The twenty-eighth birth moon was the most important and special day for a therian. He should have been with his family, celebrating. As the alpha’s son, the whole pack would have gone all out for a huge party. Even with how the world had changed, they would make something special. He would have shifted and gone running with them all, fed, and then come back to party some more.
He’d been to a twenty-eighth birth moon celebration when he was just a pup, right after he’d shifted to human for the first time, and though he’d had to go to bed early since he was so young, and a lot of the party was more adult-centered, he’d remembered the buzz in the air, the excitement, and how he couldn’t wait until his own twenty-eighth birth moon.
It wasn’t turning out quite like he’d thought it would. Though now, it was even more exciting, because it might mean freedom and reuniting with his family, assuming he could find his way back home.
Noah went through the mental checklist of his escape plan. He’d been forming it casually for years, but only more specifically for the past three months. He was deep in thought when he smelled her through the glass of his cell. The sweetest smell in the universe.
His nostrils flared. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
He would never forget that scent if he lived to be two thousand. That scent was burned into his brain. That scent was Sydney.
“5856, congratulations, you have a new neighbor. Meet 5857B. Isn’t she pretty?” The cheery robotic voice emphasized the letter B too harshly, as if to say, Yes, 5857 is dead. We killed him. This one might be next. Perhaps there will be a 5856B as well.
Not if Noah had anything to say about it. He growled and looked down at his tattoo. If they laid a hand on her… If they marked her in any way… He began to pace in the far-too-small cell as a rage he’d never before felt began to build.
Sydney retreated to the other end of the glass cube, her back pressed against the farthest wall she could get from the angry, growling guy with glowing, yellow eyes. Fur began to sprout on his arms and fangs pushed through his gums. A voice came out over the speakers.
“Be polite, 5856. We would like this one to last a while.”
Polite, yeah right. But the fur disappeared back into his skin. The fangs receded, and his eyes went back to a normal brown. She wasn’t sure how strong the glass was. Was it shatterproof? Was she about to find out? What was he?
He could be any number of therian breeds but something inside her screamed “werewolf”. But the wolves she remembered as a kid had all been nice. Not like this.
Had he killed the last person in the cube she now occupied? How had he gotten in? Had they let him in? So many questions and way too much intense staring aimed at her.
A few minutes passed, and someone in a white lab coat came to her door. The glass slid open. The woman in the coat had a friendly smile, but Sydney didn’t trust it. Despite her recent road trip, she wasn’t that gullible. She knew the score now.
She sniffed the air. Human. Magical human. She’d never had blood from a magic user before, and she was sure she wasn’t about to get it now. The only kind of blood she’d ever had was regular human. It was all they’d been able to get.
“5857B, if you’ll come with me please.”
“S-Sydney. M-my name is Sydney.”
“5857B,” the woman repeated, glancing at the clipboard in her hand as if it contained all infallible knowledge. “Please, let’s not make this difficult.”
Sydney looked back to see 5856 growling some more and followed the woman in the white coat out of the cube. Between the two, she seemed to be the safer option.
She was grateful for the silence as they walked down the hall. It allowed her to digest everything.
Jacob had taken no chances with her and had always had the weapon ready in case she tried any further pathetic escape or murder attempts. She couldn’t even kill a regular human who’d practically shoved her fangs into his vein. What an awful excuse for a vampire she was.
Tonight had been a shorter drive. The night was only just now reaching its midpoint. She knew because she felt her strongest in the middle of the night. But she was so hungry. The traveling and stress had worn on her.
She’d begged Jacob to reconsider. She’d offered to help him find his family, even though she had no idea who they were or where they could be or how to get the information to find them. She’d even suggested that maybe the magic users he’d met didn’t know either. Maybe it was a trick. Maybe they just wanted her and were using the story they knew would most easily gain his cooperation. Maybe they were even a danger to him.
Stories had filtered out from the human cities. The human mates at the compound had all been criminals who’d been thrown out into the wilderness—to the monsters—for their disobedience. But they had never seemed particularly criminal to Sydney. Just scared. They’d expected the monsters to rip them apart or torture them. It was the kind of story talked about in hushed whispers in the cities. It was why they never tried to escape their prison even though the only barriers keeping them in was the fear of being thrown out. The real barriers were to keep the preternaturals from coming in and getting to the easy food and resources.
Vampires had been lying in wait for all of them as soon as they’d been tossed out. They’d never stopped to consider that, given how hard food was to come by, that they would be protected and cherished, not abused.
But Jacob’s story was different. He’d been taken from his family before things had gotten terrible. He hadn’t been tossed out as a criminal. He must have been so scared of the vampires.
She’d gotten Jacob to entertain the notion that the human cities might not follow through on their side of the deal. It was a few brief minutes in which her hope had overcome her fear, but then his face had hardened and he was back to his mission, his foot pressed more firmly against the gas than before. He’d been determined to deliver her to her fate.
The trade had been fast. Her, for a folded up piece of paper with an address. As two men in white coats had escorted her toward a steel tunnel, Jacob had said. “Syd, I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t looked back. She wouldn’t acknowledge him or give him the barest hint that there would ever be a point in time in which she could forgive him for this.
“5857B?” The woman said, snapping a finger in front of Sydney’s face. “We’re here.”
The room looked like a hospital room Sydney had seen once on an old movie her parents had in their collection. She panicked as the woman pulled her into the room.
“Relax. It’s nothing to be afraid of. We just need to run some tests. We know who you are and what you are. We’d like to know if you’ve stopped aging.”
Sydney calmed and allowed herself to be led into the room. She’d like to know that, too. The big question had always been whether or not she would age and die, or if she could potentially be immortal. She knew, of course, that she could never be immortal. She wasn’t strong like her father or other regular vampires. She was far too fragile and easy to kill, too weak to defend herself against anything. So no, she wouldn’t be immortal. Something would take her out eventually and free those who loved her from their constant vigilance.
But she wanted to know if she’d stopped aging, or if her aging process had slowed somehow. She didn’t think she looked twenty-seven, but then, some women aged better than others, and she’d never know how her mother might have aged. Charlee had been frozen at twenty-six when she’d been claimed by Anthony.