In the Beginning …

I am a monster. Listen and I will tell you how the wereing began, and how I was raised by wolves, and what happened in a place called Fox Hollow.

Fox Hollow. To all appearances a perfectly ordinary town filled with perfectly ordinary homes and perfectly ordinary people. But appearances truly are deceiving, because Fox Hollow is not ordinary. Oh, no.

Something terrible crept into the town and changed the people who lived there. Something so monstrous, so terrifying, that you may never sleep again.…

Me.

In the beginning was the wereing. The change that comes for the three nights of the full moon and turns me into a howling beast. The change that waits in my blood and cannot be denied. The change that makes me a night creature—a werewolf—a foul thing who lives in the darkest part of the shadow, waiting for prey to come within range of my glistening fangs.

I know nothing of my mother and father, save that they, too, must have been werewolves. How they came to leave me in the woods I do not know, but anything is possible. They might have been chased by hunters, or attacked by other night creatures. Or maybe I was stolen from their lair—but why any creature would want to steal a wretched beast like me remains a mystery.

The first thing I remember is the smell of warm fur. The fur of the Wolfmother who took me into her den, and fed me with her litter of cubs, and protected me from the terrors of darkness even though I didn’t look anything like the other wolves.

Oh, how I remember the warmth of that den, the feeling of safeness as we snuggled together. The low rrrrrrrrrr sound coming from our throats meant we were happy, and the Wolfmother rrrrrrrr’d back at us and licked our faces to make us clean.

For the longest time I thought like a wolf, ate like a wolf, ran like a wolf, bayed like a wolf at the light of the moon. The Wolf-mother’s cubs were my brothers and sisters and I loved them and played with them and fought with them.

I thought I was a wolf. Until the wereing began …