Hi! I just recently discovered that one of my favorite trilogys- the wolves of Mercy Falls series- was a fanfic area! So I decided to do this. Although I have no plot as of yet, it will follow the storyline of Shiver. Please review!

Everyone knows the story of Sam and Grace- Sam, the werewolf; Grace, the human. They were very much in love. But the full story... a piece of it was lost. Sam's terrible childhood wasn't suffered alone- no, there was another, younger. A young girl with hair like a dark abyss and eyes like steel- Aleta. Aleta Roth.

The first time Aleta saw the wolves, they weren't wolves.

A tall, tall man with auburn hair and deep blue eyes watched her. Them. Her and her brother. Beside him was a large man, bulky and black. Sam didn't notice- he laughed again with daddy, his yellow eyes sparkling. The wolves ignored the thronging crowd, standing like rocks in a rushing river. Aleta frowned and tugged on his sleeve.

"Tham- tham."

His eyes flicked down to her and he grinned, sporting a large smile with a gaping hole in the front. He had just lost his front tooth and was proud of it. Sam had a soft spot the size of Texas for his younger sister- he would do anything for her, from sharing his candy with her to pushing down the mean boy in his class who teased her and stole her toys.

"Yeah, Ally?"

Aleta pointed. "Wolfs."

"Wolves?" he looked where she was pointing. The man narrowed his eyes in thought at them when he did.

"No, Ally. People."

"Wolfs," Aleta insisted, but Sam just shook his head.

"Come on, Ally. Mommy and Daddy are leaving." and they were, walking on without realizing they had stopped. They were on our way to the candy shop- the one with melty, gooey things that any four year old loved- and Aleta was no exception. All thought of wolves left her mind and she squealed, racing with Sam back to their parents' sides.

The man watched- and smiled.

... Line Break ...

Aleta screamed and banged on the bathroom door with her tiny fists, whaling on the wood and shrieking like a banshee while she did. Tears welled in her eyes and she heard Sam cry out again- Aleta could smell blood on the other side of the barrier. Her parents counted, counted, talking in soothing voices- Don't worry, Sam and We're helping, Sam.

"Tham!" Aleta wailed and kicked the door, grunting when it hurt. Water splashed under the door. "Tham!" She backed up, her bare feet squeaking on the tile in the hallway, and flew forward, slamming her shoulder into the door. When that didn't work and Sam screeched, Aleta darted down the hallway to the kitchen, where daddy had told her the phone would be if anything ever happened to him or mommy or Sam. Dial 911 if that ever happens.

Sam had been sick for a while. Really, really sick. He was a wolf now, Aleta knew. He threw up a lot and shuddered into new shapes, huddled under the blankets and ripping the blankets to shreds with black claws and white teeth. Aleta was worried when she heard them talking-the grownups.

"We have to get rid of the demon," daddy said firmly.

"There's nothing more we can do," the man in the big white dress said. "The church has tried so much. He can't be banished."

"Then we'll kill it ourselves."

But mommy and daddy had knives, sharp knives they had told Aleta never never to touch because they were sharp.

She opened the phone in the drawer, scanning the buttons and trying furiously to remember which buttons were nine and one. Sam made an awful howling noise, not quite human, and Aleta bit her lip and guessed.

"911, what's your emergency?" a girl's voice asked. Aleta didn't waste time wondering how.

"My bwother is dying!" she wailed with a choking sob. "Mommy and Daddy are killing him!"

"Where is your location?"

"I dunno! Help, please!"

"Calm down, miss. We are tracking your location."

Aleta had an idea and ran back to the hallway, back to the door bursting with muffled sobs, and threw the phone at the door. When that didn't work and Sam went quiet, she frowned and opened her mouth to scream, "MOMMY, THE DEMON GOT ME!"

Not that she knew what a demon was, but it worked.

There was a scrambling noise and a sound like splashing water, and the door flew open, and there stood her mommy with the razor and red on her arm. Her shirt was soaked through and wet, and Aleta knew that red was supposed to stay inside-it only came out when your knee hit hard things. Her mommy's eyes were wild, brown, savage, and when she saw Aleta she grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her hard and lifting her off the ground.

"Out! Out! We'll cut you too, you monster, GET OUT OF MY DAUGHTER!"

Aleta whimpered and cried, shouting her distress but her mother didn't notice and over her mother's shoulder, through the doorway, she saw her daddy by the bathtub and Sam lying still, floating on his back like he taught her to float in the pool, only his black mop of hair spread around his face in a sea of red, red, red water and he wasn't smiling.

Aleta stared.

There was a ringing smash from somewhere in the front of the house and the sudden buzz of voices-shouting unintelligibly and racing through the house with black things in their hands. Aleta heard their feet pounding into the kitchen and into the hallway and they swarmed around her mommy and poured into the bathroom and Aleta was moved into someone else's hands and there was a lot of yelling, movement, swirling colors.

Black, like Sam's hair rimmed with red...

... Line Break ...

"Gregory and Annette Roth, I hereby sentence you both to life in prison for the attempted murder of Samuel and Aleta Roth."

... Line Break ...

They both thrashed in the arms of their captors-Sam in Beck's, and Aleta in the man who insisted was her father's.

"Tham! Tham!"

"Aleta! Let her go!"

"Sam, come on." Beck soothed. "She's going to her home now."

"Tham," Aleta wailed, tears streaking her face, midnight braids coming undone. "Don't leave!"

Their captors dragged them apart.

... Line Break ...

"Dad, come on," Aleta sighed. "You can't keep coming home like this. I swear, one of these days you're gonna get arrested for drinking and driving."

She glanced at the bedraggled man at the table. His hair was smushed on one side, and his bleary eyes squinted against the harsh kitchen light. Aleta rummaged around in the cabinets for a moment before pulling down a bottle of aspirin with a triumphant sound. Clunking the bottle down in front of him, she pulled the half empty paper cup of alcohol from his hand.

"Hey," he muttered. "How'm I supposed to take these?"

Aleta dumped the alcohol down the drain and crushed the cup, tossing it backward over her shoulder into the wastebasket by the entrance to the living room. She rinsed out the cup she had just been using, filled it to the brim with tap water, and set it down on the table next to the bottle of pills.

"With this." she ordered. "With all of this."

"Yeah, yeah," he laughed, then groaned. Quickly Holt popped open the pills and swallowed three, ignoring the sharp look Aleta sent his way. He drained the glass and sighed, putting his head in his arms. Aleta crossed her arms in front of the table. This was getting ridiculous. It was Friday and she was supposed to be waking up in four hours to go to school.

"You need to stop going to your friends' houses and getting drunk. It isn't healthy and we're always low on aspirin. It's three in the morning, Holt."

"I know," he said. His voice was muffled by his arms. "And what would I do without you?"

"Pass out in the gutter."

"Ha. Funny."

His shoulders relaxed as the meds kicked in and he raised his head back up. Aleta took his glass, turned to the sink, filled it back up, and gave it back to him, then rubbed her face tiredly, yawning. Plucking at the frayes of her pajama sleeves, she said, "Now drink that, and we'll get you to bed."

"You sound like my mom," Holt said seriously, and sipped his water.

"And you sound like a facetious teenager!" Aleta snapped. "Stop being a baby!"

The real reason she wanted to go to bed again was simple- the fleeting mist of a wide smile with a missing tooth, eyes like the wolves outside her house, black hair bathed in blood. The high, tinny singing voice of a potential angel rang through her dreams every night for as long as she could remember, and she really wasn't sure why. She was missing something, Aleta knew. Something important she couldn't place.

Aleta's train of thought was interrupted by a cheeky clink of Holt's glass on wood. He looked at her expectantly.

"Don't give me attitude! You're the one with the hangover, genius! Come on," she said, leaning down and slipping Holt's arm over her shoulders and helping him stand. He almost toppled and leaned heavily on Aleta, and she grunted. She was starting to get stronger, Aleta noted dryly. They stumbled along to his room across the house, and when he was comfortably under the covers and snoring away, Aleta turned back to her own room just across the hall.

Dark and cool, Aleta's room was her own sanctuary. The walls were dark purple, almost black, like the night sky. The walls were dotted with paintings and murals of her own creation-a yellow eye on a boy's face dominated most of them. The boy from her dreams. He was young-six at the least, eight at the very most. He smiled with a big grin missing a tooth.

Others were more gruesome- a mangled hand twisted with claws and fur, a hunched shape under shredded bed sheets, a single tooth dripping with fresh-drawn blood. The glinting edge of a razor held by a red-stained hand.

A few were fairly normal. A moonlit night on the beach, like a reverse sunrise. A few were of the woods behind her house and the eyes of humans staring back at her in the shape of wolves.

Only one I didn't understand- a life-size painting on my wall. A tall man, so tall I'd needed a step-stool to paint him. Dark auburn hair framed his face, and shadowed his eyes-blue like the calm ocean. He watched out with such a strange kind of thoughtfulness on his face-it was kind of creepy actually, Aleta wasn't quite sure why she'd painted it.

Her bed was just a nest of blankets on the floor, because she'd never felt quite comfortable in a bed. A plain white desk was shoved into the corner, with a desk light and an uneven pile of textbooks and unfinished homework. The carpet was a soft green- Alita had saved for ages to be able to get a new carpet.

She collapsed into her nest and fell asleep to the gentle singing of the wolves outside.