In only twenty-four hours she went from a beautiful young woman to a crone, then nothing but scattered dust.

Lycaon was devastated by the loss of his love, but worse than that was the haunting knowledge that soon his own sons would join their mother and die every bit as horrifically.

Like her, they would die for something none of them had had a part in.

Unable to bear the injustice, he confronted the gods and told them to screw themselves. He would not stand by and watch his children die. Ever.

That very night, he began using the darkest of magick to splice the genes of his wife’s people with those of the strongest of animals. Wolves, jackals, lions, tigers, panthers, jaguars, cheetahs, bears, hawks, leopards, even a rare dragon-those were his chosen few to be the saviors of his children.

When his experiments were complete, he’d created an entirely new species. No longer human, no longer Apollite nor animal, they were something else entirely.

The experiments turned his two sons into four separate beings. Two creatures who held the hearts of an animal and who lived as an animal by the light of day. And two who held the hearts of a human. By day, human would be their base form.

This was their gift.

And so was born their new curse.

From their mother’s Apollite race, they inherited magick and psychic abilities. From their father’s tampering they would live by day as their base form, either human or animal, and at night they would be able to switch to their alternate form. Man became beast and beast became man.

Under the light of the full moon, when their powers were strongest, not even the laws of time or physics would hold sway over them. From that day forward they would live for centuries, immune from the curse of Apollo.