Who is Magpie?

“What was it like?” Corleone Tran asked suddenly, looking at Magpie with her pen ready. “You we’re obviously well educated, and trained, you had to know, somewhere, that how they treated you compared to the others was different. But you could really do nothing?”

Magpie’s sassy expression fell apart with the unexpected question, resting somewhere around exhausted and surprised. “Like a smell you can’t remember or find. The thoughts bounce around in the very back of your mind but you can’t connect it with anything tangible. Eventually it gets so exhausting that you stop trying and you just accept that these fluttering thoughts are how everyone must feel.”

A flush began warming up Magpie’s face, and her swaying returned as did her fever. Doctor Pon rushed around the table, clearly forgetting this was a counsel meeting he was not invited to, and started to check her pulse and temperature. “Your wolf is strong.”

Magpie nodded lazily. “Can you use that wolf telepathy thing or whatever to tell her to stop being such a bitch.”

Doctor Pon chuckled. “Unfortunately no, even if you were in wolven form only you can speak to your wolven while she’s not fronting.”

Magpie sighed, “bummer,” before slouching over towards the doctor.

Ezekiel stepped in immediately, holding her up as gently as he could. He picked her up off the desk, moving her into his chair where the arms could support her and he could re-address his counsel.

“I have obviously withdrawn any charges against her, so what say you?”

Wallace cleared his throat. “I can understand where you are coming from, the bond is something very special for us and, finding it myself, I know how that can affect your judgement, but how do we know this isn’t a ploy to put a fox in the hen house? She could just as easily have been sent in the hopes that we would show her mercy so she could take us down from within.”

“While that would be something they would do, they would never think so highly of me.” Magpie muttered, arms now folded on the conference table with her head on top of them. “They sent me on all kinds of assignments, ones they needed to succeed, ones they didn’t care if they failed, ones where I’m sure they hoped I would be the casualty reported back. The scars I wear for not being good enough … I wasn’t a slow learner, I was the best. They enjoyed humiliating and degrading me, even if no one was around to witness it. They would know that, if I survived without their drugs, I would feel no love lost for them.”

“What sorts of missions?” Chevalier krii asked.

“You’ll need to be more specific.” Bronx interrupted, for which Magpie was grateful.

“Fine, what was your last big assignment?” Chevalier rephrased.

Magpie sighed again, more to prepare her voice than anything else. “We were told we were blowing up weaponry, a warehouse full of it. We found out too late that they lied.”

“That was you?” Ezekiel hissed.

Thinking back to that day he had been there, checking on the incoming supplies when a fire started outside. He had been in one of the upper floors when the explosion went off, unable to get down the stairs quick enough to catch anyone, but seeing two people running away through a window. It had taken him months to arrange such a supply and it was gone in minutes.

Ezekiel began growling as he recalled the loss. “Were you of the ones messing around with our security system, or the two setting the charges in the warehouse.”

She recognized the question for what it was, as he specified the number, he had seen them run off. “I was the one too close when everything went boom.”

Their eye contact did not falter as she spoke. Magpie saw the anger in that stare, weighing down on her even as she lazily lifted her head from the table to look at him. She felt that fear of disappointing again in her stomach, but she didn’t care to address it.

Looking away first she rested her head back against her arms muttering, “take a picture.”

Chevalier looked almost please with herself when she spoke up again. “And your favourite assignment?”

The sigh this time was more frustration. “A fall gala years ago.”

Raymond chuckled. “The key ceremony? That was also you? Why would they send the same person to do something so catastrophic and something so pointless?”

“I don’t give the same answers twice.” Magpie spoke, voice muffled against her arms.

“Why was it your favourite?” Harriette asked above Wallace’s attempted retort.

“The dress I wore was very pretty, worth the cost. People called me ‘miss’ and ‘madam’, and I was given hors d’oeuvres and champagne. That was the longest time I didn’t have to be Magpie.” Magpie smirked despite herself, she could feel it, she could feel the way she used how she looked to get what she wanted.

And she hated it.

It felt like the beginning. Like a familiar hike she’d been on a thousand times, but this time she’d somehow taken a wrong turn. She could feel their sympathy, most of them anyway. She could easily tell more half truths, eliminate the worst things about those stories, and live on that sympathy, but just once she wanted to live off of respect.

She could hear her wolven agree, done being trapped within but not willing to compromise her unyielding personality. She wanted to put everything on the table, and, if it came to it, go out fighting. More than that she wanted Ezekiel to know what he was idealizing as his mate.

“I pretended to date a guy for six months to be invited because they told me to. They wanted to see if I could maintain a personality for a long period of time.” She looked up at him, eyes swirling with gold again. “Ask your questions alpha, seven years is a long time.”

He was still furious about their supplies. He had been searching for resources to help a western territory, and right after they had gathered it all to ship out it had been destroyed. Magpie looked him in the eye, challenging him to ask the questions he didn’t want to know. She challenged him to care about her after knowing the truth, slipping one of her steal bobbypins into her hands from her waistband to be prepared for when she believed he’d stop.

“Have you killed people?” He asked. Ezekiel’s own hazel eyes showed the same gold swirl as her, his alpha accepting her challenge.

Magpie nodded, not proudly, just a short down and up motion. She had lost count of how many people she had been sent to end. She was sure it remained in only the double digits, but she didn’t like it being high enough to lose count.

“Wolven? Have you killed wolven?” Ezekiel demanded, and again she gave a short nod. “If there’s petty theft and death, I assume break and entry? Burglary? Larson?” To each she nodded in the same manner, but something snagged her focus, easily getting her sidetracked.

“Petty theft? While I’ll admit their reason for wanting the stupid key was completely petty, I disagree about the theft. I am quite proud of that one, they wanted me to destroy the party with smoke bombs and set off the fire alarms. The date was their stupid test, but it was my idea to sneak in and take it during the dancing. I left that event clean, no one got so much as a bloody nose from me.” Magpie wouldn’t frown, she held her head high on this one.

It was one of the few times she had disagreed with a plan that they had changed it, and she had had the best time. She wondered if her pride had shown when she returned, and if that was why the months that followed had been among the hardest.

“I bet your date wouldn’t have called it a clean break.” Ezekiel joked.

She rolled her eyes. “He got to date me for six months, honestly I’m pretty sure I got the short end of that stick.”

Ezekiel’s smug look left his face, staring at Magpie as his wolf growled within him at her discussing being with another man. And she heard it. Her cocky face dip slightly, but her smug demeanour only wavered slightly. Looking away from him at the counsel she challenged them to ask their questions.