Rejected Mate and Following Fate

Chapter 36: Where Am I?

My head aches crazy bad with the weight of that damn bear sitting on my skull, my mouth feels weird and furry like I just ate my own socks, and I blink at the bright white piercing light as I slowly try to open my eyes. Flinching at the assault and screwing my face up in reaction. My body is heavy and disconnected as I try to come to and figure out where I am and what happened to me. I feel like I just survived a train wreck, and I'm not entirely sure I'm not dead and in the afterlife waiting room. I'm completely disorientated, everything spinning, and I can barely move my body as though somehow, I've lost use of anything but my eyelids. I feel vacuum pressed to the surface I'm lying flat out on and it's the most surreal sensation to wake up to.

It takes a minute for my eyes to grow accustomed to the brightness of my surroundings and much like having a torch shone in your face, it's painful at first until it starts to level out and an actual ceiling comes into focus. Watery eyes blurring to clarity and blinking repetitively to figure out what I am staring at.

White square tiles, and a center grey wooden fan that's on slow and hitting me with a gentle breeze. The tiles are large, grubby, and pull my focus enough to let me grasp at the reality of my situation. That I'm inside a building and no longer on the forest floor.

My gut twists and my insides sink as that filters through. It all comes slowly back, the memory of eating dirt and passing out, and I try to sit hurriedly as panic comes kicking back into play. Straining with all I have in me as mild panic sets in.

I can't move, a tightness across my chest, arms, and legs, yanking me down painfully and when I attempt a second time, trying to figure out what's wrong with my body, I realize it's not me… I'm restrained. It's not some weird malfunction of my body after being tranquilized at all.

I manage to tilt my chin, still woozy but able to drag the exaggerated weight of my skull up enough to look down my body and exhale at the sight I see. Laid out flat on a hospital bed of some sort, dressed in a light medical gown. There are leather straps across me at several points of my torso and legs, keeping me taped down, and both my ankles and wrists are shackled in wide black fabric to the side bars of the bed. The guards are up, holding me in place, and try as I can to wriggle, I can barely move an inch. They're tight, thick, and impenetrable while I'm in human form.

I turn my head to the side, dizziness making everything sway, getting a blank white painted brick wall and turn the other way, opening up my view into a small medical room. Brick all around, no windows, and one white door closed shut with nothing but a high square glass panel in the upper half. There are cupboards, trolleys, and worktops in here, with all manners of medical kits and supplies, some posters on the walls that remind me of the doctors surgery in Radstone and an array of panels up near the door that look pretty high tech. The floor is vinyl tiled in a weird blue grey and apart from the information posters on dressing wounds, the predominant color in here is white. It's stark, stinks of disinfectant, and has the usual low hum of electrical outlets and the whirring fan over my head.

It's almost eerily silent and deserted, but I know that's far from reality. There is nothing overly out of place for a sick room that causes me any extra alarm. I mean, it's not like I'm waking up mid body slicing in an alien abduction story.

I feel nauseous, my heart pounding through my ears already, even without the added anxiety of me waking up and finding myself captive in a strange place. I'm obviously inside the building now, somewhere below ground and I have no chance in hell of getting off this bed. My energy levels are low as hell, I can't get up, probably not even without the straps, while I haven't come all the way to out of my drugged stupor.

My first attempt at turning is completely futile, as with sheer will power, I try in the hopes of wiping the residue drug out of my system. It's like I have zero ability, and even breaking my own promise to myself to never link Colton's again, I try, desperate for some kind of help right now. Just his reassuring voice,

his always knowing what to do, his words to calm me. I get a black wall of non-penetration, meaning something is blocking all of my gifts and abilities and I'm right now, no better off than a mere mortal with no gifts at all.

I wonder what the hell they've done to me to subdue all that is supernatural and I don't have time to ponder it when a tiny buzzing sound draws my attention up above my head, behind my line of vision. Wriggling around until I can tilt my head far enough back, arching the very slight amount I can, to see a camera repositioning in the top corner over my head and focusing its attention on me. I guess my movements alerted someone to the fact I'm now awake, and I glare at it hatefully, visually doing what my body can't and rebelling in some small way. I try harder than ever to get movement out of these straps and give up as a wave of fatigue washes over me and leaves me breathless.

Its futile, I have no strength at all, still groggy enough that my little amount of energy wanes fast and I jump internally when the door across the room beeps loudly, reverberating through my ears and clicks to signal someone coming in.

"I see you're awake, dear girl. I've been impatiently poised and ready to come introduce myself to such a marvel as yourself." The heavy accent is foreign, almost like the Queen of England that I've heard on television in the orphanage, and I screw my face up at the man who strolls in towards me, smiles weirdly as though eyeing up a special gift someone has left for him by surprise. I'm momentarily taken aback by the almost caricature way he has of talking.

He's in his older years with greying fluffy hair, glasses, and a balding head. His midriff is round and portly, which makes his white lab coat look restrictive and emphasizes he's wider in size than in height. I can tell the second he walks in that he's not wolf; I mean you would never see a wolf in this bad a physical shape and we definitely do not go bald. Grey over time, but none of that human aging flaws like developing weight or saggy bits. Definitely no losing hair. Wolves stay in their prime until they cash out past the hundred and so years we live for, and this guy looks like he's maybe hitting human sixty at

a push. He has a striped, baby blue shirt on, a peek of green braces, but a dark red polka dot bow tie that just adds to his peculiarness.

I just stare at him pointedly; eyes steeped in mistrust and give him no response. Còntens bel0ngs to Nô(v)elDr/a/ma.Org

"Quite." He says absurdly for no obvious reason as his eyes travel up and down me in the most disturbing way. I'm definitely being sized up for some sort of alien autopsy. Either that or he's lost in his own head and marveling at some wonder that has him smiling like a weirdo.

"Where am I?" I blurt out boldly, not really caring about polite and friendly given my current predicament, and the fact this asshole has me lassoed to a bed, while Willy Wonka style bobbing nearby. My spine is agony at the point of that damn dart, and it feels like I'm black and blue all over. Only just beginning to feel my fingers and toes and despite starting to regain some alert, I feel like I'm not quite here fully yet, and this still has an aura of dreamlike to it.

"Oh, of course… silly me. How rude and utterly awful. Let me introduce myself first. I'm Doctor George William Robert Adams, I'm the resident chief scientific officer at this facility, and you my dear are our guest. Sadly, we did have to take some measures for both our safety and yours, given that like my acquaintances, you seem to possess a certain wonderful gift, but it's a temporary arrangement until we become better acquainted. I hope you won't hold it against us, that without knowing your character or purpose for trespassing on our doorstep, we acted hastily in a precautionary manner. And your name is?" It's a whoosh of ridiculously precise, queen's English in an exaggerated and somewhat foolish sense. I'm at a loss. I didn't think people actually talked or behaved like this, let alone ones who survived living among the aggressive, low patient, temper driven, wolf kind, like me. He's a little absurd.

I blink at him, stupefied at that whole upper crust, marble mouthed, mass of weirdness, that came out of him. He seems like some eccentric Mary Poppins type character, and I'm sure I might still be high

from whatever they darted me with. I stare right back at him blankly, dropping my head back on the semi flat pillow underneath it and say not a word.

"I know, I know…. You must be thinking the absolute worst after Mr. Deacon took you down with an elephant dart, and they carted you in here and trussed you up like a Sunday roast on an oven sheet. Truly, we don't mean any harm, we would just like to ascertain who you are, where you came from, and exactly what you were doing snooping around this rather top secret and out of bounds facility. A boring informality before we can be more hospitable. Please don't hold it against me." He raises his brow at me, still smiling like a demented person and removes his glasses to clean them on his coat, only breaking eye contact for a moment before returning them to his face and renewing that creep smile. I'm starting to wonder if this one is a sandwich short of a picnic and maybe this is what happens when you live in a box underground and don't see the sun for prolonged periods.

"Passing through. I have no idea what this place is and no interest in it." I point out blankly, not really willing to elaborate, but it only gets a strange hmmm noise in return as he nods at me.

"I see. Except the little issue with that is, you were very clearly caught on our surveillance, snooping around, and checking Tyron's truck out, before high tailing it into the forest. Oopsy. I believe you, but they don't, which is rather disastrous. May I add though… wow, just wow, I've never seen, literally ever, in the real flesh and bone myself, an actual pure and full white furred wolf. It truly was a remarkable sight, not to side-track the main point and negate the seriousness of your current position, but I just had to put that out there." He raises his palms in a quirky little jazz hand movement that perfectly times with the happy wide eyed, lifted brow thing he does. The dude is strange.

Who the hell is this guy, and did he swallow a thesaurus in his formative years? He sure takes the long way to say anything and it totally throws you off. I honestly can't tell if this is a tactic to disarm you and pull information, or if he really is a conversation starved oddball and tends to offload. Maybe he's just weird, he has the whole odd outfit thing down to a T for being a weird one.

I'm also shocked to be told my fur is now fully white, although I did have hints and suspicion it was turning that way, but he just solidified the fact for me. It's not like I've had a mirror, or an ability to take my head off and use it to look at my full body when turned. No idea why my turning white is happening, and I wonder if mother experienced the same thing. A flaw, just like everyone said it was, maybe some kind of disease that spreads.