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At the same moment, Gracie began to laugh. The student’s merriment was so honest and joyful that it would have been contagious...if my wolf hadn’t currently been attempting to crawl out of my skin and rip out Sebastien’s throat, that is. As it was, though, I needed several seconds to even make sense of my companion’s subsequent words.
“You’re such a lightweight,” the girl told me, pulling electrodes off her skin as she hopped off the chair. “Most people make it up to ten ‘shocks’ before they give in.” Air quotes completed, Gracie turned to drag a box of candy off the shelf behind her back, then rummaged inside to come up with four options. “Here. Which one do you want?”
I gazed at the girl in befuddlement. I was a lightweight...and now it was time for candy?
“It’s just pretend,” the pup explained, shaking the crinkly-coated chocolate bars to catch my attention. “No electricity, no pain. I’m the professor’s lab assistant this summer. Hard job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
Silently, I turned to cock my head at Sebastien, struggling to reassess the conversation that had gone before. A moment ago, I’d thought Gracie was a poor waif down on her luck and the professor was a monster using the girl’s desperation for the sake of his own experiments. And now...now I wasn’t even sure what to think.
I expected glib explanations to roll forth from the professor’s lips, but Sebastien appeared nearly as tongue-tied as I was. The human eyed me speculatively, one index finger pressed against his mouth as if he wanted to speak and was struggling to keep unintended words inside. And as I took in his posture, a shiver ran up my spine.
I had a feeling I’d just made a terrible mistake.
Luckily, Gracie was talkative enough for all three of us. “You’ve probably never taken a psychology course, have you?” she asked. And when I shook my head mutely, the girl launched into a long-winded explanation that my harried brain finally managed to condense into a mostly understandable core.
The experiment—and it was an experiment, that much was now clear—had nothing to do with pain tolerances. Instead, Sebastien was gauging my reaction to the situation, determining how far I was willing to go when both other participants were supposedly on board with creating supposed agony in the pup.
“This project is funded by DARPA, isn’t it?” I said at last, drawing conclusions that were perhaps too far-reaching and perhaps a little paranoid...but that felt entirely right at the time.
Because, despite the pretty words Gracie had used to class up her explanation, this didn’t seem like the sort of experimentation a civilian organization would care to have their name attached to. And, of the funding organizations listed on various posters running down the hall, DARPA was the clear choice for creation of such an inhumane scheme.
“Yes,” Sebastien admitted, speaking carefully as if afraid to set me off...as well he might be since my teeth were bared and I was barely holding back a menacing growl. “It’s true that DARPA provided some of the baseline funding. But they support thousands of projects around the globe, and this experiment was and is entirely under my control. Look, I’m sorry we lied to you, but what you took part in today is just a slight twist on the classic analysis of reactions to authority figures. The Milgram experiment....”
Werewolf-like, the male reached out to place one soothing palm atop my forearm as he spoke, and I immediately lost track of all words. Because contact with Sebastien felt like heaven. Like being wrapped up in my family’s protective embrace...while diving out of an airplane with only one small parachute strapped to my back. I could almost sense wind whipping against my cheeks, could nearly hear the whisper of a pack mate begging me to pull the ripcord and slow my plummeting descent.
But my usually mild-mannered wolf fought against any attempt to step away from the human’s side, instead keeping us stuck in heart-pounding free fall. Mine, the beast growled silently, freezing our joint muscles into place.
She and I were usually so closely attuned that I didn’t differentiate between our wishes. Sometimes we were wolf and sometimes we were human, but the distinction had more to do with which set of muscles would best achieve our goals rather than it did with any battle of ego or will.
Now, though, we each struggled to take control, fighting for command of a body we usually shared equally. I clenched my teeth and strained against her efforts...and I might just have lost had the ringing of my phone not provided a wolf-friendly excuse for us both to step aside.
Pack is calling, I reminded her. Pack, the one thing that every wolf understood deep within her bones. And, reluctantly, my own inner beast accepted my retreat from Sebastien’s touch, allowing me to dig into my pocket for the chiming telephone before turning away to break all contact with the confusing college professor standing by our side.
Then I forgot Sebastien’s magnetic attraction as nearly incoherent apologizes filled my ear. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
And just like that, I dropped back down to the hard pavement of reality with a nearly audible thud.
***
AT FIRST, THE VOICE on the other end of the line was so garbled and confused that I couldn’t even figure out who it was. Only after I pulled the device away from my ear and glanced at the screen did I realize this was Lissa, one of the shifters left in charge of guarding my sister’s house.
Immediately, my stomach made a beeline for the hard tile floor, but this time for a far less palatable reason than enjoying an enticing human’s touch. Because I was sorely afraid that anything Lissa might be so vehemently sorry about wasn’t something I wanted to hear.
But I needed to hear what was going on...and soon if Harmony’s life lay in the balance as I currently suspected. “Stop groveling and start explaining,” I commanded, not bothering to take the time to soothe the other female’s fears in the human way. Instead, ignoring the other inhabitants of the lab, I unleashed my inner wolf and allowed the beast to carry our human body toward the building’s exit, first at a walk then at a trot.
On the other end of the line, Lissa gulped then obeyed. “We watched the apartment all day just like Andrea told us to,” the guard started, her voice still quavering but her words significantly more understandable as my compulsion did its work. “No one of Ms. Garcia’s description left and no werewolves entered on our watch. But you sounded extremely concerned when you called, so Marcia went to check out the human’s hallway. And an old lady came to the door....”
My lips tried to turn upwards into a smile as Lissa painted a picture of the eldest Garcia attempting to chase two Greenbriar werewolves out of her hallway with that ever-present cane. But I could guess where this story was going...and there would be no happy ending to smile about. So I cut into the stream of chatter yet again.
“Tell me,” I ordered, forcing Lissa to cut to the chase.
For a moment, even an alpha compulsion wasn’t enough to break through the pained silence lying cold and hard between us. Then, at last, Lissa spoke, her words nearly too quiet to hear. “They were gone,” she whispered, the pain of a wolf who’d failed her alpha strong even if her voice remained muted and weak. “The human and her pup left before we even got there. They went to the zoo early this morning...and they never came back.”