Page 15 of Savage Surrender

“No.”

I turn toward him. “Compelling rebuttal.”

“We don’t tell her before the fitting.”

“Don’t—”

“She’ll go for his throat. And every time Montgomery needs leverage, Bianca offers him her body and calls it a plan. If she attacks him tomorrow, they put her in secured quarters until her heat. No.”

“So we hand her another reason not to trust us.”

“Until we’re out of this house and out of the collars.” His voice lowers. “Then all five of us see everything.”

The laptop chimes.

Index complete.

One result sits beneath a file named with fourteen meaningless numbers. I open the preview, and a clinical header fills the screen: TruScent — Trial cohort. Dosage tables follow it, then scent-response baselines and a column of designations.

F.M. — T.B. — W.D. — O.W.

Us.

Objective: pharmacological redirection of established scent-match orientation to designated target (W.M.).

Established.

Not created. Not induced. Redirected. They weren’t trying to build a match. They were trying to cover one that already existed.

When Bianca was only fourteen, they tried to separate us for the first time.

I scroll to the result.

Response: failed.

They failed at sixteen. They failed at twenty, even if we ended up ensnared. They could cut off my nose, and Bianca would still be under my skin until the end of time.

“So, are we keeping this from her too?”

“Just for now.”

I could walk down the hall and tell her. I should.

The word established sits on the screen. Ours before the drugs, before Whitney, before they tried to choose for us. I read it twice before my fingers move again.

I encrypt all of the files and bury a copy in the archive only Mason can reach.

Her voice carries from down the hall, dry and bossy. She’s ordering Freddie around and enjoying every second of it. From the hard-on he keeps trying to hide, he is too. I snap the laptop shut. Weller is already on his feet, setting his mouth into the neutral line he uses in hostile boardrooms.

Bianca slips past him with her hair twisted into a knot that’s coming loose at the sides. Her thin shirt does nothing to hide the outline of her nipples, which I would very much like to put in my mouth. Her tiny shorts could stop traffic.

“Find anything useful?”

“We’re getting our ducks in a row. The ducks are spreadsheets. You’d hate it.”

She looks from Weller’s boardroom face to my hands on the laptop. No smiles for us. “That’s not what I asked.”

No. It isn’t.