17. Simon
Days pass relatively quietly with little sign of O’Hare or his cronies, and we use them to not only practice manipulating our bonds, but also to get to know the other shifters in our section. The four of us have been taking our meals with them all, as none of the guards or other personnel have approached our quarters with supplies since Nick and Luc’s return.
Shane, the quokka, is the head of his motley crew. While he isn’t necessarily the most ferocious of the lot, the others look up to him, as he’s the eldest at twenty-seven. They’re also a mix of Mundane and Altered shifters. Shane is Mundane, and after him comes Francis, an Altered gazelle shifter who is twenty-four. Cory and Rory are a set of twin spotted hyenas—and they’re both Altered—who are around twenty-one. There are five teenage shifters between the ages of thirteen and nineteen, most of them Altered: Bj?rn, a musk ox, who is nineteen; seventeen-year-old Theo, a brown bear and the only Mundane teen; fifteen-year-old Whitby, a European badger; and thirteen year old Samuel, a porcupine; and Eli, an Arctic fox. Ollie is one of the youngest there, and although he’s uncertain of his age, he thinks he’s around nine years old. The youngest of the lot are a pair of maned wolf siblings, Aaron and Abel. Aaron is eight, and Abel is six.
It takes a couple of days before Aaron and Abel feel comfortable around the four of us, especially Quin and me. I’m not sure if it’s because our animals are larger predators, or because they’re both horrendously shy, but it helps that Ollie doesn’t seem to be afraid of us. Cory and Rory have both taken it upon themselves to protect the younger brothers, and the four of them are as close-knit as a found family can get.
By my calculations, I’ve been held at Vieux Sang for at least three weeks now, but I have no clue how much time I lost between being tranquilized in the parking lot of the Council headquarters in Sacramento and waking up strapped to a table in that chamber of horrors. It could have been hours or days, but neither Tálstrom nor I had any sense of time passing before we regained consciousness.
I’m already up for the day when Tál perks up, hearing a rattle outside the main door of our quarters. The door opens to show a pair of armed guards escorting a petrified human pushing a trolley laden with supplies, and I step back as the guards raise their guns and point them at me.
“Back up, shifter scum!” one of the guards spits at me, and I internally roll my eyes at his idiocy. He’s a shifter—a mongoose by the smell of him—willingly aiding and abetting the imprisonment and torture of innocent shifters—and children—yet he calls me scum?
I lift my hands and scoot over to the wall farthest from them all, showing I’m no threat to them—for now. The terrified human quickly shoves packets of jerky, pretzels, trail mix, and electrolyte drinks onto the shelves before dumping several stacks of clean towels and scrubs in a pile on the floor. The guards twitch at the sounds of the others waking, barking for the human to hurry up. He does as ordered, shoving the remaining contents of his cart onto the floor and then bolting with it back out the door, the guards hot on his heels.
I wait for the echoes of their rushed footsteps to fade before approaching the piles on the floor, kneeling down to separate them into neater piles for Quin, Nick, Luc, and myself. By the time I’m done the others are up, joining me beside our new bounty.
“I take it they managed to get over their fear of us, then?” Quin quips sarcastically, and I smirk.
“I mean, they looked as though they were all about to shit themselves. I’d probably be full of tranquilizer darts if I’d let off a fart, they were that jumpy,” I joke back, grabbing some towels and a couple of packages of soap and toothpaste before gathering the pile of scrubs in my size and heading back to my cell.
Once I’ve put everything away, I head out to the larger shared common area, my stomach growling at the prospect of food. As I near the space, I can hear the guards yelling at someone. I slow my steps as I ease my way closer to the corner, fury lighting up my veins as I catch sight of what’s going down.
One of the guards—the mongoose from before—has Eli in a chokehold, trying to drag him back toward the exit while also twisting back and forth in an attempt to keep everyone in his line of sight. The twins are shielding Aaron and Abel with their bodies, with Francis standing protectively in front of them. Whitby is clinging to a distressed Ollie, trying to comfort him as Shane faces down the yelling guard. Bj?rn hovers over an unconscious and bleeding Samuel while a bristling yet still-human Theo prowls back and forth between the guards and the exit, preventing them from leaving with Eli.
We need to do something, I growl to Tál, and his chuff of agreement steels my spine. Despite my fall from grace after I rejected Sila, my father raised me to be a leader and protector. I may not have a Pride, may never be head of a Collective, but I’ll be damned if I’ll sit back and let others suffer. My failings toward Sila, and even Catherine, will not be repeated.
“What the ever-loving fuck do you shit-bags think you’re doing?” I bellow as I stroll around the corner, allowing my dominance to harmlessly wash over the shifters under my protection. The guards, however, stagger under its weight, and the one berating Shane spins around to face me.
“This is none of your business, lion. Go back to your rooms, and we can pretend this never happened.”
I inhale, the scent of leafy forest and fertile soil tainted by the sour stench of trash says more about this shifter and his proclivities than anything else he could say or do.
“How about this, you overgrown trash panda,” I sneer, taking a deliberate dig at his raccoon, “you get out of my friend Shane’s face, your little grub-eating friend over there releases Eli, and then you both fuck off out of here before I lose my temper. You want to pick on someone? I’m your fucking man. You want to drag one of us off to your chop-shops and perform inhumane torture and then bleat that it’s ‘science’? Then you come and fucking collect me. Not Eli. Not the twins. Not even Shane or Quin. Not a single, solitary shifter in this section of Hell. You fucking come for me, or I’ll be sure that when I eventually get my paws on you—and I fucking will!—your death will be prolonged and agonizing.”
I relax and allow Tál’s golden eyes flare, bringing forward our shift enough for my nails to sharpen into claws and my teeth to lengthen and drop down into fangs.
“Make the right choice, fuckers,” I carefully enunciate, my smile promising pain and death if they choose incorrectly.
I sense Quin’s approach and grin evilly as he comes to stand beside me, feet braced and arms crossed, a vicious scowl decorating his face. Yeah, that’s right, fuckers. We’ll eat you alive if you don’t back down.
The mongoose releases Eli and shoves him away, the young fox stumbling into Theo’s arms. The raccoon, knowing he’s defeated, slowly backs up to the exit, his glare full of hatred and rage. That dude has a hard-on for power and doesn’t like being publicly stripped of it.
“O’Hare will hear about this, and then you’ll be sorry!” he jeers at me, but I simply grin back at him.
“Oh, I’m counting on it. O’Hare and I have some unfinished business together, and I’m betting he’s just itching to get his hands and eye on me. So long as he plays by my rules, I’ll play by his. Now, run along and deliver my message like a good little lackey, won’t you?” My voice drips with condescension, and I stare down the guards as they flee.
“Oh, and boys? Don’t try to starve us or give us tainted food, or I’ll take it out of your hides. Pass the word around.”
My order is punctuated by the slamming and locking of the door behind the guards, and I shake myself, drawing back my dominance and retracting my fangs and claws. Tál huffs with amusement at the lingering stench of fear from the guards, and we saunter over to where Shane is consoling Eli and Ollie beside a now-conscious Samuel. I crouch down about a foot away, not wanting to crowd them, Quin right there next to me.
“Hey, how are you guys feeling? Eli, you breathing okay, dude? Samuel, how’s your head?” My voice is soft and calm, and I try to send soothing vibes out to the others. Nick and Luc have joined us and are over with the twins and the younger brothers, reassuring them all that it’s over, for now. Bj?rn approaches me, his solid presence reassuring the younger shifters.
“Did you mean it?” he rumbles quietly to me, and I glance at him from the corner of my eye.
“Mean what, exactly?” I respond, although I’m pretty sure I know what he’s asking about.
“That you’ll take our place when it comes to their ‘experiments’? You don’t even know what they do to us. Especially not the younger ones.”
The look of raw anguish that crosses Bj?rn’s face as he glances over to the kids makes my heart ache, and I wait until he’s looking back at me before I answer.
“Bj?rn, there are things I’ve done in my life that I’m not proud of. Actions—and inaction—I took that hurt others. None of you, not a one, deserves to be here. I can’t say the same for me. Everything I’ve done has led me here. So, this is where I make my stand. I won’t sit by and let them hurt you, not while I have breath in my body and a beating heart. I meant every fucking word, and I promise you, I will do everything in my power to free you all, even if it means I’m left behind.”
The younger musk ox swallows heavily, the sincere gravity of my words resonating with him. He nods, then offers me his hand.
“Come, ljón. Let us get breakfast sorted for the little ones. While this isn’t an uncommon occurrence for them, it will be best if we can help them forget, at least for the moment.”
I grasp Bj?rn’s outstretched palm and let him pull me to my feet, slapping him on the shoulder in camaraderie as we head to the kitchen. Food sounds good, and I’ll need to keep myself fueled up if I have any hope of surviving the nightmare I’ve just signed up for.
***
It would appear that the raccoon and the mongoose both passed along my message, as that same afternoon roughly half a dozen guards barge through the door to the shared common area. The one that Quin hates, Kim Johnson, leads the charge, and the moment his glare lands on me, a malevolent grin splits his face.
“Well, lookie here. If it ain’t the big, bad lion hisself, ready and waiting for his medicine.” Johnson points his dart-gun at me, his finger twitching over the trigger.
“Ya threw down a challenge, Simba, and now it’s time ya paid the piper. O’Hare is waiting for ya. Are ya gonna come quietly, or do we get to have a little fun with yer pathetic friends?”
I stand, shooting Quin a look, using it to amplify the message I’m sending along our bond.
Don’t struggle. Don’t fight. Protect the others.
Quin’s nod is almost imperceptible, but his acquiescence relieves me of one concern, at least.
“As I told your little trash-panda friend earlier today, as long as O’Hare plays by my rules, I’ll be his own personal torture toy.” I step closer to the sniveling little rodent, my own glare darkening as I growl a warning.
“Just remember though, you sycophantic rat, if you touch even a single hair on any of these shifters while I’m gone, by the time I’m finished with you it’ll make what I did to O’Hare look like a weekend retreat at a spa. So, if you want to keep your insides where they belong, don’t fuck with anyone else!”
The lemming shifter gulps noisily, his face blanching white at my threat as his dark, beady eyes dart around at all the faces witnessing his fall.
“Now, if you’d be so kind as to lead the way? I’m sure O’Hare is waiting.” I smirk, waving my hand in front of me. I send a pulse of reassurance and strength through my bonds with the others before smothering them protectively like the rest as I walk out the door toward my doom.
I don’t look back.