Chapter 59 - Going Viral [https://cdn.midjourney.com/44fdfcff-f244-44dd-a5aa-a49eddff43ee/0_3.png]

When they pulled free David’s blindfold, the light from the bright product testing room blinded him. The space had been cleared, and the presence of those gathered made his skin go cold. Around the table, he knew a few faces, leaders from other communities, including one from the wolves that lived to the west, and the townie preacher. A gathering of the communities had been called, which rarely meant anything good was happening. His heart hollowed out and filled with ice. Why was he here? They only came together when there was trouble.

At the head of the table, Ba sat with her face set like stone, exposing no emotion to the council circle. He knew she was angry. A rose patina shone under her dark skin and her eyes flamed black. There was violence in the way she gripped her coffee mug as if only its weight kept her hand from striking out. What he didn’t know was at who?

Blinking, to adjust his vision, he asked, “Why am I here?”

The preacher spoke first, leaning forward, his hair slicked back, smelling of sheep. “To answer some questions.”

A sharp-nosed woman with raven eyes, a stranger, said, “Is she taking Ursa or not?”

“No. We decided against it as a family. There are four fathers, so it is easy for us to take turns watching over her when she sleeps.” He swallowed. The hardened faces around the table staring at him were unnerving. He wasn’t used to being the center of attention. “We have a mother’s room in the barn. The old-fashioned kind that has bars on all six sides. The bottom is buried in the dirt. She chose what was best for the baby.”

“And what about what is best for the community?” The sharp nosed woman leaned forward and turned her phone toward him. “Is this your woman? It certainly looks like the pictures I’ve seen of her.”

David’s skin prickled with wariness. The hair on the back of his neck rose. “Why would you have pictures of her?” When the grainy video began to play, he recognized her instantly, asleep on a couch in a college apartment. “She is somewhere sleeping. Where did you get that? It isn’t our home.”

“We know that,” the preacher said. “Keep watching.”

The skin at her ankles and wrists split obscenely as the baby pulled her into a change. Body twisting, she rolled into her heart shape on the shag rug. Kennedy had offered to show him the video before they burned the memory card. He’d refused to watch it. “Is this Sandy’s house? Kennedy took the memory card from the camera. We destroyed it. How do you have a copy?”

Ba’s voice was tired, heavy, and weighted. “The video transmitted to the roommate’s phone, all of it. The girl’s boyfriend posted it online. In the past twenty-four hours, it’s become quite the sensation. It’s all over the Internet. Everywhere.”

The wolf steepled his fingers on top of the table. “We’ve never had a breach like this.”

The preacher added, “We are going to mitigate the problem by proving it’s a hoax. We can claim it’s a film project. Lord willing, it will work.”

Ba sneered. “Don’t call to your filthy God in my house. You are hardly better than a sheep. I don’t think this is stoppable.”

The preacher stiffened. “You don’t see one of my people getting caught on camera. From birth to death, we stay in the skin as a sacrament. This is our sacred sacrifice to Christ.”

The woman holding the incriminating video shook her head. “Delusional fool.”

The Wolf didn’t curb his mocking laughter. “I thought you were just cowards.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Animal,” the preacher hissed. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“Because this is a breach large enough to affect us all, sheep lover. It’s been generations since they’ve hunted any of us.”

“Enough,” Ba growled. “You knew about the video, David?”

“I knew that seeing herself recorded is what brought her to her senses and why she came home, where she needed to be. She brought the memory card with her and showed us what she did to her friend’s apartment.” He spat on the clean floor. “She is now where she is supposed to be. With us. We didn’t know that there were other copies.”

“Which us are you speaking of?” The sharp-nosed woman narrowed her gaze.

“My family.”

“And your community, David?” Ba’s angry gaze punched through him.

With his wrists bound, he turned his hands palms up, opening them in appeasement. “She is carrying our child. What kind of man would I be if I didn’t protect her? It is my duty to help her get through this. I came here because Snow said she needed me. She wouldn’t call like that unless something important was going on.”

“Oh, I’d say it’s important,” said Palmer from the high camps.

The hook-nosed stranger spoke again. “Especially pregnant, she is too dangerous to live. She is one of the Lost. Why are we talking about this creature?” She turned her narrowed gaze toward Ba. “I place much of the blame at your feet. Her chemistry did not cloud you. You knew what she was. Why is she alive?”

The preacher added, “In living memory, no one has been this foolish or exposed the people so glaringly.”

David tried to explain. “It wasn’t her fault.”

Ba touched her hand to her forehead. “That is true. The fault is yours and mine. We sent you with them, and you let her leave and return to the world of the sheep. I thought you were smarter than that.”

“She wanted to go. What was I supposed to do, jail her?” He leaned forward. “Ba, first heats almost never end in viable pregnancies. We talked about it. We wanted her to come back on her own, of her free will.”

“She is one of the lost, you fool.” A grizzled leader from the Carolinas added, “Why have you expected anything from her but madness or death… hers or yours? I can not understand this foolishness. What would have made sense was to keep her in the mother’s room you described until she ripened or not.”

“And if she hadn’t caught ripe, what would you have had us do with her? Kill her?”

“Cull her.” The wolf’s face was grim. “Protect your people and remove the risk she presented. When was the last time a Bear culled a human being to cut out the rot in their species? One of the lost is not of the people. Have you forgotten how?”

The big man from the Carolinas smacked his hand down on the table. “We don’t kill our own. That is not our way.”

“We don’t cull humans,” the preacher said. “We coexist. Your people could learn something from us. More of you might reach adulthood.”

Stunned, David sat back in his chair, staring at the wolf. “You cull Shepherds?” The silence in the room intensified the sound of his heart beating in his ears.

Ba opened her hand. “David, even we have had to make that choice with the ones who go mad. But only when we have to. It’s rare. Those like her don’t survive. She probably would have died in her hotel room without the Vet’s help. There would have been some cleanup that the Preacher would have dealt with.”

Chest puffing, the preacher stiffened with pride. “My town stays quiet. Every few years, we have a stray, one of the Lost who wanders in amongst us, drawn for whatever reason to these hills. They die fast, half split, drained of blood, or they go mad, or they end our problem with them politely by taking it upon themselves to eat a gun, or take pills. Sometimes not so politely. Occasionally, with a little help.”

Disgusted, David grimaced. “Why not just let them go home?”

“Because a half-split being in an alleyway, or some middle-class backyard, would be a hell of a lot harder to make disappear than even your girl’s ridiculous video.” The paster shook his head and offered a beaming altar smile. “It’s for the best. Less painful.”

“Is that what you were going to do to her?” Horror bloomed inside David.

Quietly, Ba said, “If we had to.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Ba glanced toward her husband, who stood at the edge of the room. “There were some folks who held a foolish hope that she might turn out to be a healer.”

“Why am I here?” Regret tightened David’s throat so that it was difficult to make the words come out. He should have stayed with Kennedy, protected her first, and prioritized being a father.

With a voice tinged with ice, Ba explained, “To make it easier to bring her here, David. Let’s end this the way we should have. I made a mistake, hoping to give you a chance to do what was right. I thought you and Terry would have enough sense to keep her contained. You and that stupid Vet, those town boys, just plopped her on a bus like there was no danger in that.”

“I would have contained her to protect her, if I’d known that video would happen!”

Ba’s shoulders sagged. “You should have done it for us, to protect the people. You don’t know what your negligence has done. You don’t know what it is like to be hunted. But you will.”