Hidden Strength

Chapter One:

Chapter One:

Willa's Wednesday nights rarely held more than homework or reading. They were incredibly boring, uninteresting, and dull. Which was completely fine with her. She didn't mind being curled up on her bed, scribbling numbers and symbols into her notebook, solving math problems. She did, however, mind the sudden rapping at her bedroom door. Willa looked up and called gently, "Come in."

She smiled as her mom opened the door and stood leaning against the door frame. Even though Willa wasn't genetically related to Melissa McCall, she had an incredibly strong mother-daughter relationship with her. Having never known, or cared to know, who her birth parents were, she found that it was incredibly rare that she remember she was adopted at birth. Willa put her calculus homework down and asked, "What's up?"

Her mom smiled and pulled away from the door frame, walking over and siting on Willa's bed. Willa leant against the wall behind her as her mother answered, "The hospital called. One of our long term patients disappeared, and a couple swears they saw him walking into the woods. They're doubling up staff as a security precaution until we find him, and they're worried more people will just start wandering off. Scott's still at work, so-"

"I'll be fine here alone, Mom, don't worry. I'm probably going to go to sleep soon anyway," Willa chuckled. While more teenagers would have gotten irritated at their parents for assuming they couldn't be alone, it wasn't that big of a stretch in her case. The blonde was easily frightened, couldn't watch a horror movie even in the daytime, and had been scared by her own shadow once. Well, twice- okay at least seven times, Willa had thought her shadow was something or someone that would attack her and she panicked. 

But for all the courage she lacked, she was far too curious for someone who had had nightmares over Beauty and the Beast when she was three. As soon as Willa saw her mom's car leave, the 5'2", blue eyes blond was off her bed, Calculus book and papers discarded to her bedside table, and flipped the sign on her bedroom door. After her 'twin' and his best friend had barged in more than once and frightened her awake, Willa had gotten something to prevent it. With 'Sleeping: Do Not Enter' now facing anyone who tried to enter her room, she closed the door and grabbed her black hoodie, crawling out her window so she didn't need a key.

The reserve wasn't far from her house, a ten minute jog at the most.The wooded reserve itself, however, was much too big, Willa had decided an hour later. She'd been looking for the alleged missing patient for at least ninety minutes, and so far, all she had seen were trees, leaves, and a lot more trees. It was dark and freezing, and Willa was tired and freezing and beginning to realize how stupid of an idea this was. She was leaning against a tree, groaning and trying to figure out which direction she was supposed go to head home.

Before she could decide on which direction, something moved behind her. Instantly, the waif-ish girl froze, closing her eyes and praying it was just one of the search party, that she just had gotten caught by normal people, not some psycho. Instead, Willa heard a growl, and not just a dog. No, it was something big, angry, and vicious. It was something that could kill her. She knew that without looking, but the need to at least see what was going to kill her was overwhelming, and slowly, she turned her head. The second she saw what it really was, she wished she hadn't discarded the psycho theory.

Holy. Mother. Of. God. No, it was impossible. She thought it was a wolf, or some big, rabid attack dog on the loose. Those seemed like preferable options at this point. Willa's heart as trying to punch through her chest as she saw it. The creature that growled was so much worse, it was a wolf like no other. It was massive, red eyes making her want to faint, it's size alone made her believe that she would never make it out of the woods. 

It growled again, but this time, Willa ran. She forgot about how tired she was starting to get, that she didn't even know which direction she was running. All she could think about was not being shredded to pieces by something that looked straight out of a horror movie. She couldn't die, not here, not like this! There were things she had to do before she died! Why hadn't she just stayed home and finished homework?! She only had a week left of her freshman year, and now she was going to die before she managed a year in high school.