In the morning, Edrik was gone. He'd left a note.

"I'm not very good at goodbyes. Figured this would be less weird. I'll take your stuff to storage for you. Major said to leave your keys on the kitchen table, and some people will be by to pick you up.

Miss you already, asshole.

Edrik xxx"

Ignoring the way his throat closed when he read those words, Oryen gathered his things and got dressed in time for his escort to arrive and take him to quarantine. There would be no goodbye party or official send off. Fens got turned all the time, and it was bad for morale to remind everyone regularly how dangerous their jobs were. He got into the back of a sedan and waved goodbye to base as they drove out the gates, but nothing and no one waved back.

They arrived at the facility several hours later, where two armed guards holding werewolf-grade siinca rifles flanked the entrance. His escort passed him over to the guards, who cuffed him in inhibitors. A shock travelled like pins and needles up Oryen's arms and through his body, suppressing whatever dangers lurked in his blood.

The inhibitors were a largely unnecessary precaution. Oryen wouldn't have his first transformation for weeks yet. It would have been convenient if he could have just worn a cuff voluntarily and remained free, but unfortunately this type of confinement had lethal consequences. Preventing a werewolf's transformations for extended periods resulted in rapid health degeneration and, eventually, death.

So quarantine it was.

Without a goodbye, his escort got back into the car and drove away. Oryen turned to his new handlers. "I'm guessing you have more paperwork for me?" he said.

They had much more than that. None of the people who dealt with him knew who he was or that he'd submitted willingly to quarantine. They fingerprinted him. Took retinal scans. X-rayed him to ensure he wasn't ferrying in contraband. They took his backpack and dug through that too. They told him to strip all his clothes off, including his bandages, and then stood him in a room where pressurized jets in the walls sprayed him down from every direction, scraping his skin of any contaminants. They had him sit, naked and soaking wet, on a cold metal table while a doctor drew his blood, took his temperature—higher than a normal human—and asked him a million invasive questions about his medical history and how he got infected.

Once he'd finally finished, the guards took him into a doctor's office. The room was equipped with most of the things you'd normally find—cupboards full of cotton swabs, a desk, a tray of medical instruments. The only thing out of place was a chair with several reinforced iron restraints.

A man wearing a white lab coat sat at the desk, muttering to himself and staring down at the clipboard. He looked up when he heard Oryen enter.

"Captain Taron Beckett?"

It was a relief to hear his name. At least this doctor had been briefed on his particular situation. Oryen waved off the formality, though it was nice to hear the honorific one last time. "It's just Oryen now."

The doctor nodded, unfazed. "Oryen. I'm Doctor Cobb. I'll be fitting you with your quarantine collar."

Oryen had no clue what that meant, but he grinned good-naturedly.

"Have a seat, Cap—Oryen. Please ignore the restraints. Some of our patients aren't as cooperative as you've been."

Oryen sat down, eyeing the warped metal from where countless patients had struggled. Meanwhile, the doctor busied himself with some of the paperwork on his clipboard. "We apologize for any discomfort during processing," he continued. "We try to be thorough, but it isn't the most dignified of experiences."

"You haven't slept in a military barrack before, have ya, Doc? I lost my shame a long time ago."

The doctor grinned. "Well, either way, we would have preferred to give you a proper send off. After all you've done—"

"Please, Doc. I'm not expecting special treatment just because I've been keeping the world safe all these years."

The doctor chuckled. "It's good to see your situation hasn't killed your sense of humour."

He opened a drawer and pulled out a leather collar with a metal strip around the interior. He fiddled with a clasp until it released with a metallic click, and the collar expanded to the circumference of a basketball. Several thick needles protruded from the inside. A prickle of goosebumps rose on Oryen's arms.

"I may have just lost a little of that sense of humour, Doc," he said. "Tell me that isn't going around my neck." He knew it was.

"I'm afraid so," the doctor replied. "I assure you, it looks a lot more painful than it is. It's only slightly more painful than the average needle." He showed the device to Oryen. Close up, it looked worse, not better. The needles were thick enough that a grain of rice could easily slip through them. The brown leather exterior looked far more comfortable than the metal inside. He could see seams where the telescopic metal could expand or shrink to accommodate the size of his neck.

Whether he was a human or a wolf.

"How does it work, Doc?"

The doctor smiled, his scientific interest momentarily trumping his bedside manner. "Oh, it's quite genius, really. These needles are inserted into the carotid arteries. Blood flows through the collar as an extension of your circulatory system. The collar can detect lycanthin, the hormone that regulates your transformations, so it can expand or contract based on the release or suppression of lycanthin in your system, thus adapting to your transformations."

Oryen whistled. "Sounds above my pay grade. And it prevents us leaving the quarantine area?"

"Yes. Not to worry, the collar simply releases a tranquilizer into your bloodstream if the collar's GPS detects you've left the Sector. Once sedated, guards will bring you back. We won't have to worry about you running off though, right?" He smiled warmly. "You're one of the good ones."

Oryen nodded. "That's me. Law-abiding lycanthrope. So, uh, should we get this over with?" He indicated the collar with a jerk of his chin.

"Of course. If you could just hold as still as possible, this will be over quickly."

Doctor Cobb raised the collar over Oryen's head and lowered it. The action gave him the disconcerting impression of a noose being placed around his neck. Holding perfectly still, he watched the needles pass a few inches from his face. Oryen's heartrate ratcheted up. The doctor adjusted the orientation of the collar a few times before he seemed satisfied.

"On the count of three?"

Oryen took a deep breath. "Just surprise me, Doc."

He didn't realize he was holding his breath until the collar suddenly clamped down around his throat. The needles pierced his skin and—contrary to what the doctor said—it hurt a lot more than the average needle. Oryen gritted his teeth.

"There," Doctor Cobb said. "Not so bad, right?"

"I've had worse."

"Comfortable?"

It wasn't too snug, but Oryen wouldn't call the needles comfortable. "Yeah, I've always enjoyed the feeling of a very weak person choking me all day long." It earned him a genuine laugh. "Can I see it?"

The doctor handed him a mirror from his desk. The brown leather of the collar around his neck was a scant shade lighter than his skin. His hazel eyes and messy curls, however, were the same as ever. Somehow he'd expected to look different. More feral perhaps.

"Not really my style. You wouldn't happen to have one in pink?"

"You could paint it," the doctor said with a laugh.

As Oryen looked the collar over, a rivulet of blood trickled down his throat from beneath it. The doctor was ready with a cotton swab and dabbed it away.

"Once we remove the inhibitors, you'll heal up right away."

After that, the two guards returned, this time to escort him into a room with an uncomfortable looking row of offensively orange seats like you might find in a clinic waiting room or primary school.

Sitting in one of those chairs was Oryen's Mum. The crisp lines of her pantsuit freshly ironed, her manicured hands clutching a purse in her lap, she stood the moment he arrived. Oryen wished the feeling that filled his heart at that moment was gratitude, or love, or warmth, but there was only dread. He swallowed.

"Taron," she said, opening her arms. She pulled him into a stiff hug so that their bodies hardly touched.

"Hey Mum." He pulled away and scratched his chin. "I didn't know you'd be here."

"Stop that." She slapped his hand away from his face. "Oh, Taron, that collar."

"Yeah. New uniform's a bit less comfortable."

She frowned at it. There was a hint of sympathy in the expression, but something else too. Vindication that she'd been right all along. He swallowed, which made him all the more aware of the needles.

"Your father sends his love," she said finally. "Couldn't come, unfortunately. Very busy day at work."

Oryen could picture the conversation. His mum on the phone, typing at her computer, thrusting papers at an assistant—doing a thousand things at once while she told his father, "Taron's gone and disappointed us again. This time turned himself into a werewolf. Yes, we warned him. I hate to say I told you so." His father on the other end, pouring himself a bourbon and telling his assistant, yes, he'd be with the client, this wouldn't take two minutes.

No matter what Oryen did, it had never warranted missing work. Even getting turned into a werewolf.

"Isn't it always."

"It was difficult to get away myself," she went on. In those words he heard the same thing he always did. That he should be grateful for whatever reluctant scrap of attention they handed him. He should be happy she came at all. "Ten thousand things I need to get back to, but I wanted to say goodbye."

"Why?"

"We don't know when you'll be out again. Hoping soon, of course."

"What would it matter? Not like you came to see me much when I was an hour away. Not a whole lot of difference now."

"There's always been Christmas," she said. "We've missed you. We've just been very busy. You know that." She placed a hand on his shoulder. "We've worked hard to give you and your brother what you have."

Oryen gave a stiff nod. "Right. I guess Ezra won't be coming to say goodbye either, then?"

His mother's voice soured. "Don't be ridiculous, Taron. You know we haven't heard from him either."

Another stiff nod. Oryen chewed the inside of his lip. There were a lot of things on his mind, things he wanted to say. Why should they pretend to be sad about saying goodbye when there had been so few 'hello's between then and now? Between the time when their preferred son vanished and their disappointment finally fell victim to the monsters he hunted?

Instead, he said, "Well, nice of you to drop by. Bye, Mum."

"Oh, don't be like that," she said. "You don't get to blame me or your father for what's happened, not when you could have been anything and you chose to be a Fen. Of all things. You could have gone to Forester's. Or Churchill's. You could have joined your father's firm."

His face grew hot, but he had nothing to say. He didn't want an education or a six-figure salary job, he just wanted...

"Not blaming you," he muttered. "Just don't see why you care."

His mum stared at him, uncomprehending, her perfectly painted mouth slightly ajar. She looked older. "Of course we care," she said. "How could you say we don't?"

He took a deep, steadying breath. She said the words, but he couldn't feel them. "Nevermind. Sorry. Just a bit...stressed. Thanks for coming."

She smiled, thin-lipped and not with her teeth. She drew him into another hug and patted his back. "Make sure you write, if you can," she said. "We'll see you when you get out. We'll miss you."

She pulled away. As she left, Oryen thought, if this was normal, she'd turn around and wave again. Or come back for another hug. She'd cry hard. At best, she looked a little misty eyed, but when she turned and walked out it was without a backwards glance. It was unsurprising, and it still hurt as much as it always had.

Then she stopped at the door. "Oh!" Marching back to him, she held out the envelope in her hand. "I nearly forgot. This was for you. I believe your commanding officer left it at the desk. Good thing I remembered."

She handed it over. Oryen took it with numb fingers.

"Ta," she said. Then she left for good.

Afterward, both guards led him across the room and through a door with several coded locks. Sunlight poured in the moment it clicked open. His vision bleached, Oryen squinted through his fingers into the day. Once his eyes adjusted, Oryen couldn't say he liked what he saw. They walked a caged expanse of muddy terrain. Behind and in front of him stood two twin walls, stretching in either direction as far as the eye could see. The featureless, muddy terrain they crossed was a no-man's-land. The only thing that stood out across it was a body, closer to the inner wall than the outer. A black halo of flies swarmed it but even from this distance, Oryen could see that it didn't have a head. His stomach flipped.

The male guard followed his line of vision. "Yeah. That'll be you if you try to escape, mate," he said in a way which underscored that Oryen was definitely not his 'mate.'

Oryen didn't reply. He didn't want to imagine what the werewolf had done to deserve that treatment. Perhaps tranquilizers had been unable to subdue this one. Still, he couldn't help feeling a stone of dread weigh in his stomach at the sight of the body decaying without the dignity of a funeral in the muddy trench of no-man's land.

They reached the inner wall, where an intimidating metal door stood as the last remaining barrier into the Sector. The guard went through a song and dance of key cards, fingerprint and retinal scanners. After a digital beep of confirmation, the doors parted with a prehistoric wail. The second guard stepped forward to remove Oryen's inhibitor cuffs. The moment his wrists were released, he felt a sudden surge of strength. He massaged his wrists.

I'm changing...

The heavy door opened by a gap of only two feet. Oryen stared beyond it into the Sector. It was an alien landscape he scarcely recognized as earthly. His shock had him frozen to the spot, so he wasn't prepared when the guard gave him a perfunctory shove past the doors. Oryen stumbled unceremoniously into the quarantine zone and looked behind him just in time to see the doors slamming shut. Not a goodbye or well-wish from his escorts.

The sinking pit in his stomach grew. With no other options left to him, he took the envelope from his pocket and split it open. The note inside was short. It was from Major Pickton, the man who oversaw Oryen's squad, a man of few words even in person.

The note read: Terrible what's happened. You have my sympathies. If you're looking for protection within quarantine, my advice would be to find the Mardero pack. Good luck.

Major Edmund Nathaniel Pickton