The bubble they had me in burst. Papers, wood, everything splintered and broke scattered all around me like the result of a hurricane. I howled in agony until the pain stopped. But when I looked down at my hands—they were no longer my hands.
They were big fluffy paws.
I had finally become a wolf but this made no sense to me. I've never had a wolf form—never even had a wolf talk to me in my head. The thing that all shifters can do. The bond you share? I've never had that.
“You still telling yourself that? I've been in your head since you were born but the volume's been turned down so low you could never hear me.” Noa was growling at me, clearly pissed off.
He stalked around me like a predator stalking its prey. I struggled but eventually I stood on all fours trying to adapt to this new form. The wings felt wrong and the tail felt too heavy. I just now noticed we were talking without our mouths moving.
“We have a telepathic bond dummy. You've always had it. I'm going to give you slack because you were a kid at the time. You didn't know. But a guy can only take being told he doesn’t exist for so long.”
I heard Noa's words loud and clear. But it didn't click until now that he was right. Growing up I'd always had these intense headaches. At first I just thought they were migraines as a result of the experiments my parents did on me.Only now do I realize they were Noa trying to speak to me.
“You think that day you met our mate you just happened to like her really hard? No, that was our mate bond activating. She's our fated mate as she has always been. That desire to protect, that obsession we've had for years? There's nothing else that could be except that. It's thanks to her that I finally got to wake up that I finally had a voice you could hear. But even then it was still like I was fighting to be heard through the void chamber of your mind.”
“Assuming everything you're saying is correct, and granted I'm changed right now so I'm going to play ball, why couldn't we transform earlier?”
“I don't know.” He whined softly, patting his nose.
“But I have a feeling if we look at your parents memory we might be able to figure it out.”
We both turn to Mnemosyne waiting expectantly. The pages of her book turned by themselves much to her shock.
“Well that's never happened before!”
The memory changed to that of a small unkempt scientific laboratory. The linoleum walls were stained with various colors of brown and red blue and green as if anything they could have tested in that room they did. There I was strapped to the table no older than one year old by the looks of it.
I could feel Sapphyra’s hand press against me but the bubble reformed, capturing me in it once more. I turn to her and nod,letting her know even without words that it was okay. None of this was new to me, well knowing that I've been experimented on that was not new to me.
My father stood by a control panel fiddling with something gold in a small vial. It looked like particles and in his other hand he held another vial filled with red liquid. He mixes the two and swirls them around. The vial fizzled and shook but eventually it settled down the particles now dissolved.
“I've done it”, my father said with a small smile on his face.
My mother, in probably the only display of affection she's ever given me, gently rubbed the top of my head.
“Is that so? You finally figured out how to make it?”
“I have at—least I think I have. With this our boy will be sure to be the apex predator he was always meant to be.”
“That's good!" my mother said frowning, “I was so worried he would grow up weak and without a wolf. And we know what happens to the weak in our family don't we?”
My father nodded a grim look on his face. He took a syringe and filled it with a strange liquid. He tapped the needle twice and pushed out any air bubbles, a professional in his own right. And then he injected me with it. My mother held me down as I screamed and the liquid entered my veins.
At first nothing happened except for my bloodcurdling screaming loud enough to burst the eardrums of any normal person.
And then my body started changing with the rapid succession. Scales of all colors and then fur popped up all over my body. They would come then they would leave. Never in the same place sometimes all at once, sometimes only in patches. It was clear my parents were waiting for some grand conclusion to happen but when my body settled down and stayed human? You could hear their disappointment crashing against the floor like a mink vase.
“No, can't be! I gave him dragon's blood the only amount we could get!”
My mother growled, she snapped her teeth at my father.
“Inject him again! I will not have a weak pup!”
“I gave him all that we had. There's nothing more I can do for him.” His shoulders slumped, defeat all over his face. They didn't want to believe it but that was the moment for them that they realized this is just who I was going to be.
They didn't just take it in stride they still trained me, still pushed and hoped for that outcome. For that day when I would burst out of my skin and become the apex predator they wanted me to be.
As the memory faded things started to fall together. And suddenly that not guilty claim I made no longer sounded far-fetched. I know what day I need now. Because if this is true that it explains everything that went wrong explains why all those people died.
Noa grumbled, snapping at me with his jaws.
“I knew you were bullshitting!”
“No no it's not bullshiting I knew something was off I just had to dig around until I found out what cuz it never set right with me. My calculations have never been that off. I accounted for a small margin of death but nowhere near the digits that we got. I'm talking single, maybe double digits the same amount of people who would have died anyway because it was just another Tuesday.”
“But thousands? Millions? “
“No, something went wrong but it was not my calculations.”
“Then you better pick the right day cuz I think we're running out of chances here.” Noa said, struggling to maintain his form.
Themis cried out as her hand hit the ground, the guilty stone weighing far more than the non guilty stone. The sound of her bones snapping could be heard.
Damn it this is no good!
“Noa what's wrong with you? Why are you struggling to maintain your form?”
“I'm not struggling to maintain it, I'm struggling not to kill you. That's what happens if you get from guilty Wyatt, I get to kill you and take your place.”
In the words of my wife, shit.
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