Chapter Text
The needle slid in like nothing. No pain yet, maybe it would come after, so Oscar Piastri kept his eyes on the ceiling tiles. It was white and perforated, swallowing sound and spitting back only the low mechanical hum from the lab equipment. The smell of antiseptic was tainted by something rusty, like blood had been scrubbed away at some point. There was a glass cage-like structure on the other side of the laboratory that had made Oscar feel uneasy as soon as he stepped inside earlier. Now he sat on the edge of a steel exam table, shirt off, the cold biting into the skin of his back. His dog tags lay flat against his sternum, the metal already warmed by his body heat.
“Hold still, private,” the technician said. Her voice was clipped, professional, the same tone they used when they handed out ration cards. She didn’t look at his face. People rarely ever did when they were working on you rather than for you.
The serum was cold going in. Slowly spreading through the vein in his left arm like an ice cube was being pressed against his skin. And it still wasn’t painful. More like a presage of pain, something that promised to become worse later. Oscar’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t flinch. He’d learned that much in basic training: show nothing, and they might forget you existed.
Two other techs hovered nearby, one monitoring the vitals display that beeped in patronizing pulses. The syringe was larger than the ones Oscar had been vaccinated for standard procedures — it was thick glass, the plunger already depressed halfway. The liquid inside glimmered under the light and looked almost scarily white.
Dr. Emmy Silberg stood at the foot of the table, arms crossed over her white coat. She was the kind of woman who looked like she’d been carved from the same concrete as the walls. Sharp cheekbones, gray-streaked hair pulled into a severe knot, eyes that had already calculated your worth down to the decimal cases. She watched the plunger empty with clinical satisfaction.
As a low-ranked drone monitoring soldier, 23 years old. 1m78cm of careful, unremarkable guy, brown hair, brown eyes. Oscar hadn’t known exactly how it worked or why he was chosen for that. One day, his captain had pulled him out of the control room, where he was supposed to spend the day monitoring drones over the borders of conflict zones. The man seemed a little haunted, as if he had terrible news to deliver. Oscar would never forget how his heart pounded in his chest, thinking it was some bad news from home. Until the man explained he would be moved to another base. The one where they kept their dog soldiers. Shifters. At that moment, Oscar had simply nodded and accepted his fate, there's little a soldier can do when receiving orders from superiors.
He still had signed the papers on his own, more than interested in the bonuses offered for all that.
“You’re wondering why you,” Silberg had said earlier, not a question.
Oscar had swallowed, uncomfortable. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You scored the highest in compatibility testing. Your blood markers matched our specimen, Norris-4, almost perfectly. Ninety-eight percent alignment. That’s… rare.” She allowed herself the smallest smile that never reached her eyes. “Most successful candidates only hit sixty. Let's consider it a nature's gift.”
A gift.
Her words sat wrong in his stomach. He’d joined the monitoring corps because it was safe desk work, drone feeds, watching other people bleed from kilometers away. He’d aced the exams, sure, but he’d chosen the quiet corners on purpose. The whole world was burning with war anyway. Now here he was, shirtless under fluorescent lights, while something foreign wormed its way into his bloodstream.
The technician withdrew the needle with a swift motion. A bead of blood welled up immediately, she pressed gauze over it, taped it down.
“What exactly am I supposed to do with him?” Oscar asked. His voice came out steadier than he felt. “The shifter.”
The werewolf.
Silberg’s smile thinned. “Assimilation. That’s the official term. Teach him routine, schedule, how to follow orders, complete the drills and training. Obedience, mostly. You will make him useful to the war effort, those are the Wardog Program objectives. For years, the shifter’s packs won’t volunteer, so we… encourage compliance. You’ll be his handler. His leash. His scent will respond to yours. He won’t be able to fight it.”
Oscar blinked. “Scent?”
“You’ll understand soon enough.” She tapped a tablet, and her voice became bored, as if she had repeated those words too many times. “He’s been difficult. Previous handlers didn’t last, but you’re different. The marker's compatibility and the serum ensures it. You’re untouchable now. He can snarl all he wants but he can’t hurt you.”
Untouchable. The word should have been comforting. It wasn’t. It felt restrictive. Even if the collar was snapping shut around someone else’s throat.
They gave Oscar a fresh uniform, black fatigues, no insignia except the small silver handler’s pin on the collar. It had a wolf shape, ironically. The fabric smelled of starch and detergent. Oscar didn’t know why his nose stung from it.
Two armed escorts waited outside the medical bay, rifles slung low, faces hidden behind visors. They didn’t speak as they marched him and Silberg down the corridor. The base was a labyrinth of concrete and steel, every hallway the same washed-out gray, every door stamped with red classification codes. Overhead, the ventilation system whistled like it was suffering to keep the bunker air breathable.
Oscar’s arm finally throbbed where the needle had gone in. The serum coldness was moving now, threading through muscle and bone. He kept himself steady, the way he’d been taught. Panic was for civilians, not trained soldiers.
They stopped at a heavy blast door marked LEVEL-4 CONTAINMENT. One of the escorts swiped a keycard. The door hissed open like an exhale.
“Cell 81 now, Dr. Silberg,” the man said. “He broke some bars in the last cell. We gave him a lesson before changing.”
The scientist barely reacted, she only told the guards to escort from closer.
Oscar moved with them, trying to ignore the warning behind that exchange. The cell block smelled like unwashed bodies and ozone. Fluorescent strips flickered overhead, casting long shadows that twitched with every movement inside. Oscar’s boots echoed too loudly. He kept his hands at his sides, fingers loose. Calm. Collected. That was the only armor he had.
They paused outside Cell 81. Thick reinforced glass formed one wall, but it had been slid aside like a curtain over thick metal bars. Inside, the space was bigger than Oscar expected, maybe ten meters square, concrete floor sloped toward a drain in the center, steel chains bolted to the far wall. A single overhead light buzzed, painting everything in sickly yellow.
And there he was.
The shifter stood in the middle of the cell, wrists manacled but the chains long enough to allow movement. Coiled lean muscle in what seemed to be a purely human form at first, but wasn't. Dark brown curls matted with sweat, green eyes that stole the light and fractured it into something almost grey or pale blue. His skin was tanned, stretched tight over angular bones that looked like they’d been designed for violence. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Just loose gray pants that hung low on narrow hips. Scars crossed his torso fresh and pink, still healing. A beast wearing a man’s skin.
Oscar’s mouth went dry.
People always said werewolves were monstrous. They hadn’t lied. But the articles hadn’t mentioned how the monster could look like this. His face was still recognizably humanoid, angular cheekbones, strong jaw. But the mouth had pushed forward very slightly, teeth gleaming. The creature was all dangerous edges and raw power.
“Subject’s in partial shift,” the guard said, almost conversationally. “Don’t make sudden moves. He’s fast.”
They stopped at a heavy barred door. The lead guard keyed in a code. Hydraulic locks disengaged with a sound like bones snapping.
The escorts shoved Oscar forward. The door clanged shut behind him. Locks engaged with a snapping sound.
The werewolf head tilted up.
For one frozen heartbeat, the shifter just stared. Then the air changed. A low growl rolled out of him, deep enough to vibrate in Oscar’s skull. The sound wasn’t human. It was older than that. Animalistic and furious.
He lunged.
The chains rattled like gunfire. Black claws, curved up and too long for human hands, they sliced the air where Oscar’s throat had been a fraction of a second earlier. Oscar stumbled back, boots slipping on the concrete, and hit the bars hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. The shifter was on him in the next heartbeat, body heat slamming into Oscar like a furnace. The shifter’s breath was hot against his face, teeth bared, eyes wild and green and hating. Claws hovered centimeters from Oscar’s jugular. Close enough that he could feel them tickle his skin.
Oscar’s heart hammered so hard he thought it might give up. He didn’t scream. He didn’t even breathe. He just stared into those fractured greenish eyes and saw the exact moment the rage cracked.
The werewolf inhaled deeply.
His nostrils flared. The growl fractured into something smaller, something broken. The clawed fingers trembled, then that huge hand retreated. Oscar could smell it now too, his own scent, altered, blooming outward like syrup. Something sweet underneath the werewolf stink, something that shouldn't belong to Oscar. It wrapped around them like an invisible rope. The shifter’s pupils blew wide, black swallowing green. His chest heaved once, twice. A sound tore out of him, not a snarl this time. Just one small whine. Low and involuntary, the kind of sound an animal made when it was caught between bear trap jaws.
Oscar’s knee jerked up on pure instinct. It connected with the werewolf thigh, hard. It felt like hitting a wall. The shifter staggered back slightly before pushing himself back, chains clinking, but he didn’t retaliate. He apparently couldn’t. The whine turned into a snarl of pure frustration, lips peeling back from teeth that were too sharp. His eyes said everything his voice didn’t. I fucking despise you. I would kill you if I could.
Behind the protection glass, Dr. Silberg and two other scientists who joined her were watching. One of them actually clapped. Slowly. Like it was a theater performance.
“Perfect synchronization,” Silberg said, voice echoing through the cell. “The serum took, he can’t harm you, Handler Piastri. Not now and not ever. This bond is instinctive for them. More than cultural, it's a biological primal connection. Beautiful, really…”
Beautiful? Oscar wanted to laugh nervously, but his throat was too tight. He pushed off the cell bars, legs shaking, and straightened his uniform. The shifter tracked every movement, eyes narrowed, chest still rising and falling too fast. His claws flexed, then retracted. He looked like he was fighting his own body, muscles tense, veins standing out along his forearms.
Oscar swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “What- what happens now?”
Silberg’s voice crackled again. “Now we'll begin assimilation. Start with basic commands. His name is Lando, he understands English perfectly, he just chooses not to listen. Use your presence, he’ll respond to it whether he wants to or not.”
The door slid open. The escorts were back, but they didn’t enter. They waited. Lando didn’t move as Oscar backed out. He just stood there, chained and seething, green eyes locked on Oscar. The last thing Oscar saw before he turned to leave was the way Lando’s nostrils flared again, chasing the ghost of his scent. Chasing it like it was good.
The dread settled in Oscar’s stomach then, heavy and cold.
They hadn’t known. The scientists hadn't known for sure. The way Silberg had said “perfect synchronization” as if she was surprised. How the other guy had clapped. They’d injected him with something experimental and thrown him into the cage to see if the beast would rip his throat out or not.
And it hadn’t.
Just because Oscar smelled good now. Or something like that, the concept was fucked up. Oscar kept his face blank as the escorts marched him back toward the surface levels.
The mess at the base was a gray box filled with the scrape of trays and the low murmur of voices that never quite became conversation. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like dying insects. Oscar sat alone at the end of a long table, spooning powdered eggs that tasted like wet cardboard. His arm still ached. The scent on his skin felt wrong, too sweet, inviting, as if someone showered him on niche perfume.
He hadn’t slept. Every time he closed his eyes he saw those claws, those eyes, and heard that whine. The way the shifter had looked at him like he was guilty.
A tray clattered down across from him.
“New handler,” a voice said. Friendly. Too friendly for this place. A French accent underneath. “You’re the Norris-4 guy, right? Piastri?”
Oscar looked up. The man was maybe in his late twenties, broad-shouldered, handsome even, and a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Medical corps patch on his sleeve. Handler pin on his collar, just like Oscar’s.
“Charles,” the man introduced himself, dropping into the seat. “Handler to Max. He’s been fully assimilated for three years now. You’ll meet him eventually. Big softie once you get past the teeth.”
Oscar nodded once. He didn’t trust the smile. Nothing here was good.
Charles leaned in, voice dropping. “First night’s always the worst. They drop you down there like bait and hope the serum works. You’re lucky to be alive. I mean, most of us got the trial run with the less volatile ones. Norris-4’s a fucking nightmare. Killed three handlers before you.”
Oscar’s spoon paused halfway to his mouth. “They didn’t tell me that.”
“They never do. They like to think it's our fault for wanting the government money as bonus,” Charles said, shoveling eggs like they were tasty.
Oscar hummed an answer in acknowledgement, then asked, “Any tips on the job?”
“Keep your head down. That’s rule one. Ask too many questions, they move you to God knows where. Or worse. Just do the basics. Make him eat on schedule, shift forms when they want, march when they say march.” Charles shrugged. “The brass doesn’t care how you feel about it.”
Oscar’s gaze flicked again to the handler’s pin on Charles’s collar. It looked worn, like it had been cleaned too many times. “And rule two?”
Charles’s smile faded a fraction. He glanced around, then leaned closer. The institutional hum almost swallowed his words, but Oscar heard them anyway.
“Trust your shifter.”
Oscar wanted to laugh at the joke. The sound died in his throat. “He tried to kill me too, you know? Claws at my throat. I could smell his breath, for fuck’s sake. And you’re telling me to trust that thing?”
Charles’s light eyes were steady, maybe even kind. “You don’t have a choice. That thing in your veins now? It’s not just scent. It's a bond. For them, it's… sacred. He feels you now. Heartbeats, emotions, pain. Anything you try to bury. He can’t hurt you, but he’ll tear himself apart trying to if you don't work together. And if you don’t trust the instinct, even a little, he’ll drag you down with him. I learned that the hard way.”
Charles' eyes darkened.
Oscar looked away and stared at his tray. The eggs had gone cold. The terror from yesterday had grown teeth overnight and now it gnawed at the edges of his calm, the careful control he’d spent years building. He could still feel Lando’s heat against his body, the way those claws had trembled. The whine that had sounded like surrender and rage braided together.
Charles' words made sense.
He thought of the textbook knowledge on werewolves and blurred internet pictures. Monstrous beasts without control, pack animals driven by instinct. Monogamous mating for life; a bite from the male to the female, forever, irreversible. And here he was, a low-ranked soldier, smelling like someone’s destined girlfriend because science had decided it was convenient for war.
The way Lando had inhaled him, pupils blown, body reacting even as his mind probably screamed hatred. Oscar’s own skin had tightened at the proximity, an unwelcome flush crawling up his neck that had quite nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the serum inside his body was. It was disgusting. It was intimate in a way that made his stomach turn.
He pushed the tray away.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he confessed quietly. Not only to Charles but himself too.
"That's too late."
Charles reached across and clapped his forearm, right under where the needle had been. Surprising Oscar as the touch lingered a second too long, like he was checking his pulse. “You’ll learn,” He stood, tray in hand. “...or you will learn the hard way. Breakfast ends in ten. Better get to the observation deck. They’ll want you to start the routine today. Feeding, exercise and training drills. The usual shit.”
Oscar didn’t answer. He just sat there, hand flat on the table, feeling the ghost of claws against his throat and the new scent clinging to his skin.
The concrete floor and metal bars were cold enough to leach the warmth from his bones, but Lando kept his back pressed to it anyway, curled like a dog in the corner of the cell. Three months. He had carved the tally into the far wall with a single extended claw, sharp scratches that barely looked like tally marks and more like desperate drags. He used the guards' shifts to measure time. One for every day he woke up still chained, for every night the vents spat human sweat and gun oil instead of pine needles, river mud and the smoke of his pack’s hearth.
Norris pack. The memories ached behind his eyes like a fresh bruise. He could still see it if he closed them. The great house with its timber beams blackened by generations of fires, pups tumbling across the wide porch, their laughter sharp and wild. His father’s voice rolling low and steady over the evening meal, telling stories of old hunts. His mother’s hands, callused and gentle, braiding his sister’s hair while his youngest brother, barely old enough to half-shift, gnawed on a deer bone at her feet. The other families weaving in and out, the scent of the pack thick as blood in the air. Safe, known, home.
He had given it all away in one stupid, heroic heartbeat.
The attack had come at dusk, the sky bleeding red like a gutted boar. Human soldiers in matte-black gear, no insignia, moving like ghosts through the trees. Lando had been the one on watch. He’d roared the warning, half-shifted already, claws out, fur rippling across his shoulders in dark waves. “Run!” he’d snarled to the others, voice already twisting into the growl that lived in his chest now. His mother had looked back once, green eyes wide, the same green that stared back at him from the polished steel door of this cage every time he paced past it, and then they were gone, melting into the forest like they had practiced a thousand times since humans started to kidnap their pups.
He had stayed. Bought the pack families the minutes they needed. A dozen soldiers had swarmed him, tasers crackling, nets singing through the air. He’d torn through three humans before the darts found the soft place under his jaw. The last thing he remembered was the taste of his own blood and the distant howl of his pack fading into the trees.
Now this was home. Cell 81. Before it had been cell 86. Meters of gray nothing. Where the drain in the center still carried the faint metallic reek of the last handler’s blood from weeks ago. Lando kept himself half-shifted at all times, taller than his human form, stronger too. Claws out, fangs crowding his gums, fur dusting his forearms and the backs of his shoulders in a coarse, protective mantle. Full human skin felt too naked. Too soft and breakable. Vulnerability was a luxury and the humans had taken even that.
The night before, they had dragged another one in.
Lando had smelled the new handler from the corridor. Pure sweat, fear, and his lips had peeled back in something that wasn’t quite a smile. Easy, they always thought the serum would fix it. A week of scent-conditioning, they called it. As if pumping a human full of stolen she-wolf essence could rewrite three thousand years of instinct. The last three had died screaming quick and clean, almost merciful. Lando had learned to make it fast, anything slower and the scientists took notes with too much interest.
But this one…
The boy, because he looked quite young, all round-faced and soft-mouthed and just old enough to have left his parent's den if he was a werewolf, had stepped into the cell and the air had changed. Lando had lunged on pure reflex, claws singing toward the fragile column of throat, and then…
Home.
The scent had drowned him like a river's current during a spring flood. Sweet beneath the artificial bite from his clothes and skin, layered with something deeper that smelled of a den and hearth and felt like the press of a mate’s belly rounded with pups. It was impossible. It was obscene. Lando’s claws had frozen centimeters from skin, trembling with the effort not to close the distance. His lungs had betrayed him, dragging the scent deeper, and a whine, low, broken and so fucking needy, had clawed its way out of his throat before he could choke it down.
The boy had striken him hard with his knee, proving he had some fight in him. And Lando had staggered back even if it didn't hurt, because his body had wanted to let him. Had wanted to fold around the blow like it was a caress. His claws had retracted against his will. His fangs had dulled. And in the boy’s wide mahogany eyes, Lando had seen the exact moment the human realized something was wrong.
He hated it.
Hated the way the scent clung now, even after the boy had been let out. It lingered in the vents, in the thick air of the cell, in the marrow of his own bones. It smelled like a mate he had known for ten or fifty years. Like a female he should have courted under the full moon, claimed with a careful bite to the shoulder, loved until their pups tumbled out squalling and fierce.
A future that had been carved out of him with chains and the human’s perversion.
Lando curled tighter. The chains at his wrists clinked softly, a lullaby for prisoners. He pressed his face into the crook of his arm and breathed in the ghost of the boy’s scent anyway, because his body refused to stop. Grief sat heavy in his chest, a stone that grew sharper with every heartbeat.
Real mates were chosen by the moon and blood, fought for during ruts, not by needles and white-coated monsters. Real mates had futures. Pups. A den built together from fallen logs and shared hunt kills. This one only had a name because the scientists had let slip through the intercom like it was nothing after the boy left and they observed Lando.
Oscar.
And Oscar smelled like everything Lando was never going to have.
Lando stayed curled like that until the vents sighed and the lights overhead flickered to the sickly yellow because someone was coming near the cell again.
Sleep never came. Only the memory of his mother’s hands and the echo of pups’ laughter, as the slow, terrible realization that the boy’s scent had already rooted inside him like a parasite, tugged. Lando wanted to rip his own throat out just to make it stop.
The steel barred door opened at what should be late morning, though time had lost its teeth down here. Two guards first, rifles low and ready. Then the scientist, Dr. Silberg, the one with the icy blue eyes, and behind her, the boy.
He carried a metal tray like a waiter, shoulders stiff under the black fatigues, light brown hair a little messy. His round face was flushed, a soft pink that spread down his neck and disappeared beneath the collar. Cute, not beautiful. Not the kind of face that turned heads in a pack circle. But the scent rolling off him in slow, helpless waves made Lando’s mouth flood with saliva and his gut twist with something darker than hunger.
Dr. Silberg stopped at the threshold, tablet in hand. “Lando has refused solid food for three days. The starvation protocol isn’t yielding results. Handler Piastri, your intervention is required for compliance. Use the bond, he must respond to it.”
They let Oscar inside the cell again.
Dark eyes flicked to Lando, then away. He looked out of place, like a fawn dropped into a wolf pit wearing a uniform a size too big for his courage. “Ahm, Lando,” he said, voice low and careful, the way you’d speak to a spooked farm animal. “It’s breakfast, mate… I bet it tastes–”
He glanced down at the tray. A slab of beef, barely seared, still weeping red across the metal. A puddle of something that might have been gravy. Oscar’s nose wrinkled, the blush deepening.
“...edible?”
Lando bit down on his tongue until he tasted copper. The word mate landed like a joke told at a funeral. He wanted to snarl it back. Fuck off and take your fake scent with you, but the guards were watching, and the rifle in the one on the left was already twitching. Lando stayed motionless on the floor, half-curled, claws flexing against concrete. At least the boy didn’t call him dog like other handlers did. At least he didn’t rattle the chains or prod with a shock baton like the others.
One minute stretched. Then another.
Behind Oscar’s back, the guard on the right shifted his weight. The barrel of his rifle rose, casual as breathing, and settled aimed at the meat of Oscar’s thigh. Not the chest. Not a kill shot. Just enough to bleed. Just enough to hurt. A warning for the beast.
Lando’s entire existence stuttered.
Terror flooded him so fast his vision tunneled black at the edges, green eyes fixed on that small black circle aimed at Oscar’s leg. Part of him wanted to believe it was a bluff. Humans bluffed. They postured. They played games with things they didn’t care to understand. But his other part, the mate part that had already sunk claws into his soul, panicked at the prospect of an image of red spreading across the cement floor, of the boy crumpling, of that perfect scent going sour with pain and fear.
He was on his feet before the thought finished forming, it made his chains rattle. The tray left Oscar’s hands without resistance, he took it like it was made of glass. Then he dropped to his haunches and tore into the meat with his teeth, fangs shearing through gristle and fat. Juice ran down his chin, dark and hot. He ate like an animal because that was what they wanted to see, and because it was better than watching the boy bleed for nothing.
The guards laughed, a low, ugly sound that echoed off the cell like crushed sticks. Oscar turned toward the sound, oblivious, the flush on his cheeks still climbing.
Lando didn’t look up after that. He couldn’t. The scent was everywhere now, thick as smoke, wrapping around his tongue with every swallow. It tasted like something he didn’t want to give in to. When the tray was empty he licked the last traces from his claws slowly and felt the scientists’ eyes on him.
“Excellent compliance,” Dr. Silberg murmured, tapping her tablet. “Shall we proceed to the exterior patio for exercise rotation? Full observation team on site. Let’s see how the bond holds under open sky and with other shifters.”
They marched them out in formation. Lando first, chains shortened to a hobble, Oscar walking two paces behind like a reluctant shadow. The corridors and stairs stretched endless, every turn the same gray throat. Lando kept his gaze forward, but his ears tracked the boy’s heartbeat, quick, unsteady, trying so hard to stay calm.
His cheeks were scarlet now, the blush crawling all the way to his ears. It should have been ridiculous. A man, smelling like a she-wolf on the edge of heat. Sweet. Fertile, even. Lando’s frown deepened, a low growl building in his chest that he swallowed before it could escape. Those scientists were fucked beyond measure. Deep levels of it. They had taken something cherished, a mate scent, the one thing a wolf carried in his blood like a promise, and twisted it into this. It made his skin crawl and his groin tighten in the same breath, shame and want braided so tight he couldn’t tell them apart.
The patio was a concrete yard ringed by tall walls topped with razor wire and watchtowers. The gray sky pressed down like a lid. No trees near. No wind that smelled of anything but diesel and distant gunpowder. But it was outside. The closest thing to freedom they allowed.
For the first time in months, Lando felt the outside air fill his lungs.
Scientists clustered along the observation rail above, white coats flapping in the weak breeze, tablets glowing. They watched like it was theater.
Lando behaved. He walked the perimeter when ordered, dropped into the required push-up position when the intercom barked the command. He didn’t snarl. Didn’t lunge. Because every time he even thought about it, his eyes found Oscar standing at the edge of the yard, hands clasped behind his back, trying to look like he belonged in this nightmare.
The boy’s scent spiked every time Lando passed within three meters, hotter, sweeter, carrying notes of embarrassment and something sharper underneath. Arousal? Fear? Both? Lando’s nostrils flared despite himself. The image refused to match the scent: the soft round face, the straight light-brown hair falling into mahogany eyes, the way Oscar’s uniform hung a little loose on a narrow waist. Cute, yes. But still a guy. Still the enemy. Still the living chain they had fastened around Lando.
Oscar cleared his throat after the third lap. Tentative. Like testing thin ice. “So… you got any exercises you like? Or sports? Back home, I mean. Before all this.”
Lando kept walking, he didn’t answer.
Oscar’s shoulders dipped, just a fraction. Disappointment flickered across the round face, quick and human and somehow worse than anger.
He mumbled something under his breath, voice rough, “I like cricket.”
The simple words landed between them heavily.
Lando’s steps faltered for half a heartbeat. He felt it then, the full blown of the man's distressed feelings settling over him. The serum had done its work. It had reached into the deepest part of him, the part that should’ve connected with the mother of his pups. Instead, it reacted to a human boy who blushed and cared about a fucking sport Lando never heard about.
It was fucked up and it would last for as long as they lived.
Lando kept walking because stopping would mean acknowledging it but inside, where the bond with his pack used to sing loud and clear, something new had taken root.
Warm, terrible and inevitable. It coiled around his ribs, pulsed in time with Oscar’s heartbeat, and whispered the same thing over and over.
He is mine.
Even if he burned the world and himself down trying to prove he wasn’t.
The sky began to clear toward afternoon, sun higher. He stood there, cheeks still flushed, scent still pouring out in helpless waves that made Lando’s mouth water and his eyes sting with rage he no longer knew who to aim at.
The room was smaller than Oscar had expected for something the brass called an “upgrade” for an almost successful assimilated shifter and his handler. Lando's remarkable good behavior for the past week, eating when told, running when told, behaving like a trained dog on the patio while scientists took notes and murmured about progress and Oscar's approach, had earned them this.
It was four meters by three, concrete walls painted in an alabaster tone. There was a single overhead light that buzzed like a dying wasp. And of course, only one narrow cot bolted to the floor. Oscar tried the metal locker to see if there was an inflatable mattress or something, but only found towels and blankets. A tap that dripped rust into a stained basin and a small folding door for a bathroom that only had a toilet, a shower and a small mirror.
Oscar heard that most other soldiers didn't like the shifters using the communal bathrooms.
The air in his new accommodation tasted damp and recycled. The room was deep in the lower levels of the bunker under the base, near the cells. Oscar sat on the edge of the cot with his elbows on his knees, head throbbing in time with the bruises, purple marks that ran the length of both arms where the needles had been. They had taken eight vials this morning, his thick blood that the technicians had stared at like it was gold. Dr. Silberg had leaned in close enough for him to smell her peppermint gum and the sharper chemical edge beneath it, murmuring, “Fascinating response. Estradiol and analogs spiking. We’ll need more data on the secondary markers.”
Oscar had said nothing. He never did anymore because most of the time the scientists just stared at him like he was stupid. He knew that all those hormone names rang a bell, he couldn't quite place why, just a wrong feeling in general. But it had been easier just to let them drain him and pretend the cramps twisting low in his gut were from bad food poisoning instead of whatever the serum was doing inside him.
He was still staring at the floor, tired and disconnected, when the outer door clanged open.
Lando stepped through first.
The shifter looked very human now, almost. Oscar first noticed that Lando was shorter than his half-shifted self, maybe shorter than Oscar even. But he still looked dangerous, even while smaller and more handsome. The dark brown curls had been hacked short at the sides in the military cut they gave every asset, but the top still fell in stubborn waves that caught the ugly light and turned it bronze. The uniform, black fatigues identical to Oscar’s, fit him too well, stretched across shoulders that had once been chained and now moved with the lazy, lethal grace of something that had decided not to kill yet. A backpack, hung from one hand like it weighed nothing, was the kind issued to new transfers. Inside it would be the bare minimum, spare uniform, toothbrush, the things they gave everyone who wasn’t important enough to warrant comfort.
Around his throat sat the collar.
It looked deceptively simple: matte black, no thicker than a finger, with a single red diode blinking slow and steady at the hollow of his throat. The scientists called it “pacification unit.” Oscar had overheard the briefing.
Non-lethal to the wearer, supposedly. It only meant that killing a werewolf was damned hard. But, if the signal tripped, it would send enough current through Lando’s nervous system to drop him screaming. And there was the bomb. If any living thing stood within two meters during detonation, the shaped explosion would turn them into red mist, maybe make Lando spend a full day healing back to life. A cursed necklace. A bomb with a heartbeat.
Oscar felt something dangerously close to comfort uncoil in his chest at the sight of it.
Lando’s green eyes, possessing a curious shift between blue and hazel depending on the light, flicked to him once. The look was the same one he’d worn for the past week, flat, murderous, the kind of stare that said ‘You'd be dead if I could’.
The shifter hadn’t said more than two words a day since the patio. Usually just “yes” or “no” when the guards barked orders to Oscar to ask Lando. Oscar told himself it didn’t bother him. Told himself the serum had done its job and the rest was just noise.
The guards coming behind shoved the backpack the rest of the way in, the door sealed with a pneumatic hiss that sounded final.
Lando dropped the backpack. It hit the floor with a dull thud. He didn’t look away from Oscar.
For a long moment the only sound was the drip of the sink and the low mechanical sigh of the ventilation. Oscar felt the weight of those eyes like claws resting against his jugular again, close enough to cut, not quite pressing. He waited for the lunge that never came. The bond held. It always held.
Lando’s voice, when it finally scraped out, was rough as gravel dragged across concrete. “What’s your problem?”
Oscar blinked, the question landed sideways, unexpected.
He had grown used to the silence, to the way Lando moved around him like an angry shadow.
Charles’ words echoed inside his skull — trust your shifter —, and for some reason Oscar’s mouth opened before his brain caught up.
“They took a lot of blood today. The scientists, I mean.” he said. His own voice sounded thin, groggy, like it belonged to someone else. “Many vials. Kept muttering about hormone levels markers. I don't know. They looked… excited in a creepy way.”
He rubbed the inside of his elbow where the biggest bruise bloomed, purple and tender.
“I don’t know what the serum’s doing to me. But my guts feel wrong every day. Cramps. Like someone’s rearranging the furniture in there.” He chuckled.
Admitting it out loud made the dread sharper, more real. Oscar was already halfway to convincing himself it was cancer, some freaky, lab-grown cells that would eat him from the inside while the brass watched and took notes. He stopped his thoughts there, no need to get crazier while he was already in pain.
Lando gave him a low considering sound that vibrated. It wasn't an agreement or comfort. Maybe he understood exactly why the scientists were excited, using his heightened senses to scan Oscar or the freakish bond they shared, and just had zero intention of explaining it. The shifter crossed to the far wall, slid down it until he sat with his back against the concrete, legs stretched out.
Oscar waited for more. Nothing came.
It was fine, Oscar didn’t feel like knowing anyway. It would make the cramps feel more than discomfort and he couldn’t afford that kind of honesty right now. Instead he leaned back on the cot, boots still on, and closed his eyes. The room was too small. The air already carried both their scents, his own altered sweetness clashing with Lando’s wilder musk of pine and blood and unwashed werewolf. It should have been suffocating. Instead the exhaustion pulled him under like warm water, and for the first time in weeks he slept without dreaming of claws or green eyes.
The main reason for his nightmares was inside his room with him.
When he woke the light had shifted to the harsher white of evening cycle. His stomach growled, loud enough that Lando’s head turned a fraction. He looked at the digital clock above the door.
“Shit. It's almost past dinner,” Oscar said, standing. His legs were steady enough.
Lando rose in one fluid motion, backpack forgotten. He followed two steps behind, the way he always did now. The corridors pressed in tighter at this hour, lined with soldiers heading to mess or night shift. Boots rang on metal grating. Voices overlapped in the tired rhythm of men who had stopped pretending the war was glorious. Long tables bolted to the floor, overhead fluorescents casting everyone in the same sickly pallor. Heads turned as they entered, Oscar felt the stares like needles from earlier, invasive and painful.
A cluster of guards near the serving line sneered openly, one muttered loud enough to carry, “More dirty dogs eating at the people’s table now. These fucking handlers and their pets, man.” Another laughed, short and ugly.
Oscar kept his eyes forward, praying Lando wouldn't get offended enough to snap as they got trays with food. He thankfully spotted Charles at a corner table, shoulders relaxed, and next to him a man with dirty blond hair and sharp blue eyes. Max. An older assimilated shape-shifter, probably back after missions out. Oscar slid onto the bench across from them. Lando folded himself down beside him without being told, close enough that their thighs almost brushed. The contact sent a low, unwelcome spark through Oscar’s nerves.
Charles’s smile was genuine, the only one in the room that didn’t feel mocking. “Piastri. You look like shit, mate. They drain you dry or something? You're like… pale.”
“Something,” Oscar answered, voice flat. “I’m fine.”
Charles’s eyes flicked to the needle bruises on Oscar’s arms, then to Lando, then back. He didn’t push.
Max just grunted acknowledging them and kept shoveling green mash onto his fork.
The quiet rhythm of four men eating held, then Max lifted his chin toward Lando, measuring him the way one wolf measured another, their handlers supposed.
“Norris pup,” Max rumbled. The nickname landed like a challenge. “How’s the old pack holding? Still singing those mountain songs at full moon?”
Lando’s jaw tightened. The collar’s diode blinked faster for half a second, then steadied. “Don’t know,” he said. Two words. More than he usually gave anyone. “Been locked up here too long.”
Max nodded, firm and unconcerned, like they were talking about weather.
“Should’ve settled with the first handler. Like I did. Killing makes the scientists too interested,” He pointed his finger. Gaze slid to Charles, and something passed between them — private, heavy, the kind of look that carried months of shared experiences and unspoken bargains. Charles’ only shook his head, exasperated.
Lando’s voice dropped lower.
“I know that now. But this one is different,” he said.
Oscar frowned, and the fork paused halfway to his mouth. “What?”
Silence stretched.
Charles barked a laugh, short and forced.
“Who the fuck knows? Sometimes wolfy-boys talk in riddles. Half poetry, half threat. You get used to it.” He clapped Max on the shoulder, the touch lingering a beat too long, then looked back at Oscar. “Eat. You’re no good to anyone if you pass out in the yard tomorrow.”
The rest of the meal passed in scraps of conversation that never quite landed. Max and Lando kept trading those weighing glances, sizing up each other. Oscar ate mechanically, the cramps in his gut easing a little with the food but never fully leaving. Every time Lando shifted beside him, the altered scent in Oscar’s own skin flared hotter, sweeter, like his body was answering some question he couldn't understand. He hated how aware he was of the shifter’s knee inches from his own.
Back in the bunker room, the door sealed with the same final hiss. The room felt even smaller now that night cycle had dimmed the overhead to a sullen amber.
Oscar stared at the single cot, then at the bare floor. “We don't have an extra cot,” he said, irritation sharpening his words. “Figures.”
Lando’s mouth twitched, the closest thing to a smile he’d shown in weeks, and it wasn’t kind, just mocking.
“Floor in the cell was concrete too,” he said.
Guilt twisted in Oscar’s chest, small and useless. He grabbed the thick cover from the foot of the cot and one of the two blankets, thrusting them toward the shifter. “Here. Take them.”
Lando looked at the offering like it might bite. Then he snatched the bundle and hurled it straight at Oscar. The fabric smacked him across the face.
“Keep your stink away from me,” Lando growled.
The words were low, venomous, but underneath them Oscar heard the same strain he’d heard in that first whine back in the cell.
The shifter dropped to the floor, back against the wall, head pillowed on one arm. In the dim light he looked terribly, painfully human: all cropped curls, the line of his jaw tense, the way his chest rose and fell like any exhausted soldier after a long day. No claws and sharp teeth from his half-shifted self. Just a man in a uniform with a bomb around his neck and angry eyes.
Oscar snorted despite himself. “You’re the one stinking up the place, you know that? Haven’t seen a shower since they hosed you down in that cell containment.”
Lando didn’t answer. His eyes stayed closed, but Oscar could feel the awareness radiating off him, weirdly. The bond, he realized. The way it pulled taut between them like a wire strung through both their ribcages.
Oscar lay down on the cot fully clothed again, only boots off this time, and pulled the blanket over himself. He stared at the ceiling and listened to Lando’s breathing even out, not quite asleep. Tomorrow, Oscar decided he would drag the bastard to the shower if he had to.
But then the cramps were back, low and twisting, and the unwashed smell of the man on the floor wrapped around him like smoke. Oscar closed his eyes and tried not to think about how the serum had made his body a traitor, how that scent should have disgusted him, but instead it felt personal.
They were roommates now, cheers.