"Your scent changed. It changed in a specific direction. I know what that direction means."
His jaw works.
"You're a lab subject," he says, and the sentence is doing a lot of work, trying to rebuild a wall that the chemistry between us has already walked through without checking. I blink at him.
"And?"
"You've been in controlled conditions for years. Your responses are probably-"
"If you sayengineeredagain, I'm going to bite you, and not in the fun way." Something crosses his face.
"Was there a fun way in that scenario?"
"That's for me to know, and you to find out," I grumble, narrowing my eyes at him.
His eyes hold mine for a moment that goes one beat longer than tactical necessity requires. Then the building decides for both of us. A crash from somewhere nearby, not distant anymore. A sound followed by a roar that compresses the air in the corridor and rattles the damaged fixtures overhead and makes the claw marks on the wall feel significantly more relevant.
Colt grabs my hand. Full grip this time with fingers laced, which is not a tactical choice; that's not how you maintain control of a person you're extracting from a dangerous environment. That's just how you hold someone's hand, and then he moves.
We run like our lives depend on it, because more than likely, it does. The pheromone situation does not improve with movement. If anything, it makes it worse. His body heat, the rhythm of running beside someone, the way our shoulders make contact when the corridor narrows… every point ofproximity registers like a separate incident my nervous system is logging for later review.
By the time we hit the exit corridor, my rational mind is operating at roughly thirty percent capacity, and the rest has been redistributed to biological functions that are not helpful right now.
"Oh, fuck," I moan, unable to help myself. Colt makes a sound that might be a groan from a person with a more expressive range.
"What?"
"I just had a thought."
"Thoughts are a secondary concern right now."
"What if we're compatible? Biologically. Like, genuinely compatible, not just proximity-response. What if the chemistry is actually-"
He stops walking. Turns to face me with the slow, deliberate rotation of a man who is choosing how to handle what he's about to hear.
"You're thinking about mating," he grunts.
"I'm thinking aboutbiology."
"You're thinking about sex during an active emergency," he huffs out, cocking an arrogant eyebrow my way.
"I'm thinking aboutscience," I say, holding his gaze earnestly, "these are important distinctions."
"They're the same thought."
"They have different academic framings," I whine, and then bite down hard on the inside of my cheek.
He stares at me.
"You," he says, carefully, "are the most-"
Another explosion cuts off Colt’s words. Deeper in the facility, but the shockwave still moves through the floor and up through my feet. It reminds both of us that we are standing in a building that is hosting a catastrophic event, and we havenot yet left it.
Colt looks at the ceiling briefly. The look of him requesting patience from a universe that isn't offering it. Then he looks back at me.
I smile at him.
Not the wide, defensive grin I use when I need something to hide behind. Just… a smile. Smaller. Genuine. The kind I don't have a lot of practice with because there hasn't been much to aim it at.
