Werewolf

Werewolves are a supernatural species with the ability to transform into a wolf-like humanoid. In rare cases, Werewolves can also have such advanced shapeshifting abilities that they can actually turn into a real wolf.

History
The origins of the werewolf race begins at the dawn of humanity following their exodus from the Garden of Eden. They were created when Cain, the eldest son of Adam and Eve, murdered his younger brother Abel in a fit of jealous rage. As a result, Nature itself cursed Cain. He was marked with a dark power that forced him to transform into the beast that he truly was whenever the light of the Full Moon shone upon the earth, forever cursing him and his descendants with the first strain of a mystical virus that would one day come to be known as Lycanthropy.

Cain would later stumble upon the first witch, Lilith, who taught him to control his transformation and even bore him a number of children, thus giving rise to the Original Pack, before going their separate ways. He soon learned that he could also infect others with his curse, but unlike his natural born descendants, these "turnblood" as the sons of Cain came to call them, did not have to take a human life in order to activate their werewolf gene.

Millennia after the creation of the Original Werewolves, a Greek King named Lycaon attempted to deceive and dishonour the Olympian god Zeus, who in turn channelled Nature's curse and the blood of Cain's descendants to repeat the punishment, this time sentencing Lycaon and his fifty sons to an eternity as beasts for their crimes of cannibalism, but they too learned to control their transformation with the help of Celtic Druids who would continue to serve the packs as Emissaries, powerful advisors and allies.

Physiology
When two werewolves mate in their full-wolf form, the female remains in that form for her week-long pregnancy, at the end of which she gives birth to extremely beautiful werewolves with human intelligence. These werewolves do not have a human form, and forever remain as angelic wolves. Only especially powerful werewolves can transform into actual wolves. Some bloodlines are more likely to produce such werewolves than others, such as the Hales and the Labonairs. The Crescents are an ancient pack of werewolves who are among the oldest and most powerful in the world, with most, if not all, members, possessing the ability to transform into an actual wolf at will. In the 1990s, the entire pack had been cursed into their full wolf form, even those who had not yet developed the ability to do so. After the curse was lifted, members of the pack could not change back at will until the marriage of Jackson Kenner and Hayley Marshall, essentially empowering the entire pack and making all of them evolved werewolves.

The Labonairs are effectively werewolf royalty, of the Lycaonian breed. Unlike most werewolves of this type, the Labonairs are not the descendants of Lycaon's original fifty sons whom he bit to save them from Zeus's lightning bolts, but of the offspring he fathered after his transformation, making them the bloodline of the first pureborn Lycaonian. Unlike Lycaonian werewolves, Cainites who have developed the ability to transform into an actual wolf manifest differently. Their 'inner wolf' actually materializes within them and violently rips through their human body, it is only until they learn to control their transformation that they can change seamlessly without the blood and gore, similar to their Lycaonian counterparts who shift to their full wolf form in very little or no pain. Forced transformations however, are painful for both breeds.

Also, only natural-born Cainites have to activate their werewolf gene through murder. Those infected by a Cainite are just like any other bitten werewolf. The descendants of the bitten werewolf do not have to kill to access their powers either, only the blood descendants of Cain need to do so.