you're too young & eager to love

Here we go! Testing out a new set of characters - lycanthropes that exist in a futuristic setting where they are being hunted and contained for study. Or used as pets.

I am way too lazy for a cut.

My tenses jump all over the place here, fair warning.

-


It was dark inside the military facility – the dark of a power outage. No emergency lights, or digital displays, or dull blue glows from refrigerators or ovens. The woman went limp, her soft knees nearly touching the ground, but Chason did not slow to accommodate her. He snarled, his eyes already adapted to the lack of lighting, and pushed her tall frame against the metal door forcefully. He could smell her fear, the blood beneath her breakable skin, and he turned his face up, into the shell of her blonde hair, the scratch of his beard sharp against her ear. “Enter the code.”

This was the third time had had spoken to her. He punctuated the words with grim laughter, and even she knew there was nothing jocular about his demand.

-

Ita is on display when he is brought in, poised like a decoration, adding warmth and beauty to a desolate environment.

His eyes have the flashing alertness of someone either unstable or very cunning. He seems to move with the guards, but he is slick and straining, testing their awareness and the restraints they have shackled him in. He makes a noise that hurts her ears. A gnawing, gnashing, whining call. It is surprisingly high pitched for a man of his stature – darkened by the sun, weathered by the forces, but strong and leanly muscled. Ita presses her soft palm to the wall, seeking balance and stability from the stone.

A woman is brought in behind them with a second group of guards. She is dark and dust covered, spitting and fighting and cackling. There is blood on her mouth and fingers. She smells like heat and hunger but there is no fear in her. At her arrival, the man bucks within the hold of his captors, twisting his neck and raging. He would have broken his wrists if given the chance, would have torn through his leg with his teeth if it meant that he could be free of the shackles. “Austin!” He yells the name as though he will never be allowed to speak it again, and the woman makes a curious moan in return. He answers with a yelping kind of laughter.

The exchange is primal and primitive and happens within mere moments. The two are separated (Austin to Departures headed for the Rebel Facility C and the man to the infirmary for documentation) in a frenzy of actions. The guards shout commands, and the new arrivals speak their language of beasts.

-

Austin wore her hair in braids. It was cooler and more practical but Chason would unbraid them when she allowed it, digging his fingers into her scalp and biting at her mouth. She would push him away, scratching at his shoulders in the process, until he whined like a pup. Austin was the type of woman who grew used to hearing the whimpers and wants of men.

She was able to thrive in a world that barely fostered weeds.

Austin was the one who gave the orders and made the decisions. The one who bedded each member of their pack, and yet she would sleep pressed against him, her limbs tight with strength and stress, occasionally murmuring in her sleep with her lips pressed to the hollow of Chason’s neck.

They were close in age, and they had known each other as children. (The societal battle had only been a scuffle then – adults speaking politics in raised voices and the government threatening new legislation.) She had kissed him first, and it was only after her parents were detained. Only when she needed his strength to fuel her own. They left together, picking up their own kind as they went, forming a group of six that learned survival and the safety of shadows.

-

The land is wasted.

They hunt as animals and shift in secret. They distrust strangers and the cawing, insignificant laughter of others.

Chason fears a metal cage, observations, breeding studies, experiments, and the way the government can steal an essence now. Austin fears silence and lack of control, but she is quiet about such matters. When they hear news of the recently developed tagging system she says it’s impossible, but she spends the night in the desert, a lurking wolf-like creature whose spots are abyss dark.

-

At the facility, Chason paces in his cell. His skin bristles, his mouth is dry, and the first time he is removed for surveillance he bites off the hand of a two hundred pound guard. The blood and flesh inside his mouth spurns him forward, and he makes a rapid succession of low pitched, soft sounding grunts that declare his attack.

He is isolated for a month and tranquilized. He dreams of milk skies and thunder and a restless hunger. He does not dream of Austin though he hears the cries and growls of hyenas in his sleep. They cannot kill in silence, he thinks in drugged fashion, because the sounds are part and parcel of our strength.

His lucidity arrives with a grievous headache. He does not have to be briefed by the doctors to know he has been tagged. He can feel the serum in his blood, restraining him, limiting him, and he wants to rip the tongues from all the men who think that power can be bottled.

-

He sees a statuesque blonde when escorted back to the holding pens. She is dressed elaborately like some of the other women at the facility, and there is something deceiving fragile about her perfect stance and placid smile. She meets his gaze, however, and Chason feels laughter rip up into his throat as a warning. If she flinches he cannot see it, but he catches the scent of her in passing. Something sweetly oiled and rich with a hint of familiarity.

His mouth waters instantly, which amuses him. He breathes again before realizing that the familiarity is Austin. A sour wind smell of animal and sickness and canine, but it’s still her. “Where did they take her?” He barks at the woman, already six feet in passing, and the guards give him a blow to the back of his shoulders that makes him grit his teeth.

“Stupid dog.” The guard who dealt the blow snaps. “Beasts do not speak to the companions. Move on.”

Even shifters had social statuses, Chason knew, but he did not care now. He strained and caught her gaze again. He thought he saw her shoulders slip and her head fall minutely to the right, just the briefest of gestures to a corridor labeled Departures, but he couldn’t be sure.

More writing/fiddling with the newbies!

-



He was only one of hundreds in the security files. Harrow saw him as another study experiment, though he had taken the precaution to mark his file with the yellow alert symbol signifying the possibility of a threat. A name (Chason Waters), age (27), and breed (Crocuta crocuta) with an impressive amount of statistics already listed. Most new captives take weeks to be tested so thoroughly, but the nature of his arrest and the volatile class of his species made it necessary to analyze his data fully upon arrival.
Ita felt a pang of sympathy. The tests are grueling, humiliating, and painful. She looked at the file on the computer, pausing occasionally to listen for the sounds of approaching footsteps or the rustle of keys unlocking a door, and tried to calm the hurried excitement of panic low in her stomach. But she continued, scrolling with forced patience through the record. Dark-haired, six foot two, and smiling in his picture. Captives don’t often smile in the pictures. They stare straight forward, and sometimes all the vulnerability is revealed there, the fear. But he was smiling, or at least there was some amusement, some cleverness there.
Thick black hair, falling down on the forehead, and his eyes bright with threats. He wore a shirt that had been ripped during processing, and there were angry marks on his neck as though something had nearly clawed open his throat. His arms were folded rather than by his sides. In the three other pictures, he stood with his arms lowered but there was the same faint amusement, though he’d tried to conceal it a little. Maybe somebody had told him not to smile.
Maybe he had laughed afterward.

-

His hands were rough, calloused, and he hurt her when he held her by the inside of her arm. He moved quickly, so quick that even Ita’s long legs had trouble keeping up. She felt awkward, somehow, even though she knew the corridors and the hallways better than he did. “Come on.” He growled, eager and low, and she tripped over the heavy layers of her clothing.
He did not leave her. He put his arm around her and lifted her easily to her feet. He thought she was coming apart, breaking down, unsure of whether or not leaving was the best option. She was pampered and pleasured and too much of what Chason considered a traitor. (Rich little thing, wasn’t she? Fed proper and exempt from tests and loved for her beauty.) But he needed her secrets and her knowledge, so when she turned towards him in the dark he felt himself kiss her hair.

-

He built fires for warmth in the desert. It was for her comfort rather than his. He was unusually warm, and she remembered how her arms had felt almost burnt after he had held her in the facility, pulling and urging her forward.
Ita wrapped herself in protective scarves, and Chason listened to the night intently. He spent so much time watching the horizon that she was, suddenly, surprised to see him looking at her from across the fire. Like he never saw a female creature before in his life. He didn’t look dangerous or unmanageable, but he looked unpredictable – as he had all along.
She could feel the way he removed his clothes, the hurried, close to ripping movements. She thought she could sense his change, the shift in the air when he relented to the beast, and Ita heard his breath in the darkness. She saw the reflection of the fire from his canine eyes before he slipped into the barren terrain.
That was for her comfort too.

-


They travelled mostly at night. Chason was searching for a town safe enough to deposit her at so he can continue alone. He could travel quicker without her, but he promised to return. He did not promise much, so she took his words with a heavy seriousness.
He was not as quiet as she would have thought him to be. He was quick to anger and impatient, but he spoke freely in a voice permanently coated in dust – the type of growling tones that sent shivers up her elegant spine.
He told her of his childhood and so he told her of Austin.
“You love her.”
Chason laughed, a snickering, goading type of noise. “No.”
“But you … you have mated with her, haven’t you? You speak as though you are devoted to her.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, digging his fingers into the tight skin. All he could taste was sand and ruin. He was not sure if the desert or the cages made him more animalistic. “There are many types of devotion.”

She slept huddled close to the dying embers of the fire. Even bundled in her layers she felt the cold fiercely. Chason heard her noises in the dark, the soft, throaty gasps as she shivered. He let her feel the loneliness of the cold for three nights before he started to sleep beside her.
His arms were heavy and felt like binds, and he pulled Ita to him easily. It was a demanding gesture; he was used to taking. His hands did not wander, but he kept his mouth to the back of her neck as though he would pin her to the sand and keep her from straying.
Chason was surprised by her stillness and the way her mouth softened.