Chapter Text
The incident report lay open on his desk looking bland and innocuous. Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Clay wanted to set the fucking thing on fire. If the fuckwits weren’t smart enough to recognise a non human when they saw one, then it was their own fault and Cougar had done the armed forces a favour. It wasn’t like the fact that Special Ops was almost entirely filled with non humans was kept secret and Cougar himself was distinctive enough that he should be immediately recognisable to anyone who wasn’t blind, and given some of the abilities that Clay had come across over the years even that wouldn’t be a good enough excuse for such stupidity.
But there was no getting away from the fact that, justified or not under pack law the world over, the humans in the United States military came down hard on what they called “troublesome elements”. If Cougar hadn’t been the best sniper the military had seen in years he would have been dancing a jig at the end of a rope already. And now, because Clay had “been unable to exert a sufficient level of control over a subordinate” they were both going to face punishment. Fifty lashes with Clay holding the whip. To try and refuse to do it would be deemed treason and he would be shot, Cougar would still be flogged half within an inch of his life and what was left of his unit, his pack, would be scattered to the four winds.
Clay tried to keep his face free of expression as he stepped onto the parade ground, but between the angry and aggrieved muttering from human and Other alike it was hard. It was made so much harder when Cougar raised his head – they took his hat, the bastards took his hat! Clay thought as his bitterness grew – and in a rare moment of near defiance he looked Clay in the eyes and shook his head. Clay knew then, that if he did not take the whip and refused to punish Cougar and died for it, Cougar would never forgive him.
He looked across the ground to where Pooch and Roque stood, both perfectly still and thrumming with anger. They each of them looked ready to tear the ones who held Cougar limb from limb but were reigning in the impulse and that told Clay everything he needed to know.
Clay took the whip when it was held out to him and waited while the charges were read aloud.
“For the crime of disrespecting a human Corporal Carlos Alvarez will receive ten lashes. For the crime of striking a human, thirty lashes. For lack of remorse over his actions, an additional ten lashes.
“For not ensuring that his subordinates show sufficient respect for a human, Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Clay will carry out Corporal Alvarez’s punishment himself. Let this be a lesson for all those gathered here today. And let them note, also, my leniency. Begin.”