“I am not a dog,” I scoffed.
A glimmer of amusement moved through his expression.
“No,” he agreed quietly. “You are considerably more difficult than any dog I’ve ever encountered.”
“Then take it off.”
“I’m not going to do that, my pet.”
“You can’t just?—”
“You’re mine now, Raiza.” There was a finality to it that cut through the rest of my protest before I could finish forming it. “It’s about time you accepted that.” His hand dropped, dragging down the side of me and just glancing against my ass. The reminder was very clear.
This time, I chose to heed it.
My fingers fell away from the collar. I told myself it was tactical. I told myself it was simply a matter of choosing my battles.
I did not think about the fact that the metal was warm against my skin.
I did not think too hard that something about wearing it felt right.
I tried not to think about how much the words ‘my pet’ lit up a piece of my soul.
He grunted in satisfaction as he led me out of the closet, but he stopped in the hall just outside, then lifted his hand to the base of my throat and tapped the gem at the center of the collar.
A slender chain extended from it. It was silver, fine enough to catch the morning light that cut through the windows at the end of the hall. He took the end and wound it once around his wrist without looking away from my face.
“You said something last night,” I managed. “About showing off your newest acquisition.”
“I did.” He turned, gave the chain a single unhurried pull, and walked.
He didn’t take me toward the elevator.
He took me down.
There was a staircase at the far end of the hall. It was wide and sweeping, the kind that existed to be descended rather than merely used. I went down it beside him with my head up, which was pure stubbornness, because my heart was doing something mortifying behind my ribs. The dress the alien tech had made swept around my legs. The silver at my throat caught the light every time I moved.
The floor below his penthouse was clearly where his officers gathered in the mornings.
Nine or ten of them, arranged around a long table with several mugs that might have been full of coffee and holographic maps I wasn’t supposed to see. When we came through the door, the conversation stopped the way sound stops when you fall through ice.
They looked at me.
I had spent my entire life being looked through. Raiza Nix: too small for the front lines, too stubborn to die, the girl who drew the joker card and somehow kept breathing after. I was not a person people fell silent for.
They looked at him next, and their faces did something complicated.
One of them had risen slightly from his chair. His eyes moved from my face to the chain in Talyn’s hand and back to my face with an expression I recognized even if I’d never been its cause before.
Envy.
Talyn walked through the room slowly, which was worse than being hurried would have been. He stopped near the long windows that looked out over the city and turned.
I understood what he wanted.
I turned too. My chin came up. I don’t know where that came from. Maybe it was the last scraps of soldier in me, or some other thing that I’d figure out a different day, but I turned, and I stood beside the most powerful man in the city in his dress on his leash, and I let them look.
The room was very quiet.
