by Mandy Rosko
"Then, maybe you could just thank me instead of trying to make off with my wallet."
Her hand froze. He reached back and, with an iron grip, snatched her wrist, stopping her before she could yank her hand back and pretend to be innocent.
Which didn't stop her from trying to pull away. "I wasn't trying to take your wallet."
"Yes, you were."
He looked angry. He looked really pissed off, and that made Trisha all the more fearful.
Memories of her time in the lab came flooding back. Punishments for any pranks she'd played on the guard or scientists. The beatings she'd taken for stealing cracker boxes and hiding them under her cot.
Panic rushed through her, and the man in front of her vanished, replaced with someone in a white lab coat.
They weren't in the food court of the FUC Academy anymore either. They were in a large cement room with multiple picnic tables filled with other prisoners trying to keep their heads down and stay as small and unnoticeable as possible.
She felt herself begin to tremble and knew she was shrinking down, trying to get small so the beatings had less area to hit.
"I'm sorry. I won't do it again." She tried to slide her hand out of his grip, tried to put some distance between them, but he wouldn't let her go. "I won't do it again."
Trisha felt like she was falling into something. Tunnel vision took over, and she couldn't focus on anything other than the desperate need to get away.
"If you were a regular citizen, just another shifter, I could have you arrested for trying to steal from a FUC agent."
"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
His grip was still iron tight, the same as the day she'd been taken out of her regular life and put into the lab. She could see the figure shrouded in darkness, who had a similar steely grip.
"Hey, you all right? Look at me. Come on."
"I won't do it again. I won't do it again." She knew she was speaking quickly and taking short gulps of air. She couldn't see the figures around her, but she knew everyone was looking. It would be okay... She would take her punishment and live to pull another stunt another day. She just had to brace herself for what was coming.
"Breathe. Come on. You're all right." His measured tough-guy voice had softened, his grip released her wrist, and he guided her to a chair, gently pressing her onto it.
Some of the blackness cleared, and she could see him in front of her, knelt down. As he instructed her to breathe, she started to come back to herself. It was his voice that did it. As though she was following the sound of it through a heavy fog. Finding her way back to civilization.
Odd how that worked.
She could see him. The man in front of her wasn't wearing a white lab coat. The sun was coming in through the windows in the cafeteria; they were clearly not underground in a dingy, cement bunker, though, for a few terrible seconds, she'd been convinced she was back in that place.
And the idea of it terrified her so much more than she’d thought it would.
Trisha thought she would have been braver, especially now that she was out. If anything, it seemed getting her freedom made her more terrified of the possibility of having to go back.
"Are you all right? Do you know where you are?"
She blinked and then blinked again. The floor was no longer tilting beneath her feet, and the vision of the mysterious figure who’d grabbed her faded. Not that there had been much to see. She couldn't remember his face and only recalled that he was a shadow.
But now she could see with embarrassing clarity how everyone in the cafeteria was looking at her. Cindy had gotten out of her seat. She wasn't right beside Trisha, but only a few feet away, as if she had been on her way and stopped.
* * *
Trisha looked at them and then back at the big guy in front of her.
The big bad wolf was holding both of her hands in his while kneeling in front of her, as though she were a delicate butterfly about to shudder apart.
And everyone saw it.
She did not like that.
Trisha yanked away from him, standing and backing away. This time, he didn't fight her.
"Right, well, I was just playing a prank. I wasn't actually trying to steal your stupid wallet. So can I go now?"
Not exactly smooth, but she needed to get out of there and away from all the curious, concerned, and amused stares. She'd shared a prison with them. They'd thought she was the brave one.
"Yeah, you go on ahead if you're finished eating."
She was definitely finished eating, and it was best to hightail it out of there before Wolfy changed his mind. It was strange enough that he was letting her go, but she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Walking out of there, head held high, Trisha was just going to pretend that had gone exactly as she expected it to go, that no one watched her as she left, and that she didn't desperately want to break into a run.
And she was definitely going to ignore the fact that her wrist burned with an odd sensation where Wolfy had grabbed her.
2
Agent Warren Tremblay watched as the woman walked away.
It didn't take a wolf's skillset to hear her accelerated heartbeat or smell the sweat she secreted, let alone observe her shallow breathing. Though she'd pulled herself out of the panic episode quickly, he knew her brave act was a load of bullshit.
He'd scared the hell out of her, and he was positively ashamed of himself for it.
He glanced back at the others in the cafeteria, and they all quickly returned to the meals in front of them, arms around their trays as though they were still prisoners and he was a guard ready and waiting to spring some trouble into their already miserable lives.
He was there to protect them, not to make them feel as though they were trapped in a whole new cage.
And he knew all about what that felt like. He didn't want to be the guy who made them feel that.
"You."
The short blonde woman with the visible scales and gills at the sides of her throat jumped.
Warren reminded himself that he was not their keeper, and he had to make these people see that, too. He softened his voice. "You're together a lot during meal time. Any idea what that was?"
"I…" The woman trembled slightly before straightening herself out. "I think she just wanted to leave."
"That's not what I mean." He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "If something's going on with her, or any of you, we need to know about it. You're all here in a safe space. This isn't just movement from one cage to another. We're here to help."
The woman, who couldn't have been any older than twenty, glared at him. He could swear he saw glowing in the scales across her jawline and even the few on her cheeks and forehead. "I don't know what you're talking about. She's fine. She just wanted to be alone. Now, am I dismissed?"
He wasn't going to get anything out of her, and prolonging the conversation wasn't going to help anything. "You don't need to be dismissed. You're free to come and go."
He thought he heard a grunted, Sure we are, as the blonde stalked off, but he wasn't going to worry about it. He was worried about the first girl, and if he wanted to help her, then he needed to bring this to the attention of Doctor Valerie Stiffler, the shifter in charge of their overall therapy.
Warren was good at shooting a gun and defusing a possibly explosive situation, but mental health in a situation like this was an entirely different scenario that he was nowhere near qualified to handle. This was a group of former humans who were trying to come to terms with the shifter world, their new abilities, and whether or not they could control said abilities. Not to mention all they must have gone through while being captured and experimented on.
He needed a professional for this.
He should have gone to Dr. Stiffler, but the burning in his hand from where he’d touched the horned woman was still there, and it was sending all kinds of signals throughout his body and through his shifter side.
The damned wolf inside his head liked
to think it was in charge when it wasn't. Sometimes it acted on its own and only pulled Warren along for the ride. Like now.
Because he found himself following horn woman's scent.
She smelled like clean skin and the Irish Spring soap everyone had been given when they arrived at the Academy. But there was something else underlying that, and it made his nose burn and the hand that had held onto her wrist twitch.
It was something he couldn't quite place, but he knew he wanted it all the same.
He was right to follow her because he soon realized she seemed to be hiding. Was she trying to hide from him? Or from everyone else?
Her scent trail took him to the gardens surrounding the exercise and training yard. He found her easily, sitting between shrubs in the flowerbed. It wasn't a bad place to hide, as she was blocked off from a couple of angles, and with the tulips coming into bloom, anyone just casually glancing over might not see her.
But he could, and he could smell her.
Why did her scent have to be this powerful?
It was distinct enough to him that he could pick it out from thinner vines, leaves, and small flowers—he didn't know that tree bloomed flowers—that surrounded her. It gave the impression of something...ethereal?
He saw her before she noticed him, which meant he had a moment to take in the sight of her, sitting in the dirt with her knees pulled up to her chest.
His own chest constricted as he felt sympathy for her as well as a deep need to protect her. He wanted to fix what ailed her.
She became aware of his presence then, judging by the sudden stiffness in her spine and the way she looked around. She sniffed at the air, but he doubted she knew what most of the smells meant—she was a human who'd been turned shifter but kept in an underground lab.
"Wolfy?"
He jerked back.
She stood suddenly, a leafy twig getting caught in her hair and a small vine wrapping around her horn. Several leaves and flower petals caught up in her sudden rise floated down around her, but as she was standing there, glaring at him, she looked like a majestic forest fairy.
"What the fucking hell do you want?"
Didn't talk like one, though.
The worst part about this was how he couldn't think of what to say.
That was unusual for him.
He pulled himself together quickly, the stupid wolf inside his head drooling like a complete idiot regardless of how much he told the dumb animal to sit.
"I came after you to make sure you were all right."
"I'm fine."
He didn't want to argue with her that she was most definitely not fine, as much as he might disagree with her claim. He didn't know much about psychology, but he knew enough to not take away someone's right to claim their own feelings.
"I just wanted to check in with you. It seems like our interaction in the cafeteria might have brought up some traumatic stuff." He inwardly cringed. Stiffler would have been so much better about what to say...
"Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, I've been through traumatic stuff. Thank you so much for reminding me about it. The spike in the middle of my forehead wasn't enough of a daily reminder."
Shit. "I just wanted to reiterate to you that you are no prisoner here. I grabbed you because you were trying to steal something from me, and that's not allowed. Just like in the human world, the shifter world has laws and rules, and stealing is breaking one of them."
"So why don't you go ahead and have me arrested then, huh? Then I can go to my third place of lock-up. At least then I won't have to wait every day for the next round of tests."
"The tests at FUCN'A are done to try to help you, not to harm you."
"Sure, yeah, I know, I get it. You've all told us a thousand times. You just need our blood and for us to participate in the endurance tests and whatnot so you can try to understand what's been done to us. You think it feels any different?"
"I would hope it would feel different in that you're treated with respect and dignity, and no one is altering your biological makeup." He was doing a terrible job at this. He could see that plain as day, and he needed to stop right now and back away from the situation. Every word he spoke could act as a traumatic reminder of what she had been through, and he couldn't make himself shut up.
Now she was looking at him as though she couldn't figure him out.
She was going to run away from him. She was going to yell at him some more about being an idiot and then run off to be on her own again, and there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to go to Stiffler, or worse, the academy director, Alyce Cooper.
The last thing he wanted was to get the llama spitting mad at him…again.
The slow smile that pulled at the horned woman's lips was the last thing in the world he expected to see on her face, short of the sparkle that appeared in her eyes.
"You're secretly a shy guy, aren't you?"
"A what?" He almost fell back a step, as if she'd punched him. Years of training and self-discipline kept his feet locked firm and his face emotionless, but somehow, he got the impression she was looking right through him.
And she was enjoying what she saw.
"You are, aren't you? You're a shy guy."
All he could think of was the little video game character with the big black eyes. His niece loved those games.
If only that was what she was talking about.
"You want everyone to think you're this stoic badass who doesn't let anything bother him, but underneath it, you're a sweetie. A shy guy."
"I am not a shy guy. I am responsible for your care and safety, and I wanted to see you after you ran off."
"Uh-huh, did that all by yourself, right? Leaving the rest of the prison guards to watch over the other freaks in the cafeteria so you could make sure I was feeling all right?"
"Right, and we are not prison guards; we are your bodyguards and your teachers, if you want us to be."
"Really?"
She was clever, and despite the mild panic attack he'd seen earlier, there was a fire inside her he hadn't noticed before. He was glad for it. It was likely the thing that pulled her through the horrific experiments she'd suffered through.
Knowing this about her, he was able to match her personality. She didn't need his coddling and protecting right now; she needed to know the shifter world was not out to get her and that she could be a productive member of its society.
If she chose to be.
"Yes. Really. You can come to me or anyone else in this facility and ask anything you like. We will answer to the best of our abilities."
"All right, so answer me this, why are you really out here?"
He kept looking at her, not totally understanding.
"If you're such a professional and this place really is that safe, then why are you out here with me? Why bother if there's nothing here that can hurt me?"
He didn't want to get into it with her that she might need protecting from herself, or possibly the other people there who had been rescued.
It had happened a couple of times already. The victims of horrific experiments had gone on a rampage, killing and destroying property wherever they could and sometimes directing their rage and need for revenge on their captors to the FUCN'A staff.
But those were mild reactions compared to what had happened to some experiments from the infamous Mastermind labs. As much as the bleeding hearts wanted to help the rescued people, the guards had to remember that some could lose all touch with their humanity and need to be put down before they took down others.
Probably not the sort of details she needed.
"Like I said, I was concerned our interaction may have been harmful to you, so I'm here to check on your physical and mental well-being."
She crossed her arms. "If everyone around here wants to see to our mental well-being, then you should all consider letting us leave this place."
"It's been explained to you why that can't happen."
"Because we can't let humans know about shifters. B
ecause someone might freak out and shift in front of people. Not to mention the big protrusion on my forehead that can't be hidden. And God forbid I'm out there making people gawk and you all might have to euthanize me or something."
He winced. He didn't mean to. Warren considered himself talented in the art of keeping a poker face. But hearing her talk about the shifter world like that didn't exactly feel good.
He wasn't going to lie to her. It was a possibility. A worst-case one, but still… "Hanging around here is a much better alternative than letting the cryptozoian council decide your fate." Before the FUC had the academy to house them, experiments would be put up in hospitals. And if they couldn't control their emotions, they'd get moved from there to jail.
"That's not what would happen to you," he said. "But this is as much for your protection as it is for everyone else's."
"Doesn't feel like it."
His gut twisted with sympathy and the helpless realization there was little to nothing he could do for her, aside from keeping her safe in this facility while the actual professionals went about their days preparing her for the real world.
One she might not even be able to go back to in the end.
But he was nothing if not a stubborn wolf. His old man used to tell him as much. Said it was why he had to give Warren the belt as much as he did.
That stubborn nature had served him well in his lifetime and gave him more than a few fat lips from his dad. It was the very thing that inspired him to go out and become his own man the day he turned sixteen. To get his education and do something to help other shifters out there who might need it.
Guarding the lab victims was no exception.
"God, what I wouldn't give to get drunk," the woman moaned.
It was the sort of sound that made the stupid wolf in his head start thinking things it really shouldn't.
Down, boy. Not that kind of moan. "You can't get drunk. Not without a lot of help."
"Yeah, I get this place is a fortress, and you guys probably have a boatload of people on guard to keep anyone from sneaking in any alcohol, but can't you just give a girl a break?"
He realized she didn't know… and was sad to have to break this news to her. "No, I mean, aside from the fact that this is a training facility and it wouldn't be professional to have alcohol on the scene, as a shifter, you can't get drunk. Literally. At least not without downing an ocean's worth of booze."