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I n the resettlement project office, Simon fidgeted.

‘So, your plan is to make a follow-up film with the pack?’ said Jon the team manager.‘And you’d highlight the work we’re doing here and plans for the future reintegration of lost species into the UK?’

‘Mmm,’ Simon replied. His eyes strayed out of the portacabin window, scanning the forest for a sign of wolves. Sun filtered through the leaves and branches to make puddles of light among the pine needles. He thought there was movement, but wasn’t sure.

‘When’s the film being broadcast?’

‘Christmas,’ Simon said, pulling himself back into the room.

The walls were plastered in information, white boards, maps, photographs of the wolves.

He scanned them, looking at the familiar faces.

There she was, the young wolf with the vivid blue eyes.

Two wolf years older, perhaps four human years equivalent.

It was absurd, looking at her now. She was a wolf.

Not a person. A wild animal, forager, hunter, tied into rigid hierarchical rules.

She was beautiful but she was a wolf. He tried to recall Sky in human form, her dainty features flickering in fire light, dim under lanterns.

Her blue eyes were alternately baffled and mocking.

Humans were incompetent, carbuncles on the edge of nature not part of it.

He had thought she was dead. Like David.

There was the sickness to fight, convincing the production company to show the film.

There had been no point in remembering that face, those faces, when they were now nothing but dust. His heart thudded in anticipation but nausea rose too.

What was he doing? It was only a week to full moon.

His senses were heightened and the smell of the pack was coming closer. He turned back to the window.

‘The thing is…’ Jon continued, ‘how shall I put this… there’s a certain amount of notoriety about your proposed film.’

He was focussed on Simon’s shoulder, unable to meet his eyes. Simon clenched his hands and jaw, took a deep breath and scanned the wolves again. He could hear Rose’s voice: ‘You just want to see Sky.’ Was it true? Or did he believe in what he was selling ?

He smiled, to change the sound of his words. ‘What kind of notoriety? It hasn’t even been shown yet.’ His hands remained clenched.

‘Well, the thing is,’ continued Jon,’ you got attacked and your cameraman was killed. There’s some question over how safely the project was run.’

‘It was a random incident, unpredictable. My production team has been creating wildlife programmes for eight years without any problems. Last summer… the attack was, attacks were unpremeditated. The person responsible was living rough in the forest and had probably lost his mind some time beforehand. We’ll never know what motivated … ’

‘Person?’ Jon interrupted. ‘Obviously a person shot David Kineson but I understood that the attack on you was by a wild animal. Rumoured to be a wolf. The thing is, it was hard enough to get permission to bring wolves to this area and give them relatively free reign in this forest. If people realise it’s the same pack which you’d been observing, they would assume it was a wolf which had attacked you and that the wolf was one of the pack.

Can you imagine the headlines? Killer beast roaming forest a mile from primary school.

I don’t want that kind of publicity. What assurance can you give me? ’

‘It wasn’t a wolf.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I wasn’t attacked by a wolf. It was a person. A deranged person.’

‘The rumours said…’

‘Would have thought you were the last person to believe in rumours.’

Jon engaged eyes again, flickering back and forth, trying to gauge the truth in what Simon was saying.

‘The person was mad. He was dressed in rags, an animal skin of some kind. He attacked me, and a few days later, he came back with a gun and shot David. It all came out in the inquest.’

Jon frowned. Simon wondered who in the crew had said what to whom.

Sue would need to know. He tried to remember the creature which had attacked him.

For the first time, he wondered what he, himself looked like when he changed.

Did he actually look like a wolf, or was he a wolffish human?

He suppressed the urge to run his tongue over his teeth and kept his eyes steady on Jon’s face and away from the exposed flesh of his neck and collar bone above his tee shirt.

There was a lightness in Simon’s head and an ache in his bones, a cold sweat was forming on his back, a slight feverishness.

His nostrils picked up a scent on the air and he looked back towards the window.

He could see them now, eyes peering from the undergrowth.

Taking in the walls again, he noticed the week’s tasks marked up on the white board.

Full Moon was written in big red letters on Wednesday.

Today is Monday, he thought, that’s why I can smell them, I shouldn’t be here.

His mind went back to the day it changed. It had been a full moon. The creature came from nowhere and attacked him. And then two days later, David was shot by someone, the creature in human form, who was trying to shoot him. It made no sense. Why was it so important to kill him?

If I go out to the pack, will they recognise me? He wondered, and will they recognise me as the human or the werewolf? They were fond of me as a human, I thought, but they don’t like werewolves. Will Sky recognise me?

Jon sighed audibly. ‘It’s not you, Dr Henderson, you’ve got a fantastic reputation. It’s the connection between this pack and that incident. And I gather David Kineson was your friend.’

‘He was my friend. Also my brother -in-law.’

‘Your sister must be devastated.’

‘Mmm. She wasn’t exactly light-hearted beforehand.’

‘OK look, we’ll go out and see if they’re about.

It’s not a definite “no”.’ Jon opened the door and they went outside.

‘I saw you looking at the chart. You’re probably wondering why we’re pandering to popular views about the full-moon but it’s a new part of the research.

Did you notice anything unusual around full-moon? ’

‘I’m not sure we had long enough with them to say,’ said Simon. ‘The full moon wasn’t something we were thinking about, apart from lighting I suppose. What about you?’

They walked across the clearing and towards the trees, no sudden movements, steady pace, voices low. The wolves watched, their ears twitching, smelling the air.

The senior male stood slightly ahead of the pack and at the end of the clearing.

He recognised the scents of the two men.

One was the one who belonged with this place, wherever it was.

Harmless, a little annoying on occasion, with his poking and prodding, but they could endure him and his group.

The other though… the male made a soft noise - this man had sat with the pack in the other place.

He had once smelt of the leaf mould and pine needles of a different forest. He had been a different sort of annoying, his group had been larger, with cold hard objects hidden in trees and bright lights flashing.

This was the man that fascinated their young female, that tempted her to give into her abnormality, to change from her proper form into human form.

The senior male knew she should mate but without a male from another pack, he couldn’t permit it.

But even if there hadn’t been, he didn’t want the abnormality to be passed on.

He had thought it would stop when she had nearly died, her body bleeding under the trees, left by the humans, dragged off by the wolves.

But she was still changing, albeit no longer at will.

That time was near again. And as for this man, he was not the same anymore.

He smelt wrong, there was a sourness stronger than the milky, fungal smell they were used to.

There was musk, sickness, ageing, the taint of meat rotting trapped in teeth, a stomach filled with bile.

He looked different, he moved slower, he peered, there was a slight lameness.

He reminded the senior male of that thing , the thing that had prowled round, dying, seeking to spread infection.

But he was not that thing yet. Now he was still the man who had lain down with them in the trees and fascinated the young female.

Perhaps it would be better if she decided what shape to be and stayed with it.

Perhaps she and this man would be mates.

It was hard to understand why she’d want that chill nakedness, those unstable limbs, that disconnection with the world.

The senior male relaxed and came forward to greet Simon.

The remainder of the pack, in order of rank came forward too, sniffing and remembering.

One of the older wolves let out a soft howl, recalling the place that was gone, the forest where they were not, which was where this man, surely, belonged.

A young wolf, who had been no more than a cub a year ago, ran out and gambolled round him, remembering softly nipping those legs, the soft ruffling between his ears.

The senior female turned to look for the young one: the one who had been besotted, who had gone near the flames and changed, her fur disappearing, her limbs lengthening, and stood shivering in the shadows till someone drew her in among the people. But she would not come forward.

The young female stayed back under the shadow of trees.

She lifted her muzzle and smelt him. He was the same and not the same.

His scent was confusing. In her mind, she imagined something, that feeling of touching with fingertips, of speaking, of arms around her.

It was clearer again, it came and went, this imagining.

Sometimes she could barely remember and other times, she knew she would change and run and be cold and lonely.

The moon shrunk and disappeared and she ran with the pack, hunting rabbits, snuffling berries, then the moon grew and as it grew she became filled with a pain, a hunger which would not be satisfied.

It was nearly on her again, she was aware of him, imagined fur-less limbs and the dislocation from the pack.

Her ears twitched towards the way she would go, towards the setting sun, the fence, the place where the woman was. And where he would be.

But he had left her. She had been a wolf and the thing had come through the air and bitten her in the shoulder and she had fallen.

She had felt the blood run out of her and the light fading and all around her the humans were rushing and crying and lifting the dead man and the wounded man and they left her.

He left her. The pack had pulled her away and licked her clean and curled around her until she healed.

But he was gone. And that feeling that she could chose her shape had passed out of her flesh with the blood that poured or had been stoppered by the thing buried in her muscle.

And now the changing was forced on her by the moon and when she found him…

she could not quite recall in her current state, but at the back of her mind was the taste of tears, the soreness of a weeping mouth, the saltiness of a nose running with grief.

She thought he hadn’t come because he was dead, but he wasn’t dead.

Yet all this time he had not come. Now he had come and she longed to go to him and yet refused.

Let him feel the pain and the hunger as she had.

She laid her muzzle on her paws and looked at him through the grass.

He was seeking her out, she could see him.

She could smell the sweat of him, not quite right, not quite how it had been before, in the other place.

He spotted her and moved forward. She backed away, then stood and for a second caught his gaze.

Then with slow deliberation, she turned and sitting down, faced a tree, resting her forehead against its trunk.

Moisture filled her eyes but she would not turn round again.