I didn't always know that I was a werepanther. For the first 15 years of my life, I was a fairly well-adjusted kid, albeit a little withdrawn from my peers. I lived with my mother and older sister, born four years earlier than myself. I never met my father. Though I grew up wondering about him, I never grew up hating him. Both my mother and my sister would say that he "had to leave" and that "it was for the best".
Sometime in my 15th year on the planet, my mother didn't come home from work. Not that day, not the day after, not EVER. It left just me and my sister, Lauren, to fend for ourselves. I won't lie, it was hard. I couldn't have a job and maintain my grades, and Lauren's waitressing job barely made ends meet on our bills. Luckily, she could bring home food from the Denny's she worked at, so we didn't starve. She actually settled into the mother role quite well, as she'd always been very protective of me, and we were quite close, even for a brother and sister.
As my 16th birthday drew closer, though, things began to get a little tense. She'd begun acting more withdrawn from me, not really wanting to be near me. I found it all the more bothersome when I'd ask what was bothering her, and she'd simply shake her head, with a distant look in her eyes. She'd lie and say, "Nothing, bro. Nothing at all," then she'd make some idle chitchat to change the topic, and it would be forgotten. If I pushed the issue too much, she'd get rather upset and simply leave.
In the last month leading up to my birthday, things began to get truly odd for me. At seemingly random points, but always when I was in close proximity to my sister, a sensation similar to a light static charge would run through my body. It would cloud my thoughts, buzzing in my brain, and thrum through my groin. The closer my birthday came, the more frequent, and stronger these sensations became. Worse yet, they now seemed to be at their strongest when I simply touched my sister. I gave her a hug and popped a raging hard on almost immediately. I don't know whose face held more shock and shame, really. In the final week before my birthday, we barely spoke, and couldn't bring ourselves to make eye contact. Obviously, we didn't hug or touch each other at all if we could avoid it. Yet inevitably, at some point we'd brush against each other, and both leap back from the insanely powerful sensation.
The sensation I finally realized that she felt as well.
"You felt that too?" I asked hesitantly, freaked out and ashamed still.
"We'll have this talk soon enough, bro. We'll have this talk soon enough," she replied cryptically.
Then it was my birthday and she simply said, "Bro, it's time you found out a few things." Boy, was I in for a shock.