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“You have the patient!” He gestures toward the now still wolf on the table. “And I’m tired of having the same conversation over and over. It’s been six months. We are getting impatient!”

There’s that infamous “we” again.

Cassian leaves the lab, slamming the door shut behind him. Trembling, I sit down heavily on the stool next to me. Every inch of this lab is monitored. I can’t draw this wolf’s blood without Cassian finding out. I already tried once.

I’m so exhausted. They haven’t even give me a proper room to sleep in. Every night, I’m locked in that same cell with this wolf. According to our captor, it’s so that the wolf gets used to me.

Aside from Cassian, there is one other man who comes in, an assistant. He’s a little chattier but still treats me like vermin. I don’t know which one of them scares me more.

According to the assistant, the wolf has been at this facility for a long time. And he has injured a lot of the scientists who have tried to fix him.

If that is the case, why is Cassian forcing me to sleep in the same cell as him every night? Does he want the silver wolf to kill me? At this point, I don’t even know.

I pick up another syringe and insert it into the limp wolf’s shoulder. After a few minutes, he stirs, and his eyes open. There’s a hint of clarity in them.

To be honest, I’m not sure why they want him to shift back. I can only imagine that they have something worse planned for him. At least one thing has been confirmed: he is a kidnap victim.

I hover over his head, pretending to be studying him, and my voice is whisper soft. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure out a way to get you out of here, too. I’m working on several things at the same time. We’ll escape together. I’m not going to leave you behind.”

I reach into my pocket and bring out a meatball that I was given for lunch. If nothing else, at least I am fed three times a day. These past six months, I’ve been saving anything that contains meat and feeding it to this poor wolf.

I was right when I thought that he was being starved. It’s to keep him weak so he doesn’t attack his captors. One good thing that has come of my feeding him is that he doesn’t show aggression toward me anymore. Initially, he was quite vicious; he never straight out tried to kill me, but he was always snarling and growling at me. Now, he only does that when I try to give him an injection. In our cell, we coexist in peace. He seems to have realized, even with his lack of lucidity, that I’m not a threat, that I am a source of food. While he still does not allow me to get very close to him, he doesn’t lash out at me anymore.

I have a few theories about what is wrong with him. First and foremost, I believe he has remained in his wolf form for far too long. And if this is the case, then it’s possible he has lost touch with his human self and is only listening to his instincts.

I make sure not to make any sudden noise as I block the surveillance camera and pretend to administer another injection. The wolf’s tongue darts out and wraps around the meatball. He chews it and swallows.

Our eyes meet.

“I’ll get you out of here. Don’t worry.”

I am tryingto create a reversal drug, but there’s something else I’m trying to figure out, too. From the moment I first met this wolf, there has been a glazed look in his eyes, as if he is constantly drugged.

He is fed twice a week but isn’t given meat, only raw vegetables, to eat. However, it’s not the food but the water that I suspect the most. They give him one bowl of water twice a week. Every time he drinks from it, he becomes more aggressive, and his eyes seem off.

Recently, I’ve begun dumping his water out and replacing it with the bottled water that I keep on me at all times. It took a lot of arguing with Cassian to allow me to have open access to water. I pretended to faint a couple of times and blamed it on dehydration. The excess water I receive, I try to give to my cellmate.

Today, he has not been brought into the lab, but I’m here, reworking the formula yet again. At this point, I’m certain that whoever created the initial drug is no longer around. Otherwise, he or she would have been able to reverse the effects easily. They’ve clearly been able to come up with a functioning version that immobilizes shifters and leaves them unable to change into their wolf forms. Yet they can’t seem to undo the damage to this one. And he’s clearly important to them, for some reason.

I study the ingredient list and begin working on the computer, coming up with some more revisions. I have the original formula and a few of the creator’s notes. Of course, I have no plans of doing what Cassian has demanded. He wants me to reverse the formula and force my cellmate into his human form, with the inability to shift back.

I’m doing something else entirely.

My fingers drum a rhythm on my knee as I wait for the computer to get done with its calculations. Glancing at the clock, I feel my stomach rumble. I’ve lost a significant amount of weight since I was brought here. How could I not when I’m feeding the wolf most of my food? I need him healthy. And I need him to trust me if we’re going to get out of here.

Which I fully intend to do.

Keep me captive? These fools have lost their minds. They gave me the tools to facilitate my own escape.

It’s almost time for my meal to arrive, and I glance toward the door in anticipation. It opens, and I expect Cassian to enter with a tray.

However, someone else walks in.

I’ve never seen this man around before. He is tall, his body bulging with muscles. He’s wearing a black tunic with his arms exposed and pants that look like they haven’t seen the inside of a washing machine in decades. His dirty blonde hair reaches past his shoulders and looks matted. His right eye has an ugly looking scar on it.

Everything about him screams danger.

“So, you’re the human that boy has been hiding away?” He leers at me. “You don’t look like much, not even a mouthful.”