Kitty Goes to War by Carrie Vaughn

with adrenaline and uncertainty.
    What did I tell them? That they should at least try to overcome the instincts to fight and run? That life—a human life—was worth living? They needed therapy, and I was vastly unqualified to be a therapist. Especially when Ben was right and I ought to be getting a little therapy myself. But who else was going to help them? Who else could begin to understand?
    “Tyler, sit down,” I said. “Please. You’re driving me crazy.”
    He looked at me, shot me a skin-searing glare—then ducked his gaze and slouched into one of the chairs across the table. I was amazed; I tried not toshow it. Happy with that little victory, I let Walters continue hunkering. I didn’t want to press the cornered wolf, as it were.
    “Well,” I said. “What’s next?” Thinking out loud more than anything. I didn’t have to do anything but listen to them talk. That’s what therapists did, right? If only.
    “Van should be here,” Tyler said.
    “He’s not. I’m sorry,” I said curtly.
    “We’re a pack. We should be together,” Tyler said.
    “That’s your wolf talking. You have to take care of yourselves right now. Vanderman hasn’t done a very good job looking after you, has he? He hasn’t been a very good alpha. That’s what got you all into this mess in the first place.”
    “What do you expect us to do?”
    “Talking’s a good start.”
    Tyler’s body language was nearly human. He was slouching unhappily, but his attention was on me. He was leaning on the table, his fingers laced together. Not clenched like claws. Walters, on the other hand, was almost cowering. I could see the ghosts of ears pinned back and a tail clamped close to his body. There was the kind of deference a canine showed because he was offering respect to a leader. Then there was the kind of deference he showed because he thought he was going to get smacked down. Because he didn’t know what was going on, and he was afraid. Walters hadn’t said a word, yet. He justkept staring at me. If I could break that stare, I might be able to shake him.
    “I respect your loyalty to Sergeant Vanderman. But if you want to go home, if you don’t want to end up locked in a cell for the rest of your lives, you’re going to have to let him go and move on.”
    “It’s not right,” Tyler said. “It feels like abandoning him.”
    “Is this some army ‘leave no man behind’ thing?” I said, trying to keep my temper—and sarcasm—in check. The last thing the room needed was more aggression.
    “You don’t understand.”
    “What Vanderman did to Yarrow, Crane, Estevan—how does that fall into the philosophy? Isn’t that leaving someone behind?”
    Walters got up and started pacing, just a few feet along the back wall. I ignored him. Let him work off the nervous energy; I could only keep these guys calm by staying calm myself.
    I continued. “Captain Gordon seems like he was a good guy. It sounds like he really took care of you. Vanderman shows all the signs of only caring about the power, without any of the responsibility. Now, I don’t know how much you really know about werewolves, how much Gordon really taught you. But it’s not just supposed to be about the power and playing follow-the-leader. You still have to at least try to be human, if you want to keep living with people.”
    “We’re not people,” Tyler said in a rough voice.
    That made my stomach sink. I held on to my sanity by clinging to the belief that I was human—maybe a different kind of human with some wacky supernatural problems going on, but human all the same, with a husband, a job, a mortgage, a family, and all the other good stuff.
    If Tyler didn’t believe he was human and a part of human society, what chance did he have?
    “Did Gordon warn you?” I said. “Did he tell you what it was like before he did this to you?”
    Tyler winced, as if he was trying to remember something he’d forgotten—or that the remembering was difficult. “It seems