AN: Not a new chapter, I'm afraid.

But I just finished my Final Exams and boy was it BRUTAL. As you've all been so patient and as a bit of stress relief, here's a little excerpt from the Hale Bestiary from the previous chapter.

My take on the origin of werewolves and the different breeds of werewolves playing in this universe. Try and see if you can figure out where each breed of werewolf introduced here is from :D

Hope you all like it!

OoOoO

DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING WRITTEN HERE. I've merely borrowed werewolves from different sources to put them all here.

OoOoO

It started with a witch.

"The Hollow", they called her because she was so devoid of love or care or fear or anger. All she knew was a hunger for power. She wreaked havoc across the plains. Sucking the life and magic out of her victims until they were just as empty as her.

Seven tribes came together to put a stop to her. Each sending their most skilled and powerful warriors to defeat her. With the light of the full moon and the help of their spirit animals, the wolves, they tracked her down and with their magic, they bound her and ensured she could never harm another soul.

But The Hollow would not be defeated so easily. With her last breath, she cursed the seven warriors who defeated her to merge with their spirit animals and turn into mindless beasts on the night of the full moon.

The warriors changed for the first time that night. They roamed the surrounding field on all fours and howled at the moon. When daybreak came, the warriors were broken. Unwilling to bring harm to their tribes, they decided to inform their elders of what happened and then disappear into the night.

When they reached their people, they realized there was truly no limit to the cruelty and power of The Hollow. For she not only cursed the warriors who defeated her. She cursed their blood and so, any who shared it would suffer the same fate on the full moon.

Their people raged and wept.

Seeing the devastation in their people, the warriors chose to fight The Hollow's curse. They each urged their respective tribes to help them find a cure, a solution. For there is no curse in the known world that is without a cure.

Only, they chose different paths.

Four of the seven tribes chose to stay together. They sought the help of the witches but they admitted they could not lift the curse cast by one such as The Hollow. All they could do was spare the children. For them, the curse would remain dormant until they spilled human blood.

The other three tribes scoured the farther regions for answers. They used all manner of voodoo and potions and rituals to try and end the curse. None were successful. All they managed to do was make their curse transferrable through their bite. Horrified by what they'd done, two of the three tribes broke away and searched for answers elsewhere.

But the one who remained would not give up so easily. They kept experimenting with anything they could find, even turning to human sacrifice as an answer. They would not stop until finally, the curse and their own actions made them more feral, more rabid, and more animalistic. Every full moon, the rabid wolves came out and craved one thing above all else: a human heart. The only thing capable of stopping them was the sacrifice they offered the gods in their madness: silver.

The two remaining tribes found their way to the old country.

One tribe believed there was no cure to be found. They looked for ways to mitigate the effects and ensure the beast they held within harmed no one. They focused on potions and the effects of the poisonous plant, wolfsbane. They diluted the plant and experimented with others until finally, they came up with a potion that would sedate their inner wolves long enough to allow their human minds to become the dominant one. There was a price however. For their consumption of the poison, even in its diluted form, caused their bodies to suffer. They became bigger, thinner, hairless, and almost sickly on the Full Moon. And when they failed to take the potion on the week of the full moon, the eagerness and longing of their wolves for control caused the humans to be completely subserved by the angry wolves and lose memories of the entire night.

Finally, the last of the seven tribes turned to the druids of the old country for help. Like the witches in their old home, they could not lift the curse in its entirety. Instead, they offered to give them more control over their inner wolves. The druids were successful and the tribe learned to control their shifts, even learning to summon it when the sun is highest in the sky. All would have been well, until an incident occured between one of the younger tribe members and an outsider. The two boys fought each other and in the process, the outsider was bit, turned, and eventually died. The druids were furious so as punishment and a means to prevent other incidents like this from happening again, they cast another spell. From there on out, the power of the bite would be taken from the tribe and bestowed solely on the leader, the Alpha, whose power would be identified by the vibrant red in their eyes. As punishment for the boy and all who would use their power to kill, the druids marked them. Their eyes would turn as cold as The Hollow herself, and anyone who faced them either in human or wolf form would know they had committed the most horrible crime.

Thus began the curse of the werewolves.

======================================================================

AN: How do you all like it? I wanted to write a werewolf origin story for Shifted but I wanted to give myself the extra challenge of blending it with different werewolf lores in fiction. I think I did a good job of doing so in a way that made sense, but what do you all think?

Some of you may have recognized where each of these are from, especially "The Hollow". Yes, this was borrowed from "The Originals" as I really liked that origin story. But, this doesn't mean crossovers with these other worlds... at least I don't think so.