Hello everyone! I have been out of the fanfiction game for a few years now, thanks to working my way through graduate school. I am in the last year of my PhD right now, so I have a bit of free time to write.

I got the idea for this fanfiction by reading a ton of different imprint stories. I realized that most of them were New Moon AU's, and it made me wonder, what if Bella met a wolf and was imprinted on before she ever met Edward Cullen? How would the tale we know play out? Would Bella still be fascinated with Edward? Would he be fascinated with her? How would a relationship with one of the wolves change the dynamic of the Twilight saga. With that in mind, Eventide was born.

I did a significant amount of research on wolfdogs, but I am not a expert by any means. If you find any mistakes, please do let me know. Also, while I enjoy the movies, I absolutely hate the cast. Emily Browning is my preferred Bella. I'm up in the air about the others.

Disclaimer: Own nothing. I'm just playing in their sandbox. Don't own the book (rarely take from the movies, but may do so)

Prologue

If Bella had to pinpoint when everything had started, the exact moment that put her on the pathway she was currently traveling, she would have to say that it all started with Fenrir.

It was the summer before her sixteenth birthday, and she was, once again, attempting to stave off what she considered her mother Renee's most harebrained idea to date.

"A wolf." The words, flat, hung in the air between them. She needn't have spoken at all as her mother had not even stopped for breath.

"—and really, Bella, they're just so majestic. I remember visiting that reservation, the one outside of Forks, once with your father. He took me on a hike in the woods—thought it'd be romantic, I suppose, but he hadn't counted on the poison oak. Bumps in the most uncomfortable places…—and I swear I saw one. Of course, I didn't think anything of it, then, but now, well, who knows? I certainly think it's possible, don't you?"

Her mother paused then, her wide blue eyes studying Bella intently, and waited for a response. Bella blinked several times trying to process everything her mother had said.

"You want to adopt a wolf," she said instead.

This seemed to be all her mother needed to fly off into another spiel. "No, not a wolf, Bella, a wolfdog—They're hybrids, you know? Not the same thing at all."

And that was the end of that conversation. Afterward, Bella did what she always did when her mother acquired a new interest—she researched. High content, mid content, low content, different pairings, different breeds, how to care for one, how to feed one, how to train one Bella learned all there was to know about wolfdogs. In the month following her mother's proclamation, Bella tried to become an expert all the while trying to dissuade her mother of actually following through.

This wasn't the first time her mother had delusions of grandeur in regards to her haphazard hobbies. Their house was almost a timeline of her mother's neglected interests, each one left to the dust as soon as her mind had settled on the next. But this time was different because her mother's interest was a living breathing being and not a set of skis, a pottery oven, or scuba gear.

Her mother was unflappable. Every time Bella tried to talk to her, to explain the intense training that would be needed with the animal, to talk about the sort of food the animal would eat, or to even get her mother to actually choose a breeder, she would always say, "Whatever you want, Bella. I know you'll choose the right thing."

Bella's protests that Renee was the one who wanted to adopt the animal in question went on deaf ears. What little explanation Bella had received had only served to confuse her.

"I had a dream," she finally admitted, one cool January morning—cool for Arizona, at any rate. "I saw you, Bella. I saw you beautiful and happy with a wolf by your side. It was magical."

Bella had been admittedly doubtful. She was a practical girl. Her mother always said she was born middle-aged and grew older every year. She supposed it was true, especially back then. Someone had to make sure the rent was paid, the groceries got bought, and the car got filled with gas after all. There wasn't much room in her daily world of school and home for the supernatural or magic.

In the end, the wolfdog breeder Bella had finally chosen was located on the nearby Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation. She was an old, stooped woman with a face that for some reason, reminded Bella of one of her father Charlie's friends, Billy Black. To this date, Bella was still not sure why she chose that particular breeder. The other breeders, in Arizona and across the US, certainly seemed more professional. They had websites with links full of information and photos of multiple liters over the past several years. None of them had seemed right. Instead, Bella had called the last one on the list of breeders, a phone number the only information she had. The old woman had refused to discuss anything with her over the phone, urging Bella to come visit instead.

When Bella arrived at the woman's small house, she had studied Bella's face intently for several minutes, her dark eyes seemingly looking through Bella's soul. Finally, she nodded, the look on her wizened face certain. "You'll do. Pups won't be born for a couple weeks yet. Isaac will call you."

Bella had not known what she was getting into. The first time she visited the puppies, they were just ten days old. It was way too early, she thought, even though it would be weeks before she took the puppy home, but Sarah, the old woman, hadn't thought so.

"These things take a while" was all she would say.

The first time she set eyes on Fenrir, she fell in love. He was a dark, scrappy little thing, with a dark coat, dark nose, dark blue eyes, and attitude to spare. The litter was all lumped in a dark pile with the exception of one puppy, the smallest by far, who was separated from the others. Sarah had watched from the doorway as Bella observed the pups. She made an aborted gesture to touch the solitary puppy, but pulled her hand back at the last minute. The puppy snuffled a time or two before making his way to the side of the container the litter was in where she stood. Before Bella had time to react, Sarah had picked up the puppy and handed it to her along with a bottle.

"His mother has rejected him," she explained. "Too small, I think. You'll have to come by every afternoon to feed him, so he gets to know you. I'll take care of the other feedings."

"But I haven't even picked him!" she protested weakly as she looked down at the puppy hungrily sucking milk from the bottle. An only child of only children, she'd never fed anything with a bottle.

The old woman's dark gaze was unyielding. "He picked you. That's the way of it."

And maybe it was. That didn't mean it was easy, by any means.

By the time Fenrir was ready to come, Renee was no longer interested in him and had not been in some time. Maybe if Bella had gone with another breeder or a lower content puppy, Renee would have been more interested, but the time between July and April had caused her interest to wane. Still, she had never complained about the puppy's expenses. She'd hired a contractor to build a containment area for him in the backyard of their house, and she purchased the raw meat for him to eat from the butchers. Otherwise, she was very hand off, but Bella thought that was more because her budding relationship with Phil, a baseball player about a decade her junior. Whatever the reason, Bella had found herself the primary owner and caretaker of Fenrir, a seven-week-old wolfdog puppy who was way more wolf than dog.

From there it had been an uphill climb, with her sometimes dragging Fenrir, and Fenrir sometimes dragging her along./4./ He was as stubborn as she was, both refusing to give an inch, util slowly but surely, Bella tamed her wolf. She had never really been an animal person—she'd never had a pet as a child—but she found that she loved having Fenrir. He was high-maintenance and demanding, but she thought he was good for her. Before getting him, Bella had been rather passive. Not shy, per say, but quiet and weary of drawing attention to herself. With Fenrir, she had to be assertive, the alpha in their little pack, or he would walk all over her. He also was responsible for getting her out of her house. She was used to spending her days in school and her nights and weekends doing homework and taking care of her mother. After getting the puppy, she spent a lot of her time outside, taking Feni—her nickname for him—out on long walks around Phoenix or sometimes going out to visit Sarah.

She was so busy that she hadn't even noticed how serious her mother and Phil were until they announced their engagement a month after her seventeenth birthday. Within a month, they were married, and within another, Bella was boarding a plane heading to her father's house.

If Fenrir was where everything had started, then her move to Forks was where Bella took her first and biggest step on the journey.

"You don't have to go," her mother said once again when they were waiting for her to board her flight to Seattle after checking Fenrir in.

"I know, but I think I should. I have been thinking about Charlie a lot lately, Mom. I want to get to know him."

It wasn't quite a lie. She did want to get to know Charlie. She hadn't been the best daughter to him over the years. She barely spoke to him, and she hadn't seen him in over two years. Forks, Washington might not be her favorite place, but she knew that her going was right for both parents. Her mother could travel with Phil, like Bella knew she wanted to do, and she could get to know Charlie.

"If you're sure…" she trailed off before smiling. "Well, have you got everything you need for now? Phil's dropping your boxes off at the post office in the morning, so don't worry about that."

Bella gave her mom a hug. "I've got everything. Love you."

"Love you, too, sweetheart."

Bella slept during the flight from Phoenix to Seattle, but she was wide-awake—and anxious—all throughout the short flight from Seattle to Port Angeles. However, by the time she the plane was arriving in Port Angeles, Bella's anxieties were a distant memory.

This was her chance at a new start, and it would be a good thing, she hoped.