Who is Magpie?

Someone knocked on the door tentatively and Bronx moved to let them in. It was Elliot, a member of the guard that had been one of two monitoring Magpie. Ezekiel quickly closed his screen, he had minimized when Magpie move toward the toilet, and greeted his friend from his desk.

“Alpha, I can’t find Fiona. Do you know where she is?” Elliot asked..

They both nodded, Ezekiel addressing him.“She’s out on an errand, what do you need?”

His face got slightly pink. “The girl…. Magpie, she started her period? And needs another shower and fresh clothes.”

Bronx howled a laugh. “This your first time discussing periods Elliot? I’m guessing not many girlfriends then?” Elliot smirked then, looking knowingly at Bronx who was going for the jab and forgot he was gay. “Oh yea…”

Ezekiel sighed. “Who else on the guard can I send.”

“What are you worried about now?” One look at Ezekiel and he understood, making him laugh again. “Everyone knows who she is now, someone on the counsel has a big mouth, no one would dare sneak a peak. Plus you know if you don’t send someone she’ll strip in the cell.”

A low growl rolled from Ezekiel at the thought. He had had to balance the same thoughts earlier, seeing Magpie take off her shirt like it was a private show for him, but knowing others were watching her. Before he could think clearly he had burst into the security room and forced his men to turn around. It had been Bronx’s idea to send Fiona, and he was glad for his brother’s clear head in spite of his own.

He waved his hand at him. “Bronx, you go. If you go to the training room one of the females will be able to give you the menstrual products you need and then you can bring them to her.”

Both men nodded and left, barely closing the door behind them before they heard a fist strike the thick wood desk. Ezekiel was done with the counsel, taking their time with deliberation when he was sure a bigger problem was right around the corner.

Like every time before, Magpie heard the top door open and knew to expect company, and then heard the steps cross the floor toward her cell. She recognized the steps but was surprised he was the one sent downstairs.

“Did I scare Fiona?” She laughed, fairly sure the answer was no, but feeling like it was possible.

“She’s busy.” Bronx muttered, “Come on, you know the way.”

Bronx could see the blood on the inner leg of her pants and unlocked the door with the hand not holding a plastic basket full of the hygiene products the women had gathered. Magpie went off in front of him, the blood running down her leg and leaving small droplets on the floor. Bronx had to give girls credit, if he had to bleed for a week every month he would have it all removed. He let her get ahead of him, reaching into a cleaning cupboards and dragging a cloth with his foot over the marks to avoid her needing to see it on the way out.

“Didn’t expect to see you down here again,” she muttered. “Not after the look you had gotten about our conversation during the first meeting.”

When she hung her shirt over the wall it made a slight sound, like it had a weight in the top. Bronx tucked a finger against it gently, lifting the fabric to see a pin that looked like the one Ezekiel had been wearing the day before. The bloody pants moved over the wall next, but the blood smelt too thin for a period.

Magpie twisted her hair up and out of the way with one of her other pins and began washing her leg with the same, still damp, bar of soap from earlier. “Does he really think….” She stopped herself from saying anything more, cringing as she washed her inner thigh. Bronx put the basket for her on the floor and pushed it passed the wall with his foot. “I need a roll of gauze,” she said quietly.

The faucet was turned off, a pink tinge to the water running down the drain, and he heard the plastic getting pealed off the back of a pad. “Why? Is there not enough stuff there?” He returned, surprised that the women had missed anything.

She coughed a little awkwardly before whispering. “It’s not my period.”

Bronx darted down the hall and back with a roll from the cupboard when he realized what she had meant. He handed the roll over to her as she removed the pad, and he could just make out her shadow wrapping her leg. She then went through the basket, utilizing a packet with a fresh pair of underwear before putting on fresh pants and her shirt. Moving around the wall she folded the bloodied pants, handing them to Bronx as she folded them in half again with the pin wrapped with the pad wrapper in the middle.

She looked up at him, eyes wide, pleading. “You’ll take care of this?” He nodded, sliding the wrapped object into his pocket with more than a little confusion. “So would your alpha have demanded harakiri if you had peaked or something, haha,” she added awkwardly, eyes darting to and away from him as she moved passed to return to her room.

Bronx followed behind her, looking for a limp in her step but seeing none. “Did you really….?” He began, but stopped.

Those who watched the cameras wouldn’t rat out their conversations, but the counsel had been checking the footage. Her irregular behaviour had definitely done well for adding to the facts that she hadn’t been in control, but much of it was also her working out which was kind of intimidating.

He closed and locked the door behind her. She was still the same puzzle that she walked in as, but as Bronx looked at her now he felt like the puzzle was changing.

She turned her back and leant against the bars. “I feel… grounded. Like I’ve been on rollerblades until now, fucking killing it by the way, though I’ve always thought logically. Two days in here isn’t really that long .” She raised the collar of her shirt, the smell of the garden easing her mind. “… but how long after your wolf woke up could you keep it from wanting to shift?…”

She clacked her ankle cuffs together as she walked back over to her cot and sat on the edge, adjusting the hem of her pants.

Bronx caught the briefest sight of black around her ankles before she went to the bathroom area and deposited the basket of unneeded supplies. He glanced at her thigh, likely already starting to heal, but he still wondered why she had done it.

He felt the stick covered in trash in his pocket all the way to the laundry room, and still back up to Ezekiel’s office where Bronx could swear he hadn’t even moved.

“Fiona won’t be back until tomorrow so I canceled the meeting for today. Her phone is spotty at best and once she gets there she’ll only have the landline to check in.” Ezekiel replied, signing some documents and quickly filing them away. “There didn’t seem a point in having the same arguments when there’s new information on the way.”

Bronx nodded, which he couldn’t see, and moved to place the object in the wrapper on his desk. Ezekiel looked up almost furiously, expecting it to be a weird joke. As he looked at it he realized it had landed too loudly to be a tampon and picked it up. Unwrapping the warm metal hair pin he noted that while it looked the same, it was weighted differently than the one he had given back to her. Both were thin, wide, and long steel hair pins, like a bobby pin, but this one was weighted more heavily on the bent end.

When the wrapper was off he could smell lilies, bright and aromatic. A smile stretched across his face and he inhaled the fragrance left on the pin from the natural oils in her hair. This was her, this was her scent, not the fake lemons that years of hormone drugs had caused, this was Magpie.

“You must understand something I don’t because it looks like she cut herself to give you the pin back.” Bronx quirked his gaze, flopping into the chair in front of the desk.

His smile continued. “No, she cut herself to…. She cut herself?”

Bronx nodded. “She’s not on her period. She cut the inside of her thigh to get Fiona to come back down. Must have been considerable for it to still be bleeding when I got there.”

Ezekiel felt.. proud?, fortunate?, and maybe a little terrified. “This isn’t the pin I sent her. This one is heavier. “ He placed it to grab the one from his drawer, but the first one pulled his letter opener over to it. “And she’s figured out the trick to the no keyhole shackles. Clever.”

“She’s not wearing them anymore.” Bronx exclaimed, excited to finally figure out what he was seeing. “She must’ve cut the calves off her pants to keep them wrapped around her, but I think they’re unlocked.”

“What did she say, exactly?” Ezekiel wondered, checking if the other pin was also magnetic; it wasn’t.

Bronx rolled his eyes like he could rewind his mind that way. “She asked how long I could keep from shifting after my wolf woke up.”

Ezekiel stopped staring at the lemony pin.. “She’s getting antsy.”

“I think she could make it.” Bronx declared, but the look Ezekiel shot him let him know he wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

“It looks like it’s going to come to a challenge.” Ezekiel growled, standing up from his chair, tucking the old pin into his hair and new one onto the collar of his shirt. “I’ll be in the training wing until the next meeting.”