(This is a Twilight Fanfiction in an Alternate Universe. It is mentioned in Eclipse that James had been tracking a Child of the Moon, but this story takes place two years after Bella is transformed. In this universe, Bella and Edward do not have a child and thus Jacob is still moping around. Everything else, sans Jacob's imprinting, still happened as the books portrayed. Also, I do not own the characters of Stephanie Meyer nor do I own her ideas. I do, however, own the character Eve...the Child of the Moon. Enjoy, everyone, and please R&R!)

When a Howl Beckons

Prologue

Pain blossomed, and she screamed.

Fur shivered and flowed across her skin like a dark, violent river. She collapsed to the moss covered Earth and gulped air hungrily, her lungs trying to catch as the agony vibrated through her nerves. She watched with terror as her arms twisted and elongated, her wrist joints climbed up her arms, and the muscles beneath the skin wriggled into new positions like worms moving beneath a blanket. She watched as her fingers thickened and grew, as nails as thick and as long as curved blades replaced her flimsy human nails, and as her palms thickened to pads as rough as steel wool.

Clenching her eyes shut, she vomited what little she had eaten onto the forest floor out of a mouth that was rapidly snapping and popping. Her organs were stretching, rearranging, growing, and changing within her and the nausea was too much to bear. With vocal cords still in the middle of rearranging, she howled her agony and horror to the night sky until she ran out of breath.

Her backside itched horrendously as her tailbone grew far from it's original position and covered quickly with auburn colored fur. As her tail finished, so did her maw and ears, and she finally fell onto her side in the fetal position. She clutched a body that, by all scientific measures, shouldn't exit. She was Lupine; she was werewolf. As the screaming insanity that was her human mind was crushed beneath the wolf's, she picked herself up on steadily strengthening hind legs and crouched for a moment.

Her wolf mind assessed the woods around her. The tall, heavily furred ears moved erratically, searching for food that hadn't been scared off by the Change. Heartbeats, small and fast, were heard in the distance and immediately dismissed. Small animals were not on the menu tonight. What the wolf wanted, and needed, happened to be much larger prey and not as easily devoured.

Panting, emerald eyes flashing in the moonlight, she stood on powerful hind legs and raised her snout to the full moon. Lean muscles rippled beneath the thin summer coat of fur on a body that vaguely resembled human in shape. Heavily muscled, long arms which ended in human shaped hands, with shoulders capable of a fuller range of motion. A longer, muscled torso with a lean stomach that met hips capable of upright and quadruped movement. This new body sported heavily muscled legs that resembled more of it's wolf brethren's anatomy than human. Where a human skull should be, a wolf skull sat complete with maw full of incredibly strong teeth and blood red tongue.

She stretched the ache out of her muscles and bones before dropping to all fours. She sniffed the air tentatively, tasting each scent individually, until she found what she was looking for. The blood lust was immediate, and she howled with frenzied hunger at the full moon before loping in the direction of the preferred prey.