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The autumn air of northern New England was chilly and crisp as it blew through whatever leaves remained on the trees, which had morphed into vibrant arrays of reds and yellows and oranges as the season grew colder. The trees themselves seemed to whisper to one another as the winds snaked through their branches, breathing life into the dead forest that surrounded the small, rural town of Pangea, Maine.
Pangea was a tiny town, barely a small speck on a map, that was cradled in a vast, forested valley - well hidden from the prying eyes of the world. It was quiet, quaint, and unassuming, the type of town where everyone knew everyone else, and that was all its residents needed. A calm, secluded setting where once a month, when the sun set and its light drained from the valley and left behind nothing but the brilliant scattering of stars and the bright rays of a luminous full moon, the werewolf pack of Pangea could run free without fear of harming any innocent soul that stumbled into their paths.
It was an unfortunately common theme amongst the members of the pack. A lover who thought they wouldn’t get hurt, a sibling who insisted on staying by their side, an innocent neighbor or friend who had accidentally stumbled into their path. The results were always disastrous and had always led the culprits to the pack. It was no real surprise - werewolves were always better controlled in a pack and such a tragic event was the perfect catalysis to push lone wolves towards such an environment.
Alice Kirkland was one of the rare few who didn’t share that background. She considered herself lucky, in a weird way, to be born into this life, rather than having a normal life violently ripped from her. She knew the ins and outs and knew how dangerous it could be. She’d been taught and warned by her parents and siblings and hadn’t needed to learn from experience. Alice also knew how to control herself when the full moon rose and she transformed. Not everyone could say the same. Control took time and painstaking effort. It wasn't easy and those who didn’t have that control were dangerous and unstable - to all of them.
So when Alice and her pack stepped out into the forest, full moon hanging tauntingly overhead, she knew immediately that something was wrong. It was a hard feeling to describe, driven more by instinct than anything else, but it was there nonetheless. Like a faint warning signal in the back of her head, trying to get her hackles raised before her transformation could even happen. It set her on edge. Agitation ran its way through the rest of the pack - they could sense it too.
Alice gave off a low, irritated growl, trying not to feed into the restlessness of the rest of the pack, but feeling herself being drawn in anyway. Her eyes scanned the abandoned forest for any sign of the source, searching for anything that could explain such a feeling. She couldn’t search long. Soon after, she felt the familiar itch underneath her skin, running deep into her bones and traveling quickly along the veins of her body, and the strong pull of the moonlight above her, which danced across her skin as the cool air of the forest trailed goosebumps up her arms. The transformation was instant - bones snapped and reformed, teeth grew longer and sharper, hair spread and thickened to fur, and senses sharpened a hundredfold. The pain of it all faded before it could sink in, no more than a flash of blinding heat contained within a single moment, and it left behind a pack of werewolves in its wake.
The agitation Alice had felt in her human state doubled in her wolf form and that the reasoning for that vague, unexplainable feeling became blatantly obvious. Floating in the air, amongst the crisp autumn breeze and the familiar smell of her pack, was a faint, unfamiliar scent. It was faded and far away and Alice just barely caught it as the wind turned her way, but it was there.
Another wolf had entered their territory.
Another growl ripped itself from the base of Alice’s throat and verberated through the air, echoed by the others around her until they all were howling together in unison. It was a warning, a claim, and a call for the hunt. Whatever the reason for the other wolf’s arrival, the pack would find them and figure it out. One way or another.
Together, the pack plunged into the forest, streaking through all the foliage and avoiding the trees and rocks and branches as they sprinted. There was something cathartic about running with the pack - paws pounding against the ground, blood pumping through her veins, adrenaline saturating the air, pushing them further and faster. On any normal occasion, such a feeling would be liberating, a welcome change from the monotony of her everyday life, but this was not a normal occasion.
As the pack pushed deeper into the forest, Alice could smell the scent getting growing stronger and stronger as they grew closer to its source. It was a strong scent, a strange mixture of cinnamon undercut by a faint smell of vanilla. That wasn’t what caught Alice’s attention though. Because instead, of the normal, restless smell of a lone wolf, the scent was overpowered by panic and fear and blood. It caused Alice to stop in her tracks, if only for a brief second, to search for the source and she could feel the dynamic in the pack shift instantly.
The agitation dissipated into worry. There weren’t many things that could harm a werewolf, especially one who had transformed, so why was this one hurt? Who, or what, had hurt them? How bad was it?
Alice pushed herself to run faster and find the other wolf before anything else could harm them.
They ran for what felt like hours, scouring the darkened forest for any sign that would lead them to the other wolf. Then it came. A slight rustle of leaves and the faint snapping of twigs, so subtle Alice almost missed it. But it was accompanied by the overwhelming scent of cinnamon and vanilla, so close and strong that it’s presence shot warmth into her to the core and drew her closer and closer like a siren’s call. It was all soured by the scent of blood, metallic and bitter and gut-wrenching. Alice had to find them. Find them and protect them and make sure that nothing happened to -
Before she could finish the thought, an unfamiliar wolf burst through the trees around her, tripping over themselves as they did so, and instantly froze as soon as they laid eyes on Alice. Alice could feel her own blood freeze her into place, too afraid that any unwelcomed movement would scare the other wolf off. For a brief, tense moment, the two wolves stood there and simply stared at one another, too shocked to do anything but. It gave Alice enough time to look them over - sky blue eyes, widened with raw fear and a small hint of exhaustion, and thick, dark blonde fur, caked and matted with blood along her right side. Alice had been right, she - definitely she - was hurt.
Then the tension shattered. The other wolf flashed Alice her canines and growled out a warning, tail tucked behind her hind legs and bodyweight shifted off of her bad leg. Alice didn’t have time to respond before the other wolf bolted in the opposite direction, disappearing into the trees as quickly as she’d come. Alice gave chase, following the scent of the other wolf in hopes of catching up. She didn’t really have much of a chance. Alice prided herself on being one of the fastest members of her pack - working hard in order to be able to outrun the rest of her siblings. It wouldn’t be hard to catch up to the wounded stranger that had come into their territory.
It took Alice mere moments before she caught up to the other wolf again, cornered by a wrong turn she’d taken into the cove of a nearby stream, which was surrounded on all three sides by sheer rock walls carved out over time by the flowing water. She was effectively trapped, too injured to fight her way out, and tried to scale the walls three times her height. Alice let out a loud, victorious howl to draw in the rest of her pack, letting them know that the hunt was over.
From inside the cove, the other wolf whimpered and hugged the farthest wall, ears flattened back against her head and limp more evident now that her adrenaline was wearing off. Alice watched her carefully, wary of any sudden movements she was making. But the longer she watched, the more evident it became that the other wolf had given up on trying to run. She had curled up on one of the cove’s dry rocks, blue eyes pinned on Alice. Now that she was sitting still, Alice could see how much blood had caked the other wolf’s side. It ran down her neck and coated the fur over her right shoulder. It was a worrying sight, to say the least, but the important thing was that she was safe now. The pack could help her. Alice could help her.
-
The last thing Amelia Jones could remember was blood. The metallic taste in her mouth, the putrid smell filling her nose, the sticky feeling coating her skin. It was all she could remember before fear and pain completely overtook her.
Then there was nothing.
Nothing except for her.
Amelia didn’t know her, admittedly, but she already knew she’d fallen hard. The strange woman was the only thing that she could remember from the dreams she had for the last three months. Lithe, light blonde hair, and burning green eyes. Amelia didn’t even know if she was real, but she was the entire reason she’d come to Maine. Her sister had called her completely crazy. And to be fair, she was probably right. Ditching college mid-semester and taking a road trip to Maine for absolutely no good reason other than a woman in your dreams was definitely something a crazy person did.
Then she’d stayed in AirBnB with some woman named Anya and everything had gone completely wrong. The other woman - who Amelia had never seen before in her life - had started taking complete nonsense about how Amelia was going to ‘become one’ with her and how she’d make ‘a perfect edition’ to some sort of group-pack-cult thing. Amelia knew a horror movie premise when she heard it and had bolted out of there as fast as her feet could’ve carried her.
The last thing she remembered was the blinding pain of something ripping into her shoulder and clawing at her neck. She remembered the blind, sheer panic and the blood and the running and the adrenaline because she had to get very, very far away because she was in danger and something was chasing her through the woods and the wilderness and the cold and if it caught up it would surely mean her death so she had to keep running.
Then Amelia woke up.
She woke up in a soft bed, cocooned in the warmth of soft blankets and plush pillows, with the smell of home surrounding her and the grogginess of sleep weighing her down. The vague fragments of memories were nothing more than distant, foggy dreams and Amelia wasn’t even sure they’d been real. Until a small movement ignited a fiery pain in her shoulder that shot its way up into her neck.
Amelia choked on a scream, trying not to let any of the pained sounds out. Instead, the scream turned into a whimper.
The pain sizzled underneath her skin until it slowly faded away.
Now, however, she was aware. The pain had stripped away the warmth and the grogginess and now Amelia could feel the itchy gauze wrapped around her upper body and the soft sheets of a bed that was not hers and see the color of an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar place.
Where was she? What happened to her? What the fuck was going on?
Slowly, and trying not to agitate any more pain, Amelia sat up to take a glance around the room she was in. It was a small, simple room, furnished with a bare dresser to her right, a TV hanging on the wall, a large, four-poster bed, and a bench piled high with more, fleece-lined blankets. To her left, two open doorways led into what looked like a bathroom and a closet - a third one was solidly closed. It all screamed ‘guest room’ to her. Amelia prayed to God that she wasn’t back at Anya’s.
Amelia snuggled back into the blankets when the cold air of the room hit her bare shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a shirt, but at least the bandages covered the majority of her torso. Also, she was wearing pants. That was a win, right?
She curled deeper into the blankets and the pillows, ignoring the pins and needles that shot through her as a result, and tried to hold back the tears. Her sister had been right - though she absolutely loathed to admit it. She should’ve never left California, she should’ve never dropped out of college, she should’ve never come here, because now she was hurt and being kept in some strange house, alone, with no way of contacting anyone and she was probably going to be murdered.
Definitely going to be murdered if Anya had caught up to her.
Before she could work out how to escape from the room or work herself up into a panic attack, Amelia heard two faint voices from behind the closed door.
“The girl needs rest,” the first voice hissed, just outside of the door. She sounded insistent and annoyed at whoever she was talking to. Amelia was just glad the voice wasn’t Anya’s.
“She’s been sleeping for two days,” a second woman snapped back, sounding equally irritated.
“You know exactly how much a first transformation takes out of us, not to mention she’s injured.”
“I need to see her, Francine.” That one sounded more like a warning than a request.
“Yes, yes, I know,” the first woman - Francine - said, not at all phased by the other woman’s tone. “‘You felt a pull, you want to see her’, etcetera, etcetera, but the last thing she needs is you bursting in there and get her riled up.”
“How dare -”
The door opened as soon as the second woman began voicing her opposition and Amelia finally got to see the two speakers. The first woman was gorgeous - bleach blonde hair pinned back in a loose, messy bun, clothes hugging her curves, and crystal blue eyes shining in the sunlight streaming in through the window. It wasn’t the first woman that immediately caught Amelia’s eye. Instead, it was the second woman behind her, presumably the one who had been wanting to see her, that her eyes snapped to.
Because that woman was the one from her dream. That woman was the entire reason she’d given up everything, the entire reason she’d come out here, and the entire reason she was in this situation.
The first woman stopped in her tracks as soon as she noticed Amelia was watching her.
“Oh, well, hello,” she said, flashing Amelia a small smile. The woman took a step forward and something about the movement triggered a reaction in Amelia. She could feel herself seize up and fought the urge to scramble away.
Dream-woman or not, these people could be with Anya, trying to lure her into whatever the hell Anya had tried to drag her into in the first place.
The second woman, who still stood in the doorway, seemed to sense her rising panic and shoved her way into the room to scramble to her side. Amelia couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t react the same way with the second woman than she did with the first. The other woman was a welcome presence at her side and Amelia had no doubt that, with her around, nothing was going to happen.
“How are you feeling?” the second woman asked. Though the first woman was beautiful, sure, but there was something her pulling her towards the second. A driving force that seemed to tie them tightly together and wouldn’t let go.
She didn’t know what the hell was going on and she needed to get to the bottom of it. Now.
“Who the hell are you people?” Amelia asked instead. Her voice was hoarse and her throat raw, but she continued anyway. “And what the fuck is going on?”