Colton
It was strange having Sidney over now that we knew she was a wolf, I still wasn't sure if it was a good kind of strange or a bad kind. I could feel that part of me felt threatened and wanted to defend our land against her but more than anything she intruiged me. I wanted to know more about her and so did the rest of the pack, so Bowen had decided on another dinner to have a chance at questioning her. I was one of the lucky two to get a seat beside her while Asher took up a place on her other side, neither of us were too interested in attacking her so it was a safer set up for everyone involved. The food was dished out and we talked lightly while we ate, but as soon as the food was finished the real quizzing started.
"So Sidney Blake, I believe you have some explaining to do." Bowen raised from his spot at the head of the table. "Great, here we go. Let me guess this is the part where you ask me about my life's story? I don't care if you know some, but I'm not going into details." She sighed out as she sent a pointed look back at our alpha, being his best friend and beta I easily caught the look of surprise he tried to hide. "Well it could be useful knowing what we're up against." I remarked gently as she glanced my way with a nod.
"Well like I said I was orphaned at a young age, my parents were killed when I was three when defending our home from rogues. I don't remember much about them and the only reason the rogues didn't get me was because I was at the babysitters place, she was a friend of my mother's the reports said." She stated slowly as we all listened intently to her words. "If that was the case why didn't she adopt you?!" Beckett had his own feelings about the foster system, he never really spoke about what he went through in it. "Well for one, she was human and she had three kids of her own to care for, she didn't have the time or money for a wolf pup like me." Her smile is a sad and lonely one, and I get the feeling there's something else to that story she wasn't going to tell us.
Beckett
How could anyone not have time for one little girl? Sure she might be a shifter toddler but she was just a baby if she was really your friends kid you wouldn't put her in the d*** system. "How long were you in the system?" My question comes out on a growl, I'm gritting my teeth to help keep control of my own temper while she shrugs back at me. "Too long. I was a little girl so they placed me into a foster home pretty quick but they bounced me around a lot considering I wasn't one to obey the rules very often." Her chuckle is dark and the flash of something in her eyes has me questioning my own time spent in that h*** hole of a life.
I knew Gav had it easy since he was more submissive than me but she was an alpha, how would she have been treated if she fought them even more than I had? "I'm not going to go into details but I can say I don't have a single good experience from my time in those places of fear, pain and anger. I had just turned twelve when they put me in a particularly bad one, the people there accidentally found out I could shift. I had hidden it from all the others but that place was so horrible that my wolf took over to try getting me out." I'm holding my breath at her words now. I want to know more of her pain, but at the same time I'm terrified what she might say next.
"What happened?" Gavin's voice is a soft gasp as she keeps her eyes focused on her empty plate in front of her. "It got me out of the foster system into something even worse. They sold me to some people, horrible people, they took me to a place far away from all aspects of normal civilization to some sort of bunker lab they had hidden away." Her words have my stomach dropping and I suddenly wish we hadn't just ate, because now I'm feeling sick at the possibilities of what she might say next. "I was shoved into a tiny cage and left in a darkened room alone, but I wasn't the only one there. I could here and smell other shifters and I could see the shadows of more cages around me." She says slowly and I have to stand and pace the room to help keep some of my sanity.
"You were just a kid, why would they..." even Colton seems shook up by her words. "I might have been the youngest one there but I wasn't stupid, I figured out what was going on pretty quickly and I didn't wait long before they proved me right. It was a testing facility, they did things to us that I wouldn't wish on anyone, we were treated like animals. I watched the others go crazy and when they didn't come back from one of the lab sessions you knew they were dead, in a way it was a nicer of the two evils when you lived in that horror hole." Her sigh is soft as her eyes go from her plate to our ceiling.
"Why didn't you fight or escape them?!" I know my tone sounds angry but she doesn't flinch from it at all, only glances my way expressionlessly. "You think I didn't try? Sweetness I fought them every single time they came to take me from my cage, I fought when they brought me my meager scraps of food, I even killed some of them but there were always more to take their place. The people that ran the place saw how I acted and what I could do, I expected them to kill me or increase my number of sessions but..." The smirk on her lips is dark and dangerous, how could anyone ever try to hurt this brave warrior of a female?
Bowen
"But what?" Asher is the one to break the growing silence, it's like any loud noise will break this spell of truth coming from her. "My sessions stopped entirely for a week and they increased my rations so suddenly that I feared they were trying to poison me. That's when the boss came to me and said I was going to get the chance to fight my way out. I didn't understand what they meant but they loaded my cage onto a truck and that night was the start of something that changed things, it's debatable whether it was for better or worse." Her statement is clear as she glances around to all of us with a cold look in her eyes.
"I guess you know what the fights are right?" Her words ring out to our silence. "I know enough about them, both wolf and human alike. Hey say they're quick and easy ways to earn some cash if you're in a pinch. I went to one once and I never went back, it wasn't a good place." Micah is unusually solemn as he meets her gaze with a slight shudder. There's something in the way she studies him, some sort of understanding my high ranking blood knows I'll never be able to understand.
"It's not so bad if you know how to work it to your advantage and stay in the shadows out of sight, for the most part. There was a time when it was my favorite place, the people that caged me might have forced me to fight but I found I didn't hate that part. I was a good fighter and I viewed those fights as a way to lash out all my anger and hatred for being caged and used as a lab rat. I killed plenty of people and beasts in those fights, from all walks of life. Some of what I did there still haunts me, but there's a more dangerous part of me that still craves for those fights." Her honesty is startling, but the fact she is trusting us with that truth keeps me silent.
"I actually had it pretty decent compared to some of the others but then the tests started up again. Only problem was this time instead of wanting me to win the fights they wanted me to lose, and I was too d*** stubborn to let that happen. I got punished because of it and that poison dart was created because of my 'disobedient' nature." There are more than a few growls in response to her words now. "One time they shot me up right before a fight with two large male wolves, one of them was Cortez. He was the big male I killed near the boundary line that night, he was a strong fighter even when I wasn't drugged up." Her words are delivered with the shake of her head.
"I got torn up pretty bad because of the poison making it hard for me to fight but by some miracle I won, if I hadn't Cortez would have killed me that night." She states, how her tone is so calm I don't understand. "You should have ripped him to shreds while he was still breathing." Beck snarls, but she just ignores his angry pacing. "The boss man however wasn't happy with me going against his orders to lose so from then on things got worse and worse, long story short I ended up fighting my way out of that bunker. I escaped a little over a year ago and I've been running on my own ever since. Then I moved here and met all of you and you pretty much know the rest after that." Her shrug breaks the silent room with outbursts of shock and anger.
"You were in that s*** hole for eight years!?" Simon is on his feet and by her side in an instant, hovering as if he wants to protect her and check her for injuries all at once. "Not including the time in foster care yes, but as I've said before, I choose not to dwell on my past because there's nothing anyone can do to change it." Her words are firm as she stares all of us down, that's when I decide to speak my piece. "It's not exactly in the past if they came hunting for you a few nights ago." I raise as the room falls silent again, her gaze pierces through me once more. "They can hunt me all they want, I'm never going back, I'll die before I let that happen." Her tone is cold and clear and my wolf is suddenly whining internally at her willingness to give up her life.
"Well then Sidney Blake I ask as your neighbor and friend let us help make sure that doesn't happen?" I voice for my pack as she studies me a moment. I know for a fact that no matter her choice we will fight to keep her safe and protect her in any way that we can. "Like I have a choice in the matter when it comes to idiots like you, just try to remember you boys aren't the only ones with a set of teeth and claws." She groans out, her grin now is brighter than before and it helps my anxious wolf to calm beneath my skin. "As if we could possibly forget." I rumbled back to her light chuckle. She agreed to our help, now I just had to convince her to join the pack, but something tells me that's going to be harder than I originally thought.