Wet mud sucks at my limbs, sapping away precious body heat as I lay in wait for a beast of legend.

I could already hear it coming; or rather, I could determine its approach, for in reality it made no noise but those that it chose to, for the stories were wrong on this count.

A wolf’s instincts for the hunt, paired with an unearthly dexterity mean that, instead, I must seek the changes in the forest that herald its arrival, such as the terror flight of birds and the silence of insects.

The things that herald calamity in stories, for here we find the seed of truth.

From my hiding place in the bushes, I look out into a small forest clearing. Breaking wide the thick canopy of the deep forest I’ve chosen for my hunt, this clearing offers a dazzling sight, painted in stark shadows and the pale tones of a moon at its brightest.

At first, from deep within the forest gloom I see only twin bloodstones, atop mirrors of the moon. Predatory eyes dilated, reflecting moonlight tinted in deep crimsons that chills my bones even as a grin is drawn upon my face.

Cautiously, the enormous frame of a great wolf - deformed silhouette broken by jagged bone spurs that deny the mind’s eye a solid purchase on its form - creeps forward, into the light.

Werewolves, they call them, but such a name fails most spectacularly to capture the majesty and horror before me, its serrated maw already aflood with saliva, in anticipation of a promised feast.

With every movement I take in new details that both enrapture and shock, its immense, primed form an unspoken promise of a swift and inevitable death.

Hunched and top-heavy, the wolf seemingly belies its nature as both man and wolf, but rather something new and unique; any thoughts of a natural being are denied again the emphatically sinister and numerous spurs that jut out from a tightly-stretched and bedraggled fur in no discernable pattern.

It can’t smell me, I’m relieved to find. If it could, I’d already be dead- the skunk musk that burns my eyes, the mud to mask my scent and the much more appealing scent of a deer carcass keep it distracted.

Soon the bait would be taken; the trap sprung.

The trap is set in the mouth of a cave- a scaled up version of a humane catch-and-release cage, disguised under rocks and vegetation - and I can see the beast is hesitant. Probably, he questions the source of this free meal, as any true wolf should.

Still, my monstrous quarry has only the instincts of a wolf and none of the learned behaviour of its smaller brethren- a she-wolf would never allow her pup to fall for this trick… which is thankfully not the case here, for I hear the great metallic whine and slam of the cage door closing, cacophonous echoes penetrating deep into the caverns behind it.

Trapped, my singled-out friend is quick to call out, seeking kin much too distant to aid it. No humbled beast this, yet a wolf alone to my eyes. A predator made cautious- at the mercy of another.

Me. I am the predator here.

The night is filled with the stress noises of metal being deformed and the great howls that seed the nightmares of children the world over. To me, it is a beautiful sound, one I have sought for decades- it is the sound of vindicated dreams and the inevitable fulfilment of deepest desire.

The cage won’t last the whole night, but I do not need it to.

I approach with confidence, yet a giggle bubbles beneath my feigned calm. I can’t wait for what is to come, for it is my future; one that will NOT be denied by the instinctual fear that attempts to grip me in the presence of terror made flesh.

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A dreadful silence falls finally as the wolf’s eyes lock upon me, a primal fear threatening to root me in place- from this angle I see naught but the reflected light of the wonder’s eyes, bright yellows ringing deep reds. Beautiful, yet so very, very hungry.

Oh my dearest wolf, you are so very wrong if you would think of me as food.

My faculties now mastered in an instant of fervour, I enter the mouth of the cave and stand before the great king of the moonlight forest; the wolf that eats the meat of men.

My countenance puts the beast on edge; it must be reassessing me, for it growls a great warning that rattles my bones at this range, but I let out that chained giggle in response; it bubbles up beyond my ability to hold it in- my madness, my lust for this moment.

Without hesitation I thrust my arm into the cage, just far enough that the creature might taste but not take it; the bite of a werewolf; the future I have sought for half my life… finally to make me who I am inside.

It happens in an instant, the lunge of my desired sire, a powerful strike of the whole upper body and jaw that bends the cage bars just as it breaks my arm between them, but the deed is done, a tooth having delved into my forearm to the bone, flesh now torn from it an hanging loose.

I do not try to remove my arm- it’s useless like this and I no longer need to worry about it, for it will heal. I will never fear injury again.

The great wolf considers me with what might even be disgust at my madness, backing further into the cave as if unsure what to expect of this new kind of feed that refuses to fear.

I have yet to stop giggling, but I feel my chest faltering as something within me shifts… and thus I’m forced to stop. Perhaps because my throat can no longer make such a sound, or perhaps just because I am inclined to allow this hallowed moment the respect it is due.

Pain to dwarf that in my arm comes swiftly, the sensation of my spine being broken at every vertebrae. I shift and writhe as the musculature changes in inconsistent ways, great flexing movements that crush, twist and shatter my bones.

In defiance of the pain, I howl my throat raw, even as my lungs burn and my senses are wracked with intensity of a wildfire spreading across every nerve, from my chest to my extremities.

As I convulse and throw myself every which way, I tear my arm from the cage bars- what little of it comes free, though I barely notice under the churning feelings of nausea, euphoria and a pain I feel could kill a lesser person.

The pain subsides somewhat as my body settles for a moment- fear floods me as the change has not finished. Did it fail? Was I not worthy of the gift?

I can only collapse as my limbs give out- all four of them, for my arm has already regrown to an extent- the wrist half reformed, but messy and twisted unnaturally even compared to the stretched and mangled shape of my other.

I can’t think, I can only feel fear and shame, but also something else: Hunger, but nothing like I have known before. It is a well that draws me in as I consider it, I fall prey to its clutches within a moment; it now drives me, it is all that I am and can be.

I drag my broken form forwards, tearing my chest across the bracken and thorns below me. I take no notice for my eyes have locked upon the deer carcass within the cage. Just as it must have for the great wolf I trapped, it becomes my whole world.

Food.

Food for the fire; the change; the HUNGER.

I reach into the cage feebly, aiming to feed on something I cannot access- I push and I wail and I scream for what I cannot have. For hours, perhaps.

I’m taken from my suffering by the sensation and stench of raw meat in my face- it has been moved, that I might feed; and so I do. Tearing with my savaged wrist, my half-changed hand-things, my teeth that are no longer those I’ve had a decade, some just gone, some remaining in a shattered form, but others replaced with sharp fangs fit for the meat I consume now ravenously.

Before I can finish the meal, the pain flares again, now greater but also welcome in a way I could never have imagined- it feels like the coming of a revelation. Toes dipped into the well of a potential savage but beautiful.

I know what is to come and it is all I wanted and more.

I know that my arms are changing again, my body convulsing such that heart failure should have taken me by now- I feel skin tear, splitting as flesh grows beneath, no longer to be constrained by humanity best discarded.

I know that what once was is dead, but it is a distant thing, for I feel only that great satisfaction; profound and all-consuming delight. Where once there was pain, now there is joy.

And hunger- yet changed. A purpose, not a shackle.

Feel; experience; submerge in a world of sensation and find purpose in the hunt.

The last thing I feel is a probing but affectionate nose, wet and furry against my face, but this is not a moment that belongs to Me.

It belongs to the wolf.