Chapter III: With eyes wide open
Aran awoke groggily on what he estimated to be the next morning, although he felt tired, like he had not slept at all. His chest still felt sensitive, but did not hurt as much as before. Additionally, he noticed that he was no longer wearing the nylon harness. Instead, his body appeared to be fully covered by a piece of fleece clothing. Even his hands and paws were encased in the soft fabric. The only limbs that were left out were his head and tail.
As the black wolf tried to pull his mind out of the world of the sleeping, he noticed that it was pitch-black around him. No, wait, it was not dark, he was blindfolded! Furthermore, there was something in his mouth, something rubbery that connected to the small yet hard surface which gently pressed against his muzzle.
He tried to spit it out, but the object refused to budge. With a little effort, Aran explored the strange item that did not appear to show any interest in moving out of his mouth, only to conclude that it was... a pacifier? Why was there a pacifier in his mouth? And why was he blindfolded?
Further fumbling around showed that the pacifier was held in his muzzle by a small harness that probably closed at the back of his head. Removing either the harness or the blindfold proved to be impossible, as the fabric around Aran's hands was too thick and did not supply any grip at all.
The wolf groped around, trying to find anything that could tell him where he was. To his left, he found a series of sturdy bars that were far enough apart to put his hands through, yet too close to one another to allow his entire body to pass. Bars? Did Kaiser put him in a cage?
On the other side, his hands struck something soft and... furry? At first thought, Aran expected it to be another person, so he held his breath. Observing nothing but complete silence, he touched the soft object again and felt around. It definitely had the shape of a dog, although it was probably feral. The dog did not move and neither did it emit body heat.
With both of his hands, Aran tried to lift the object, concluding that it was rather light. He then decided to sniff around, only to conclude that the dog was not really a dog, but rather... a toy? What was going on here? First a blindfold and a pacifier, now a stuffed dog? What did Kaiser do to him? Why did the Doberman keep him captive? Why him, of all people?
Aran sniffed the air once again. There were not many scents to discover, but he did pick up the trace of another person, most certainly canine and possibly female. He failed to identify any of the other minor scents he could smell, but moreover, Kaiser's scent was not among them.
Feeling stiff from lying on his back, Aran turned to his side towards the stuffed dog. During this shifting, the wolf noticed something that threw him off balance even more. There was something unusual touching the base of his tail.
As well as he might, Aran fumbled around his tail, but yet again, his fingers could not find any grip. However, his suspicion was raised as he held his breath in suspense. Still groping his waist, he suddenly heard a soft crinkly sound, after which he discovered that there was a relatively thick layer of clothing around his waist.
He summed up the deviations once more: blindfold, pacifier, stuffed dog, bars, thick clothing. 'No, not clothing', the wolf thought. The blindfold did not make sense, but the bars did. Whether they belonged to a cage or a crib did not matter. Kaiser obviously wanted him to stay where he was. The thick clothing was not underwear, but rather a diaper.
Was Kaiser a psychopath? There had to be a reason why he was clothed this way. No person in his right mind would dress a twenty-year-old like he was... a cub? 'When Mike asked me what I wanted for my twentieth birthday, this was not what I had in mind', Aran thought.
More and more questions tried to hijack the wolf's train of thought, and unfortunately, with success. The questions succeeded each other rapidly, but the answers held off and as far as there were any, they were only fragments. Aran was falling into an anxiety attack, but since he had never experienced anything like that before, he had no clue of what was happening to him
Little did he know that anxiety attacks were actually a common symptom of withdrawal from ursaurine. He had used the drug for only a couple of weeks, but for the effect to last, one had to administer a dose at least once every forty-eight hours. It had been close to three days since the last time Aran had ingested his last pill.
With his tail between his legs and ears folded against the back of his head, Aran instinctively curled up, trying to make himself as small as possible. In his mind, it made perfect sense that he could evade or escape from whatever scared him, but it obviously did not. He whimpered, terrified of something threatening that was not actually there.
Since the wolf was blindfolded, he did not know that there was a baby monitor in the room, connected to a portable receiver. Said receiver was carried by a female Border Collie, whom immediately responded to the scared wolf's whimpering. After all, this was an indication that the wolf was awake.
The black wolf was too far gone to hear the pawsteps on the stairs, produced by the collie hurrying towards him. Neither did he pick up the sound of a door being opened and closed again. The collie quickly turned the baby monitor off, not wanting to hear herself in stereo.
She then turned to the wolf in his crib, whom looked like he could start thrashing any moment. The collie unlocked the side of the crib and lowered it, so she could pet Aran on his head.
"There, there," she said with a warm voice, gently ruffling the wolf's headfur.
The sudden input of sound caught Aran's attention, although it did not calm his anxiety.
"Kathfew?" he managed to get past the pacifier, attempting to call out Kaiser's name.
"Don't be afraid, Aran," the collie replied, ignoring the wolf's question, "I'm right here for you."