My body goes still.Not frozen...Listening.
He feels the difference.I know because his eyes sharpen, because his breath stutters, because the hand around my wrist trembles once before steadying.
“Too much?”he asks.No one has ever asked me that as if the answer mattered.
My chest tightens.“No,” I whisper.
His thumb moves once.A small stroke over my pulse and heat spills through me, soft and frightening.
Behind us, the silver collar hisses, and the moment fractures.Knox releases me instantly and turns, putting himself between me and the box.I don’t resent it this time.
Krishka mutters something I can tell is foul even if it’s in a language I don’t know.Akasha jerks her hand back, shaking out her fingers as if burned.
“What?”Aldron asks.
Krishka’s face is grim.“The collar is not only a threat.”
Akasha looks at me, and I already know I will hate what comes next.
“What is it?”I ask.
Krishka answers when Akasha doesn’t.“It’s keyed to your blood.”
Knox’s shoulders rise, and I place one hand lightly against his back before I can think better of it.He freezes, but so do I.The muscle beneath my palm is hot and hard as stone.The contact should scare me, especially with his body still vibrating with barely contained violence.
It doesn’t.It grounds me.Maybe it grounds him, too, because the growl building in his chest doesn’t break loose.
“Keyed how?”I ask.
Krishka folds her arms.“If placed around your throat, it would bind to you, not like the crude restraints they used before.This is worse.Cleaner.Designed to suppress panic, weaken resistance, and make verbal commands harder to disobey.”
The room tilts, and my hand drops from Knox’s back.
No.No, no, no.Not again.Never again.
My lungs refuse to work.
Ari is suddenly beside me, not touching, just there.“Breathe, Briana.”
I try, but nothing happens, and the collar blurs in my vision.
A command collar for my throat.To make me quiet.To make me obey.
The bar disappears and the velvet returns.Hands.Smoke.Teeth.My own voice is trapped behind my tongue.I can’t breathe.
Knox turns, and for a second, panic flashes across his face so raw it cuts through mine.He crouches, not standing over me, not touching.He lowers himself until he is beneath my eye level, enormous body folded into something careful.
“Briana,” he says.
I shake my head, but I don’t know what I am denying.The collar.The memory.The fact that my body is betraying me in front of everyone.
Knox’s voice drops.“Look at me.”But I can’t, the panic has me locked in place.“It’s not an order,” he says quickly, rough and urgent.“A request.Only a request.”
That reaches me, and I drag my eyes to his.Brown, not black.Worried, not pitying.
“Good,” he says.“That’s good.”
My breath stutters in.Then sticks.
