Hey all my readers out there. I just wanted to say again how much I appreciate all of this support. I never expected to get many readers; much less reviews, but you guys have exceeded all of my expectations. I had an epiphany today and now I pretty much know how the whole story is going to play out. Enjoy!

Last time:

"So," said Sophie, "how'd it go?"

"Amazing," I answered, still a bit bemused. I rolled over and refused to answer any more questions.

I woke up earlier than usual the next morning. I turned over and saw Sophie sleeping in the bed next to me. What was going on here? I looked at my alarm clock. It was eight in the morning! What was happening here? I never got up at eight. I tried to never get up before nine unless I absolutely had to. What was worse, I was alert, wide-awake, and not groggy in the least.

I had been wrong about the nightmares. I didn't know if Seth had done it on purpose, but being around him had chased every scary image from my mind, even after he was gone.

I rolled out of bed, walked down the stairs and into the kitchen and poured myself an enormous bowl of cereal. I almost sighed as I realized that I still had yet to do my homework. I decided to get it over with and then read a bit and maybe watch some television.

I changed into a ratty old pair of sweat pants, stuck my long hair up in a very messy bun, and collapsed onto the sofa. No one was going to see me today, anyway. Sophie might want to whack me over the head with a broomstick, but no one else in my family would care.

A few hours later, all my homework was done, even my Spanish. Thank God my family owned a Spanish-English dictionary. I grabbed the remote control and switched on the television. Sophie came in and sat down in the chair next to me. We were just getting comfortable watching reruns of '80s sitcoms when the doorbell rang.

"Your turn," I said to Sophie. She rolled her eyes and walked out of the room toward the door. I got my attention back to the show for a full ten seconds before my attention was jolted back into the real world.

"Haley, that freakishly tall guy is here again!" I heard Sophie scream. I jumped up. I needed to get Sophie away from Seth before she had a chance to embarrass me again.

I jogged over to the doorway, where Seth was waiting patiently as Sophie was chattering to him about something. I realized with a shock what I was wearing. I probably looked like a complete slob. I prayed that he wouldn't notice. What was he here for, anyway? I wasn't complaining or anything, but I couldn't think up a reason for why he would show up at my door unexpectedly, less than twenty-four hours since I'd last seen him.

I shot Sophie a glance that would hopefully make her go away. "Sorry about my sister," I said.

"It's okay," he said. I didn't care anymore why he was here. I was just glad he was. He just had that way of looking.

"I need to talk to you about something important," he said. Oh no, this was like what boys said when they wanted to break up with a girl on television shows. Oh, who was I kidding, we weren't even technically together. Yet. "Can we take a walk?"

I realized I had been staring at him for about five seconds since he had asked his question. I blushed. "Sure, okay. Where?"

"I was thinking we could just go on a bit of a hike in the woods," he grinned. "I know my way around them."

I wasn't exactly a nature person, but I wasn't going to pass on a chance to spend time with Seth. I quickly agreed and made Sophie agree to tell Mom on the pain of death. I slid my sneakers on and followed Seth out the door.

I again got into his car, and he drove for about two minutes and parked along the side of the road. Seth gestured at the woods, "You coming?"

I jogged a bit to catch up with him, and then speed walked beside him in order to keep up with his long strides.

We walked in silence for a few minutes. I reveled in the closeness that seemed to pass without words between us. I knew I wasn't the most experienced in the relationship department, but there had to be something special here. I doubted every high school couple felt like this, and we weren't even officially a couple. He hadn't said it aloud anyway, we sure felt like one to me.

Seth stopped when we were past the point where anyone could see us from outside the forest. He looked at the ground and took a deep breath, as if preparing himself for something. I panicked a bit. What was wrong? Did he have a terminal disease? Six months to live? A good sense of humor and an idea of how to freak me out? I doubted it was the last one.

"Did you like the legends that Billy and Old Quil told last night?" he asked.

"Yes, they were great. I told you already." I was getting nervous.

Seth took another huge breath. "What if I told you the legends aren't legends? What if they're real?"

I shivered. "You can't be serious. I know it's a treasured piece of your cultural heritage and everything, but things like that can't exist. It's impossible."

"It's not impossible, Haley. What I'm trying to say is, I'm a werewolf."

Now I knew was a good time to back away. Seth was either mentally deranged or into hard drugs. I knew I should back away, but I couldn't bring myself to. Maybe I was mentally deranged too, but I felt safe around him. That didn't mean I was going to believe his werewolf story, though.

"Seth, that's not possible. Werewolves are only in the movies. I'm not that gullible. Please, just tell me the truth." I felt like a fool. People always tried to play jokes like this on me at my old school. I was infamously gullible.

"I'm not lying to you. I could never lie to you. If you don't trust me, I'll prove it." Seth unleashed the full power his gaze had on me.

I went slightly weak. "Okay, lets say you are a werewolf. How are you going to prove it? It's not the full moon," I mumbled slightly.

Seth chuckled. "We don't transform during the full moon. We can transform any time. Just stay right here. No matter what happens, promise not to panic. There is nothing to be afraid of." He turned around and ran off at a scary speed that I thought could only be attained by Olympic athletes.

I sighed. I hoped he'd be done with his joke soon. I started to get a bit nervous. What if Seth wasn't the amazing guy I'd made him out to be? What if he left me here? No, I couldn't believe he would do that. There was a freaky connection between us that I wasn't imagining. No matter what he did, a part of me knew that he would never intentionally hurt me.

I heard heavy footprints falling on the forest floor. I spun around. It surely couldn't be… But it was. A giant sand-colored wolf as big as a bear was standing calmly a few yards away from me. My head spun. This was either a huge coincidence, and an extremely dangerous wild animal that would want to eat me for dinner, or Seth was telling the truth.

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision so I could be sure of what I saw, because what I saw was too insane to believe. The enormous beast was looking at me. Not just looking at me but looking at me. The exact same way that Seth did.

That did it. I was now 99.9% sure that Seth was the large canine sitting so tamely in front of me. I approached it cautiously, knowing that if it turned out to be a real animal I would be sorry. What the heck, it was already close enough. It could eat me if it wanted to, and nothing I did would stop it.

I was a foot away from it. I reached out my hand, knowing that what I was doing could be very, very stupid. I couldn't resist, though. I touched my hand to the soft fur and knew, with 500% certainty, that this was Seth and that he meant me no harm.

"Hi Seth," I said, as he bent his gigantic head down to look me straight in the eye. "I guess it's a good thing we didn't bet on this." Seth grinned an huge, wolfy grin. I grinned too. It was infectious. "Do you mind explaining this a bit more? Not now, I mean, you can't talk now, but could you maybe change back and tell me." I was babbling. Someone really needed to slap me. Not Seth though, at least not with those paws.

He turned around and walked off. I sat down on a tree root. This was just too much to take in. My head was spinning with the complications of what I had just seen. It just wasn't physically possible for one thing to change into another. I'd paid enough attention in science class to know that much.

Seth came sprinting back into view. He stopped when he saw me on the ground. He wasn't even out of breath. He reached over and pulled me to my feet, keeping his oven-hot hand in mine.

"Are you alright?" he asked. He looked incredibly worried.

"I'm fine," I said, my voice a bit unsteady. "I'm just a bit overwhelmed. I wasn't exactly expecting this. Just a few questions though. Are all of the legends true, including the one about the cold ones?"

"Yes, we call them vampires now, though. It's the reason I can transform. Vampires trigger the gene that makes us turn into huge wolves. It's our job to protect the people of our tribe from any harmful ones."

"Us? How many of you are there?" I noticed I sounded a bit panicked.

"Ten. Me, Jake, Embry, Quil, Leah, Sam, Jared, Paul, Collin, and Brady. There are two different packs though, with two different alphas."

"Alphas? Like in real wolf packs?"

"Exactly, we need a leader in order to function properly, just like the wild animals."

"One more thing. Why are you telling me all this? I have no special powers. I've known you for only a few days." I hoped I didn't sound whiny. I really didn't understand why I was chosen to be let in on the secret.

"Remember in the story, how Taha Aki found his true spirit wife? Well, I guess that was sort of like the first imprinting. Imprinting is a bit like love at first sight, but not exactly. It's not necessarily love, it's more of a gravity thing. When you imprint, all you want to do is protect her and make her happy. You find your soul mate. I imprinted on you, Haley."

I was already feeling a bit faint from the werewolf encounter and the realization that the world was incredibly different from how I had always thought of it to be. When I heard this, I couldn't help it. My legs gave out from under me. Seth acted more quickly than I had though possible. He caught me mid-fall and scooped me up into his arms.

I closed my eyes. It was a dream. An amazing, fantastical dream. But then why did I feel so warm? I looked up into the concerned face of Seth. Okay, so this was real. There was a hot (if you'll excuse the pun) werewolf who claimed to be my soul mate. Things could be worse. Who was I kidding? This was unreal.

"You can put me down, now if you're finished with the world-shattering news." Now wasn't exactly the time to be sarcastic, but I needed some semblance of normalcy right now.

Seth set me back on my feet and started explaining the details of being a wolf (werewolf apparently wasn't the correct term) and a short history of his pack. I listened with a gaping mouth to the fact that they could read each others minds when they phased, that they phased whenever they got too angry and couldn't control themselves, and to the long-winded story of a girl named Bella who was now a vampire but had a half-vampire kid while she was human, and got into trouble with the vampire officials. I had a hard time following it in my shocked state, truthfully.

When he was done, Seth looked at me again and asked, "Do you want me to take you home now?"

I nodded. I wanted to spend time with Seth of course, but my parents were going to be wondering what was taking me so long. We made our way back to the car in silence once again. I felt completely normal again, but Seth insisted that I lean on him slightly. I wasn't going to put up a very strong argument against that.

I clambered into the passenger seat of Jake's car. "Why me?" I wondered out loud.

"Why you what?" Seth looked a bit confused.

"Why did you imprint on me?" I asked. Fortune had smiled a little too brightly on me and I was getting a tiny bit suspicious.

"Haley, you're my perfect match, and I'm yours. No one knows exactly why we imprint. I think of it as a short-cut."

"A short-cut?" It was my turn to look confused.

"To finding true love," said Seth, and he leaned over and kissed me. I closed my eyes. I'd always pictured your first kiss as rather cliché and not all that special. I did not know how wrong I was. His arms wrapped around me, and I could feel the heat of his body flowing into mine. His lips were gentle against mine. He pulled away and looked again and I would've sworn everything that I was the luckiest girl in the world.

"I know you just met me," said Seth, "but it doesn't feel that way to me."

I was tongue-tied. What could I possibly say to him that would mean enough. I wanted to fall to my knees and thank him, but I thought I'd made a enough of a fool out of myself for one day.

I settled for a "I don't feel that way either. I think I knew, even before you told me, that there was something special."

Smiling broadly, Seth started the car and started the short drive home. When we arrived, he walked me up again. He stopped on the doorstep and gathered me in his arms. "I'll see you again as soon as I can," he whispered, before leaning down and kissing me again.