10. Theo #3
Idris closes his eyes for one breath. When he opens them, they look darker.
He leans in slowly. His mouth touches my shoulder first, warm and careful, barely more than a kiss.
My whole body reacts. Heat moves under my skin in a soft rush, with something gentler and humiliatingly sweet.
I make a sound before I can stop it, a low little moan that slips out against the silence of the room.
My face burns. “Sorry.”
Sloane’s fingers tighten around mine. “Nothing to be sorry for, sweetheart.”
Idris doesn't lift his mouth from my skin when he speaks. His voice vibrates against me, and I nearly make the sound again. “You’re allowed to feel it.”
Then his teeth set.
The bite hurts for one bright second. Sharp pressure, skin breaking, Alpha biology striking through me like a match.
My free hand grabs Idris’ shoulder, and Sloane’s hand closes around mine as my back arches.
The sound that leaves me this time isn't small enough to hide.
It trembles through the room, embarrassed and needy and mine.
Idris holds the bite steady.
He doesn't deepen it too far. I can feel the restraint in his jaw, in the way his hand stays open at my ribs, in the tremor that passes through him when my body answers. Something warm unfurls from the bite, a thread of black tea and rain slipping under my skin causing my purr to start.
It is still damaged at the edges, still rough from the interrupted heat and crying and everything Garrett put in me, but it’s mine.
It moves from my chest into the place where Idris’ mouth is sealed to my shoulder, and Idris shudders so hard his hand tightens once before he forces it loose again.
Sloane bends over our joined hands and presses his mouth to my knuckles.
When Idris releases the bite, he does it slowly. His tongue touches the mark once, instinctive and careful, cleaning the small bead of blood before he pulls back. My breath breaks. I'm shaking with the aftershock of the bite.
Idris looks wrecked. There’s blood at his mouth. My blood. The sight should frighten me, but it doesn’t. He wipes it away with the cloth Dr. Mercer hands him and keeps his other hand visible, away from me, waiting until I reach for him first.
So I do.
My fingers touch his jaw. His eyes close for half a second, and when he opens them, there are tears there.
Not falling. Held. He stays on his knees in front of me while Dr. Mercer steps in to check the bite, her gloved hands gentle, her voice soft and clinical enough to keep the room from tilting too far into feeling.
“Clean,” she says. “Temporary anchor response is present. Pulse elevated but within expected range. Theo, can you tell me how you feel?”
I look for the answer inside my body. The bite aches, warm and new beneath the air. Idris is there, a thread I can touch if I breathe toward it.
But Garrett isn't the only Alpha the room can name anymore.
“I feel…” My voice catches. I try again. “I feel like I chose.”
Dr. Mercer’s expression softens. “Good.”
Zana’s pen moves across a final line on the document. “I’m noting Theo’s verbal confirmation after the bite. Dr. Mercer, you’ll attach the vital readings and your medical opinion that the consent was valid?”
“Yes,” Dr. Mercer says. “And my recommendation that Theo not be left with Garrett Crane under any circumstances during active recovery.”
Sloane’s head lifts, and for the first time all night, something like air enters his chest.
Zana gathers the signed papers into a folder, leaving copies on the table.
Her face has gone hard again, but not cold.
“From this moment forward, Theo isn't alone with Garrett. Not in a room, not in a hallway, not for a recovery check-in. Placement conversations go through me or Dr. Mercer. If Garrett wants to discuss Theo’s status, he does it with witnesses and records.”
Idris finally rises from his knees, but he doesn't sit beside me until I tug once at his sleeve.
Then he comes carefully, fitting himself on my other side so I'm between him and Sloane again.
His arm goes along the back of the sofa, not around me yet.
I lean into him anyway, pressing my newly bitten shoulder gently against his chest because I want the pressure there.
The bite gives one warm pulse, and my purr stutters out in answer before I can stop it.
Embarrassment moves through me again. Idris feels it somehow, maybe through the temporary thread, maybe because he watches too closely. His mouth lowers to my hair, and he speaks against it quietly enough that only I can hear.
“Still nothing to be sorry for.”
My eyes sting. I turn my face into his shirt and breathe in black tea and rain, then reach blindly for Sloane until his hand finds mine.
He holds on immediately, his thumb moving over my knuckles with shaking tenderness.
For a while, the room is all paper and witnesses and the faint ache of teeth in my shoulder, but underneath that is something Garrett didn’t write.
A mark that will fade, but not before it tells the truth.