I had been lying to myself about the cage.
Not the room. The room was obvious. Locked door, no exit.
I could work with obvious.
The problem was the people.
The council wanted me contained and cooperative. The agency would want me useful and obedient. Dominic wanted me safe, which sounded better until safe started looking a lot like kept. Rhain wanted access, and I didn’t yet know whether that meant help, claim, strategy, or all three.
Everyone had a preferred version of me.
The day passed without producing any of the rulings everyone was pretending not to wait for. No decision on Solberg’s access request. No decision on joint custody. No decision on what, exactly, the council intended to call me when it finally stopped calling me protected.
Just the same update, delivered twice with different deputies and the same careful lack of information.
Deliberations ongoing.
Worship
Catalina
By day eight, the bond under my ribs had begun to settle from crisis into condition, and confinement had found its rhythm.
Breakfast at seven. Escorted library windows, where I kept searching for rival-clan bonds and kept finding the same carefully maintained absence. Council updates that said almost nothing with impressive formality. Dinner at six. Final check at nine.
Then the room sealed, and the night belonged to me.
Mostly.
I woke at one-forty-seven with my face hot, my mouth dry, and the ghost of a hand at the base of my throat.
The bond was supposed to be a low wire behind my sternum, not a telephone. It carried distance, direction, and strong emotion. Usually. Apparently sleep loosened the rules, because Dominic Graves having a wet dream didn’t stay politely on his side of the line.
A hand at my throat.
A mouth at my collarbone.
Heat.
Want.
The line fraying at the edges.
I sat up in the dark.
The room was silent. The window was black. The lock was still engaged, which meant nothing had entered the room except the heat his dream had left running through me.
Not mine.
Definitely not mine.
I put my fingers against the side of my throat. “Absolutely not,” I said to the room and to the bond. More so to the six-foot-three dragon enforcer asleep somewhere beneath me, dreaming with no subtlety at all.
I cursed in my head in three languages. Then I got out of bed and dressed.
Dark leggings. Soft long-sleeve shirt. Boots that didn’t echo. Hair up.
The lock on the door belonged to the council’s schedule. It wouldn’t open between nine p.m. and seven a.m. without authorization from the outside, which made the door useless.
