Chapter One: 3rd Person POV

Ayelet Smythe was born and raised in "the heart of the Rockies", the small mountain town Salida, Colorado, population 5,504. Growing up there she always dreamt of moving to a big city, discovering who she is, and becoming a famous writer. All those dreams abruptly disappeared one night shortly after her seventeenth birthday. That night she learned the cold, hard truth… nightmare-ish myths exist, and she's one of them.

Ayelet was supposed to "make herself scarce" and stay out of the house while her mother, Aislyn, had some "alone time" with her newest boyfriend, she came home around midnight like Aislyn had asked. As soon as Ayelet opened the front door, a fowl metallic scent was permanently etched into her memory. In that moment something about her being shifted, all of her senses heightened; from her sense of smell, she could smell the lavender, oak and earthiness of the open bottle of wine on the kitchen counter, as well as the chemical stench of the laundry room down the hall and despite the potent iron scent of blood there was a sickeningly sweet odor that seemed to be coming from up stairs. Her vision was sharp and crystal clear and even though the darkness of night consumed the house she could practically see as if the sun was shining brightly outside. Her hearing was what surprised her the most, she could hear everything going on outside the house but what freaked her out was when she realized that inside the house was dead quiet. The footsteps that took her farther into the house were just as quiet, she felt like a predator stalking unknown prey. A sudden whimpering sound from upstairs got her attention, she made my way up the stair case slowly, cautiously.

When she reached the top of the stairs a hushed voice came from inside her mother's room.

"Do you smell that Adair?" a female voice asked with disgust.

"Yeah, it smells like…" he began to say but when Ayelet looked into the room and saw the scene before her she couldn't keep quiet any longer interrupting him.

"Mom!" She exclaimed but her voice came out sounding unlike her own.

The two strangers standing over Aislyn's cowering figure whipped their heads around toward Ayelet, surprise with a flicker of something else flashed in their eyes and on their faces.

"No way…" the guy she assumed to be Adair, remarks in awe.

It wasn't only surprise on their faces that Ayelet noticed about them, their skin was beyond pale, their eyes an un-human crimson red and somehow she knew they were not only dangerous but her enemy as well. But above all that she also somehow knew exactly what they were. Suddenly she felt like she had stepped into Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula. The line between reality and fiction started blurring and an unbelievable anger washed over her blurring her vision. Fire felt like it had replaced the blood in her veins, violent tremors over took her entire body which she couldn't stop, and she couldn't stop the threat that came out of her mouth.

"Back away from my mother, NOW, or I'll rip you limb from limb!"

"I'd like to see you try little girl," the beautiful blonde sneered.

The heat boiling through her veins got too much for her body to handle, she felt her body explode. The next few minutes are hazy in her memory, one minute the beyond beautiful blonde was charging toward Ayelet then the next thing Ayelet remembers is the blondes partner, Adair, gathering up what looked like bloody body parts and jumping out the nearest window with them. The memory of those short few moments feels like someone else's that Ayelet carries around in her mind.

Then Aislyn came back to the forefront of her mind. Ayelet made her way over to her, but the look in her eyes stopped her. The same terror she had as those two demonic strangers looked down over her was mirrored at Ayelet in that moment.

Mom, it's me, don't be afraid, is what she wanted to say but all she heard was the whimpering of a… dog.

"Embry?" Aislyn whispered, her hand over her mouth in shock.

Embry? Who's that? Mom, it's me Ayelet, she tried to speak again.

"Stay away from me you monster, just stay away!" she exclaimed at Ayelet with the look of a cornered animal.

Ayelet took a couple steps away from her, it was then that she realized something was off about herself. She walked over to the full length mirror that hung on Aislyn's bathroom door. The reflection that stared back at her frightened her but intrigued her even more. It took her a long moment to put the pieces together, the majestic grey wolf that looked back at her… was her. A sudden panic overcame her and she just ran out of the house, found her way to and ran alongside the Arkansas River and didn't stop until she was just west of Dodge City, Kansas, 363 miles away. The sun had risen and she did my best to stay hidden away from humans, instinct had taken over. That whole day was hell, her mind was a complete chaotic mess. She kept waiting to wake up and learn that the past twenty-four hours had only been a nightmare. Stuff like what had happened was supposed to happen only in fairytales and myths. At that time she had no idea if she was going to permanently be a wolf or perhaps be human once again. As soon as darkness of night fell she made her way back to Salida the way she had come.

She made it all the way back to Canon City, Colorado, when suddenly tremors wracked her body once again and was human once more. But what was worse than the pain of changing back was coming to afterwards and finding out that she was completely naked. She tried all she could to change back into the wolf but nothing happened, by some stroke of luck a house on the edge of town had clothes outside hanging out to dry. Getting caught stealing the clothes was the least of her worries, how was she going to approach her mother after all the chaos that was left behind when she ran off would be so much worse.

She walked up to Aislyn's house still not knowing what she was going to say to her. Her last words to Ayelet had been looping in her mind over and over…

"Embry?" she whispered in confusion.

Ayelet had no idea who that was, she hadn't ever heard that name before then. At first she thought Aislyn had said her middle name, Ember, but with her heightened senses she know she hadn't heard wrong.

"Stay away from me you monster, just stay away!"

Ayelet won't ever forget the look in her mother's eyes when she said that, there was complete and sheer terror in them. Ayelet was afraid she would see that same look the moment she stepped through the front door, but gathered her courage once more and took a hold of the doorknob.

"Mom, you home?" she called into the house as she closed the front door behind her.

Whenever Aislyn had a personal problem, her solution to that was to pretend it wasn't there, pretend it didn't happen at all. And that is the approach she took to the hellish events that led to the first time Ayelet changed into a wolf. And the subject of her being something out of a fairytale was a topic that was completely off limits between her and Aislyn. Even though they didn't talk about it Aislyn never looked at her the same after that night. It felt like she was living with a stranger most of the time, but that wasn't something new. Aislyn and Ayelet hadn't ever been close, in fact Ayelet hadn't ever been close to anyone her entire life.

Ayelet had always thought that if it wasn't for bad luck she wouldn't have any luck at all. She had grown up a loner and now that she could change into a wolf at will she felt even more alone, more like a freak. But all considering she handled all the changes and chaos in her life rather well, most people probably would have went crazy.

Over the next seven years she honed her wolfy side and kept that side of herself secret from any and everyone. When in wolf form she let instinct take over, it taught her a lot actually. During those years she did as much research as she could to learn about what she was, but found very little, practically nothing in fact.

She didn't find a solid clue until just before the seventh anniversary of the first time she changed. Her mother, Aislyn, was on her way home from work one day when a teenage girl texting on her phone while driving ran a red light. The police officers that came to the house informed Ayelet that Aislyn died on impact, that she didn't suffer and Ayelet was thankful for that. For the week and half after the funeral Ayelet went through everything in her mother's house, sold the furniture and appliances then donated the other odds and ends. She was doing one last walk through of the house when she noticed the attic door slightly open and got a feeling she should check up there. She pulled down the attic stairs and made her way up, looked around, and the only thing besides decade's worth of dust that she saw was a small shoebox. She grabbed it and climbed back down the attic ladder closing it behind her. She sat down at the top of the stairs and opened the shoebox. There was a bunch of random things inside, the first thing that she pulled out was a guy sized t-shirt that said, "Quileute Nation". For some reason this sounded familiar to her but right then couldn't place where she had heard it. Then pulled out a braided leather bracelet, it was beautiful and intricate, and it easily slipped onto her wrist. Then on the bottom of the shoebox was couple of folded up letters with her mother's name on them and she would have read them right then but what was underneath them caught her attention, pictures. They were pictures from years ago of Aislyn who looked to be around Ayelet's age with a bunch of people that she had no clue who they were. Aislyn actually looked happy in those pictures. It was the last picture that really got Ayelet's attention, it was of her mother, who was standing with a guy, his arms wrapped around her tightly, they're looking at one another lovingly, both smiling like idiots. On the back of the picture there was something written;

The happiest day of our lives! AS + EC (a heart was drawn here) July 21st, 2023

This date was just a few months (seven to be exact) before Ayelet was born, and this didn't go unnoticed by her. She flipped the picture back over and stared at it for a long time. She let the thought that the guy she was looking at was more than likely her estranged father. She looked through all the pictures again and found him in every one, always near Aislyn. She finally put the pictures down and picked up the letters and began to read them.

Hey Beautiful,

I just wanted to do something simple to say I love you and to put that smile I love so much back on your face. I want everyone to know how much you mean to me. Ever since you have entered my life, I've been flying on Cloud 9 and I have not come down yet.

I tell you this every day, but you are the most beautiful person I know, inside and out and I see that more clearly with each passing day. I love everything about you, about us. You do something to me that no other has, you have made me so happy, the happiest I've been a VERY long time. You give me the most amazing feelings inside, the feeling of being in love with you.

I still don't know what I did to be so lucky to have you in my life, my dream come true... I am so thankful though. In this short time that we've been together, we have grown so much and I can't wait to see what the future holds for us.

Love, Embry

Before she found the shoebox she did not have a direction in life, had no idea what she would do or where she wanted to go after her mother's passing. But with the clues given to her by the contents of the shoebox she had a purpose, a direction. When she went to look up the Quileute Nation online to find out where it was she realized why it had seemed familiar to her before. A couple years before when she was trying once again to find any information on who/what she is, came across a Quileute legend mentioning that the tribe were descended from wolves. At the time she had assumed it was just a belief, a myth, not fact. But with the new information that recently came to light she considered that perhaps there was more truth to the Quileute legends than she or anyone originally thought.

Ayelet had been saving money ever since her very first job that she got at fifteen, so with all that money she had saved along with the money got from the house, she decided to go to La Push and booked a local private jet charter to Denver International Airport, then flew into Seattle, after that took a small pond jumper to the Quillayute airport, that's just a bit northeast of La Push, Washington. Before she had left Colorado she had done some research to find a place in the La Push/Forks area for rent. In the local newspaper, The Forks Forum, she found a "second floor/upstairs apartment" for rent by two 'elderly' sisters, Lola Mae and Louise Fae Waverly. Over the phone they sounded like two very lively old ladies, who graciously offered to pick Ayelet up at the Quillayute Airport when she arrived. She packed her small amount of personal belongings and got a ride to the Salida Airport. She left Colorado with the first bit of hope she had ever had, hope that her journey would help her learn the truth about who she really is.