And Sasha seemed to be going through some sort of drug withdrawal.
He pressed the soles of his slipper-socks to the floor and tipped his head back against the wall, breathing in shallow shudders through an open mouth. His lips and eyelashes trembled; an unconscious vibration she swore she could feel from a foot away. Sweat stood out on his brow, temples, upper lip, and throat, a greasy sheen that glued tendrils of hair to his cheeks. His shirt clung to his chest.
A twinge of sympathy found its way through her suspicion. “What did they do to you?” she asked.
His eyes opened a crack and slid over. An aborted smile quirked one corner of his mouth. “Kidnapped me. Drugged me. They keep drugging me.”
She blinked, surprised despite herself. He wore the same kind of cuffs that she did, but if he was…what Fulk had said he was. Whattheywere. Then maybe it wasn’t so simple as cutting off a flow of power like he was an electrical box. Not like with her.
“Is it because you’re a – a wolf?” she asked, stumbling over the word a little.
“No.” His smile stretched, his chapped lips cracking. “It’s because they made me. Seventy-five years ago. And they know I hate them.” His Russian accent lent the words gravity. Hinted at a threat.
“Seventy-five…” She lifted her brows. “But you look–”
“I was nineteen when I was turned.” When she only stared: “You look surprised. And you can make fire.”
“Yeah. Very true.”
He shut his eyes again with another unsteady sigh. “Did they leave him alive?”
The skin on the back of her neck prickled. “Who?”
“The human you smell like. The one they took you from. Is he alive?”
“They won’t tell me. I hope.” It hurt too viscerally to think otherwise. “What about you?”
He made a small huffing sound and smiled again, eyes still closed. “Mine is very stubborn.” The smile slipped. “And he feels very guilty. All the time. He will come for me, even though he shouldn’t.”
Red shifted to a more comfortable position, one that mirrored Sasha’s: feet on the floor, back to the wall. “That sounds like Rooster.”
He snorted. “His name is Rooster?”
“Well,” she said, defensive, “what’s your guy’s?”
“Nikita.” The name full of longing and worry and hopeless affection. She wondered if her own voice had sounded that way to him.
“Another Russian, huh?”
“What’s wrong with Russian?”
“What’s wrong with Rooster?” she shot back. Then softened: “His name is Roger. Rooster’s just a nickname.”
“I figured.”
They lapsed into silence.
It wasn’t uncomfortable, so Red couldn’t explain the way the confession built and built in her gut until she had to bring it up and let it out. Maybe it was the unlikely comfort of knowing the person beside her was a prisoner, too, brought here against his will.
“I was born here,” she said, quietly. Fulk had said wolves could hear like dogs – like real wolves. That she could speak softly enough to keep the cameras from picking up the words.
Sasha lifted his head away from the wall and looked at her.
“Not here, exactly, in this place. But at the Institute. The one in New York. I was raised there. In a lab.”
“Shit. Really?”
“Fulk says he can smell who my parents were, but I never met them. I’m just…an experiment.” A weapon, she added silently, because she understood, finally. She guessed Sasha was a weapon, too.
