Bête
From the White Wolf Wiki, the most complete White Wolf reference
Bête is a term with a confused definition. It has been used to mean "all the Changing Breeds other than the Mokole", "all the Changing Breeds other than the Garou", and "all the Changing Breeds in general".
The confusion traces back to 1993, when the word was first used in the Werewolf Players Guide First Edition. On page 165 it is defined as "other shapeshifters" under the heading of "Mokole Lexicon", and so obviously was intended to mean all the Changing Breeds besides the dragon breed itself, and to be used fairly exclusively by them.
However, the term spoke to a need for a comparable word for the Garou themselves to use; however, rather than making a new word for the purpose, authors simply appropriated "Bête". This is clear in the Werewolf Players Guide Second Edition (published in 1998), where on pages 129-131 it is used frequently, clearly indicating the breeds other than the werewolves - or, perhaps, to the Changing Breeds in general. This latter use of Bête would be particularly nonsensical, as there were already a number of synonyms that are used right in those same pages - "Changing Breeds", "shapeshifters", "Changers" and "werecreatures". There would be no reason to confuse a word originally intended for another purpose when there are already suitable words.
A year later, in 1999, White Wolf released breedbook Mokole. Within it, on page 16, Bête was again defined as "shapeshifters other than Mokole". Clearly authors for Gaia's Memory refused to let their right to the term go.
The following year, in Werewolf: The Apocalypse Revised Edition, a suitable replacement was finally provided in the word Fera, defined on page 54 as "shapeshifters other than werewolves". Use of Bête in non-Mokole contexts became unnecessary then, and became a rather rare mistake thereafter. That said, the same sort of confusion and misunderstanding that corrupted Bête would afflict the word Fera as well, as it was sometimes used as (or even defined as) a synonym for "Changing Breeds", as seen on page 18 of Dark Ages: Werewolf, and as suggested by the title for the book dedicated to the shapeshifters other than the Garou in Revised Edition, Players Guide to the Changing Breeds.
Other shapeshifters often have similar words. The Bastet have "Killi", a term defined on page 27 of breedbook Bastet as "fellow shapeshifters", and presumably doesn't include the Bastet themselves, although use of the word on page 33 of the same book seems to suggest it too may be used as a synonym for "shapeshifters". As defined on page 15 of breedbook Ananasi, the Ananasi use the word Ovid to refer to the other Changing Breeds, and there seems to be less room for including themselves in the term, as "most of whom are not considered significant in the grander scheme of things" is the rest of the definition. Similarly, on page 17 of breedbook Nagah, the Nagah are noted as having the term Khurah to refer to those shifters other than themselves, and again is clearly distinct in having "a connotation of 'our charges' or 'our wards'."
The term itself is French, and does indeed translate as "beast".
