(Racquetball likes to chase the hose. I think the hose won.)

Palace felt horrible. No, worse than horrible. His throat throbbed sharply the entire way around and he felt surprisingly cold. 

"He's starting to come back around but we should still have a few minutes. Get more heat blankets on him." A female voice said from somewhere that sounded very far away. "He's still in shock." 

Weight was quickly added to his body but if they were heat blankets, they didn't make a difference to him. He was freezing and his muscles ached from shivering so hard. 

"Everyone clean up and get away from him now, please. He should be fully awake soon. We'll continue the shock treatment once I can be sure that it's safe to be close to him again." The woman's voice echoed in his mind. He wanted to chase her away from him, but all he could manage was a flick of his ear. 

His mind went dark for an unknown amount of time before a gentle pressure moving between his ears woke him. He let a low growl slip from his panting mouth, but the hands barely paused in their attention. 

"It's alright, Pal. Your Knight is finally here." An unfamiliar voice said soothingly. 

He wasn't soothed, but he couldn't even lift his head, so there wasn't much he could do about the man. His ears picked up several other people as he lay there, immobile, making him wonder if he was still locked up in the empty room. 

"Is he still shivering?" Asked the female voice from earlier. 

Silence answered her, but judging from the sigh and sudden sharp pain he felt in his shoulder, the quiet had earned him a shot of something. 

"Keep going. Even if he isn't responding much, he still got that growl out. Do whatever you can." She said, making Palace want to growl again, but he couldn't find the strength. 

He heard several footsteps running around him but his eyes refused to open to even allow him the luxury of seeing who was messing with him. 

"I was hoping that it wouldn't be too deep or infected, but luck wasn't on our side at all. We should have gotten to it sooner." The woman said. 

The hand gently petting his head stilled, its fingers curling softly into his thick, dirty fur. 

"Can't we give him more antibiotics?" The raspy voice near him asked. He had a feeling that whoever it was that was speaking right then was also the one touching his head. 

"We already dosed him with triple the recommended amount." The woman said. 

A pair of footsteps came closer then and another hand was added to his coat. It stroked down along the blankets covering his side, then returned to just below his neck to continue the action. His frustration mounted as the second hand refused to go away. After about five minutes of attention, he managed another quiet growl. 

"There we go. Keep at it, boys. Hopefully with some more attention and another bag of fluids, he'll be doing a bit better." The woman said, making Palace want to groan. 

He really didn't want to do anything, but if showing that he was awake would get the people to stop touching him... 

Grunting, he gave his head a dull shake, feeling both hands retreat from his body with the action. 

"Alright, both of you back off for now." The woman said, making the person next to him get up and hurry away. 

When he didn't hear a second person do the same, he let out a slightly stronger warning growl. 

"Get away from him. Now." A dominant male voice ordered. 

There was a moment of tense silence before he heard whoever was close to him slowly get up and start walking away. A faint yet familiar scent met his nose with the person's movement, but his foggy mind couldn't quite place it. 

"Alright, we'll leave the blankets in with him and see how he holds up." The woman's voice said as Palace heard her footsteps come closer. 

He felt something being tugged from his skin and figured that it had been one of the fluid IV lines she'd mentioned. Darkness took over again soon after, leaving him to rest until his nose picked up on something that it couldn't ignore. 

His body felt like it weighed twice as much as before, but he refused to remain on the floor when he could smell something absolutely delicious nearby. It took him what felt like forever to finally push himself up into a sloppy sitting position, and he was already panting hard by the time he managed it. He did notice that even though his head felt heavy, it was missing the familiar weight of the metal collar and few remaining pieces of chain that he'd grown accustomed to wearing.  

Palace lowered his ears and tilted his head to either side. His neck ached from the movement, but he couldn't not be happy that the painful collar was finally gone. It left a question in his mind, however, as to why they had done it. 

The wolf's movements on the cameras were being monitored by quite a few people from the other side of the wall. Jared and Jamie were both there, as well as Loren and Knight. 

"Bet he's glad to have that thing off." Jared mumbled, more to himself than to anyone present. 

He saw his brother nod beside him, but frowned when Knight began to speak. 

"I bet he's freaking out wondering why you had taken it off and what restraint device is going to replace it so that someone could try to get at him without him killing them." 

All three of them glared at Knight, earning an acidic look in response. 

"I'll kill all of you if you even consider doing anything to him." He said without an ounce of hesitation, as if he weren't surrounded by two lions and a vet who was one hell of a shot with a tranquilizer gun. 

Jared stood from his chair and stepped forward, crossing his arms over as his chest as he glared down at the shifter. "You know that we aren't trying to hurt him, or get to him. You should also know that it's not wise to threaten two lions." 

Knight turned to face him, not even seeming the littlest bit concerned. 

"Back off, or I'll bring you to your knees before you can even blink." 

Jared was just opening his mouth to snarl when he felt the pressure he now knew was Knight's ability, press in on his mind. 

His brother quickly stepped in front of him, his teeth bared as a growl left his throat. "Stop, or I'll shred you, bird." He threatened. 

Jared wasn't sure if the aggression would actually make Knight back off, or just spur him on more, but thankfully the pressure in his mind dissipated, allowing him to give a relieved sigh. 

Dropping back down into his chair, he waited for Knight to slowly sink down into the one he'd been using closest to the wolf's enclosure before speaking again. "Alright, let's try to figure some of this out before we tear each other apart either mentally or physically." He said, gesturing slightly with his hands. 

"The wolf is your brother. I know that your name is Knight, so what is his?" 

Knight fidgeted for a moment before glaring at the floor. "Palace." 

An unintentional chuckle slipped from Jared's lips, fueling Knight to take a faint stab at his mind. Jared winced, but held his lion's anger back with a bit of effort. 

"Sorry, your names just fit together so well." It was kind of cute. 

Knight bristled, pushing a bit more pain into Jared's mind before pulling away. 

"I don't want to hear you think that, damn creep." Knight hissed, making Jared flinch back. 

"You... heard that?" He asked, surprised, even though he probably shouldn't have been since Knight could get into his head. 

The guy narrowed his eyes on him, looking like he wanted to rip his head off. In fact... Jared's eyes lowered to Knight's hands and he pursed his lips when he saw that the guy's fingernails had turned into partial talons. 

"Sorry, I didn't mean anything by it." He said awkwardly. "So, you two are brothers. I'm assuming that your parents were a wolf and a hawk...?" 

Knight leaned back in his uncomfortable plastic chair and rolled his eyes. "No shit." 

"That's quite surprising. Most of the time it's extremely difficult to reproduce when dealing with such different species of shifters." Loren added, earning a slightly less hostile glare from Knight before he returned his attention to Jared. 

"I guess daddy had good aim." Knight said with a tone dripping with so much venom that Jared could feel his hatred in his mind. 

Swallowing down his own emotional reaction to the anger he felt surging through him from Knight, Jared thought about letting Jamie into his mind to try and mitigate some of it... 

He glanced at his brother, who was staring right at him with worried eyes. He's probably trying to get into my mind. He'd been blocking him out ever since he'd felt Knight come in. 

Reluctantly, he shook his head slightly, then turned his attention back to Knight. If he let Jamie in, then Knight would probably be able to hear him, too, and possibly attack him. It also felt like his mind would be too crowded, even though he was used to having his pride communicating with him regularly together. It just felt like it would be too much. 

"Alright, so, I'm going to assume that you're the younger brother?" He asked, getting a slight nod from Knight. 

Jared nodded in response, then licked his lips in thought. "You look to be around nineteen or twenty?" He stated, though it was more of a question. 

Knight looked a little confused for a moment before he just shrugged. "Honestly, I forgot, but that sounds right." 

He forgot? 

The guy's eyes narrowed on him and he felt a bit of pain pulse behind his eyes. 

Sorry. He quickly thought. The pain disappeared a moment later. 

"Alright, so you're around nineteen or twenty. We haven't seen your brother's human side yet, so could you tell us his approximate age?" 

The guy's soft greenish red eyes lifted toward the feeding panel they'd used earlier to slide the meal Palace was still slowly enjoying into his enclosure. Knight had suggested the stew, and it was clearly a hit with his brother. 

"He's somewhere around twenty-four." He said, a hint of sadness in his voice that was magnified so harshly in his mind that Jared felt his breath catch in his throat for a moment as he tried to push through the emotion that had bled over from Knight's mind. 

Jamie thankfully took over the questioning, probably noticing the trouble he was having. 

"So, that would lead us to the more serious questions. It's clear by some of the paperwork that was recovered from the home you were kept in that you two were taken when you were younger and sold to the man who owned that estate." He said, getting a nod from Knight and taking his attention away from where Palace was, breaking through his sadness enough to give Jared a chance to calm down.

Jamie leaned back in his own chair and crossed one leg over the other before continuing. "The records also showed that Palace had been sold multiple times under the condition that if he killed his new owner, that he was to be returned without any refunds." 

Knight glared up at the ceiling as a pulse of frustration and hatred shook Jared's mind painfully. 

"Yes." Was all Knight said as he returned his attention to Jamie. 

"I can understand that he's a very interesting cross, but it doesn't make sense. The prices for him were astronomical." Jamie said. 

Jared didn't understand that part, either. He had a gorgeous animal for a shift, but to bring in the amount of money that had been written on the documents they'd read over? It made no sense. 

Knight remained silent, but Jared could still feel his presence in his mind. I wonder... He carefully nudged at the conscious at the edge of his thoughts. When he felt it retaliate in warning, he clenched his jaw and shoved it. 

A plethora of emotions flooded into his head as he found himself invading Knight's hectic mind. The guy's eyes had widened to saucers at the intrusion before his expression turned positively livid. 

He was forced from Knight's mind in an instant, then mentally attacked to the point where he was falling out of his chair as tears fell from his tightly shut eyes. 

A loud roar echoed in the small room, followed by the sound of a chair being knocked to the floor right before a body joined it. Another loud roar and the pain in his mind began to subside. 

Jared's eyes slowly opened, but it took him several seconds to blink away the black dots dancing before his vision. He knew that the headache behind them would likely not disappear for a while. 

When he saw his brother's lion looming over Knight on the floor, he tried to speak, but his voice refused to work. 

Jamie! He shouted to his brother, finally allowing him to hear his thoughts. 

The lion let out one more growl before straightening back up and flicking one ear. 

About time you let me in. What the hell is going on? Jamie thought to him. 

Jared slowly managed to push himself up to lean against the wall with Loren's help. He was panting hard, but he couldn't blame Knight for the attack. He would have done the same thing... and now he knew why the guy seemed so angry at the world. 

Leave him be. It was my fault he did that. 

Jamie's large lion glared at him over his shoulder. He's hurting you! 

Closing his eyes, Jared leaned his head back against the wall and sighed. 

Yeah, he did. I would have hurt me, too. 

His brother tilted his giant head in question before turning and stalking toward him to nuzzle against his face. 

Why? Jamie finally asked. 

Jared let his eyes crack open just enough to see Knight push himself up to sit. Their eyes met and his narrowed with a hatred Jared now knew he deserved. 

I pushed my way into his mind. 

Jamie's lion sat down beside him, his mouth open as he panted. 

I'm going to assume that you discovered something there that he'd been trying to hide? Maybe the reason why his brother had cost so much? Or why he'd been sold when Knight had just  been tied up for years? 

Jared swallowed the lump in his throat and gave a faint nod. 

His big brother was sold and abused multiple times, and each time, Knight saw the paperwork being signed. Heard the men talk about how great it would be to tame him and get offspring that were wolf griffons. 

There was a long pause between them as his words sunk in. 

He's... like Spots. 

Jared felt his lips turn down into a frown. 

Yeah. He's a cross-shifter.