Winter

Sixty-Six

There were no mirrors in the lab, not even in the tiled room with the sterilizing shower Wolf had been taken to in order to wash the sticky gel out of his hair. He didn’t need a mirror, though, to know what they’d done. He could see the difference in his bone structure when he looked at his hands and feet. He could feel the difference in his protruding mouth, his enlarged teeth, his malformed jaw. They’d altered his facial bone structure, making way for the row of implanted canine teeth. There was a new curvature to his shoulders and an awkward flex of his feet, which looked more like paws now, made for running and bounding at great speeds. His hands were enormous, now fixed with reinforced, claw-shaped fingernails.

He could even smell it inside himself. New chemicals and hormones pumping through his veins. Testosterone. Adrenaline. Pheromones. He wondered when the new fur would start sprouting over his skin, completing the transformation.

He was miserable. He was everything he had never wanted to be.

He was also starving.

A uniform had been left for him, similar to the uniform he’d worn as a special operative. A formality for his role at the coronation. Most of the bioengineered soldiers received far less distinguished clothing, being more animal than man.

And now he was one of them. He tried to temper his disgust. After all, who was he to pass judgment on his brothers?

Yet his emotions continued to fluctuate. Furious and burning one moment. Devastated and full of self-loathing the next.

This was his fate. This had always been his fate. He couldn’t imagine how he had ever thought differently. Had he honestly believed he could be better? That he deserved more? He was destined to kill and eat and destroy. That was all he was entitled to.

Suddenly, his nose twitched.

Food.

Saliva rolled onto his tongue and he wicked it against his sharp teeth. Something in his stomach roiled, angry at its own hollowness.

He shuddered, remembering this hunger from back when he had first begun training as an operative. He had both craved and hated the slabs of barely cooked meat they were presented, and the way they had to fight for their own piece, confirming the pack’s pecking order in the process. Even then, the hunger had not been this bad.

He swallowed, hard, and finished dressing.

His body had begun to shake when he opened the door and the aroma of the food burst in his nostrils. He was almost panting.

Thaumaturge Bement and the lab technician were still there, though the unconscious man had been removed. The technician shrank back when she saw Wolf’s expression. She situated herself behind another suspension tank, filled with some other victim.

“That look must mean there’s food in the building,” she said.

“Indeed.” The thaumaturge was leaning against a wall, perusing her portscreen. “They are in the elevator with it now.”

“I didn’t realize you were going to have him eat here. Have you ever seen one of them when they’ve first eaten?”

“I will handle him. Go about your business.”

Casting one more hesitant glance at Wolf, the woman returned to checking the diagnostics screens on the tank.

There was a chime down the hallway and the aroma of food wafted a hundred times stronger still. Wolf gripped the door frame. His legs were weak with lust, his knees ready to give out beneath him.

A servant arrived, pushing a wooden cart draped with a white cloth. “Mistress,” he said, bowing to the thaumaturge. He was dismissed.

Wolf’s senses were being pummeled. His ears pricked at the hiss of steam. His stomach spasmed with desire. Lamb.

“Are you hungry?”

He snarled, growling at the thaumaturge. He could lunge at her now, have the woman torn to bits before she even knew what was happening. But something held him back. Some deep-seated fear. Memories of another thaumaturge breaking his will.

“I asked you a question. I know you’re nothing but an animal now, but I still think you’re smart enough to answer with a simple yes or no.”

“Yes,” Wolf grunted.

“Yes, what?”

Rage nearly blinded him, but it was shoved back down. Wolf grimaced against the uprise of hatred. “Yes, Mistress.”

“Good. We do not have time to get to know each other and build the relationship of understanding a thaumaturge would normally form with her pack. But I did want to illustrate for you two main principles, in a way that your little animal brain can understand.” She whisked off the white cloth, revealing a platter overflowing with seared meat and bones, cartilage and marrow.

Wolf shuddered with hunger, but also with disgust. Disgust at the meat, and disgust at his own cravings. An odd memory eclipsed this new urge. Something glossy and red and bursting with juice—tomatoes.

They’re the best part, and they were grown in my own garden …

“The first thing you need to know as a member of Her Majesty’s army is that a good dog will always be rewarded.” The thaumaturge waved her arm over the food. “Go ahead. Take a bite.”

He flapped his head, willing away the unfamiliar voice. It was that girl again. The red-haired girl who was so repulsed by him.

Wolf’s legs moved of their own accord, drawing him toward the cart. His stomach yearned. His tongue lagged.

But as soon as he reached a clawed hand toward the platter, pain lanced through his gut. He doubled over in agony. His legs gave out and he crumpled to the floor, his shoulder smacking the edge of the cart and sending it crashing into the nearby wall. The pain dragged on and on, arcing through every limb, like a thousand daggers burying themselves in his flesh.

The thaumaturge smiled.

The pain relented. Wolf was left trembling on the ground, his cheeks damp from sweat or tears or both.

The torture wasn’t new to him. He remembered it from his training before, with Jael. But he had not felt it since he’d become the alpha. A prized soldier. A good, loyal pup.

“And that,” said the thaumaturge, “is what will happen should you disappoint me. Do we have an understanding?”

He nodded shakily, his muscles still twitching.

“Do we have an understanding?”

He coughed. “Yes. Mistress.”

“Good.” Taking the tray off the cart, the thaumaturge dropped it onto the floor beside him. “Now eat your meal like a good dog. Our queen awaits.”