WHAT CAME OUT OF MY SLEEPING BAG

FRIDAY, 12 FEBRUARY, 3.15 AM

So I went to sleep, a snug fat caterpillar in my sleeping bag cocoon, taking for granted that everything would just continue as expected when I woke up in my little world.

I mean, I've done that lots of times, gone to bed and woke up and continued my life as usual.

That was how my life worked until recently, and even so, the worst that had ever happened to me was a bad dream travel, but I always woke up, the alarm would ring, and my life would sort itself out and carry on.

It's like my life had been somewhat crazy ever since the year started, but the craziest stuff was also coralled to my sleeping hours, so in that way I was kind of like Batman. Hahahaha. The terror that stalked in the night.

Okay, so I wasn't a charming playboy philanthropist by day, but I was a... eccentric highschool alpha?

Dang, I'm sure if I thought about it more, I would be able to think of a better fictional analogy, but until then, (impersonates Batman) I'm Batman.

But today, that very clear division between my "double life" got blurred. It's a little like Batman waking up in the morning still in his batsuit. Nothing too permanent, but still, it crossed the line.

I woke up in the darkness, my arms and legs bound up so tightly, I couldn't move, my eyes were opened but I couldn't see, my nose didn't seem to be working as it should either. Immediately, the possibility of that I had accidentally dream travelled into Greta's, I mean, Sabre's memories came to mind and I totally freaked out.

I didn't want to see it, much less live it again. Hell no! I wanted out, now, and at that moment, quite a number of things happened in very quick succession. So you should probably read the next few paragraphs really quickly.

The first was, my hair flared, which wasn't unexpected except that when it did, it took the form of very thin wire blades and burst opened my bindings with the sound like sharp scissors zipping very quickly through thin material in many directions.

This was promptly followed by a string of Lycan in a low growly voice. There was no direct translation to these words, but paraphrasing it would be something like, "F***, f***, what the f***." Very poetic.

This was backed up by a chorus of low growls of betas being woken from their slumber and then the light being flipped on.

I blinked, and the sight that greeted me was my Mate, bloodied and cut up, but totally scentless, almost like it was fake blood, except it was too early for holloween.

Even his clothes, which was the dark blue Night Leaf warrior jacket and his usual dark cargos and boots, were cut up like he just dragged himself out from a lawn mower or something. (The boots were fine though, proving itself to be good quality boots.)

And then the girls, who were awoken by the lights and noises looked and screamed.

"What happened to you?" I asked, somewhat shocked, I took a step forward, but Bell growled low and warningly.

In response Ki took out a gun, "It's dangerous, goddess. He's not in control."

"Then who's in control?" I asked.

"His wolf." Ki answered. He was saying it like it was a bad thing. He wasn't even smiling.

Harvey had put himself between the girls and Bell. He also had a gun out, but unlike Ki, he wasn't aiming it at MY MATE. More like just instinctively mirroring Ki's level of alert, his mental gears turning to make sense of this situation.

Sabre was sobbing and going hysterical by now. Savy was carrying her.

"Mum? Dad? Can you come down quick?" Savy mindlinked the SOS, and of course I heard it.

Ben was standing at the switches, like the other two betas, gun in hand, "Go fetch another box of water, Jonah."

Jonah was out like a flash.

Then I remembered what Ki said about how Mate's wolf had been treated from when he was a youth.

I shook my head, "It's okay..."

Carefully, I approached Mate. He was growling, his muscles quivering from restraint.

I tried to calm my mate, "It's okay, Bell. We're in the packhouse, you dream-travelled into my sleeping bag, but I thought I was having a bad dream, and then I freaked out and..."

And then my eyes widened at the realization - I was the one who sliced my own Mate up? By now, being the healing wolf that he was, Mate was completely healed, only his bloodied clothes bore to long cuts across his body.

I looked around me at the shredded pieces of sleeping bag.

Oh man, wth did I do now?

I put my hand to my forehead in disbelief. My hair did that?

"Goddess, please be careful." Ki was nearly begging.

"Don't worry." I tried to reassure Ki, "I'm his mate, he won't hurt me."

At any rate, I was the monster here.

Hahaha, look what I just did to my own mate! My heart clenched a little. He was my mate and that didn't stop my hair from whipping knifes around him.

"This is a Chi-Ka-Boom, isn't it?" Harvey asked. I had to wonder if he was talking about me.

Ki nodded, his gun still pointing at my mate, his Luna, and true alpha. WTH. I knew Ki's wolf was wrestling it, but it felt like he didn't have a choice, "I didn't bring the tranquilizers. So we have to shoot to wound, and then restrain him till our Luna Bell gains back control of himself."

Wait what? No way! I know this wolf! My Mate's wolf was the fluffiest, calmest, gentlest beast - even more so than the human himself. I flared, my hair immediately wrapping around my mate. Oh man, I'm Medusa irl! Gah!

Maybe this was my Chi-Ka-Boom. Boo was definitely on the surface, "Mine."

Of course at this point, Mum and Dad had to burst into the scene.

"Sam!" Mum scolded, "Put down your Luna!"

My hair instinctively tighten. Bell choked a bit.

"You're gonna kill him, Sam." Ben informed me.

And then Bell started purring.

"Or turn him on." Ki mumured.

"Sam, let him go." Dad ordered.

What did he think I was trying to do? But my hair wasn't cooperating.

"I can't!" And then my eyes started to do that funny thing, you know, the one where it produces salty water because, I hadn't want to admit it, but I was f***ing scared, "I can't control it!"

And besides the fact it was possessed a la horror movie, it would at anytime turn into wire blades and slice up my mate into pieces right in front of me.

I knew it could because it had just a moment ago, maybe the others had not connected the dots between the strips of sleeping bag material, a slashed up Luna, and my hair, but I knew it. I was a freaking monster, and I can't stop it.

I had zero control of my hair.

At the sight of my tears, Mate's wolf growled lowly. It was like in his room at the Underground again, the mood shifted very quickly. Mate turned and reached out his large hand for me, and my hair loosened its grip.

He stroked my head, "Shhh... Precious, do not cry."

Mate's Wolf had spoke in ancient lycan, his eyes were still a lustrous gold.

This completely stunned everyone, but not because of the ancient language, or the super arcane term of endearment. Ki studied his Luna Bell's wolf very carefully.

Bell's wolf was still out, but he spoke without cursing, and was not ripping anyone's head off... which Ki seemed to find unbelievable.

"I can't... I can't... control my hair..." I told Bell in between what sounded like sobs even to my own ears.

"Shhh... My precious princess, shhhh..." Bell soothed in lycan, while stroking down the wildest locks.

"But...but...but..." It's not like Mate could be on hand 24/7 to keep my hair in check. It's not that I wanted my hair to look like a magazine cover all the time, I just didn't want to kill someone by accident!

Suddenly I understood Elsa! What pain she must have endured, to keep away from her sister. Wait, what was I thinking about? This wasn't a Disney cartoon. I was in deep s***.

"Patience young one. Control comes. With time." Mate soothed out the rest of my hair along with my wolf who dropped my forehead on one side of his broad chest.

Wait, wasn't I supposed to be calming him? WTH.

And what's with the "young one" talk? What was he? Master Yoda? WTH! I flared and pulled away. My mate's wolf thinks he's a green Jedi master.

But Bell only smiled, the kind of smile people made when they thought something was cute.

{Cute.}

I flared again and growled at him. How dare he! I should have just strangled him for real!

But of course my hair completely ignored my wishes.

By now, my Betas had put away their guns. Jonah got back with a new box of bottled water. Mum was carrying Sabre who had stopped crying and was just peeping out now and then like she was trying to find a good balance to satisfy both her curiosity and fear. Yes, little human, your big sister was a monster. For real. So don't make up a song asking me to make a snowman with you.

Ki handed a bottle of water to Bell, whose wolf had receded after calming my hair.

And then Dad said, "Can someone please tell me what just happened?"

If Bruce Wayne's parents hadn't died, he would never had become Batman, not just because he wouldn't have run out of their funeral and fallen into the batcave in his estate, but because there would've been far too many things to explain in the morning.

Why are you injured (again)? Why was there a black cape in the laundry? What did you do to the family limo? Why was cat woman in your room? You know... Because these things that you did in the dark of the night, will inevitably slip into the bright of the day.

I knew that now.

And eventually, we managed to piece together what happened.

Mate and his men had started the rogue hunt. The goddess was with them, and they had been successful from the onset. It's been 5 hours. They were taking a two hours rest break before resuming the hunt at 4AM. He had just managed to fall asleep when he was awoken by multiple lashes across his body.

Naturally, his wolf took over.

Yeah. Okay.

So now I had to explain about how I was awoken from my sleep because my sleeping bag was way too small for Mate to be zipped inside it with me.

I omitted the part about my face being in the crook of his neck - thus blocking my view and smell, because that part felt embaressing to say aloud.

So I skipped to how my hair had sliced through the sleeping bag, and Mate, by accident.

Everyone stopped at this point to survey the pieces of sleeping bag scattered on the floor.

And then Sabre spotted something and pointed, "Uh oh, Mama."

We all looked at the small pink tuff of unicorn tail lying by itself at the foot of the sofa. No! I flared, "Sir Sparkalot!"

Sabre squirmed out of Mum's arms to retreive the decapitated tail. I sniffed out the scent of Mate, me, and lemons and found the rest of the unicorn under a piece of sleeping bag.

It was slashed across the middle. The ring it held inside was exposed, but otherwise in one piece.

"That!" Sabre pointed, "Ring!"

"Mine!" I told her.

Sabre nodded wide eyed and retreated to Mum. She gave mum Sir Sparkalot's tail.

I looked at my poor unicorn. Grrr...

"I'll get you another." Mate promised, "I have to go now."

What, now? I looked up at the overhanging clock, it was nearly 4AM.

He lifted a lock of blue hair and kissed it, and then just as my hair tried to wrap itself around him, he disappeared. I flared again at the empty space. Grrrr!

And then someone's alarm started to ring. Harvey took out his phone and turned it off, "It's up and go time."

Ben groaned.

"It's four in the morning!" Lizzy protested.

"You girls can sleep. The alarm was for us, betas." Ben said.

"Okay, then I'm going to sleep with the girls." Jonah nodded, and then he shook his head quickly, "I mean, not with the girls, far away from the girls..."

"We all know what you meant, Jonah." Lizzy rolled her eyes, "Just go back to sleep."

"Uh yeah, okay." Jonah disappeared into his sleeping bag.

Ki smiled and asked, "Shall I bring breakfast down later?"

"Bring it up to the conference room." Dad decided, "We can meet and receive the morning updates together."

"Yes, Alpha." The guys bowed immediately.

Dad put his hand on Mum's back to usher her (and Sabre) out with him.

And to my surprise, life went back to "normal" again. You'd think waking up with a head of hair that turned into a deadly weapon would have had bigger consequences.

Well, almost normal anyway. I could still hear everyone's mindlink and was perfectly aware that Ben, Jonah, Lizzy and Savy were voting on who had the scarier monster, Bell or Me.

I tried to find the off switch for the mindlink power, but couldn't. So I had to resort to a mindseal as thick as one of our bullet proof glass sliding doors to keep out all the random mindlink messages that my evolving wolf would now accidentally pick up like a faulty satellite dish.

Hopefully, Mate was right, and with time my powers would settle down.

I wondered if dad's alpha wolf could also hear mindlinks? That would be pretty funny - that he could hear everything Savy and I had mindlinked at the dinner table and had to act like he didn't hear our sass. Hahaha.

Actually, blocking out the unwanted mindlink noises wasn't the biggest challenge.

It was the dangerous hair.

I wanted to use the caterpillar who went to slept in my sleeping bag cocoon and burst out as a rather scary type of butterfly as the analogy for my new metamorphosis because I've heard Link use it once to share about his first shift at one of the Lycan study group sessions where they got older youths to share their first shift experience with us.

I mean, I started writing this diary in anticipation for that said year of metamorphosis. But my personal experience was far less poetic than Link's.

I feel like the racoon who turned out to be a porcupine.

I really don't know if my hair would one day kill someone, but let's take it one day at a time.

My goal for today was not to kill anything with my hair. Wow. I guess Medusa had it rough, huh? I imagined her looking into the mirror in the mornings (being careful not to make eye contact with her snake hair, of course), "You can do it Meddie. Just stay calm, deep breaths, and try not to antagonize the hair."

Yeah. Cos that was my game plan today.

Lizzy and Savy crawled back into their sleeping bags.

"Do you want Sabre's sleeping bag?" Savy offered as she zipped herself in.

"No thanks." I answered because the thought of sleeping in a bag that smelled like the little human was like asking to be dragged into one of her memories again.

The sofa of the packhouse lounge smelled like a thousand butts though. In the end I found Ben's sleeping bag and crawled into that. Ben was okay.

"Ah!" Jonah popped up from his sleeping bag next to me, "Sam!"

He shifted-rolled in his sleeping bag all the way to the other corner of the room.

Whatever. I shut my eyes and tried to go back to sleep with my tattered unicorn, sniffing the scent of Mate and me and lemons. I didn't actually think it would work, but it did, and the next thing I knew, Savy was shaking me up like it was Christmas morning, "Sam, wake up! You'd never guess what you did now!"