I woke up to the feeling that I was being shoved around and shaken in a box.  My poor, muddled mind didn’t understand at first what was happening to my body, being so used to waking up in a stationary bed that didn’t move.  At all.

It was then that I remembered that we were traveling to Washton, and that by that afternoon we would arrive and present ourselves to the military authorities, notifying the Governors that we had arrived.  All I really wanted to do was just fall back asleep, and get on with my dreams.  They had been interesting as of late, the only problem being that I could hardly remember them by the time conscious thoughts took hold of my mind and I was able to communicate with the world around me.  I groaned and rolled over on the cot, and ended up looking right at Kayn who was across a narrow aisle.  Her wings were to me, covering up most of the bed, but I could still make out the toes of a third party in the room.  They were both sleeping soundly.

I let out a snort of disgust, and got up.  Leaving the small room, I shut the door quietly so I wouldn’t wake the two.  It was good that they had found one another, and had learned about one another.  I needed to remember that.  They were human after all, and despite Kayn’s new appendages, they still had the same feelings.  I woke up to the feeling that I was being shoved around and shaken in a box.  My poor, muddled mind didn’t understand at first what was happening to my body, being so used to waking up in a stationary bed that didn’t move.  At all.

It was then that I remembered that we were traveling to Washton, and that by that afternoon we would arrive and present ourselves to the military authorities, notifying the Governors that we had arrived.  All I really wanted to do was just fall back asleep, and get on with my dreams.  They had been interesting as of late, the only problem being that I could hardly remember them by the time conscious thoughts took hold of my mind and I was able to communicate with the world around me.  I groaned and rolled over on the cot, and ended up looking right at Kayn who was across a narrow aisle.  Her wings were to me, covering ‘C’mon, Blaire.  Don’t let the Alpha wolf in you get to you,’ I mentally scolded myself.  Sometimes that Wolf was just too damned stubborn.  

I poured myself a cup of juice, and gagged it down despite all the sugar that I could taste in it.  Opening up the small warmer, I pulled out a plate that was laden with nothing but ham and bacon for my breakfast.  I scarffed all of it down, and was sitting with my face to the window when I heard noises coming from the sleeping compartment.  A moment later, both Kayn and Falon came into the main lounging area of the hover vehicle that was taking us to the Seat of the country.  I gave them a sly look with a little bit of snarl, and said, “Did you two stay up late after I went to bed last night, or did you go to bed and not sleep?”  From the blush that suddenly appeared on Kayn’s face, I had a good guess that it had been the latter rather than the former.  I shook my head, and then turned it back to the window, pointedly ignoring all of their cuddly remarks to one another.  It was about to make me sick.

I closed my eyes for a moment, just meaning to bring my attention to my own thoughts when I suddenly remembered something I had never wanted to think of ever again…

“How did you sleep last night?” he asked me, running his hands along my sides and kissing the sides of my neck as I was sitting down at the kitchen table of his apartment.

I smiled and groaned as I stretched under his hands.  “I slept as well as you did, and somehow I managed to wake up before you.  How could you sleep so long, Dimitri?   And where did you go last night, so that when I woke up your side of the bed was cold and you were nowhere to be found?”

His hands stopped their lazy course of caressing my skin beneath the scanty clothing that I had put on in order to come into the front of the house.  I felt his body stiffen, but I decided that it was worry for me waking up in the middle of the night that made him act that way.  After all, he was also a teacher at the University, but not one of mine.  “I had something to do at my office.  They called me in last night, saying that someone had tried to break in, and that I was to check to make sure that nothing in my office was out of place.”

I had shrugged, then smiled a worried smile.  “Well, was everything in order, then?”

He looked into my eyes, and said, “Yes.  Everything was wonderfully in place.”

She could feel the tears forming behind her eyes, but she refused to let a single one drop in front of the two whom she trusted, who must never know that she had a wound that ran as deep as it did inside her heart.  How she came to never trust a man to stay beside her, and how come she never took a boyfriend or took another man into her bed.

I had decided to stop by and surprise him.  The sun was shining, there were even a few wild birds out and about.  The air didn’t really have a smell for once, and I could see for at least 3 miles if there was an open space.  I was going to drop by, give him his anniversary gift because we had been together for 2 years.  I was going to take him out to lunch.  And I was going to come into his office before his classes were out, so I could surprise him when he came in.

But Dimitri didn’t have classes on Thurday.  He didn’t have any classes on any day from 10:30 until 2:20.  And when I walked into the room…I was shocked.  The other woman there was sleeping on the couch, her only garment the blanket that I had given him for Chrismas the year before.  But that scene I could’ve dealt with.  I would have been pissed at him, and asked him why he had a naked woman in his office in the middle of the day.  But then I noticed the masculine arm draped over her hip, a hand that was still caressing her even in his dreams.  And when I heard that voice, I lost all reason.

I slammed the door shut with enough force that the glass in the panes rattled and a small break formed in the corner.  I just stared at them as they jumped up, fully awake but totally confused.  That was when the other girl’s brain started to work, and she realized who I was.  Her eyes became wide with fear, and I saw Dimitri’s arms tighten around the girl.

I could hardly talk to him.  The only words that I got out were, “How long now?”

He told me, “About 9 months.”

I nodded, and threw the paperweight on his desk at his head.  He brought his arm up fast enough to keep the heavy glass object from hitting his head, but I heard a satisfying crack as his arm broke, I heard the scream that only helped me with my pain a little bit.

I threw the watch that I was going to give him for our anniversary at the girl, and told her, “Here, you take this and give it to him for something.  Because he will never get anything from me ever again.  Not even a word of reference to another employer, not even a hello as I see him pass me in a shop somewhere.”  I looked at him, the man that had been my life who was now groaning with the pain of his broken arm.  “You can rot in the depths of the Christian Hell for all I care.  I hope that you soul is devoured by Cerberus and that even he spits your suffering body back out of his mouth because you taste so sour with the weight of your sins.”

And I walked out of the room, and never saw the man again.

I hadn’t realized it, but the talking between Falon and Kayn had stopped quite a while ago.  I forced the tears back, and looked at them with half-opened eyes.  “I don’t feel too good,” I said as my excuse, and walked back to the room with the cots.  As I lay down on my own, I heard through the door Kayn say, “Something’s wrong.  It was when she saw us come in and start eating that I smelled pain on her and around her…something happened, Falon.”  And I heard him reply, bless his soul just as I had damned Dimitri’s, “Let’s leave her be for now.  If she doesn’t want to talk about it, then we shouldn’t force her.”

So I silently cried myself to sleep again, to dream my strange dreams that I could never remember.

Sometime later, I woke up to the sounds of the doors of the vehicle opening with a whoosh, and the murmur of peoples voices when they didn’t really wish to be heard.  Someone then opened the door to my room and said, “Blaire, you need to wake up.  We are here, and they need your security clearance in order for you to carry your gun on you and to wear your uniform in public.  Blaire?  BLAIRE!”  I rolled over and moaned.  “C’mon, sleepyhead.  They really do need your codes and an iris scan.”  Falon grabbed my covers and jerked them off of me.  I growled.  “You don’t intimidate me, little puppy.  Now get up.  The people outside may even outrank you.”

At that last comment, I did finally get up, glaring at him the entire time while I grabbed my long coat to hide my tail, when I went out to type in my codes and to have my eye scanned.  I glared at him while I walked back to the room, and was still even glaring at him when I slammed the door in his face.  “Well fine then, Captain, be a pissey little puppy.  I think that you should’ve chosen the cat, you know…because your attitude is very much like theirs right now.”

I yanked the door open, and was about to punch Falon in the face, but he had been expecting me.  Grabbing my arm before it was fully extended and yanking me down on the ground did nothing for my temper, and neither did the sadistic grin on Falon’s face.  “OK now, pissey puppy.  You listen to me for once, listen to age over rank.  Whatever happened that made you depressed, I don’t want to know about it, and I don’t want Kayn worrying over you when she is also stressing seeing the real world again for the first time in several years.  I want her to have fun and to not be worrying about her captain the entire time, alright?  So whatever your problem is, get over it.”

I heard footsteps approaching the hovercraft, and Falon released me, giving me enough time to get up before Kayn came in and saw Falon straddling me in order to keep me down.  She could smell the anger in the air, I knew, so I made an excuse for it by grumbling to Falon, “You could’ve told those damned officers to just come in and take the damned scan.”  Falon raised an eyebrow and shook his head, but said nothing.

It was Kayn that spoke the obvious.  “If we had done that,” she said, giving me a weird look, “then there was the possibility that they would’ve seen your tail.  We aren’t allowed to show the results of the experiment yet, and that means to no one.”  I felt like as if my ears were flattening with the rebuke, and Kayn gave me a funny look.  “Did you just intentionally move your ears, Blaire?” she asked.

I shook my head slightly confused.  ‘How could a person move her ears?’ I thought to myself, and felt like whacking myself on the forehead.  Because I was no longer completely human, that’s how.  The wolves could move their ears, and now I was able to do some movement as well.  “I guess that that is just another side effect that we’ll have to list,” I said as I plopped myself down in a chair as the vehicle started to move again.

“What apartment did they send us to?” I asked Kayn, who was obviously the person who had stayed to talk to the Border patrol for the Microcity of Washton.  

Kayn looked at her papers, and then said, “The one on the south district near a building called the Smithsonian.  The guards seemed jealous that we were placed in those apartments.”

I nodded, my expression now slightly interested.  “That’s because the Smithsonian is one of the few old buildings left after the Third World War, Kayn, or do you not know your history?  When Russia attacked us the first time, their main target was the capitol, but somehow the Smithsonian and the White House managed to come out of it damaged but repairable.  The building called the Pentagon, like the shape, was totally gone once their new weapon hit us.  It was devastating.  However, that same workmanship from the 17th century was redone to make it all look like it was made of the same materials.”

Kayn nodded, now deep in thought.  “It’s one of the last of its kind, isn’t it?  Like how we are the first of our kind.”

I nodded again, and sighed.  Those apartments were usually reserved for the most important people of the State and of the World when they visited the capitol.  It made me somewhat happy and somewhat jittery when she told us that we were staying there.

“Get ready for a pleasant stay,” was all that I said, and then I looked out the window again, staring at all the building that we passed in order to get to the center of the city.