Page 28 of Strays
The nurse smiles, placing the tray on Johane’s lap. "Sure, sweetheart." She gives us a quick once-over, then winks at Johane. "Really pretty boys. You lucky dog."
Johane blinks.
I blink.
I’m not used to people being this friendly around me.
When the nurse is gone, Shane tilts his head. "Do you know her?"
"No. Met her this morning. Why?" Johane replies, already poking at her food with a plastic fork.
We exchange a look. Our mate is astonishing.
A few minutes later, the room is so packed with tiny human chairs it’s impossible to move around, but we’re all seated, surrounding her bed, taking whatever chance we get to touch her without getting in her way while she eats.
I casually position my arm over her bed so my right hand brushes her forearm. Jay rests a hand over her left foot, and Shane drapes an arm over her legs.
Our touch is too light. I want to press down, to rub my hand against her skin, but I force myself to stay still.
"How old are you guys?" she asks suddenly.
"Jay and I are twenty-six," I say. "Shane’s twenty-five. You?"
"Twenty-five too." She tilts her head thoughtfully. "So I guess the books were right. Among scent-mates, the nyra’s age is always the arithmetic mean of her aegis."
We all give her blank stares.
"There are books about that?" Shane asks.
"Not just about age," she says. "But there are tons about aegis-nyra bonds. You’ve never read any of them?"
"Uh… no." I didn’t even know that was a thing.
"Huh. I’m surprised," she says. "Dr. Steve Bureau wrote half of them. Sinceyou were part of that douchebag’s program, I figured you might take my crown as the biggest reader of gregalis physiology."
Jay laughs. "Nope. Even if you’d read just one, you’d still be the champion."
We were part of his program, yeah, but we didn’t have much direct contact with Dr. Bureau.
I’ve got complicated feelings about him. His core belief was always the same: gregalis aren’t people, just animals. Dangerous if left unchecked, but useful if controlled.
He built the Artificial Packs Program on the premise that, since gregalis are nothing but biology-driven animals, then he could engineer anything with the right hormone cocktails and enough behavioral conditioning. Packs. Bonds. Loyalty. All of it.
And here’s the cruel part. As strays, we owe him our lives. Without his Program, we’d be dead. But the fact that it worked is what gave his theories weight. We became living proof that he was right. Or at least that’s what a lot of humans believe.
Outside of stray packs, pretty much every aegis despises what Bureau represents. And since we’re the product of his work, they hate us even more.
"Where do you live?" Johane asks, changing the subject.
"Right now? Nowhere," Jay replies. "We lived in Greenster, Pennsylvania, for six years, but now that we’ve found you, we’re being relocated to Great Sky, Connecticut."
"That’s perfect!" she exclaims, eyes bright. "If we find a place halfway between Great Sky and Bridgeport, I could get to the hospital in half an hour, even with traffic."
Her excitement makes me smile. I think I’ve smiled more today than in my entire life. But I don’t get it. Why does she need to get to a hospital fast?
"The hospital?" Jay asks, confused.
Her voice shifts, her eyes filling with something close to panic. “I... I thought the MAB guys would've told you. When they said the meeting was scheduled, I just... I assumed you knew and were okay with it. I mean... they wouldn’t have scheduled it otherwise, right? Same way they warned me about you being strays before I agreed to the meeting.”
