No one saw it coming. The weather was always unpredictable in the mountainous regions of western France. There was a crack of lightning blazing through the thick branches of ferns as the boy leaned against a mossy tree for support. The ground was muddy and smelled of rotting leaves and wet earth. He had spent more than the past half hour trudging through the forest which surrounded the city of Strasbourg.

As he walked, his boots seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the mud with each step, like an octopus pulling its prey deeper and deeper into the black sea. He reached up and pushed the hood of his robes off his head. It was still raining hard and the water had already soaked through the thick fabric, so keeping it over his head was nothing more than a burden. He wiped away a few strands of brown hair from his eyes as they only obscured his vision and realized that his hair was also soaking wet. His hair resembled something closer to a brown mop. It never seemed to behave itself and it was always hard to brush through. The boy reached up and tried to comb through his hair with his fingers. He never bothered combing his hair, mainly because he saw no reason to other than because his mother told him to do so. All the other boys he knew had perfectly combed hair, but he never wanted to be like them. He knew he was different. They always played silly games like hide and go seek, but he preferred taking long walks in the woods with his one friend.

Taking advantage of his break in walking, the boy tried to wipe off the majority of the mud that weighed down his long robes, as he knew his mother would not appreciate the extra washing. He laughed quietly to himself as he thought of how his mother would react to his immediate flight from home. She was a kind woman, who rarely raised her voice at her son. She was always good natured and caring; which is the exact same reason why the boy left his home. It was ironic, in a way, that he could find the time to laugh at a time like this. He needed to find his friend, Derek, before it was too late.

Just as he noticed he had scraped the back of his heel very badly he heard someone yelling off in the distance, not a very long ways from where he was. Though he could not tell if the voice belonged to that of his friend, he could tell that the anguished cry was from someone in danger. Ignoring the pain from the fresh wound on his ankle he ran to the voice, and as he grew closer he saw two dark figures, one which towered over the other.

"Daniel!" the boy heard someone calling out to him. It came from the shorter of the two figures, and now that he was closer he could tell that it was Derek. However, Derek's calling for his friend drove the second figure's attention towards Daniel. Two piercing golden eyed stared at Daniel with such hatred and ferocity that it was tangible amidst the fog. A flash of lightning caught itself against the beast's fangs and caused them to glisten with their thick saliva. Every strand of its jet-black hair seemed to curl with tension at the sight of the second boy.

Muscles tensed and there was a flash of fur sweeping before Daniel's eyes. Taken aback by the incredible speed of the monster, he fell backwards and tried to scramble away from its predatory advances. Derek ran to his friend's side, his eyebrows creased together from a mixture of fear, anger, and worry that he could not contain. His eyes frantically jerked from the werewolf to Daniel; he was both glad and unhappy that his friend had come to the rescue, but he knew that it put them both in grave danger. If anything, he would have wanted only himself to get hurt instead of both he and Daniel. Without thinking, Derek seized Daniel by the arm and started running as if the devil himself was on their tails.

Daniel knew that there was no possible way the two of them would be able to fight the werewolf, so it was only logical that they run. The two of them ran past large patches of thorn bushes and leaped over large logs in attempts to gain a reasonable distance from the beast.

"Why the heck did you come out here?" Derek asked finally, gasping for breath as he ran. His muscles were aching, but he knew he needed to press on if he wanted to live. Hopefully they would find the road which lead directly to the city and they would be safe.

"Likely question," he replied, "I'd like to know why you did it the first place. We both knew it was full moon and it's obviously not safe to be out here."

"I saw a centaur right next to the city! I wanted to try and talk to it…but it sorta brought me deeper into the woods. I was in the area we walk around all the time, so it was fine."

"Oh come on, Derek, you know those things don't talk to humans. They don't want anything to do with us."

"Yeah, but I did so talk to it! He told me that to really understand creatures like himself, I should become one in every single way. You think you know what that means?"

"Not really. I guess you gotta spend lots of time with them or something."

Suddenly Derek tripped over one of the many branches that lay on the forest floor, threatening to catch their feet like vipers hiding in grass. He frantically tried to get up, but his pant leg was caught onto a splinter of the wood and it would not let go.

"Dani-" before the last syllables of his best friend's name escaped his lips the werewolf had thrown itself fully onto the boy's body, ramming his back into the rocky ground. Daniel quickly spun around to see what had happened to his friend, and his emerald green eyes widened at the sight. Without thinking, Daniel raced back to his friend in a speed that nearly matched the werewolf's, and just as the werewolf raised himself to full-body length, he slid into the space between the two with his arms out. He was using himself as a barrier to save his friend.

Perhaps his innate decision was a wrong one, but one thought crossed Daniel's mind as the werewolf's piercing sharp teeth ripped across his chest – he was going to die.