Page 369 of Immune

The others stay quiet. Not absent, just there listening silently. They make space around her words.

Dakota’s hand lifts, then stops before it reaches me. Then she whispers, “It doesn’t feel like freedom anymore. I don’t think it ever really did. It feels like I left you outside because I was scared.”

Something splits open in my chest, slow and painful.

“You didn’t leave me anywhere,” I tell her softly.

“No?” she pushes.

“No.”

“I did,” she insists, right before her fingers touch my shirt lightly. Just the fabric, but I feel it everywhere. “I was scared that belonging would turn into another cage. I was scared if I let all of you in, I’d disappear under it all. But you were there when there wasn’t even a bond. You found me anyway.”

My throat tightens and every word I’ve kept bottled pushes against my teeth. I don’t say any of them. Only her name comes out. “Dakota.”

She moves closer before she quietly confesses, “I don’t want you outside.”

The room suddenly loses air, and then it loses more when her hand slides up my chest and stops over my heart. It’s thundering under her palm, beating too loud and fast, not calm at all.

“Bite me, Xeon,” she says, and I’m sure she feels my heart stop before it beats even faster. “Not because I need the bond. But because I wantyours.”

Behind her, Ewan’s breath catches.

Fletcher closes his eyes for a second.

Kaito looks at me and gives the smallest nod.

Space. Permission. Pack.

My hand rises to Dakota’s face but I stop before touching. She leans into my palm and makes the choice herself. Her skin is warm and soft, olive tone decorated with pale patches that look like a map to every hidden part of her, and I brush my thumb across her cheek. Her eyes don’t leave mine, not even for a second.

“You’re sure?” I ask.

She gives me a crooked look that sends a bolt of something through my body. “You’ve really picked now to become difficult? Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

Her mouth twitches. “Good.”

I bend slowly, slow enough that she can change her mind and slow enough that every single bond in the room feels like the shape of consent before instinct can touch it. My mouth brushes the side of her throat and I feel her pulse jump.

So does mine.

She smells like soap, rain, honey, bruises, heat building under healing skin, and Dakota. Not Vector’s chemicals. Not blood and smoke. Not fear alone.

Dakota.

Her hands grip my shirt and she whispers, “Do it.”

The thin hold on my control snaps at the need in those two small words, and my teeth sink into her throat before it becomes a full thought in my brain. Dakota gasps and the sound cuts through me with a mixture of pleasure and pain, both tangled together bright and sharp.

The bond opens slowly at first. No explosion or rumble of thunder. Just a single line drawn through the dark from her to me. Frost and steel. Her breath shudders against my cheek and mine follows while the bond slides under my ribs deep and cold and perfect, not empty of feeling but too full for noise. Itsettles like a blade laid down carefully between us, like a door closing against a storm, like silence turning into shelter instead of distance.

Then Dakota moans.

Low.

Broken.