Molly had ended up staying at the library until closing, though she didn't mean to. She'd become engrossed in a coffee table book featuring pictures of European architecture through the ages and had lost track of time. She'd only come back to the real world after the librarian had pointedly told her the place was closing in ten minutes.
It doesn't matter in any event. Molly would rather be anywhere but home with her domineering mother, even though Mother will be in a rage that she'd stayed out so late. She doesn't even care about Molly, really, she just likes to have her there to fetch and carry and listen while she complains. Molly wishes for the millionth time in her life that her father had taken her when he'd left when she was a baby.
So now Molly walks home through the park. There is a full moon so she can see easily enough, though the wind is fierce and cold. She wraps her oversized red hoodie tight around her small frame and tries to hurry. Even though Molly is twenty, no one ever believes her when she tells them. She is short and slight and has the face of a twelve year old. Life is really not fair.
She doesn't see her attackers until they are right on top of her, and then she only gets a vague impression of several men surrounding her, before a chemical-smelling cloth is put over her nose. The next thing Molly knows, she is waking up underneath a spotlight. She cannot see anything outside the overbright cone of light, and the only thing inside it is her and a circle of concrete floor. She sits up, her head still foggy from the drug, feeling more confusion than fear. Then she hears a growl.
It is a low rumble, like thunder, decidedly not human, and Molly's reaction is curious. Her heart thumps against her ribs, but not entirely in fear. There is a bit of that, but mostly she feels...excitement. Unexpectedly, a few more lights come on overhead, expanding her puddle of visibility, and she jumps and yelps, startled. The growl ceases as if flipped off by a switch. She doesn't think it was, though. Something in her knows that whatever made that sound is still outside the light, watching. Waiting.
Her eyes are drawn to the direction she last heard the sound, held there. She can't look down, away. She doesn't want to. Finally, there are scuffling sounds, and a clacking against the concrete floor as it steps into the light, and Molly's breath freezes in her lungs. No, not human, but not animal either. Molly stands, face it, trembling more from shock than fear.
"You are real," she whispers. "You are a werewolf."
He, and he is definitely male, stands taller than most humans, well over seven feet. His head is entirely canine, a wolf's head, with the triangular ears that stand up, and a muzzle full of sharp, deadly-looking teeth. His eyes, though, there is something in them that is intelligent. Perhaps not human, but more than animal. He watches her with amber eyes as intently as she is watching him.
