It always started the same way, irritability and mood swings... a fever. Then came the chills up and down my spine, the shaking in my legs, and the sensation of bees under my skin. No matter how much I ate I stayed hungry and the urge to be doing something, anything, so long as I was moving became unbarable. All of it only built and built until it reached the peak during the full moon and even my thoughts got hazy. Usually, I could Change at will or choose not to. Usually, I had control over my other side. The full moon was the one time where I didn't have a choice... and the one time I didn't have control... That scared me.
Ironically, though I've always been what I am and I'd always suffered from the fevers, hunger, and irritability around the full moon... I'd never actually gone through a Change until recently. See, females of my kind are a bit of a rarity. As a rule, human women don't survive being bitten and Changed... The strain is too much on the mind and body, even men die on occassion. Before me, only ONE female had ever survived the Change. Her case was an odd one, she'd been a survivor... An orphan jumping from one abusive home to the next, who had learned to overcome being a victim. She'd been in peak physical condition, mentally and emotionally strong, and the one who had bitten her had also been a bit... strange for our kind. He was an orphaned male werewolf who had spent most of his life living in the marshes of the bayou, and had gone through his first change as a pre-pubecent child... also unheard of in our world. So, it was chalked up to odd circumstance... a combonation that would probably never happen again.
Later though, through the help of the lore the Ijiraat had collected (a type of shifter) the pack discovered some answers to their mystery... According to the Ijiraat, it was likely that the male's parents had BOTH been werewolves, it was also likely that the woman's father had been a mutt who'd been living among humans and trying to blend in. Eventually, they had twins... a boy and a girl. Both of their children were werewolves and the both had gone through their first Changes young. I'm like the woman... I'd had a mutt father, a passing salesman if you will, I didn't know his name and neither did my mother since it had been a one night stand... One of many. I'd gone through most of my life not knowing what I was or why I seemed to always get sick around the full moon... Not until I'd been bitten. Like the woman, I'd survived... barely.
A group of mutts, nonpack werewolves, had taken me in. Normally, mutts don't run together. They're loners and usually troublemakers who don't like following Pack rules, but this group was different. The only reason they are mutts is because they don't feel like settling down and joining Pack life... Recently, however, there have been deaths following us wherever we go, half eaten bodies. Someone is trying to frame us for man-killing... someone with a vendetta. Now, the Pack is hunting us down as any possible risk to the secret of our kind's existance is a crime punishable by death... If my little group doesn't soon find out who is causing the deaths we may face full on war with the Pack, an outcome no one wants.
The Change was on me now, cutting off my thoughts of the Pack and pretty much everything else. The pain was intense, bones compressing as muscle and tendons rearranged themselves... Fur sprouted along the body as I fell to my hands and knees, spine elongating to a tail and joints popping and snapping as my body twisted and arched in ways human bodies can't... My vision danced and faded in and out as my eyes changed to see as a wolf sees... different hues and colors. A gargled sound of pain escaped my lips as my skull elongated, sprouting a muzzle... Soon came the change in nose and ears, hands and feet, skin feeling like it was being torn to bits... and then it was over. The whole process took maybe fifteen minutes if you did it often enough and had enough energy. If you were tired and hadn't done it in a while it could take up to an hour of stopping and starting over and over and unimaginable pain. The only good thing about the Change was that once it was done and the pain faded, the endorphins from finally being DONE with the pain and the adrenaline of the experience flooded you making the searing pain a delicious ache that made you want to RUN.
Forgetting the troubles of the day, I tilted my head back and howled... answering cries of MY pack sang back to me from all around the woods, and then we were running.
