The Nightmare

The wolves eyes have haunted my nightmares for years. Every dream is the same, it starts when I was 10, before my magic manifested and things went south.... I'm playing in our back yard while Mother works on her garden. Her long hair is loosely tied behind her back and she's planting a new rose bush. Our back yard was unfenced and faded into the forest so my parents could easily access it when they wanted. I wasn't allowed to go in by myself so I took advantage of Mother being distracted to sneak into the forest.

I loved the forest, but Mother and Father were never too keen about me venturing in. They always said it was too dangerous and the pack was not to be trusted when it came to maintaining our safety. As I traveled further into the forest, I became more unfamiliar with the area and eventually get lost. At this point, I've gone so deep into the forest that the undergrowth is thick, and I'm having a hard time moving through it. My shirt snagged on a branch and I'm fighting to get it loose. Panic makes just a few minutes, feel like hours, I finally break free but I ripped my shirt in the process. As I move away from the tree I lose my footing and roll down a small ravine, slamming into the stream at the bottom. The impact left me breathless and unable to move until I regain my breath. I start to get up but I get my foot stuck in between some rocks and I lose my shoe to the stream to free myself. I must have made a commotion because when I look down stream there's a wolf studying me. I've never seen any other wolves aside from my parents and because they're often confused for rogues, its not safe for us to be around a pack wolf. Panicking, I scream and try to run away but its not long before the wolf is on top of me. I kick and scream in a plea for my parents as it grabs hold of me. In my struggle my head strikes a rock and I lose consciousness.

The rest of the dream fades in and out. I'm tortured for what feels like days. The wolf that took me is an older man and screams about how rogue wolves need to be punished for what they've done to the bloodlines. I'm just old enough that I heal faster than most so the torture is brutal. He breaks my fingers, dislocates my toes, and slices my skin with his claws. He keeps screaming at me to shift but I can't. I've never shifted before, I'm not old enough. I plead for him to stop, he hits me in the back of the head with something hard. The man starts laughing, his voice is gravelly like he has smoked a pack a day his whole life. "You think your parents are going to save you, little bitch? I bet they don't even care that you're gone, rogues are trash and deserve to be treated as such. You're lucky you're so young, I could do far worse things than this so stop crying you whiny mutt." He growls and hits me in the head again. The door to the room opens and the man says "It's about damn time you came home." My vision starts to go dark and the last thing I see is a set of intense green eyes.

I wake up every night with those eyes burned into my brain. I thought I had grown out of this nightmare years ago until the last few months.

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The worst part about the dream is that I can't tell if it's a dream or a memory. I don't have any new memories until I was 11 when I woke up in my bed hooked to a heart monitor. Mother told me that I just fell asleep for a few months. After I turned 18 I was able request my medical records without needing mother there. I found out that I went missing for three months and the next three I was in a coma. Shortly after I woke up, I shifted. My parents were overjoyed that I had shifted at such an early age as it meant I was supposed to be a powerful wolf. Werewolves don't normally shift until they're at least 16 so their human bodies have more time to mature; the ones able to earlier typically have strong Lycan blood lines and mature faster than their non-Lycan counterparts. Even so, they still normally shift around the age of 14. Someone changing at 11 is practically unheard of. When we first shift, all of us are grey because our wolf is still maturing for about another year before we grow into our "adult" coats. That is also when we can name our wolves. Most wolves stay within normal colors that you would see in the smaller wild wolves.

My mother was a beautiful grey wolf and she came from a long line of powerful Lycans that originated in Italy. Because of her Lycan blood, she was much bigger than most, her shoulders stand at roughly 50 inches, and she was considered small by their standards. Mother migrated to the states when she turned 18 because she wanted a simple life, unlike that of the high-profile lifestyle her family lived. Since she left her pack on good terms, she became a lone wolf. Lone wolves aren't retaliated against like rogues because they tend to be self-sustaining free spirits that like to travel. Most packs don't mind if a lone wolf resides in their territory if they have permission and follow the local laws. Father was a lower tier Lycan and matched mothers size but was considered large for his genetics. His pelt, however was a russet color. Children normally take on a combination of their parents coat colors and that was how I found out that my father wasn't actually my father. Well that, and the fact that I possessed magic.

When my adult coat started to come in it was a pure black pelt, nothing abnormal about that. I eventually developed white spots on my feet and legs, chest, and snout. Down my spine, the white is more spread out. Overall, I have a bit of a blue heeler look going on and that only happens in witch/wolf hybrids.

My "father" disowned me and left my mother 12shortly after. By the time I was 16, she had left me too. Word got out about the Lycan she-witch and I got a lot of unwanted attention. On my 17th birthday, I went through the ceremony that all young witches go through in order to access the full extent of their power but on my way home I was abducted and tortured for the next six months. Happy fucking birthday to me, right? I was injected with wolfsbane and mistletoe, both can be deadly to wolves but because I'm a hybrid, it still hurts but it didn't cause as much damage as it should have. The only reason I was able to escape was because they got drunk the night before I was supposed to be transported to the "King" to cleanse me of my wolf. After I escaped, I bound Emerald because as long as I smelled like both a witch and a wolf I would always be hunted. Even now, they still manage to find me.