Howling At The Moon

The Calm Before The Storm

A week prior...

"How exactly did we get roped into this?" Collin asked his twin. "Dude, are you seriously asking me this? For real?" Brady looked at his younger brother (by 14 minutes as that individual liked to exasperatedly exclaim every time the topic came up) "Uh yeah… dumb question I know." Just then, a shiny black, Ford, pick-up truck screeched to a halt next to them, and a smiling face appeared in the driver's window. "You two bums need a ride?" "Hey Seth, how's it going man?" Brady bumped fists with his friend while they waited for Collin to climb in the back seat. "Dude, nice ride" called Collin, while Seth pulled back onto the road "Does Jake know you jacked his truck?"

The twins snickered as Seth snorted, "Yeah, 'coz I'm gonna agree to drive a bunch of wolves around and not get anything out of it… Who do you take me for Collin? You?" The two older boys busted up laughing while the youngest in the two packs countered their ribbing with a good natured comment of his own. "Get stuffed you guys"

"I told Jake, when they thought of this whole scheme, that if I was going to be a designated driver, I was going to do it in style." As they continued towards the store where they were due to pick up Embry, the boys chatted back and forth about the night's plan. One they had been making for ages.

Sam Uley, Alpha of the La Push pack, had finally worked up enough guts to get down on one knee, and ask Emily, his imprint, to marry him. While the amusing story of his proposing had become legend to the pack, tonight they were all heading out to Port Angeles to celebrate the engagement of the couple that had practically parented the rest of the pack as they had phased one by one. And the younger ones were going solely to babysit the older wolves that were finally going to be able to let their hair down without the stress of everything they had endured over the previous few months. The episode with Bella's return, the tension before Renesmee's birth, the visit from the Volturi after that… it had felt like a never ending tide of chaos that had engulfed the packs with no hope for them getting away.

But it had been hardest of all on the youngest of the packs. Brady, Collin and Ryan were three wolves who had phased just before the war with the newborns, but the ones who had phased just before the Volturi visit were much younger and took it much harder. Apart from the physical havoc it had wreaked on their bodies, their minds suffered as well. Cut off from their friends, insecure with attempting to explain their situations to their parents, they felt trapped and miserable. Until Jake had finally talked Sam into allowing the youngest ones to at least tell their parents, before anyone did something drastic like ship their wayward troublemaker off to military school. This decision had come right on time and Ryan had literally been taken off the bus to Chicago Military Academy, by Jake.

But the place these changes had affected the youngest wolves the most had been in school where they had suddenly seemed to shift alliances from their everyday friends and started hanging out with the gang, as the rest of the reservation saw the packs. Now that there was no threat, most of them were back in school and while Jake, Quil, and Jared had made sure they didn't have to go back to high school by taking their equivalency exams, Paul and Embry had surprised them all by saying they wanted to go back and graduate.

Which brought them back to the night at hand, as they pulled up in front of Embry's apartment and honked impatiently while their pack brother sauntered out. When the pack all headed out together somewhere, it was usually cause for passersby to stop and stare at the large group of even larger men, who actually growled if anyone so much as glanced at the women with them. It wasn't even always the man with the woman in question that got offended. It was any single one of them; whichever one happened to notice the unlucky cretin that attempted to make eye candy of one of the imprints.

They had all noticed this tendency of theirs to get over-protective, and as usual it was Seth who broke into an argument between Paul and Jared, when he came up with the theory behind it. Paul and Rachel, his imprint, had been loading groceries into her truck at the supermarket, before one of their infamous bonfires; and Jared had just driven into the parking lot with Kim. This was when he noticed a sedan driving past Paul and Rachel, and his sensitive hearing picked up one of the teenagers in it, calling out, "Nice Ass" as they drove past. He slammed on the brakes, was out the door and the teenager had a broken nose before his brain even registered the extremely large, Native-American boy that had pulled him out his open window.

Although Paul was not angry with his pack-mate, his problem was with the fact that he felt he missed out on delivering a pounding to someone who had disrespected his woman.

(The fact that he used the phrase 'my woman' and the others did not correct him, led to ALL the imprinted wolves being in extremely deep trouble with their women respectively. The only one who received a reprieve was Jake, even Claire had flounced off when Quil offered to play dolls with her, as though she knew exactly why the other women were angry. The youngest of both packs found it so hilarious that they had to defect to Jake's territory for a couple of days to escape their Alpha's retribution. Even though Jake sympathized, he couldn't really blame Sam - who could when he left the house, still smarting from Emily's telling off, only to see the cubs rolling on the ground in laughter)

It was just before Paul got mad enough to phase, that Seth interrupted and pointed out that the imprints didn't just matter to their respective wolves. They mattered to the rest of the pack, because they were an integral part of the pack.

"I mean, look man, you imprinted on Kim, that makes her special to me, now just hold on and let me finish Jared" Seth explained as Jared growled at him. "Jake's my alpha, I look up to the guy, and I look up to you too Paul, even though you're an idiot most times, so Rachel is as good as another big sister to me… and you guys know I would kill for Leah, even though she could probably do it better herself. We all just feel like they are family, and it's kinda an automatic reaction to be protective, you know what I'm getting at here?"

"Embry! Move your ass man, any slower and we might make it there by closing time." "Can it Brady, and Collin, shove over man, lemme get in." Seth interrupted before the arguing got worse, "Buckle up boys, Jake told me Rosalie worked on his truck before Edward told her it was a Birthday Gift for him…" the boys roared with laughter, as Rosalie's dislike for Jacob was legendary "Let's see what this thing can do"

With that, Brady leaned forward, turned up the volume on the state of the art stereo system in the truck, and with a loud whoop, the 4 young shapeshifters, took off into the night to meet the rest of their party, leaving behind smoke and the smell of burning rubber to mark the starting point of their drive.

For them, at least, the night had officially begun.

What they didn't know was that, for one of them, it was an even bigger beginning.