Lauren Mallory's eighteenth birthday started off good. Angela baked a red velvet birthday cake for her which they ate during lunch. Jessica came over to her house and they got drunk on her mother's bottle of Rose in the living room while watching a rom-com starring Hugh Jackman. Her parents were out of town (as per usual) and Lauren went to bed as she began to feel ill.
She thought it was because of too much Rose and not eating enough actual food. She wanted to sleep it off but she woke up in the middle of the night feeling like her skin was on fire. Jessica took her temperature and was alarmed at her fever. She barely remembered Jessica leading her to her car and driving her to the ER.
Since her parents were stuck in Chicago due to a blizzard, Angela's mom, Mrs. Weber was her stand-in guardian. She spent the night aching from head to toe and wanting to jump into an icy lake. Her temperature went down and she stayed another day for observation until her parents finally arrived in Forks and took her home. Her parents weren't ones to fuss and left her to rest in her room and made sure she was fed.
She was back in school and everything was normal again. It could've been food poisoning or just a bug going around. She felt fine until October came and she woke up on day feeling disoriented. She had excess energy and decided to go on a run to get rid of the restlessness in her bones.
It was the weekend and she had nothing better to do. That's when she saw the wolf. It was the largest wolf she'd ever seen, about the size of a bear. It had brown fur and paws too big for its body. It was running through the forest and hit a tree.
It shook its head like a big ruffled dog and its brown eyes widened comically at the sight of her. It froze as if hoping it would stop seeing her if it didn't move. She knew she should've been afraid a wild animal, one so large, being close to her but she wasn't. Instinctively she wanted to bare her teeth at it and she had to stop herself from doing so. The wolf began backing away slowly, nearly stumbling on his overgrown paws, before it turned tail and ran.
Not wanting to linger on what she'd just witnessed, she ran back home. Her dad was making breakfast in the kitchen and gestured for her to sit down. He made her a French omelet and she poured a glass of orange juice for herself. She could hear her mom talking on the phone with a client in the next room.
Lauren cut into the omelet and grimaced at the melted cheese inside. She never had a problem with Boursin before. Her dad noticed and urged her to eat.
"Protein's good for you," he said. "You'll need your strength."
"Volleyball season doesn't start till next month."
"Still, you want to be ready for anything, right?"
"What does that even mean?"
Her dad was the type to make vague comments and he never really explained. Her mother could talk enough for both of them. She took a bite of her eggs to make him happy. The cheese tasted sharper than usual. Maybe he hadn't used Boursin this time.
Her mom sounded unhappy as she began to rip into the other person on the phone. Lauren snorted. Somebody was pissing off Kathleen Mallory. She looked out the kitchen window and saw her mom standing at the edge of the back lawn far away. She swore her mom was in the next room.
She shouldn't have been able to hear her so well. She took a sip of her orange juice and it tasted so acidic she thought it must've gone bad. She poured the rest of her glass into the sink. She finished her omelet and went to her room.
The rest of her day was just as weird. Sounds were too loud. Lights were too bright. And she felt so worn out from the stimulation she burrowed under her comforter in the dark with earplugs and tried to shout out the world.
When night came, she watched the full moon from her window and pushed off the comforter as she began to feel overheated. She took out the earplugs and threw them on the floor as she began to sweat, that familiar head to toe ache blooming out like an angry wound. She was sick again. She thought it was over.
Her mom opened the door, entering her bedroom cautiously. She leaned down and laid a cool hand on Lauren's feverish forehead. She looked sad. Her dad went inside the room too and they wordlessly pulled her to her feet.
Lauren could only lean on them like a lifeless marionette as they led her down to the basement. They'd told her not to go down to the basement as there were repairs needed to be done with cracks in the wall. All Lauren saw was a large cage. Her parents were grim and quiet as they opened the cage and laid her down on the cold steel floor.
"Mom," she called out, grasping her hand in hers with as much strength as she could. "What's going on?"
"It's going to be okay, Laurie," Her mother hadn't called her that since she was little. "We'll be just outside the cage. You'll get through the night."
Alarmed, she turned to her Dad who was standing at the cage entrance. "Dad?"
"We're going to be with you through all of it," he reassured her. "Don't fight it. It'll hurt more if you do."
Her mom got to her feet and pulled away from Lauren who tried to hold on to her desperately. She left the cage and closed the door and locked it with a padlock the size of Lauren's palm. Her mom knelt down beside the cage and reached through the bars to gently move Lauren's sweaty bangs from her face.
"Do you remember when you were little and your Grandpa Ivan used to tell your stories?" she said. "All the stories about the volkolak? The men who turned into wolves?"
Her dad knelt beside her mother and added, "And your Pépère Louise told about the loup-garou?"
Lauren felt fear and dread pool in her belly. Her bones were aching to her marrow and she wanted to scream. "What's happening to me?"
Her mother answered with much regret, "All those stories were real, Lauren."
After the worst weekend of her life, Lauren was considering packing up her life and living in a secluded mountain for the rest of her life. That was what her ancestors did before they were hunted to near extinction. She hadn't remembered much of Saturday night aside from the sheer terror and excruciating pain of her bones remaking themselves. She had screamed until her vocal cords broke and the pain continued until all she saw darkness.
Her parents had told her that her wolf form had been furious and wild. She growled and thrashed against the bars of the cage through the night. Lauren understood that fury as she walked around her high school like a festering open wound, daring people to mess with her so she could have an outlet. She was angry at her parents for all the lies and secrets, at herself for not seeing the obvious signs, and at the universe for making her a werewolf and not just the ordinary human she was content to be.
She did not want the legacy of becoming a monster every month and potentially going on a killing spree. She did not want the thing that had caused her Uncle Stephen to take his own life. She did not want to know the myths were more than fiction because if she existed what else did? Vampires and werewolves were real. What other monsters hid in the dark?
She smelled them before she saw them. They smelled sickly sweet like sugar. It could've been a pleasant scent if her senses didn't find it cloying instead. She had to throw away all scented toiletries she owned as they gave her a headache.
She parked her car in the school parking lot, Jessica and Angela walking with her as they made their way into the school. The Cullens walked as a group, ignoring their classmates as they walked through the hallway. Lauren closed her eyes trying to keep herself from reacting at their presence. She wanted to bare her teeth in challenge.
She needed to get away. She turned to make her way to the bathroom but bumped into someone. That sickly sweet scent. She looked up and golden eyes stared down at her, lips quirked up in an easy grin.
"You okay there, gorgeous?" It was the big Cullen, tall and muscled like a wrestler. "You look a little paler than usual."
"You're one to talk," The world felt like it was spinning and all she could focus on was this impossibly handsome man with dark, curly hair. "You're as white as chalk."
He laughed a deep husky sound that sent shivers up her spine. "You got me there, Mallory."
Something was happening. Something her parents and even her grandparents hadn't told her. She felt like a boat unable to move, anchored to the seafloor. And the anchor was this stupid vampire boy.
She told him, almost pleading, "I need to go."
He needed to let her go. She didn't know how but she wanted to get in her car and drive until she was far, far away from there. Fear and panic gripped her and she felt lightheaded. His smile dropped and he looked concerned, hand reaching to touch her arm and she shook him off.
He wasn't fazed by her rejection. "Are you okay?"
"No," Her feet were finally obeying her and she turned to leave. "But that's not your problem."
Lauren officially met a member of the Quileute pack when she got home and found Leah Clearwater waiting for her on the back porch. She was sipping on a cup of that fancy coffee her father liked and wore only a t-shirt and denim shorts even though it was well into autumn. Leah was pretty woman in her early twenties with russet skin and her hair was short and choppy as if she cut it herself. Werewolves had a much higher temperature and Lauren learned that this morning when she didn't need to bundle up in her winter coat like she usually did around this time.
Leah introduced herself and explained about the pack. They were a different kind of werewolf from what she was. Lauren was closer to the werewolves in horror movies. The Quileutes could shift at will and did not feel the pull the moon like she did. Lauren had never felt more alone, knowing she was the last of a dying species.
"You need a pack," Leah told her. "You may not be exactly like us but you need the support of a pack. The lone wolf dies but the pack survives."
"Do you like the pack?"
Leah looked away. "That doesn't matter."
"That's a no then," Lauren scoffed. "Why should I join a pack that you clearly don't even like being a part of?"
"Okay, kid. You want the truth? The pack is made up of a bunch of assholes, especially the Alpha who is my ex that dumped me for my cousin. I don't like them but I know that I need them," the older girl said. "Do I enjoy that I need them? Fuck no and you probably won't like them either but we can hate them together."
Lauren decided she liked Leah Clearwater. "Girls gotta stick together, right?"
"Exactly," Leah nodded. "I'll be your mentor as you get used to being what you are."
Lauren felt gratitude bubbling inside of her. The near constant rage was still her companion but it felt nice to hate the world with someone. Misery loved company after all. And it wasn't like she could tell her friends what she was or at least not until she accepted herself first.
"Okay, Wolf Mentor, maybe you can answer something for me…"
She explained what happened earlier when she bumped into Emmett Cullen. The pull, the anchor, the world spinning, it was worse than even the full moon. Leah listened attentively with growing dismay and she explained about imprinting. Disgusted, the older girl remarked, "You imprinted on a leech. You might as well fuck a corpse."
"I'm not happy about this either."
From Leah's obvious disgust, this was not going to go well with the pack. They might kick her out before she was ever part of the group. She would lose Leah as a mentor and she didn't want that. There had to be a way to get out of this imprinting nonsense.
She wasn't going to fall in love with a vampire.
Welcome to my self-indulgent nightmare with imprinting nonsense. I'll be here all week.
1. Lauren is one of the Children of the Moon and according to the Twilight wiki, "The Children of the Moon, also known as werewolves, are human beings that at night and the fullest phase of the moon transform into fearsome feral wolf-like creatures. Werewolves, unlike shape-shifter's, have the strength and power to kill a vampire single-handedly. Their strength coupled with their inability to control the shift into their wolf forms makes them extremely dangerous and resulted in many vampires fearing them. This fear lead to the Volturi nearly eradicating all werewolves from Europe and Asia." The thing I changed from canon is that a wolf has to be born and not made here. They can't infect people to make more werewolves.
2. Leah, Sam and Emily are meant to be around 19 in canon. I've aged them up for their 20's and out of college cause it's better this way. Enough with the teen weddings.
