Chapter Text
I abandoned the only family member I had left, but I did it to save his life. We may not have had much of an existence, but it beats being dead and one of us had to die. Instead of waiting for someone else to decide our fate, I chose for everyone. In a world where I had no say in anything, it felt good to choose, even if that choice was death.
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Luck had never been a talent of mine so when someone roughly shook me awake, I realized I had failed. I was not surprised.
A cacophony of sounds and smells competed for my attention. High-pitched repetitive beeps, coughing, moaning, the scent of blood, feces, sweat, cleanser, plastic. I was going to be sick.
A human loomed over me, yelling something.
“Wake up.”, a human male said.
Usually obedient by nature, I tried to do as I was asked, but someone had filled my brain with mud, and I was stuck.
“Wake up child. Wake up.”, the human said.
I was trying, but the mud had morphed into a comfortable bed, and I was so sleepy.
“It is not nice to fall asleep when an adult is speaking.”, the human said.
“We are losing her.”, a second human said.
“God, she is in terrible condition.”, the second human said.
“Did anyone call the police?”, a third human asked.
“What makes a child do this to themselves?”
Someone shook me hard and I was back. I tried opening my eyes, but the light burned my irises.
“Hey.”, the first human said.
“Hey.”
This time they shook me so hard; I swear my brain rattled in my skull. I tried to open my eyes again, but all I could manage was to see the world around me from behind slitted eyelids. Suddenly the face of a human male loomed into view.
“What’s your name? Little girl?”, the first human asked.
“Char.”
My voice sounded so far away, and the bed was waiting. I wanted to lie down in it and have a rest.
“Char, that is a pretty name for a pretty girl. Do you know where you are?”, the first human asked.
Opening my eyes, I could see the human was not alone. Other humans were standing over me looking down.
“Not a girl.”, I said.
“Speak up sweetheart. Do you know where you are?”, asked the third human.
Irritated I drew in a deep breath to shout but all that came out was a croak.
“I am not a girl.”
The humans muttered to each other, and in the few seconds that their attention slipped, I drifted away.
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Startled awake I sat up abruptly and heard someone in the room gasp. Wherever I was it was dark. I could hear and smell a dissonance of familiar and foreign scents and sounds. My instincts told me to go to ground and find cover, but when I tried to move, I felt things tug at various places on my skin.
“Good God child. You scared me sitting up like that.”, a human female said.
Homing in on the location of the voice I was able to see the human female sitting by my bed in a chair. She was wearing dark blue pajamas and smelled like garlic, fish, and a lingering perfume of some kind that made me want to sneeze.
Patting my body, I tried to identify what was attached to me and felt some thin strands that led to my chest. Horrified I put my hand under some kind of itchy dress and found they led to stickers on my chest. I gave an experimental tug and when it didn’t hurt, I gathered all the leads into my fist and yanked.
Alarms started wailing, lights started blinking, and my chest stung, but there wasn’t any time for me to nurse my wounds. I tried to get out of bed again, but I was still attached to something, and this time I felt a pain in the back of my hand. This was different than what had been attached to my chest, whatever this was, it hurt.
“Girl, what are you doing? Don’t pull that out, you're going to hurt yourself.”, said the human.
She stood and tried to stop me; I easily batted her away.
Quickly, I used my fingers and touched the back of my hand. There was a bandage wound around my hand. Probing it, I found a bump that had tubing leading from my hand to some unknown place.
This time when I pulled, it hurt, and I yelped. In a panic, I scrabbled and tore at the bandage.
The human began to yell.
“I have a code grey.”, the human said.
Realizing I was panicking I took a deep breath and did a small shift to access my wolf. My wolf had superior senses and I needed them to get me out of this. My eyes flickered amber and my wolf senses sputtered in and out of reach, like a guttering candle about to run out of wick. Damn it, that was too much.
Focusing, I tried again, this time I made the shift minuscule, and it worked, the connection was steadier. Quickly I assessed my hand. There was something inserted under my skin and some kind of liquid was dripping into me. Shivering in disgust and fear I yanked hard, felt a stab of pain, and smelled blood.
Before I could leap from the bed and flee humans came into the room, put their hands on me, and pressed me onto the mattress. I struggled to free myself and began screaming for the only person I had left in this world.
A pinch on my right shoulder was the only warning I had and within seconds my screams lost their power. No matter how I fought to stay awake I could not stop slipping into the black void of unconsciousness.
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The next time I woke, the room was oppressively bright, and I lay there for a time, confused. Where am I? I attempted to sit up and look around, but I couldn’t: I was tied to a bed. Alarmed, I tried to identify what was holding me down and discovered I was on a bed, my feet and wrists were in leather cuffs, and my waist and chest had thick leather straps running across them.
My heart pounded in my chest. I was terrified. What kind of place was this, and why was I restrained? Turning my head, I could see I was in the center of a large room. The room must have had another purpose, other than tying children to beds because to my right there were heavy-looking couches and tables shoved against the wall. On my left, were windows, and behind them, I could see three humans, two females and a male wearing pajamas sitting at what looked like workstations. All of them were facing me.
Testing my bonds, I realized that in my human body, I could not escape. I decided to find out more about my situation. My only option was the three runts behind the glass.
“Excuse me.”, I said.
My voice sounded hoarse from all the screaming and my tongue was as dry as a dessert. When was the last time I drank or ate anything? I had no idea how many days had passed since…my brain flinched away from the memory that had started this chain of events.
Louder this time, I tried to call out again.
“Excuse me.”
The humans behind the glass did not even twitch. Could they hear me?
Feeling a tickle in my mind, I heard my brother speak through our familial bond.
All shifters related by blood, pack, or mate had a telepathic bond. Sometimes the bonds were so strong, that you could sense locations and feelings.
“They can’t hear through the glass, they are human, remember?”, Tee said.
“Tee is that you.”, I asked.
“Yes, you idiot. Who else would it be?”
“Are you okay?”, I asked.
“No, I am not. I am tied to a bed by crazy humans.”, Tee said.
“Where are you?”, I asked.
“In a bed behind you.”, Tee said.
I heard him thrashing about directly behind me. They had us head-to-head in front of the window.
“Have you noticed?”, Tee asked.
“Noticed what”
“It’s cooler here.”, Tee said.
He was right, I had been so distracted that I did not notice. Wherever we were, it was considerably cooler than the temperature our captors kept us in.
Wait, why was Tee here?
“Are you hurt?”, I asked.
“No, but you are. I can smell blood.”, Tee said out loud.
I remembered the strange tube that was inserted into the back of my hand.
“It was a small injury; it’s already gone.”, I said.
Werewolf healing was superior to human healing. We could heal small wounds in minutes, and larger wounds in hours or days. We could even regenerate organs or limbs under the right conditions, and I would know. The human runts who bought us had been harvesting organs from us for the last three years.
“What are we doing here, did they sell us?”, I asked.
“Don’t you remember?”, Tee asked.
“No.”
Wait, do I?
Furrowing my brows I tried to remember. I retraced my memories and recalled the hospital room where I tried to escape, and before that, someone shaking me. And before that? Where had I been before that?
Tee was unusually silent while I rummaged around in my memories.
Tee and I were litter mates, humans would call us fraternal twins. Before we were taken, we lived with our pack of about twenty or so adults. Our parents were the pack’s alpha and omega, and we were the only pups the pack had. Everybody had a hand in raising us and we were cherished and doted upon by everyone.
Not many pups are born to Arctic werewolves because the conditions are so extreme. We lived on an Arctic tundra. It was like a desert, but instead of scorching heat and sand, we had ice and cold. Our average temperature was - 30˚ Fahrenheit and we spent almost half of the year in complete darkness. There were no trees, or bushes, just endless ice, and food was very scarce. Not much can survive where I grew up and just like in a desert, water was almost nonexistent. This meant as a subspecies we were very tough. We might be small, but we made up for it.
Compared to other werewolves, our senses are sharper, we are faster and stealthier, and we can tolerate extremely low temperatures. An adult Arctic werewolf can go half of a year without eating and when we are in our wolf form, we don't need water. We are also known for our beauty in both forms and our pure white fur, meant to blend in with the constant ice we live in, was the envy of the werewolf species.
We had our weaknesses and if you knew them, we would be at your mercy. We are no match against other werewolves in direct combat because our bodies’ structures are surprisingly fragile, and a direct hit would crumple us. We also cannot tolerate heat; warm temperatures make us lethargic and sap our strength. But you need to catch us first.
Another thing that made us different from other werewolves was how we lived. Arctic werewolves were fundamentalists. We believed in following Lupus’ teachings, and we interpreted our deities’ teachings, Luna and Lupus, literally. Meaning we lived the same way our ancient ancestors had. We enforced the old laws, spent most of our lives in our wolf form, lived in warren-like dens or caves, and kept ourselves away from the modern world. Unlike the modern werewolves that lived in houses and spent the majority of their lives in their human forms and lived on the outskirts of, or side by side, with humanity.
We were happy and free, abiding by the old laws and customs, but the rest of the world had its laws that we hardly knew about. And whenever we encountered modern civilization, or as we called them, the godless ones, we ran into trouble. One example was paranormal hunters.
Paranormal hunters liked to abduct werepups for money and because we were undocumented by human standards, and citizens of nowhere, they knew there was little we could do if they left the borders of our territories and disappeared into a large city. But to do that, they had to survive.
It was not so easy to steal pups from a werewolf pack. You had to creep deep into our territory; we could smell you up to 6 miles away. Avoid our sentries; we moved silently and were comfortable in complete darkness. Make it into our dens; compared to humans, we were immensely powerful; even our omegas could easily best a human. Now, do all of that in reverse but with a pup or two. Pups are also strong. It was a suicide mission.
Supernatural hunters must be insane for money to even attempt it, but every once and a while one lunatic would try. Each pup was worth millions. But as my mom used to say natural selection exists, and if these hunters wanted to be eliminated from the future gene pool of humanity, so be it.
Unfortunately, every once and a while, by dumb sheer luck they succeeded, like they did with us.
Now we lived in a city, called Los Angeles with our human captors, Alice, and Brad. They bought us three years ago and turned us into for-profit organ factories. They bought us through a supernatural trafficking ring, and the trafficking ring purchased us from the supernatural hunter. All of which would be illegal if anyone knew supernatural beings existed.
I had a mom, a dad, and a pack that loved me. Dad had just begun teaching us how to hunt. My mother was warm and welcoming, and I adored her. My earliest memories were full of her milk and honey aroma. Our pack mates who cleaned and fed us, loved us so much that they fought over who got to regurgitate food from their stomachs to feed us. We were so loved. And now we lived with monsters who kept us in this ungodly hot city that reached temperatures of 100˚ Fahrenheit that weakened us until we could hardly move.
I was beginning to forget my mother’s face. I had already forgotten most of what my pack looked like, and I knew the day I forgot what she looked like would be the day my soul left my body, and I would become nothing more than an organ donor, a lifeless husk.
But how did we get here? Why can’t I remember?
“You tried to leave me.”, Tee said.
“Huh?”, I said.
“You promised we would run away together. You promised. You and me forever.”, Tee said.
“What do you mean I tried to leave you? As far as I can tell you are still here with me.”, I said.
“You left me behind.”, Tee’s wolf whined through the bond.
This made no sense, why would I leave my brother, the only family I had left? I would never do that. Tee was the only thing I had in the world worth living for…
Oh. I remember.
My heart started to race, and I struggled to find any weakness in the restraints that held me. We had to get out of here, right now! The human captors would be looking for us and if they found us: I didn’t dare to think about it lest Tee sensed it through our bond.
Where are we?
I scanned the room looking for anything that would be a clue about where we were, but there was nothing.
Maybe I could shift into my wolf. If I did, I would be able to slip free of my bonds, and could free Tee, but if I was seen… I looked at the humans behind the window. There was no way I would be able to transform, not with them there.
The existence of paranormal beings was a secret, and our ancestors ensured we could never reveal ourselves to a human, not even if our life was at risk. It was some kind of instinct that all paranormals had woven into our DNA, by a very old magic. That was why I could not shift. My wolf would not come because there was a chance one of the humans might look up from their work and see me.
I needed a better plan.
“Wanna get out of here?”, I asked.
“I’m not talking to you.”, Tee said.
I shared my annoyance through our bond.
“Are we even a pack anymore?”, asked Tee.
“We don’t have time for this. Help me think of a way to get out.”, I said.
“Have they ever untied you? Like to eat, or um, to go to the bathroom?”, I asked.
“Yes, they let me out to go to the bathroom. You were sleeping. Lazy head.”, Tee said.
“I have an idea. Listen closely. You need to do exactly as I say.”