Apologies

Jill Hammer was in line at the store, getting her wallet out as the cashier was waiting for the money. He placed the money in the cashier's hand instead.

She looked back toward him, and nearly jumped.

"Sorry." Grayson apologized. It was the one thing he'd wanted to do for the last four years. She didn't answer. "I didn't mean to startle you, I just wanted to pay for your things."

Jill adjusted her purse. "Why, what are you doing here? We went to the completely opposite side of the bubble."

"Yeah, you did." All four of them wanted to not only separate, but Devin promised he would take them all the way to the other side so they would never run into each other again on accident.

This was no accident. "Could we talk?" He showed her where he would wear a holster. "It'll be friendly, I promise."

She still didn't look comfortable with that, but she shrugged and pointed to a nearby table. They went to sit down at it. "What do you want to talk about?"

"How out of touch me and Billy were. I've been wanting to tell for over three years," he confessed. "We never became part of Devin's team, but he didn't use any hypnotic control to show us why our ways needed to change. It was just the daily life around here. He kept us in his apartment for a week and let us watch television. To see how similar it was to ours."

She seemed to start to relax some. She still had a strange sensation on his senses, but he understood it now. It wasn't her fault anymore than it was his. "After the week, he brought us out to associate with the outside world, on a leash. We didn't take it too well at first, but eventually we understood." The threats stopped. The shouts stopped. They were starting to understand the differences between the different kinds of werewolves.

They understood why the human world only dealt with feral werewolves. They saw more of the actual past with the werewolves and could see how each side messed up. It took less than three months before they were no longer on any kind of leash, and it took less than a year before Devin let them move to apartments nearby.

Keeping them under surveillance during their changes was a must, their hormones were going crazy. Neither of them never wanted to become a werewolf themselves though. Even now, they could change if they needed to. They'd been trained to change.

They still preferred not to. Most of the populous chose the human form, but when a werewolf walked the street, it didn't cause any unnecessary attention. Mostly it tended to be younger werewolves looking for their mates, mothers bonding with their cubs, or young cubs that didn't prefer being in their human shape yet.

After all of that, Billy and him felt awful about how they treated Jill and Lily Hammer. They didn't deserve it. In fact, they were even better at controlling their emotions than them.

After he shared their experiences and past, he let her know that him and Billy personally had someone that used to be their next door neighbor get shredded by a werewolf. She was just a young friend in elementary school. Three boys watched it. One of them ended up needing therapy for the rest of his life. The other two, became cops. They used their badges to track down any suspicious werewolves, get them to reveal themselves, and take them down.

"I think I understand now," she finally said. "It was trauma and ignorance. I'm sorry for your friend."

"No werewolf needs to be, any more than any person." He passed some ketchup to her.

"You already paid for my meal." She finally gave him a genuine smile. "I don't need ketchup too." Then, it started to fade. "You are really all the way over here, just to-"

"Jill!" Devin's voice shouted toward her as he bounded as a wolf straight up on her table. "Where's Lily?"

Lily? "Is she in trouble?"

"Everyone is, and it's my fault," Devin said as he dropped his ears and body lower.

Grayson couldn't judge him. "We came out here to do more than apologize. We need you to come to the Wolf Islands with us."

"The Wolf Islands? For what?" she asked.

" . . . to be on a TV show." Grayson looked toward Devin's tail just dead and unmoving on the table. "We should get Lily and I'll tell you what happened four days ago."

Four Days earlier

Devin Oliver Olivacea had been over at Billy's watching a movie with him and Grayson. He still kept close tabs on them, but they had become more understanding of the situation. He had them growing a hydroponic garden to help them learn to feed themselves while they felt guilty about the plundering.

Everything under the ocean was brought down. If it was created, it descended from the surface somewhere before. They could never forget that. Simply looking outside the window always revealed that.

They lived inside the ocean floor. Outside of their bubble was every kind of deep sea underwater creature out there. The bubble itself needed to be very large to cover an entire city. For the longest time, they were more interested in watching outside the bubble then even watching TV. They even went and roughly knocked on his door once at 2:00 in the morning because there was some kind of giant squid on the side. They were afraid it was attacking.

It didn't take very long before it lost interest, everything was more enforced than it looked. While they were settling down to watch a movie, there was a knock on their door.

Grayson went to the door and the director of Devin's team was there with Mads.

"Devin," Mads called out. "I had a feeling you were here if you didn't answer the door."

Mads? He hadn't seen Mads for some time, he seemed to distance himself from the team. "What is it?"

"Something happened, Devin," the director said to him. "These men are involved too, so go ahead and sit down."

Devin sat down with everyone. The director pushed something into the TV. A prerecording CD format?

"This is from the Wolf Islands," he said. "I'm sorry. Especially you, Devin." He pressed play.