“I need to go to the bathroom, though.”
The admission costs more than it should. Not because the need itself is humiliating—it’s biology, it’s universal, it’s theparticular, democratic requirement that doesn’t care whether you’re an Omega with a ten-thousand-plus kill count or a kitten on a windowsill. But because admitting the need in this context means admitting that my body can’t perform the basic logistical sequence ofstand up, walk to bathroom, close doorwithout assistance, and admitting that means acknowledging a vulnerability that the void considers operationally unacceptable.
“Oh,” Cassian says. “Okay.”
He stands.
The motion is immediate—the rolling chair pushed back, his body rising with the fluid efficiency of someone who has assessed the situation and determined the next action without requiring a committee.
“It’s okay.” I say it quickly—too quickly, the words crowding each other on their way out of my mouth with the particular urgency of a woman who can see the trajectory of the next sixty seconds and is trying to redirect it before it arrives at the destination she’s anticipating. “I can just crawl out of the bed.”
Crawl.
Victoria Sinclair.
Kill count beyond ten thousand.
Offering to crawl to the bathroom.
The dignity of it is staggering.
“She doesn’t need to get Hawk,” I add, the correction arriving before it’s been requested because the part of my brain responsible for predicting other people’s behavior has already computed the probability that Cassian’s next action will be to summon my feral Alpha, and the probability is high enough to warrant a preemptive dismissal. “He probably needs a break or he’ll be an overprotective puppy.”
“I wasn’t going to get Hawk.”
He says it matter-of-factly—the vocal equivalent of a man correcting an incorrect assumption without making aproduction of the correction. Then he steps to the bedside, lowers the hand rail with a practiced motion that suggests familiarity with the mechanism, and before my brain has time to compute the trajectory ofthisparticular development?—
He scoops me up.
Into his arms. One arm under my knees, the other supporting my back, the lift executed with a fluidity that I don’t expect and my body doesn’t resist because the motion is too fast for resistance and too controlled for alarm. I’m suddenly off the bed and against a chest that is warmer than the air and firmer than the mattress and carrying me with an ease that doesn’t match his frame.
I give him a look.
The expression is the void’s standard-issuewhat do you think you’re doing—eyebrows slightly elevated, mouth set in the flat line that communicates displeasure without specifying its source, the overall composition of a face that has been transported without its consent and wants the transporter to know that consent was not obtained.
“I’m not only cunning,” he says, and his voice is even, unhurried, carrying the particular composure of a man who is fully aware of the look he’s receiving and is choosing to address it with information rather than apology. “But I’m pretty strong despite my slim build.”
He adjusts his grip. The motion is minor—a slight redistribution of my weight that demonstrates, rather than explains, the strength claim he just made. His arms are steady. Not straining. The muscles engaged but not taxed, operating within a capacity that apparently has significant overhead.
“Though you’re extremely light.”
I huff.
The sound is indignant, involuntary, carrying the particular offense of a woman whose body mass has been underestimated by a man who is currently holding it.
“I’m at least one-eighty.”
He practically bicep curls me.
The motion is casual, demonstrative—a single, controlled flex that lifts my body several inches higher in his grip and returns it to its original position with the mechanical efficiency of a man performing a calibration test on equipment he’s confident in. The ease of it is insulting. The ease of it makes my eyebrows climb toward my hairline in an expression that I don’t control and don’t attempt to because the void has apparently decided that being bicep-curled by a stranger falls outside its emotional jurisdiction.
I gawk at him.
The expression is the closest thing to open-mouthed surprise that my face produces—a fractional parting of my lips, a widening of my eyes, the overall composition of a woman who has been lifted like a dumbbell and is reconsidering her assessment of the man doing the lifting.
“Take away at least five or ten pounds,” he says, and the clinical delivery doesn’t fully conceal the concern underneath. “You’ve probably dropped weight. When all this is over, we’ll feed you.”
We’ll feed you.
