearview mirror.

Their rental car was smashed from the driver’s side by a drunk driver who had no idea where he was and what he was doing. Jake’s mother died on impact, and Jake’s dad died on the way to the hospital. It took a while for paramedics to untangle the terrified little boy from the wreckage as his seatbelt was tangled around his legs. Jake was relatively unscarred except for a piece of glass that was jammed into his side and several cuts and bruises along his arms and face. Now he was an orphan and he had no choice but to go and live with his grandparents, who he had no problem with, but he was an island boy, not a city boy.

Growing up with his grandparents was a little difficult at first since he didn’t know much about how to live in the city. The closest he got to the ocean home he had had in Hawaii was the Xiao’s lake house. Jake loved that lake house and would spend his every waking moment in the summer on or in the water. Going to school was hard too, as he got bullied for being the new kid and made fun of for his glasses. He so desperately wanted to go back to being homeschooled and he wanted his parents back, but he had accepted that would probably never happen. Jake’s parent’s death had led him to experience and learn more than a seven-year-old should ever know or have to deal with in their developing brains.

There was also other difficult information. Jake's grandparents told him stories of how his parents were a specific type of Therianthrope named Kitsune, and that they turned into foxes on the full moon. There were different eye colors for the foxes as well. Alphas had bright green eyes, betas had bright blue and omegas had bright orange. He learned that his father had been born into the pack and his mother had been an omega until she joined his father's pack. The Alpha of the Kitsunes was a man named Orion Valkyrie and he was also the Ambassador of the whole entire Therianthrope faction. As a seven-year-old, Jake found this cool and asked his grandparents if he would eventually turn into one as well. They told him that he would because it was in his genes.

As a preteen, Jake got into sports. He swam for the middle school’s competitive swim team, played basketball, volleyball, baseball, and football. It was a lot for him, but he loved it and it took his mind off his parent’s death and the bullying that was still going on. At least he was smarter than them and got more and more friends due to his natural comedic humor and his ability to sing and play different instruments. Other people thought he was cool since he knew three different languages. Chinese from his father’s side, Korean from his mother’s side and English. Jake learned to get over the bullying and often ignoring them or walking away when they approached him. The only thing he fought back on was when they insulted his parents.

When he was thirteen, he got his first girlfriend. He really liked her and found her endearing as she would laugh at every joke he said. But to his disappointment and heartbreak, she had only asked him as a dare from the popular kids. They were trying to see if they could make him break. When it didn’t work, the kids tried a different approach by taking Jake’s clothes whenever he was in the shower, tearing his books apart, and even breaking the tiny locket he carried around, which held a picture of his parents at their wedding before he was born. You could tell that Anastasia was pregnant in that picture and that she was young. This led to them calling him the “son of a whore.”

They even took it as far as beating him up and leaving him bleeding with several broken bones on the side of the road. Jake had thought he was going to die, so he crawled into a shady place with a bunch of trees and laid down to sleep, waiting for death to approach him, but it never did. He awoke to the sharp smell of antiseptic and bright lights. Jake’s left leg was in a cast and he could feel the stitches in his side move when he sat up. There was also a bandage around his head and he was confused as to why he was even awake. When the nurse came in to check his vitals and injuries, he asked her who had saved him. “I don’t know, honey. There was just a man that came in with you in his arms and said you needed help.” She said and that was that.

The bullying faded as he got into high school since he finally grew into his body. Jake also became the baseball captain and got spectacular grades, but good things are bound to go bad. In Jake’s freshman year, he lost his grandmother to cancer and a few days after his grandmother’s passing, his grandfather lost his fight with Alzheimer’s and passed away in his sleep. At only fifteen, Jake was truly an orphan with no one else in his family to go to. The only place he had to go was with one of his basketball friends and his parents. Jake was grateful to Sungjoo for this and even obeyed everything that his Sungjoo’s parents told him to do. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind to not do that since they had taken him in without really as much as a warning.

Life from then was different, as the normally loud and exuberant boy had become quiet. His grades also became spectacular and he excelled in all of his classes. This was because he knew that his grandparents would’ve wanted him to graduate and be a good student. With this in mind, Jake passed his freshman year with honors and the ability to go into all AP classes. Disliking the fast pace of those classes, he decided not to take them in his sophomore year. His sophomore year would also be like this. Good grades and silence around other kids. He didn’t want to disturb the kids who had a good life with his depressing one. He thought that he shouldn’t be like this around them and almost dropped out of school, if not for his best friend, Sungjoo.

Jake’s junior year was different. He became loud again and he got more friends that he could geek out with and tell them stories of what life used to be like on the beach. Jake also made it into a competition that he had been waiting to get into for like forever. It was a singing competition to figure out who would be good enough to get into the Honor Choir. As Jake could now drive, he signed up for the audition and could not wait for it. His choir teacher was very surprised that this normally quiet boy had wanted to audition to be in the best of the best choir. He normally had stage fright and couldn’t even sing a single note in front of the choir let alone several different people that would be judging harshly based on your voice.

The day had come to go to the competition, and it was a full moon. Leaving when it was light outside, so he wouldn’t be driving in the dark, he had almost made it to the competition. In fact, he was only a few feet away, before he felt an intense pain radiate throughout his body. It was like nothing he had ever felt before. Even the pain of the car accident when he was little and the pain from being beaten up couldn’t compare to this. He screamed, shrill and high and squeezed his eyes shut, feeling his body transform into something he had never even thought he could transform into. Tumbling out of the car, he found himself transformed into a beautiful arctic fox with pure white fur. His eyes shot open, a bright glowing blue, indicating that he was a beta and he yowled before running off into the forest.

Jake’s senses were alive. He could smell everything and could hear every living thing’s heartbeat from a long way away. Walking around the forest, he stopped every few feet to sniff the flowers, and then he hid behind a tree, burrowing into his tail, and falling asleep. He remembered the things his grandparents had told him when he was little and instantly knew that he was a kitsune. There was a little nagging feeling in the back of his mind that he should’ve known earlier due to the fact that his grandparents had told him that his parents had both been Kitsune’s. He was in the direct line of having the gene and honestly he kind of figured he had it since he had a bit of a temper as a little boy.

When he got back to the house, the Lee’s had almost sent a search party out for him. But when they figured out that he had turned, they explained that they had taken him in after his grandparents had died, because they were Kitsunes themselves. They had also known his parents and were sad to learn that they had died a while ago. Jake was just happy to have someone that was like him in the same house, so he wouldn’t be alone. Sungjoo’s uncle Younghoon explained that he had been friends with Alec in high school before he had run off and that they had been in the Kitsune pack that was in Evermore together. Both of Jake’s parents had been betas and if he wanted he could become part of the pack as well.

So that’s what Jake did. He became a part of the Evermore kitsune pack and got the pack tattoo on his hipbone so that only he could see it. He now had a home, a family and people that loved him. It was nice knowing that he had people to come back too and people to give him clothes after he transformed since he would be naked when he turned back into a human. It was also nice to know that he had a friend that was exactly like him, though he was a silver fox and not an arctic fox. That didn’t matter to Jake, he just was happy to have a friend. Younghoon also helped him get through junior year without any bullying or getting extremely angry, since that would result in another transformation in the middle of the school.

During the summer before his senior year, he got a job as a waiter in the human territory. He was so happy to have this job since it allowed him to make money that could use to rent his own apartment, so he didn’t have to intrude on Younghoon’s life. The other Kitsune was sad to see him go, so he put the apartment in his own name since he was eighteen. Now Jake lives with Younghoon and has finally figured out about his grandparents on his mother’s side. The Bae’s had been searching for him for a while and found out where he lived from the school, so they sent him a letter, apologizing for disowning his mother and father, and Jake doesn’t know whether or not to forgive them.