"They change—or they are changed." He was quiet for a moment, then went on.
"It was getting about time for me to decide whether to re-up when I was approached by a recruiter looking for volunteers. I found out later from Eren that they eventually got a lot sneakier about it, and turned it into more of an assembly line kind of thing, where they tested military applicants to weed out the non-shifters. The ones who excelled at the program found out later that they had been roped onto an all-shifter mercenary team against their will.
"But there was none of that with me. My eventual team and I were among the first to be recruited, and I ended up talking to the Colonel himself. He explained that he was putting together a shifter team and wanted me to be part of it. The only thing that I was misled about was that I thought it was associated with the military when in fact it wasn't.
"I decided to try it. It was something new. I'd get to go to lots of places I hadn't been, and I liked the idea of being around other people like me. And itwasokay at first, if a little boring. We did security, mostly. I liked a lot of the guys I worked with.
"And then things started getting worse."
He paused, rubbing Mira's shoulder.
"It became clear over time that what the Colonel wanted was a private shifter army that he could hire out to the highest bidder, to fight wars or pull off a revolution or whatever was wanted. But most of us didn't want anything to do with that—and that's when things went bad.
"We soon found out that we couldn't leave. Even back then, he had a group of hand-picked guards, loyal to him, who made sure to put the rest of us in our place. But they couldn't control all of us, and when it became apparent that the rest of us were preparing to get out one way or another—and a couple had already left—that's when Black Rock Island happened.
"It was obvious from the beginning that being imprisoned on an island in the middle of nowhere wasn't going to end well, but we had no idea how bad it could get. The Colonel developed his training techniques on us, which were aimed at conditioning us through—" He drew a deep breath. "—the sort of techniques you'd use on animals, but not responsible training, more like cruel training with electric shocks, depriving us of food and water, solitary confinement and other abuse. The objective was to drive us deeper and deeper into our shifted state, until we were barely more than animals, taking orders without question."
He had to stop talking for a minute. Mira rubbed her thumb back and forth across his hand.
"I'm amazed at your resilience," she said quietly. "That's an unbelievable thing to have gone through and come out as whole as you are."
"Not really. Shifters are like that. We retreat into our animal when we're threatened, physically or mentally. Animals can have emotional trauma just like humans can—but they bounce back a lot faster, most of the time, because they're creatures who live in the present. The Colonel correctly guessed that badly abused shifters would retreat to spending all their time in their shifted form. But as you saw when we freed the prisoners back on Black Rock Island, they were hardly the cowed and tamed animals that he wanted."
Mira shuddered. "That's what those animals were? People who had been kept in cages until they forgot how to be people?"
"I hope not," Dane said fervently. "I mean, that was the idea, yes. But Eren and I could still shift, and we could still think and plan and do things in our human bodies; it was just more difficult than it used to be. And it got easier over time, once we were able to practice. I expect they've got big problems back on that island, and the Colonel might be far too busy dealing with his escapees than trying to chase us."
"Whoishe?" Mira asked. "You call him the Colonel, and apparently he calls himself that, but he must have an actual name, and he can't possibly have a regular commission in any actual military."
Dane managed a smile, the first time he'd felt like smiling since the story began. "I don't know. No one really knows anything about him, not even if he's a shifter or not, though we all assume so because he's very strong and tough. But no one has any idea what his shift form is, where he came from, or even what his real name is."
"So you escaped, and he's been looking for you ever since?"
Dane nodded. "I don't know how he eventually found me. It's possible that a distress beacon from your boat made them look there, but it's also possible that I've been under surveillance for weeks and didn't know it. One thing about shifters is that we're uniquely designed for stealthy surveillance. I might have been watched by a seagull or a dolphin who was reporting back. I'll probably never know."
"But that means your island isn't safe any longer," Mira said quietly.
"No," Dane said. There was an unexpected shudder of pain inside him. "Not as long as the Colonel is still searching for me. I can't ever go back there."
He hadn't meant it to be a home. It was only supposed to be a temporary place of refuge. But that was before he had repaired the cabin, built the garden, and shaped the rest of the island to his needs with his bare hands.
He was angry, he realized. He was deeply, powerfully angry. They had norightto chase him from his home, threaten his mate, and try to take away everything he had built for himself.
"We won't let them get away with this," Mira said fiercely. "Shifters might be unknown to the world in general, but they're still people, aren't they? They still have citizenship and human rights. We'll get the law involved, maybe even the military. Let's see how he deals with a couple of Navy gunboats showing up in his front yard."
Dane appreciated her enthusiasm, but he was quietly thinking about something more personal. He had been avoiding Black Rock Island ever since his escape. Now his own reluctance felt cowardly to him.
Mira and I will never be safe as long as the Colonel lives. Once we get out of here, if they don't find us first, I'm going to go back there, and I'm going to take care of him once and for all.
"We'll see," he told Mira. "First, we have to get offthisisland, and then we'll deal with whatever comes next."
"Together," she said fiercely, squeezing his hand.
Dane wondered how far that loyalty went. Would she go all the way to helping him infiltrate the island prison they had escaped from, to assassinate its ruler?
He hoped it didn't come to that. But he remembered the two of them sneaking around the fortress together, the unconscious teamwork, the way they almost seemed to be telepathically in sync.
The way she had backed up every one of his decisions.
