“What are you talking about?” She honestly didn’t know.
“For one, the color of your fur. I’m intrigued by your unique lineage—I’d almost thought the white wolf was only legend. But here you are—different and conveniently in my cage. Your father doesn’t know who impregnated your mother, although I suspect he plans to use the general registration program to track him down.” Agent Smith lifted one eyebrow. “How does that saying go? All politics is personal. Certainly true in your father’s case.”
Grace was beginning to wonder if it was true in Agent Smith’s case as well—or if he just had some deep loathing for shifters programmed into his DNA. She was still coming to grips with the idea that her biological father was a shifter… but she hadn’t gotten to the point of wondering who that shifter might be. Or where he might’ve gone. He obviously didn’t stick around long.
“I don’t suppose you know who your true father is,” Agent Smith tried.
She narrowed her eyes. “Why does it even matter?”
He rose up out of his chair and loomed over her cage. “It matters because understanding shifters is everything. It’s the key to keeping control of our world. Your father’s legislation is the culmination of the effort, not the beginning. I have been working on this for years—studying, analyzing, tracking down shifters, showing how pervasive they are in our society and how much of a danger they are to it.” He gestured to her. “You’re a prime example, Grace. You’re exactly what I don’t want to see happen.” He wrinkled up his nose, disgusted. “Humans breeding with shifters. Polluting our DNA with your genes. Ruining our families and our bloodlines. Most shifters mate with each other, and if they simply kept to that, it would be bad enough. But you don’t restrain yourselves, do you? You and your wanton sexuality, seducing the human population and creating halfling abominations like yourself. It has to be stopped.”
Grace’s eyes slowly went wide as she listened to his hate-filled and frankly irrational ranting. This had to be personal for him to feel this much loathing. “So this is all about… segregation? You want to keep humans and shifters apart?”
Agent Smith shrugged one shoulder. “That doesn’t go anywhere near far enough. Your father’s legislation will flush out the shifters hiding among our population. Then we can domesticate the animals, turn them into non-shifters permanently, so they can’t corrupt the gene pool. This beast nature of yours has to be controlled, Grace. Cured.” His lip curled back as he said it.
Grace was shaking again. “I don’t need to be cured!”
“You’re unnatural. Something I’m going to fix.” He gestured around the empty basement lab where she was being held prisoner. “My operations have been curtailed lately—those River brothers managed that much—but it doesn’t matter. I already have the serums I need. I can cure you of your base animal tendencies, as well as use the shifter genetic serums I’ve developed as a weapon against our enemies. At least in that way, your kind can prove useful.” He crouched down next to her cage door. “Now, Grace, how about you shift for me? I need a sample of that blood of yours in shifter form with that unique fur color.”
Grace lifted her chin in defiance. “I’m not cooperating with you.”
A small smirk grew on his face. “I was hoping you might say that. I’d be happy to have a witch force you to shift, but bringing witches into the building is a little… inconvenient. But there are other ways to accomplish the same goal, especially for a young woman like yourself who’s particularly inexperienced at controlling her wolf.”
The gleam in his eye made her physically ill. She didn’t want to cooperate, but she knew she couldn’t control her wolf. She’d already lost it once, in her father’s office, revealing herself. She was sure she would lose whatever game Agent Smith wanted to play.
“That won’t be necessary.” Grace closed her eyes and forced herself to shift. She wasn’t sure what would happen next, but when she opened her eyes as a wolf, Agent Smith already had a gun out. A familiar pinch pierced her fur coat. Darkness swam around her, and she lost control of her limbs, slumping to the floor.
The last thing she heard was, “Thank you for your cooperation, Grace.”
Then the darkness closed in.
This time, when Grace started to wake up, she kept her eyes closed.
She was lying on something hard and flat and cold. There were bindings holding her down, across her ankles and hands and chest. The same smell of steel and antiseptic pervaded her nose. Even before she opened her eyes, she knew where she was—the gurney. A sickening drop in her stomach accompanied that realization.