Page 48 of Designation Prey

Robert sighs heavily, squeezing the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “I don’t have any recommendations to give you off the top of my head. It’s very hard to find a Dominant who can give a submissive with a prey designation the appropriate care they need. Any Dominant can fuck a submissive, but to put a submissive with those needsfirstis not something a lot of Dominants are capable of. Prey submissives in particular are hard to resist and require a Dominant that has an unusual level of restraint. On the rare occasions a Dominant is good enough to be with a prey submissive, they usually wind up bonding. Most often the Dominant is unable to walk away once he’s been with a submissive oriented that way. And I’d argue that the prey submissive is so docile and oriented towards being owned that they would have great difficulty not choosing the Dominant they initially interact with. You have to choose the Dominant wisely. How soon do you need someone?”

There’s a long pause. Liam is afraid he knows what’s about to happen. This man is going to ask him to help.

“Oh. I sort of hoped you would be there. We don’t know if he’ll be looking for someone permanent, and we expect his ability to resist his designation is quite high, he’s done it for so long?—”

“He will want someone permanent,” he interjects. “And just because he’s been denied doesn’t mean he has the desire or will to continue resisting.” Liam can feel his blood pressure rising.

He hears a male voice in the background. “Daniel needs one man and that’s it. That’s all he’severwanted,” the person says.

Prey designation is rare. Rare enough that hearing about a submissive named Daniel makes his heart clench in grief.

He will never get over the loss. His own failure and culpability led to Daniel’s death. He’d been told by General Burrows that Daniel died, didn’t make the transition to stasis, and he’d tried to find out if that was true, but had gotten nowhere.

And yet. Part of him has always wondered if that was a lie. And now he’s getting a call about another prey submissive with the same name who would have gone into stasis a few years ago….

Liam knows it’s unlikely, but he’s instantly hoping that somehow this is abouthisDaniel.

It’s foolish. “I don’t think you mentioned. What is Daniel’s surname?”

“Burrows.”

Liam sits down heavily on the couch. His voice is rough. “The person you’re with now, Daniel’s brother… is he Logan Burrows?”

“How do you know that?” Robert asks.

His eyes are welling with tears and he has to clear his throat. “Because Daniel told me when we were together. Daniel Burrows wasmysubmissive. But Daniel’s dead. That’s what I was told. I don’t even know if I believed it, but there wasn’t anything I could do,” he says. It sounds like an excuse to his own ears, though he doesn’t know what he could have done to discover the truth. “He’s been gone for three years now.”

“Who told you he was dead?” Logan demands. He can tell Robert has put him on speakerphone.

“Your father. The general. He called me a week after Daniel left and said he’d been put into stasis but that he hadn’t made the transition. That can happen if the submissive has a bond. With Daniel’s extreme designation, it was… it was believable.”And he’d been so sure it was his fault, already so swamped with grief at his own failure that he’d accepted the lie.

He’d hoped Daniel was in stasis somewhere. He’d scoured death records and never found anything but couldn’t find any proof he’d survived and was in stasis, either. The last three years his life have been an unpleasant blur filled with regret and nightmares, punctuated by work—a desperate quest to make sure other submissives with a designation like Daniel’s get a chance for happiness when his boy didn’t.

It made sense for Daniel’s father to tell him Daniel had died so he’d stop looking. Daniel’s father was a powerful man and Liam had been blocked at every turn.Eventually, he’d had no choice but to accept that Daniel was gone.

“Daniel was your boy,” Robert repeats.

Logan says, “Danielisn’tdead. My father was just an asshole with too much power, and he probably told you Daniel was dead so you’d go away. My father put him into stasis, but now he’s gone and we’re bringing him out.”

“When?” Liam demands. “I have to be there. He—He’ll need me. And I need him. My god. I won’t believe he’s alive until I see him,” he says, voice rough with emotion.

“Did you love him?” Logan asks.

“I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone,” Liam rasps. “I did love him then and I still do.”I just didn’t know it, he thinks. Didn’t say it because the relationship was too new and Daniel wasn’t in a position to make choices for himself. And because they’d thought it was temporary.

Daniel is Liam’s biggest regret. He didn’t deserve Daniel and didn’t treat him like he deserved, like he was loved and cherished. In hindsight, he’s examined their time together and can see so many mistakes.

“He’s perfect just as he is, you know. Gorgeous and smart. Funny and wise about people. But he’s shy, and it took him a while to come out of his shell. And I miss him every single day. He loved you so much, Logan. Loves, I suppose.” A sound comes from his chest that could be a laugh. “I can’t believe he’s alive.”

They plan to meet up the following day to get Daniel out of stasis. Liam doesn’t sleep a wink. He paces and finds himself lost in thought and memory, staring at nothing. He goes to the gym at three a.m. but starts crying on the treadmill and walks the city until the sun rises instead.

Daniel is alive. Daniel has been so badly abused by the people who were meant to care for him. By his father and even the military, both conspiring to change and ruin him rather than accept him as he was.

Liam eats breakfast, showers, and then shaves. He can’t help but look at himself critically in the mirror, assessing how he looks now compared to three years ago when he first met Daniel.

When they’d met, he’d been a man entering his prime. Muscular, fit, confident, and handsome. He’d been a good-looking Dominant who had the respect of his peers and a job he loved.

He’d helped a lot of submissives, partnered with them, encouraged them, but he’d never wanted any of them to be his own. He’d always known he was a temporary partner and that had been fine.

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