Starlight rested behind a deathly aurora. The tortured skies bore testament to the unnatural flames that had turned so many cities to glass and reduced countless victims to salt. There was a poison in the air, radioactive ash, and the winter was upon us. It was a winter that would only grow colder in spring, and colder still turned summer. It was a winter that would not end, not in our lifetime.

We were howling with our human voices as the full moon began to climb into the skies. We welcomed it, greeting it, and its light shone down on us. Our formation was even, and we were prepared for the change, shivering and disrobed in the cold night air. Our howls at the rising moon became pained as we began to fall and change, writhing in agony.

Our migraines twisted us while our spines reshaped themselves. All our bones cracked within, all at once, and began to reform. Our bile steamed and the gasses of our bodies erupted from fissures in our skin. Our teeth shattered into fangs and our fingers split into claws. A burning itch covered us as our fur grew. Even our new parts - our tails - felt the pain as the base of our spine extended. With our eyes and hearing and sensitivity becoming keener, every sound and sight brought confusion, a sort of madness of the senses.

The nine of us lycans of the Ravenrock Pack had stood together, not counting the good doctor among us. Each of Type One could easily control two of Type Three. Lieutenant Colonel Rose kept Treach and Abbot by his side, Halo kept Seyfried and Conner and Bruna kept Slate and me.

We therefore formed three teams. I retained the most control and memory of my time as a wolf because of the bond between me and Bruna. Without her I would just be a mad beast, killing indiscriminately and unable to recall what I had done. All of Type Three were like that, but with a leader, an alpha - Type One, we were obedient and focused.

The pack ran as silent nightmares out of the forest and across the cleared landscape around the disease research center. Our leaders growled and nipped at us and we ran with them. The lights were only another source of shadows, as our eyes found the path through the darkness by moonlight.

The first guards we met didn't have time to react as they looked and saw our eyes shining in the dark. Behind them, as they peered into the night, two fur-covered creatures silently arose and pushed them to the ground. Before they could scream their throats were torn out and before they could draw their weapons their hands were bitten off.

Bruna lifted the key card and placed it against the reader. When the door unlocked, she pushed it open with one claw and gestured for the pack to enter. Once the pack was inside, the other guards stationed at the entrance sounded the alarm and drew their weapons.

They fired at us and in their panic their aim was wild, and their bullets only grazed us or missed entirely. We outnumbered the guards at the entrance and descended on them in pairs, coordinating our kills with precision. Then we split up. Two groups went their way, working through the bottom floor and the stairs.

Bruna was drooling in front of the elevator, making us wait. I could hear its approach and sensed that there were enforcers coming. The sound of the alarm was irritating me and making me anxious. When the elevator doors opened, we stood out of sight on either side of the elevator. The enforcers stepped out with their weapons ready. We attacked suddenly from both sides. When they were dead, Bruna made us board the elevator.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

She tried to push the buttons, but instead, her claws just raked the control panel. The doors closed and we ascended to a random floor. The look of horror at the sight of us was left on the faces of those we found waking to the nightmare of our intrusion. It was some kind of residential floor where the researchers lived. Most of them were in their night robes and we cut through them with our claws and left their bodies where they fell.

Throughout the building, the alarms continued and there were occasional gunshots or the loud rattle of automatics. The other teams were using the stairs and climbing floor by floor, killing everyone they found. When it was over it still wasn't over. We stalked through the building for hours, finding each survivor where they hid and dragging them out to be ripped open, screaming.

As morning approached, we couldn't find anyone else. I was glad to be leaving the noise of the endless alarm, which had driven me nearly mad. Outside the moon was gone from the skies and the first glow of morning had begun.

We returned to where we had started the night with our transformation. With aches, cramping and flashes of hot pain we began to change back into human form. Bruna, Halo and Lieutenant Colonel Rose knew full well all that we had done. Among the rest of us, only I retained any memory of the murderous night, but it was vague and dreamlike. I could remember many parts, but the whole of it was like a fog, and it was hard to recall more than the pain and the barest details.

I was grateful I could remember no more than I did, and I envied the others who were like me who knew what we had done but couldn't remember any of it. Bruna found me shivering and curled up in a fetal position, crying at the awfulness of it. She had already cleaned herself up and donned her uniform.

"Atanarjuat, it is over, my love. Be still, be calm." Bruna said to me soothingly. She washed the blood off of me in the freezing morning air and helped me get dressed as I shivered and shook, trembling from the cold and from the red horrors in my mind.

I could somehow still hear the alarm, the screams of terror. I could see the flashes of the kills, the outline of fur-covered beasts in the halls. I could see Bruna as the hulking monster, drooling and dripping gore. It kept coming to me in flashes, every time I closed my eyes.

"We should not have done that." I whispered in remorse. It was too horrible; I could not justify what we had done.

"What should we do, then? Let them continue? We are fighting a war. We must kill them, all of them. Do you know some other way?" Bruna's eyes were zealous. I hated seeing her like that, I couldn't stand to listen to her try to justify what we did.

"Don't say that. Don't ask me that." I coughed. I was weeping and she grabbed me in her arms and held me close.

"I'm sorry." Bruna said into my ear. "My gentle one, I am sorry you must be this way. You must learn to take it in. You must learn."

"I cannot." I gasped.

"Yes, you can." Bruna soothed me somehow. I began to calm down, letting her hold me. It was like the embrace of a mother holding her upset child. I felt safe in her arms, and my spirit returned to me and reminded me that I was not the wolf, nor was the wolf me.

I looked into her eyes, and I understood the difference between her and I. She was always both a woman and the wolf inside her. She felt no conflict, no remorse. I still loved her, but I feared becoming like her.

"Don't you feel any pity for them?" I asked her.

Bruna shook her head and said carefully: "There is no sense in feeling pity for the dead."