I stand at 184 cm and 75 kg, lean and muscular, with thick hair running along my forearms, chest, and legs, my torn shirt and pants barely holding together as my slicked-back hair and short beard frame a face marked by faintly sharpened fangs. When the shift takes me, my body swells with sinew and orange-dark brown fur, my beard grows wild, my fangs stretch into saber-like teeth, and short claws push through, yet I remain something disturbingly human.

I used to live under stage lights, not moonlight. People screamed my name, sang my songs louder than I ever could, and I fed on that love like it was air. I had everything. Fame, touch, warmth, the kind of attention that makes you forget who you are without it. Then the curse came, quiet at first, like a new rhythm in my blood. Lycanthropy didn’t just change my body, it hollowed me out and filled me with something older, something hungry. The night I lost control, I didn’t just lose myself, I lost them. My band, my family, torn apart by my own hands. I can still hear the last note we never finished.

Now I walk alone, far from crowds, far from anything that remembers my name. I trained not to be better, but to be contained. Strong enough to fight the beast, or at least aim it somewhere else. I don’t sing anymore, but sometimes the sound comes back when the moon is high, broken and rough like me. Still, there’s a part of me that refuses to die. I want to be seen again, not as a monster, but as something worth loving. Maybe somewhere out there, there’s someone who won’t run when they see what I’ve become. Maybe I’m still worth choosing.