“Then why are you still here? If you’re so powerful, why haven’t you broken out yet?”
“They keep me weak,” he sighed. “Those drugs of theirs. They manipulate my body and mind, weak when they want me weak, strong and confused when they want me to be.”
“When would they want you to be strong and confused? That seems like a recipe for disaster for them.”
His neighbor didn’t answer. Silence stretched out for so long that Forest thought he must have fallen asleep, and he tried to find some way to occupy himself. He tried to pace, but it was useless. The cell was only big enough for two strides in any direction. He considered doing pushups, but he’d never been able to do more than three in a row, and he figured he didn’t need the blow to his ego. On the other hand, who would know? There was nothing else to do anyway. He sighed and assumed the position.
He didn’t bother counting. He started thinking about everything his mysterious neighbor had said. He was stuck on the idea of a double life span or more. What the hell would he do with it? He’d been to school, gotten his degree, and landed a job he liked well enough. He wasn’t good with people, and never entertained the fantasy that he’d ever fall in love with anyone who would love him back. Kids were completely out of the question; he couldn’t visualize raising a child without a partner, and he couldn’t imagine having a partner.
So what would he do with immortality? He could always go back to school, get another degree. Maybe start a business, though the pressures of an endeavor like that intimidated him. Maybe after fifty years or so in the same young body, he’d be able to overcome his fear. But he didn’t really want to; he’d always considered himself a background character, someone who did what he was told and did it well. All he’d ever wanted was a quiet life where he could spend a lot of time without other people to organize his thoughts and ponder the grand questions of existence. He could always build himself a castle and hole up for the rest of eternity, he thought.
He realized that he’d been doing pushups for several minutes, and he hadn’t even broken a sweat. He started counting at that point, though he had no idea how many he’d done prior to that, he counted five hundred before he stopped out of sheer boredom. His muscles weren’t even sore.
“So, um... does this werewolf package come with super strength or something?” he called through the vent.
“Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that? Super strength, heightened senses—the works. It’s a good life if you can live it. Having all of that and being bottled up in here, though... frankly I’d rather be dead.”
“You aren’t going to... you know?”
“Couldn’t kill myself if I wanted to,” he replied. “Even if I found a way to do it, they’d bring me back. They need me.”
“Why?”
“They just do. There are some things you don’t need to know yet. When and if you do, I’ll get you all caught up.”
“Pretty sure I need to know whatever there is to know if I’m going to be stuck here for hundreds of years,” Forest pointed out.
“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. Shut up now, someone’s coming.”
Forest opened his mouth to ask how he knew, but then he heard the footsteps. They were very faint, but definitely moving in his direction. Impulsively, he moved the cot back into the corner where he found it. He didn’t want to risk stepping out of line. Not yet, anyway. There was a rebellious seed deep inside him, and it was growing.
Chapter Three
The footsteps stopped outside his cell. He heard someone moving things around on metal, and then the door swung open. It was the same round woman from before, and she was pushing a cart filled with food and syringes. The food smelled amazing, but the syringes held his attention.
“Now then, time you got something in your belly. There you are.”
“What are those for?” Forest asked, pointing at the syringes.
“It’s medicine, love. That animal attack, you know. We have to get you fixed up, don’t we? There now, just sit back and eat your food, there’s a good boy.”
Forest automatically chewed the food while keeping his eyes fixed suspiciously on the syringes. “What do they do?” he asked.
“They help you,” she said impatiently. “And they help me by making you stop asking silly questions. Mr. Animus will answer everything in good time. I’m just the nurse around here, just here to follow orders is all. All finished? Very good then, roll over and let me see your bum.”
“No?” Forest said hesitantly.
She huffed and stomped a surprisingly tiny foot. “Now dear, if you don’t take your medicine I’ll have to call in the goons. You don’t want that, I don’t want that, and they will be very annoyed about it which will just make it worse for everybody. Come now, be a good boy.”
“Look, lady, I’m not a boy, good or otherwise. I’m a grown man, and I have rights.”
“Oh, you silly thing,” she chuckled. “You’re not a man at all, and I’m afraid there are no rights extended to your kind. Now. Roll over.” Forest resisted, and she sighed. “Very well then, have it your way,” she said. She pulled the cart out of the room and shut the door.
“You’re going to regret that,” the voice said through the vent.
“Why?”
“Because she wasn’t lying. The goons hate helping with this bit, and they’re more than willing to take out their frustration on you.”
“So, what am I supposed to do, just let them experiment on me forever without putting up a fight? Roll over and take it like a damn dog?”
“Hey, I’m open to other suggestions. If you can figure a way out of here I’m all ears. Unfortunately they have all the power here. They have this place utterly controlled. You’ll see. Next time around, you’ll take her injections quietly. Everybody does eventually.”
Forest’s next question was cut off by the sound of boots tromping through the halls. The door opened to reveal the nurse, flanked by a pair of goons on either side. Her face was grim; theirs were a terrifying mixture of anger and eager anticipation. Forest told himself he was stronger than he’d ever been, possibly even stronger than they were, but it didn’t help. As they moved toward him as a single unit, he flashed back to elementary school when he’d spent every lunch period getting smashed into the dirt by schoolyard bullies. His instincts took over, and he curled into a defensive ball, his fists positioned in front of his face.
Two goons grabbed his wrists and pinned them against the wall, while the other two battered his torso with sharp, efficient punches. He strained against the men holding his wrists, but could gain no leverage. When they had finished their assault, they flipped him over, two pinning his arms, two pinning his legs. The nurse moved in then, and quickly injected his right buttock three times. The world began to whirl, and as the goons released him, he tumbled off the bed.
He vaguely heard the door slam as the drugs took effect. The grey ceiling spun, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the dizziness that threatened to render his meal moot.
“I told you,” the voice echoed through the haze. “You’ll probably just roll over next time like a good boy. Everybody does.”
Forest wanted to answer, but he was afraid to open his mouth. Instead, he curled into the fetal position and pulled the blanket off his bed, covering himself on the cold, concrete floor. He deliberately slowed his breathing and focused on falling asleep. He didn’t know when he drifted off to sleep, but at some point his thoughts became dreams; dark, frightening dreams filled with disembodied voices screaming at him to take his medicine.
Forest awoke in pitch black, but he felt warmer than he had when he’d fallen asleep. He felt stiff, sore, and utterly wrong; all of his limbs were in the wrong places, and his spine had extended and was moving on its own. He tried to curse, but it came out as a wordless snarl. He was a damn wolf again, and now he couldn’t talk. He paced the floor, learning his cell from the new perspective in the dark.
“How you feeling, buddy?” a voice
asked. He growled in surprise. He’d forgotten his neighbor. “That bad, huh? Yeah, don’t worry. It’ll wear off in twelve hours or so. They’re stressing out your body doing it like that; the chemical shift is more sudden and more complete than the natural shift. If you were left to your own devices, you would probably never morph all the way into wolf form. Werewolves don’t really do that; even when we shift. We retain the best parts of being human. Opposable thumbs and fingers and walking upright, as well as all the benefits of being a wolf: stamina, strength, and the cunning and speed that comes from being a predator.”
Forest listened, since he couldn’t reply. The loss of his voice made him surprisingly angry; it wasn’t unusual for him, during his human existence, to go for weeks without talking to another person. Now that he didn’t even have a choice, there were a million things he wanted to say. He wanted to ask his neighbor for his name, ask what his life had been like prior to ending up in here. Two hundred years must have given him dozens of stories worth telling, and Forest wanted to hear them all. Whether because he was actually curious, or simply because he wanted to distract himself from his predicament, he couldn’t tell. He didn’t think it mattered.
He paced the room until he was tired, and then he returned to the cot. It was far less comfortable than it had been when he was a human, and it hadn’t been too terribly comfortable then. He decided to try the dog bed, recognizing that this was exactly why it had been included in his cell in the first place. He fit inside it perfectly, and the soft, squishy cushions cradled his curled-up body. He sighed, laying his head down on the edge.
“You still awake?” the voice asked.
Forest wanted to say yes, but it came out a small bark. He growled, frustrated at the loss of the most basic communication skills. The bark was enough to answer the question, though, and his neighbor kept talking.
“I’ve lived long enough to see our species fall in and out of human consciousness half a dozen times. We live in legend, but every once in a while, some unfortunate soul will stumble across a lone wolf on the prowl. Sometimes they’re treated like they’re insane, and we get away with it. Sometimes they turn, and we get away with it. Sometimes, though, there’s a perfect storm of coincidences, and we are discovered.” The voice paused for a moment before it continued again.
“The last time it happened, the humans began a great hunt across the continent. The wolves, the natural wolves, suffered the most. The humans had decided that anything that even resembled a werewolf was fair game, which included natural wolves and extraordinarily hairy humans, or those with poor emotional control, or those with mental issues. They killed more humans and animals than shifters, which was good for us; it was bad for everything else, though.”
“This time, it seems the panic has been contained. I’m not sure that anyone who isn’t affiliated with this facility is even aware that we exist. That’s also good for us. Humans have surprisingly short memories when it comes to uncomfortable facts, though they have surprisingly long ones when it comes to cozy fictions. We are neither cozy nor fiction, so we have been relegated to both in the human awareness.”
Forest processed this and yapped at him to continue.
“I guess you’re wondering what all of this has to do with you. I guess the underground society isn’t much of a concern for you, at least not while we’re both stuck in here. But the thing is, my ancestors have stories spanning a thousand years of battles between humans and werewolves, and two things are consistent: when they as a whole become aware of us, we face extinction; and, whenever they can, they will attempt to harness our powers without becoming us. Both of those things directly affect you.
“First, the extinction bit. Shifters faced extinction a thousand times before humans ever landed here; ice ages, asteroids, plagues, you name it. Since we were so few for so long, we developed a few biological... quirks. Contrary to popular belief, we aren’t solely reliant on turning humans to increase our population. Shifters breed sexually, as most animals do, except that we have the unique ability to take any role in the breeding process. Males can carry pups, females can inseminate. This comes from the many, many times when our species was reduced so far that we were left with only a single gender in any given location. We would have gone extinct otherwise. They may attempt to study this facet of our biology, if they are aware of it.”
I would, Forest admitted to himself. That was a fascinating bit of biology, and he would have jumped at the chance to study it. He would have preferred to be on the other side of the equation, though.
“That second part is probably what you’re going to face most often. They will do whatever they can to harness your power. Shifters would make fantastic super soldiers, but we have that pesky free will and tribal loyalty that gets in the way. We fight for no human, and we fight no wars for profit. We defend our tribes and our lives. Those are the only valid reasons to fight, and the humans aren’t quite on the same page as far as that goes. Their petty squabbles cause so many lives to be lost, and we refuse to be a party to that on principle.”
Makes sense, Forest thought. He refused to join the military for the same reason, though his parents held out hope that he would eventually. His dad had been in the army, and he’d wanted Forest to follow in his footsteps, if only to give him more confidence in himself. Forest knew that it was concern over him more than any overwhelming sense of patriotism that led his father to push him in that direction. He’d let up once Forest had found a calling more suited to his personality. Working with birds soothed his anxious soul, and he liked to believe that his parents were proud of him, even if he wasn’t their kind of successful.
“But I think that’s enough history for now,” the man said through a yawn. “Sleep well. You’ll be able to talk in the morning. I’ll answer any questions you have, if I can.”
Forest heard him roll over on his squeaky cot. Loneliness settled over him as thick silence filled the tiny space, broken only by the man’s rhythmic breathing. He turned inward, bringing the image of his imaginary garden to mind. It had always been his safe space, the place in his mind he retreated to when the world became too cruel. A thin waterfall poured from an impossibly high peak into an incredibly clear pool. Rainbows dusted the rose quartz crystals at the base of the waterfall, and massive hawks flew overhead. Hundreds of kinds of ferns and flowers burst in unapologetically fabulous colors around the banks of the pool, flirting with the hummingbirds who zipped through the clean air. Swans floated gracefully in the pool, followed by their fuzzy grey offspring.
There was peace here, in this warm little corner of his mind. He allowed it to engulf him, to draw him into a dream without pain or fear or loss. The loneliness permeated even his dream. Lovebirds followed him wherever he walked in his dream garden, mocking him with their fluttery little duets. His garden had been tainted by the deep ache in his soul, and he cried as he faced the knowledge that he didn’t belong anywhere, with anyone; not even in his own mind.
He awoke naked, human, and shivering in the tear-soaked dog bed. He scuttled stiffly across the room and dressed himself once more in the plain, loose, grey pajamas he’d acquired at some point, wrapped himself in the thin blanket, and huddled on the cot.
“They really need better heating in this place,” Forest muttered through chattering teeth.
“How are you feeling?” his neighbor asked.
“Cold,” he replied.
“Yeah, those chemical shifts are hell on your system. It’s actually about seventy-five, seventy-six degrees in here.”
“C-can’t be,” he stuttered. His fingers and toes were mottled with thin blue lines, and he flexed them to get his blood moving.
“Walk around,” his neighbor told him. “Do some jumping jacks. Or squats, or pushups, doesn’t really matter. Exercise helps.”
Forest glared at the wall between their cells, but he did as his neighbor suggested. The jumping jacks popped every joint in his body twice, and he whimpered. The pushups sent fiery pain down his spine, s
ettling in his tailbone. He felt the ghost of a tail, and had to check to be sure that he was still human. Squats were twice as bad, but when he was done, he did feel warmer and more like himself.
Chapter Four
“In the real world, shifting is both conscious and reflexive,” Forest’s neighbor explained. “Which means that you naturally twist and shake your body into place as you shift, and continue moving around a bit after a shift to settle into the form. These chemicals sort of dampen those instincts, making you tense up against the shift.”
“So I should make a conscious effort to go limp when they inject me?” Forest asked.
“That would help,” he said. “And if you can manage to stay awake for a while afterward, you should at least give yourself one good shake.”
“Alright, I’ll try that,” Forest replied.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway and Forest groaned.
“Don’t worry,” his neighbor told him. “It’s just breakfast.”
He was right, of course. The feet stopped outside his door, and a little slot at the bottom of the door slid open. A tray slid through, then the slot slid closed. He heard the same thing happen at the door beside him, then it happened twice more across the hall.
“How many of us are there in this place?” Forest asked.
“At least four,” his neighbor said, intentionally vague. “But my best guess is twelve.”
“Why twelve?”
The man paused, considering. He needed the newbie on his side; if he confessed his sins now, he might never convince him. That was what happened with the last newbie they put beside him; he told the truth, and forfeited trust in the process. He couldn’t let that happen this time.
Wild Ride: An M/M Shifter Mpreg Romance Bundle Page 48
