CHAPTER ONE

"Every traveller has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering." - Charles Dickens

Sadness was merely a remnant of happiness, anger a manifestation of passion, and grief the remains of love. If you could learn to embrace your sadness and your anger and your grief, then you'd be able find your way back to the heart that first led you there. These were the words of a wise, loving mother that got a young girl through trying times, and stayed with her well into adulthood. Everyone thought that it was grief that drove the Black girls away. That was perhaps true, in part, but they had deeper reasons than that which the rest of the world claimed to know.

For Rebecca, it was really guilt that had compelled her to leave. At the time of their mother's death, she had been a difficult child, caught up in the haze of teenage rebellion. She knew that, though no one ever said as much, she had been a disappointment to both parents and a black mark on her mother's legacy. Leaving had been her misguided attempt at returning peace to her loved ones at home. By the time she finally came to realise that her absence had made not a single thing better for her grief-stricken father, there was no turning back from having met a boy, fallen in love, and settled down far away from home.

Unlike her twin, Rachel didn't leave the reservation to escape the memory of her lost mother. Bonding over their frustration with Rebecca had brought her and her mother closer than ever in the months prior to the fatal accident that had taken Sarah's life. And in that precious space of time that she now cherished, Rachel had gained invaluable insight into her mother's early life and the person she had been outside of motherhood. What she learned then helped shape the woman that she would later become herself.

In the wake of Rebecca's departure, Rachel's had seemed like a double betrayal to their father and brother. But her motivations for leaving La Push couldn't have been more different. In fact, she had gone away with every intention of returning home eventually, but only once she felt that she had succeeded in bringing some honour to her mother's memory. College and independence were two things that Sarah had always wanted but never had. And so, fuelled by a burning desire to taste freedom for the both of them, Rachel left. In all her years away, spare time and holidays were spent travelling and exploring, seeing and tasting and experiencing new things that her mother would have loved to try in another lifetime.

The day of Rachel Black's return was all kinds of unspectacular. It was dull and overcast, as it was on most days, with the sky hanging overhead a gloomy sea of dark clouds. The waters at sea were choppy and unkind, inviting little hope of a leisurely swim. And the tranquillity of the forest line was broken by the distant howl of wolves. But all of this was undeniably familiar to her, and so she chose to believe that this was the ancient land's way of welcoming its long-lost daughter home.

When she pulled up outside her childhood home, Rachel saw that her father was right where she had left him six years ago, sitting outside on the porch he had built with his own hands as a young man, anxiously awaiting his daughter's arrival. The sight put a crack in her heart as she imagined him sitting there all these years, waiting. Just waiting. Without a moment's hesitation, Rachel ran up to embrace her father, who had a tear in his eye as he uttered his welcome.

"What took you so long?" Billy Black asked his eldest child as they pulled apart.

"Traffic in the city like you wouldn't believe," she explained, referring to the crawl of cars on the road that had kept her from getting out of Seattle in the amount of time that she had expected.

Her father simply smiled. That was not what he had meant.

The hours that followed were spent catching up. As they spoke, Rachel noticed the new lines that age had etched into her father's face, and Billy noticed the quiet confidence that had found its way into his daughter's voice. It was clear that both had evolved in different ways. They realised that hours would not suffice for them to get reacquainted with each other, for as much as they were still the same people on the inside, the time that had elapsed had added layers to their lives.

This couldn't have become more evident to Rachel when her little brother walked through the front door later that evening, no longer very little at all. Although she was of an average height for a girl, she was dwarfed by Jacob's stature as he came up to greet her, picking her up off the ground and engulfing her in a giant bear hug. He must have just come back from working out, because he was hot and sweaty and gross. Rachel complained. His response was to squeeze her more tightly against him, pressing her face into his shirt.

She gagged.

Billy laughed.

Jacob was as warm and jovial as he always was on phone calls, but there was a darkness in the back of his eye that was new. Rachel got the sense that something was not quite right, but she didn't want to push it, at least not on her very first night home; there would be time for the big-sisterly inquiry later. So instead, they talked and teased and ate and laughed, and though two members of the family remained missing from the dinner table, it still felt like home.

And home, after years away, was exactly where Rachel wanted to be.

: : : : :

It was a little later when it began to rain. It came as a soft light shower, not enough to penetrate the wolf's coarse dark grey outer coat, but just enough of a sprinkle to be irritating. It tickled his nose and made him sneeze. His brown comrade barked out a laugh from his assigned zone on the other edge of the woods. The grey wolf grunted as he stalked through the maze of trees, pissed about the fact that nothing was private these days. In an explicit show of retaliation, he flashed his friend a vivid, uncensored memory of his latest conquest. The other wolf expressed his disgust with a loud, hacking cough.

Wolf brains, when connected, formed a crude version of the Internet; it was useful for communication purposes, but it was also loaded with a cacophony useless shit. The grey wolf, whose name was Paul, was perpetually annoyed by this unfortunate side effect of open telepathy. He really didn't want to know the details of everyone else's lives, or share the specifics of his. He had no interest whatsoever in how beautiful Jared thought Kim was or how hard Quil found his math test or how excited Jacob was to have his sister coming home.

Not that he had any choice in the matter. It seemed like he really didn't have much of a choice in much of anything lately. Like serving the reservation as an un-aging, shape-shifting wolf boy, indefinitely. Like staying put in this little corner of the world, forever. As a matter of fact, his shoddy control over his wolf meant that he barely even got to decide when and where he turned into a giant carnivore. Add being under the supreme command of his alpha to the mix and that left him with a life that was hardly his to live anymore.

Paul missed his freedom sorely. He had never been truly aware of his possession of it until the day he lost it all in an explosion of fabric and fur. Before it happened, he had long been awaiting graduation in anticipation of finally becoming his own man. Now he was only half a man, and certainly not his own.

There was no sugar-coating it: his life sucked. And, unbeknownst to him, it was right on the verge of sucking even more.

As he drew close to the more populated part of his patrol area, the thick cloud of dinner smells overtook Paul's senses. He had already eaten just a while ago, but ever since he first became what he now was, he had found that his hunger was rarely sated. Passing by Billy Black's house, he picked up the delicious aroma of roast chicken. It mingled in the cool night air with an odd scent that he couldn't quite place. Peppermint? He thought he felt a tugging in his chest.

Heartburn? Jared snorted.

Paul growled and trudged ahead, his dark form disappearing back into the shadows of the forest. Asshole.