Oryen ran. He experienced a brief jolt of exhilaration as he kicked off, strides long. He realized with an electric thrill that he was faster than he'd ever been before the bite to his arm. That thrill only lasted a solitary lap though because, even at his current pace, the other werewolves were lapping him at twice the speed while appearing hardly winded.

At this rate, he would be here until sunset. If he didn't collapse first.

The sun cooked the rock beneath them, and hardly a breeze disturbed the air. The majority of the werewolves around him had removed their clothing—whatever they could—to keep cool. He didn't have that option. The tattoo on his collarbone burned hotter under the withering heat mirage and cloudless skies with a sense of foreboding. If anybody saw it, he would not have to worry about dropping dead from heat exhaustion. He would need to find a way to better conceal it, but for now he could only keep running.

At his back, Serove's gruff, twanging accent berated him. "You call that a RUN, I've seen puppies toddle faster!" "This ain't no tortoise and the hare bullshit!" And worst of all, "You sure you 'n the boss are even related?!"

At one point, Aryeta returned again with more recruits. Among them, Jezarri. She waved to Oryen as he passed. He managed to return the gesture, though his body felt composed of gelatine.

After watching her flee the tag collectors and seeing her stood next to two of the werewolves on that dais, Jezarri was the last person he'd expect to join the Kappas.

His keen ears overheard some of the introductions.

"What 'bout you?" Serove grunted

"My name's Jezarri." 

"Wha?"

"Jezarri."

"Squeaker, more like."

"Be nice," Aryeta scolded.

The new recruits joined their exercise. Some of the werewolves had completed their laps and begun the strength-training set to them by their Gamma task-master. With an encouraging smile, Jezarri slowed to keep pace with Oryen and urge him on. It was a lost cause. He was fairly certain this was what death felt like. Jezarri had to pull away or risk Serove's wrath.

With his strength waning, even the new recruits finished long before Oryen did. One of them, a middle-aged man with his hair in a thick braid, graciously delivered Oryen some water before leaving.

Serove stayed and watched him, the torrent of abuse endless. Oryen wanted badly to lash out. In all his time as captain of the Fens, he'd never treated a subordinate with the dehumanizing brutality characterized by many military operations before him. It had never worked to earn his respect in basic, only his fearful obedience. But then, that was all people like Serove wanted.

"My dentures'll need washing before you're done this one fucking simple ass exercise, Kappa!" Serove snarled as the sun set.

Stomach howling for food, mouth parched, clothes soaked through with sweat, Oryen passed his hundred and fiftieth lap. Every muscle in his body trembled and threatened to fail. Serove watched and said nothing as Oryen paused, trying to stop the quaking of his legs by rubbing his hands viciously up and down his thighs.

"Quitting?"

The triumph in that tone set Oryen's teeth on edge. He stood straight, but the moment's pause had been enough for his muscles to lock up. He made it another half lap before he tripped and went down hard on his hands. The gravel bit into his palms and knees. He tried to stand, but recognized the signs that his body no longer obeyed his commands. His vision swam and he went down again. This time, he stayed down, the smell of the stone still hot like charcoal beneath him. Serove, who had stood in the sun all day without water or food just to watch, stomped his way across the arena and picked Oryen up by the collar of his shirt. Oryen struggled to get his feet under him, even grabbing Serove's arm for stability. Anything to avoid his shirt ripping. That was all he needed, now.

Serove let him hold on, but with a look of confused disgust. "Ya even a werewolf, boy?"

Oryen barely recognized the parched gasp as his own voice. "Bitten four days ago. So no."

Serove eyed the bandages on the arm Oryen had used to steady himself against his shoulder.
"Hundred and fifty will have to do then," he said without a lick of sympathy. That he'd done it at all in the present conditions would not be enough to impress, Oryen thought.

What would, though? With a brother like his, the comparison would never be favorable.

He was half-escorted, half-carried to the barracks. His legs wobbled whenever he put weight on them, but he made it without falling. At the mess hall, the man with the braid waited with a plate of food in front of him. The smell of mashed potatoes, garlic, beef still pink and simmering all triggered a flood of saliva in Oryen's parched mouth. The glass of water, still so cold that condensation pooled under it, seemed luxury enough.

Serove said, "Oryen, meet Evrynne. He's your Delta. Head of your unit."

Oryen licked his lips and said with the scratch of the sun in his throat, "Nice to meet you and your potatoes."

Serove left. Evrynne said, "Eat up."

"Want to share?" Oryen would have preferred to birth a porcupine than share.

"It's all yours."

His mother's penchant for etiquette satisfied, Oryen threw the rest out the window and dug in. The moment the food touched his tongue, his stomach seemed to rise in his throat to meet it. He felt both sick and starving.

"So, you're Lazro's brother," Evrynne said.

"The one and only," Oryen managed around a mouthful of food.

"Serove wanted me to make it clear that you won't be afforded leniency by virtue of the fact you're related."

Oryen licked grease from his lips. "I got that memo."

"You'll get no special privileges or exceptions to the rules. You'll have the same responsibilities, the same orders, the same accommodations and meals and punishments that any other Kappa gets."

Oryen felt a bit annoyed that they assumed he wanted any special treatment in the first place. Finishing his glass of water, he plunked it down and said, "Yep, I get it. You don't need to belabour it. I've been his brother my whole life."

Evrynne held up his hands. "Don't shoot the messenger. Just making sure we're clear," he said. "When you're finished, I'll show you to your bunk."

His 'bunk' was actually a hammock at the back of a cavernous stone room lined with nine other identical hammocks, each filled with a man or woman sleeping soundly. One of them was Jezarri, her bony shape curled in the fabric like a mummy, and an empty hammock beside hers. Evrynne crawled into a bunk cut like a shelf into the wall itself, lined with blankets and pillows.

Oryen crawled into the one empty hammock—a precarious goal when his legs shook like a foal's—but he managed. Rocking gently, he managed few thoughts or fears about what the next day would hold before he dropped out of consciousness.

It felt like seconds later when he woke to the alarming sensation of being smothered in his sleep. He sat bolt upright, or tried to. Instead, he felt a thick set of arms gripping him around the middle. The hammock had been pulled tight around him like a cocoon. Muffled footsteps and voices penetrated the dark around him. He struggled to free his arms when a loud, ripping noise cut above the rest, unmistakable in its origin. Duct tape. Oryen struggled harder, knowing instinctively what that sound meant, his muscles still screaming from the brutal run of that day.

This was a hazing.

Only it was a werewolf hazing, and he didn't know, couldn't tell, if they were aware just how human and fragile he still was.

In his sudden flailing, his head connected with something hard and a shout of pain and frustration encouraged him to keep flailing. Hands like iron held him still. More ripping duct tape noises as they trapped his limbs together.

"I think he broke my nose!" a distinctly nasal voice said right behind him.

"Quit yer bitchin' and keep holding him, Noxx," said another voice. This one Oryen recognized as Serove. So at least someone was aware Oryen hadn't transformed yet.

Beside him, Jezarri's voice squeaked, "What are you doing?!"

He wasn't the only victim tonight.

Oryen said, "Haze us later, I'm tired."

An uproar of laughter around him. Another pair of hands bound his arms more closely to his sides while the others worked with the duct tape. Oryen quit squirming and sagged in his hammock prison. He couldn't feel hands on him anymore and assumed, rightly, that they'd unhooked his hammock and were carrying each end by the ropes. He swung in disorienting directions—side to side, then front to back, round in a loop when they got particularly jovial. He focused solely on keeping his food down.

"Do you have a goal in all this?" Oryen asked. "My subservience? I'm not proud. You can have it. If your goal is to embarrass me though I've got zero shame. A kiss? You just had to a—AASK!" At that moment they gave the hammock a violent swing.

After a few more minutes of directionless swinging and whispered chatter, another sound penetrated the thick bubble of the hammock that gave Oryen chills. Water bubbling and splashing. A river.

Before he could voice protest or will his sore and cramping muscles to struggle through the duct tape, the werewolves carrying him swung the hammock. Like a pendulum, he went backward and then hurled, weightlessly, forward. He crashed through a barrier of cold, water enveloping him. His hip hit the bottom first but he couldn't open his mouth to scream underwater. The hammock turned into a thick skin that bubbled and stuck to him. He couldn't see. It was pitch black in the water and no light indicated where the top or the bottom was. He thought he heard a splash nearby. They must have thrown Jezarri in too. He rolled and thrashed, barely a gasp of breath in his lungs. His hip crashed painfully into the bottom again. He tried to orient himself around it but the motion of the water kept turning him round. In his thrashing, his head crashed into something else. A splintering pain cracked through his vision. For a moment, he stopped thrashing, afraid he'd knock himself out and drown in earnest. Would they let him? Surely they wouldn't go that far. His brother's position afforded him that much.

His knees touched solid ground, flat and cool. Sinking against what he hoped to be the river's bottom, he pushed upward and finally broke the surface. He tried to gulp in air, but the soaked hammock sticking to his face choked his airways closed. He could hear them laughing—great roars and peals of it as he struggled to free himself. Every inch of his body felt leaden with stones from his run, and the duct tape seemed immovable. Regardless, he strained against it, gasping in breath where possible. He knew there was no chance of ripping free on his own, yet, to his surprise, he felt something give a little as he strained against his binds.

"Think he's had enough?" said Serove's voice.

With a last angry wrench of his shoulder, Oryen felt and heard the tape rip. Then splashing around him and hands on him, claws tearing the bindings apart. He finally emerged from the sopping hammock into dry air, gulping in huge lungfuls of it.

He was not in a river. He sat in a circular basin, about three foot deep, with a statue at its centre spewing water in four grand arcs into the surrounding pool. They'd thrown him in one of the fountains lining the main avenue of Kolraga. Beside him, Jezarri stood gasping for air, too. She looked frazzled, soaked through and wild. Her fingers ended in five-inch long claws, which she'd used to help free him.

The laughter erupted louder than before. Oryen imagined he looked far more petrified than a grown man in three foot of water should. It had been too disorienting in the water to tell. The goose egg forming on his head throbbed.

"Haha," he said. "Good one."

"That was a great one," said Evrynne. "You should plan all our hazings, Sero."

Serove twirled a roll of duct tape around his finger. The others slapped him on the back. Oryen counted seven around him. The entire squad.

Oryen stood and extricated himself from the hammock, attempting to rip off the duct tape that remained so he could once again use it as bedding. He stepped out of the fountain and was sure to splash his spectators as he did. He offered Jezarri a hand and helped her out of the fountain too, her cheeks turning faintly pink as she stepped over the rim.

"Should have seen your face," said Noxx. A short, thick-set man with blood on his lip from an obviously broken nose. It had healed that way, and would need breaking again to reset it. Oryen took a certain vindictive joy in that.

"Should see yours," Oryen said. "Least mine's still pretty."

Serove and Evrynne exchanged looks, then burst out laughing again. "You're a funny guy," Serove said. "But we got no use for pretty here." He gestured to the others. "Come on. Back to bed."

"Ah, I love new recruits," someone sighed.

"Worth the sleep deprivation for sure."

Their voices faded into the night as they left. Jezarri rang out her hammock as much as possible.

"Thanks for helping me," Oryen said.

Her cheeks turned pink again. "It's not fair. You're not a werewolf yet."

Oryen shrugged. "Don't think that matters as much as who I'm related to." He began peeling the tape off the fabric. The water had made the adhesive sticky as glue.

Jezarri used her claws and was making short work of dismantling the tape. "Don't let them sour the reunion," she said. "I know how it feels, to be separated from your family for so long."

Oryen recalled her standing on the dais with her parents. Why join the ranks of Kappas if she already had such connections? Lazro had made it clear that Oryen's lack of experience as a werewolf complicated his standing.

"Why did you join the Kappas?" he asked.

She shrugged and flushed brighter. "Didn't seem fair that my relationship bought me privileges when yours didn't." He thought he sensed a lie in the words, but he also smelled something on her. Something he'd never have picked up with his human senses, but seemed overly pungent to his lupine ones.

Pheromones?

Oryen almost felt guilty, but mostly he just felt tired. If she'd joined him because she fancied him, she'd be disappointed.

Bedding sorted, they made their sopping way back to the barracks . The squad had already curled up in their perfectly dry hammocks. Oryen went to sleep in his soaking wet clothes.

It would take them ages to dry, but he didn't have a spare pair. The clothes he'd arrived in hadn't been returned yet. He couldn't afford to take anything off to hang up and dry. He pressed a hand against the cold, wet fabric, over the tattoo, and prayed tomorrow would be easier.