Chapter 70

Mira

Hello again, old friend.

———

Of all the mysterious medical facilities I could end up in, I was in the same one as Rae. If it hadn’t been such a terrible situation I would have laughed about it. The universe worked in mysterious ways, and now was not the time to question the gods.

“Where did they come from?” I asked the man next to me.

I still couldn’t figure out if he was in charge or just a middle manager. He didn’t give off the aura of an Alpha, and seemed somehow unbound by societal hierarchy. It made him all the more unnerving to be around.

“Oh, these two are wonderful volunteers,” he said with a smile.

He wore glasses with a light prescription, and I wondered if he needed them to see or if he just wanted to obscure his eyes from others. The more I looked at this face the more his expressions seemed like masks he was wearing, trading one for another to match whatever story he was telling.

“As with any medical anomaly, we need specific individuals as test subjects,” he continued. “Pairs can be even more difficult to match, which is why these two are so exciting to us.”

“And what exactly are you doing with them?”

“Simply put,” he looked directly at me, “if we can harness the power of Fated Mates, extract it and…donate it elsewhere, we have the opportunity to endow a wolf with the cosmic power of ten others.”

There was that crocodile smile again. I did my best to match it, playing along as another curious doctor who wanted to create supernatural beings at the cost of innocents. I always marveled at those who went into science in medicine and saw all the potential to heal and create a better world, and then chose to create harm and destruction. They called it innovation, I called it ego-mania.

“So, Super Alphas?” I said lightly, as if I were a marketing exec trying to sell his experiments.

“Ha, something like that, perhaps,” he said. “We’ve also gotten better at restoring balance to those after traumatic experiences— not just the ones we cause.”

I turned back to look through the window. My reflection was superimposed onto my vision of Rae in the chair. It wasn’t lost on me that I was seeing myself in her, the visceral memories creeping up my spine.

I looked at the boy, Julian, wondering about his story. Where did he come from? What were his dreams?

They looked nothing alike, but he reminded me of Dominic. My mind brought his face into view, the swarthy features and perpetually-furrowed brow. I wondered if that furrow was because of a place like this, if Dominic had been in a similar chair as Julian those many years ago.

I swallowed hard, fighting back the emotion that threatened to overtake me. I needed this man to trust me if I was going to get out of here.

“And what happens to the kids, after?” I asked casually. “Send ‘em back home with a lollipop?”

“Oh they’ll be alright, if a bit changed after the experience,” he said with a shrug. “Most won’t remember a thing. And if we get them in this fragile time in their youth, it’s not even that strange for their wolf not to develop. They’ll think they are the problem, not some mad scientists in the woods— a story so few would believe.”

“That’s…genius,” I said to him sincerely. That plan had worked on me when I was young, so of course it would work on them.

“We could use your genius,” he said, suddenly closer to me before I realized he had moved. “And in return, we could give you what you desire most.”

He leaned in close, his breath tickling the side of my face.

“Your wolf.”

I couldn’t fight the shiver that went up my spine when I heard those words. This whole time I didn’t question how this stranger knew so much about me, but it all clicked together that it wasn’t just because I was a new Luna. He knew me because I was one of their guinea pigs. I had a vision of ripping this man’s head off.

My temperature was rising but I stayed calm on the outside.

“I’m curious about the process— would it be possible to get a closer look, observe things from inside?”

I kept my tone and body language light and nonchalant, as if this was a diagnostic visit and I needed to consider my options before accepting a job.

“Of course,” he said with genuine delight. “We’ll just have to scrub in.”

I was quiet as we prepared, my eyes keen on exits and instruments and cameras and alarms. There was the seed of a plan in my head, and I would just have to pray it would grow into something useful when it mattered.

The room was quiet for how much was going on inside of it. I counted four people in matching scrubs, one with an embroidered lab coat. They hardly looked at me as I entered with my escort. I studied the monitors and apparatuses trying to track what was happening, but some of it looked so foreign to me.

The teens had wires taped to their foreheads, chest, stomach, and feet. Intravenous tubes came out of both arms, and my inner alarm went off at the safety of such a method. Most of the wires led to a console between the chairs, a machine I had never seen before that looked like it came from another planet.

“It’s a two part system: Extract and Stabilize,” the man said to me. “It’s best done over several treatments, with days of rest in between, so as not to over harvest.”

My head jerked at him when he said this, and I felt the blood rush to my head. My hands made fists at my sides. I managed to look away.

I walked away around the back of the chairs, trying to seem fascinated by the scene I was watching and not disgusted as I really was. I paused next to Rae’s chair next to her head.

She was so young. Even with the sedatives keeping her stable and unconscious, her forehead was creased unnaturally. She looked like she was afraid. As I stood there I heard her whimper, and a single tear fell from her eye and rolled slowly down her cheek.

Before I knew what I was doing, I reached out and wiped the tear away with the back of my index finger. It was a tender moment, and the room blurred around us. Rae’s head turned slightly to follow my hand. When I pulled away her eyes opened, and she started screaming.

Chaos broke out quickly, with the man in charge ordering two people to grab me, while the others came to check on Rae.

I felt hand grips my arms just above the elbows, and I fought against them. It was like they were trying to pick me up and drag me at the same time, causing my body to twist in several directions as I flailed against them.

Rae’s voice was ragged and raspy as she screamed and bit at the air around her. Her eyes were cloudy, so I imagined she was stuck in some frightful hallucination turned waking nightmare.

I saw the man coming towards me with a needle in his hand. If he put me back under, I might never leave here in one piece.

The panic turned to rage inside me, and a surge of something in the pit of my being started to crack open.

Mira.

I focused on the inner mechanisms of my body, breathing into the opening and unveiling of something that had been stifled for so long. My bones shifted under my skin, my skin became thicker and sprouted golden fuzz. My fingernails sharpened with a menacing curl. My eyesight sharpened, and I smelled the evil in the room mixed with the sweat of the others.

I’m back.

With a final thrash against my handlers, I broke free with a howl that shook the glass windows of the room. I wasn’t even looking as I rent my paws through the air, clawing away the years of injustice and clearing a path to safety. There was blood, on the floor and on my hands, and I had to get out of there.

I leapt over to Rae’s chair, and she went completely silent as she then fell unconscious again. I ripped the wires and tubes off of her, threw her over my shoulder, and ran.