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Chapter 3
(Ebony P.O.V)
The first thing I noticed when I started to wake up was that I was on something soft, and I was warm, wrapped tightly in something. I opened my eyes to see that I was laid out on the back seat of a jeep, wrapped in a heavy, black coat. I sat up, and saw that I was alone.
Victor's scent lingered in the cab, but he wasn't here. I tried to open the door, but found it locked. I frowned. I was locked in. Well, he did say that he wasn't going to hurt me, and my instincts told me I could trust him. Maybe he'd gone to get food, and didn't want to wake me up? I took in my surroundings. The car was more comfortable than either of the cages I'd been kept in. It was smaller than my cage at the Island, but larger than the cage at Alkali Lake. That had just been a dog crate, really.
I heard the lock click, and the driver's door opened. Victor climbed in. After the door was shut behind him, he turned in his seat, and dropped a wal- mart carrier bag on the floor in front of me.
"There are clothes in there, but first, I'm going to have to clean up your wounds." He said. He pulled out a pack of wipes from a first aid kit, and some bandages. When he opened the packet of wipes, the smell hit me. It was like the smell of the Island, and Alkali Lake. I flinched, and whimpered.
"Shh, don't worry. These will just clean any dirt from your wounds." Victor said. "I'm going to need you to take off your top, so I can clean them all, Cub." I did so, and he reached out, and picked up one of my arms. Using the wipes, he cleaned all the cuts on both my arms, and then my upper body. He then bandaged them up. "Don't you have the ability to heal?" he asked.
I nodded. "The white coats just didn't give me enough food and rest after the adatium."
"The what?" he asked, frowning.
"Adatium. They put me on a cold table, and lowered me into a tank of water. The needles injected me with it."
"Adamantium, you mean?" He asked, his voice dangerously quiet. I nodded, shrinking away from him.
Victor growled. "Not only did he not tell me there was another Feral, but he also failed to mention he'd bonded the Adamantium to two people." He looked at me. "Relax, Cub, I'm not angry at you. Just the guy who did it to you. Stryker. Now, did they hurt you anywhere else?"
I nodded. "My legs." I said.
"Alright. Let me see. I'll clean and bandage those as well."
Five minutes later, I was putting on the jeans, long sleeved shirt, black hoodie and coat that had all been in the bag. As well as the trainers. When I was dressed in the new clothes, Victor started driving.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"To get you something to eat. And then go somewhere to get you more clothes. Then, we'll head for someplace safe to stay."
"Kay." I said, and I sat back in my seat.
"So, Cub." He said after a while. "How did Stryker and his team get hold of you?"
"My parents were mean to me. I ran away. The men picked me up off the street."
"Did you fight?"
"Yeah. There were just too many. And I'd slept in a dead end alley."
"I'm going to have to start teaching you how to defend yourself, Cub. Lesson one; never get backed into a corner that you can't get out of."
I nodded, taking in the advice. I may need it some day. "You're not going to send me back to my parents are you?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No cub. I'm not. I'm going to protect you. I don't think sending you back to them would help that at all." He looked at me in the mirror. "Don't worry cub. You can trust me. We're family now. Family sticks together. Got it?"
I nodded. "Got it." I had a faint smile on my face. I was going to have a real family. Victor pulled up in a car park, and got out. I opened the jeep door, just as Victor reached it. He reached in, and picked me up. He closed the door with his free arm, and carried me into what seemed like a dinner. I wouldn't know. I'd never been in one.
Victor put me down on one of the seats in a booth, and handed me a menu. He picked one up, and looked at it. I copied him, but all the lines on the pages looked like nonsense to me.
"What do you want to eat, Cub?" he asked.
I shrugged.
"There has to be something on the menu that… wait a minute, can you read?"
I shook my head. "No one ever taught me. And I can only count to five. I had to teach myself that."
"Seems like I'm ordering for you then. And I'm going to have to teach you to read and count. Alright then. What do you normally have to eat? Before you ran away?"
I shrugged again. "Bread. Some meat if I was good, and stayed out of the way and did my chores." I answered. "Maybe some cereal."
(No P.O.V)
Victor was quickly realising that he'd have his work cut out for him here. Not only had she been used as an experiment, but her home life had been worse than his own as a kid when she'd lived with her so-called 'parents'. He was going to have to teach her a lot more than he thought.
"Right, I'll just order you a small breakfast. Eat what you can of it. I'll also get you some juice or something. I'm going to have to teach you how to read and I'm guessing write, too, as well as your numbers."
He ordered the Cubs food, and his own, and when it came he noticed how she only picked at it. Even though he knew she was starving.
"Come on Cub, eat up. I know you're hungry." She started to eat a bit quicker, but not much. Then he realised what she was doing. "Ebony, you don't need to make the food last. Whenever you're hungry, I'll get you something to eat, alright?"
The corners of her lips tilted up slightly again, and she started eating quicker. Ebony only finished half the food, but Victor knew it was normal. She wasn't used to having so much to eat.
He paid the waitress, and left, carrying Ebony out, just like he had in. He put her back in the back seat of the jeep, and got in himself. Victor then started to drive. He needed to get things for the cub, and food to stock up the cupboards at the house.
A/N: Please let me know what you thought!