PLEASE NOTE: this is the first book I've ever written, I started writing it when I was 15 and finished it at 18. The plot quality is extremely poor and frankly, kind of redundant. I like to think I improved a lot since then so please read my book The Song Of The Wolf instead. 

 This feels a bit deceptive but here's the Prologue to give you a taste:

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Thousands of years ago, nestled in the bosom of ancient Greece, lay a land called Arcadia. During a time when gods stepped down from mount Olympus to indulge in human delights, King Lycaon had his reign.

He introduced high levels of culture and civilisation to the realm: science, religion, philosophy and the arts. People from all walks of life gathered the temples, bathhouses, theatres and stadiums; in the bustling stoas and marketplaces, to trade goods, ideas, and engage in lively discussions.

King Lycaon's rule was marked by an iron-fisted approach to governance. He issued decrees, enforcing the worship of Zeus as the supreme deity, ensuring uniformity in religious practices. He represented a period of great intellectual and artistic achievement. Yet, also of contentious rule, where cultural splendour accompanied the imposition of ideology.

As the kingdom basked in the radiance of prosperity, dark clouds gathered on the horizon. Seeds of discord sprouted beneath the weight of the king's hunger for more, casting a long shadow over Arcadia. He conquered many neighbouring lands, expanding his borders and amassing unimaginable riches. Countless women fell victim to his lustful gaze as his bloodline began to take shape. Twelve sons and a multitude of daughters, born of his escapades.

The commoners, who had once revered their king, now regarded him and his offspring with trepidation. The twelve young princes, driven by hormones and rotten by a privileged upbringing, became the embodiment of dread. Their whims were indulged without question, their antics left unchallenged.

The fate of the realm hung precariously, teetering on the edge of chaos, as the spoils of excess threatened to overshadow the brilliance that once illuminated. The king began to neglect the care of his people, which even the gods took notice of. Zeus himself decided to put Lycaon's character to trial. He dressed in the rags of a poor peasant and travelled down to the Arcadian palace, begging for food and shelter. Lycaon, cunning as a fox, saw through the ruse and welcomed his guest with a facade of generosity. But he did not take kindly to being tricked, not even by the supreme god. The king and his eleven eldest sons hatched a plan that would test Zeus' divine omniscience and the very fabric of fate. They plotted to sacrifice the youngest of the brood and serve his corpse as a dish, dressed to resemble a spit-roasted wild boar.

Revered for his role in maintaining cosmic order, Zeus wielded justice and punishment with unwavering resolve. The moment the platter was paraded into the great hall, his all-seeing eye penetrated the veil of falsehood and the heavens responded in kind, unleashing a spectacle of thunder and lightning. The audacity of mere mortals, daring to mock the divine arbiter was an affront to the very essence of celestial balance. Such transgressions would not go unanswered.

A curse descended upon Lycaon and his sons, contorting their bodies into beasts –nightmarish wolves destined to roam the earth. In the aftermath, Zeus shifted his attention to the roasted dish. He resurrected the once-sacrificed son, now a grown man, and proclaimed him the monarch of Arcadia. As the newfound king assumed his role, it became apparent that the laws of nature had been disrupted. The young man's soul had become deformed and twisted. Fuelled by the deep-seated grudge he held against his father and brothers, he sentenced them to death, seeking to mete out divine retribution by offering their flesh to the very god who had cursed them.

Despite the traps and strategies set in motion, the creatures eluded capture. They proved too fast, their size and heightened senses unmatched adversaries to meek humans. The pack of wolves escaped Arcadia and scattered to the farthest reaches of the world.

Time marched on and the pursuit of the Lycanthropes, as they were now referred to, dwindled. But the legend grew. Their tormented howls would forever pierce the stillness of night, as a cautionary tale of the gods' judgement and the grave folly of mortals that stood against it.

In the year 132, a group of Hibernian islanders found an unconscious man on their shores. At first glance, he appeared human. But the stranger did not move like one, and his amber eyes seemed to glow, even under the blanket of night. The concept of language fell on deaf ears. Instead of using words, he emitted animalistic growls and sounds. The Celts brought him to their elder, a druid with ancient knowledge of an esoteric practice called telepathy. An enigma only few knew how to decrypt.

The pieces of an extraordinary lineage fell into place, revealing a connection to the fabled Lycanthropes. The stranger, named Maccon, recounted how, as a testament of partial remorse, Zeus had bestowed upon them the ability to transform back into their human form.

Lycanthropes mirrored the dynamics of their distant wolf kin. Living, sleeping, and hunting in packs. From the original twelve Lycanthropes, only three direct descendants remained: Maccon, Orvin, and Brun, each leading their own pack. They had branched into hundreds upon thousands of beings, ranging from halfbloods to quarterbloods and beyond –each carrying the active Lycan-gene that was exclusively passed down to male offspring.

For years, Maccon and his pack traversed the continent, in search of a haven safe from persecution. The journey had taken them through the mountains of Francia, over the Britannic Ocean, across Britannia and to Hibernia. Kilometres ahead of the others, a scouting Maccon washed up on the beach. There, he surrendered to exhaustion long enough for the Celts to discover him.

At the end of his story, the druid offered Maccon refuge on behalf of the tribe. In return, Maccon pledged his and his pack's services to them. News of the forged pact spread like wildfire, reaching the ears of the pack, who joined their alpha in the village.

The Celts named them Faoladh, a term later translated into old English as werewulf.

Whispers of these creatures coexisting with humans began to circulate in mainland Europe, and more Lycanthropes arrived –having heard of the Emerald Isle, where their kin led an existence as guardian angels. The new arrivals were presented with two choices: return from whence they came, or stay and bow to Maccon's authority. The majority chose the latter, and the pack grew. And when the winds of war swept across the land, the Hibernian kings knew they could rely on the Lycans to serve as staunch defenders of their adopted home.

The wheel of time turned and the Lycans adapted to human life. Beneath the seamless assimilation, an inner struggle persisted. The beast that resided within prevented them from understanding another language quintessential to the human experience: that of the heart.

As a token of gratitude, the druid granted them a gift that transcended materiality.

He defined it as a spiritual marriage of souls. Leatheils. Two halves of the same whole. Similar, though not identical, to the concept later proposed by the philosopher Plato in his Symposium. The druid recounted how humans, in an age long forgotten, had been beings with extraordinary power, sporting two faces, four arms, and four legs. Male, female, and androgynous. Such was their might that they posed a threat to the gods themselves. And so, Zeus cleaved each human in two, creating two-legged, two-armed beings. These mutilated halves were left to wander the earth, forever yearning for their other half –their Leatheil.

The Leatheils differentiated from the Plato variant on another front. The pairing was chosen by the threads of fate; a perfect, harmonious union of a Lycanthrope and a woman. From the dawn of their first breath, these Leatheils were drawn together by a magnetic pull that defied gravity. Their senses would be heightened, recognising each other by scent and appearance. Once the two had united in the most intimate of ways, their hearts would beat as one, attuning to the other's presence and emotions. Regardless of distance. Sharing their joy and fear, anger and pain.

Still, there was no guarantee a human woman's fragile body would survive the process of hybrid-childbirth.

Maccon had been crowned the King of Lycanthropes. His fur, a rare and obsidian shade, set him apart from his wolf brothers, marking him as the chosen monarch. The idea of love held little sway over his heart; his devotion lay solely with his pack. Thus, the druid devised a separate gift for him—a Childbearer.

A human woman selected on the basis of her bodily capacity to carry and bear the strongest of Lycanthrope-children, to ensure the royal bloodline would never cease to exist. Like a Leatheil, the Childbearer –too– would be chosen by the Fates, and was identifiable by the violet colour of her eyes.

For generations, the Lycanthropes lived in harmony alongside the Celts. The Leatheils and the Childbearers, securing the happiness and continuation of the kingdom.

The heirs of Maccon's royal bloodline discovered a hidden truth. Though the druid had spoken true about the nature of their affection, there was more to the heart's language than they had been led to believe. Love came in various forms—platonic and familial, instinctual and profound.

In the year 432, as the sun dipped below the horizon, Saint Patrick stood atop a hill in county Meath, surrounded by curious faces. He spoke of a benevolent god who offered salvation and forgiveness. Christianity quickly gained a foothold, spreading like a fog over the landscape of Hibernia. The ancient ways of worship were left to echo in the murmurs of the wind and the rustling of leaves. The idea of a single, all-powerful God resonated with those weary of appeasing an array of pagan deities, each with their own demands and temperaments. By default, that same weariness extended to the mythical Lycanthropes.

A lone oak tree, once venerated as a symbol of sacred wisdom and life, found itself eclipsed by a simple wooden cross. The era of torches, pitchforks and misery returned, and the Lycanthropes were forced to retreat into the shadows once more.

Through the annals of history, cultures across the globe have spun their own tales about the half-man, half-wolves. In the dim flicker of campfires, in the black forest of Prussia, within the pages of mediaeval texts and on the vast plains of Native America, lore has been whispered and written, passed down like treasured secrets.

Sceptics attributed sightings and encounters to folklore, superstition, and psychological phenomena. Rationalists argued that the legends were born from the need to explain unusual animal behaviours or to instil moral lessons.

But even in an age when the principles of science and reason govern our minds, the stories linger. They are burrowed within the human psyche, awaiting the next full moon. To awaken our primal wonder and ask whether in the twilight between fact and fiction, there is still room for destiny.