Riot Wheeler is a werewolf that currently resides in Shadow Lake and has been a Lunar Cove resident for 6 months trying to outrun their past, but even supernatural speed won’t help them now.
DON’T THEY KNOW IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD?
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Nonbinary, They/Them & Ze/Hir AGE: 26 PLACE OF BIRTH: Baton Rouge, Louisiana OCCUPATION: Cashier at Hero Comics FACECLAIM: Fin Argus
IT ENDED WHEN YOU SAID GOODBYE
SPECIES: Werewolf PACK POSITION: Non-Member (Beta)
WELCOME TO LUNAR COVE, RIOT WHEELER
Trigger Warnings: Murder, Implied Physical Assault, Gun, Ptsd
MawMaw had a real name. Logically, Riot knew this. But for their whole life, and their mama’s whole life too probably, she’d only ever been MawMaw. When Riot came along, they became the third generation she raised. She raised her own daughter, and then her granddaughter, and Riot’s arrival marks her great grandchild. It wasn’t a typical family dynamic. Riot was aware of that from a very young age. Their granddad passed away when they’re only four, and their mother would come and go, so for the most part it was just them and MawMaw in what had to be the cheapest apartment in Baton Rouge. They didn’t have cable, and some of the other kids in the apartment complex didn’t seem to warm up to Riot, but in all it was pretty okay. When they were young, their MawMaw told them about The Before. Before it was just the two of them, their family was extensive, connected. Bonded in a way that humans could never understand. She said it so matter-of-factly, Riot almost forgot to question what she meant, separating them from humans. She waved them off at first, promising to explain when they were older. The whole thing was not a tale for young ears, she used to say. Still, she raised a hellion not a fool, and as unbelievable as it sounded to them, it was fun to imagine the reason she let them sleep over at friends’ houses so often and stressed that she wore white gold and supposedly went to bed so early was because maybe she was secretly an alien and not just their elderly great grandma.
Apparently eleven was old enough for the whole story. Up to that point, she just talked about how her parents were respected and her uncle was reckless and her sister ran off with her sweetheart back in ‘56 and never called or wrote home again. But at eleven, Riot was deemed Old Enough for the Truth. She made it sound like a high honor. The story she told would be fantastical and unbelievable if Riot hadn’t known for a fact MawMaw had never, ever lied to them, not even to spare their feelings. She told them that, in The Before, their family had a rich history in Louisiana. There was a word for them. MawMaw grew up speaking French at home, and stumbled through learning English at school, much to her instructors’ ire, so she tried to speak more English than French with Riot, and when she dropped the word “loup-garou”, it took them a moment. Loup means wolf. What did garou mean? They were only mildly annoyed to find out it means werewolf. Her big reveal, overshadowed by an eleven year old’s own personal vendetta against their native tongue. The priorities of a kid, right?
She managed to get Riot back on track, and she explained what it all meant. She was a triggered wolf, she explained, which meant she could and did shift. It’s why they were conveniently out of the apartment when the full moon came around. She said it’s pretty much guaranteed they were a wolf too. She had a cousin who had a baby with a human and supposedly that baby was human too, but she said there was only one real way to know. Their eyes went wide when she told them the wolf was triggered when you take a life. Riot was all wide eyes and exhale when they asked if that meant she killed someone. MawMaw had never spared their feelings. She told them about the hunters that came for them. It made them feel nauseous. Would hunters come for the two of them? That made her laugh. Over the years, everyone had mostly spread out, left Louisiana behind for the Rocky Mountains and the Northern Lights and sunshine and who knows what else. The two of them were safe. She was wrong, in the end, but it comforted them at the time.
Riot was seventeen years old in 2014. The iPhone 5 they’d saved up for was black, with a black and green case. Matching ear buds completed the look, and the cord hung from their ears into their pocket as they walked home, the setting sun and street lights snapping to life to remind them they were incredibly late getting home. MawMaw wasn’t going to be happy, definitely not. So they tried to walk faster, wanting to hurry home. She was definitely going to worry that night. There had been a couple muggings reported recently. She was more concerned about the news a kid the next town over seemed to vanish into thin air, but Riot brushed it off. Kids their age ran off all the time here. They came home once they realized there’s a difference between being broke at your mom’s house and being broke an hour or more from home. Some grating bubblegum pop song blared in their earbuds, and they weren’t thinking about runaways or curfews or the hurried footsteps they couldn’t hear over the synth in their ears until they were sent crashing to the pavement, scraping their hands as they tried to break their fall. Their phone fell from their pocket and the force ripped the earbuds from their ears, and they swore under their breath, certain the screen was wrecked. They moved to push themself back onto their feet, and froze when a click broke the momentary silence, and cold metal was pressed to the nape of their neck.
The command was simple. Stand up slowly. Don’t try to run. You won’t get far. They nodded, muttered affirmatives, and tried to run the numbers. And the results were in. They weren’t in some action thriller. Doing as they’re told might just get them out alive. Muggings were simple, anyway. Hand over your stuff, problem solved, right? They hadn’t even seen the guy’s face yet, too worried about what might happen if they turned around. They’d be fine, right? Right?
Only one of them made it out of the dark alley the man had parked his truck in. Two shots rang out in the night air, and Riot scrambled to grab their phone and their earbuds, running half on adrenaline and half on a dazed sort of terror as something else reared its head in their chest. They ran home, their eyes burning from tears or the night air or probably whatever was drying tacky and gross on their face, neck, and their left arm. They didn’t want to think about what just happened, what they just did. It wouldn’t stop replaying, though. It had been an accident. They were just trying to get the gun out of their face. They hadn’t meant to shove so hard. The timing was wrong. Oh, god, was he dead? They’d never seen a dead or dying person before, let alone one that looked like that. They kept running. They didn’t let themself cry.
Their hands shook so badly they dropped their key twice, and MawMaw could only clap a hand over her mouth and stare when she saw them. That was when they finally cried. And when they wiped their face, it came away tinged pink. Blood. It was blood on their face, on their shirt. It had dried on their arm, where the first shot apparently just grazed them. They could barely even tell her what happened, and what they did manage probably didn’t make any sense. She struggled to her feet, brought a cloth. Wiped their face with one hand, cradled their cheek with the other. It was okay now. They made it home. They were safe. It was okay.
Things spiraled quickly after that. They were terrified to leave the apartment, refused to go to school or the store or even to the gas station alone. When they absolutely had to be somewhere it felt like a race against time to get back home again. They didn’t want to be out when the street lights came on. The news reported on the guy’s death. They tried not to pay attention. They heard something about him being a person of interest in other disappearances. Was this supposed to make them feel lucky? Grateful? They just felt sick. The fear crescendoed, and they dropped out of high school altogether. They hardly left their room. Full moons were agonizing now. They asked MawMaw if triggering the wolf felt like that for her, if it felt like imploding, erupting, burning, and freezing. She said she didn’t remember. It was the first time they thought she was lying to them.
It took time. That was the worst part. Riot wasn’t going to just wake up and be fine. MawMaw died when they were 23, and they’d be lying if they said that didn’t set them back. They’d known it was coming. That didn’t make it easier. Their mom came to the funeral, but it was like seeing an aunt who swore she saw you all the time as a baby, but you couldn’t pick her out of a crowd if you tried. They barely talked. The funeral was bad, but going back to an empty apartment was worse. Packing up and donating her things was probably the worst thing they’d ever had to do. The first full moon after she died was especially bad. They managed. A few weeks later, a letter from their mom arrived. Maybe the fourth time in their entire life she’d written. Not urgent enough to waste minutes on her phone card, clearly. Admittedly, they didn’t read it closely. Something about Rhode Island. MawMaw told her their “curse” had been triggered. Blah blah blah. They tossed it, not giving it a second thought.
Until a year and a half ago, anyway. The man who’d owned the apartment complex their whole life passed away, and his son sold the building. So Riot didn’t have much of a say in leaving. They ended up couch surfing and living out of their car, slowly moving north in an unconscious recollection of the place their mother had mentioned. Six months ago, they pulled their pathetic little hatchback with their whole life packed away in the back past a sign that read Lunar Cove. The decent sized insurance and inheritance MawMaw had squirreled away for them would have let them buy one of the halfway decent little houses. But Shadow Lake felt more familiar, more their speed. Six months on, even with all the activity, they’re finding it a lot easier to be on their own now.
