Ah, yes, the protocol that involved injections that left Phoenix writhing in pain and feeling as if his insides boiled.It must not have worked as planned, because Phoenix hadn’t noticed anything different about himself.
Stevens kept his gaze on Phoenix but obviously spoke to someone else when he said, “Tell me when.”
The main doctor appeared and stood beside the major with a tablet in hand. Beside him, one of his flunkies held up a phone, obviously recording what would happen next. Sadistic bastards planning to capture him writhing once the major shot him.
Dr. Levy gave a nod. “Do it.”
The gun fired, and the bullet hit Phoenix in the shoulder, causing him to gasp in surprise. The pain hit a moment later, and he gritted his teeth.
“Nothing’s happening,” Stevens remarked.
“Because he’s fighting the trauma,” the doctor replied. “Shoot him again.”
The gun crack made Phoenix’s ears ring, and the resulting bullet to the thigh sent Phoenix crashing to the ground, where he smacked his already wounded shoulder. Pain burst, an explosive bomb of agony that had him writhing.
And squirming.
And burning.
And… roaring?
As Phoenix tried to grasp what he heard, he realized a few things.
One, he no longer felt any pain.
Two, he had his hands on the ground, only they looked like paws.
It took him a second to hear Stevens crowing. “Holy shit. He’s a tiger.”
Wait, what? Phoenix tried to exclaim, only to have the words emerge as a chuffing snort. He tugged against the chain holding him in place, only to partially choke himself. Next, he tamped the ground with paws that appeared to belong to him.Something flicking just out of sight caught his attention. He whirled and then yelped in pain when he caught hold of a sinuous and hairy tail with his teeth.
His tail, as it turned out, seeing as how it hurt when he bit it.
In that moment it hit him that Stevens wasn’t joking.
I’m a tiger.But unlike Tony, he wasn’t gr-r-r-eat.
Chapter One
I’m never sailing again.Or if Phoenix did, he’d make sure he had an actual cabin.
The container Phoenix travelled in—AKA stowed away inside to get out of North America—really played a number on his claustrophobia. More than once, the windowless metal box had him panicking that he would run out of air and suffocate. He wouldn’t, as a few drilled holes ensured a constant supply of fresh oxygen and, when his mind got paranoid, deep breathing exercises helped, as did his nightly excursions. While Phoenix might not be able to move out and about during the day—lest the crew notice him and realize he wasn’t one of the sailors—at night, he slipped from his self-imposed cell to stretch. As he did laps around the ship to keep fit, he reminded himself he wasn’t actually a prisoner again.
Yet.
His nocturnal expeditions put him at risk of discovery, but he didn’t care. His mental health needed it. Besides, his acute sense of hearing and smell allowed him to avoid the few crew members who piloted the ship at night.
It would take twenty-seven days to reach Malaysia. A long journey, and yet, Phoenix chose a shipping freighter over othermethods like flying, which required a passport and had too many facial-recognition checkpoints for his liking. He’d not escaped General Davidson and his sadistic staff just to be careless and end up captured again.
As to why he needed to get to Malaysia? Because he had questions about the whole tiger thing, and online research indicated he might find answers there. See, one thing he and the others discovered after they escaped captivity was that while they’d been led to believe shapeshifting was a thing found only in books and movies, civilizations around the world all had some version of therianthropes—AKA, people who could change into animals. Most folks knew about werewolves, but that was only the tip of the shifting iceberg. Once Phoenix and the others who’d escaped began digging and searching on the internet, they discovered a whole plethora of legends that featured therianthropes. Selkies, skin walkers, kitsune, kelpies, nagas, tiger shifters, bear, and more. Were those stories actually based in fact? If yes, could they help Phoenix and the others adjust to their new physical reality? After all, if werewolves and other mythical beings still existed, then they’d obviously managed to successfully live amongst humanity, which led to his captain theorizing,“Davidson and his lackeys must have found a therianthrope and thought it might be useful, hence why he started experimenting with the protocol.”A procedure that unlocked whatever beast hid in their ancestral genes. Tiger for Phoenix and Takhi. Wolf for the captain, plus Freya and Radley. Idris was a bear. However, it should be noted that the protocol didn’t succeed for everyone.
Gage had died. Zendaya had shifted into a wolf but went completely feral and jumped off a cliff after trying to attack the troop.
Phoenix counted himself lucky he remained sane, and his animal side turned out to be recognizable. When they’d escaped,they’d discovered there were literal monsters in the general’s literal basement. Phoenix would never forget the murderous being with wings that had emerged from the rubble and torn off someone's head before taking flight into the night sky.
Despite the difficulty in escaping, Phoenix and the other captives survived, making them the lucky ones.
Kind of.
