Theron
The news wasn’t getting any better on the political front. Every day seemed to bring new debate about how the country should respond to the revelation that shifters and magic were real. Were they looking into the science of it, or goddess forbid asking the shifters who were already out to the public, including a federal employee? Nope. They were talking amongst themselves, making wild speculations, and listening to reactionary commentary.
People coming out of the woodwork to talk about neighbors who they suspected were magic, hunters talking about strange things they saw in the woods, and an ongoing debate about Bigfoot being a shifter or group of shifters. It was like alien abductions, except they actually had proof, and didn’t seem to be interested in using the footage they had other than to make a farce out of us and show Whisper again and again running scared through St. Louis. It had been weeks. But that was nothing on what was happening on the political level.
“I’m just saying.” A man on the news was banging on the table with his fist as he spoke, the volume turned way down in the bar as half the clan was glued to the television. “We have to keep our families safe. There isn’t enough known about these creatures to allow them carte blanche existence in our country.” His face was red, and even through the pixelated television interview, I could see sweat on his forehead. He kept mopping it off with a handkerchief and smacking the table.
“Shifters have existed amongst us for millennia. As far as we know. How are they any different today than they were a month ago, or two months?” The woman being interviewed was the personification of cool and calm. Her hair was held back in a clip, and not a single strand of the platinum blonde was out of place. She sat with her hands folded in front of her, and looked directly at the interviewer as she was asked questions. “I have lived in Burlington Vermont my entire life. The Lords of Khaos Motorcycle Club is a staple at public events, they raise money for charity, assist local businesses and own a great deal of property in and around the Chittenden County area.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that they are animals, Senator Quincy,” the man sitting next to her said, face nearly purple. He smacked his hand on the table hard enough that her water glass jumped. Without a beat she steadied it and leveled her eyes at him.
“She’s a shifter,” Bex’s brother growled, eyes permanently changed to his bear’s ebony. The growl in his voice was permanent too. Being forced to stay in your animal skin long enough, you didn’t come all the way back. “See how she moves. Bird.”
“She isn’t.” Kai took a sip of his coffee, swirling the beverage around before taking another. “I’ve met her at events. Human through and through.”
“Then she’s mated,” Conner argued, kicking his feet up on an empty stool. “Has to be.”
“Senator Quincy’s wife is a very nice woman from South Carolina,” Whisper read off from her phone. “They have two children, a boy and a girl.” She turned her phone so Conner could read it, but the man was growling at the screen and not paying attention.
“Her wife isn’t a shifter either,” Kai just mumbled into his coffee. “Not that anyone is bothering to ask.”
“I would like to point out, Senator Franklin, that you yourself are an animal, along with every one of the nearly nine billion humans on the planet,” the Vermont Senator intoned, taking a delicate sip of her water. “Whether we grow fur on feathers, or not, we are, in fact, animals. Apes, if you really want to get into the nitty gritty.”
“Now don’t you start spewing your Darwinism to me, ma’am,” Senator Franklin was more than heated up at this point. Made me wonder what idiot decided to put someone clearly volatile on the news in the first place. “I am a good Christian, and man was created separately from beasts.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot that the bible is biological law, silly me.” I could hear the eye roll, and half the room cheered, the other half was still face first in their morning coffee, or under the age of two. “Back to the subject at hand. I would like to point out that we must have learned something from the cultural revolutions in this country, that dividing up the populous and pointing fingers at them has not served your party well in the past.” She took another neat sip of her water and placed it back on the table without a sound. “Let’s talk about the civil rights movement or the equality act.”
“Those people weren’t animals,” Franklin hissed, poking his finger at the table, spit flying from his mouth. “We are talking about the difference between May and Clyde Maryweather and the Wolfman.”
“Oh, so we are acknowledging that people of different skin colors and those of the LGBT community are fully fledged citizens. I appreciate that, coming from you.” Senator Quincy nodded to someone off camera, and I could taste a soundbite that would come and bite the Florida senator in the ass later. “But I believe we have heard from not only several scientists who have come forward as well as from Mr. Aetos, that a wolfman is not a shifter. Shifters are a human and an animal cohabitating in a single body. They are either the human, or the animal, not between.”
“You are mincing words.”
“Would you like to elaborate, which words do you feel I have been mincing?” She turned to him and cocked her head.
“See, bird shifter,” Connor growled, pointing at the television. “And she’s not sweating under those lights.”
“Because she wore appropriate clothing,” Bex patted her brother on the back, ignoring the way he flinched away from contact. “He’s wearing a wool suit and she’s wearing a cotton dress. “Anyone else want tea?” she asked, shaking a box of herbal tea as she walked towards the kitchen. “Honestly, I just need an excuse to get away from all of this.” She gestured at the man on the television who was banging his hands again.
“I would love some,” Whisper said quietly, her eyes down on the table.
I could feel her anxiety ratcheting up the longer we watched the news. Things had been spiraling. From states calling for votes to restrict shifter movement, to the House proposing a bill that would force shifters and witches to register. States had started calling for borders to be closed. The only highlight was Canada. Our neighbor had openly said they would allow any shifter or witch into their country if seeking political asylum. It was going to be needed. The middle eastern countries and Russia were calling for the immediate removal of all things supernatural. A shoot on sight order had been placed in Afghanistan, with no repercussions for false accusations.
The world had lost its collective mind, and only a few places seemed to be taking things in stride. England had simply accepted things, and moved on, so had Germany. The prime minister had gone on television to say that with the mistakes their country had made in the past, they were going to accept the shifter revelation as just another historical event, and any changes that needed to be made would be slow and steady.
“Do you want to head upstairs,” I asked, putting my hand over hers and feeling the fine tremor there. “We can have some quiet time.” I was so proud of her. Not once had Frigga come to the surface since we had started to tighten our mating bond. We had enjoyed more kissing and touches, and much more time in her shower than I had ever spent outside of my teenage years.
“I want to go to the shop.” My mate looked up at me with sad eyes. “I want to draw and be creative.”
“Just until the end of this week, baby bear.” Kai reached out to her, and my mate leaned over and let her brother cuddle her up in his arms. “We’ve been asked to stay put until Sheriff Carter can clear us from this incident with the hiker.”
“Fucking stupid.” Fitz dropped down next to his mate and accepted the mint tea she had made him. “We’re on twenty four hour surveillance with the new system that Tweek has set up, and there are fucking gawkers at the front gates at all fucking times of the day.” He sniffed the cup he’d been handed and gave his mate an incredulous look. “What the hell is this?” He took a sip and shrugged. “Ain’t no way we can leave without someone seeing.”
“I know that, and you know that, and I don’t know a single one of us who would have killed a hiker for no fucking reason twenty miles from here.” Kai took a long breath and stuck a toothpick between his lips, chewing on the end. “But we have to let them come to that same conclusion.”
“I’m going to the shop Monday then.” Whisper stood and walked out of the room, her jean clad ass swaying temptingly as she went for the stairs. “You coming?” she asked, with a look over her shoulder that was all seduction.
“I will see you all at another time,” I said, picking up my coffee mug and leaving it on the corner of the bar where Mama Bear was collecting them.
“Yes you will,” Les shouted as I followed my mate. Baby Jade in his arms, waving her hands in the air. “We need to talk about the wall.”
The wall. The crumbling structure that once had kept things out of Ironwood Heights. The remains of it were piled up along the border, having been destroyed during the battle with Paradigm.
“We can start work in the morning.” I wasn’t trained in engineering, and building wasn’t my trade. My job centered around intelligence, and I was still very much employed by the United States Government, though I had been asked not to turn in any reports, nor to assist with any open investigations until this little matter of my fucking existence could be sorted out. Made my skin itch thinking about it. As I sat at Ironwood talking about rebuilding an ancient–okay maybe two hundred year old–wall, my email continued to be bombarded with half finished things that needed my attention, and were sitting to atrophy as I was benched. I don’t like leaving things unfinished.
“Gonna take everyone.” I nodded and followed my mate up to our room.
Cots still lined the halls, even as families were moved into rooms that had once housed the patients. The rooms on the third floor all shared bathrooms, save Mama’s apartment and Tweek’s loft. It was nearly a full wing that he had taken over and pulled all the walls he could out of. It housed the server bank, his surveillance area that watched every inch of the property and a good thirty meters into the woods, and his own room. The man had even made himself a kitchen and living room. It was rather impressive, but also spoke to how important his role was in the club and the clan.
I weaved around people who were still sleeping in the hallways, and straight through our door. When I got there, Whisper was sitting on the bed with Mr. Purple Potamus in her arms.
“I did this,” she mumbled into the top of the teardrop shaped stuffy, her breath blowing his tuft of lilac hair. “I put this all in motion.”
“Paradigm did this.” I sat down next to her and pulled her up against my side, pressing a kiss to her head. “I could give you platitudes and say things like Rome wasn’t built in a day, or it’s gonna get worse before it gets better, but the truth is, none of us know what's going to happen next.” I held her in my arms, feeling her tears soak into my shirt as I rocked us back and forth. “You have a good clan here. A network of others who support you, and love you. And that is what’s going to get us through this.”
“Sheriff Carter’s going to be back,” she sniffled against my chest. “He’s going to be back over and over and over again, until we either get through this, or they replace him for protecting us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He will, but every time we will have the surveillance. We will have what we need to prove that we aren’t hurting people.”
“Except for the times when we’re hurting people.” Her bright blue eyes looked up at me, simmering with unshed tears. “'Cause my old clan will come, Theron. They’re going to come with Tooth and Claw to take me back.”
“How many were in your clan?” I asked, still rocking slowly, Mr. Purple Potamus between us. “A dozen, two?”
“There were ten males left when I got out,” she said, rubbing her face against my shirt.
“And how many here?” I prompted.
“Including the full clan? A hundred or hundred fifty.”
I silently counted in my head. Trying to name everyone that I had met. The number seemed low to me. “And we have dragons.”
“Yes.” Whisper nodded. “If there’s trouble, Kai will call in Hell’s Fury. Seeing as we’ve basically absconded with their witch and her coven.”
“Exactly.” We sat in silence for a long moment, tears still dripping down my mate’s chin, but a calm had descended over our bond. Acceptance. Whisper slowly pulled away from me and put her stuffy back on the pile of them that dominated a good third of the room. “Do you want to go back down?” I asked, watching her dab her eyes, clearing away the makeup that had run down her cheeks.
“Can we stay in here?” she asked, hands disappearing behind her back as she twisted back and forth, bottom lip tugging between her teeth. “I wanted to try more touches.”
“Lock the door, baby.” I stood and went into the bathroom where I had washed her toy. “I’m always interested in more touching with you.”