Chapter 16 Adri
Something wasn’t right. Adri lay absolutely still as he tried to process.
Cold metal beneath his naked skin. The scent of damp and city grime in his nose.
He tried an experimental move of his hand only to find it couldn’t respond as some kind of restraint tugged at his wrist. When he let his eyes peek open the tiniest amount, pitch blackness met his vision.
The kind of darkness even his jaguar eyes couldn’t make sense of.
Swallowing down a rumbling growl, he tried to figure out if shifting was going to make this better or worse.
Changing forms while restrained could be a recipe for dislocated and broken limbs if you weren’t careful.
Those would heal, though. It was more important that he got free before whoever had left him there returned.
Reaching for his jaguar, Adri willed his bones and muscles to transform.
It was only then that he noticed the ever-present awareness of his animal side in his mind was silent.
His breaths started coming faster, too fast, and he forced himself to slow the frantic rise and fall of his chest. Calm.
He needed to stay calm. It was easier said than done when he couldn’t even fully inhale against the tight band pinning him down to the metal table.
Even worse, he had a sinking suspicion it wasn’t a table at all, but a gurney.
Whoever had secured him had done it well.
There wasn’t the slightest give that he could leverage, and his muscles felt lethargic.
Lacking. Now that he was focussed on the physical sensations he usually ignored as fleeting inconveniences to his supernatural healing, the sharp throbbing in his head like he’d never experienced became overwhelming.
The flex of his muscles against the restraints made him aware of another dull ache in the crook of his elbow, where he could feel fiery liquid flowing into his veins faster as his blood started rushing.
A cannula of some kind. The burn of the drug was a constant irritation that only panicked him more.
What the fuck were they pumping into his body?
The click of a lock was like a gunshot in the silent room as Adri strained to escape, eyes wide and teeth bared—teeth, not fangs, because he still couldn’t reach his jaguar.
When bright white light flooded the room, he winced and fought the urge to squeeze his eyes closed, tears streaming down his cheeks in response to the pain as he focussed his attention on the three people entering. Three humans.
“Good. He’s awake,” a man in a white coat said.
“Looks like you’ve finally cracked it. We haven’t had one die from shock in over a month,” another replied.
“What the fuck did you do to me?” Adri asked, voice rasping.
The men ignored him.
“How long until it takes effect?” A more familiar voice asked, someone Adri couldn’t quite crane his neck far enough to view. Was that the mayor? That answered the question of how high up the terrorist rot went in the city’s governance.
“The chip is already rewiring his brain. Generally, susceptibility comes at around days three to five, and any unfortunate side effects emerge by day ten.”
Susceptibility to what? Ferality? Or was that the unfortunate side effect?
Stewart stepped closer, finally entering Adri’s field of vision.
“What the fuck is this?”
Adri tried to snap at the mayor’s fingers with blunt teeth as he reached out to grab his jaw and tilt his head to the side, but he was still too lethargic and weak to resist. He hated that.
Hated being vulnerable. Hated being confined again.
It took everything he had not to start hyperventilating as he forced himself to focus on a single trail of stains on the concrete ceiling.
It was earthy and damp, suggesting he was somewhere in the tunnel system under the city.
He pretended the stain was arterial blood spatter, letting his mind drift in a fantasy where he ripped himself free of his restraints and slashed this asshole’s throat with his claws.
“It’s just a bruise,” one of the scientists muttered, distracting Adri from his thoughts.
“He’s a fucking shifter. They don’t bruise like this. Who did this to you?” Stewart asked, wrenching Adri’s face around to look at him.
Glaring up at the mayor with what he knew was a reckless grin, Adri decided to see how much he could mess with the humans.
“My mate. He’s going to fucking disembowel you and string you from the ceiling by your guts.
He’s good at that because he’s a doctor.
A real one. Not like these wannabe evil scientists you’ve got going on. ”
“You were refusing to complete the bond. The other fighters we took confirmed it,” Stewart said, a hint of real fear seeping into his voice.
“How come I’ve got an unhealed bite mark on my neck, then?” Adri asked, hoping they didn’t look close enough to realise the teeth marks had never broken the skin.
“Fuck! We can’t risk exposure of this location. We need to move him now!”
Adri smirked as he smelled terror and weakness in the air, despite the absence of his jaguar from his mind.
This was his chance to maximise the likelihood that his people would be found.
“You need to move all of us. My Alpha isn’t going to leave our fighters behind, and my mate will already have locked in on the location. ”
Chaos ensued as Stewart and the head scientist started barking orders, a flurry of more humans descending around them.
“We need to move him now and hope they haven’t managed to map his location yet. The shielding on the entrances won’t stop them from digging down to us.”
“Get the Sabatini warehouse cleared. We’ll put all the pack’s people there and draw them away from the tunnels.
If they get their people back, they won’t be able to justify a further attack to the Council, and the magic needed to break through our defences is too much to hide from them.
Move the rest of our forces back to the blue district so we can collapse the tunnels here if they’re breached. ”
“Shall we terminate the subjects before we move them?”
Adri’s blood ran cold. Once again, he tried and failed to tear himself free of his restraints.
“Not yet. By the time the pack finds them, they’ll either be feral or under our control. Either way, they should be able to take some of them out. We can always detonate the chips remotely if we need to,” Stewart said. “Knock him out again so we don’t have any more fuck ups.”
Adri snarled at the scientist who stepped close to mess with his IV line, and the human looked down at him with derision. “I’m going to put you down like the animal you are as soon as I get the word.”
“I’m going to get my mate to keep you alive and conscious with his power while my pack tears you into pieces as tiny as your small-minded fucking brain.”
“I wouldn’t be making threats about my brain in your position. That chip you have in yours is controlled by an app on my phone.”
Unconsciousness pulled at him, and Adri’s vision darkened as whatever this asshole had inserted into his IV started to take effect. The human’s last retort followed him down into oblivion.
“Sweet dreams, asshole. If you wake up, you’ll be nothing more than another weapon. With any luck, you’ll kill that mate of yours for us.”