by Kari Gregg
“Thank you.” He rattled off the date and time, my name, and Westfield’s address before returning his attention to me. “Nox, I’m Dr. Oliver Bennet, but you can call me Oliver. I’ve been treating your brother as his psychiatrist for the past four years. I want to assure you our sessions are confidential. I won’t repeat anything you say to him… or anyone else.”
I snorted, pointedly glaring at the recording device.
“That’s for my personal files.”
“Dio—”
“With your permission,” he said, raising his palm, “I’ll send a summary of our talks to your alpha—”
“Yes,” I said, leaning down to speak into the device.
“—but no transcripts or recordings will be provided to your pack,” the doctor finished, lips curving. “I want you to feel safe here.”
I blinked at him and schooled my features into a placid mask.
“Okay?”
I nodded again, before remembering the recorder. “Yes.”
The human’s mouth quirked. He relaxed in his chair and studied me over steepled fingers. “So… Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
I scowled at him.
“Perhaps what happened during last week’s visit?”
I shook my head violently. No, I didn’t want to talk about that. Ever.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Nox. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know.”
My glare indicated exactly who I blamed and my message must’ve been clear because the doctor chuckled. “Yes, well. We’ve temporarily sealed the outside half of the visiting room from our air-conditioning system. Joth won’t detect your scent anymore. You’ll be warmer until we settle on proper filtration, but we decided against sealing off Joth instead. Nose-blinding him to the environment we’ve worked hard to acclimate him to would’ve been needlessly cruel.”
Like locking him in an isolated cage with a few hundred humans and experimenting on him wasn’t? But I kept my mouth shut.
The human slid a pair of glasses from his suit jacket. After unfolding them, he perched the spectacles on his nose. “He regrets his outburst, you know. He’s been terribly upset.”
I bet.
“In my years at Westfield, he’s never snapped like that. I consulted his previous therapist. Once Joth adapted to incarceration, he became a model prisoner. Polite. Cooperative and kind. Despite his isolation, he’s participated in several reentry programs, including earning his GED and an associate degree in information technology via distance learning, which is a striking achievement for your kind.” He studied me with curious brown eyes. “According to the information supplied by your pack, you quit school at fourteen?”
Alarm jolted through me. He had to know I’d spent months in my animal form after the murders. The human police had been desperate to interrogate me. After Farron had finally been forced to admit I couldn’t be produced to answer their questions because I’d run, my breakdown had caused a minor panic. Humans and shifters alike had hunted me. Had I wanted to, I wouldn’t have been able to return until the furor died down and by then… School was the last place I belonged.
“I work,” I said, frowning.
“Several years ago, my wife managed to obtain a desk you made, a special gift for my home office and at a considerable sum, I’ll add. Cherry, with knobs whittled into squirrels?”
Grudgingly, I nodded. I remembered the piece. I didn’t take on big projects like it often.
“You’re talented,” the doctor said. “Your kind tends to be industrious in the trades you choose.” He stroked his chin, assessing me like a bug under his microscope. “But shifters are rarely educated.”
Not by human standards, maybe. I stifled my sniff of disdain.
“You quit school younger than most, but shifters usually leave to begin learning a trade before obtaining a high school diploma. Your brother, on the other hand, worked for his equivalency and some college. Worked hard. At nineteen, few humans achieve as much as he has. For a shifter, his accomplishments are extraordinary.”
I could’ve pointed out Joth owed no duty to a pack. No full moon offering was expected from him to support shifter families, fatten pack coffers, and otherwise strengthen us as a group. His birth pack had exiled him after the murders. No other pack would have him. He could do as he pleased. The rest of us had jobs, responsibilities.
“He’s smart.”
Dr. Bennet straightened his shoulders. “Two standard deviations from the mean according to our intelligence tests.” When I blinked at him, the human chuckled. “He’s an exceptional learner.”
I snorted.
“You’ve something to add?” The doctor spread his open palms. “You can speak freely. Nothing you say is wrong or will land you in trouble.”
If he truly believed that—and his scent told me he didn’t consider his statements a lie—then he was a bigger fool than I’d already surmised. That irritation, more than the doctor’s invitation to elaborate, broke my resolve to shut up.
“He isn’t smart because he’s a fast learner or because he continued your human schooling. He’s clever because he figured out how to use you.”
“Do you believe Joth is manipulative?”
Tearing my attention away, I bit my lip and shrugged. I didn’t know what my brother was. A killer, yes. His ability to seem normal most of the time only made him more dangerous. Truthfully, although I’d loved him and part of me always would, I didn’t know Joth. I wasn’t sure anyone could.
“His outburst traumatized you and him both, but it was also a breakthrough. We observed a hint of his aggression when he taunted you during your first visit, but Joth tends to be self-contained and controlled. After the murders, he locked down his violent urges. Treating him without observable phenomenon to guide our drug therapies has been difficult because we haven’t seen active evidence of psychopathy in him.” The doctor flashed a stiff smile. “Until last week.”
I gulped, my stomach twisting sickly.
“You triggered the dark malevolence in him and that gave us—”
“I don’t want to talk about my brother.” I didn’t want to be in the human’s cramped office at all, but I especially didn’t want to discuss Joth.
“Okay. The news is probably best delivered by him anyway.” The doctor made a frustrated sound in his throat. “What about your new alpha? I’m told you’re in a relationship.”
He fucked me. I wouldn’t call it a relationship. “He’s trying to breed me.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
I wrinkled my nose at the human’s prodding. “I like sex.” Because I couldn’t resist poking back, I added, “Sexual submission is important to omegas.” Including damaged and broken omegas.
“Do you want a child?”
I fidgeted with the stiff denim cuff of my blue jeans.
“Nox?”
“What I want doesn’t matter. I can’t.”
“You don’t know that.” When I glared at him, Dr. Bennet tipped his jaw to a curious angle. “If Dio is trying to impregnate you, he evidently believes it’s possible.”
“Joth gutted me.” The agony, the hot slippery blood spilling from my abdomen, those things I remembered with brutal clarity. Indeed, I could not forget it. “He said he didn’t need to kill me to destroy me, and he was right. He shredded my womb. I can’t breed.”
“Shifters command an amazing capacity to heal, however, and the months you stayed in animal form would’ve aided recovery.”
The tips of my fingers ached, my claws desperate to push through. “The human doctors said I can’t.”
Dr. Bennet pressed his lips together. “Six years ago, you couldn’t, but you haven’t been examined since.”
“You think I can spontaneously regrow a womb?” I choked down bitter laughter. “I’m not a starfish.”
“No, not a starfish, but specialists have studied your original scans and images…” The human grunted. “If you could conceive and carry to term, would you
want to, though? That’s the question. If you don’t want to be a father, whether or not children are possible is irrelevant.”
My skin itched, my wolf’s coat of fur struggling to break through. “I can’t.”
“But if you could?” Oblivious to my shaky control and his peril, the human leaned forward. “I’ve consulted about your case with Dr. Lyon and Dr. Gabot, both of whom specialize in shifter medicine, and if—”
“I’d like to see Joth now.”
The human’s brows furrowed. “Will you agree to a fresh panel of tests, at least?” When a growl slipped from my throat, he raised both palms. “Your alpha is in accord with new scans, imaging, and blood tests. If you’re willing, that is.”
I’d thought my brother manipulative? A burst of outrage streaked through me because, truly, if the alpha fucking me had decided, what were the human authorities asking me for?
I gritted my teeth, barely hanging onto my human form in my ire as I leaned to speak into the recording device. “Yes.”
Dr. Bennet sat upright. “You’ll cooperate with the exams?”
“Yes,” I repeated.
“Excellent.” His voice purred with satisfaction. “With your permission, I’d like to run a few psychological tests as well.”
When did humans ever not want to experiment on my kind?
The doctor waved a careless hand. “Nothing invasive or uncomfortable. An intelligence test. A diagnostic tool or two to guide your therapy.”
I frowned. “Dio?”
“He believes you haven’t reached your full potential in recovering from the murders and is willing to try anything to shake you out of your rut. More testing could help.”
My mouth thinned. For a fixer, my new alpha had developed a shocking reliance on humans and their way of doing things, but who was I to oppose Dio? Omegas obeyed their alphas, be that alpha a parent or the leader of their pack. With my father dead and the lone remaining member of my family in a human cage, I had only Dio. I’d submit to whatever he wanted. Grudgingly, but I’d do it.
“All right.” I didn’t like it, though, and I didn’t want to be there anymore. “May I see Joth?”
“He’s preparing for your visit, and you still owe me an hour.” Dr. Bennet reached behind him for a pile of cardstock images on his desk. “Now that you’ve agreed to testing, why don’t we start with a Rorschach? To break the ice.”
I sighed.
“You’re familiar with the concept?” He wagged the first picture at me. “You tell me what each of a series of inkblot images looks like to you—”
“I know what the test is.” I’d seen it on a television before the murders. “It looks like Batman.”
Frowning, the human traced the edge of the cardstock with the tip of his finger. “I haven’t showed you the inkblot yet, Nox.”
I nodded. “Batman.”
He showed me the picture. “This is Batman,” he said, deadpan.
I squinted at the thing. It sort of looked like a bat and that was good enough for me. “Yep.” All of the pictures would be Batman if I had any say about it, and sadly for Dr. Bennet, I did.
After the predictable disaster of my meeting with the human doctor, Joth waited on the other side of the visiting room window, his spine straight and stress grooving lines on both sides of his mouth. Reckless happiness had swelled my chest since leaving the frustrated doctor and my steps to the plastic chair were light. I snatched at the telephone receiver, sure I could handle my brother too. I’d pay for my rebelliousness later, but for now, I preened.
“Hi,” I said into the phone without a whisper of prompting from Joth, which was a first.
“Hey, Nox.” My brother blinked at me, his stare perplexed. “You’re in a mood.”
I was. I really was. “Dr. Bennet has a lot of pictures of Batman. He must be a fan.”
“Uh-huh.” He arched an eyebrow. “You okay?”
Not really, but since when had that mattered? Not once in six years, maybe not even before then. Until the murders, I hadn’t questioned my fate in being born an omega. I might have occasionally entertained wistful longings for a different destiny, but I’d accepted my likely future regardless. Since I didn’t want to discuss that either, I prevaricated.
“The human said you wanted to show me something.”
“I do.” Brows furrowing, he rested his telephone receiver on the metal tabletop. He shrugged off his shirt and piled it on the table. He angled in his seat to present his biceps, where a skin-toned gauze bandage stuck to the muscle. He picked up the phone again. “Do you know what a medicated patch is?”
“Yes,” I lied, but since I believed the humans had adequately sealed off the room, something on my face must have revealed me because Joth launched into an explanation anyway. I tuned him out, making vague encouraging noises when he paused for breath, but I didn’t really care. Chemicals were absorbed into his body from the bandage into his skin. So what? Human doctors and their human medicines had nothing to do with me.
“—wolfsbane,” Joth said.
Jaw gaping, I jerked my gaze up. For the first time in six years, I looked at my brother directly, incapable of resisting my appalled stare. They were poisoning him? He didn’t appear sick. His skin waxed the same unhealthy pallor as before, the sun long denied Joth, but pain hadn’t etched lines around his mouth or creased the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t thin. His arms, shoulders, and chest bulged with dense muscle like every other alpha. Joth certainly wasn’t wasting away.
“A low but constant dose prevents shifting, but more importantly, wolfsbane helps me control my more aggressive impulses.” Joth curved one corner of his mouth to form a wry grin. “I’ve been on the patch for years for security purposes, but Oliver has been fine-tuning my prescription as part of my therapy.”
The wolfsbane hadn’t stopped Joth from destroying the visiting room, had it? I sniffed my contempt.
“Oliver recommended an increase in dosage after last week, and I agreed.” He shrugged. “Other than minor nausea the first couple days, I’ve been fine. Oliver thinks my body is acclimating to the wolfsbane. That’s why I attacked and is the only reason I could shift, even partially. I needed more wolfsbane.” He stared at me, brown eyes beseeching. “I don’t want to hurt you, Nox. I don’t.”
My brother’s talent at appearing sincere made him especially lethal. Joth lured his prey into complacency before he struck, his viciousness and cruelty all the sharper for the ruse of kindness preceding it. I’d seen him at his work, had personally experienced it. Recently, no less. Still, I wanted to believe him. He’d killed the ones I loved, destroyed our family in every way that counted. He’d almost killed me, but I wanted to believe.
My brother was the most dangerous shifter alive.
“If I meant to hurt you, I can’t.” He patted the gauze patch on his arm. “Wolfsbane helps lock down those instincts. I can be rational, steadier.”
Staring at him, I couldn’t forget that he’d persisted in requesting visits from me at Westfield for years. Years. Including the period before the human doctors had upped his dose of poison. No matter how much I wished my brother meant me no harm, he’d asked for me before wolfsbane had made him steadier or more rational, by his own report. He’d wear my intestines as suspenders if he could.
“Okay,” I said because his deliberate pause seemed to demand a response.
He sighed. “You don’t believe me.”
I didn’t see any point in lying about it. I shook my head.
Joth wrinkled his nose. “I’ll prove it then.” He clenched the telephone receiver tighter, knuckles showing white. “You can talk to Oliver about me. I’ve given him permission to tell you everything. My treatment and therapies we’ve tried. Medical test results. The progress I’ve made since he took over my case, my prognosis.”
As long as he stayed on the other side of the safety glass, what the humans did to him was none of my business, but I suspected my alpha would disagree with that. He’d sent me to the huma
n prison to discover what he could about my murderous brother.
“I’ll tell the pack, and if I don’t, the humans will,” I said, not because he deserved my honesty but because my integrity demanded a fair warning.
“That’s a price I’m willing to pay,” Joth said. “It got you here, didn’t it?”
I shrugged. I couldn’t argue with him there.
“So,” Joth said on a long drawl, relaxing into his chair. He drummed the fingers of his free hand on the metal table. “You’re seeing someone.”
Choking down bitter laughter, I locked my muscles to stay absolutely still.
“Who?” my brother demanded. He’d gentled his voice, but nothing masked the steely command underlying the single word.
Luckily, my hour defying Dr. Bennet had bolstered me. Refusing to answer was easier.
Not that figuring out who had fucked me presented any special difficulty. Of course Joth knew. “What the pack’s new alpha is doing to you isn’t right, Nox.”
If he genuinely believed that, he’d been among humans too long because that was human reasoning, not a shifter’s. As long as an omega had a protector, he or she richly benefited a pack, but alone? Other shifters would fight to claim an omega, fight viciously. Once my father died, only my barren womb had prevented that sort of brutality. Living on the edges of the pack’s territory helped. Out of sight, out of mind. I didn’t believe in a lot, but the others had cared for me once. None of them would’ve wanted to push a broken wolf like me into sex, but instincts could be compelling. The animal wanted to rut. Avoiding contact with the others made resisting those urges easier for them and easier for me. I’d learned to fight with tooth and claw since the murders. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.
Unclaimed, I would always be a potential source of contention in my pack, though, and a target for abuse too. Dio had simply erased those dangers. With the alpha’s scent clinging to me, no one would risk touching me.
“If Dad were alive, he’d never lay a finger on you.” Joth scowled. “If I wasn’t in this cage, he wouldn’t dare.”
“He wouldn’t.” I nodded. “Because I’d be dead.”