Chapter 94 The Bond

Evernya strained her ears to hear outside the room, but aside from her breathing and the quiet rattle of the chains binding her, she heard nothing. Left alone, bound to her chair, all Evernya could do was wait.

After five minutes, she became bored, deciding to delve into her bloodline to pass the time. She figuratively poked a hole in the mental barrier she created on instinct around her bloodline information, causing to flood in. Overwhelmed, Evernya blacked out for several minutes as her brain processed and integrated the information.

Unfortunately, before she could make sense of what her bloodline gave her, the door closed, bringing her attention back to the outside world. Evernya watched Detective Walker return to her seat, carrying her bag. After returning to her seat, Detective Walker muttered something under her breath, causing the compelling truth spell to dissipate from Evernya’s mind. Evernya sighed in relief but otherwise kept herself on guard, watching Detective Walker’s every move like a hawk.

Unfortunately, after canceling the truth spell, Detective Walker pulled out her folder and read through it. Damn it! I am sick of these stupid mind games! I bet she has that damn folder memorized already. Doesn’t she have some other poor shifter to torture? I can’t be as exciting as some mastermind criminal, though with how affected that damn truth spell is, I doubt it would take long to question suspects.

Finally, after ten minutes of silence, Detective Walker looked up at her interviewee as she announced. “On the charge of unauthorized removal of a shifter collar, we find the defendant guilty. However, considering the involuntary nature of the incident, we shall downgrade the charge to the involuntary removal of a shifter collar. This charge carries a 10,000 crystal fine or forty-five days of daily mana donation.”

Evernya opened her mouth to protest, but before she could speak a word, Detective Walker removed a certain tablet with her hand hovering over it. Scared of experiencing another shock, Evernya clamped her mouth shut as Detective Walker continued, “based on inconclusive evidence and testimonies, we shall reduce the charge of falsifying identification to voluntary use of outdated identification for which we find the defendant guilty. This charge carries a 5,000 crystal fine or thirty days of daily mana donation.”

Stupid shifter prejudiced government! This is bullshit. Just because they couldn’t find proof on the original charges, they reduced them till they could make them stick! Evernya ranted mentally but kept her mouth shut while eying the tablet with fear.

With a slight smile from the taming of her interviewee, Detective Walker moved on to the last charge. “On the charge of having an unregistered bloodline without a collar, we find the defended guilty. However, on the condition of registering the bloodline within 30 days, we shall reduce the punishment the punishment from 250,000 crystals and one year of daily mana donation to 5000 crystals.”

This is a robbery! How can they find me guilty on the last charge when I didn’t voluntarily remove my collar! Evernya mentally fumed, with her eyes flashing with fury.

Detective Walker disregarded her interviewee’s visible anger as she inquired, “How shall you serve your punishment? If you choose the mana donation, we will require you to wear a mana absorption, and tracking bracelet only removable at the end of your sentence. However, if you choose the fine, your citizen debt will rise to the sentenced amount. If you cannot pay off your citizen debt within six months, you must enter into the service of the Sepinian Mages Council until you pay all debts owed.”

I hate this, but I don’t want to deal with another interrogation if I try to fight the charges. If I didn’t have Meira, the fines would screw me, but still paying this much for bogus charges is disgusting. Through gritted teeth, Evernya replied, “I will take the fine. I don’t agree with the charges, but I’m sure you people will find something else to stick on if I try to contest.”

Detective Walker nodded, having expected her interviewee’s response before looking down on her tablet. Evernya cringed, bracing herself for the pain, but none came after several minutes.

Evernya tentatively cracked her eyes open to find Detective Walker sifting through her bag. A groan involuntarily escaped her mouth as she spotted a familiar oversized silver collar. Detective Walker glanced up at her interviewee and explained, “You must wear shifter collar within tier 2 and up cities until you register your bloodline and update your ID. Fortunately, whoever removed your collar did not damage it, saving you from purchasing another.”

Stuck bound to her chair, Evernya watched the detective the detective stand and approach her with the collar in one hand and a strange glowing red crystal in the other. With surprising gentleness, Detective Walker lifted her hair out of the way before locking the collar into place around her knock. An involuntary shiver ran through her body as the cold metal contacted her skin. Now unable to turn her head over twenty degrees, Evernya lost track of the detective.

While standing behind her interviewee, the detective touched the crystal to a circular plate on the back of the head harness, causing a series of clicks to sound. After unstrapping the harness and setting it on the table, the detective again disappeared from view. Detective Walker touched the crystal to the back of each silver band in a seemingly random order. Only after the crystal touched every band, do they unlock and swing open in the middle front.

No long compressed by the tight bands, Evernya sucked in a deep breath for the first time since becoming coherent in the room.

“Stand up.” Detective Walker ordered.

Evernya awkwardly rose to her feet, still restrained by the waist chain connected to her wrist cuffs and her ankle hobbles. Detective Walker crouched to touch the crystal to each ankle cuff, causing them to unlock and fall off Evernya’s ankles. Next, she tapped a silver plate at the back of the waist chain before holding the crystal to each cuff for several seconds before again holding the crystal to the back of the waist chain. Finally, about ten seconds later, the wrist cuffs unlocked and fell away, followed by the waist chain.

Now free, her helmet head and marks left by the restraints disappeared within seconds, causing Detective Walker’s eyes to widen. “Neat trick. I wish I could do that. There is more to you, than it seems, but I already missed my chance to find out.” Detective Walker commented in a warmer tone than she used during the interrogation.

She walked over to the tablet and presses something, causing the orange skinsuit Evernya was wearing to unstick from her body with the odd pulling sensation similar to her training suit.

“You may change into the clothes provided by your elf friend in the room next door.” Detective Walker stated.

“What about my mate?” Evernya Inquired, flashing back to the unconscious kitsune bound in the cell.

As if a switch flipped, Detective Walker freely answered. “After reviewing all evidence, including interviews and an investigation of her training, we deemed her incapable of performing any action of her own free will, voiding all charges. Personally, I found it disgusting with how many layers of conditioning they put on the poor girl. By the time she went to auction, she was nothing more than a voice-controlled doll incapable of thought.”

How dare they hurt my mate! Evernya mentally roared as a blast of force ripped out of her, launching the restraints lying around her. In surprise, Detective Walker casted a hastily built shield, protecting herself from the blast. Whoa! What the hell is wrong with me! I don’t even know the girl, and I feel like tearing this room part. Evernya thought after her brief blast of anger.

Several deep breaths later, Evernya reopened her now much calmer eyes, turning them apologetically toward Detective Walker, who was standing in the corner with a shield erected.

“Sorry about that, this mate thing is quite new to me.” Evernya apologized despite disliking the woman.

Detective Walker canceled her shield and smoothed out the wrinkles in her suit before responding, “don’t apologize. There is a reason why the law used to free your mate exists. Shifters are protective of their mates, but alphas are on a whole another level, plus you add in your young age.”

“Still, I’m not usually like this. Even after everything I’ve been through, waking up in a cell and interrogated right after isn’t the best for mental stability.” Evernya commented, glaring at the restraint chair she recently vacated.

Detective Walker waved off her former interviewee’s comment as she continued, returning to her stern, professional demeanor. “We will leave your mate to your custody since by law all recently freed slaves become minors until they can prove their mental independence. The good news is, as far as we can tell, she is healthy and should awaken any time now.”

“Why was she restrained and locked in that cell?” Evernya questioned while glaring at the detective.

Detective Walker winced, mumbling under her breath at the incompetence of keeping mate prisoners within view of each other. Which, of course, Evernya heard earning a growl. Afraid of angering the already volatile female alpha, Detective Walker quickly explained, bracing herself for the explosion. “We didn’t clear her until after your interview. If she had woken up before you, she would have taken your place.”

While fighting with her instincts to tear the woman in front of her to shreds, Evernya growled, “So you people kept an innocent girl locked in a cell just because you hoped you could interrogate a little more information from her!? Hasn’t she been through enough!? I consider myself innocent, but at least I’ve gotten used to being stuck in stressful situations. Not only was your so-called interview extremely invasive, your thugs were hardly gentle! They shocked me at least a dozen times because they thought I was ignoring them when I could barely move!”

Stuck with a furious, mated alpha shifter between her and the door, Detective Walker raised her hands in surrender as she attempted to justify their actions. “The guards are on unpaid leave, pending an investigation. You have to realize our guards typically deal with defiant and violent shifters and powerful mages, not a young female shifter like you. For what it’s worth, I am sorry for the way I treated you. The council was breathing down my neck to figure out what happened and how the removal of two supposedly secure collars happened without alerting us. Plus, tensions were high as several high-ranking council members lost several hours of memories from the same auction. I apologize for my role in this. I gained no enjoyment out of torturing a young woman like you, but I no choice.”

Evernya closed her eyes once again, following her mana system flow for a few seconds before she did something she may regret. When she reopened her eyes, they returned to their typical dimly glowing state as she continued to question, “I understand, but was electrocuting me necessary? I wanted to tear you apart after that. You have to realize I am more in the dark than you are. The last I remember was that asshole who bought my mate storming into our booth with a group of guards and my chained up mate.”

With a genuinely apologetic expression, the detective explained, “Sorry about hurting you, but I had to do it. Otherwise, you would have kept asking questions.”

“True, I probably would have. Still no excuse for putting me through electrocution. At least the other shocks were tolerable, pain wise. It just made my body convulse, but yours was all pain.” Evernya admitted, shivering from the memory of the second long shock.

Detective Walker sympathetically explained having been through the shocking protocol as a requirement to dispense it. “They serve different purposes. The guard’s shocking protocol is for neutralization of the target while mine was for punishment.”

“Either way, I would rather avoid being shocked for the foreseeable future,” Evernya commented before changing the subject. “So, do you have any idea what really happened that night?”

Detective Walker hesitated for a few seconds, pressing something on the tablet before replying, feeling she owed her former interviewee at least this much. “We don’t know for sure. That’s why my superiors put pressure on me to go after you. From what we pieced together from the witnesses who remember is, Mr. Sunfire, the person who bought your mate, somehow summoned an old one who ended up turning on him and helping you and your mate before taking him and the two slave trainers away somewhere. It seems real far-fetched, but it lines up with the off the charts mana readings we got from the area around that time. The problem we had is we can’t force truth spells on people without pressing charges, and we could find nothing to charge any of them aside from you and your mate. If we would have forced charges on any of the witness’s major public backlash would ensue, you have some very influential friends. To make things worse, as I mentioned before, most of our mages council and multiple members of Tier 3 councils, along with all their elite guards, have memory loss going back around an hour. This whole situation is a mess, and unfortunately, you were an easy target.”

“Jeez, I kinda wish I was awake for all of that just to witness it all,” Evernya commented, now understanding the situation, though still peeved.

“So do I because then I could get something out of you.” Detective Walker joked.

“If I was awake, I doubt I would be in this mess.” Evernya shot back with a small smile.

With her former interviewee loosening up, Detective Walker took a shot. “The pause about your races still bugs me. Were you really a pure-blooded feline shifter before that night?”

Evernya took the question as her cue to leave. The orange-clad shifter smirked as she strutted out the door. Now a free woman.

Next door, as the detective informed her, was a small room with a small metal table and chairs. Set on the table is a box filled with her belongings and two sets of outfits, just some basic black shorts, and t-shirts, along with two pairs of bra and panties. One shirt had a much larger tail hole to accommodate her mate’s collection of tails. Included with the outfits was her prepaid cellphone, platinum card, and both hers and her mate’s ID. Before she could examine the ID, the door opened, and a woman dressed as a nurse pushed a stretcher carrying the unconscious kitsune into the room, fortunately minus the silver restraints but still wearing an identical orange skinsuit and silver collar.

Realizing the stretcher won’t fit without moving the table, Evernya telekinetically pushed the table and chairs to a corner, allowing the nurse to enter. Unfazed by the display of magic, the nurse inquired, “Do you need help dressing her?”

“No, thank you. I think I can handle it.” Evernya replied, eyes already glued to her sleeping mate.

“I will wait outside then.” The nurse stated, before leaving the distracted girl alone.

Evernya locked the door before quickly stripping down, then changing into her outfit. She turned to the unconscious kitsune, trying to formulate a plan of attack. She is so tiny up close. I thought I was little, but I think she is at least five centimeters shorter. Evernya thought before her eyes landed on the vast array of long fluffy white tails. How can she support that many tails? They have to weigh a ton.

Evernya gently lifted one of the many fluffy white tails, finding it weighed practically nothing That has to break some law of physics, but I guess if they weighted as much as they looked, she would have a terrible time keeping balance being so tail heavy. As beautiful as these tails are, I prefer my single tail. Still, I wouldn’t mind having a couple more. Who wouldn’t want more precious tails? Am I jealous of her multi-tailness? I never felt like I needed more than one tail before. Maybe the sliver of Kitsune genetics is the cause. Oh well, something to explore in the future. For now, I need to get her dressed.

Evernya fed mana into the skinsuit to make it enlarge, then gently pulled it off the unconscious kitsune. Once it was off, she averted her eyes to protect her mate’s modesty as she spun toward the table to grab the second outfit.

A quiet rustle of sheets caused her to freeze. Afraid of waking her mate, Evernya silently telekinetically grabbed the second outfit. However, when she turned back to her mate, two beautiful ruby red orbs met her surprised sapphire blue eyes. The moment their eyes met, a final lock snapped into place.

If someone else were witnessing the event, they would see a blue chain shooting out of Evernya’s black band to meet a red chain from the Kitsune’s. The chains connected to the opposite band before weaving together, creating one purple chain linking them together permanently.