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Description
            My eyes fluttered open and were met with the dark silhouettes of pines. I didn't immediately remember where I was or how I'd gotten there. Propping myself up to a sitting position with my front paws I yawned deeply revealing my fangs and stretched my fur-covered arms high over my head. Man, I hadn't slept this heavily in a long time! I'd had such a nice dream; it was so real too. If only I could remember what it was? Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I looked to the sky trying to judge the time based on the position of the stars. For once I regretted not bringing a cell phone or at least a watch (as impractical as that would be).  I tried to think about what I'd done over the last several hours. There was moshing at the Metallica concert, driving back and coming up here to hunt, but what after that…?

            It all rushed back to me in an instant: I'd encountered the first werewolf I'd ever seen and pretty much fallen in love with her at first sight! After the initial shock of finally meeting another of my kind had turned to excitement for the same reason, I was able to talk freely and openly unlike I ever had before, even to my parents. It was such a refreshing change to not hide who I was! We'd talked about her family and how she'd also been born a werewolf (from her mom's side), we'd talked about school and friends, likes and dislikes, how we each dealt with being a werewolf, all this while running side by side for hours, her responding all the while through telepathy, of course. She also taught me more about team hunting and the trips she'd taken with her mother. It was as if we'd already known each other, and were coming back together at last like long lost friends. You could say it was just like the plot from some cheesy romance movie, a fantasy dream that was almost too good to be true.

            I jumped up on all four legs to shake off my coat, then rose up to just the hind legs of my anthro wolf form, scenting the night breeze and letting my ears rotate to catch any sound they might pick up. Finding nothing but the usual night sounds of the forest, I started off towards home again in an easy jog. If it wasn't a dream, the plan was to meet up at my house Sunday afternoon so I could introduce her to my parents, then later I'd meet hers. I figured that since she'd found me early Saturday morning and it was dark again, it was either sometime that same night or early Sunday morning. We'd probably fallen asleep sometime during the day here in that patch of scrub oak, but she must have left some time ago. Hungry again already from all that running, I decided to hunt something down before heading home to take a quick morning nap before church started. I could hardly focus for all the thoughts of Emmalee I had on my mind; I scared away 3 different deer and had to resort to a couple of raccoons to somewhat fill me up instead.

            While hunting I'd worked my way through the dark trees and closer to civilization, and soon caught my scent on the drybag with my clothes.  Not caring much for getting dressed right then, I shifted to my timber wolf form instead and carried the bag in my mouth as I went. I figured Emmalee was probably sleeping right now; unlike me she pretty much kept on a human schedule all week because of school and everything else, but it had paid off.  I hadn't done too bad myself (I'd gotten a full ride scholarship to a prestigious university after all), but this week she'd graduate high school not only as one of the highest in her class, but with an associate's degree already in the bag to boot! Even with everything on her plate, she'd told me she didn't want to risk waiting to find me until summer started on the chance that I'd leave to college right after graduating. It was important for her to talk to me wolf to wolf; that's why she'd gone to all the trouble of always keeping downwind and carefully hiding her tracks. She'd been trying to locate me for the last 3 weekends and had woken very early the morning she finally found me. I'm so glad she did, I never would have known her otherwise!

            Once on the back deck with my paws lightly clicking on the wooden slats, I did a quick 360 degree scan of my surroundings to make sure nobody else was around (every once in a while people would cut through the woods in my back yard), shook a few dead leaves and pieces of grass from my fur that I'd missed before, then transformed my right paw until it was just hand-like enough to open the back door and then slipped inside. I opened my jaws to drop the bag by the mat on the tiled floor, then looked up to check the time on the microwave clock. The green glowing digits were a bit hard on my eyes, but I saw they indicated it was 5:50am.  I didn't feel like going to the trouble of using a bed right then either and ambled over to the living room (so I could hear easier when my parents were up), then flopped limply on the carpet to catch a few winks.

            After getting home from church later that day, I couldn't contain my excitement. I was pacing absentmindedly around the house and constantly checking my phone for the time.

            "Seth, is something bothering you today?" asked Mom from the kitchen where she was making a few sandwiches for lunch, peanut butter and jelly for them and raw hamburgers for me.

            "You're usually dead asleep by now from your trips up the mountain, yet here you are pacing around, nervous as a rabbit!"

            I stopped to face her. "Well, nervous as a wolf anyway," I laughed. "Mom? There's someone I want you and Dad to meet! They should arrive here any minute!"

            "Someone you want us to meet? But you've never brought anyone to the house before!"

            "This is someone special," I said grinning widely, then paused. "In fact I think they're here now!"

            I heard the sound of a Mazda 3 gradually get louder until it came to a stop in front of the house, breaks squeaking at too high a frequency for my human parents to notice. With ears as good as mine and a lot of practice, I was able to tell the different engine manufacturers apart without looking (and often the specific model of car as well). The door opened and slammed, and there were quick, nearly silent footfalls on the front walk that again would have been inaudible to my parents. I opened the door before she arrived.

            "Hi Emma-Uh, are you…?"

            "Yes silly, it's me!" She leaned closer and whispered, "What did you think I'd show up in my wolf form or something?" As she spoke, her scent reached my nose confirming it was her.

            "Oh!"  I laughed. "I just… I didn't really think about it. I've just never seen your human form before…"

            "Well yep, it's me!" She did a little spin to emphasize the fact; this left me feeling dazzled all over again just like the morning before.

            "Seth, who's there? Are you going to let them in?" My mom came to the door and taking it from me opened it wider to see my guest. "Oh! Hello! Come on inside. Dan, Dan? Seth has a visitor!" she called to my Dad.  "Oh, he must be asleep," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "What's your name?" she asked Emmalee, leading us both to the couches in the living room where I'd slept earlier. "Mom, this is Emmalee!" I answered for her. "I met her last night while hunting!"

            "While… hunting?" Mom said, somewhat startled. "But does that mean she…?" she asked hesitantly, her voice trailing off while looking from me to Emmalee to search her expression.

            "Yep, she saw me as a werewolf!" I said grinning once again as Mom brought her hands to her mouth.

            "It's okay Mrs. Davis!" said Emmalee soothingly. "See, I'm a werewolf too!"

            Her panic at my potential discovery was replaced with confusion. "Another werewolf? Besides my husband's deceased brother and his wife, Seth here is the only werewolf I've ever known all these years! He always used to tell me about never being able to smell out other werewolves anywhere else either." She looked towards me at that last word and I nodded in affirmation.

            "Well, we aren't very common, but we are out there. In fact, my mom and older brother are also werewolves. My dad isn't though, and my mom didn't reveal her true self to him until their honeymoon cruise. Needless to say it was quite a shock!"

            "I know how that is," my mom said laughing. I thought about my first shift so long ago and joined in laughing as well as I remembered her startled reactions.
"I think she's the one that planned the long cruise; since they were at sea for so long he wouldn't have been able to make any hasty decisions or just leave after she showed her wolf side. She was very nervous at first, and to hear her tell it he didn't know quite how to respond to her sudden revelation either.  Soon though, he realized she was still the same person and decided not to let that come between them at all. She even offered to turn him, but he still hasn't made up his mind if he wants to be bitten or not. We tease him for it sometimes, but he takes it good-naturedly."

            We spent most of the afternoon in the living room, Emmalee getting acquainted with my mom. Although this was the second time hearing most of her story, I listened with rapt attention to every word Emmalee spoke. Once dad finally came down from his Sunday nap I was able to fill him in with what he missed before arriving. They both agreed Emmalee was bright, witty, independent and full of life, and we shared a lot of the same beliefs.  My parents couldn't have been happier with her, especially now that they'd found out she was a werewolf like their only son! Mom even broke out my usually well-hidden wolf photo album she had used to save pictures of me in my wolf form doing crazy things through the years; it had never been seen by anyone outside the family before. Emmalee laughed at the pictures and commented on how cute of a wolf pup I'd been.

            Later in the evening, mom offered to make a nice meal and invite her to stay for dinner; raw steaks for me and Emmalee and well-done for my parents. Em was impressed with how thoughtfully she was able to take care of our unique lupine tastes, but my mom just shrugged it off and said it all came from having such a picky eater in the house, winking playfully at me as she did.

            After dinner, I followed Emmalee in my Tacoma to go meet her parents. She had a nice house way on the other side of town that, like mine, was nestled in the forest to allow for frequent trips out into the woods. I'd never really ventured to that side of the forest more than once or twice because the valley was so big with various cities, and the lake in the middle made it difficult too.  It was no wonder I'd never caught her scent before.

            Her family was very nice, and I could definitely catch the werewolf scent of her mom and brother before I even entered. Her dad was a proficient scientist at the lab in our area. Turns out he didn't want to become a werewolf without thoroughly studying the werewolf virus and its healing properties to see if it could be used in the medical industry and help cure diseases. Someday he'd get bitten by his wife and try to catalog all the changes and modifications that took place as they happened.

            Her mother was able to tell me many things about what being a werewolf meant, finally putting to rest many questions I'd had about myself growing up. I learned about the various packs scattered throughout the world, and how it was rare to fine lone wolves like me since we're such a social race with wolves and humans being that way independent of each other to begin with. She considered her husband and children to be her pack just as her own family had been when she was growing up, and whenever they could they'd go meet with another pack that lived a couple hours away.  I reveled in this great new feeling I'd never experienced before meeting Emmalee; now I had even more werewolves to share the secret with. They even accepted me like a brother into the pack; I didn't have to be a lone wolf anymore!

            While on the topic of wolf packs, she mentioned that several famous people were actually werewolves, especially athletes. Jay Leno, Venus and Serena Williams, and You know Kobe Bryant? Yeah, he's actually a werewolf too! I wondered how he did it, keeping his lycanthropy secret after being so famous (not to mention all the blood and other medical tests they must do on professional athletes).

            Another interesting fact was that sometimes werewolves gave birth to other werewolves, and other times they'd be born human without the ability to change at all. This is what had happened to her younger brother John. Fortunately, with at least one werewolf parent, the chance was very high that a werewolf bite would change him. He'd grown up with his mom and older sister, so naturally being around lycanthropy made it normal part of life for him. When he reached the age of accountability at 8 years old, he was given the chance to have the same.  He took it and was bitten by Emmalee and her mother simultaneously in a special ceremony.

            Before leaving for the night, I remembered the upcoming graduation dance and asked her if she was doing anything next weekend; although we'd still be busy with the last week of school ahead and each still have work and other human duties to attend to, she agreed and said she'd love to go.

            Though we hardly saw one another in person that week with so much going on, we were able to text each other frequently and chat on Facebook (though we never mentioned werewolves in any conversations except in person just to be safe). We even managed to catch a movie and eat out on the night before graduation.

            Even though our graduation ceremonies were both on the same evening, fortunately they were spread out enough so I could catch hers before we rushed over to mine just as it started. Although most of what both commencement speakers said was the typical cliché graduation spiel one would expect about going forth, the future being in our hands, and this being the first day of the rest of our lives, when they talked about having made lifelong friendships here at such-and-such high, me and Emmalee both met eyes and smiled, mutually agreeing that was probably going to be the case with us.

            One particular quote from someone named Alan Alda also stuck out:

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing, but what you'll discover will be wonderful.    What you'll discover will be yourself.

            How fitting that we'd just met in the "wilderness" just days before, and now here we were sharing this life-changing event together! I hoped it was a sign as to things to come in our future together.

            After the ceremony, both families drove to my house where my parents had put together a small party at my house complete with festive graduation-themed balloons and plenty of food to suit both wolf and human tastes. Me, Emmalee, her two brothers, and her mom all decided to shift to werewolf form, howling and laughing and just generally having a good time. After an hour or two, me and Em shifted back to our human forms to get ready for the dance, me donning my black tuxedo and her sporting an impressive, robin's-egg blue dress and white satin gloves. I wasn't sure why, but Em insisted we bring our normal clothes with us in a duffle bag "just in case."

            After walking her out to the car, I realized I'd forgotten my camera and dashed back to the house to grab it from the coat rack by the front door where I'd left it. As I turned to leave again, my mom called my name, then came over with a hug to say how proud of me she was and how great I looked in the tuxedo.

            "Have fun, and remember who you are!" she whispered with a smile. I grinned and winked at her before jumping 20 feet to land by the car door and got inside.

            "I will."

            We arrived at the graduation dance about an hour after it had started. Since we were back in civilization, I resisted the urge to do acrobatics and settled on merely sliding across the hood of the car to the passenger door to help her out. She smiled. "Thank you!" Chivalry is not dead.

            The inside of the club was just about how one would expect it to be: Pounding trance music that hurt our ears more than it did most people's, flashing strobe and colored chaser lights, and a seething mass of entangled people moving to the beat on the dance floor. The only thing that stuck out were the teachers who were reluctantly there to chaperon and make sure nobody got too carried away.

            We hovered around the food table and had a couple drinks from the punch bowl while waiting for the current song to be done, me introducing Em to a few people I knew in the interim. They were just ending a longer remix so we had about 10 minutes to wait, but since the music was so loud we weren't really able to say a whole lot. Man, telepathy would have come in handy here. Once the next mix started, Emmalee was the first to react.

            "Oh I love this song! Come dance with me!" she yelled above the noise.

            "Um, I'm not that great of a dancer." I barked back.

            "Is mah big wuff afwaid of dancin'?"she cooed in the voice people use to talk to small children. I looked around nervously, not used to hearing the "W" word used so casually in public, but I need not have worried from the noise.

            "No, no. It's just that I have 4 left feet."She giggled at my joke but pulled me onto the floor.

            "Not right now you don't! Come on, I'll teach you!"

            We found a space, and she yelled to me again. "Alright, it's easy. Just move to the music and do what feels natural! Here, I'll show you." She started off slowly until finding a pattern she liked, then started swinging her arms and gyrating to the music. I felt uneasy, but moved in and tried to start swaying to the music like she had. I felt like a fool, but she would smile at me every so often in an encouraging way to keep me going.

            After a couple more loud techno songs had passed, the DJ finally decided on a slower, quieter song. At that, Emmalee grabbed my hands and guided them to her hips despite my embarrassed protests and put her own arms on my shoulders.

            "Slow dancing is a little different. You still move to the music, but like the title implies it's a bit more relaxed. Our legs are a bit offset so we can move our feet without running into each other, like this." I was nervous about the position we were in never having slow danced before, but let her guide me until I got the movements down.

            After the first slow song was over, the DJ put on another. Although I was starting to enjoy this whole dancing thing, it was getting a little hot in here. I pulled at my white collar with one finger to emphasize the fact.

            "It's getting a little hot in here; mind if we go outside?" I asked. She nodded, so we stepped off the dance floor and out of the crowd, up the winding spiral staircase which was half-hidden in the back, and up to the flat cement roof. There was only one other couple there making out, but once they saw us they decided to leave the way we came, giving us free reign of the place. Even better, we could still hear the music from downstairs clearly through the semi-opaque skylights on the far side of the roof.

            "Care for another dance, milady?" I asked in the best British accent I could muster, which sounded terrible.

            "Why yes of course, fine sir," she said in a much better accent of her own, coming towards me with an arm arched upwards. I took it, and we started dancing again part way into the song.

            As the music softly played in the background, we moved our stance closer, my arms traveling to the small of her back and hers coming up to embrace my neck. Wordlessly, she bit her lower lip and looked at my mouth before slowly closing her eyes and inching her face closer to mine as she did. I'd never been in this situation before, but had seen enough movies and been in the halls of high school long enough to know what it meant. My heart began to pound, but ignoring my fear I closed my eyes as well and hoped I didn't miss.

            When our lips met, the same feeling I'd gotten when we first met came back, this time even more powerful than the first. All fear replaced with excitement, I moved in a bit more forcefully, kissing her harder and running my tongue along her lip as I did. She accepted and opened her mouth further as her tongue met mine. At that moment, I lost control of my ability to stay human; I could feel my muscles bulging and fur poking out of my pores like daisies.

            I kept my eyes sealed shut but could feel her body start to do the same against mine. Our clothes tore and fell around us, the sound of ripping getting more pronounced every time our hearts beat; it sounded almost like the rhythm of a song. I barely felt the pain as my feet burst through my dress shoes; I heard as Em kicked off her heels before the same happened to her. Our hands had become the more paw-like appendages of our anthro wolf forms, and we continued to embrace, our arms sliding somewhat further apart as we both expanded in size. We kept kissing and shifting, even when both of our mouths became muzzles. I could feel her tongue flatten and elongate as it became rougher, and still we kissed nose to nose. With a gasp, our mouths broke apart as we finished our transformations in unison, both exhaling heavily and panting. I moved to lick her furry face with my lupine tongue as she nuzzled into my shoulder. I stopped the wet kisses as she moved to lay her cheek softly against my chest, then positioned my own head on top of hers, both still in each other's embrace.

            "I love you," I whispered softly into her ear.

             was her soft telepathic reply.

            We stood like that for a few minutes simply enjoying the feel of one another's embrace, only fur and torn remainders of our clothing separating our entwined bodies. It was magical, standing there with the crescent moon hanging high above us in the cloudless sky, the wind playing softly through our fur as the stars shone in her golden eyes.

            Emmalee broke the silence without moving a muscle.



            Man, she had a way of getting to the point. Right then the slow song ended and melted back into one of the heavy techno mixes, and almost as if her soundless words had been prophetic, we both turned as the sounds of footsteps came clattering up the long spiral staircase. Using superhuman (or super wolf I guess) effort, I broke our embrace. We laughingly gathered up the remains of my tux and her dress and sprinted quickly to the edge of the roof closest to the dark parking lot, then pausing briefly to look over and make sure nobody was there, we jumped the 12 feet down to land on either side of her car, both of us reverting as we went.

            Fortunately, the spare clothing she'd suggested we bring was still in the duffle bag in the back seat; we tore it open and donned the clothing just as the final changes from wolf to human took place.  I took off out of the parking lot a little too quickly, squealing the tires as we sped laughingly back to her house. In reality, the timing worked out perfectly; her dad said I had to bring her back by midnight, and it was just after quarter 'til. Besides, he'd jokingly promised he'd sic Emmalee's mom on me if I brought her back late, and serious or not I didn't want to tangle with another full grown werewolf (not in that way at least). With one final kiss for the evening on her front porch to wish her good night, I then half stumbled over to my truck where I'd parked it earlier. I drove home in a happy, content daze, on top of the world and already anxiously awaiting the next time we'd meet.

Description
            My eyes fluttered open and were met with the dark silhouettes of pines. I didn't immediately remember where I was or how I'd gotten there. Propping myself up to a sitting position with my front paws I yawned deeply revealing my fangs and stretched my fur-covered arms high over my head. Man, I hadn't slept this heavily in a long time! I'd had such a nice dream; it was so real too. If only I could remember what it was? Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I looked to the sky trying to judge the time based on the position of the stars. For once I regretted not bringing a cell phone or at least a watch (as impractical as that would be).  I tried to think about what I'd done over the last several hours. There was moshing at the Metallica concert, driving back and coming up here to hunt, but what after that…?

            It all rushed back to me in an instant: I'd encountered the first werewolf I'd ever seen and pretty much fallen in love with her at first sight! After the initial shock of finally meeting another of my kind had turned to excitement for the same reason, I was able to talk freely and openly unlike I ever had before, even to my parents. It was such a refreshing change to not hide who I was! We'd talked about her family and how she'd also been born a werewolf (from her mom's side), we'd talked about school and friends, likes and dislikes, how we each dealt with being a werewolf, all this while running side by side for hours, her responding all the while through telepathy, of course. She also taught me more about team hunting and the trips she'd taken with her mother. It was as if we'd already known each other, and were coming back together at last like long lost friends. You could say it was just like the plot from some cheesy romance movie, a fantasy dream that was almost too good to be true.

            I jumped up on all four legs to shake off my coat, then rose up to just the hind legs of my anthro wolf form, scenting the night breeze and letting my ears rotate to catch any sound they might pick up. Finding nothing but the usual night sounds of the forest, I started off towards home again in an easy jog. If it wasn't a dream, the plan was to meet up at my house Sunday afternoon so I could introduce her to my parents, then later I'd meet hers. I figured that since she'd found me early Saturday morning and it was dark again, it was either sometime that same night or early Sunday morning. We'd probably fallen asleep sometime during the day here in that patch of scrub oak, but she must have left some time ago. Hungry again already from all that running, I decided to hunt something down before heading home to take a quick morning nap before church started. I could hardly focus for all the thoughts of Emmalee I had on my mind; I scared away 3 different deer and had to resort to a couple of raccoons to somewhat fill me up instead.

            While hunting I'd worked my way through the dark trees and closer to civilization, and soon caught my scent on the drybag with my clothes.  Not caring much for getting dressed right then, I shifted to my timber wolf form instead and carried the bag in my mouth as I went. I figured Emmalee was probably sleeping right now; unlike me she pretty much kept on a human schedule all week because of school and everything else, but it had paid off.  I hadn't done too bad myself (I'd gotten a full ride scholarship to a prestigious university after all), but this week she'd graduate high school not only as one of the highest in her class, but with an associate's degree already in the bag to boot! Even with everything on her plate, she'd told me she didn't want to risk waiting to find me until summer started on the chance that I'd leave to college right after graduating. It was important for her to talk to me wolf to wolf; that's why she'd gone to all the trouble of always keeping downwind and carefully hiding her tracks. She'd been trying to locate me for the last 3 weekends and had woken very early the morning she finally found me. I'm so glad she did, I never would have known her otherwise!

            Once on the back deck with my paws lightly clicking on the wooden slats, I did a quick 360 degree scan of my surroundings to make sure nobody else was around (every once in a while people would cut through the woods in my back yard), shook a few dead leaves and pieces of grass from my fur that I'd missed before, then transformed my right paw until it was just hand-like enough to open the back door and then slipped inside. I opened my jaws to drop the bag by the mat on the tiled floor, then looked up to check the time on the microwave clock. The green glowing digits were a bit hard on my eyes, but I saw they indicated it was 5:50am.  I didn't feel like going to the trouble of using a bed right then either and ambled over to the living room (so I could hear easier when my parents were up), then flopped limply on the carpet to catch a few winks.

            After getting home from church later that day, I couldn't contain my excitement. I was pacing absentmindedly around the house and constantly checking my phone for the time.

            "Seth, is something bothering you today?" asked Mom from the kitchen where she was making a few sandwiches for lunch, peanut butter and jelly for them and raw hamburgers for me.

            "You're usually dead asleep by now from your trips up the mountain, yet here you are pacing around, nervous as a rabbit!"

            I stopped to face her. "Well, nervous as a wolf anyway," I laughed. "Mom? There's someone I want you and Dad to meet! They should arrive here any minute!"

            "Someone you want us to meet? But you've never brought anyone to the house before!"

            "This is someone special," I said grinning widely, then paused. "In fact I think they're here now!"

            I heard the sound of a Mazda 3 gradually get louder until it came to a stop in front of the house, breaks squeaking at too high a frequency for my human parents to notice. With ears as good as mine and a lot of practice, I was able to tell the different engine manufacturers apart without looking (and often the specific model of car as well). The door opened and slammed, and there were quick, nearly silent footfalls on the front walk that again would have been inaudible to my parents. I opened the door before she arrived.

            "Hi Emma-Uh, are you…?"

            "Yes silly, it's me!" She leaned closer and whispered, "What did you think I'd show up in my wolf form or something?" As she spoke, her scent reached my nose confirming it was her.

            "Oh!"  I laughed. "I just… I didn't really think about it. I've just never seen your human form before…"

            "Well yep, it's me!" She did a little spin to emphasize the fact; this left me feeling dazzled all over again just like the morning before.

            "Seth, who's there? Are you going to let them in?" My mom came to the door and taking it from me opened it wider to see my guest. "Oh! Hello! Come on inside. Dan, Dan? Seth has a visitor!" she called to my Dad.  "Oh, he must be asleep," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "What's your name?" she asked Emmalee, leading us both to the couches in the living room where I'd slept earlier. "Mom, this is Emmalee!" I answered for her. "I met her last night while hunting!"

            "While… hunting?" Mom said, somewhat startled. "But does that mean she…?" she asked hesitantly, her voice trailing off while looking from me to Emmalee to search her expression.

            "Yep, she saw me as a werewolf!" I said grinning once again as Mom brought her hands to her mouth.

            "It's okay Mrs. Davis!" said Emmalee soothingly. "See, I'm a werewolf too!"

            Her panic at my potential discovery was replaced with confusion. "Another werewolf? Besides my husband's deceased brother and his wife, Seth here is the only werewolf I've ever known all these years! He always used to tell me about never being able to smell out other werewolves anywhere else either." She looked towards me at that last word and I nodded in affirmation.

            "Well, we aren't very common, but we are out there. In fact, my mom and older brother are also werewolves. My dad isn't though, and my mom didn't reveal her true self to him until their honeymoon cruise. Needless to say it was quite a shock!"

            "I know how that is," my mom said laughing. I thought about my first shift so long ago and joined in laughing as well as I remembered her startled reactions.
"I think she's the one that planned the long cruise; since they were at sea for so long he wouldn't have been able to make any hasty decisions or just leave after she showed her wolf side. She was very nervous at first, and to hear her tell it he didn't know quite how to respond to her sudden revelation either.  Soon though, he realized she was still the same person and decided not to let that come between them at all. She even offered to turn him, but he still hasn't made up his mind if he wants to be bitten or not. We tease him for it sometimes, but he takes it good-naturedly."

            We spent most of the afternoon in the living room, Emmalee getting acquainted with my mom. Although this was the second time hearing most of her story, I listened with rapt attention to every word Emmalee spoke. Once dad finally came down from his Sunday nap I was able to fill him in with what he missed before arriving. They both agreed Emmalee was bright, witty, independent and full of life, and we shared a lot of the same beliefs.  My parents couldn't have been happier with her, especially now that they'd found out she was a werewolf like their only son! Mom even broke out my usually well-hidden wolf photo album she had used to save pictures of me in my wolf form doing crazy things through the years; it had never been seen by anyone outside the family before. Emmalee laughed at the pictures and commented on how cute of a wolf pup I'd been.

            Later in the evening, mom offered to make a nice meal and invite her to stay for dinner; raw steaks for me and Emmalee and well-done for my parents. Em was impressed with how thoughtfully she was able to take care of our unique lupine tastes, but my mom just shrugged it off and said it all came from having such a picky eater in the house, winking playfully at me as she did.

            After dinner, I followed Emmalee in my Tacoma to go meet her parents. She had a nice house way on the other side of town that, like mine, was nestled in the forest to allow for frequent trips out into the woods. I'd never really ventured to that side of the forest more than once or twice because the valley was so big with various cities, and the lake in the middle made it difficult too.  It was no wonder I'd never caught her scent before.

            Her family was very nice, and I could definitely catch the werewolf scent of her mom and brother before I even entered. Her dad was a proficient scientist at the lab in our area. Turns out he didn't want to become a werewolf without thoroughly studying the werewolf virus and its healing properties to see if it could be used in the medical industry and help cure diseases. Someday he'd get bitten by his wife and try to catalog all the changes and modifications that took place as they happened.

            Her mother was able to tell me many things about what being a werewolf meant, finally putting to rest many questions I'd had about myself growing up. I learned about the various packs scattered throughout the world, and how it was rare to fine lone wolves like me since we're such a social race with wolves and humans being that way independent of each other to begin with. She considered her husband and children to be her pack just as her own family had been when she was growing up, and whenever they could they'd go meet with another pack that lived a couple hours away.  I reveled in this great new feeling I'd never experienced before meeting Emmalee; now I had even more werewolves to share the secret with. They even accepted me like a brother into the pack; I didn't have to be a lone wolf anymore!

            While on the topic of wolf packs, she mentioned that several famous people were actually werewolves, especially athletes. Jay Leno, Venus and Serena Williams, and You know Kobe Bryant? Yeah, he's actually a werewolf too! I wondered how he did it, keeping his lycanthropy secret after being so famous (not to mention all the blood and other medical tests they must do on professional athletes).

            Another interesting fact was that sometimes werewolves gave birth to other werewolves, and other times they'd be born human without the ability to change at all. This is what had happened to her younger brother John. Fortunately, with at least one werewolf parent, the chance was very high that a werewolf bite would change him. He'd grown up with his mom and older sister, so naturally being around lycanthropy made it normal part of life for him. When he reached the age of accountability at 8 years old, he was given the chance to have the same.  He took it and was bitten by Emmalee and her mother simultaneously in a special ceremony.

            Before leaving for the night, I remembered the upcoming graduation dance and asked her if she was doing anything next weekend; although we'd still be busy with the last week of school ahead and each still have work and other human duties to attend to, she agreed and said she'd love to go.

            Though we hardly saw one another in person that week with so much going on, we were able to text each other frequently and chat on Facebook (though we never mentioned werewolves in any conversations except in person just to be safe). We even managed to catch a movie and eat out on the night before graduation.

            Even though our graduation ceremonies were both on the same evening, fortunately they were spread out enough so I could catch hers before we rushed over to mine just as it started. Although most of what both commencement speakers said was the typical cliché graduation spiel one would expect about going forth, the future being in our hands, and this being the first day of the rest of our lives, when they talked about having made lifelong friendships here at such-and-such high, me and Emmalee both met eyes and smiled, mutually agreeing that was probably going to be the case with us.

            One particular quote from someone named Alan Alda also stuck out:

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing, but what you'll discover will be wonderful.    What you'll discover will be yourself.

            How fitting that we'd just met in the "wilderness" just days before, and now here we were sharing this life-changing event together! I hoped it was a sign as to things to come in our future together.

            After the ceremony, both families drove to my house where my parents had put together a small party at my house complete with festive graduation-themed balloons and plenty of food to suit both wolf and human tastes. Me, Emmalee, her two brothers, and her mom all decided to shift to werewolf form, howling and laughing and just generally having a good time. After an hour or two, me and Em shifted back to our human forms to get ready for the dance, me donning my black tuxedo and her sporting an impressive, robin's-egg blue dress and white satin gloves. I wasn't sure why, but Em insisted we bring our normal clothes with us in a duffle bag "just in case."

            After walking her out to the car, I realized I'd forgotten my camera and dashed back to the house to grab it from the coat rack by the front door where I'd left it. As I turned to leave again, my mom called my name, then came over with a hug to say how proud of me she was and how great I looked in the tuxedo.

            "Have fun, and remember who you are!" she whispered with a smile. I grinned and winked at her before jumping 20 feet to land by the car door and got inside.

            "I will."

            We arrived at the graduation dance about an hour after it had started. Since we were back in civilization, I resisted the urge to do acrobatics and settled on merely sliding across the hood of the car to the passenger door to help her out. She smiled. "Thank you!" Chivalry is not dead.

            The inside of the club was just about how one would expect it to be: Pounding trance music that hurt our ears more than it did most people's, flashing strobe and colored chaser lights, and a seething mass of entangled people moving to the beat on the dance floor. The only thing that stuck out were the teachers who were reluctantly there to chaperon and make sure nobody got too carried away.

            We hovered around the food table and had a couple drinks from the punch bowl while waiting for the current song to be done, me introducing Em to a few people I knew in the interim. They were just ending a longer remix so we had about 10 minutes to wait, but since the music was so loud we weren't really able to say a whole lot. Man, telepathy would have come in handy here. Once the next mix started, Emmalee was the first to react.

            "Oh I love this song! Come dance with me!" she yelled above the noise.

            "Um, I'm not that great of a dancer." I barked back.

            "Is mah big wuff afwaid of dancin'?"she cooed in the voice people use to talk to small children. I looked around nervously, not used to hearing the "W" word used so casually in public, but I need not have worried from the noise.

            "No, no. It's just that I have 4 left feet."She giggled at my joke but pulled me onto the floor.

            "Not right now you don't! Come on, I'll teach you!"

            We found a space, and she yelled to me again. "Alright, it's easy. Just move to the music and do what feels natural! Here, I'll show you." She started off slowly until finding a pattern she liked, then started swinging her arms and gyrating to the music. I felt uneasy, but moved in and tried to start swaying to the music like she had. I felt like a fool, but she would smile at me every so often in an encouraging way to keep me going.

            After a couple more loud techno songs had passed, the DJ finally decided on a slower, quieter song. At that, Emmalee grabbed my hands and guided them to her hips despite my embarrassed protests and put her own arms on my shoulders.

            "Slow dancing is a little different. You still move to the music, but like the title implies it's a bit more relaxed. Our legs are a bit offset so we can move our feet without running into each other, like this." I was nervous about the position we were in never having slow danced before, but let her guide me until I got the movements down.

            After the first slow song was over, the DJ put on another. Although I was starting to enjoy this whole dancing thing, it was getting a little hot in here. I pulled at my white collar with one finger to emphasize the fact.

            "It's getting a little hot in here; mind if we go outside?" I asked. She nodded, so we stepped off the dance floor and out of the crowd, up the winding spiral staircase which was half-hidden in the back, and up to the flat cement roof. There was only one other couple there making out, but once they saw us they decided to leave the way we came, giving us free reign of the place. Even better, we could still hear the music from downstairs clearly through the semi-opaque skylights on the far side of the roof.

            "Care for another dance, milady?" I asked in the best British accent I could muster, which sounded terrible.

            "Why yes of course, fine sir," she said in a much better accent of her own, coming towards me with an arm arched upwards. I took it, and we started dancing again part way into the song.

            As the music softly played in the background, we moved our stance closer, my arms traveling to the small of her back and hers coming up to embrace my neck. Wordlessly, she bit her lower lip and looked at my mouth before slowly closing her eyes and inching her face closer to mine as she did. I'd never been in this situation before, but had seen enough movies and been in the halls of high school long enough to know what it meant. My heart began to pound, but ignoring my fear I closed my eyes as well and hoped I didn't miss.

            When our lips met, the same feeling I'd gotten when we first met came back, this time even more powerful than the first. All fear replaced with excitement, I moved in a bit more forcefully, kissing her harder and running my tongue along her lip as I did. She accepted and opened her mouth further as her tongue met mine. At that moment, I lost control of my ability to stay human; I could feel my muscles bulging and fur poking out of my pores like daisies.

            I kept my eyes sealed shut but could feel her body start to do the same against mine. Our clothes tore and fell around us, the sound of ripping getting more pronounced every time our hearts beat; it sounded almost like the rhythm of a song. I barely felt the pain as my feet burst through my dress shoes; I heard as Em kicked off her heels before the same happened to her. Our hands had become the more paw-like appendages of our anthro wolf forms, and we continued to embrace, our arms sliding somewhat further apart as we both expanded in size. We kept kissing and shifting, even when both of our mouths became muzzles. I could feel her tongue flatten and elongate as it became rougher, and still we kissed nose to nose. With a gasp, our mouths broke apart as we finished our transformations in unison, both exhaling heavily and panting. I moved to lick her furry face with my lupine tongue as she nuzzled into my shoulder. I stopped the wet kisses as she moved to lay her cheek softly against my chest, then positioned my own head on top of hers, both still in each other's embrace.

            "I love you," I whispered softly into her ear.

             was her soft telepathic reply.

            We stood like that for a few minutes simply enjoying the feel of one another's embrace, only fur and torn remainders of our clothing separating our entwined bodies. It was magical, standing there with the crescent moon hanging high above us in the cloudless sky, the wind playing softly through our fur as the stars shone in her golden eyes.

            Emmalee broke the silence without moving a muscle.



            Man, she had a way of getting to the point. Right then the slow song ended and melted back into one of the heavy techno mixes, and almost as if her soundless words had been prophetic, we both turned as the sounds of footsteps came clattering up the long spiral staircase. Using superhuman (or super wolf I guess) effort, I broke our embrace. We laughingly gathered up the remains of my tux and her dress and sprinted quickly to the edge of the roof closest to the dark parking lot, then pausing briefly to look over and make sure nobody was there, we jumped the 12 feet down to land on either side of her car, both of us reverting as we went.

            Fortunately, the spare clothing she'd suggested we bring was still in the duffle bag in the back seat; we tore it open and donned the clothing just as the final changes from wolf to human took place.  I took off out of the parking lot a little too quickly, squealing the tires as we sped laughingly back to her house. In reality, the timing worked out perfectly; her dad said I had to bring her back by midnight, and it was just after quarter 'til. Besides, he'd jokingly promised he'd sic Emmalee's mom on me if I brought her back late, and serious or not I didn't want to tangle with another full grown werewolf (not in that way at least). With one final kiss for the evening on her front porch to wish her good night, I then half stumbled over to my truck where I'd parked it earlier. I drove home in a happy, content daze, on top of the world and already anxiously awaiting the next time we'd meet.