by Mandy Rosko
This was why he didn't want to talk to any of the patients. He was just supposed to stick around the outskirts, looking in and making sure they all stayed safe. If anything out of the ordinary happened, like one of them having a panic attack, he was supposed to call the doc. Nothing else. He wasn't supposed to be having these heart-to-hearts.
"If you think about it, you're really not so bad off."
Trisha looked at him, her gaze fixed and hard. "What do you mean?"
Warren got that feeling that he was treading on thin ice again, but he couldn't simply give it a never mind and ignore that he'd said anything at all. "Some of the people in there barely look human anymore. If the worst you have to deal with is a horn on your head that looks pretty in the moonlight, then you got off lucky."
A quick glance down showed that her claws were coming out again. He could almost feel the heat coming off of her, as though her blood was boiling just beneath her skin. "Got to say, I never would've thought the big compliment here would be that I got off lucky after having escaped months, maybe even years, of captivity and torture."
She stood sharply. Warren forced himself to stay seated.
Fuck. He'd totally screwed this up, and now she was leaving. He wouldn't explain himself. There was nothing to explain. He shouldn't have said anything at all, and if she wanted to be on her own, back in the safety of her room, then she had every right to go.
Except he didn't expect her to turn around and look back at him.
"Did you mean it?"
Years of training kept his expression blank and unreadable, even though his guts were in turmoil.
"Mean what?"
With a soft, almost hesitant hand, she reached up and tapped the side of her horn. "That you think it's pretty in the light?"
That was what she was choosing to focus on? Didn't matter. He was willing to take the olive branch. "Yes. It's…very pretty. In the moonlight." He was struggling with his words again. This wasn't good. He thought he might've insulted her again by pointing out that only the horn was pretty, and only in this lighting, even though that wasn't how he meant it.
Trisha did not spin around and storm off. She pressed her lips together and glanced down. Warren wasn't so sure if he imagined the shine in her eyes.
"Thank you." Her voice floated softly, hesitantly toward him.
She seemed so fragile in that moment, despite everything she had survived. And it made all of the wrong instincts kick up inside of him.
The protective kind.
Because, apparently, he had managed to say one thing right. One thing that would make her feel better, if only a little bit.
"You're welcome. Do you want me to escort you back to your room?"
She shook her head. "No, I want to go on my own. I promise I will go, too. I won't take any detours."
He nodded. He wouldn't fight her on it, but he also couldn't forget how entranced with the snake she'd been. He'd let her think she was going back alone, but he'd be damned if he didn't keep an eye on her. He'd keep his distance and make sure she didn't know he was there.
Trisha nodded back at him. There was another brief hesitation, and for a moment, Warren thought she wanted to say something to him. He must have just imagined it because she turned and power-walked away from him.
Warren watched her go. He would give it a few more seconds before following after her.
For now, there were the stars above him, and the memory of what that horn had looked like beneath them.
It really had been pretty.
She was so pretty.
He was so fucked.
5
Trisha didn't tell her roomie about what happened with Mr. Stick-Up-His-Ass outside in the garden.
Cindy hadn't exactly been waiting up for her anyway. When Trisha came back, her friend was snoozing softly. She didn't sleep well outside of a fish tank anymore, so Trisha wouldn't disturb her when her breathing was so even.
She saved it for the next day and spent most of the night awake and staring at her ceiling.
He was into her.
There was no doubt about it. Trisha tried to come up with all sorts of reasons why he was giving off the signals that had nothing to do with what she thought it was. Something innocent that she was mistaking.
Nope. He liked her, and for some reason, the idea of that brought a warm, floody feeling into her chest. Something she definitely shouldn't be feeling, considering he was kind of rude and aloof.
The rudeness she could do without, but maybe that was just his way.
Weren't men usually dingbats when it came to this kind of thing? He might not be intending to be rude. In fact, it seemed more as though he had been trying to cheer her up and was incredibly clumsy about it. Clumsy in a way that only made him look more endearing.
With the horn in the middle of her head, Trisha had learned how to stay on her back when she slept. She had to learn how to do a lot of things with it taking up so much real estate on her forehead. It really did seem like a minor thing compared to what some of the others had to deal with.
Cindy, who felt more at home in the bath than walking around in the sunshine. Then there was TJ, with those teeth of his. Numerous other people who had been rescued from that compound barely looked human anymore.
Trisha really was lucky to have her face and body still intact. To only have to worry about a stupid horn that made it awkward to sleep and prevented her from getting too close to people lest she stab them by accident.
But it was still something she thought about. How could she not notice that she had this when sleeping on her belly was impossible? Or when she could barely push her face up into the warm stream of a shower without her horn nudging the showerhead?
He said it was pretty.
That warm feeling kicked up in her chest again. Definitely not heartburn. She would've noticed that. Mainly because she had it so many times thanks to the garbage food she had been served back when she had been a guinea pig for so many terrible experiments.
Feeding the test subjects quality food had apparently been low on the scale of importance. She would've thought it would be more important, considering how food could react with a body and they were doing countless experiments on her body. But that was neither here nor there. She knew what heartburn felt like, and this was definitely not it.
Trisha barely slept that night, which wasn't unusual. Nor was her hobby of setting up camp in the chair next to Cindy's bed, waiting for her roommate to open her eyes.
Like a total creep, and it never failed to amuse her.
No matter how many times she did it, Cindy was always startled by it. At least she didn't scream anymore, but she still nearly climbed the wall and touched the ceiling with how high she jumped.
"Morning adrenaline, better than any coffee!" Trisha laughed while Cindy glared.
"You need to pick up a hobby. Maybe painting will keep you busy and make you stop being a weird stalker." She drank one of the many bottles of water she kept next to her bed for her hydration and started rubbing lotion into her hands to keep them from getting too dry.
"Weird? Me? But you like me weird!"
Cindy muttered something and rolled her eyes, laughing while she gathered her clothes and stormed to the bathroom. Trisha knew she wasn't really mad, so she sat by the door and told Cindy all the details of the night before.
"I mean, you think he's into you?" Cindy had been encouraging Trisha just the day before, but now she sounded unsure.
"I don't know…what do you think?" Sitting on the bench with him had sure felt like something was there between them, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was some kind of dumb rescuer fantasy. He represented her release from the lab and was one of the first sexy guys she'd met. Maybe it was all just a silly thing, and there was nothing going on at all.
"I think we should go to breakfast. I'm starving, and he'll likely be there so I can watch his reaction to you."
On their way to the cafeteria, Trisha shared more of her thoughts
. "If this is something I'm thinking about, then that means I must have had relationships before going into the compound, right?"
"I guess so. But wouldn't it be really, I don't know, unprofessional? The guy is supposed to be doing a job here. He's supposed to be watching out for us and making sure none of us go crazy and attack each other or destroy the school. Don't you think it would be a big no-no for him to be flirting with you?"
That was a good point.
"I don't think he's flirting with me. Not exactly. I just saw something in his eyes, and I think I heard it in the tone of his voice. He said my horn was pretty."
And her belly still felt warm as she remembered the sound of his voice when he said those words. She didn't even want to think about what that could mean when it came to her own feelings.
They passed by several of the patients who were going about their new morning routines. It was interesting to have the mornings to themselves, be able to get up and walk around, get dressed, brush their teeth, and then get ready for breakfast in the cafeteria, as though they were, mostly, normal.
Back at the lab, everyone would have remained locked up in their tiny cells until they were needed for something. Toilets were typically inches away from their beds, and there was no privacy to speak of.
The option of locking doors, doors that you couldn't see through, wasn't there. They were only bars. And when there weren't bars, it was glass walls.
When Trisha shifted into her raccoon form, she was usually able to squeeze through the bars and sneak about, get into the trash and make a mess, knowing some minion would have to clean it up.
Not that she could ever get out since that place had been locked down even tighter than their cells. If there had ever been a fire in there, they would have all been fucked.
Of course, her fun didn't last long once they started checking the cameras, and then she got the cells with the glass walls. Nothing a raccoon could sneak in and out of. It had been a real shame. She'd been searching for someone to mess up one night, someone to leave a set of keycards where her little paws could reach it so she could get everyone out.
Nope.
Thank God for FUC.
Though this place was having drawbacks of its own. She hated the lessons on shifter life and safety, trying to lay low from other humans, as if she could do that with a horn coming out of her head, and there wasn't much privacy either.
Much more than the labs, of course. Whenever anybody tried to put up sheets in the former cells to give them that sense of privacy, they were quickly taken down, and the person who had done it was swiftly taught a lesson.
Here, it was at least possible to be alone from time to time, though everyone still got poked and prodded at by the doctors who were trying to figure out exactly what had been done to them, and having designated times where they were supposed to be doing certain things wasn't so fun either.
Being at FUCN'A wasn't normal by any stretch of the imagination. Trisha couldn't even remember her old life, but she knew it had nothing to do with anything in her current life.
Still, she was grateful for everything.
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and all of that.
Cindy had become quiet. She didn't comment on the pretty thing, and Trisha figured that she was making her uncomfortable.
Cindy had her own troubles to worry about. Why would she want to hear about whether or not someone on staff here happened to think Trisha wasn't the worst thing in the world to look at?
A lot of the people took issue with how they looked now compared to when they were first being experimented on.
Trisha decided she wasn't going to talk about her looks, or anyone else's for that matter. Even if it was positive.
"I also saw a snake last night."
They lined up in the cafeteria with their trays, getting ready to grab a breakfast that, while not ideal since powdered eggs were about as good as they sounded, was a thousand times better than anything they were fed back in their prison.
Cindy responded to that. "Really? A snake?"
"Yeah, so watch out when you go out into the yard today. I don't know how many there are, but I don't want you getting bitten."
She didn't think the conversation would go anywhere from there. Trisha was only using it as a steppingstone to get off the previous topic.
So she was stunned when Cindy asked for more details, as if it was important to her.
"What kind of snake? Did you see what it looked like? Any markings on it?"
Their food was portioned onto their trays, and they made their way to their usual table.
"I… didn't see it that well. I didn't think to look for any. Why? Do you know which poisonous ones are around here?" That seemed important to know. But Warren had asked her about what it had looked like, too.
Cindy shook her head. "I don't know about poisonous snakes, but I did hear that there was a former student here who disappeared. A snake shifter."
"Disappeared? Like, left training because he couldn't cut it or, like, was kidnapped?" The idea drove a cold knife of fear into Trisha's heart. They were supposed to be safe on the grounds...
"It's all just rumor, but from what I heard, he betrayed FUC. He worked for the bad guys or was already working for bad guys when he enrolled. Either way, there was a break-in, an attack on the academy, and this cadet was connected to it and disappeared right at the same time of the attack."
Trisha liked rumors. "I wonder if I can ask Warren about it." She was already looking around, trying to spot him. She didn't see him, which was a downer. The guy couldn't be working every day, even though he seemed to do exactly that.
She really wished he was there, though.
Whether or not she was warming up to him because she was starved for affection was beside the point. He was quickly turning into a favorite of hers out of all the staff and security guards who worked there. That was all. But that didn't mean she was going to do anything about it.
Not that there was an it to speak of.
Then something else hit her. "Who told you all this?"
Cindy stirred her fork into her runny eggs and shrugged. "No one told me directly. The people here talk when they think I'm not paying attention."
Trisha was insanely proud of her. "Look at you. I didn't think you would have it in you."
Cindy looked up at her with those big eyes. A hint of a smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. "I can be a bad girl, too, sometimes."
6
He slipped in quietly, easily, through a small crack in the wall.
Many houses had weaknesses like this that allowed him to get in and out without anyone ever noticing.
Well, there had been that one time he had been spotted. Nearly getting his head stomped on by a screeching woman who danced around, flailing forks and knives and anything else she could grasp hadn't been pleasant. The tip of his tail, where he had been stepped on, still hurt well over a year later. Or it was a phantom pain. No shifter of his size ever forgot what it was like to be stepped on.
A shudder rippled through his long body just thinking about it.
If he were caught today, he would get more than a stomping.
Slithering through the inside of the walls of the house, avoiding spiders and pushing his way through old cobwebs that were since abandoned, it was easy enough to get through the foam and insulation. Older houses were always the easiest to navigate. Years of previous pests had already paved the way, and so few people thought about what went on inside their walls.
From within the walls, he could hear the murmurs of the people who lived there. The sound of footsteps that rumbled through the house, which would have been ignored or gone unnoticed entirely by someone in a more human shape.
Not for him.
At his size and in his position, every noise sounded like it came from a giant.
Because they kind of did.
He liked to pretend he was the kid from Jack and the Beanstalk whenever he did a mission like this.
But funny enough that it took his mind off the pressure. It let him work.
Not that he was there to kill giants. No, it wasn't that kind of mission.
In fact, he was here of his own free will. His mother had no say in this.
He found a vent that had an opening he could just squeeze through. The vent led him to a grate, and from there, he could see more of the house.
This was the baby's room. Jonathan flicked his tongue out for a sniff. God, he really hated the smell of baby powder. There was something just so unsettling about it. But as much as he hated the smell of baby powders and lotions, and even the lingering scent of the diaper caddy that needed to be emptied, he didn't hate children.
Not that he cared for them either. He just didn't hate them.
He had a very easy line to cross when it came to kids. He didn't care what happened to them, but he wouldn't tolerate someone who killed them or...
Well, everyone with a functioning brain could agree with him on that last one. No need to go into details he didn't like thinking about, but they were his two rules when it came to kids and babies.
Except, this time...
"Were you waiting for me?"
Jonathan tensed up. Which meant that, in his current form, his body coiled into a knot of sorts.
Luckily, the woman who entered the baby room wasn't talking to him. She walked right by the vent and went to what appeared to be a crib. It was just out of sight, but he could make out the leg of it as the lady bent down with a coo and hoisted the bundle into her arms.
He had a hard time telling humans apart when he could only hear their voice and see their legs, but he was pretty sure this was the beaver.
"There we go. Let's get something to snack on while daddy-bird talks to his friend."
They were in sight for only a hair of a second as they left the room, but it was enough for Jonathan to see that the kid was getting pretty big.
He'd been just a newborn the last time Jonathan had seen him.
Smaller than any average newborn because he had been premature, thanks to what Jonathan's mother had done.
