DISCLAIMER: This is a mature chapter, dealing with adult situations.

So Dad and I drove home from the rec center. It was a peaceful, uneventful drive.

The snow was falling all around us, each snowflake doing it's own dance. I'll always remember moments like that. The peace it brought to both of us.

My Father had everything he could possibly want, and so did I. Our family was together, healthy, happy. I loved my Father's lessons, and he loved teaching them to me. Logan, try as he might, just didn't like them in the same way I did. My mother used to say that I was a lot like my Father, and she didn't know what a compliment that was to me. And, as much as I adored everything he had to teach me, I equally adored just sitting in silence with him. Like that winter's drive.

Carefully, he pulled passed Stonehaven's gates, and that is when we heard it.

Wolf howls.

You're probably thinking that's no big deal, right? Wrong.

My Father could recognize instantly an intruder, and he recognized it then. Two of them. He swore heavily, and put the Jeep into high gear, speeding up the driveway faster then I had ever seen him drive.

Dad unbuckled his seat belt, turning to me. I'd never seen a look like that in his eyes.

"Go inside. NOW!" He jumped out of the jeep, running in the direction of the sound. "Call Antonio and Nick!" He called back over his shoulder, the snow obscuring his shape.

I don't remember getting out of the car. Or going into the house. I do remember walking into the kitchen, and the smell. Blood.

I can't describe it, exactly. If you've ever been in a room of a massacre, you know what I mean. It overwhelms. And for me? It was even worse.

"Mom! Mommy!" I yelled at her. Then I remembered her phone call.

The sound in the garage.

It couldn't have been Dad. The timing wasn't right. He couldn't have driving to get me, while being at the house five minutes earlier.

"MOM!" I ran out of the kitchen, and followed the scent. I opened the door leading to the garage. A lot of people would write a horror scene in the dark. Scarier that way, they say.

I say it's scarier in the light. When you can't hide from the truth.

My mother lay face down on the garage floor, the oil stains mixing with the blood to taint her hair.

I didn't check her pulse; there wasn't enough meat on her neck to check.

Maybe you think I should have fallen to the ground, started to sob. And maybe I would have, if I didn't remember my Father was outside. Outnumbered.

I had already lost my mother. But my father? Clayton?

I bolted from the room, and out of the house. It was so cold, so cold. I couldn't see his footprints; it was snowing too hard. I shut down, and let my instincts take over. I ran faster than I ever had, and probably ever will again.

I have never prayed in my entire life, as hard as I had then. I don't know whom exactly I was praying to, God, Allah, The Powers That Be. But I prayed.

I prayed my Father would win.

I prayed I would get there in time.

I prayed that Logan wouldn't come home, and see our visitors.

But more than anything, I prayed to wake up.

I want to tell you I got there in time.

I want to tell you that my presence didn't startle my father, that the sight of his daughter, running wildly through the snow, smelling of his wife's blood didn't distract him. It did.

Maybe If I hadn't been so… naive, thinking I could fight beside my Father, maybe if I had stayed away, he would have won. I just don't know. But all it takes is a second of distraction, and you are down for the count.

There were two fully grown, over six feet each, bulky werewolves standing over my father's prone body.

I remember his face, when he saw me running. The horror in his eyes. The fear.

I didn't know my father could look like that. He had always been so strong, so sure. Nothing scared my Father.

Except me- the thought of me going up against the men he was fighting.

That had scared him, I could smell it, and so could the mutts- the cowards who had used that distraction against us and delivered a final blow. He fell back into the snow, his chest rising and falling sporadically.

Then they turned to me, a sick smile on their faces.

I couldn't fight them off, when they came to me. They forced me to the ground, ripping off my clothes. I bit at them, scratched, hit, kicked. None of it worked. They were two adult werewolves, and no matter my training, no matter the extra strength my super-blood gave me. . .I was no match for them. Not then.

I knew what the wanted to do to me. What they were going to do. I don't know whether they knew how old I was. I don't know whether that mattered to them. They just looked at me like a piece of meat. A once in a lifetime chance. My mother was dead; I was the only female of their species they would ever get a chance to . . .

I never closed my eyes. I remember that.

I was so scared. So terrified by everything I had seen, everything that I was seeing at that moment. Fear. It is not the best emotion to have, when you are a maturing werewolf. My instincts kicked in, and just as one of them started to. . . start, I knew I was starting to Change.

My shoulder popped, fighting against both the weight of the man holding it down and the human body that it belonged to. My body started to Change, and they didn't stop. They didn't stop. Somewhere between my spine cracking, my bones breaking and re-knitting, I blacked out. Is that what they are calling it now? I was conscious. I know that. I just don't know how I got from there, to… well.

I'm not going into the details.

Partly, because it is too painful to explain. No, no, not painful .I. . . I don't have the words. I've never been able to fully explain how that moment in time changed me, so utterly and completely. It catches my breath.

It catches my breath, crushing my windpipe, I try to scream but—

I'm not going into the details.

Because it doesn't matter.

That girl, that girl that they . . . She didn't survive.

The girl Logan found sitting naked in the blood stained snow- she was just a body. The body of a girl, covered in her own blood, and the blood of the men she had just ripped apart. He cradled her in his arms, carried her back into the house. He turned on the hot water in the shower as high as it would go, and carried her in there. She couldn't stand on her own, so he held her up. The scalding water poured over them both, but it didn't slow the shivering; it just washed off the stain.

And still, she didn't speak a word.