Disclaimer: Everything you recognise from the film series isn't mine.

Feedback: Always appreciated.

AN: Timeline-wise, this fic starts a few months before what would have been the start of the original film, but things changed significantly for Michael in particular for reasons that will be explained soon.

The Lone Wolf

It had been a year since the accident, and Michael Corvin was still amazed that he'd managed to keep it together as much as he had.

The experience of losing Samantha in the car crash would have been bad under any circumstances, but when he'd also had to deal with the memory of that… thing… he'd hit… like something from a horror movie had just walked off the screen…

God, if it hadn't been for those scratches on his arm, he probably would have assumed it was all just some twisted nightmare, but even at his worst, he wasn't sure he could have imagined any of that, particularly when he'd been totally sober that night. He'd been told that the other driver had been the cause of the accident because the man had been drunk, but Michael still wondered if the man had been that drunk or if it was just because he'd seen the same thing Michael had and had less control of himself.

The image of that giant wolf still made Michael shiver, no matter how long it had been or what had happened to him since then. He wasn't sure what something like that had been doing in the middle of a busy road, but somehow the thing had been stupid enough to run into the street just in time to get caught between him and that other car. Sam had barely had time to scream before the engine hitting her in the chest had left her breathless and unconscious, while the other car (from what little clear memory he had of the accident) must have basically pulverized the wolf's spine and most of its organs, its head crashing through the windshield. Michael only briefly registered its fangs digging into his arm as he tried to push it away, but eventually he and the wolf must have both blacked out.

When he woke up a short while later, the wolf had vanished, but the fact that both cars were still pinned together made it clear that the accident itself had been real. Sam had been half-delirious from the pain, only able to ask him if he was all right before she finally lost consciousness, dying just a few minutes before an ambulance arrived. Michael had tried to convince himself that he'd just imagined the parts involving the wolf, but even if he'd wanted to be rational about it, that scratch on his arm had been itchy enough that he had a few suspicions about the whole thing no matter how much he tried to tell himself that it had been caused by the shattered glass.

It hadn't been enough for him to want to tell anyone else about it, especially when he had Sam's funeral to worry about, but Michael was relieved beyond words that an old friend's interest in horror movies had inspired him to take the time to find a suitably isolated spot for the night of the next full moon after the original accident. The old warehouse he'd found had mainly been useful because it was so isolated, but after he'd spent most of the night waiting for something to happen, he'd almost been relieved when he actually felt himself changing and knew he hadn't gone to all that trouble for nothing. The first moments of the change had felt like his body was being kicked apart from the inside, giving him a disturbing image of the Alien movies before he'd basically blacked out, but when he'd regained control of himself he'd felt a bit more relaxed, as though he'd just woken up from a deep sleep.

It was still disorientating to go through the change, of course, but at least he came through the whole experience without getting anyone else killed.

There were times when Michael wondered why he hadn't met another werewolf yet, but frankly, if the thing he'd seen on the road that night was any example of what the average werewolf was like, he was almost glad he didn't know more of them. Every time he blacked out at the full moon he was terrified of waking up and finding bits of other people in his teeth, and as it was he still kept finding the occasional local news report of animal attacks the next morning no matter how securely he tried to lock himself up. He was starting to get a better sense of what he did when he was in that wolf state, but the memories still felt like a bad dream when he 'woke up' the next morning, and he was still amazed that he'd managed to avoid embarrassing public nudity charges; his wolf had always stuck close to wherever he changed, even if it never stayed in the warehouse itself.

Learning about his new dietary requirements still slightly puzzled him, since he was fairly sure vampires were the ones meant to prefer blood, but through trial and error in private he'd managed to work out that raw steaks were close enough so that he could at least train his body to keep them down if he was on a night out. Even the occasional drink with friends was tolerable so long as he didn't over-indulge, so he tended to always volunteer as the designated driver for nights out to give himself a plausible reason not to be shown drinking much.

In any case, when he'd felt the need to get away from the memories of Sam and what they could have had, coming to Budapest had seemed like the best way to get away from the painful old memories and try and explore a few more pleasant ones. His grandparents were dead or had moved on by now, but they'd left him enough to find a flat, and he'd even managed to make arrangements to reserve an old storage locker on the outskirts of town that he could basically lock himself in every month. He'd managed to establish a complex little favour network at the hospital that ensured he always got the night of the full moon off by trading shifts with others; since an apparent side-effect of his new condition was a lesser need for sleep, it was easy enough for him to cover a few day shifts to make up the numbers. He'd even done a little private analysis of his own bloodwork, which had been enough to tentatively identify whatever had infected him as a kind of mutated rabies, but attempts to treat his blood with a rabies vaccine hadn't produced any kind of result, and he didn't have the necessary expertise to try and devise a better treatment himself.

It wasn't a perfect arrangement, but so far the wolf hadn't punched through the door or done any serious damage to the storage locker, so all Michael had to do was take a change of clothes there with him each night and hope nothing went wrong until he returned to normal. Until he could work out if there was any kind of 'cure' for this thing, or at least some way to keep the wolf under control apart from locking himself away each night, Michael supposed he should just be grateful that he had enough savings to cover the cost of the storage locker on top of everything else.

It was a lonely life, but he just had to hope he'd find some better way to control what had happened to him eventually…