Dangerous Territory

Seven

She woke up in half-form.

Blood was pooled over her stomach from where she had accidentally cut herself during the night, her jaw was throbbing and her limbs were twisted bizarrely, hair and bone protruding in places they hadn't been before she had fallen asleep.

Every sense was magnified times seven, ears twitching at the sound of running water, the wind that clattered against the window pane, the beating of her dad's heart as he moved around across the hallway. Her nose was in the air, hand pressed against her face as she growled deep in her chest. She was searching for something.

Whatever it was, she needed it.

Like emerging from deep under water, the pre-sleep daze lifted and she ripped her hand from her face, glaring at the object as though it was a threat.

She had unconsciously searched out his scent in her sleep.

Slowly, she reverted back to human form, reigning in the bubbling fury.

Her chest was tender, the persistent aching hurting more than the gashes across her stomach. While the gashes were quickly healing over, the aching was becoming rawer with every second.

The dream she'd just had was playing over and over in her head, blaring its awful siren.

She must have shifted too fast.

The skin around her nails was torn, white and red fluid dripping from her human hands onto the cream bedsheet in a steady stream. Her toes throbbed, teeth rattling around in her skull as she grounded herself.

She wanted so desperately to ground herself.

She needed an anchor.

An image flashed in her head of prison bars being torn in two, chains being broken, a fully grown wolf ripping limb from bloody limb and bathing in the decomposed corpse of his enemy.

She was going to do it.

She was going to break her mate out of prison.

He had undone her.

---

By the time she walked into the station, later that morning, she was no longer planning to follow through with her crazy plan.

She couldn't believe she had thought breaking a cold blooded murderer out of a supermax prison was a feasible idea.

She couldn't believe she had actually considered breaking the law when it was her job to uphold it.

Yet the idea still itched at the back of her mind.

It was tempting; whispering sweet nothings into her ear until she was forced to pay it attention.

The more she chewed over it, the more it lured her in.

An insolent child demanding to have its own way.

Would it really be so hard to-

The thought was too insistent to totally dismiss so Mala soothed the bond with a silent promise to research Auden, at the bare minimum, to see if she could find any redeeming qualities about him.

Was there any saving grace?

When her free hour rolled around, she found an empty room and pulled out her laptop, making sure that none of the cameras could get a view of the screen. She wasn't doing anything wrong, not at the moment, but she didn't believe it hurt to be cautious.

Bringing up a random search engine, her fingers hovered over the keys for heavy minute.

Auden Olivio.