Under The Cover of Darkness

Preface: The Day I Starred in my Own Horror Movie

I remember the day I turned 18 like it was yesterday. Id only dreamt about it since I was little, since the moment I saw prince charming kiss sleeping beauty awake, causing her to wake up and promptly get married to the handsome fellow, i knew what id wanted. A happily ever after of course! a handsome lad who would fight dragons for me and pine after me even if my greatest talent was sleeping! Hell, prince charming loved sleeping beauty simply because she was beautiful. What more could a girl want? I mean, she got her prince charming and she was just set- boom, happily ever after, roll the credits. Everyone's happy.

Now, I realize that by now, youre probably confused. Since when does turning 18 equate to the appearance of your prince charming? Well, my faithful readers, when you turn 18 you get to look for sugar daddies, other wise known as the modern day prince charming, amirite? Lol jk, dont worry. I should have mentioned earlier that I'm a werewolf.

Golly, no, I don't turn into a giant dog on a full moon or pillage nearby villages for shits and gigs. I dont even hunt vampires, so stop referencing those movies! Us actual werewolves are just like everybody else. We put our pants on one leg at a time, and sometimes sprout a tail (and turn into a normal sized wolf). We can do so on command, uninfluenced by that orbiting rock whos reflection we can see in the night sky.

The only thing that Twilight movie did get right is the prophecy of soul mates. In the movie, they called it 'imprinting'. Well in my pack, the Twilight pack, (goddammit I see the irony all too clearly), we call it finding your destined. Unlike in that god-awful movie, wolves are never destined to children (yuck!), because in order to know who your destined is, both parties must be adults. Now, I'm no scientist or anything but I know it has something to do with your hormones. It's just the time that your body and wolf spirit decide that they're ready to be the half to someone's whole. For most wolves its around 16 or seventeen that they identify their mates. Fate just has a way of placing the two in front of each other soon after maturity. After that it begins with a simple connection of the eyes or an accidental brush up of bare skin and viola! Youve met your destined.

I guess this is why my eighteenth birthday had been somewhat of a milestone. All my life I'd been behind the other kids, always shorter, always slower, I was even the last in my grade to shift for the first time. When I was 14 I'd already spent 13 months playing hide and seek in the woods with my friends as a human. That seems alright enough until I reveal that all of my friends had been wolves, and that in wolf hide and seek, when you find someone the object is to chase them down and pin them to the ground. Lets just say that I found out that human teeth dont exactly serve as an advantage the same way wolf teeth do. I really dont want to talk about what its like flossing your friend's fur out of your incisors.

And so it was no surprise that I was the last of my friends to find my destined as well. My two best friends, Charlotte and Kenny, had realized they were destined for each other shortly after we had begun our Junior year. the day I turned 18 was in the middle of our Senior, and Id been over third wheeling the PDA fest that was Charlotte and Kenny for, I dont know, forever!

Now, don't get me wrong! Id grown up with those two as my best friends. In elementary school, Kenny had taken turns dating the both of us before Charlotte and I had realized that sometimes playing dolls was in fact better without Kenny in the mix at all. We each had our own connections, so when they had turned out to be each other's destined I was overjoyed for them. It's not often that your destined turns out to be someone you had already chosen for yourself, anyways. Really, I'd heard stories of destined pairs who reject each other, because the pairing seemed unlikely. Can you believe that? Unlikely! I mean, can you believe the gall of some wolves; being presented with your absolute equal, the completion to your search, the lime to your corona, only to ignore that? It seems to me like if Fate wants to spoon feed you your soul mate you should take it for crying out loud. I could only guess that some wolves believed they knew better than Fate on how to choose a life partner.