by Selena Scott
He leaned back and immediately Dawn found herself swept into the most incredible kiss of her life. His flavor invaded her. His heat. His soft, insistent press. Dawn was careful not to make a single noise, but she wanted to sigh into him. She wanted to feel that groan of his reverberate through her. But no. They kissed one another completely silently.
But still, she could feel his words as clearly as if he’d spoken them. I love you, he was telling her. I’ll love you forever. She felt it in her heart.
When he pulled back from the kiss, she was dizzy, her heart in her throat. She opened her mouth to tell him that she loved him but he wasn’t having it. He placed his fingers over her mouth.
He shook his head no.
Dawn nodded to show that she understood, biting back her disappointment. Not telling him was like trying to swallow down air that she needed to exhale. Her body almost shuddered with the effort of withholding.
His head cocked to the side, listening to something on the other side of the door, and he quickly stepped back from her.
The door kicked open and two new guards stood there, guns at their hips. “Let’s go. He wants to see you.”
Dawn and Quill both stepped forward but the guard shook his head.
“Not you, girly. Just him.”
Dawn blinked. He’d told her that they would likely be separated at some point, but she hadn’t assumed it would happen this early.
Quill nodded and stepped forward, out the door, without looking back at her. Which was something else he’d prepared her for, the indifference he would have to show toward her.
“Think of it like an inside joke,” he’d told her. “Something we can laugh about later. It’s like the Director is our boss and we can’t let him know that we’re together because we’re not allowed to date at work.”
At the time, it had seemed like it wouldn’t be that hard. He’d made it sound like a game. But watching him walk away, the door slamming closed behind him, Dawn was suddenly filled with the urge to light a match and watch this place burn. This was all anything but a game. Not only were their lives and freedoms in danger, she was standing in the middle of the domain of the man who’d tried every trick in the book to strip Quill of his humanity.
The Director had preyed on a boy who was drowning in grief. He’d swept in and made him think that the only thing he had worth living for was doing the Director’s bidding. His insidious, evil work.
Seriously. If Dawn got the chance, she was definitely kicking this guy right where it hurt.
She estimated an hour of alone time in that room, with the guard right outside the door, before she was summoned.
Her heart banged in her chest as she stepped out into the hallway. Immediately, the guard reached over her head and fastened something around her neck. Dawn had to fight every animalistic instinct she had to keep from shifting. And then her hands were being gathered together as well and she was collared and handcuffed and being dragged along by a metal chain.
Well, wasn’t this a party.
This building smelled like chemicals and animal fear. There was the bright, metallic scent of adrenaline coming from every direction. She could scent stress and pain on the air like a perfume. After a few minutes of winding through the honeycomb of hallways, the guard dragged her into a room, like any of the others, but this one was a bit larger and had furniture placed around. It was weirdly out-of-place furniture for the setting. There were two velvet armchairs, plush couches, and in the far corner, a curtain that surrounded what she guessed was a bed. Was this where the Director lived?
Dawn did everything she could to keep her lip from curling. Her eyes swept the room and in a far corner, a man was rising from another seating area. Two smaller armchairs facing one another. Quill rose next to him.
As the man walked over to her, Dawn tried to hide her shock. This was the Director? This medium-sized, innocuous-looking person? He had gray hair in a balding ring around his head and a button-up shirt tucked into khakis. He was trim and well kept. The only thing strange about him was the lack of any lines on his face. Where most people his age would have laugh and frown lines around the eyes and mouth, he had nothing. He was baby smooth. Almost pink like a baby too. It was strange and disconcerting.
Dawn forced her eyes away from him and over to Quill. But that was a little disconcerting too; he was looking at her with a bored expression on his face.
“The chains are unnecessary,” Quill said in low, cruel voice. “She’s fully housebroken.”
Housebroken?! Ooooooooo. He was gonna pay for that one later. She was gonna his tie hands together and see how he liked it. The thought rose hysterically within her but she pushed it down, fighting for her composure. Unwilling to crack.
She was supposed to show fear and confusion and incompetence. That was it.
The Director, hands in his pockets, walked a slow circle around Dawn, eyeing her at every angle. “She looks healthy enough.”
“She’s recovered fully from her time in the mountains,” Quill answered. “I’ve made sure she’s gotten plenty of nutrients over the last year.”
Immediately, Dawn thought of every dinner and lunch they’d eaten together. Quill always so eager to bring her food. To feed her. At the time, she’d thought it was sweet. That it was an instinct to protect her. But had he really been… getting her healthy for the Director?
The thought made her stomach curl. Not because of who Quill was now. The man who’d loved and protected her viciously. But because of who he’d been then. The confused and hurt person whose only job had been to destroy her life.
She glanced at Quill and he casually scratched at his left ear.
All the tension unraveled from her gut. That was their signal. They’d thought of it in the car.
“You’re going to be unsettled by the way I am with him,” Quill had warned her. “You’re going to feel like the whole thing is creepy. And seriously, you might even wonder what’s the truth and what’s not. But you just have to trust me, Dawn. I’m going to sell this thing to the very last inch. You just have to trust that my heart is still in my chest, still beating for you.”
“We need a signal,” she’d decided. “Some imperceptible way for me to know that you’re on my side.”
“Brilliant. How about I’ll scratch my ear? Like this.”
He’d shown her then, and it was exactly how he was doing it now. I’m here, he was telling her. I love you. I’ll fight for you. We’re doing great.
She took a breath and looked away. Steadying herself.
“What’s your name, girl,” the Director asked her once he’d completed his circle and wound up back in front of her.
“Dawn.”
“Why even have names?” the Director asked and Dawn immediately decided she hated his voice. It was a chameleon’s voice. Smooth and convincing now, but Dawn could easily picture him screaming at her, cursing her, threatening her. “If you and your brothers grew up in your wolf forms, why would you even have the need for names?”
“Our parents gave them to us before they died.”
“You must have fond memories of your parents.”
She cleared her throat. Quill had warned her about this too. That he would probe into her past, search for connections that would make it harder to disappear her from her world.
“Not really. I was very young when they died.”
He nodded his head, seemingly in satisfaction. What an asshole.
“And your brothers? Aren’t they wondering where you are?”
“I’m sure they are,” she said, remembering the words that Quill had tailored for her to say. “But… they aren’t like I am. That can’t tolerate captivity. If they came, they’d rebel. They’d fight. They’d get themselves killed. I’m here because I know I can handle it. If you have me, you have no need for them.”
He chuffed in surprise. “You have it all figured out, huh?”
She shrugged. “I love my brothers. I’m willing to do anything to keep them safe.”
He eyed her, his head cocked to one side, a funny little smile on his face. “You think highly of yourself. You’re so sure that we’ll want you to work with us here.”
Dawn glanced at Quill. “I really don’t know anything about what you do here. But Quill has made it clear that I’m exactly what you’re looking for. He seems to think I’m a big find.”
She couldn’t help but cross her arms in front of her chest, half in protection from this creep and half in defiance.
Quill caught her eye, scratched his ear briefly, and she let her arms float back to her sides, schooling her face into a more innocuous expression.
“Well, Quill does know what I’m looking for,” the Director said, his eyes still riveted to Dawn. “I think I’d like to see what you can do.”
The Director beckoned to someone behind Dawn and then turned to sit on one of the armchairs.
“I hope you don’t think it’s rude, but we’ve devised a few tests in order for me to be able to assess your skills, love.”
Love?
Puke. Dawn held back the twist of her expression at the very last second.
She didn’t answer back, just turned to see what was going on. There were three more guards in the room, two of them heavily armed with both guns and tranquilizers and one of them with a large, rolling box.
“First,” the Director said, “I think I’d like to see your shift. Guard, if you’ll remove the shackles, then we’ll see what we’re working with.”
Quill hadn’t been sure if the Director would want to see her shift or her scenting skills proven first. She knew it was a relief to her and a source of tension to him that it was turning out this way.
It was a relief to her because she felt like this was the only part of the test that she wasn’t confident she could fake and she wanted to get it out of the way first. It was a source of tension to him because he had hoped that if she failed her scent test first then maybe the Director wouldn’t even want to see her shift. He’d just ask her to leave. Of course, there was also the whole part about Dawn having to get naked in a room full of strangers and neither of them were too thrilled about that. But it was what it was.
One of the guards undid the shackle at her throat and the handcuff and the chains fell heavily away from her. She immediately set to work on her clothes, wanting to get the whole thing done with quickly.
She looked at no one as she stripped down. Not even Quill. She wanted to look at Quill. She wanted his eyes to take away this entire moment. She wanted to drown there in his gaze, so that nothing else existed. But, of course, she couldn’t exactly do that without giving away their relationship, so, when she was down to her underwear, she glanced at him just long enough for him to scratch his ear.
And then she was naked. And then she was… shifting? It was the most awkward, stilted, painful shift of her life. She channeled every deconstructive lesson that Quill had tried to teach her. She channeled every ounce of her nervous energy, every eye that was on her twisting body. The voice of the Director. The synthetic, chemical scent that filled this room. The fear and loathing of every person here. She channeled it all and allowed the nerves to fill her.
Her shift must have been terrible to look at. When she was finally in her wolf form, she wanted to sit back on her haunches and howl. She wanted to growl and snap her jaws at the men with the guns. She wanted to run as fast as she could. She wanted escape on a deep, animal level.
Instead, she did what Quill had coached her to do and lay down, her snout on her paws.
“Shift back,” the Director said, an inscrutable expression on his face.
Dawn did so, and it was just as bad as before. By the time she was done, there was a layer of sweat over her entire body, her muscles ached, she was fatigued. But that didn’t stop her from immediately scrambling into her clothing.
When she was settled again, the guard with the shackles approached her and the Director waved him away. “I think there’s no need for those.”
The Director looked over his shoulder at Quill. “Quite a rough shift. She barely has control over it.”
Quill shifted nervously on his feet.
Jeez, he was a good actor. Dawn couldn’t wait to razz him about it later. She’d watched the Oscars with Ida earlier this year. She’d make him one of those out of tin foil.
“I know it’s not great. I figured that’s something she could learn.”
“You made it seem like it would be no problem,” the Director said in a flat voice.
Quill said nothing in response.
“Well, let’s move on to the scent portion of this assessment.” The Director motioned to the man with the wooden box and he stepped forward.
He unpacked the box and she saw that there were multiple compartments and drawers. It was supposed to be scent-proof, she supposed. Each scent was supposed to stay in its own little quarters. But as he jostled and moved the box from one side to the other, getting it ready, bursts of scent made themselves apparent to Dawn.
“First off,” the Director said, motioning toward the first compartment, “we’d like you to identify some basic objects by their scent alone.”
One of the guards came up behind her and slipped a blindfold over her eyes. Dawn tensed but forced herself to relax. She couldn’t go giving herself away by punching this guy in the throat.
She heard some rustling, the compartments clicking open and closed, and random bursts of disparate scents washed over her. Even with her eyes covered, she could place each person in the room. She knew that the only moving body was the guard who was administering the test. For a moment, she indulged and did what she couldn’t do with her eyes. She focused only on Quill, on his personal scent. She let it wash over her. Comfort her. Just a few hours and they’d be free of this mess. On their way back to Portland.
Their only issues would be how to break the news of their relationship to her brothers and how to get Quill a new job. It would be bliss.
“Object number one,” the guard said, holding something up under her nose.
A chunk of quartz, iron-rich, mined in an area with salt-heavy soil. Sanitized in some sort of chemical solvent. Housed in a drawer lined with dusty velvet. Held in the hand of a man who used soap and no lotion.
“It’s a rock,” she said.
There was silence and then scuffling. A drawer opening and closing. “Object number two.”
Black pepper in a glass shaker with a metal top, a bit of rust under the lid. Normally housed in a spice cabinet that also housed cinnamon, thyme, parsley, bay leaves, cardamom, cloves, and a Tupperware of oatmeal that unfortunately had meal worms growing in it. The last person to have handled the pepper shaker before the man who held it now had needed to wash their hands.
“Pepper,” she said dimly. She was threading the needle here, the way that Quill had coached her. She couldn’t pretend to be downright terrible at identifying scents or else the Director would sense that the whole thing was a trick. She had to be good enough to have caught Quill’s eye but mediocre enough to not be an interesting prospect to the Director.
“Object number three.”
A chicken egg, uncooked, straight from a refrigerator that housed coleslaw, ketchup, and a variety of sandwiches that had been in there a few days too long. It had sat near some sort of medicine as well, a kind of medicine that Phoenix had needed to use when he’d run a fever in the hospital all those months ago, though Dawn couldn’t remember its name now. The chicken egg was at least two weeks old. The chicken had clearly been given hormones. It came from a farm that used pesticides.
“Not sure,” Dawn said, taking another hearty sniff. “I think it might be an egg.”
“All right,” the Director said, sounding bored. “Take the blindfold off.”
“Oh,” Dawn said. “I was right, it was an egg.”
“Uh huh. Part two of the test is set up on the coffee table.” He pointed to the table in front of him and Dawn came and kneeled next to the table.
Lai
d down there were ten identical house keys. Each one of them had been sprayed or rubbed with a specific scent. She could easily distinguish between each one.
“Can you tell me which key has had no scent added to it?”
That was an impossible question. Maybe for the purposes of this test there was one key that had no scent added to it, but none of them were scentless. Each one told the story of how it had ended up on that table today.
She made a show of sniffing each one and it became apparent what the Director was actually testing her on. Of the ten keys, eight of them had an obviously synthetic scent to them, cleaning products, or perfume, or essential oils, or food. There were two that didn’t smell explicitly synthetic. One of which had had nothing sprayed on it (and was obviously the right answer) though it carried with it the scent of the hand that had laid it on the table and the scent of the fabric pouch that had carried it into the room. The other one had all those requisite ambient scents as well, and also added to it was a much harder to describe scent. It was what the Director was attempting to suss out if she could sense it.
It was the scent of deception. How else to describe it? It was a chemical cocktail that an animal emitted when it was hiding itself. It was the scent of hormone and pheromone and organic chemical. But to admit that she could scent that would be to admit that she was useful to the Director.
So, she played dumb. But not that dumb.
“Actually, I think you’ve made a mistake with this test. Neither of these two keys have any scent to them.” She pointed to the two. The scentless key and the trap.
The Director frowned and crossed his legs, beginning to look a little agitated. He threw a long look at Quill before he turned back to Dawn.
“All right, then. There’s one last question. One of these men,” he gestured toward the guards, “is a shifter. Can you tell which one?”
None of them. She’d known that from the second they’d stepped into the room. But the third from the left had the scent of a raccoon shifter rubbed all over him as a decoy. She knew that were she to tell the Director that she could decipher that, she’d get herself a one-way ticket to the land of medical experiments for the rest of her life.