by Selena Scott
“So, does anybody know how to storm a military complex?” Ida asked innocently, her toe drawing a circle in the dirt.
“First of all,” Phoenix said, “you’re waiting in the car.”
“You too,” Orion said to Diana.
“You’re discriminating against us because we’re women!” Ida protested.
Phoenix shook his head. “No. We’re discriminating against you because you’re humans. Wren and Dawn can come.”
Ida growled in protest but Diana laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll only distract them if they think we’re in danger. If they know we’re a safe distance away, they’re more likely to concentrate.”
“Now that we got that settled,” Jesse said, looking a little bemused by all the lovers’ quarrels taking place. “First off, we’re gonna want to cut the power. Most shifters can see better in the dark than humans.”
“I can do that,” Sasha volunteered.
“You know how to do that?” Orion asked.
“Sure,” Sasha shrugged, blushing. “I’m an electrical engineer.” He looked around at all of their surprised faces. “Oh, jeez. I might not be the most valuable shifter around here, but I’m not completely useless. I can do some stuff.”
“All right, so Sasha is going to turn the power off. Then we’ll infiltrate.” Jesse pointed to the three wolves and himself. You’re a raven shifter, right?” he asked Wren and she nodded. “Good. We’re gonna need a bird’s eye view first so that we know the layout of the place. And while we’re in there, it would be good to have someone that can help us communicate with one another. Because unless you know where he is in there, we’re gonna have to split up to find him.”
“I know where they just took him,” Dawn said. “The Director told Quill where to wait for him. But I don’t know if he’s still there.”
Now that they’d decided to act, a timer had started ticking in Dawn’s gut. She felt like every second that passed might be counting down to Quill’s very last heartbeat. She didn’t even let herself entertain the thought that he might, at that very moment, be dying. Or dead already. They couldn’t charge in there without even the semblance of a plan. They had to figure out how to do this.
Jesse, who apparently did know how to storm a military complex, drew them all closer and explained what to do. Wren shifted into her raven form and disappeared into the sky, coming back fifteen minutes later with an exact layout and reports of a strange man creeping along the outside of the fence.
Dawn took a deep breath and looked around at all the people she loved the most in the world. Her family. Her friends. Her first love. The only person missing from this group was the man she was willing to die for. The love of her life. Her mate.
And she would stop at nothing to get him back.
***
Quill waited listlessly for the Director to come to him. As soon as he’d tossed the keys to Dawn, exhaustion had hit him with tidal wave force. It was over. It was finally over. All the tension of the last few days was gone. He’d succeeded in getting her out from under the Director’s watchful eye. So, all that was left to do was receive his punishment.
Death or torture.
Interestingly enough, he no longer knew which one he preferred. He had no hope for making it out into the free world again. The Director would never allow that to happen. He’d seen it in his eyes as Dawn had performed her part perfectly. She’d come across as vaguely talented, but rough and dimwitted. Perfection. The Director had lost interest in her almost the second she’d begun failing her tests.
All the excitement the Director had had for Dawn’s future had been siphoned off into his rage and disappointment in Quill. Every ounce that the Director had been looking forward to utilizing Dawn’s skills was now pointed into making Quill pay for his recruitment mistakes.
If the Director killed him out right, it would be merciful and short. So, maybe Quill should wish for that. But if the Director tortured him for a while, he’d have just that much longer to hold Dawn in his heart. To remember and treasure their time together. It had been so long since love had taken up residence in Quill’s heart that he hoped he’d have a little more time to hold onto it.
The room was windowless so he had no concept of passing time except for the seconds his own heartbeat ticked away. With any luck, Dawn would be with her brothers now, speeding away down the highway, back to Portland.
With that thought in his mind, Quill leaned his head back against the wall he sat against and dozed.
A sound pulled him back into the present and he realized that his dreams had been mercifully filled with Dawn. It was nice to realize that he could be so kind to himself. To have gifted himself a few last moments with her. Even if only in his mind.
The sound had been a hand at the doorknob and Quill’s bleary eyes came open to see a figure standing framed in the doorway, backlit by fluorescent light.
“He’ll see you now.”
Quill stood and let the guard escort him down the hallway, past the room where the Director had met Dawn, past a few closed doors and a few open ones.
The place had the same distinct feeling as a graveyard. The muted activity of restless spirits. Obviously, things had happened here; one could feel that in the air that was never quite still. But nothing much was happening now. Every room was empty, both of people and of furniture that Quill could see. But down the perpendicular hallways he could hear voices. The Director’s men must be housed somewhere in this building.
Quill wondered how many there were and then decided it was pointless to take a guess. It would only take one of them to kill him anyhow.
Finally, after a few minutes of twists and turns through the hallways, the guard deposited Quill in the doorway of a room contrastingly filled with objects and activity.
“Go,” the guard said, shoving Quill in before him. Quill got the distinct impression that the guard didn’t like being in that room and he could understand why. All around them machines beeped and whirred, their screens racing from image to image. There was a series of different tranquilizer darts laid out side by side in a long line, vials of different liquids positioned at each of their heads. Most sickeningly, there was what looked like a shiny silver operating table. Just beyond that, there were jars of… things. Quill didn’t look too closely but he could only imagine they were organic in nature. Once living, now trophies of a truly sick man.
Quill’s stomach soured. He could see it now, plain as day, why he’d stayed by the Director’s side for so long. It was because the man was this awful, this evil, that Quill had seen no other choice than to stay. Because if Quill had known, on some level, just how bad this man truly was, he’d have known better than to truly stop and look closely. He’d known, in his heart, that to truly investigate the morality of what was happening here would be to take a stand against it. And he hadn’t been strong enough, morally or physically, to take a stand against it. So, the only thing to do had been to follow, as blindly as possibly.
He couldn’t forgive himself for this. Hell, he figured that it would likely take decades of time to eventually forgive himself for his actions as a young, hurt man. And those were decades he was certain he didn’t have. He’d be shocked if the Director let him make it to next week. But what he could do right in this very instant, was not hate himself.
It was a final gift to Dawn. Not that she’d ever know about it. But that didn’t matter. The last thing that Quill would do for her was to not die hating himself. She wouldn’t want that.
“Q17.”
Quill’s head snapped to one side and there was the Director. He sat behind a metal counter, one elbow on the table and his chin propped on his hand. And therein was part of the deceptive magic of that man. Sometimes he just seemed so normal.
“Leave us,” the Director said to the guard and Quill could practically see clouds of dust left behind in his wake. The door slammed behind him as he went and Quill could feel the reverberation of that sound in his gut. The slamming of that lab door felt remarkably sim
ilar to the slamming of the door of Quill’s tomb. This was where he’d be buried. Alive or dead, it ended in this room.
The Director beckoned Quill forward.
He stood where he was. There were so many things that the Director had forced him to do over the years. Heeling like a dog was not going to be on that list. Not today.
The Director seemed to read the defiance in Quill’s features and he smirked. “Do you know why you are named Q17?”
I’m not, Quill thought. But instead he just shook his head. He’d long since stopped wondering about that nomenclature.
“Q for your given name, of course. But there was actually a lot of thought put into the seventeen. I chose it intentionally. I wanted a double-digit number. The implication being that many more, just like you, had come before you. That I’d gone through sixteen just like you. But it had to be an odd number. An unfinished number. It couldn’t be Q20, for instance. Twenty is a good, round number. It implies the nexus of something. The mountaintop. The summit of a lifetime’s work. And I never wanted you to think that’s what you were to me. Seventeen implies many before and many yet to come. I wanted you to feel like you were a part of something special, but not special yourself. I needed you to know that you were replaceable. Imperfect. That perhaps hard work could make up for your natural shortcomings.”
What an absolute asshole.
It came out of nowhere, Dawn’s voice in his head, but Quill was intensely grateful for it. He could almost hear the outrage in her tone. How horrified and disgusted she would’ve been to hear this despicable diatribe. Even now, the Director was playing games with Quill, trying to defeat him in every way, but this time, Quill wasn’t a young boy, he wasn’t utterly destroyed by grief. He was a grown man bolstered by love.
“Unfortunately,” the Director said, lifting his chin off his palm, “your shortcomings prevailed. And now, here we are. Much worse off than when we started. All because of your failings.” He steepled his fingers and for the first time, a wretched emotion worked into his voice, just around the edges. “Do you have any idea how much money I spent attempting to capture those three?”
Quill stood where he was and just listened.
“I was promised,” the Director continued. “By a man that I trained to serve this cause at all costs, that the three Wolf siblings were unique. Incredible finds. That they had the potential to resurrect the program that was so frustratingly stolen from me when the camps closed down.”
The Director spoke as if the camps had simply gone bankrupt. There was no implication in his tone or words that they had been shut down by the government for gross human rights violations. That they were a horrifying black mark on this nation’s history. That Quill’s own family had been murdered there.
Quill’s fist clenched.
“Here I was, thinking that perhaps all my hard work over the years was about to be rewarded. That my disciple had found the three shifters that would change everything. That we could use them. That the light of fortune would shine upon our program once again. Funding, Quill. You promised me the three shifters that would restore our funding.
“But instead, here I sit, in this molding, abandoned wasteland, and you’ve somehow cost me money.” He stood now. “I find out, through conversation with this woman, that not only are her brothers less talented than she—if that were possible—they are also less amiable. And then, there she goes, showing me her talents.”
His lips had gone white with rage now.
“She was spectacularly mediocre, Q17.” He picked up a glass beaker and smashed it against a wall. “There was literally nothing there that I could study or salvage or weaponize. In fact, the only thing I noticed about this woman that had any value whatsoever was how she looked peeling her underwear down her legs.”
All the sedate, fuzzy acceptance of his situation immediately evaporated in a haze of irate fury. He wanted the Director’s head on a spike. He wanted to wear it like a necklace around his own neck.
The fury cleared his head for a moment and Quill realized something that his brain had been too muddled to see minutes before. He was currently alone in a room with the Director.
He, a grizzly bear shifter, was only twenty feet from one of the most evil humans on the planet.
Of all the horrible things that the Director had enlisted Quill to do, outright murder had never been one of them. An empty, metallic feeling started zooming through his veins. Like his blood was a river of hollow-point bullets.
Could he kill this man?
Either the Director was going to kill him, and he’d never see Dawn again. Or he’d kill the Director, get sent to prison for life, and never see Dawn again.
But in one of those scenarios, the Director couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.
The bullets in his blood started moving double time.
“I’ve had some time to think on it, Q17.” The Director moved out from behind the table, closer to Quill. “And I realized what must have happened here. I didn’t think you capable of it. Yet, here we are. I think you fell in love with this girl.”
All of Quill’s blood froze in place. A roaring filled his ears for a moment. How much had the Director figured out? If he’d put it together that Quill loved her, then he might have put it together that Quill had tricked him. Which meant that maybe Dawn wasn’t out of harm’s way at all.
Purpose reignited his desire for action. He could never stand docilely by if she was in danger.
“Why? I have no idea, considering she’s remarkably ordinary. But lust plays tricks on all of our hearts at some time or another.”
Quill ground his teeth.
“I think you fell in lust with this girl and saw her as much more than she actually was. You thought her spectacular. When really, she’s completely mundane.”
Quill felt both appeased and incensed. Anyone calling Dawn mundane deserved a backhand that would have them seeing Jupiter. But also, if the Director was still thinking that Dawn was mundane, she wasn’t in danger from him.
“So now, here I am, left in a horrible conundrum. You’ve been one of my most valuable foot soldiers, Quill. I’ve trusted you through thick and thin. It would be a shame to waste all your training and have to start from scratch with someone new. But I always knew that it would be possible that you had a shelf life. That at some point, you’d do something predictably underwhelming like fall in love with an unimpressive woman and lose me a million dollars.”
The Director was now ten feet from Quill.
“And now that that has happened, there are only so many options you leave me with.”
He was close enough that if Quill were in his grizzly form, he could swipe him with a paw. It was now or never. If Quill was going to do it, it would have to be this second. No hesitation. In just a few more seconds, he could wipe the Director off the face of the earth. Simple as that.
He realized now, with something akin to helium in his stomach, that there were parts of Quill’s soul that the Director had absolutely no access to. They were Quill’s and Quill’s alone. He didn’t have names for them. But he knew inherently that these were the parts of someone’s soul that could never be taken; they could only be given. And by dint of that, they could never be the Director’s. They would only ever be Dawn’s.
The Director didn’t own him. He didn’t control him. And he didn’t define him.
With Dawn in his heart, Quill launched forward and into his shift, his clothes starting to shred, his claws and teeth emerging first. It was joyous, really, the stretch and amplification and majesty of becoming his animal form. He didn’t do it enough. He should have spent more time in his bear form over the last few years, gamboling in the mountains.
He was almost there, almost fully shifted when a sound like a cannon went off and Quill felt something pierce his shoulder. His shift stopped, most of the way through as he froze. Liquid fire started lancing through his veins and he gasped for breath. He’d never been caught in the middle of a shift before, unable to be one part
of himself or another. He retracted back, like a snail, stumbled down to his knees, and was a human again.
He had just enough wherewithal to use his hand to take the dart out of his shoulder. It was a different kind of tranquilizer dart than he’d ever seen before. And it didn’t feel like the other one had. He didn’t feel dim or sleepy. He felt alert. Except for the fire that licked the edges of every cell. He tried to push himself to standing, his clothing in tatters on his frame, but his legs and arms wouldn’t cooperate.
He fell to his back, his head knocking hard enough against the tile floor to have him seeing a spray of stars for a moment.
It had been a paralyzing agent, he realized, as he tried again to move his arms and legs and could barely lift his hands from the ground.
His mind was perfectly cogent as he watched the Director come to stand over top of him.
“Oh, Q17,” the Director sighed. “You’re completely useless to me now. You know what an owner does to the dog who bites him?”
And then he lifted a pistol into Quill’s view, pointing it directly at him.
With a pop, the lights went out, followed by a deafening bang. Quill’s body jerked when the bullet entered his side. And, almost mercifully, the pain put him to sleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A half an hour later, Quill was awake again, staring down the barrel of a different gun, into the eyes of a different man. But once again, all he could do was lie there. He was starting to feel his toes again, which meant that the paralyzing agent wouldn’t last forever. But that was little consolation when he was bleeding out and a very large gun was being pointed at his head.
Quill blinked his eyes, trying to see clearly. “It’s you,” he whispered.
“Jesus,” the man replied. “You’re hit.”
He stepped away and came back a moment later with a roll of paper towels that he pressed against Quill’s wound.
Quill hissed.
“Can you hold that there?” the man asked.