Page 1 of Lost Wolf (Exiled Omegas #2)

Once upon a time, I had a name, but I can’t remember what it is.

I know it's not any of the things the humans call me. Not “subject” or “specimen” or, in the case of that one beady-eyed man who mops the floor, “mongrel.” Whatever my name is, it's lost, stolen from me by drugs, time, and disuse along with all the other pieces of my past.

Somewhere in the very back of my mind, my instincts and basic knowledge of the world still survive, but the idea of anything beyond these walls seems almost too intangible to be real.

I know there was a time before this—before the humans in white coats with cruel eyes and cold hands—but the persistent mental haze makes my memories of anything but this place, this cage, and this sterile room faded, colorless, and nearly impossible for me to grasp.

I can’t remember what it felt like to not be a wolf, but I know I have a second form that’s similar to that of my captors.

I can’t remember what the sky looks like, but I know that it’s blue.

And I can’t remember anywhere but here, but I had a home once, somewhere I was happy and loved, and something that’s more of a feeling than an actual memory at this point.

And that feeling, that idea of home and the thought that maybe one day I’d be able to go back there, is the only thing that's kept me going in this place.

But it’s been…

So.

Long.

And any hope I had of ever seeing anything beyond the bars of this cage is fading.

The days… months… years all blur together anymore, and I don't know how much longer I can last.

Something's wrong with me, something more than the so-called treatments they force on me and something the people in white coats don’t understand and can't seem to fix. Over the past few months—or maybe even years, the passage of time is hard to judge in this place—my limbs have grown weaker, my fur sparse and brittle, and my vision blurry.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to die in this place.

Maybe even soon.

A shiver wracks my body, a physical manifestation of the bone-deep cold I can’t seem to shake, and I curl into a ball in the corner with my nose tucked under my tail, the grating of the too-small cage digging into my side. The dim lighting casts most of the room outside the cage in shadow and the scent of chemicals sits heavy in the air, blinding two of my most useful senses and making my tiny, freezing prison seem even more bleak.

Before I started to fade, they at least afforded me a kennel large enough to walk around in and a blanket to sleep on. The blanket came with me into this cage, but they took it soon after to wash away the consequences of their last experiment and never brought it back.

The humans have never been kind, but now they don't seem to care what happens to me at all. Where once there was a kind of malicious curiosity from them, now there’s only bland disappointment.

And I have no idea why.

I don't know what they want from me. I never have. Otherwise, I'd gladly give it to them.

I’m sure whatever knowledge they want has something to do with how I’m different from them, how I have two forms opposed to their one, but they’ve never actually asked me anything. Even though they know I’m sentient, know I’m not just the wolf I appear to be, they don’t bother explaining anything to me; not what they inject me with or why, not what they’re looking for, and certainly not why they all seem to hate me so much.

What have I ever done to them?

I wish I knew.

The door to the room swings open, and I squint against the sudden flood of light from the hallway. A man stands silhouetted in the doorway for a moment, the only thing I can clearly make out is the white coat he's wearing, and the sight twists my stomach with fear and nausea.

All the humans here are bad, but the ones who wear white coats are always the worst. The man who mops the floor might sneer and call me names and sometimes even poke at me through the cage, but the people in the white coats are, more often than not, going to do much more unpleasant things.

Early on, they just took blood and hair and fluids for testing. Later, they cut tissue from my body and sent electricity through my muscles and my brain to study the effects. The electric shocks are what broke apart and scattered my memories, but it’s only been since the injections started that my thoughts truly began to blur around the edges.

The man flicks on the overhead light, and I squeeze my eyes closed at the sudden brightness as the sound of the man’s footsteps approaches my cage. The room goes quiet, and I crack my eyes open to find the man standing about two feet in front of my cage, absentmindedly sliding his finger over the surface of the tablet in his hand, for now not paying me any attention.

But that likely won’t last for long.

I press myself against the back wall, tail between my legs and head low. A silent whine sits in my chest, my vocal cords conditioned into silence by the punishments I received every time I made the slightest noise.

The man shakes his head as he stares at the tablet in his hand. He runs his finger over the surface again, then glances at me for a moment before returning his attention to whatever he's looking at. He stares at the screen for a few more minutes before crossing the room and setting the tablet on one of the metal tables on the opposite side of the room.

“Still not the results we’re looking for,” he mutters—to himself, not to me, never to me. The last time one of the humans spoke to me and stroked the fur of my ears, the other human in the room yelled at her, and I never saw the one who touched me again.

The man moves to the small refrigerator in the corner and withdraws a small glass bottle filled with a greenish liquid. His next stop is a stack of drawers from which he takes out a plastic wrapped syringe. Bile climbs the back of my throat and my gaze flicks back and forth between the bottle and the needle.

Not that one again. Anything but that one.

The liquid he's filling the syringe with is the stuff they've been injecting me with for… I'm not sure how long. Though it’s only the most recent in a long line of other substances, it's the worst by far. I don't know what exactly the greenish liquid is supposed to do, but I know it's not doing what they're expecting.

And I know it will burn like fire through my veins.

I flatten myself as tightly against the back of the cage as I'm able to. It won't do me any good, but instinct is a powerful thing, and mine is screaming at me to get as far away as possible from that needle full of pain.

The man unlocks the cage door and opens it, the syringe casually held in one hand. He rolls his eyes as he reaches inside and grabs me by the scruff of the neck, then drags me forward, my paws scrabbling at the cold metal floor as I struggle against his hold.

“No. Bad dog.” He releases my fur and smacks the side of my head hard enough to make me dizzy—not that it takes much to do that these days. I give up fighting, not that it was doing me any good anyway, and he lets out a derisive snort at my quick submission.

He wraps one hand around my muzzle, forcing my head to twist painfully to the side. A second later, the needle pierces my skin, the sharp pain making me wince. I let out another noiseless cry and try to pull away, but the man holds firm, pressing my face all the way into the floor of the cage.

He depresses the plunger and an inferno spreads under my skin, the chemical flames licking across my nerve endings. My muscles go rigid, my bones seeming to twist and move under my skin, and I squeeze my eyes shut, taking slow breaths, trying to force my body to relax against the pain. The man withdraws the needle and stares down at me with empty eyes, observing my agony with cold detachment.

From across the room, the tablet the man was staring at earlier makes a noise, and he casts a glance over his shoulder. The object makes another noise and the man huffs in exasperation. He turns, tossing the used syringe toward a red bin to the right and nudging the cage door closed using his other hand. The syringe misses the bin, falling to the floor about a foot short of its goal.

The man curses and strides over to scoop up the needle, placing it in the bin before moving to the table and picking up the noisy tablet. He flicks his finger over the screen and curses again.

“Incompetent morons.” He moves toward the door, his gaze firmly fixed on the object in his hands as he exits the room. “Am I the only one who knows how to do anything around here?”

Whether he is or not, I don't know.

But I do know he was so distracted, he forgot to check the latch on my cage, and even through the haze of pain from the injection I can tell the door hanging there in front of me is

Not

Quite

Closed.