Alcmene Argent
When I wake up, I'm unable to tell how long I was out but I can tell it was a while because of how cramped my muscles are when I stand.
Cyanide, that's what I smelled before I went out.
What the hell happened?
I look around still feeling the aftereffects of the fear but strangely not any real pain or fatigue you would expect after the cyanide or really anything else after being in this room.
I see I was moved to one of the beds in the corner. Suddenly panic hits me and I immediately look down to make sure no one-specifically the ragazzo inquietante called Doc-changed me while I was asleep, but I look no different.
I look to the spot where the Doc stabbed me with the monstrous knife and the skin is perfect, no marks, blood is gone.
I've been known to exaggerate but there's no way that thing didn't leave a mark and it couldn't have been a nightmare because you wake up when you feel pain.
I close my eyes and focus on my body to see if I feel any different, but I only feel slightly more energized and I don't feel any pain. I check my whole body for any injuries or changes but come up empty. So, I wait. And wait. And wait before finally Elijah comes in looking solemn.
"Finally!" I exclaim dramatically throwing my hands up into the air.
He looks at me like I just grew another head and for a second, I see relief in his gaze but is soon covered with shock.
"You're-you're awake." He stutters with wide eyes as he looks at me like I'm about to drop dead, "And lucid?!"
I nod condescendingly, then I smile mockingly as I motion to the door. "Are you going to escort me back to my cell?" I ask in a saccharine sweet voice.
He stares at me a moment longer with worry and wonder before gaining control of his face and it becomes an unreadable rock once again.
He straightens and grabs my wrist and jerks me out and tries to drag me back but after a few steps I catch up and walk alongside him no matter how fast he tries to walk.
Eventually after about the millionth turn he brings me back up to the cave cell. When I skip inside the noticeable warmer cave the twins run up to me and hug me hard almost knocking me over.
I give them a quick squeeze then look over to Persephone and Matt who also look shocked as hell.
Then I bow dramatically and tell them "Sono sopravvissuto! I survived bitches!"
The stare at me for a minute blinking as though they expect me to drop dead.
"Catching flies?" I ask teasingly and they try to recover.
Matt recovers first "How? What happened there? How do you feel? Does anyone else know?" He questions.
"I don't know. Not a clue. I feel better than ever. Don't know 'bout Doc but Elijah knows because he brought me back." I answer all his questions.
"How do you feel okay? Have any injuries?" Persephone asks with wide eyes still shaking her head slowly.
"I already checked. No injuries or any physical changes I can see. I feel great, energized and not too hot though, that might be because it was cold down there. I also think my senses are stronger.
Like I can see everything in way better detail down here, I can hear the men talking below us, and I can smell your confusion-yep smells like oil, gross." I tell her they all stare at me in shock.
After a few seconds I start to twitch and shift from foot to foot. But when I shift around something feels off. Then I realize that my right foot feels significantly lighter than last time in this cave or that the cool metal on my skin is missing, so I looked down.
I bark a laugh.
"What?" Matt and Persephone ask simultaneously.
"E-The guard forgot to chain me." I answer them with my amusement in my voice though almost calling the guard, Elijah.
"So, you can't run away you still have the disc in you." Lillith calls over from the corner where she sits silently listening to us running her hands through her hair.
"No, I can't run away but I can go and spy on them." I tell them with big smile on my face. Persephone's face brightens with realization. Matt still looks unsure but doesn't say anything.
I quietly walk towards the mouth of the cave and stealthily walk in the darker areas and with my newly heightened senses and memory of the tunnels I follow the sound and end up right outside the cave where Doc, John, and Elijah are talking.
I almost jump and shout my triumph, but I quickly gain control and stop myself as I hear them talking again. I listen in as John clears his throat to quiet the other men and start the meeting.
"Well Doc. How did the experiments on the test subject go today?" John asks.
"I got the new female and did the tests the results seemed normal so I put the new strain in here but it didn't seem to do anything so I want to ask permission to break protocol to check for any changes." Doc informs him but before the big man can give his response Elijah makes a noise.
"Doc," Elijah clears his throat and asks, "what condition did you leave the test subject in?"
"She looked the same as the other test subjects, why? Did she die?" Doc asks confused.
"No, she lives. She thrives, actually," he tells Doc worriedly. "When I went in there to carry her back to her cell, she was awake and lucid. She looked healthier than she was when I caught her and kept up with me walking the whole way back to her cell not slowing or tripping once."
"She was healthy, strong, awake, and lucid?" Doc asks excitedly.
"Yu-Yes, sir." He replies stoically tripping over his words slightly.
"Go get her, I want to see this anomaly." John tells Elijah.
Oh no, they're going to find out that I'm spying on them. I started to worry. "Boss?" Elijah asks a bit of worry and confusion laced in his voice.
I don't wait any longer, I sprint back to the cave. I notice as I run that I am silent without even trying. I walk into the cave and give a summary of what I heard to Matt and Persephone. Then I go and pretend to sleep with the twins.
I hear everyone else go to their spots and start to whisper to one another. Then I hear footsteps come into the cave and Elijah calls out banging a baton against the wall.
"Wake up kitten! Doc wants to see you."
I slowly get up pretending to have been asleep and walk over. He notices my ankle and looks worried for a second as if remembering that he didn't shackle me.
It takes everything I have to suppress my snickers, but I can't stop myself from smirking for a second before fixing my expression into a tired mask.
He grabs my wrist and yanks at me forward. He speed-walks the whole way so that his long strides should be impossible for me to keep up with but somehow, I find myself keeping up easily.
When we finally reach the entrance to the cave, he whispers "Obey them, don't show anything, and survive, kitten."
Then he pushes me in with strength that should have made me stumble but it doesn't even make me falter, I stand unmoving for a second before I move forward just to annoy him. It works. I can smell his frustration, it smells spicy.
I decide to take a look around the room. There are a couple of lamps and a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. I see John leaning against the wall chewing his lip and looking at me with curiosity and hopefulness. Doc is leaning forward in a chair on one side an interrogation table and points to the chair at the other end. I walk over and sit calmly.
Then Elijah walks over and straps my hands to the table with cuffs and locks it with a combination lock.
My hands start to burn, and I look at them, they look fine, but the pain keeps intensifying. I bit my tongue to distract me from the pain. Doc studies me a little longer the cracks his knuckles.
"How do you feel? Any injuries? Side-effects?" he asks and it would be a normal question if you didn't see the crazy glint in his eyes and creepy smile.
I nod my head, then shake it, then shrug because I'm afraid if I open my mouth all that will come out is a banshee scream.
"Well honey if you can't answer with words, we will have to strip you and check ourselves." He threatens me.
I nod my head in understanding and then grind out, "Check for yourselves. Just knock me out first."
Elijah looks at me worriedly and John looks unamused, Doc just smiles as if I made his day. I take a deep breath and look him in the eye. We stare at each other for at least three minutes before he breaks our staring contest. "Okay then sweetheart," he says sweetly, "strip her." He commands Elijah.
Elijah follows his gaze to me but looks stony but walks over to me and strips me forcefully keeping his eyes on the ground and my face. Then he releases my hands of my chains and I just barely suppress a sigh of relief as the pain stops and gets a rope to tie my hands together and my ankles to the table and makes me stand up. Doc walks over and studies me. He frowns when he finds nothing strange or different with my appearance.
He grabs a camera and starts taking pictures of me I assume to try and find a change or to record and see if I change in the future. Then he shows them to John and after a lot of studying, Doc walks over and hands me the camera. I assume to study my reaction to see if I found something different about me, something new I didn't have before.
I look at all the pictures and I see that my scars have disappeared or look a lot better than last time I saw them but the last picture is the most shocking, a tattoo.
It's a tattoo on my left shoulder blade and of a silver wolf howling at the moon, and it looks like it's made of fire with bat wings and blood dripping from the moon.
I never got a tattoo, but I make sure not to change my expression and hide my eyes. Then I see my eyes, they are my normal icy blue but there is a ring of silver and some black flecks that were never there before, I again hide my reaction and keep it mostly internal. Doc and John frown.
Then John steps forward "We'll test you more tomorrow with better equipment," he concludes.
Elijah looks at me almost sympathy before his eyes become unreadable again and hands me my clothes and for a second, I think about throwing it at him out of spite but instead I start pulling on clothes.
After I get dressed, he presses a hand to my back gentler than usual and pushes me back to the prison cave and unfortunately this time remembers to chain me.
Suddenly, I notice something I've never noticed before, these chains also hurt though nowhere near as much as to ones in the interrogation room the sensation less of a burn closer to a dull ache like sore muscles and I lay down next to the twins and fall asleep.
'It's because it's silver'.
Huh, I must be more tired than I thought if I'm hearing voices.
The next morning, I wake up when someone shakes me with more strength than the twins. I open my eyes and see Matt who is in my face shaking me. I jerk back and hit my head on the wall, but it only hurt for a minute.
Huh, must not have hit it as hard as I thought.
I look up and he seems really worried I was about to ask what was going on but then he opens his mouth.
"Elijah is asking for you again, like right now, no breakfast. Persie is stalling for you." He fills me in and pauses before continuing, "and they took your siblings and won't give them back until you go with them. If you don't hurry, they will begin to hurt them, no doubt."
That gets me angry, and I immediately jump up to my feet and break out into an all-out sprint, noticing the red sheen everything has taken as I search for them.
I begin to feel uncomfortably hot, but I kept going I run all the way to the experimentation room beating Elijah by a lot.
Once I get in there I see where they put the twins through a live footage. They put them in a large dog kennel that makes me livid. I started shaking with rage and then pain.
The pain is the second worst agony I ever felt next to finding my mother brutally murdered in the living room.
Then I hear a sound like all my bones breaking then reforming and I become shorter, and my senses become twice as strong. I see red and turn around to kill everyone that dare touch my pack.
Pack?
Whatever, not important right now, time to sink my teeth into Elijah then Doc and then John all slow painful deaths then I see Elijah staring at me like weird, so I look down at my hands and what hands, in their place snow white paws.
Then I feel my tail moving…
MY TAIL!!
Then I see my reflection in the weirdly pristine table and look at myself in this new form in disbelief.
I am mostly a large silver she-wolf, but I have leathery wings that look like those of a bat with fire swirling and sparking around my tail flaring out from my fur, and my fangs are extra-long down past my lips and have venom. Don't ask me how I know because I don't know the answer to that question.
Then I hear a new voice in my head
'Hello, I am your wolf, but you are also vampyre, avian, and dragon shifter and we are all part of you. They just are not as strong yet. I was awakened because of your protectiveness they, the dragon and avian, will be awakened to some other emotion. We are special not only hybrids, but a moon wolf.'
Moon Wolf?
'Yes. Moon wolf. Uses the moon for power and manipulates the moons power and the only white or silver wolf. We are the antidote to Guillotine-V at night except during new moons.'
Well, hello then my wolf. Now let's go kill some people that touched my pack.
We lunge forward snarling but talking gave Elijah enough time to call for Doc and John who both shot us with silver infused tranq. darts the silver being the only reason they work from our shared knowledge.
I hear my bones breaking and reshaping but there is no pain this time. The world goes black.
. . .
When I wake up probably half an hour later, I am naked in the exact same place but shackled to a wall with silver infused chains though only as much as my shackles in the prison cave so not too much pain.
Wolf? Are you all, right?
'Yes, but we cannot shift because of the silver. I'm sorry.'
It's okay next time we'll be stronger and faster. Deadlier.
She yips in an excited agreement.
Then I look up to the men in the room. They all look wary, but Doc and John also look excited. But Elijah looked mostly stony and stoic, though his eyes held some concern. Doc takes a step forward holding his hands up I growl threateningly and partially shift so I have fangs, claws, and fire but my normal body. John opens his mouth and I snarled.
Then Elijah walks up when John motions towards him and then me he looks a little scared. I growl but shift completely back when my wolf says Safe.
For some reason his presence seems to quell my rage and I feel safer so I inch closer to my captor. He stands in front of his father with wide eyes facing me.
"The video isn't real. We faked to see your reaction. Your siblings are safe." He says this quickly with no emotion in his voice, but it's infused with the fake calmness one would use to calm a wild animal.
I partially shift into my fangs and grin at him. He flinches a little. Then he walks over to his corner to see. Doc gets out a silver knife. It looks suspiciously like the one that killed my mother but slightly smaller in width and has a more serrated edge. John grabs my hand Doc stabs my I hold back a cry by biting my lip which hurt worse because I forgot the change my fangs back into normal teeth.
Note to self be careful when biting yourself with fangs.
It takes about five minutes for it to stop bleeding and start to heal about three minutes later. Then Doc grabs a knife that looks like it is made of copper. They take and stab my other wrist but this time it only takes three minutes to heal completely and there is no scar unlike the other wrist. Doc writes this down then looks at me.
"Shift." He commands.
I stare back without even trying to shift he starts to look frustrated. Then he looks over to Elijah and makes a hand motion and points to the chains on the floor near him. Elijah glances worriedly at me and then sighs and walks away taking the chains with him. He walks back a minute or two later and trailing behind him in chains is Azazel. I partially shift and snarl and lunge to try and get them, but the chains are too strong for me, and the silver still blocks us from shifting entirely. I finally stop because I realize I can't break the chains and can't shift so I'm just wasting energy. I take a deep breath and try to calm down a little. I turn to Doc and John.
"I can't shift because the chains are made of silver," I explain.
Then John walks away and grabs chains made of iron and attaches then to my wrists and ankles. Then takes the silver ones off and jumps back quickly and I hear my bones cracking and shortening. I feel my paws which are too small for the chains and step right out of them. Then Doc grabs Azazel and holds the silver kitchen knife to Azazel's throat and I immediately sit back on my haunches and whine. Doc smiles and studies me. I growl when he tries to touch my fur but then John holds the knife to my brother's throat and I quiet.
Thankfully, he doesn't try and touch me again. I look to Elijah who looks at me with an equal amount of awe and fear and I love it then I smell him and my wolf howls, my mate! and starts wagging her tail but I stop her before we throw back our head and release a howl of joy.
He smells like cinnamon and cedar. Just then Doc touches me with a silver rod, and I fall to the floor with a thud. I hear my bones breaking and soon I'm back in my human form. John lets Azazel go and we walk back to our prison cell. I bring Azazel over to our sleeping corner and find Melisande already there awake. We lie down next to her and we all fall asleep.
The next morning Doc comes in and grabs me then grabs Melisande and I growl threateningly. "She'll be in your sight the whole time."
He says in a tone you would use on a wounded animal. It calms my wolf a bit. Then we follow and I let my mind wander to wondering why Elijah didn't come this morning, but I don't get to ponder this too long because Doc's voice cuts into my thoughts.
"Don't get used to me picking you up the kid will be there soon just testing on him today." He explains.
I start to worry about him but then shake that emotion away and reason with myself he's just a guard and my enemy. Soon we reach the experimentation room. I take a deep breath and Doc tells me to shift. I strip quickly and then focus on my wolf.
Help me. Please help me shift. I plead desperately with my wolf she mentally shakes herself awake.
Okay. Ready. So just think of me and picture us in wolf form. Get every detail and I'll do the rest. It shouldn't be painful this time and should be a lot faster.
I take a deep breath and focus. I picture my wolf which despite never actually have seen but my mind helpfully supplies. Then I see her and embrace her, and my senses are suddenly enhanced, and my entire body feels different and I have a tail. I quickly spin in a circle to make sure I am functioning properly.
I then see myself in the mirror like cabinets I have a normal wolf tail and no fangs or wings. I subconsciously already new this but a girl can hope. I then remember what I'm doing here and focus on Doc who is scrutinizing me.
I feel uncomfortable and slightly angered that they think I'm a science experiment created by them when all they really did was awaken my animal sides. I barely suppress a growl and only manage by thinking of the twins though I couldn't stop my tail from twitching furiously.
Then my mind decided to figure out who or what all these scents belonged to. I can smell Doc the strongest. He smells of blood, cleansing supplies, metal, male, sweat, and human not a good scent. Then I could smell all his tools which all smelled almost exactly like him. Then I could smell Melisande who smelled good considering our living conditions. Like poppy flowers and strawberries with a little sand, sweat, and silver which my wolf starts sneezing uncontrollably at and then Doc's eyes burn with curiosity.
Then I smell him.
My mate.
Elijah.
My wolf perks her ears up and her tail starts to wag slightly. Focusing on his scent to keep my attention from Doc. The more I focus on his scent my wolf gets more excited and calmer at the same time who also wants to run to him. I start to drown in his scent.
He smells amazing, better than Mel. He smells of timber, clean air, woods, freedom, male, mate, and wolf. I can barely hold a howl of excitement in hearing he is a wolf like me.
Then I smell his pain, determination, and a little fear. Thankfully, Doc tells me to shift then knocks me out with his special mixture made just for me. I embrace the tiredness and let it take over my body. I wake to the scent of fear coming from my siblings.