by Jadyn Chase
This time something was different. They had something with them.
"Open the door to one of the rooms!" Shaw commanded. Shaw Vance stood at a towering 6'4 with buzzed cut blonde hair and dark brown eyes. Those eyes contained so much rage; I wondered why he hadn't gone crazy yet. I moved out of the way as they shuffled a large black, lumpy bag into the room next to Avery's.
Curiosity gripped me as I peered into the room while the soldiers unzipped the bag. He was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen. He was unconscious, but the way his hair fell delicately over his face as streaks of daylight beamed over his body, made me silently swoon.
“What’s going on?” I finally asked. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d seen him before. There was something so familiar about his face the more I looked at it.
“Got you a live one like Eric requested,” Shaw stated firmly. He stepped out of the room and waited for me to hit the button to seal it shut. Turning to Eric, he nodded to him, “And thanks for those serum tipped tranquilizers. It worked like a gem. When can we expect a full arsenal?”
“Arsenal?” my eyes darted back and forth between Eric and Shaw.
Eric made a few faces as if disappointed his secret was out. With a heavy sigh, he gazed into my eyes, "Listen, Addy-"
“Addison,” I corrected him.
"Addison, we have something here that can change the balance of what's going on out there, and it's up to us to see it through. We need more test subjects because the last one we have is going to die soon."
“She wouldn’t be dying if you hadn’t been testing on her outside of my schedule. This isn’t right! We can’t kidnap-”
"It's a war out there, Addison," Shaw said. "We need an advantage, and this is it. We're not trying to exterminate them. We're just trying to make the sides even again."
I wanted to believe him. I tried to look at Eric and trust him again. I tried to understand why they were taking my work and weaponizing it. But all my questions would have to wait. As I turned toward Avery's room, I saw her arm on the ground between the bars. Her entire face scaled over suffocating her. This wasn't what I signed up for. This wasn't the intention of my research. All I knew was that before we began on the new guy, I had to get through an autopsy of her. Eric wouldn't be allowed anywhere near the new specimen. I'd keep him alive, and if I could … I'd help him get out of here too.
3
Maverick
What …
The …
Hell ...
I was painfully aware that I collapsed thanks to the coldness of the floor under me. The scent of the air was different from what I remembered. The constant aroma of burning embers seemed absent. Moaning and groaning, every inch of my body ached as I pushed myself up from the floor. The room spun. My head spun. My vision blurred, and I passed out again.
“I can’t believe you killed her!” I heard the sharp tone of a woman’s voice screaming.
She couldn’t be talking to me. I was the only person in the room and I hadn’t killed anyone recently. Panic began to settle in as my eyes darted around the space. I couldn’t tell how long I’d been out, but I wasn’t in the warehouse anymore. I tried flexing every muscle, every part of my body to force my scale, but nothing happened.
“This is why you don’t experiment on friends,” a male’s voice countered. “You shouldn’t be friends with them anyway! Let’s go check out the newbie.”
I had a feeling he was referring to me, but the woman rejected it, “Absolutely not! You went against my orders and killed my last subject! There’s no way I’m letting you get your hands on this one. You’re going to have to fight me.”
“Oh, Addy…”
I quietly crawled across the floor toward the barred entrance. My surroundings were like none I’d ever seen before. The tiled floors were dark, graphite, with splashes of amber laced through it. It felt like stone. A large bed sat against the back wall. It looked comfortable enough to sleep in, but as tired as I was, I needed to figure out what was going on first.
“Addison!” the woman snapped, “We’re going to see the Council right now!”
“Don’t go run and tell!” he pleaded, “We need to do this together! Our work cannot be done separately!”
“You didn’t want to work together when you were killing Avery last night! Look at her!” the woman choked out, “You didn’t isolate the compound correctly. You only slowed down the scale! You slowed it down so much that she didn’t have a chance to … and then she… you’re a monster, and you won’t get away with this!”
“Addison wait!”
Before I could reach the bars, I heard the sound of a door sliding open and then shut. The place was empty. By the time I got to the doorway, the lights were dark around the room except for a few dim bulbs placed over my door and three others. Flashes of lights and sounds came from a long island. Tubes, machines, and monitors sat across it. It looked like a lab of some sort.
“HELLO?!” I called out. The only thing I heard in return was the sound of my voice echoing back to me. I wondered who the man and woman were. They weren’t Scalers… couldn’t be. We don’t keep each other captive.
“Hello? Is anyone out there?” I called out again.
Nothing.
My head pulsed like the beat of a thousand drums. Whatever it was they hit me with; it was strong. What the hell were they doing to stop me from scaling?
I flexed my muscles again, and nothing happened. Not a burgundy or red scale to be seen or felt. I never thought myself to be emotional, but if they’d managed to strip me of my birthright, I’d be devastated. However, as the thought of never feeling the wind underneath my wings engulfed my consciousness, the pungent odor of someone struck me. It was the scent of burnt scales to be exact. The stench of a dying Scaler seeped into the air. My senses were getting stronger. Whatever it was they drugged me with, it was wearing off. Time to go.
I pulled at the bars. They were still too strong for me to yank apart. The room was large enough to hold my dragon, but I didn’t want to scale in here. Once I was at my full capacity, I’d bust through that window and take off. I just hoped we were somewhere near Black Harbor.
Instead of flexing my entire body, I tried my hands. Talons painfully protruded from my fingertips, but before I could do anything with them, they retracted. Letting out a disappointing sigh, I could tell I still had some time before I could physically break myself out of here.
The bed looked comfortable enough, and it had to be better than the floor. Until my abilities returned, I might as well get some rest. I was exhausted and couldn’t deny the fact I needed to rest. My head ached. My vision continued to blur. Sitting on that plush mattress drew my body to it faster than I anticipated. So long as I was being left alone, catching a few winks couldn’t hurt.
The low sounding buzz of the bright lights of the lab turning is what woke me. I felt weaker than when I laid down. The bars didn't appear in front of the door, and I took my chance. Swinging my feet over the edge of the bed, I stood up only to feel the same dizziness I had before. I flexed my fingers, yearning to feel the pain of my talons pushing through, but not even that would happen. Then I saw her.
Black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail with strands on either side of her face. Like two stars breaking through a night’s sky, those piercing green eyes locked onto mine and never left. The soft shade of her buttermilk skin blushed as she turned away from me.
“You’re um,” she hesitated. Her soft voice stuttered, “You don’t have any clothes on.”
I admit that when I woke up the first time, I’d been stripped of my tactical gear and laid on the floor with merely cargo pants and a t-shirt. I didn’t remember taking them off before I laid down, but here I sat wearing nothing but boxers. Her coy nature was unusually alluring. I tried to stand up, lost my footing, and stumbled back into the sitting position.
“Be careful,” she warned rushing over to me, her shyness disappearing. “You’re on a new dose of the serum.”
>
“Serum?” I breathed heavily onto her arm as she held me behind the head to lay me back down.
“Yes, the serum stops you from scaling,” she told me.
“Why the hell would anyone want that?” I asked with an unanticipated amount of disgust in my voice.
She moved back, offended by choice of words, “Because some of your kind don’t enjoy it. They should be free to choose.”
“They are,” I countered with my rage building, “If you don’t want to be a Scaler then you don’t scale. Simple.”
“It’s not that simple,” she murmured.
“Where am I?”
“The Rock,” she answered shortly. “No way on or off here without wings and you my friend do not have access to those at the moment.”
“How long?”
She began touching me, my neck, my wrist, my heart with a stethoscope. Checking my vitals it seemed. After she jotted down a few notes on her clipboard, she looked down at me, “How long for what?”
“How long won’t I be able to scale?”
Her beautifully thick eyebrows scrunched together as if she weren’t sure she should share that information, but she did, “In about three hours, you should start to feel the effects wearing off. Then, I’ll come in to give you another dose.”
“I don’t recommend that,” I told her. As hazy as I was, my temper was one hundred percent volatile.
“Please just let me run my tests to figure this out, and I swear I’ll let you go,” she told me.
I scoffed, “The scent of death drips off of you. I’m not leaving here with an Anthro watching me. Not unless it’ll be like whoever’s in that other room. I’m not too enthusiastic about their results. What’s going on here? I might be able to help you without you killing me.”
“You wouldn’t help. I know who you are. I’m surprised you don’t remember me,” she spat.
“Why should I?” I returned a just as equally irritated tone. “No Anthro is worth remembering.”
“Despite what you think about my species, yours is no better. I’m going to help you get out of here, but only after you help me. I have a mission, a goal, and I’m going to see it through to the end. Trevor deserves that much from me. You, on the other hand, I’m not so sure of. Don’t make me regret being kind to you.”
“Kind?!” the word forced my anger to boil over. Without thought to my weakened state, I reached up to her, grabbing her by the throat and yanked her down to me. Her face was so close that if I moved an inch closer, our lips would lock. The fear in her eyes erupted as her hands desperately clawed at me to let her go. Her smooth complexion began to redden as I scolded her, “Don’t you dare equate mercy for kindness! I am not here voluntarily. And more than likely, I will not leave here alive. Just because I can’t scale doesn’t mean I can’t snap your neck. Now, this is kindness.”
4
Addison
With the firm grip of his fingers around my throat, my walls grew unintentionally moist as fear combatted my feelings of unbridled lust. He was right. He could snap my neck. He could kill me right now, but he didn’t. When he finally released his grip, I gasped loudly. Taking in the air as if I’d never get the opportunity again, I backed away from him, flushed, confused, and afraid.
“Don’t ever touch me again,” I managed to choke out.
He pushed the sheet off of him and got out of the bed. His thick rusty brown hair fell in front of his face, shielding the intense glare of anger emanating from his eyes. Those luminous, honey-colored eyes bored into me like, like, like I was his prey.
My heart raced as I began to inch my way back toward the door. I didn’t want to give him another opportunity to get a hold of me. I underestimated his ability to function while dosed with the serum. He was nothing like Avery, and I should have known better. She wanted to be here. She never had reason to attack, but him? He had every right in the world to kill me where I stood. Luckily for me, he exerted too much energy choking me and instantly sat back down.
The physicality of his body moving, even as he struggled to keep himself upright, let me know that I’d have to up his dose. I should probably do it again when he falls asleep. Rubbing my neck, I backed out of the room, never letting his eyes leave mine. Once I set foot back in the lab, I slammed my hand down on the button to lock the bars back in their place.
I tried to focus on putting my notes into the computer, but I couldn’t get the image of his bulging muscles, veins pulsing, fingers squeezing my neck tighter and tighter, out of my mind. My nipples were hard. My body began to ache something awful as if I needed a fix to a drug I never had.
When Trevor held me as his pet, we were never intimate. He saved me. He loved me, but he never made love to me. I hadn’t been intimate with any Anthro either. The time I’d spent with Trevor had been spent reading and researching their scaling process in search of a way to stop it. He was obsessed with finding a cure. I wondered why he’d been so adamant about ridding himself of those scales. The answer he always gave me? He wanted to feel normal.
Now I stand in this lab continuing my work with someone who wants nothing more than to feel his own body again. We were crossing a threshold that I never agreed to. Even after he showed me how quickly he could end my life, my heart ached because of what I was putting our prisoner through. It wasn’t kind. I was merely trying to make myself feel better about being able to continue my work.
I let an hour or so pass before I went back toward the door. My specimen slept peacefully with his bulging arms folded across his chest. Even in his sleep, he was protecting himself. With a deep breath, I pushed the button to let myself back inside. I knew he’d need to eat if I were going to give him another dose. The tray I put together had an assortment of meats and even a piece of fruit. Fruit couldn't grow in Black Harbor, but here on The Rock, it was plentiful.
I set the tray down on the bedside table. Turning to him, he held a softness in his face. It was a softness on the far side of the anger I’d witnessed earlier. I couldn’t believe Shaw brought me a soldier. That’s the only way to explain his stature. He was tall. Even under the serum, he was strong. He had to be to cross paths with Shaw.
I stared at him for a long time. His breathing was steady. I don’t know why, no, I knew why I was feeling the things I was. My body was tense with passion begging to burst free because Scaler or not, he was hot. But I couldn’t let these feelings of angst and yearning blind me from what I’m supposed to be doing.
I couldn’t help but want to touch him. I sat down on the edge of the bed feeling his skin. He was near fever temp, but still, his pulse was steady. I rested the back of my hand across his forehead before moving his hair out of his face. When he didn’t move, I raked my fingers through it; across his scalp. A shiver traveled through me. Before I even realized what I was doing, I’d bent down to smell it, him. His entire essence drew me to him in a way I’d never felt before.
Pine, ash, and an indescribable musk that made me want to climb on top of him. I felt like an animal in heat. When I’d gotten my fix, I backed away to see him staring at me. My heart jumped, but heat rushed to my face.
“You certainly like toying with your own life, Addison,” he said to me in a tone much calmer than I cared to admit.
I slid away from him immediately, fumbling with my hair, and wiping my hands against my lab jacket. I began to apologize, “I’m sorry. I was just um, I uh, I brought you food. I knew you’d need something to eat. I wanted to check your vitals, and then I realized I’d never had a Scaler quite like you in my presence. The last time our paths crossed, it was too brief, and-”
He held his hand up, “You’re rambling. How long was I out this time? Have you given me another dose of that bullshit?”
“No,” I shook my head, “I can’t overdose you, or you might have a psychotic break of sorts. I need to monitor how you react physically and mentally if I’m going to offer this solution to Scalers who want to shed.”
He sat up slowly, pushing himself upri
ght against the headboard. A low growl spilled from his lips as he moved. Flashes of him growling in my ear as he took me from behind splashed across my imagination. My breath caught as I inched myself closer to the edge of the bed, but I hadn’t got up yet.
“That’s the second time you mentioned us knowing each other. How? I don’t remember you,” he said with disdain.
“But you know my name,” I was genuinely perplexed.
He motioned toward the door with a nod of his chin, “I heard some guy pissing you off when I first got in here. He called you Addy, and you corrected him, your name is Addison. I don’t know you, but I want to know how you know me.”
“Trevor Gable owned me as a pet,” I told him hoping that I wouldn’t have to go into it.
“Who the hell is that?”
I blew out a long breath as I wrung my fingers in the seat of my lap, “Trevor had to be the smallest Scarlet Wing I’d ever seen.”
“We don’t keep pets,” he stated adamantly, “They cause too much trouble…”
His voice drifted off. I hoped he remembered why they adopted that rule. His eyes grew wide, staring at me; the light bulb in his head turned on.
“You’re her, aren’t you?” he asked leaning forward with those honey-hued eyes squinting at me. “Weren’t you a redhead?”
“Scale dust turned it red,” I said letting a few strands slip between and around my fingers. “But yeah. When he refused to give me up for food rations to that brute…”
“That brute, Chef? He needed to feed about a dozen of us. Times were a bit difficult when it came to finding food back then. And Bart isn’t a fan of keeping pets anyhow. Yeah, I remember now. Trevor wasn’t even fucking you. He was keeping you as a pet-”
I cut him off, “How do you know we weren’t, um, intimate?”
“Because I knew Trevor,” he said, “He wanted to be one before being with one. I told him he was crazy, but once he had his mind made up, that was it. You know we were going to kill you that night? You were thought to be sending secret messages. If Trevor didn’t attack Chef, we probably would have. We thought you fell out of the building. Who would have thought you survived that fall?”