by Mandy Rosko
"TJ?"
He glanced back at her then at Jonathan, but yeah, Trisha was screwed because he was thinking about it.
That was enough for her.
She turned and ran.
Maybe it was because she was still clutching Cindy's hand, but the other woman ran with her.
Jonathan's mother shouted something. Trisha wasn't sure exactly what it was, but she was pretty sure it was something along the lines of "Get her!"
Either way, she wasn't sticking around for this or risking anyone getting near her face with that thing.
"I'm sorry! Trish! I'm sorry!"
"Save your breath!" They were going to deal with this later, and even Trisha knew that talking while running was a great way of getting winded and caught.
Of course, she couldn't stop herself from glancing back just to see TJ charging at her like a bull let out of its pen. She shrieked and hunched down, unable to get out of the way.
TJ was unable to stop himself as he reached for her, inadvertently stabbing himself on her horn.
Which turned out to hurt as the force of his body pushed against hers. Then the pull of skin as her horn scraped his rib cage beneath a layer of thick flesh on his chest caused her neck to yank to the side.
Her horn was sharp but not sharp enough to pierce through bone, and when used like this, it wasn't the awesome weapon she thought it would be.
Turns out, wielding a weapon on your head can really wrench on a girl's neck.
TJ couldn't say much, but he could still scream with the pain of being stabbed in the chest.
They both fell over, TJ managing to yank himself off and away from her before her horn could get any deeper, but the whiplash of it all left her reeling on the ground.
Cindy was suddenly over the both of them, her big eyes cartoonishly wide now. She looked like she didn't know who to help, but as TJ groaned and got up, his hand over the shallow hole Trisha had put there, Cindy apparently made her decision.
"TJ, we can't do this."
He got up and shoved her away, standing over Trisha now.
She couldn't move her neck. It hurt really bad, and even squirming away from him sent jolts through her neck, shoulders, and skull.
He bent over her.
She slapped his hands away, but he was so much stronger. He grabbed her and yanked her up without any problems from her or from Cindy, who rushed him again. He shrugged her away as though she were nothing, and Trisha could barely do anything to help Cindy or herself, as every step TJ took back to Jonathan, and his mother, jolted pain throughout her entire body.
She barely heard TJ saying something to her until a word finally made it through the fog of pain, barely sounding like a word at all.
"Shorry."
Trisha could barely move the rest of her body, and those lightning jolts of pain made her want to end it all, but she was still able to lift her middle finger back to him.
In the distance, Cindy screamed for help, but the fact that she was out of sight made this so much worse. It had been better when Cindy was with her because at least then she wasn't alone.
"M'shorry," TJ said again, his voice slurred, and his needle teeth parted again, like he was trying to think of anything to say, anything that wouldn't sound too much like gibberish.
Then something swooped in from the sky. Something big.
And it went straight at TJ, attacking his face in a flurry of feathers and claws.
TJ dropped her with a roar, arms flailing as he tried to yank the creature off him, punching and waving his arms around in a desperate flurry.
Trisha must have blacked out for a second from being dropped when her neck was already hurting so badly, because, when she came to, TJ was still fighting with...whatever the hell that was, but the wolf's howl that came next was like cool soothing water over all of her aches and pains.
It happened again. She was there, and then suddenly she wasn't. Being unconscious was almost preferable to the sharp pain surging through her body, except for the fact that she could hear Warren's voice.
"Don't move her. Don't move her!"
Whoever he was yelling at, well, he wasn't telling her not to move. She tried to turn her head to look at him.
"No, no, sweets, don't move."
"My neck's not broken," she said, though there was no way she could know that for sure. The fact that she'd been squirming around and fighting with TJ a second ago meant she had to be all right.
She hoped.
"Don't move anyway," Warren said, his voice soothing but sounding as though he was barely holding something back. "We're taking care of this. Don't you worry."
When Trisha was finally able to focus her eyes and see him as he was, and not just a blob of color, he had his hands reached out to her. As if he wanted to touch her but was holding himself back.
She wanted him to touch her. Right at that moment, it seemed as though that was the only thing in the world that would make her feel better.
She reached her hand up.
"Sweetie, don't move," he said, even as he took her hand.
She smiled. Holding his hand was enough.
For now.
"I'm sorry I left the room. Didn't mean to."
He nodded. "I know. I went back. I smelled him there." He looked so torn. "I shouldn't have left."
"Not your fault. FUC is going to have to get a couple of cats or something. Find some pets that eat snakes."
He laughed at her, and only then was Trisha aware of what was going on around them. The bubble that had been isolating her and Warren together, locking everyone and everything else out, burst.
While Warren wasn't looking at her, she glanced over to the side, taking a look at what all the commotion was about.
TJ was still putting up a fight, but he couldn't do too much with two people pinning him down. Mason and Chase, if she remembered right. Cindy was crying, answering the questions of a guy who kept turning his head all the way around exorcist-style, checking up on TJ and his friends.
"That's disgusting."
Warren nodded. "I wish he wouldn't do that, but he wants to keep an eye on things until backup gets here. Watching over the two people who helped attack you... I normally hate it when he does that, but right now, I don't blame him. If he hadn't flown through the trees and seen you..." He squeezed her hand tighter, lips thinning. Something was bothering him.
Well, something was bothering her, too, about the whole thing. Cindy had nearly betrayed her, and TJ did, but at the same time...
"Tell them not to hurt him too much." Trisha inhaled a deep breath, closing her eyes. "I don't think this was his fault."
"It's a hundred percent his fault." Warren practically spat his words. "And he's going to be questioned heavily after this. And he'll get an appropriate punishment for betraying FUC's goodwill."
Trisha let it go. He was angry, and she was too tired to get into why she felt sorry for TJ.
Besides, he had a point.
Just because TJ was in pain didn't mean he got to force a blade to her face.
For now, Trisha had other, better things to be concerned with.
"My neck's not broken."
"We're not taking that risk."
"Well, when the doc checks me out and says it isn't, after what I just went through, you're taking me to bed, and we're having sex. A lot of it. I earned a treat."
She opened her eyes just to see him staring down at her like he couldn't believe what had just come out of her mouth.
After a delayed reaction, he barked a laugh.
"I mean it," she said. Trisha was not playing around with this. "I know you’ve got your rules to go by and everything, but you've been giving me the eye for long enough. I don't care that I'm a guest here, or a patient, whatever. I'm checking out the second the doctor tells me I'm good to go, and we're getting naked. No excuses."
Warren nodded. "Sure thing. I don't think anyone in FUC will have anything to say about it after tonight."
"And I can s
tay with you?"
"We can't exactly go back to your place, now can we?"
She smiled, feeling safe enough to drift off. "No, I guess not."
15
Trisha needed to do a better job of paying attention to the people around her.
After what happened with Cindy and TJ, she did feel kind of selfish. She'd done nothing but complain about her horn, about being cooped up in the FUCN’A Academy building. She hadn't stopped to think about the people who had it worse than she did.
Cindy was right. Trisha looked almost entirely human, with the exception of the horn in the middle of her forehead. And her memories were gone, but they were going to come back, eventually. She wasn't the only person to be experimented on and to lose track of her past. According to Warren, most other people this had happened to had their memories returned to them, and they'd found their families, for better or worse. She wasn't the only one there with a lost past, with something terrible that happened to her, or a new life and body she hadn't wanted at first.
But she liked her horn now; she liked that she could shift into a little trash panda, minus the digging into the trash part. The longer she lived with it, the more she started seeing raccoons as the cute little survivors they really were.
Just like her.
For that reason, she insisted they take it easy on TJ and Cindy.
Warren, Mason, Chase, and every other agent of FUC who was around all assured her that it was not her decision how punishments like these were doled out. Also, the fact that they had all been so focused on subduing TJ had allowed Jonathan and his mother to get away, and that was another knock against him.
Trisha didn't care. Even if TJ was the sort of guy she didn't want to hang around with anymore after this, a part of her couldn't leave it alone.
Cindy's story was that TJ had apparently grabbed her while out swimming in the lake, and after a slurred conversation, he managed to convince her to listen to Jonathan, who more articulately convinced her that Trisha's horn could turn them into proper shifters: with one fully human form, and one fully animal form.
A unicorn horn.
She still couldn't believe it. It was impossible.
Except all the get well flowers sent to her room stayed in perfect bloom beside her bed days after they should have shown some signs of wilting.
Narwhal teeth didn't glow either.
So messed up.
Either way, Trisha told Nolan what Jonathan and his crazy mother had told her, and after she promised that she'd been used to the horn being shaven when she was in the lab, he took some shavings of her horn. Warren hadn't liked that, and Trisha swore he squeezed her hand so tight that her fingers felt ready to pop off.
"Does that hurt at all?" he'd asked.
"Yes," she said, purposely flexing her fingers in front of him. Apparently, not taking the hint, she had to reach out and stop him before he could have an angry word with the good doctor. "No, it didn't hurt. It does feel weird, though."
"How weird?" Warren asked, still apparently searching for any signs that she was in distress.
"Like having my fingernails clipped a little too close to the skin." She touched the horn at the spot where the shavings had been taken.
She'd never really felt much when touching her horn before, or cared when they'd shaven it down at the lab, but she couldn't imagine how terrible it would have been to have someone else hack it off. Even before realizing how truly awful it would have been, it was enough to make her run for it.
She was so glad her horn was right where it was. Trisha didn't want anyone other than herself, the doc, and maybe Warren touching it.
Either way, she was happy to provide small amounts of shavings when needed, provided those shavings would actually grow and fill in again. Nolan would be checking in on that periodically to make sure.
Everything was a test; everything required patience and waiting and then more testing and more waiting.
She hated that. Why couldn't results just be instant?
Either way, this wasn't the end. Not for her. Even after spending a few days in the hospital side of the Academy, and getting permission to leave with Warren, there were going to more tests, more questions.
Warren told her that the people of FUC were going to want to keep an eye on her. If the baddies wanted her horn, if they thought something about it would help them with their experiments, then she was likely not out of the woods yet. Her horn could apparently heal wounds, and it was now suspected that it might have some ability to fix what had gone wrong with the people who had been experimented on...
It was just a lot to deal with, but she was willing.
If there was something she could do to help Cindy, even TJ—the asshole—she would do it.
Cindy, because she was a friend, TJ, because he was lucky Trisha was better than he was, and everyone else staying there because they fucking deserved it.
Warren, the ass, treated her like glass even when Nolan gave her the thumbs-up to leave.
Trisha was annoyed with it, mostly, but then there was the part of her that kind of enjoyed having a big, tall alpha male walking right next to her so that he would be within easy catching distance should she happen to swoon.
Trisha considered it, just to see if he would lift her up and carry her out of the Academy like a bride, but she didn't want to scare him, and the massive whiplash she'd suffered when she'd stabbed TJ wasn't entirely gone either, so that kind of fun would have to wait.
Cindy wasn't in their shared room when Trisha got there to pack up her stuff. Trisha hated that. She'd wanted to hug her and say goodbye, promise to visit, do all those things.
Warren came up behind her, putting his large hands on her shoulders and kissing her cheek. "She'll come around. She's ashamed at her actions and choices right now."
Trisha nodded. One of the sets of flowers she'd been sent hadn't been in a vase or done up pretty, but the others had been, all signed by the staff.
Mason and Jessie sent flowers, along with Chase and his bunny wife. Even before reading the cards, she could tell what came from who because the flowers from Chase and Miranda had little toy carrots and rabbit ears in them, looking more like they'd asked for an Easter setup in the wrong season, and the card from Mason and Jessie had swans on it, while their flowers had been decorated with long leaves and feathers for accents.
Even Albert and his wife sent something, though theirs was more generic and didn't give anything away to personality or shifter type other than the little paper robins and sparrows that had been stuck into the bouquet. Trisha figured florists didn't sell any setups involving beavers or owls, so they had to make do with something else.
She hadn't expected to get anything from Albert and Beverly, or anyone else who worked for FUC, so she'd been grateful to receive anything.
It turned out Albert was the one to swoop in and make a mess of TJ's face.
Warren was a little jealous of that, not being the first one from the rescue team to find them.
That, and when Albert learned how Trish's horn had played a part in his wife's recovery they'd taken up a new interest in her, calling to check up on Trisha's health every day.
Regardless of all of that, there had been that one set of flowers that hadn't been professionally done up and hadn't come with any card. The flowers had looked like the pansies and mums from the FUCN’A gardens out front, with a few wild daisies and miniature roses from the bushes thrown in. As though Cindy had gone out hunting for any wildflower she could find or steal, for her gift, tying it all together with a piece of string and dropping it off with a nurse, swearing her to secrecy before leaving.
It was obvious who it came from.
Despite how lovely her other gifts had been, Cindy's offering was by far Trisha's favorite, and she held on to it now, prepared to take it with her to Warren's and plant the flowers that still had their roots attached.
Everything else was getting put into Warren's car right now, ready for the drive out of ther
e.
"You think she might be mad at me?"
"What? For what?" Warren's hands fell away from her shoulders, as though she'd really shocked him.
Trisha shook her head. "I don't know. I guess I don't even mean mad at me, per se, but at the entire situation. My horn could help her so much, and she was so close to getting some fast results. Testing the shavings is probably going to slow things down a lot."
She looked back at Warren, and he seemed to understand what she was getting at, because his hands wound around her shoulders again.
"You're not cutting it off. Don't even think about it."
"I wasn't." Trisha's shoulders tensed up defensively, even though she had been kind of, sort of, in the back of her mind considering it.
"It doesn't matter what those people said, or what they promised, or how disappointed Cindy is. Even without your horn doing...whatever it is that it was doing, there's already a way to switch out someone's shifter animal. We might not even need your horn for any of this."
Trisha angled her face so she could rest her cheek against Warren's chest, relishing the chance to hold him close.
What he was saying was true, but so far, it was only doable through dubious science and unwilling participants.
She had been willing.
Until she found out what exactly they planned on doing to her.
"I know you want to help," Warren said. "And you are. You're doing more than most people can. Trust me, it's going to be enough."
She looked up into his eyes. He was so sure. She got no hint that he was just saying that to be comforting either.
"You wouldn't blow smoke up my ass, would you?"
"Never," he promised, smiling about her choice of words. "Just give her some time. She got you these nice flowers, right?"
Trisha smiled, looking down into her cobbled-together bouquet. "Figured you could smell her on them."
"Yeah." He sighed. "I still don't like what she did, but all things considered, I guess I could forgive her for nearly getting my mate hurt."
"Your mate, huh?"
"Don't poke fun too much. It's a serious business for wolf-dogs."