Who is Magpie?

Jessamine had returned to the tea party to sit in Ezekiel’s lap and ignore her tea. The first sip had almost killed her and she decided tea wasn’t really her thing anyway. No one asked the question again, but Willow looked quite pleased with herself. They offered to share stories about her parents as they had known them, but she politely denied it. She didn’t yet feel ready for that rabbit hole, and didn’t miss them in a way that she was willing to bare it.

She excused herself when everyone else decided on dessert, Ezekiel begging her to stay but she insisted she was tired. Instead of going to her room she went towards the training hall, finding nearly all of the rooms unlocked but looking for the concrete room the shifters use. She checked in with Delano in the security office along the way, telling him she was used to being up late and asked if it would be okay for her to do her exercises in one of the empty training rooms. He told her which room would be empty and said that as long as she remained in that one he wouldn’t call the Alpha.

That night marked the first night of Jessamine trying to merge with her wolf.

Her wolf was excited for the experience, and though she hoped to be able to run outside, understood why they were where they were. She prepared herself, having grabbed a long house coat when she was last in her room with Ezekiel, she didn’t strip nude for her first efforts. She stood in the middle of the room breathing deeply, and willed her wolf to take over.

Every inch of her body felt like it had been touched with a match. Pain erupted from her so suddenly that she had dropped to her knees and cried out, but her wolf didn’t stop trying. Her bones snapped and warped into place, and she chanted to herself to just hold out a second longer. With a huff she collapsed onto her stomach, still a human, skin tingling, and sweat running down her forehead.

She reset, trying again, this time from the floor. She knelt on all fours like an animal, trying to imagine how she had felt about Wallace at the challenge. She managed to get her claws out and digging into the floor no problem, and wanted to build on that. She and her wolf tried to work on just growing out from those claws, moving up the arms, but she couldn’t get through it fast enough without the pain crippling her.

Her third attempt she worked her way out from the center, shifting from her core, but got as far as her skull before it felt like sharp pieces of bone were ripping through her cheeks. She felt like she had almost done it before the pain made her see stars. She had kept going until it got so bad that she blacked out for a minute on the cold floor and her wolf was afraid she had slipped and let Ezekiel sense their emotions.

They both waited in meditative silence to see if she had, knowing he would come running, seeing where she went from the security footage in the hallways. When he didn’t burst through the doors after ten minutes relief set in. Determination didn’t waver though, and soon they were trying again.

When the rising sun became visible through the skylight she rushed to retrieve her house coat and return to her room. The rest of the house was just waking up in their beds and she was just narrowly able to get to her room before she was seen. She was sure Delano had noticed, but he didn’t leave the security office to talk to her which she was grateful for.

She entered the shower in her room still in her clothes from the day before, hoping to get the stink of her sweat out of them before it lingered in the air. She washed up quickly, changing into a fresh set of pajamas before crawling into bed. Her body ached, and her skin prickled with the residual sensation of all the hairs bursting free.

No sooner had she closed her eyes was she asleep, her wolf promising that she would get it eventually…

~

“Again!” She was in the training room, being taught forms with a stick.

He had the stick, not her.

“Again!” He yelled, whacking the back of her thighs because her step wasn’t large enough.

“Again!” Her step was too big.

“Again!” She let her shoulder drop.

“Doux, now!”

One of her superiors is always called at the end of every training class to fight with her. This time it was Gull, a large man with a stick of his own. All she could do was block.

He swung at her foot and she stepped over it. He whipped it towards her face and she backed up. A jab from the other end to her breast bone had her taking a step back. The next three swipes she was able to block with the heal of her hand and get a swinging kick in against his stomach. She heard a click of his tongue behind her and stopped fighting immediately as taught, but Gull didn’t thwacking her on the head and engulfing her in stars.

Her body crumpled to the floor like a pile of dirty laundry and she was vaguely aware of the men in the room moving around her. Those in the room were gathering together, and she heard him say what he always did. There were several loud sighing sounds which honestly could have been from her own lungs as they tried to refill with oxygen from her fall.

The darkness overtook her, but this time when she woke up to the creeping sun she wasn’t on the floor of the training room in the garden, she was in her bed. Her body still ached relentlessly but the sun was well into the sky and she decided it was time to get up. She found a tray of food left on the table with a note from Ezekiel.

‘My Jessa,

I came to have breakfast with you but you seemed completely wiped. I’ll be gone likely until dinner time. There was another rogue attack and it is quite urgent that I get there and talk to my team. Please stay in the pack house while I’m gone, I won’t stop you if you refuse but I worry.

Your Alpha’

Jessamine sighed happily at the note, how he had been thoughtful enough to write it, but also because she hoped to train harder while he was gone and couldn’t sense her. She hoped with one less thing to worry about that she would be able to do it faster, starting with breakfast she tried again. Her bedroom wasn’t the most ideal location but the training rooms were likely occupied.

She had nearly torn a pillow in two biting on it to silence the screams rising in her mouth. The aches from the night before made it much more difficult, every muscle that tried to shift and length seized at the idea and spasmed within her. Her legs buckled beneath her again and again, unable to round the hip joints in and under for the quadruped position.

“RRAAaaa!” She screamed, thrilled to know about the second doors before she tried this.

Jessamine had had enough trying, pain swelling her joints and muscles enough to make her angry. She had agree to stay in the pack house for Ezekiel, but he hadn’t thought about saying anything about her fighting. She got dressed and headed for the workout rooms, searching out Fiona.

“Oh Jessamine, what can I help you with?” She asked pleasantly, doing her own sets on a lat machine.

“I’m looking for something to hit,” she said bluntly.

Fiona cackled. “What’d he do now?”

“What? Oh, no, nothing. He’s not even here right now. I uh…” She couldn’t say the truth, that she wanted to fight someone but a punching bag would do, so she told a half truth. “I remembered something they let happen to me quite often and I need to take it out on something.”

Fiona gave her an understanding look, getting up from her machine and patting her on the back. It was somehow both affectionate and comforting, and felt like something she would give any of the people on her team. They walked out into the hall and into the next room.

“Why are they all so divided?” Jessamine asked, thinking of the rooms she was used to.

There had only been a few large training rooms with any equipment, and they had very few weights present. They had to use their own body weight for most of the exercises, and she had… As she thought about it she knew there was no way that people like Gull had gained their muscle mass without access to weighted training excepting equipment. Her anger swelled further, another thing they had done to demand results and impede her progress.

“Less people, fewer scents, fewer fights, easier to contain damages, and easier to temperature control.” Fiona explained precisely, walking Jessamine to a large suspended punching bag. “Here,” Fiona offered, handing her a pair of gloves off the wall that she believed to be her size.

“I’m good.” Jessamine responded, moving toward a roll of fabric tape.

She wrapped it around her thumb, three loose passes over her knuckles, and then taped her pinkies to her ring fingers around the base. Fiona went to return the gloved to the wall and pretend like she wasn’t watching. Jessamine was fine with it by that point, but she knew that most of the eyes were on her.

Her first hit sounded flat, like someone hitting a deflated ball. She checked her grip, slowed down the movement, lined up her stance with how she wanted to hit it. Switching feet she did the same thing with the other hand, scowling at her fist as she tucked her thumb in out of a bad habit. People turned away, bored at her ritual, so when her next strike made a small seam pop somewhere on the bag she broke necks.

She used the swing of the bag to time her next punch. Again and again, she slammed her fists into the bag, working her way around it to use the bag’s swing to work her muscles and take her anger. First she was angry at her inability too shift, but then she thought back to her dream.

Another seam popped.

She could hear his words with each strike into the bag. ‘Again, again, again’. It wouldn’t have egged her forward if it weren’t for the words he always said before she passed out. ‘She will never be worth the risk’.

Another seam, *pop*.

She always pretended not to hear him; never reacting or looking their way. Somehow she felt like her ignorance kept her alive in more than one situation, and her hearing these words would be bad. She thought of how she had been so ignorant she did’t know she wasn’t human, and of all the memories that made so much more sense now.

*pop*

Had the humans that came to the Garden with deliveries always kept their car windows up? Hadn’t she started feeling sick on days with strong winds? Why had they never given her the teabag before, only the made tea? Had they been worried that she would identify the ingredients? How had it started?

*Pop*

She knew how things started here, and how her first week among her own people had gone, and wanted to know how long it was before she forgotten how she got to the Garden. How much did she forget from the concussions, and how much had they done? What else had they done to her?

*pop*

She began striking the bag again and again, her knuckles tearing with the consecutive impact. Every anger she had ever felt like a bad smell drifting in her mind came out now.

‘Again.’

She heard his voice and for a moment she thought she saw his face. Spinning, she kicked the punching bag with enough strength to pop the remaining seams holding the bag to its tether, and sent it flying across the room and into the wall. The bag burst against the wall, stuffing and sand spilling out onto the floor.

Sweat beaded across her forehead but her breaths came out controlled, even if they were a little ragged. She stared at the bag, weeping it’s filling up onto the polished concrete, picturing it as the man who kept her under his foot for seven years.

‘He’ll never get me alive,’ she assured both her and her wolf.

Fiona came up behind her. She was only dimly aware that it had been her and almost struck her when she tapped her shoulder. Jessamine met her eyes both full of so much understanding and complete ignorance.

“A bunch of people would like to spar with the Luna. What do you want?” Fiona asked quietly.

Jessamine looked around the room, not seeing a pack in this moment but a flock, and said, “I’m not safe to spar with right now. I’m going to go take a cold shower,” and left.

The flat tone with which she said it had sent a chill down the spines of some of the wolven, but it had also intrigued a lot more. They admired a strong Luna and looked over the punching bag like it was a trophy. Jessamine, however, saw it as a failure. She was meant to control her strength, control her emotions, and not break things.

When she got into her room and closed both sets of doors she fancied that she could scream. She didn’t, but having the option made her feel strangely better. She read Ezekiel’s note again; dinner was a long way away.

She showered again. She had grown to like the smells of the soaps here and the tickle they gave her nose. After she was through she did something she hadn’t done in more than seven years, she laid down and she had a nap.