So far, he'd managed to avoid being alone with T'Challa. It was common courtesy; he knew damn well he made the king's hackles rise by being here, and his presence was only suffered because T'Challa owed Steve a favor. (Imagining T'Challa as a small black kitten with all its fur puffed out made him feel a little better about the antipathy a fair number of the Wakandans in the palace displayed towards him, but not much.)

But his luck ran out one day when he was in the gym and T'Challa came in, followed by a pair of his omnipresent guards. (Of course they were all shifters; he could smell it on them a mile away.) The women's eyes narrowed at the sight of him, and he could swear their irises flashed golden for a moment.

Goddamn territorial cats. He'd never even met another shifter before this, apart from the guerrilla fighter who'd turned him, and now he had too many to deal with, and they all hated him. It wasn't even his fault.

"Don't mind me," he muttered under his breath, grabbing his towel. "I was just leaving." He wasn't anywhere close to done working out - this close to the full moon, he had a lot of pent-up aggression to work out - but he wasn't going to stay here, either.