Chapter 3 · Fangs at the Gland

Chapter 3: Fangs at the Gland

"Give it back." My voice comes out wrong, scraped low, nothing like the voice I use on the floor.

Kane doesn't give it back. He holds the folded sheet over my head with the hand that isn't pinning my wrist to the locker door, and he reads it slow, like he already knew what it would say before his fingers found it taped under the lining.

"Elite Combat Trial." His eyes don't move off the page. "Candidate R. Calder. Score ninety-eight point two." A pause that lasts too long. "Rank sealed."

"It's nothing. Old paperwork."

"It's higher than my placement score." He finally looks at me, and there's something in his face I've never seen on him before — not smug, not cold. Hungry. "You scored higher than me and you buried it. Two years. You let me put your name on cleanup duty for two years."

"Let go of my wrist."

"Why'd you hide it?" He steps in closer, and the gap between us, already nothing, disappears. The torn zipper of my vest gapes where he ripped it open ten minutes ago, cold locker air hitting skin that's gone hot everywhere he's near. "You could've had the public board. The real one. The one with your name spelled right."

"Because the second my name's on that board, I'm not invisible anymore. And invisible keeps me alive."

"Invisible keeps me from knowing what you are." His hand — the one not holding the sheet, the one still locked around my wrist — tightens. Not enough to bruise. Enough that I feel every one of his knuckles against the bone. "I'm done not knowing."

"You don't get to be done. You don't get a vote. You struck my name off the board an hour ago in front of the whole night shift."

"I struck it because I didn't know you could run a King's trial without blinking." His mouth is right at my ear now, breath hot, and the scent that cracked open in this locker the first time he got close to me tonight — that scent is back, worse, filling every inch of air between the metal walls. Mine. His. Both, tangled up until I can't tell whose heartbeat I'm feeling against my own ribs. "Now I know. Now this —" he lifts the sheet, crumples it once in his fist, "— is mine."

"It's not yours. I earned it."

"I didn't say I earned it. I said it's mine. Your name stays off that board unless I say otherwise. One word from me and the Trial Office finds out you forged a sealed score to dodge placement — unless I'm the one who signs off that it's real." His thumb drags once over the inside of my wrist, over the thin skin where my pulse is slamming. "You want the board, Calder? You go through me."

"That's blackmail."

"That's leverage. Learn the difference before you end up under someone worse."

I shove against his chest, and he doesn't move an inch, just leans his weight forward until my spine's flat against the cold metal door and the hangers inside rattle once, sharp, in the quiet. His knee comes between mine. Not an accident. He's done it on purpose, and I hate how my body answers before my brain gets a vote — the ache low and sudden, traitorous, pooling exactly where he wants it to.

"You're shaking," he says, and it isn't a question.

"I'm pissed."

"You're not just pissed." His face drops lower, past my jaw, and his nose drags the length of my throat, slow, deliberate, like he's reading me the same way he just read that score sheet. "You smell like you want me to finish what I started on this door ten minutes ago."

"I want you to let go of my wrist."

"Say it again and mean it."

I don't say it again.

His free hand lets the crumpled sheet drop — I hear it hit the concrete, a soft, stupid sound for something that just ruined my life — and both his hands find my hips instead, dragging me off the door an inch, then slamming me right back, harder, like he needs the sound of it. The locker bank groans. Somewhere down the row a loose vent panel buzzes against its screws.

"Kane." It's not a warning. I don't know what it is.

"Shut up." His voice has gone rough, half a growl, nothing left of the Alpha-heir calm he walked in with. His grip on my wrist flexes once, hard, pinning it flush against the cold door beside my head. "Don't move."

"I'm not moving."

I'm not. I couldn't if I wanted to — his whole body is a wall, his heartbeat slamming against my collarbone, the heat of him soaking through what's left of my ripped vest. His mouth is open against my throat now, hot, and I feel the scrape of something sharper than teeth should be — elongated, pressing a blunt line into the skin over my gland, right where the scent is loudest, right where every instinct in my body that isn't mine anymore is screaming at me to tip my head back and let him.

"If I mark you right now," he says against my skin, low enough that it's less words than vibration, "nobody touches that trial sheet. Nobody touches you. You'd be mine before Silas's people land tomorrow."

"That's not a question."

"No." His teeth press harder, not breaking, just promising. My fingers curl into his shirt without my permission, fisting the fabric like I could shove him off and pull him closer at the same time. "It's a countdown."

Somewhere past the locker bank, the hallway speaker crackles once — the roll-call mic, left hot on the night circuit, feeding straight to the duty office where anyone could be standing right now with their hand on the volume dial.

His mouth is at my throat and he does not bite.

Almost.

Not the last inch.