Page 108 of The Sterling Acquisition
“Couldn’t get him out of your head after that, could you?” Tallulah’s smile was knowing. “Even when you should have been focused on your corporate mumbojumbo.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Orion said, though his voice lacked conviction.
“Stage Two,” Tallulah continued, ignoring his protest, “is The Mark. The point of no return. Happens when Scent-Synced blood mixes outside the body. Triggers a bonding cascade that can’t be stopped, can’t be reversed.”
The cold feeling in Orion’s stomach turned to ice. “Blood mixing?”
“When did you two first bleed on each other?” Tallulah asked.”Though given the state of you two, you look like you’ve been doing lots of bleeding on each other.”
“Our second assessment,” Dante said with what almost looked like a wistful smile. “You punched me in the mouth and split your knuckles.”
His body had changed after that night. His heat cycles had always been erratic, but his pre-heat started almost immediately after that. At the time, he’d attributed it to stress, to the chaos of his situation.
“That’s when my suppressants and implants stopped working as effectively,” Dante said slowly. “I thought it was stress, mission variables...”
“‘Assessment’,” Tallulah repeated with obvious amusement. “That what you’re calling it?”
“We didn’t know—” Orion started, butshe cut him off.
“Of course you didn’t know. That’s the point. The Triad doesn’t ask permission. It just is.” She turned another page, revealing more diagrams that looked disturbingly biological. “From that moment on, your bodies were changing. Preparing. Your heat started going haywire, didn’t it, Orion? And Dante, I bet your Gensyn handler had a field day trying to figure out what was making their machines go off.”
He glanced at Dante, noticing how the Alpha’s breathing had changed, how his usual perfect posture had a new tension to it. Whatever was happening, Dante was feeling it too.
“Stage Three,” Tallulah said, her voice taking on an almost ceremonial tone, “is the Soul-Bite. The Sovereign’s Mark. The moment when the Omega completes the claiming by introducing the Sovereign Catalyst into the Alpha’s Dominance Anchor.”
“In English,” Orion snapped, frustration bleeding through his confusion. His hand moved unconsciously to his mouth, remembering the overwhelming instinct that had driven him to bite Dante in that moment of perfect pleasure. How right it had felt. How necessary.
“You bit him on the neck during sex and your saliva contained an enzyme that rewrote his biology,” Tallulah said bluntly. “Congratulations, you own him now.”
Orion frowned, a sudden realization hitting him. “Wait. We’ve bitten each other before... during other... encounters. Why didn’t this so-called ‘Sovereign’s Mark’ happen then?”
Tallulah’s eyebrows shot up, her lips twitching with poorly suppressed amusement. “Because, boy, it needs to happen during proper sex at climax. That’s when your body produces the enzyme. Can’t fake that part.”
Her phrasing sent a shock wave through his system that was equal parts embarrassment at Tallulah’s frankness and something darker,more primitive—a surge of possessive satisfaction that both thrilled and terrified him.
“I don’t own anyone,” Orion said, though the denial felt hollow. Something inside him—something primal and fierce—disagreed vehemently with that statement. The part of him that had felt like a circuit completed when his teeth had sunk into Dante’s flesh.
“Don’t you?” Tallulah’s eyes were sharp, assessing. “How did you feel when I suggested separating you two earlier?”
The panic. The immediate, bone-deep terror at the thought of being away from Dante even for a few minutes. The instinctive, visceralnothat had escaped him before he could even think about it.
“That doesn’t mean—”
“And you, Dante,” Tallulah continued relentlessly. “How’s that corporate conditioning holding up? Still feeling the urge to report back to your handlers? Still thinking of Orion as an asset?”
Dante’s silence was answer enough.
“The Primal Triad isn’t ownership like the corporations understand it,” Tallulah said, her voice gentling. “It’s... partnership. True partnership. The Omega chooses, and in choosing, binds them both. Can’t have one without the other anymore.”
Orion’s throat felt tight. “This is insane.”
“Is it?” Tallulah gestured between them. “Look at yourselves. Really look. When’s the last time either of you felt like you do right now?”
The word hit home because it was true. Orion felt more settled than he had in years. Like something that had been broken inside him had healed.
“Why doesn’t anyone know about this?” Dante asked. “Why hide it?”
“Because it destroys their entire system,” Tallulah said simply. “Can’t have corporate ownership when Omegas hold the real power.Can’t have Alpha dominance when the bond only completes with Omega consent. Can’t sell contracts and suppressants and bio-markers when people are capable of bonding naturally.”
