The First Werewolf
an excerpt

Nysacia appeared just outside the edges of Wepwawet’s temple. She looked around carefully for a sign of Wepwawet, or any living thing, but found only desert sands. She stepped forward a few paces and reached the wall that surrounded the temple and started to sidle her way along it, towards the gateway.
She was a few meters away from it when someone she recognised exited the temple, a roll of papyrus in his hand. He was reading it, but looked around when she sneezed.
"Demon!" he yelled, seemingly recognising her. He turned and ran towards the temple.
Nysacia cursed and turned into her desert wolf self. She chased the man across the courtyard tot he temple and up the stairs. She halted just outside, not fool enough to chase him into a place where she could be easily ambushed.
"Come out of there, you evil human!" she yelled, pacing in front of the darkened doorway. She sat in the middle of the doorway and glared into the darkness. "Reveal yourself, and I might be lenient on you!"
Something within the temple screamed, a scream fraught with so much pain that Nysacia took an involuntary step backwards, away from the source. The man she had cased to the temple fell to the ground just inside the doorway, his throat bloody and his eyes a glassy brown as they stared at the relief of Wepwawet on the wall beside Nysacia.
Out of the darkness leapt Eteus, his black fur covered in blood. Crimson saliva was dripping from his mouth onto the steps as he growled back into the temple. An arrow flew out at him, landing between his front legs.
"Eteus?" Nysacia asked, staring at the jackal.
The black creature glanced at her, and then leapt into the air, turning around and fleeing down the stairs to stand and fight at the bottom. Nysacia joined him, both of them snarling up at the doorway, where priests were backing out in fear. A couple of priests fell down the stairs backwards, leaving Nysacia and Eteus with a view of what had them so scared.
Endytia, Itous, Urnsia, Achotia, Kimetia—the five youngest children—Warania, Draocia, Rylius and Wolius—the four oldest ones—were standing in front of the doorway. Endytia (a golden jackal), Itous and Achotia (black desert wolves), Kimetia (white jackal) and Draocia, Wolius and Rylius were pacing back and forth while Warania and Urnsia held bows and arrows on the priests. The boys were in bodies that naturally grew faster than their sisters', the four of them growling as they stood to either side of their human sister.
They were almost at the age for sexual maturity, almost five or six years old. As a result, they weighed as much as their parents and were just as strong. Nysacia was well aware that the only reason she had such control over the four of them was because she had put the fear of humans into their very bones, and she had the ability to change into a human.
Urnsia and Warania, despite being only human, held their own against the priests. They knew how to use a bow, Eteus had ensured of that, and were good shots. Their not-quite-human siblings flanked her, so they were not likely to be charged and injured by the priests.
Nysacia growled at the priests still standing at the top of the stairs. Some of them were smart enough not to all turn around at the same time, and managed to keep their balance against the wild dogs herding them for a tumble down two-dozen stone steps and into the jaws of real adult wild dogs.
Nysacia looked at Eteus. The man was growling, his hackles lifted as well as his lips. He barked, and the children, unthinkingly following the orders of their father, ran for the desert wolf and the black jackal. Their sudden movements caused the priests and men to step backwards in their haste to get out of the way, and fall down the stairs.
The men screamed as they fell backwards, their cries punctuated by the snapping of bones and cracking of skulls. The pups and their human sisters ran down the stairs to their parents, Warania and Urnsia standing behind the wild dogs that were their blood-family. Their loaded bows were levelled at the few priests that had retained the presence of mind to step to the side away from the charging animals, rather than directly back from them, to their deaths.
The priests at the top of the stairs stared as Nysacia bunched her legs up, growling and getting ready to pounce on them. Eteus stepped in front of Nysacia, growling in return as she started to leap. She stopped herself and barked at him.
"what do you think you're doing?" she demanded, her tail curling up over her back as she attempted to stare her husband down, her ears forward and her teeth exposed. She was stiff-legged, her hackles lifting. She was trying to assert dominance over him, her mind not realising that a female always bowed to the male in the end.
"They deserve death! They killed my mother! I will be the one to ensure they pay for it!" she tried to leap around him, to find that he moved with her, blocking he movements.
Eteus did not reply, instead standing as she did, though a bit taller than her. "When they die, Anubis and Thoth will judge them for their sin in killing Vesitia," he said, watching her. He did not want it to sound like he was siding with them, but he did not want the priests, who were each holding a knife, to slit his wife's throat.
And his, now he thought about it. And his children's.
The priests on the top of the stairs were watching the jackal and the desert wolf with bewilderment. They had figured that the desert wolf was all for attacking them, but they did not understand just why the jackal was stopping her. They had figured that there was a contest of authority happening, and they were weighing their chances. They had three options: running, staying still or attacking the wild dogs. They were scared that any movement might attract the attention of the wild dogs, so they stood still and waited for the competition to end.
The pups and the human children stood as silent as the priests, watching their parents. They had never known their mother to back down to anyone, even their father. However, they could say the same of their father. The pups had never witnessed their parents in defeat before.
The staring competition continued, both adult wild dogs trying to bend the other to their own will. A small wind picked up and blew the sand around them all. Neither adult moved. Neither was willing to back down to the other. Nysacia's pride would be bruised. Eteus felt that all of Nysacia would be bruised if he backed down.
One of the priests shifted on his feet, taking a step back, attracting Warania's attention. Her bow, fallen lax at her side, sprang up, turning the adults' attention from one another to Warania, then the priests. Nysacia took advantage of Eteus' distraction and ran up the stairs towards the priests, snarling and growling.
"Nysacia, no!" Eteus raced up the stairs after Nysacia, trying to grab her tail in his teeth.
The priests lifted their knives. One broke and ran. The rest looked at each other, looked at the charging dogs and dropped the knives, running as well. Nysacia chased them and caught one human's leg in her teeth, pulling him to the ground and killing him before Eteus could stop her.
"Nysacia, stop!" he yelled, chasing her as she sprinted after another fleeing priest.
Nysacia ignored him almost as easily as she had before and seized another priest around the ankle and pulling him to the floor. Before she could kill him, however, Eteus pounced on her and threw her off the priest.
The priest got to his hands and knees and crawled away from the scene as fast as he could, trailing blood from his ankle. He galloped a mockery of the wolf's sprint, gritting his teeth with every jar of his ankle. He was out of sight before the growls of the fighting wild dogs echoed out of the temple's doorway and into the streets beyond the temple walls.
Nysacia had attacked Eteus and had him by the scruff of the neck, ignoring the weight and height difference between them. She was tugging him, trying to get him to the floor so she could assert her dominance over him, and then punish him for attempting to usurp her power. Their children were watching from he shadows, having followed their father in his mad sprint after their mother.
Nysacia used her claws to scratch at his eye, ad a claw caught, making blood run. Nysacia yelped as the half-blind jackal caught her front paw with his teeth and pulled her off balance so that she fell to her stomach on the floor. Eteus stood over her, growling down at her. Nysacia growled back and the Jackal hit her on the snout with a paw, knocking her onto her side. He knocked her onto her back and stood on her shoulders, holding her down. She tried to bite him, but he hit her muzzle again, forcing her to abandon that attempt, with a scratch across the delicate tissue of her nose to remember the lesson by.
Nysacia's whole demeanour changed. Her tail curled up between her legs where she lay on the floor, her vulnerable throat and belly exposed to him. Her paws were drawn into her body, and she started to whimper, alternately licking the scratch on her nose and Eteus' muzzle, ho matter how far he lifted his head to avoid it. Her ears were drawn back, and her brown eyes were wide. Her front right paw was bloody, but she did not seem to be able to feel it in the wake of backing down to Eteus' dominance.
Eteus snorted at her, and she stopped licking at his face in favour of just looking up at him and licking at the bloody cut on her nose. Very slowly, she started to return to human form, her expression and demeanour not changing. As she became human, her legs, too heavy to be kept in the air as her wolf-feet had been, fell to the floor as her tail disappeared. She drew her feet in close to her body, lifting her human hands to shoulder height, exposing her open palms to the jackal still sitting on top of her shoulders.
Eteus started to return to human form as the children hid behind a collum. Draocia turned human and sat down on the floor, licking a cut on her hand. She did not think anything of a human doing it, but hissed at Rylius as he approached to help her lick the cut clean. She had received it running over a knife abandoned by the priests, which flew up and cut her as she ran past. The four children watched their parents as the pair became fully human.
Eteus knelt over the top of Nysacia, his hands still holding her shoulders still. Even after the pair finished returning to human, they had the ears of their dog selves, which twitched to betray the emotions that their faces did not. Nysacia's were held back against her skull, easy to see through her hair. Eteus' were facing forward, paying attention to his wife's body language.
Nysacia just lay there, whimpering despite being in the wrong shape for it. Eteus was looking down at her, his eyes amused. His mouth, on the other hand, stayed silently snarling, warning her against getting up or trying to attack him.
Nysacia, still not in complete control of hr desert wolf traits, tried to lick Eteus on the nose, despite him holding it far out of her range. He smiled at her and brought his head down to nuzzle her neck. She used her hands to keep his head there while she kissed his neck, feeling herself, against all odds, purr when he lifted his hands for her shoulders to rest either side of her torso, allowing hr to get up closer to him.
Both of them had forgotten the children in the background. Warania, Draocia, Rylius and Wolius looked around as they felt the air behind them move. Draocia got out a shout before four pairs of hands grabbed them and dragged them off, a knife to their throats.