Awaking to the cold touch of saliva running down the side of my mouth, my consciousness seemed to twist one reality away from the other. Lines grew and spider-webbed across the sky, the world bled light, and through it all, I saw her. Her eyes peered through the cracks, a glance on the other side of my unconscious, open sight. The smell of my blood hit my nose, causing me to swallow the stagnant drool gathering in my gaping mouth. I was alive.

My sense of touch came back too me, and I felt beaten, and weary. The wavy breathing of my fathers changed form rolled across my back and neck as he knelt, and helped me sit. I could smell his moist breath before it even misted against the early morning cold. His fur was warm, and just as it comforted, it rolled away from my skin, replaced by the hard, unforgiving bark of a near by tree. The constant movement stopped all of the sudden, and I wanted to puke.

I grabbed my sides, and breathed deeply. Blood poured out... at least I thought it was blood. When I brought my hand up to see it, I knew instantly that it wasn't blood. It was thick, like blood. Dark, like it too. But blue. Blood ran along my fingers from the wound, but this... this was something else.

I must've stared at it for ten minutes before putting my aching arm down. The more I thought about it, the more it puzzled me... the more it troubled me.

The muffled sounds of Angela's voice rose and fell in my ears, I couldn't understand a single word. At least, not at first. As my eyes darted around the campsite we'd made the night before, I started to recognize what she was saying, as my name. Over and over again, she whispered it. She tapped my face, trying to keep eye contact. In a stupor, I told her she had beautiful eyes. She smiled slightly, as if dealing with a drunk, and kept at it.

"Listen, Michael." She said, gaining my attention. "We've got to get you back too the house."

And without a moments rest, her hands fell from my face to my shoulders. I wasn't standing, and then soon before I realized it, I was. I wasn't walking, but before I could complain about the pain, I started forward. Everything happened before I was ready, and under me, guiding me, was my lover, and to my right, my father. I knew he could have carried me (outright) on his shoulders, but he decided to let her help. And if I hadn't noticed before, they were arguing.

Both of them shouted, then awaited the other's response, and I couldn't hear a single word. And just as I'd gotten used to walking, I fell. The arching wooden steps too the house caught the top of my right foot, and I plummeted into the angled wood. Blood fell before my eyes as they picked me up.

More people came to my side, and more hands touched against my skin. Something deep inside started to rebel, but I made sure it never did. My arms became cold, and my vision began to blur in splotches, yet sharpen everywhere else. And before I knew it, I could hear them all arguing again. In the mish-mosh of their heightening voices, I said something... I couldn't remember what it was, but it hurt to say. My voice was hoarse and my neck felt like it was going to collapse under the weight of my head.

An even warmth washed over my body, I thought it was because I was now inside, but it was a little more than that.

I felt my stomach clench. I'd felt that feeling hundreds of times before, and I'd instigated them all. The feeling of freedom, is what I'd named it. And it's always been just that, freedom. It was the first step of my speeding evolution. The first step of the change. And just as quickly as it started, everything went black.

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I jumped awake, scaring the two beside my bed. Nick and Angela looked like they'd been sleeping at my bedside for a while, due to thick red lines that ran along their foreheads. Their arms were red too, only Angela's left was wrapped in a thick gauze.

"What happened?" I asked, my head both spinning, and stinging. Raising my hand too my head, pieces of that morning flashed into my head. My father, changed, cutting into my sides. Angela shaking me awake, after my nightmare. The two arguing.

I looked too the two, their faces both said the same thing...nothing. Instead, Angela's eyes pleaded me not to ask again... Nick couldn't even face me. It meant two things, they knew something terrible, and they couldn't tell me.

"Angela..." I said, I grasped her shoulder lightly, "Why did my dad..."

"Don't ask me to tell you." She said, tears gathered in her eyes, but she wouldn't allow them too fall. In them, glinted the lights in my room. They flashed differently than they would any other time. Usually, my sight was such, that a single tear acted like a mild disco ball... now, it was like looking out onto the ocean at sun up. Diamonds filled it, and they did so without glare.

"Nick?" I asked, looking at him. His jaw was clenched, but he looked at me, even though he didn't want too. He looked at me different. I knew this look though. It was the same I'd given my father after he showed me that I was his son... He knew.

But.

"You know?" I asked, even though the evidence was irrefutable.

"I know what you are..." His voice was low, and he looked betrayed. I couldn't blame him. I'd kept this one, big, secret away from him for years. "Your dad told me."

'My dad?' The thought echoed in my head, and apparently, found its way somewhere it didn't belong. Because, as the bile in my throat from their weary glances started back down, anger began to rise. A lot of it. "My dad..."

He stabbed me, then saved me. Told me to keep my secrets from my friends, then betrays me by letting them spill like groceries from a wet, paper bag? He keeps me from the truth, why? Why so discrete as too scare my friends from telling me, why?

And as I quickly found out, my body wanted answers more than my mind. Because, mid thought, I was standing forward, legs perched on my bed, and I jumped through the open door, and latched onto the railing for the stairs, changed, and poised... but it felt different.

He stood there, in the middle of a conversation with Angela's mother, and he was just becoming conscious of my actions as I launched from the railing, tearing it apart. He dropped his coffee, rose his hands up to defend himself, but it was too late, and my outstretched arms had already gripped his throat. We both sailed through the kitchens island, splintering it apart.

Before he could react I grabbed him up, and slammed him against the fridge, he didn't seem to feel the pain as I did so, but instead, he grabbed my arm. I didn't know what he was doing, so I squeezed harder. His head became tinted with read, but still he tapped against my forearms. I looked at them and back to him, twice before realizing it. Angela's screams could be heard from the destroyed stairwell. But I wasn't listening anymore, I was too busy noticing something... different.

I stood upright. Werewolves don't do that, or so I thought. They also didn't have human like arms, nor fingers like mine, gripping against my fathers tense neck. I'd only seen this once, and that was when my father saved me. A memory I wasn't ever going to forget... and the memory, that made me let go of him.

"You needed to change from a hunter, to a leader." He said, gasping and rubbing his neck with his right hand. His left fell on my shoulder as he gained control of his breathing. His eyes peered into mine, showing me a deep sadness. It wasn't like him to show a weakness, not if front of other people, that is. "Because I'm not going to be around forever."

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The damage to the stairwell and the wrecked island in the kitchen totaled to almost five grand too fix. Or so said the contractor that argued with my father on the porch. I couldn't blame him on the price either. Being called over here after dark, then being haggled with by my father did seem to make people a little less generous. I could hear them, clear on the other side of the house, where a big bon fire loomed in the back yard. Usually, I'd never come out to the back yard, mainly because the guests who stayed here from time to time, complained about having me back there. But that was years ago.

Angela, sat next to me on the ground, my arm wrapped around her to keep her close under the night sky. I ran my fingers up and down her gauzed arm. And the thought lingered, "Did I do that?"

"Yeah." She said, making me stop. She pulled my arm around her waist and under her hurt arm, looking away from the fire to stare into my arms. "But you redeemed yourself." She said, smiling.

"How?" I asked, curiosity letting me forget about the day.

She leaned away from me slightly, "When you grabbed me, you said you loved me."

I laughed.

"Don't laugh at me!" She said, hitting me in the side. She was violent when she got angry with me, something that always made me smile. "It was sweet."