Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
I have a faint feeling of guilt, knowing that my master will not like me being here with this man. But he is not a man. He is an alpha wolf, and he made me. I have always felt a kind of basic attraction to Connor, not sexually, but more like a resonance that makes us just make sense.
I stop moving and instead I stare at him, waiting to see what he has to say. He has called me here, and I have followed his call.
A truck is parked beside him. He reaches into the cab and tosses me a jacket and some pants, both garments landing over my wolf snout.
“Get changed,” he says. “We need to talk.”
I’m not sure I know how to shift forms, but there’s something about his command that just… makes it happen. Fortunately, I am still covered by bushes when it does, and I scramble into clothing before he sees anything indelicate. I hope. As a human, being naked in front of my boss does not feel great. I suddenly feel like I’m doing something very wrong. God. Why does being a person come with so very much guilt all the time?
“Put these on too, junkies leave needles out here.”
A couple of snow boots come flying into the bushes as well. Aw. He got them in my size. That could be sweet, or it could be a coincidence. I get them on my feet right away.
I take a second to compose myself and step into the clearing with Chief Connor. It’s cold out, so he’s wearing a thick jacket, snow pants. Basically what I’m wearing.
“Boss?”
I don’t know why I’m saying his title like that. We both know he’s my boss.
“Tess,” he says. “We need to talk.”
There’s a long pause following that statement in which neither one of us talk. I don’t know what he called me here for. Was it just to see if he could? My human mind has way too many thoughts whirling around it to be clear about any of them.
“You bit me.”
I break the ice with that simple statement of fact.
“Yeah,” he says. “You deserved it.”
“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or a….”
Connor growls. “You should have told me about the mutants. They’re dangerous.”
“You’re dangerous,” I point out in turn.
He snorts, like that amused him. I guess it was a bit of a joke, but not really. With one bite, he changed me and my world forever. He made me something more than human. And he fixed me. I’m grateful, but also kind of angry. These are complicated feelings to work through.
“They’ve got Sally as a brood queen,” he says. “I smelled it.”
Brood queen. That’s one super gross, very accurate way of putting it.
“Yeah. Me too,” I say ruefully.
“How many has she had?”
“Orgasms?”
“Spawn.”
“Oh. I don’t know. Three, so far? I think? They’re trying to make more.”
Connor starts pacing back and forth across the clearing. His hair has grown out a lot since I last saw him. He must be on a leave of absence from work. It’s almost down to his shoulders in a thick mane.
“Of course they are. The monster will breed her until she can’t be bred anymore. She’ll produce hundreds of mutants over her lifetime. They have to be stopped.”
“I don’t think… I mean. I don’t think she wants to be stopped. It sucks when people have kids and lose interest in their old lives, but we have to accept that as part of their personal journey of growth and not be bitter and weird about it.”
I’m getting to give him the lecture I’ve given myself many times, and it feels good because I’m starting to sort of believe myself. It’s so much easier to be righteous when you have an audience.
“This isn’t about someone getting knocked up and quitting their job,” Connor growls. “This is about something much worse. This is about a population explosion of mutants.”
“Oh. So it’s like, kind of a, well, bigotry thing?”
He snarls at me and nearly lunges. I take a quick step back as his eyes start to gleam with zealous menace.
“It’s not anything like a bigotry thing. Their kind is inherently dangerous. They’re not like normal people, or even traditional supernaturals…”
“The more you talk about this, the more prejudiced you’re sounding.”
He clamps his jaw and gives me a steely look. This conversation is now officially going downhill.
“You need to decide what side you’re on. The side that turns human women into monster incubators, or the side that freed you from your wounds forever.”
“I’m grateful for what you did for me. Don’t get me wrong. But ultimatums are always a shitty strategy. Order doesn’t want a fight with you. The mutants don’t want to get into war. They just want to live peacefully. They were designed to save humanity, they said. They were made to be heroes!”