Shift by Rachel Vincent

bleeding, and it looks like you’ve broken a wing. You’re in good company.” I held up my own graffitied cast. “But mine’s been fixed. If yours doesn’t get set properly, you can’t fly, can you? Ever.”
    His narrowed eyes and bulging jaw said I was right. That I’d found his weak spot.
    “Our doctor is just a couple of hours away.” Dr. Carver had already been called in to treat Owen. “But you won’t get so much as a Band-Aid until you tell us what we want to know. Starting with your name.”
    The thunderbird cradled his crooked arm, but his gaze did not waver. “Then I will never fly again.” He looked simultaneously distraught and resolute—I’d seldom seen a stronger will.
    “Seriously?” I took a single step closer to the bars, judging my safety by distance. “You’re going to cripple yourself for life over your name? What good will you be to your…flock, or whatever, if you’re jacked up for the rest of your life?”
    Doubt flickered across his expression, chased away almost instantly by an upsurge of stoicism. “The rest of my life? Meaning, the three seconds between the time I spill my guts and you rip them from my body? I’d say a broken arm is the least of my problems.”
    I rolled my eyes. “We’re not going to kill you.”
    “Right. You’re going to fix me up and toss me out the window with a Popsicle stick taped to one wing.” He shrugged awkwardly with the shoulder of his good arm, leaning against the cinder-block wall for support. “I’ve seen this episode. This is the one where Sylvester eats Tweety.”
    “If memory serves, Sylvester never actually swallowed, and while I love a good poultry dinner, we can’t kill you without proof you’ve killed one of ours. And you don’t match this.” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the fourteen-inch feather I’d found next to Jake’s body. I’d stored it shaft-first, to preserve the pattern of the vane.
    The difference was subtle but undeniable. Our prisoner’s feathers were dark brown, with three thick, horizontal black stripes. But the one in my hand had two thick stripes and one thin, in the middle.
    Marc stepped up when the thunderbird’s forehead furrowed as he stared at the feather. “We can’t kill you, and you’re entitled to water and two meals a day.” At least, that’s what the council said a werecat prisoner was entitled to. We didn’t actually have any precedent for how to treat prisoners of another species. “But we don’t have to tend your injuries or let you go, so you’ll stand there in pain for as long as it takes you to start talking.”
    “Then I suppose I should make myself comfortable.” The thunderbird’s gaze openly challenged Marc, who had at least ten inches and thirty pounds on him, without a hint of fear.
    Marc’s inner Alpha roared to life; I saw it in the gold specks glittering madly in his eyes. I laid my casted arm across his stomach an instant before he would have rushed the bars. Which would only have convinced the prisoner he was right in refusing to talk.
    I’d just realized something that might actually come in handy. The bird was clearly devastated by the thought of never flying again, in spite of his willingness to endure it. He hated our low-lying dwelling and the thought of “huddling” in it.
    “Yes, make yourself comfortable.” I extended my good arm to indicate the entire basement. “It stays pretty warm in here, thanks to the natural insulation of earth against cinder block….”
    The bird’s forehead furrowed and his legs twitched, as if he were fighting the impulse to stand. Or to try to flee. His dark gaze roamed the large, dim room and finally settled on one of the only two windows—short, narrow panes of glass near the ceiling, which came out at ground level outside.
    “We’re underground?” His odd, raspy voice was even rougher than usual.
    “Yup. You’re not only in our ‘ground-level hovel,’ you’re beneath it. Trapped in the earth.