Page 3 of Heart of a Dire Wolf
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“Brick!” Landry, the husky, dark-skinned guard with the thick Louisiana accent snapped his fingers for attention, then pointed to the bench. “Sit. Stay.” A smart-ass smile flitted across his face. “Good dawg.”
Nicolas Paletin, who shared his soul with a Siberian tiger, obediently sat. He angled himself so his legs didn’t stick out as the guard snapped the chain from his ankle shackles to the loop embedded into the wall. Nic pasted a peacefully vacant look on his face as he watched the guard enter the hexagonal-shaped monitoring center. The thick glass walls, brimming with spells, were supposed to muffle sight and sound, but it didn’t work if the guards left the doors wide open.
“Hey, Sharon. Where is everyone?”
Sharon made a rude noise. “Those rats quit yesterday. If the company doesn’t hire fast, I’ll be next. I’m not working any more double shifts with no days off. Magister Balton can kiss my ass.”
“I hear ya’,” agreed Landry. “High pay ain’t worth nuthin’ if you cain’t spend it.” He waved toward the monitors. “What room can I have? Auction wants the new felines ready this afternoon, so I gotta do the alpha tests now.”
The head wizard Balton and the wizards and sorcerers that ran the place for him knew surprisingly little about the shifters they were selling. Or maybe they didn’t care, as long as they could tell potential buyers about the type of animal hiding under the skin. The auctioneers apparently thought all shifter species and groups followed the rigid alpha hierarchy that was only common in older, ultra-conservative wolf packs. Felines who chose to band together in prides usually had a looser class structure, with dominants at the top, but not always.
Nic was too much of a loner to be a team player, and he didn’t want to be a leader. He’d had enough of fighting to last the rest of his long life, and disliked dominance trials. Ordinarily, he’d have refused to cooperate with the auctioneers, but his antsy tiger needed the distraction to keep from feeling claustrophobic. Shifters didn’t thrive in cages, and he was no exception. So far, only one feline shifter had the strength to ignore his order, and that male was a shambling disaster in every other way.
Sharon, a short-chinned white woman with magenta and turquoise hair, pointed to a big wall monitor with little squares showing camera feeds from exam rooms. “Intake Three will be open in a few minutes. Auction better put shifters on sale or something. Crowding makes ’em berserk. Like that stinky wolf yesterday.”
Landry nodded and rubbed his fat belly. “Yeah, I’m still sore, even after the healing spells. She sure was a fighter.”
Nic’s frustrated, increasingly short-tempered inner tiger rumbled, not liking the reminder of the woman’s violent demise. The final beatdown had been in front of his current cell. He’d seen two other deaths in the six weeks he’d been captive, but that one bothered him the most. Nic shook off the disturbing memory and focused on what he could see through the double doors.
The banks of security consoles had a mix of mundane technology and magical artifacts. Several big-screen monitors displayed more tiny squares with live feeds from each prisoner cell. The view angle suggested the camera was built into the cell’s door lock. He’d already seen and memorized an emergency evacuation map, so he knew the complex had six spokes, four for holding cells, one longer, branched one for staff dorms, offices, and exam rooms, and one for the auction showrooms. The raised, wide central hub, where he now sat, housed the security room, the staff lounge area, and the armory. Only the auction showroom and administration office wings had elevators and stairs.
Nic reached down to rub his ankle and give himself a better view of the video monitors. The shifter wing cells looked fully occupied, with two and three to a cell, but the other wings looked half empty. He didn’t know if shifters outnumbered the other magical races, or if they were just easier to catch.
He himself had been caught in a primitive but effective trap meant to snare a caribou shifter group. He hadn’t been a herd protector for more than thirty years, but he’d offered to stand in for his tiger father and caribou mother for the herd’s annual migration. His parents deserved to spend a few uninterrupted months with their new baby and his first sister.
Only twenty kilometers from home, he’d sent the herd running on ahead while he investigated an oily, metallic smell that didn’t belong in a shallow lake. He’d tripped a huge, underwater trap that nearly drowned him. That was his last memory before waking up in a shifter intake room, feeling like his head was going to explode. He hoped the clan didn’t think he’d abandoned them.
On the console below the monitors, a ruby-colored gemstone began furiously blinking. A red spark hovered near one of the tiny video squares. Sharon swore. “Since you’re waiting, do me a favor and check C-6’s control panel for magic activity.” She pointed toward the blinking gemstone. “This stupid thing has gone off twenty times since yesterday, for random cells, but the wizard on call says there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I got Thick-as-a-Brick,” said Landry, pointing a thumb over his shoulder toward Nic.
“So? Take him with you. It’s the shifter wing.”
Landry heaved a noisy sigh, but turned and walked out toward Nic.
“Come on, Brick.”
Nic waited for each order to stand, walk, and stop. His captors had the mistaken impression his human half was docile, illiterate, and cognitively impaired, and he’d carefully avoided giving them any reason to suspect otherwise. Role-playing wasn’t usually his thing, but his dominant tiger half was useful to the overworked staff, and buyers weren’t interested in scratched and dented models like him when they had plenty of perfect specimens to choose from. He’d only once had to shift into his cranky beast, to remind the sadistic guard with tusks and horns not to torment his human half. Her armor-plated skin was no match for his speed or his huge, razor-sharp claws. It had been well worth the singed fur from her fireball.
Landry led the way down the long, wide corridor of the shifter wing to nearly the end. Nic’s super-sensitivity to magic meant he got a barrage of sensations as they walked, like an otherworldly, variable wind in a crowded marketplace.
Landry hooked Nic’s ankle chain to the center floor ring, then turned to the cell’s control panel. Nic yawned loudly and smacked his lips to hide his interest. Landry touched small gemstones in sequence. The cell’s shadow spell faded to reveal the occupants, a male and a female.
The female had straight, midnight black hair, a mix of Asian and African features, and a slender body like a ballet dancer. Even smudged with dirt and hair sticking out every which way, she was exquisite. He’d only glimpsed her once before, in an auction block display cage, but her lingering scent had told him everything his tiger needed to know. She was his mate.
And the palsied male in her cell was the only feline his tiger had ever met that he couldn’t even tell its species, much less dominate.
Nic’s inner tiger roared and lunged, trying to force a shift, wanting a rematch. He gritted his teeth and forced it back.
“Oh, hell.” Landry punched a control that broadcast his voice past the kill bars into the cell. “Walls. Now!” he ordered. “And none of your shit, Lerro.”
Nic dropped his head so his long hair hid his face. He inhaled slowly to catch the scintillating scent that had been both arousing him and settling his tiger for days. He nearly drooled in pleasure.
Nic risked a quick glance up at his mate. Big mistake. When their eyes met, she froze, deer in the headlights. His tiger stilled, fascinated.
Landry made a disgusted sound. “Don’t make me flatten you, Lerro. You neither, Chekal.”
