Chapter 9
LYN
I almost—almost—go to the lab instead of medical.
There’s more testing to be done…more work, more data review. I had my vitals up the whole time I was testing my device—the device that is currently in my bag—and I should be able to figure out what’s going on.
But I also know that Kaelion—Dr. Rhyss—whatever the fuck he is to me now—will kill me if I go back to the lab, and that he’ll know when I scan in.
…so I go to fucking medical.
I call Thalara on my way over and ask her to meet me there, dying to tell her what’s going on and at least have someone to hold my hand. I’m buzzing with adrenaline, totally embarrassed, and honestly very freaked out. I still have no idea if I’ve given myself permanent brain damage.
Yeah. It’s good I’m going to medical.
Thalara is waiting in the annex of the clinic when I get there, jumping up to walk over to me. She frowns when she sees my clothes, cocking her head.
“You are…wearing Nyeri’i sleeping garments,” she says. “Is everything okay?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Thalara doesn’t ask any more questions—not yet. She just squeezes my hand and leads me to the front desk, where I check in under my student ID. The attendant glances once at my borrowed clothes, then keys something into their terminal with a noncommittal hum.
“Room three,” they say, nodding me through.
The clinic is quiet this early—just a few other students and researchers milling about, most of them half-asleep. Thalara bumps my shoulder gently, and I brace for the subsequent involuntary orgasm…
…but there’s nothing.
What the fuck?
“You going to tell me what’s going on or do I have to guess?” she asks. Her eyes widen, then, darting back over my clothes. “Oh my…did you sleep with Rhyss?!”
I glare at her. “What? Why would you even think that?”
“Well, you’ve always asked the question ‘what that tentacle hair do’—”
“That was a joke, Tay,” I mutter. “I’m not…no. No, I didn’t sleep with him. It’s so much worse than that.”
She chews anxiously on her lip. “You don’t have to tell me…”
“I want to,” I say. “It’s just—I tried out the pain translator last night.”
“On yourself?”
I give her a tight nod.
She sucks in a breath. “And?”
We step into the examination room, where a cot is waiting with a desk beside it. A screen inside instructs me to wait for a nurse.
I shut the door behind us and look back to Thalara.
“It translated pain into pleasure and I had an orgasm that wouldn’t stop until the device was physically removed,” I murmur. “And now…now every time I’m touched—”
I pause, thinking about when she bumped my shoulder.
“Flick me,” I say.
Thalara blushes bright red. “You want me to…”
“Just—” I mime the motion. “Like this. My shoulder.”
“But what if you come?”
“I’m testing it,” I say. “That’s the point.”
Thalara still looks skeptical, but she reaches out and flicks my shoulder with two fingers. It stings for a second, but…
…nothing happens.
I blink.
“Again.”
“Did it work?”
“Obviously not, or I would be doubled over moaning right now.”
Thalara’s entire face turns pink.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Just…do it again, okay?”
She flicks me again, harder this time.
And there’s still absolutely nothing.
I look down at myself, then back at her. “Okay. So…it’s not everyone.”
I start to pace as Thalara takes a seat in the little chair next to the desk.
My thoughts are…racing. Not just because of the implications of all this for me, but because of what this means for the technology.
If what I think actually happened did in fact happen, then this could be used for truly sinister purposes—for forced mate bonding, specifically.
Because I think…I think…
“How does mate bonding work?” I ask.
Thalara’s eyebrows go up. “I mean…it’s different for each species—and I’m no scientist, so you would know more than I do—but my understanding is that it’s a pheromone response where scents intermingle. I mean…humans even do it to a certain extent, you just don’t notice.”
I consider the possibilities, thinking out loud.
“Okay,” I mutter. “So here’s the theory.
Say the translator took pain input and translated it into pleasure output rather than muting the effects.
It’s all chemical signaling, right? But because it wasn’t just numbing or dull, it had to find a positive analogue, which…
in the moment it was looking for what my body associates with that level of intensity… ”
Thalara is listening, but not getting it. I can see the glazed look in her eyes—the polite “mmhm” on the tip of her tongue.
“I think it told my brain he’s my mate,” I explain.
Thalara blinks rapidly.
“I don’t—Lyn, it doesn’t really work that way except with specific species,” she says. “Like…the Skoll are pretty much the only ones with mate instincts that strong. Not humans, not the Nyeri’i.”
“It doesn’t matter when you’re fucking around with rewiring the brain,” I say.
“So…the pain input goes in; the pleasure output results. I’m on the floor, panicking, unable to stop repeated orgasms, and then who shows up but Kaelion?
And his scent is all around me when I’m already hyper-aroused, and he’s touching me, asking if I’m okay… ”
“Are you sure you don’t just like him?” Thalara interrupts.
I shoot her a look. “It’s not that simple.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
“No! It’s not! This isn’t me getting flustered because he’s hot, Tay—this is my body reacting to neurological imprinting.
The translator sent the wrong feedback loop to my hypothalamus while I was being physically comforted by a tall, firm-handed Nyeri’i man with ridiculous pheromonal saturation and yes, okay, objectively hot tentacle hair. I was chemically rewired!”
Thalara tilts her head. “Okay, but…do you want him to touch you again?”
“I don’t know!” I shout, throwing my hands in the air.
“That’s the problem! I don’t trust my own brain right now!
That’s what I’m trying to explain. What if the translator created a false association—what if this response is completely artificial and I’ve lost the ability to tell the difference between orgasm and data corruption? !”
The door slides open, revealing a Skoll nurse who clearly heard the last few sentences of that conversation. He doesn’t ask questions, just raises his eyebrows before ducking to fit his antlers and broad frame through the door.
“Lyn Walker?” he asks.
I raise my hand. “That’s me.”
“Take a seat,” he says. “I’ll run your vitals.”
The Skoll gets to work going through the motions while Thalara sits patiently, pulling out her comm to scroll through it. I narrow my eyes at her.
“You cannot tell Riley what’s going on,” I say. “Or Orin.”
“I would never,” she replies.
I’m not sure if I believe her.
The nurse affixes biometric readers to my temples, my neck, my collar bones, and my wrists, then begins tapping through the data on a tablet.
If this was a generalized orgasm response, I would have been moaning the whole time he was putting the readers on me…
but there’s absolutely nothing. I start to panic a little, watching my own heartrate go up on the diagnostic screen beside the cot.
“Hey,” Thalara says, noticing it too. “You’re okay.”
“I’m not okay.”
The nurse looks between us.
“To be quite honest,” he says. “Your vitals are all reading as entirely normal. You said at the front desk that you were concerned about neurological damage, so we’ve ordered a brain scan…but as far as I can tell, you’re healthy.”
I let out a long sigh.
“That’s good news,” Thalara offers.
“Yeah,” I say. “Good news.”
But it really isn’t. Not entirely.
Because even if everything is normal…even if my brain scan comes back clean…something has changed.
My supervisor’s touch makes me come. I want to go back to him. I want to do what he tells me.
And that is going to make it very hard to keep working.