The full moon was high in the still night sky. It was warm outside; the cloud cover made sure of that.

A sizeable part of the pack had come over to the pack house to escape the monotony of being stuck at home, in the hope that toughing out the clawing wanderlust that came with every full moon with some of their fellow packmates would be a little more bearable. The turnout was not quite what I'd expected, but still substantial.

In packs all around the island, the same scene was playing out. Meanwhile, across the border in Zirconia, the sound of suppressant pills being popped was surely reaching deafening levels.

The air inside these wood-paneled walls felt heavy. The stillness outside compounded the sensation of tepidity, as did the mellow glow of the lights. Most of us were sitting, on chairs, on the sofas, or just cross-legged on the floor. Few of us felt like conversation. Most had either gathered upon the Zirconian soap opera playing at low volume on the single TV, meditating, or just staring blankly into space.

The only people who seemed to have some semblance of vigour left were the patriarch of the Anderson family and father of Keith and Brian, Old Man Anderson, and chief warrior Lister, who were seated at one of the tables. They were across the room from me, but it was so quiet that almost everybody could tune in to their conversation without much strain.

"...who knows. They're unpredictable. Sooner or later someone was going to be targeted."

"Their M.O's a lot different from the 1990s. The bite marks were clean. They died quickly and painlessly. They knew who and what they were targeting. They were prepared. Back in the Hill attack in '95 the bite marks were ragged. I recall there was one pup who got slashed almost beyond recognition but lived because they missed all his vitals."

Old Man Anderson leaned back into his chair. "Where's he now?"

"Some Zirconian family adopted him. He's probably in uni by now." Lister wiped the sweat off his brow. "They don't think everybody died at once. Something knocked out the electrical systems, which is why nobody was able to raise the alarm. An electro-magnetic pulse or something.

"Back then they were desperate. They're not so desperate this time. They're taking their time."

"Surely an incursion into the settlements is of order."

"It's too risky."

"That's the OPLU's official line, right? They just want to sweep this under the carpet."

"And why would they want to do that?"

"They're the ones who let this whole rogue problem get out of hand. They screwed up the economy in the '90s, Zirconia bailed them out, and then they got away with it."

"That's old news. There's this new book out that looks at it from a totally different angle. There's documents we didn't know existed before. New thinking. New perspectives. You haven't seen this stuff. It will change your views."

"That's what they always say."

"The author's pretty reputable. Professor at the U of C. Fairly unbiased as Zirconian academics go."

"I don't trust them. Never have."

"This guy's different, I'm telling you. He's the first guy I've read who actually has an understanding of pack dynamics. And an opinion of the OPLU that didn't completely hinge on how much they promoted western democracy."

"So what's his hypothesis, if it's so good as you say?

"Essentially, his argument is that Sefton, Cameron and Holtz dreamed it up in the late '70s as a way of getting free money from idealistic Zirconians. As opposed to the other way around, as they would have you believe."

"I'm not quite getting your drift-"

"It was mostly Sefton's idea. Stir up hatred against Zirconians for meddling in our affairs, while also grifting the living daylights out of said Zirconians. Win-win.

Anderson Senior looked up at the ceiling wistfully. "Sefton. The man, the myth, the legend."

"His pack's getting into the news recently."

"I don't trust this Adlai guy as far as I could throw him, but we have who we can rely on to counter the Zirconian monopoly."

"Says he wants to reconcile with the rogues."

"Sefton would have never allowed him to take over him. He may have been crazy but he wasn't stupid. That's one of the good things about their pack. No hereditary system." There was a slight pause for effect, a silent insinuation of the other packs that did practice hereditary rule. "Us weres are meant to work with the law of the forest. A hereditary system goes against all of that. The law of the forest doesn't dictate that one family is ordained to rule forever."

"You can get food delivered from them. A lot of the other packs are trying it out. It's cheaper than buying it themselves, or even growing it."

"He's trying to get our trust."

"I see it more as an indictment on our lack of self-sufficiency."

Old Man Anderson shifted his posture. "They've got a stake in other things as well. Construction, transportation, private security, they've got a hand in everything. They've been quietly buying up stuff for most of the past decade. Starting with small stuff and moving up. They're playing the long game. That Betancourt guy, he knows what he's doing. And that's why we need him on our side."

"Anyway, the OPLU scheme worked perfectly. Until they finally wisened up to it after a dozen years of their tax dollars disappearing into a black hole."

"And they still bailed us out?" Anderson Senior didn't look like he quite understood.

Lister sighed. "In spite of everything, they still think that deep down, we're the same as them, and we can be saved. Because we're charity cases who just need a little help to get back on track to the righteous road of Western-style liberalism."

Old Man Anderson grunted. "They can shove their charity back up their arses. Maybe they should go back to throwing stones from their glass houses."

"Talk about living in glass houses. They're obsessed with transparency. Being able to see into things. That's why they have all those glass government buildings. So you can see the bureaucracy."

"It's a human disease."

"They've been infected."

"They're a lost cause. The less said about it the better..." 

***

It was about ten o'clock when I could bear it no longer.

I had headed home from the packhouse some time after dusk had fallen. The others had followed at around the same time. For the last three hours I had been sitting in next to Laura, as I had hundreds of times before, in silent meditation.

I felt myself break out in a cold sweat, and I felt oddly short of breath.

The beast stirring inside me needed to get out.

Laura was also reaching the end of her tether. I could see the beads of sweat on her forehead in the dim glow that came from the light in the ensuite. She wore a pained expression, but she was trying hard to fight it, the lines on her face attested to that.

We sat there, the silent, implicit knowledge of what was about to happen hanging over us like a heavy shroud, the subconscious whispers of our minds seeping through the mind link and into each others' consciousnesses, until the collective low-pitched chorus became too much to bear.

I closed my eyes, trying to fight the invisible force trying to rend apart my mind. Across the bed, I could feel Laura trying to resist the same foe. Further away, many dozens of minds were going through the same thing.

Without speaking a word, we began to undress and ready ourselves.

The fight was futile. The farther the thoughts cleaved into my mind, the more connected they grew with the minds of the rest of the pack. I felt the moon inside my head, whispers that seemingly emanated from the deepest parts of the galaxy, reverberating through the mind-spaces of my packmates, amplifying all the while.

It was time.

We opened the curtains, letting the dull white glow of the full moon stream in. The light overwhelmed me; I felt my mind let go.

The transformation was almost instantaneous; the usual gradual, grinding pain of shifting was completely bypassed. I immediately found myself on all fours, heading for the open door of the house, drawn like a moth to the source of the light. Laura was somewhere ahead of me.

All around us, sleek dark shapes slunk from the silhouettes of houses and along the streets, a pulsating stream of quicksilver under the full moon, minds linking together into one on the fly.

Leaving the village behind us, we charged through the forest as one, weaving between tree trunks, jumping over logs and other obstructions, Laura and I leading by a very slight margin. The white pall of the moon lit the valley up, glinting off the lake. The fuzzy presence of the mind link in my head sharpened into clarity as we leapt along. The tree trunks and the leaf-littered ground seemed to pass in slow motion, their details hyperrealistic in the bright moonlight. Every footfall felt definite, as if I was driving a chisel into the grain of a block of marble. There no longer felt like there was any distance between my pack-mates as I. Every footfall, every movement that they made, echoed clear as day in mine too.

The ground was baked hard from the lack of rain, the fallen leaves crackling beneath our paws, twigs breaking under our rapid footfalls.

Running away from the shores of the lake, we coursed up the mountain, heading for higher ground, paws finding purchase on the dry leaves that lined the forest floor, flitting in and out of patches where the moonlight shone through the tree cover.

I felt as if I was running on air, hovering slightly above the ground. I felt young again, my energy boundless, each stride effortless.

Laura and I finally reached the peak, slightly ahead of the others. We stood still, waiting for them to catch up, catching our own breath as the others surrounded us in a semicircle, drinking in the sight of the hills and valleys of the Stone River catchment spread out below us in the pale light of the moon.

When the last wolf entered the corral, we put our heads towards the sky and howled.

Across the valley, a reply was heard a few seconds later. The Stone River wolves were here.

In the far distance, the faint sound of even more howls could be heard, echoing through the valleys that carved their way through the thickly forested landscape, the multifaceted surfaces of the forest canopy backlit by the bright moonlight.

We headed down into the valley, and so did they from the other side, leaping over rocks and creek gullies. I strayed behind this time, making sure that everyone in the pack was accounted for.

The two packs joined in the pebble-lined margins of the river. In my mind's eye, we were one entity, a great silver stream of fur, flowing through the forest, bifurcating here and there around trees and rocks and fallen logs, but always finding our way together again. It felt like there was nothing that could stop us.

We reached the right bank of the river, frothing and glinting in the moonlight as it tumbled through some small rapids. We ran on the gravel at the water's edge, the bright light of the full moon beaming down on us, reflecting off the surface of the water, splashes of water ricocheting against our pelts as our path weaved in and out of the margins of the river.

As we built up speed down the valley, we split from the riverbank and headed uphill once more. The trees seemed to pass faster this time.

We quickly broke through the forest cover, all of us converging at a rocky outcrop, forming a large circle that almost covered the entire rock formation. We stood there, heads up, in silent reverence of the moon that hung above us. The mind link broke apart momentarily, as we made our wishes and resolutions for the month ahead.

Once again, we arched our heads and howled into the night sky.

In the far distance, echoes reverberated across river valleys as other packs returned the call.