Tori
“You clean up nice.”
It wasn’t what she said, it was the way she said it. Nobody had wanted me as a teenager, I had been on exactly two dates in my life and neither ended well. Hearing someone with actual, genuine appreciation in their voice caught me off guard.
I could feel the heat, the rosy color in my cheeks.
“Come on.” Gwen gestured, turning her back to me and walking through the storage room, back to the main room. I followed quietly, mentally cataloging everything in the storage room, looking for anything I could use as a weapon.
Five feet was a pretty big bubble to worry about, though. It would have to be something very long, or something I could throw. Nothing stood out, and I couldn’t linger in that room without raising suspicion.
Stepping into the main room, I noted that she was between me and the stairwell. Intentionally, no doubt. I wouldn’t be able to push past her, and going around the cage would give her time to react.
But I doubted she was counting on the fact that I could get up and over the cage itself in a single movement.
“Do you want me to put on a movie for you? I could get that set up for you.”
Jump right, vault over the cage, throw that book at her, up the... movie?
I glanced over at the TV. I hadn't watched TV in ages, either. Alpha didn't want us poisoned by human propaganda, so the TV was always the first thing to go if we broke into a human home. No computers, no phones, no TV - those were tools of the civilization that wanted to destroy the wilds, to pave over our entire world and spread the poison of humanity.
...it took me a moment of thinking to realize that I didn't want to watch the TV. And I used that rage at the human world, at the poison and filth that humans worshiped to fuel my movements.
"Sure, whatever." I accepted her offer, waiting for her to look at the TV, then I executed my plan. A quick jump to my right, a grip on the cage bars and I was up and over it, losing the towel on the way. I scooped the heavy-looking book from the floor as I hit the ground and flung it at her before bounding up the staircase in two big steps. Her squawk of surprise behind me brought immense satisfaction.
I grabbed the handle of the door at the top of the stairs without thinking, letting go instantly when I felt the burn. "Fuck! Oh fuck… " I slammed into the door with my shoulder. It didn't give. My hand hurt so much worse, having put a silver burn on top of a silver burn. I threw myself at the door again, screaming in rage and frustration, channeling all of that into strength in a way that only a werewolf could.
But the door stood, defiant. And I was running out of time.
“Victoria.”
The door wasn’t giving. I turned around, trying to think, trying to figure out what to do next.
Her gun was pointed at me again. She gestured at me with it as she spoke, “Even if you lunge at me, you can’t dodge this. I’m fast enough to pull this trigger and the stairway doesn’t give you enough room to get out of the way. This is exactly what I meant about you not using your head.”
I was trapped. She was right, the stairwell meant I wasn't going to be able to dodge left or right... I might be able to go up and over her, but I was going to find out what the five-foot bubble meant and so far none of her claims had been bullshit.
I raised my hands, the right one throbbing in time with my heartbeat, each pulse a fresh agony in the burn. I sneered at her, biting back the pain. "Fine. How would you have done it?"
“First of all. I already said I was a silversmith. Why did you grab the handle of the door that leads to and from a room like this?”
I winced, sighing. “Yeah, the door handle was dumb.”
She continued, driving her point home, “It's obviously going to be silver. It's also obviously going to be locked, why even bother with the handle?”
"Some locks can be destroyed just by turning the handle harder than a human can,” I shrugged, keeping my hands up, trying to ignore my right hand, “but even then, I was stuck, so tell me Miss Smart Human, how should I get past the door?"
“You should have gone straight to trying to break through it. Not that you'd have succeeded. It would have just been the smart thing to do." She relaxed the gun slightly, but I was still fairly sure she’d be able to raise it and fire before I could get to her. "I don't see a reason not to be honest with you. All entrances into and out of the house have silver on them. The doors, the windows, everything. Down here only certain equipment does because it's made to hold a werewolf, so it’s just the handle on that door. If everything down here was silver you'd be sick as a-" My eyes narrowed at her, as she paused. "Well, you know."
I couldn’t say that if she had called me a dog in that moment that I would have even tried to do anything about it. She had me and she already proved that she could drop me with that gun, and that she had no issues with putting my unconscious body in the cage.
She wasn’t done explaining, however. "Assuming you aren't caught by a hunter, because they're not gonna let you out to shower, you should have hedged any time you could get outside the cage to sneak looks at the door. To get an idea of what it was made of, how it opens. Does it have a key? Keypad? Fingerprint? What you need to do to escape depends on what you need to accomplish. Speaking of escape though.” She stepped back, keeping me in her sights and gesturing at the cage with her head. "I'd like to get some sleep tonight. How about you go back in there?"
"Something tells me the more time I give you, the harder it's going to be for me to escape," I answered flatly as I walked down the stairs with my hands up. I slowed down as I neared her, giving her time to give me room. My heart pounded as I got closer to the cage. I was in this situation because I was merciful. If I wanted more time to escape, I had to kill her.
But I had played this wrong. If I made a dash for a weapon, something to throw at her, she'd put a dart in me.
I'd kill her next time I got out of the cage.
Dropping to my knees, I crawled back in. "You said you'd give me something to wear, and I want that. But even more, I'd rather sleep as the wolf." The cage clanged shut behind me. Turning, I tapped the collar with a finger. I wasn’t going to be able to transform with it active.
“Kind of cute that you think I’m going to give you what you want after a failed escape attempt.”
I scowled at her, but I couldn’t exactly complain that she was being unfair. She could have just shot me and threw me back in the cage without giving me a chance to crawl in here on my own - although that would have been better in some ways. I wouldn’t have submitted. She stepped away, going to the storage room for a moment and came back with some folded fabric.
Tossing the oversize t-shirt down by the front of the cage, she gave me a soft smile. “If you don’t want it, it’s fine. But I said I’d give you something to wear, and I’m keeping my word. I hope you can keep that in mind, I’ve done exactly what I’ve said every step of the way, Victoria. Only one of us has.”
She sat down in the chair, watching as I pulled the shirt in. She was thinking about something, I could see it on her face.
After a moment, she asked the question on her mind, one eyebrow raised. "You really want to sleep in a cage in your wolf form? Seems kind of an odd choice. If you stayed in your human form you at least have plausible deniability that you don't want to be in there. Dogs tend to be the kind to curl up and get comfortable in their cages."
I growled at her, at her callousness. "Curling up as a human means pain in the morning. I've been sleeping as a wolf almost every night for over four years, it's what I'm used to." I set the t-shirt in the center of the cage, just so she'd have a harder time taking it away. "Wolves also curl up in their cages, when you fucking humans put them in your fucking zoos. Just because I'm more comfortable sleeping as a wolf doesn't mean I want to be here, you fucking bitch."
"Here is the deal I'm willing to make you." She looked away, not catching my eye - the opposite of what she had been doing this entire time. "I can turn off the collar. It'll let you transform and it'll fall off. You already know what happens when you make a ruckus and I'm not here. So at night, I'll let you shift into wolf and you kick the collar out. During the day you'll wear it and stay in human form."
Finally, finally she was giving me some modicum of respect. She wasn't trying to stare me down for the first time. She wasn't trying to be the alpha.
"Deal." Her expecting me to be transforming each day would give me more opportunities to escape. I waited for her signal and shifted, forcing through the brute, through the dire... and into the wolf. The collar dropped as expected, but the bracelets didn't. I had to stretch them to get them on my wrists when I put them on... they were apparently small enough that they stayed put on my front legs, my fur fluffed out around them.
I cocked my head in confusion at the bracelets, looking up at Gwen.