Animal

Breakfast

I step out of the car and look up at the dark-brown massive structure before me. The Henry mansion was unsurprisingly larger than both the one I was given and Mr. Anderson's. I glance at Greg as he set my suitcases at my feet, he gives me a nod.

"This isn't goodbye, Scrappy," Ms. Adams comes to stand beside me. "We'll see each other around and I might even come to a few of your fights."

I cross my arms and focus on the large wooden door ahead of me. "I only have one question," I say. "What about that whole speech about how you were going to leech off my influence?" Its not that I care about not being under the thumb of Ms. Adams and Mr. Anderson, but I'm wondering.

She smiles. The front door opens and two men rush out, both in basic black suits. "Things change, but nothing really changes, Miss Armstrong." She says cryptically, eyes following the men who grab my suitcases.

I frown. She taps her cane on the ground three times and I stiffen, arms falling to protect my ribs subconsciously. She smiles at me before turning her gaze on a smiling Harrison as he waved at us from the doorway. "Now if you will excuse me, I have to speak with your new owner," she steps forward and I watch her return Harrison's smile with her own vibrant one and I have a gut churning feeling that I am not really escaping Ms. Adams and her plans at all, I am simply being moved to another square on the chess board, right where she wants me.

* * *

I lift my chin and lower my shoulders, allowing the doctor to examine my neck. It felt odd not to have the collar wrapped around my neck. I swallow hard, and a itch develops around my neck and I want nothing more then to scratch at it, but I would rather not slit my own throat.

"You have second-degree burns on your neck," Dr. Saint says, a frown pulling her thin lips down in an unusual angle. "The collar had to be used more then two times on you to cause this." I'm sitting on an uncomfortable metal bed the morning after I arrived at the Henry mansion, in a room on the first floor. Apparently, its an infirmary.

"People actually use the collars?" Harrison asks from his place in a chair in the corner of the room. He was squeezing a small blue ball. "I thought they were just for... insurance?"

I eye him as I swing my legs and lower my chin when the woman steps away. "I ran away?" I say simply.

"Why?" He asks, seeming truly curious.

I stare at him for a minute before glancing at Dr. Saint. She continues to gaze down at her tablet, pretending she wasn't paying attention. She was though, she had to be. I frown at the man. The more time I spend around him, the odder he seems. So extremely...naive. He's just... not what I was expecting.

"I wanted to go home." I answer his question, he is the boss, right?

"You couldn't go home?"

My frown deepens. Is he serious? "Alright," Dr. Saint walks back to me, "I'm going to put this cream on your neck and wrap it." I run my gloved fingers gently over my naked neck, careful of my claws. It feels good not to have the collar pressing into my neck.

"What about the new collar?" I ask.

"You can wait to put it on her until after her neck has healed, right Maggie?" The CEO asks. I raise an eyebrow as Dr. Saint sputters.

"I suppose..." She glances at me. "I suppose... just for a couple of hours."

She applies the cream and wraps my neck in just a few minutes. "Finished," she says, balling her left over gauze into a ball. "Come back here in a couple of hours, Scrappy."

"Will do," Harrison says and stands. He smiles at me, "come on." He walks towards me and towards the infirmary's door. I step off the table and hesitate before I follow him into the hall. He begins walking briskly down the huge arching hallway. He's wearing a blue and yellow flower printed button up shirt and blue pants today. I nearly laughed in his face when I had first caught sight of him an hour before, but I held strong. "I have to do something for a couple of hours... CEO business and all of that." He slows down enough so that we're walking side by side. "But..." We turn into a huge kitchen, "you and Charlotte can hang out until I'm done."