Page 9 of Redeemed Wolf

“Exactly. He taught me himself.” All part of the lie, but I didn’t like thinking about my real family. The fake parents were so much better.

Eric showed me the breakroom and where I would be stationed at one corner of the facility near an emergency exit, but otherwise, I couldn’t see anything worth guarding here. He said they were in pharmaceuticals, but there were no labs, no scientists of any kind.

The only thing even remotely out of the ordinary was when we walked past a solid metal door, locked with a card reader and a keypad, and something that looked like a scanner of some kind. As we walked past, I felt an uncomfortable tingling sensation in my chest. I rubbed at my sternum absently, and as we moved on, it faded to nothing more than a remembered sense of pressure.

There was something important behind that door, but apparently, it wasn’t part of the tour.

Eric left me at the desk that would be my station going forward, with another guard named Melissa, because apparently, we all worked in pairs. She was shorter than I was by almost a foot, and couldn’t have weighed much more than an acorn, but there was something hard about her that said not to fuck with her. She was used to being underestimated. I liked her immediately.

She trained me for the rest of the day, explaining that we would take turns walking a circuit of the halls every 15 minutes, before logging it on a clipboard. That was pretty much it. That was the entirety of my new job. Walking and sitting, and presumably reporting anything out of the norm.

“Have you ever had to use that thing?” I asked Melissa, nodding at the pistol holstered at her hip.

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “But one of our other labs was broken into once, and apparently it was pretty awful, so if worse comes to worst, you’ll be glad you have it. Just in case.”

“Right… just in case.” I leaned back in my cheap plastic chair, the metal legs creaking. “What would someone want to steal from a pharmaceutical company?”

“How should I know? They don’t pay me to ask questions.” The guarded look she gave me made me think she knew more than she was letting on.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and on the way out, I exchanged phone numbers with Greg at the gate, with the promise that I would come out with the other staff on Friday. It was a good thing, because I hadn’t learned anything important today, and I knew the staff might be more likely to spill some classified information after they’d had a drink or two.

I had to bide my time, but much like when my wolf was hunting, I was not known for my patience. Maybe I was the wrong man for the job after all.

Pacey was sitting at the kitchen table when I walked in, eating a bowl of cereal. I could smell the artificial colors from here. “How was your first day?” he asked.

“Meh. It’s a job. Didn’t learn much, but at least the pay’s alright. I like my co-workers. They’ve been working there for years, and I know they’ve got a lot to teach me.”

We’d be stuck talking in code just in case my phone was bugged. I couldn’t return to the woods from this point on, because we had to assume I was being followed. Pacey would leave the apartment to relay messages to Shan from his burner phone, but I wasn’t sure how I could describe the locked door. Or that strange pressure I’d felt.

My fingers strayed to rub at my chest where I’d felt the weird sensation.I wonder what it was…

There was something going on at that lab, I had no doubt, but for now, we were playing a waiting game, and hopefully with time, it would pay off.

The entire week passedin much the same way, walking and sitting, chatting with Melissa. When Friday rolled around, I was looking forward to having a drink just for a change in the monotony. Was this what being a human was like? It was mind-numbingly boring. How could they stand it?

I hadn’t found many pros to life in the city. It was overly loud and bright, it stank, and the food was all too salty, sweet, or greasy. Sometimes all three at once.

I sat wedged into the corner of the bar’s vinyl-covered booth. My skin prickled being in such close proximity to these strangers, and when I leaned my forearms on the table, I found the surface sticky.

“First round’s on me,” Greg said, slapping me on the back before sliding out. “Pick your poison.”

“Uh, just a beer’s good. Thanks,” I tacked on as an afterthought. I wasn’t used to needing manners.

It didn’t matter what I ordered. It wasn’t like any of what they had to offer would get me drunk. For that, I needed the drink to be laced with wolfsbane, but I didn’t think this was the type of place to cater to my kind. Then again… The bartender was definitely a shifter. He had a strong, musky scent to him that laced itself through the myriad aromas—beer, body odor, pheromones, and greasy bar food. My guess was puma, based on his tan hair and amber eyes, but it could’ve been another large cat breed, I wasn’t certain.

As Greg wove his way through the crowd to the counter to place our order, the bartender met my gaze. He raised an eyebrow in question, and I nodded. Maybe I’d get a real drink after all.

“So, how do you like the job so far?” a mousy-looking man with wire-rimmed glasses asked. “Think you’ll stick around?” He’d introduced himself as Felix. He worked in accounting, the only one at the table who wasn’t a guard, but he seemed to have been adopted by the rough crew.

“Yeah, it’s all right. Why do you ask, don’t people stick around?”

He exchanged a look with Melissa on my other side. “Oh, no reason. Every job has its turnaround.”

I grunted in reply, doubtful. Before I could ask him to elaborate, though, Greg came back to the table, the bartender right behind him with a tray of drinks.

“You’re new here,” the bartender said, looking right at me as he distributed the drinks around our table. “You working up at the lab?”

“Yeah. I’m sure you’ll be seeing a lot more of me.” I smiled, but it held a sharp edge of warning. Did this guy know what was going on at the lab just down the road?

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