Author's Note: Well here's my comeback to fan fiction! I'm extremely excited and incredibly nervous at the same time but you probably just want to get to the story so I promise I won't hold you long. Feel free to visit my profile just in case you want to know my thoughts on the Twilight Saga. See that wasn't so bad! Now onto the story! Enjoy! :)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything recognizable. The only things I do own are my original characters, plot, and a purple Snuggie. ;D

Prologue

There was no quieter time than the silence promised at dead of night in these hollow woods. It is legend that if one were to close their eyes and rest their head upon a fallen juniper tree, Mother Nature herself would sing them a gentle lullaby to caress them into the most peaceful sleep one can experience, second only to death. Coated in the purest, blackest cover of midnight, the stars and the moon stood out against the black abyss serving as a gently, burning torch to always help guide you home. Any given night, one could come into this forest and find a peace like that of nirvana.

But one night will forever be remembered as the exception.

"AHHHHHHH!" a young man of the tender age of fifteen screamed from his bedroom as he thrashed uncontrollably on his makeshift bed. The scream was filled with an agony so excruciating, that it would certainly break any living heart within a five mile radius.

"Zachary!" the boy's mother screamed as she hurried into her son's room, fumbling over herself in her desperation to reach what she believed to be her dying son. She tore at the hand carved, wooden hanging beads that blocked the view of her son and raced to the side of his bed, taking his hand in her own. His hand scorched like that of a freshly sparked ember and though the burn on her own hand was certainly to be severe, she would not let go. "Oh, Zachary, my baby. Shhhhh. Mama's here, shhh."

Another scream erupted, shaking the entire clay house and threatening to bring it crumbling down and the boys thrashing just continued to worsen.

"My baby, my son, shhh. What's wrong? Shhh," she cooed as she gripped his hand tighter and pushed his long, dark hair, drenched with sweat, away from forehead while she cried hysterically. "Oh, God please no! Not my son!"

"Mama," Zachary cried through his tears and clenched teeth. "It burns, it burns so bad mama. Just make it stop, please mama. Please."

He was begging her. Her son was begging her to do the one thing a mother is required to do, to protect her child. She had no idea what was happening and the fact that she couldn't give her son the one thing he desperately needed was eating away at her very soul.

Just then, a small boy entered the room. The chaos had awakened him from a deep sleep filled with dreams expected of a twelve-year-old and thrust him into a real-life nightmare. "Mama! What's wrong with Zachary?! What's going on?!"

Upon the frantic cries of her youngest son, the mother turned around to look at him. Her puffy red eyes and tear-drenched face were an entirely new sight to her son and his eyes widened impossibly more as he witnessed this and heard the breaking of his brother's bones.

"Samuel! I need you to go get your father! He's with the other elders at the council! Hurry there and tell him to get here now! Run as fast as you can, son! GO!"

Samuel was stunned but he did as his mother asked and ran out of the house. His brother's screams echoed in the once quite woods and they followed Samuel as he raced upon the sandy floor, each scream just one more grain of sand falling in the hourglass that was his brother's life.

The tiny patch of forest awakened at the sound of his hectic breathing and his deliberate sprint upon the forest floor caused protest in the inhabitants of the land. Creatures of the night made their presence known as they seemed to carry the message of the horror back in Samuel's little clay house and some even seemed to join in the race.

After running faster than he ever had before, a breathless Samuel reached the council building.

"DAD!" he yelled as soon as he burst through the large, red wooden doors, immediately demanding the attention of the five elderly men in the room. They all looked up in surprise upon the cry and their expressions grew immensely concerned once they realized that the boy had run a mile to them in the middle of the night.

"Samuel, what on Earth are you doing here? Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to be out in the woods at this late hour?" Samuel's father questioned, in his deep baritone, as he stood up from his seat.

"Dad, you have to come quick! All of you have to come! It's Zachary! Something's really wrong! I think he's dying!" Samuel said as tears streamed down his face.

The eyes of every man in the room widened and the next minute they had all piled into Samuel's father's truck and took off in the direction Samuel had just came.

Zachary's screams greeted the elders and Samuel hopped out of bed of the truck, leading the way to the horror scene currently in progress.

"Evelyn!" Samuel's father declared once he stepped fully into the room. What he saw shocked him and rocked his very core.

There, lying on the floor, was Evelyn holding a sweating, shaking Zachary while they both cried. The popping of bones followed by Zachary's groans and yells was a disturbing sight. None of the elders moved. They all stood completely still, transfixed in their disbelief.

"Oh Elijah," Evelyn cried as she looked up at her husband, "I don't know what's wrong! He just started screaming and now he won't stop shaking! Please, help him!"

Elijah looked back at the other elders, worry evident in his eyes. "Is this what I think it is?" No one answered. "IS IT?!"

"He has all the symptoms," a grey haired man finally said, taking a step forward. "But it's unheard of amongst our people now. The Quileute are the only tribe that can currently activate the gene. I-"

"Unheard of. Not impossible," Elijah sneered at the men before returning his attention back to his wife and son.

"AHHHHHH! SO HOT! AHHHHHH!" Zachary said as he continued to fidget in his mother's arms and dug his fingers into the ground beneath him, his nails leaving a trail of red stained sand in their wake.

"Evelyn, dear, I need you to come away from Zachary. He's going to need-"

"NO! I'm not letting him go! I won't leave him! WHY WON'T YOU DO ANYTHING?! HELP HIM!" Evelyn yelled accusingly at the elders as she held on tighter to Zachary.

"EVELYN! We're going to help him as soon as you move away from him. We can't help him if you're in the way," Elijah tried reasoning with her. "He's my son too, Evelyn. I'm going to help him."

She softened at his quieter tone of voice and saw the same panic and fear she was experiencing, mirrored in the dark eyes of her husband. She gave a slight nod and leaned to kiss Zachary's forehead one more time before she moved from behind him and gently laid him on the ground.

Elijah pulled his wife behind him and she held Samuel tightly in her arms, the lack of warmth making her anxiety increase. She needed a son to hold and protect. She couldn't let the same thing happen twice.

"Elijah, we must get him outside. This room won't be big enough to contain him and by the looks of it, we don't have much time," the youngest elder instructed.

"Zachary, shhhh, everything is going to be fine son," Elijah said quietly to Zachary as he and the youngest elder lifted the young boy, carried him outside and gently place him on a patch of shrubbery a safe distance away from the house, in the cover of the woods. "Now what do we do?"

"Now, we wait. It shouldn't be much longer now," the oldest elder said as he and Elijah joined Evelyn, Samuel and the elderly men in front of the house.

After few more minutes of watching Zachary scream and thrash and beg for death, the popping of his bones increased at an alarming rate. Zachary flipped himself onto his stomach and used all of his strength to push himself up on his hands and knees as his screams were exchanged for snarls. He screamed one last time and the air mystically quivered around him, leaving a huge, brown wolf in its wake.

A scream sliced through the finally quite air and the wolf turned its head just in time to see his mother faint.

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! I hoped you enjoyed it! :)

P.S. I made a better cover for this story than that weird sidebar thing (which is a close up of Katalina, btw)! The link is on my profile so go check it out! :)