It took my brain a moment to process what he'd asked me. I was in such a completely different frame of mind, we'd been talking of something so unrelated it jarred me for a moment. Then I leaned forward a bit and out of my trunk. I heard the radio over the crackling of the campfire, where most of the party now seemed to have reconvened. "

He stepped out of my trunk and extended his hand. "Please? If you say no, I'll be really embarrassed. You'll be warmer next to the human campfire and you'll boost my self-esteem if you say yes."

I laughed. Again, with the lack of brain filter. I found it endearing. "But what about giving someone the wrong idea?" because I liked Paul, but I'd known him an hour. I didn't want to lead him on.

"What idea is there to give?" he shrugged.

"Why the hell not," I sighed, extending my hand into his own. He helped me out of my trunk and shut it as well. The way First Beach works is that there is no parking lot. It's on this road and you park in the breakdown lane. It's not a big deal because the road is a bit of dead end. It goes into some sleepy neighborhood but no one travels it unless they're going to the beach typically. There's this short, gradual slope down about a dozen or so feet before the flat pebbly beach breaks out. So, once my trunk was sealed up I didn't really know what Paul's plan was.

I glanced down at the beach and could hear the laughter under the pervasive blues piece. I looked back and saw Paul, standing in the middle of the dark empty road. "Don't back out now," he called to me as I stood between the trunk of my car and the hood of Embry's Chevy.

"The road?" I asked quizzically.

"You got any better ideas?" he asked with a grin.

I peeked down each end of the road and seeing no lights I took a step feeling the pavement beneath my sneaker-clad feet.

"I'm not going to let you get hit by a semi or anything," he said once and took a step towards me.

I rolled my eyes. Rachel Black was no wimp. I took a decided step forward, "No kidnapping me and chopping me into bits either." Paul looked momentarily horrified, but seemed to realize I was kidding. "I'm kidding," I said plainly, just to reaffirm that fact. I closed the last bit of distance between us, placing my hand in his and the other on his shoulder. He looked down finding a place for his other hand on my waist.

He was a lot taller than me – I only reached his shoulder – so we mostly stayed in the same spot, simply stepping and turning. Paul was right. I was a heck of a lot warmer; the heat of his hand spread. It warmed my lower back and continued to travel. I moved a little closer and he looked down at me with a quizzical brow. "Sorry," I apologized, "I'm freezing." He nodded with understanding and took another step closer. At this point we were almost touching. We couldn't get any closer together.

I noticed so much more with this proximity. First: Paul smelled like campfire and the woods and I found it rather pleasant. And number two: I realized that Paul was a good-looking guy.

His face usually fell into this expression of anger or bitterness, but he had one of those smiles that changed his whole face. He didn't fake a smile; all the ones I'd seen were genuine and the flash in his eyes affected every contour on his face.

He had these light green eyes, I noticed. They were lighter than what you'd usually expect. They were highly vibrant and rimmed on the outside with gold. They practically glowed. He had the same angular face as many of the rest of us on the res, but an atypical nose. It was more narrow – with one of those small bumps. His whole face, actually, was the same way. He was just more streamlined, leaner.

I was really quite absorbed in his warmth and our rhythmic movement. I peeked up, forgetting momentarily that his face would be so much closer to mine. "I remember," his voice was quiet, "when we were in grade school and you beat up a kid in your class for making fun of Jake and Quil. I was on that very same playground. You're one tough broad – I'm pretty sure you could take me if I tried to kidnap you."

I smiled sadly. I remembered the day quite vividly. Not because I'd beat the crap out of Peter Dillan. Not because I had my first detention as a result. Not because Billy pretended to be mad and later showed me how to perfect my upper cut. Later that day, Jake had stormed home in all his third grade fury, tossed his Ninja Turtles backpack on the kitchen floor and told me he hated me. That's why I remembered it.

I later learned that third grade was the threshold where having your sister fight your battles was no longer cool. That day – for me – is embedded in my mind in a sort of bittersweet way. That day, Jacob began to grow up, to become 'big kid' but with that came less reliance on his big sister. He started doing things for himself. He played more with his own friends, he didn't always want to walk home with me and for a long time he wouldn't tell me when someone was bothering him. I was only a sixth grader and for a while I was really upset because Jake, Becca and I had always been friends. We were a rare sibling match up. I had lost a friend.

By the time Jake got to Junior High we'd reached a truce. He would tell me stuff, I just couldn't do anything about it. At least like last time.

So the memory of that day was scratched into my brain because I'd replayed the events over and over so much over the years. It was such a turning point. I remember the sand of the playground, the newly repainted swing set and jungle gym. I remember the kids at the tire swing and those watching me from the gate. For an instant my mental scan of the area stopped. It paused over the little boy hanging upside down from the monkey bars – directly behind Jake and Quil's stunned faces. My eyes slipped over the mental image of the skinny boy, with his narrow nose and bright eyes.

I opened my eyes for a moment, understanding dawning on me. Without moving from our rhythmic turning, I tipped my head sideways. After a moment, Paul imitated me. "What are we doing?"

I smiled finally standing upright. "You were the little boy hanging upside down on the monkey bars…" random memories of my childhood came flooding back. I smiled thinking back to when Jake, I – and Paul apparently – were all kids. "You… you were the kid with a temper. You knocked over my mailbox when Jake and you were thirteen…" I remembered a lot now.

Paul had been a peripheral friend of Jake's. Always mentioned in passing as part of a larger group. I heard fleeting stories about him as well, when Jake would talk about his day. For some reason the thought of an in-house suspension was hanging in my mind.

Paul nodded, "That would be me."

"You still got a such a hot head?" I asked curious. Small things began to fall into place as part of my childhood and adolescence drifted through the fog.

"It was getting better," he informed me, "Until recently…"

"Recently?" I asked, "Does this have anything to do with what we were talking about earlier? Or your freakish – yet completely welcome – temperature issues?"

"Probably," he said, brow furrowing in thought.

"So," I continued slowly, trying not to lay this on the wrong way. I'm sorry but I was getting impatient. "Are you going to tell me… Are you going to tell me what is doing this to all of you? To my brother, to you?" It wasn't snappy or demanding; I was concerned and that could be heard in my voice.

A moment later and Paul had stopped us. We were simply standing in the road now. He dropped his hand from my waist. I cringed slightly as the cold air blew through the sweatshirt and the chill redoubled in that spot.

He continued to hold onto my other hand and he lead me to the opposite side of the road. Opposite the beach was this cliff face. There was about five feet of space after the road ended, filled with tumbled boulders before the rock shot dozens of feet upward and towards the sky.

Paul hopped onto a boulder and I scampered rather ungracefully up the other side. I tugged the enormous sweatshirt over my upturned knees and scooted unabashedly closer to Paul. He didn't make any indication that he noticed – sans the brief smirk.

"So there's this thing," Paul began as he looked down at the stone surface beneath us. "And it affects some boys of the Quileute people. When we reach a certain point in our lives we go through this change. In our case, it's triggered by outside forces but anyways—we… change? The physical is part of it… a pretty big part of it. But there's more. Just… a lot more."

"It's called puberty, Paul," I said quietly.

"What?" he replied, momentarily confused. "Wait… no!" he laughed looking at me in disbelief, "not puberty. I know what that is. That happened a while ago, thank you very much." He shook his head and regained his serious tone a grin lingering on his face. "This is different. It only happens to some of us. Mostly boys. Quileute boys."

I nodded in understanding. I think he was expecting me to start to put things together but I was getting nothing. Realizing this, he sighed. He looked around running his hands over his face, "Do you remember the legends? The myths your dad tells all the time?" That was random.

"Well, there are kind of a lot," I admitted, hoping he was going somewhere with this. My dad was – for all intents and purposes – the leader of the remains of our tribe. He knew all the legends backwards and forwards, like he'd really lived it. He used to tell them to us at night before bed. But there were a lot. Like a lot a lot. The trickster Raven, Q'Wati from where our tribe was supposed to begin – how he'd made us from wolves, the spirit warriors…

When I voiced this aloud Paul stopped me at that last one. "Spirit Warriors," he repeated, "go from there."

"Okay," I said dubiously, following his instructions anyways. I shook the cobwebs from my memories of Quileute folklore. "Um… Okay. The first Spirit Warriors… they could leave their bodies to defend their people. Then generations later… ah, what's his name… Taha Aki, there we go, assumed a wolf's body because someone stole his when he left it."

Paul hopped off the rock and I stopped for a moment, "Keep going," he assured me.

"All right," things were getting weird but I just continued. There had to be some kind of logic behind this, right? Paul backed slowly down the road and into the shadows of the pines that bordered first beach. I crossed my legs beneath myself and wracked my brain. "Utlapa. That's right! Utlapa, he was a traitor. He stole Taha Aki's body and pretended to be him."

I continued, now feeling down right foolish sitting here talking to myself, "Taha Aki moved into a wolf's body. But after a while he ended up killing the wolf's soul and it was just him."

At this point I heard a ruffle from the woods. I assumed Paul was returning from whatever he'd just been doing. I assumed there was some kind of point to this weird experiment. "But after a while he became the wolf. He was able to shift into a human form. And go back and forth, between the two."

At this moment in time, the rustling I heard turned to deliberate padded steps. Heavy steps. With more than two feet. Something enormous was coming towards me. My mouth snapped shut. I was no longer worried about legends. I was frozen to that rock I sat on and I couldn't make a noise.

Then like some kind of bad horror movie, the clouds shifted away from the moon, revealing an enormous wolf standing in the middle of the road. The gray fur shifted in the wind and it took up a whole traffic lane – it was that big. My mouth fell open but no sound came out. This wolf came closer towards me, taking slow, careful steps. When my mouth decided not to work – when no scream came out – my body did. I snapped up from the rock and began to back away – my eyes open wide and body incapable of coaxing a scream from my lungs.

This wolf was huge. Like the size of horse except meatier. I was absolutely assured I was going to die. I had no idea where Paul had gone and to be honest I didn't wan to think about it. Because I could've guessed.

The wolf followed after me – step for step – never closing the distance. It whined once and lowered its head. There were no bared teeth and growls but I was still certain I was on the schedule for the next meal.

I felt hot tears beginning to well up in my eyes when I bumped into something hard. I was startled and jumped into the air. I turned, recognizing Sam's old red van. I turned back around – not wanting to be caught off guard by the carnivore stalking towards me. I reached up behind me and tried for the handle.

It was unlocked.

In a blur so fast I would've suspected it from someone far more agile, I tore the door open, hopped in, slammed it shut and shoved down the locks on both the passenger and driver side. I scrambled into the back making sure the back doors were locked as well. I realize an animal that size having the dexterity to open those doors was slim, but I felt marginally better.

I could see the wolf padding towards the truck and I couldn't push myself any further to the passenger side. The tears were now streaming down my face and I still couldn't make any noise. Of all the times for my voice to give out on me. Help was only a few dozen feet away down that hill. But then again, I didn't want them getting hurt… I guess it's a good thing my body decided this on its own.

The wolf stopped only a few feet from the driver's side window. It cocked its head to the side and whined. Pushing its wet nose to the window I felt the van rock gently. I squinted my eyes closed – now regretting climbing in this steel metal death trap and fully prepared to be pushed and roll down the beach in this tin can.

My heart slowed down a tiny bit as I detected no noise and no additional attempts to tip the van. I peeked up slightly and my heart plummeted. The wolf was still there, but he sat about five feet away from the door. It just sat there, whining. I heard it's enormous claw as it pawed the ground – like a shovel on pavement. I looked over its gigantic gray form and for a moment – a slightly unhinged moment – I just felt… okay? For some bizarre reason I felt like this mutant carnivore wasn't going to hurt me. Don't ask me why because I don't know.

I sat up from my crouched position in the passenger seat and moved to the driver's side. I'd never seen a wolf up close – despite living so near the woods my whole life – but this one was remarkably animated. The face… it was almost as if it were thinking, processing; like there was an evolved mind behind the bright familiar eyes.

Just then it stood back up – slowly – now seeming to understand how frightened I was. It was strange that it was trying not to frighten me. I mean, animals don't think like that. And I was supposed to be the next meal, so what did it care?

It moved steadily in front of Embry's truck – which was in front of Sam's in the line against the road. It must've laid down, because for a moment I could see nothing.

And then some – significantly smaller - shadowed form emerged. I caught a glint of eyes and recognized Paul's face and naked torso.

And that's about where things went black.