I didn't sleep well at all that night. I woke up screaming several times and my parents would come and ask me what was wrong. I told them it was just a nightmare but... It wasn't. It was real. I am a werewolf. That's as nightmarish as it gets.

I arrived at school, and it probably appeared that I got dressed in the dark since I had 5 minutes to get ready. AGAIN.

Luckily, I wasn't the only one who looked like crap today. Matt, Jenny and Brian all had bags under their eyes.

"Hey," Jenny said. "You guys didn't sleep either?"

I shrugged and noticed a boy glaring at me and my friends. I glared right back at him, recognizing him as the captain of the lacrosse team. All noises were blocked out at once as our eyes locked. I crossed my arms and wondered why he was staring at us. Was it how we looked? His friend started talking to him animatedly and his focus was broken.

I narrowed my eyes.

"Rachel? Did you hear anything I just said?" Brian said.

I looked at him. "Um, yeah... I mean... No. Sorry… do you guys know who that guy is?" I pointed over to the lacrosse player.

"Scott McCall. One of the best high school lacrosse players ever!" Matt exclaimed.

I nodded. "Okay. Do you know him personally?"

Matt shook his head. "I've talked to him in classes but I wouldn't really call myself friends with him. Why?"

"It's just... It's nothing. Hey I'm going to go to the library and check out some books. See you guys at lunch!"

I rushed to the library and asked the librarian. "Do you have any books on werewolves?"

She looked at me over her glasses with eyes that read are-you-serious?

"I am doing a research paper on them for English."

"Mythology is over there," she nodded her head at a small section of the library.

I walked over and read the spines:

UFOs, do they really exist?

Greek and Roman Myths

Bigfoot

The Truth about Vampires

A Guide to Werewolves

I picked out the guide and read the short synopsis:

Everything you need to know about werewolves in less than 100 pages.

I looked at other books but nothing else was about werewolves so I checked it out and shoved it inconspicuously in my backpack.

The whole day went by exceedingly slowly. Every class I found my thoughts drifting off into the deep recesses of my adolescent brain while reading the book. I didn't pay attention in any of my classes, which was strange for me because I am usually the most participative student.

I shared what I learned to my friends. "So apparently we won't turn into those freaky looking monsters that attacked us, but we will look different when we change because we are betas."

"Betas?" Jenny repeated.

"Beta wolves are wolves that are part of a pack but not the leaders. They aren't as powerful. Anyway, on the night of a full moon, we change. Unless we have full control. But, at this point, we won't be able to control that so we have to make sure not to plan anything on the night of the next full moon which should be on September 24th. We also need to keep our emotions in check because we could change if we don't. And that would be really bad because we aren't ourselves when we change and could possibly kill someone."

Brian had his head in his hands. "We need to get rid of this disease. I don't want to be stuck like this for the rest of my life."

Jenny shook her head. "Me either. Does that book tell you how to become human again?"

My face kind of went pale. "About that..."

"We can't," Matt stated.

We turned to him. I breathed out heavily, grateful he was going to explain this rather than me.

"You guys, think about it... We were bitten. Our blood has been infected by those werewolves. Which means it is permanent. To stop this curse, we'd have to die."

"Unless there's something that can cure us," Jenny said. "Wolfsbane maybe? That's a thing, right?"

"No. Wolfsbane is poisonous to us. It's like our kryptonite." I explained.

Jenny crossed her arms. "We need help."

Brian nodded. "Yeah, major help. There's gotta be someone who can help us. Someone who knows exactly what we are going through. We can't change without anyone giving us guidance. This is too dangerous to figure out on our own."

"What about the Alphas that bit us?" Matt questioned.

We were silent for a few seconds.

"No," Brian shook his head. "They aren't stable. I can tell. There is something off about them."

"So now that you're a werewolf, you have a sixth sense about this kind of stuff?" Matt stifled a laugh.

Brian glared at him, dead serious. "They want us to abandon our human lives. Become wild creatures like them. Does that seem stable to you?"

Matt shrugged. "Okay, I see your point. How do we find anyone in else who is a werewolf in this town? It's not like werewolves grow on trees." Matt stated.

I shrugged. "I have no idea. But we need guidance… Preferably from someone who isn't crazy."

"What if they are all crazy?" Jenny inquired.

"We still need to try. You guys, I know none of us wants this to be happening to us but it is and we can't keep denying it. Before we know it, that full moon will turn us into werewolves and we won't know how to control ourselves unless someone helps us. Now, those people that turned us probably don't care whether or not we kill innocent people but there's gotta be someone that does and will help us! So stop shooting down all of my ideas and just think for one minute!"

The others were silent for about 10 minutes.

Brian sighed. "Okay, well there must be some way we can find them. Does the book say how to track other werewolves?"

"We need to look for them manually. By scent."

"Scent?" Jenny choked.

"It makes sense," Matt chimed in. "Our hearing is heightened. So I guess all of our senses are."

"So how do we know what scent to look for or...smell for?" Brian asked.

"It said that we'd just know," I said. "That they wouldn't smell human."

"How accurate do you think this book is?" Matt asked.

I crossed my arms. "I have no idea. But hopefully it's accurate enough."

The next three weeks we began to figure out our powers which, I'm not going to lie, were pretty awesome… I mean, if there was one good thing about being a werewolf, it would be the freedom you feel. We could run fast, had amazing reflexes, super-hearing, super-smelling. We could do things no normal human beings could do. It was really cool. But… there was that little thing about not exactly knowing what would happen on the night of the full moon which we were dreading. I had almost forgotten about it since we were having so much fun with our newfound abilities. Other than this, these past three weeks were pretty uneventful. Which was a good and a bad thing. Good because we were not attacked and did not see those crazy werewolves Killian and Claudia (we were kind of surprised…). Bad because we still had no idea how to track someone by scent that could help us.

"The full moon is in less than one week," Jenny stated, rocking back and forth on the ground of Brian's bedroom.

I combed back my hair with my fingers. "I know."

Matt wildly typed on his laptop. "Okay, Beacon Hills werewolves."

Brian raised a brow. "You are really going to look that up?"

"Hey! You never know what you will find. Besides, do you have any better ideas?" Matt defended himself. "Okay! So, yeah, there is absolutely nothing." Matt turned to us.

"What are we going to do?" Jenny asked.

My friends turned to me for direction. But, honestly, I was as clueless as them. I didn't know how this sort of stuff worked. Knowing about the supernatural was never very high on my to-do list. Besides, the book from the library was useless.

"Why don't we go into the woods?"

Brian raised a brow. "And do what?"

I shrugged. "We'll figure it out from there."

In minutes we arrived at the spot where… it happened.

"Now what?" Matt questioned.

I closed my eyes and focused on the sounds of nature all around me. Birds chirping, wind howling, frogs ribbitting, water trickling in some far off stream. I heard a swoosh and then a thump on a tree. Abruptly, I opened my eyes and swiveled my head towards the sound and sprinted to its source. My friends followed after me.

I suddenly saw two girls, one with short brown hair holding a bow and arrow, and the other with strawberry blonde hair. I recognized both from school. I stopped and my friends slowed down behind me. I ducked down behind a bush, as did Matt, Brian, and Jenny.

"I just don't know how to control this Allison," the red-head said Allison shot an arrow at a tree. "Are you even listening?" She shrieked.

"Yeah, um, sorry Lydia. I can't really say I know what you're going through. Maybe you could talk to Scott or Derek," Allison replied softly.

Scott. There was that name again.

Lydia shook her head and crossed her arms. "They wouldn't understand. No one would."

Allison sighed.

"I guess, the less I try to ignore my abilities, the better though, right? I mean, I can find people before they die. Help them before it's too late."

"Yeah, you can and you have. It's going to be fine," Allison muttered as she pulled out another arrow and drew back her bow.

Lydia twisted her long hair up into a bun.

I wanted to approach them but decided against it when someone else came to talk to them. It was Scott's friend.

"Stiles?" Lydia questioned.

"Hey, Scott said we need to have a meeting. Like now," he told them.

They nodded and followed him. We quietly snuck behind them. Eventually, they arrived at a small clearing where Scott, an attractive, muscular man, Kira (one of Jenny's friends), and some lanky guy stood.

"Okay, so all of you are probably wondering why I called you here… Derek?" Scott started.

The attractive guy (whose name was apparently Derek) took over. "We need to talk about these new alphas that came a few weeks ago."

"Do you think they have something to do with the killings?" The lanky guy asked.

Lydia rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. "Of course they do. They always do." She stated bitterly.

Derek nodded, and then raised a brow. "Wait. Something is off." He sniffed the air as if it had answers. His gaze shifted our direction. He spotted me, and I signaled for my friends to run away.

We sped back to where we came from but the people chasing us were too quick. I tripped over a surface tree root. My friends were followed by three of the people. I felt a stab in my right calf muscle.

"Ow!" I shrieked, as I saw an arrow sticking out of my leg.

Allison stood over me with a confused expression on her face. "You're just a kid," she murmured.

They eventually brought us all back to their meeting spot.

Scott and I intensely stared at each other.

Derek shrugged. "Okay, so we have three new betas to take care of. Great."

"Who's their Alpha?" The lanky guy asked.

"Killian and Claudia. They are their Alphas," Scott stated.

Stiles scratched his head. "You can have two?"

"It doesn't really matter. What matters is that they have already started adding members to their pack… Which ultimately means that they are stronger now!" Scott shouted.

"We didn't ask for this," I explained to them.

Scott looked at me with sad eyes. "No one does."

"Then let us go! The last thing we want is to be involved in this mess," Brian said.

"We can't do that. You are a part of this now whether you like it or not," Derek replied.

Matt looked really excited, which bothered me a lot more than it probably should have. "So you really are werewolves?"

Derek, looking incredibly serious, nodded.

"That is so cool! Are you guys betas too?!"

"Isaac is," Derek said coolly, gesturing to the lanky guy. "Scott and I are alphas."

"What about the others?" Jenny asked.

"Allison is a werewolf hunter, Lydia is a banshee, and Kira is a kitsune," Stiles told us.

"What are you?" I asked.

"Well, I was once a nogitsune," he said casually. "But luckily those days are over and I'm back to just being the guy with the baseball bat."

We nodded simultaneously.

"Wait, but if you're a werewolf hunter…" Matt started to say.

"I only hunt bad ones," Allison explained.

"So, now that we have all that figured out, why don't you tell us exactly what happened to you?" Stiles suggested.

All four of us exchanged wary glances, but we quickly gained up the courage to tell them our story.