Chapter 5 Kimberly #2
My heart is still trying to beat its way out of my body, but something else is happening under the fear now, something deeply inconvenient and confusing and irritatingly human.
Curiosity.
“And my restaurant,” I say, because if I don’t say it out loud I might actually start screaming. “Is it—”
He closes his eyes for half a second.
The gesture is small.
Devastating.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
There it is.
My throat tightens so fast it almost feels like a physical injury.
I swallow hard and look away from him, up at the stained concrete ceiling and the flickering utility light that suddenly feels way too bright.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “Me too.”
The room feels smaller.
The air feels heavier.
I drag a shaky breath into my lungs and then look back at him, because avoiding the giant bone-spurred not-man in the room with me feels like a bad long-term strategy.
“You carried me out of a burning building,” I say carefully. “You killed the people who were trying to kill me. You brought me here instead of leaving me to bleed out in an alley. So I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you’re not actively my enemy.”
He nods once.
Sharp.
Decisive.
“I am not.”
“Cool,” I say weakly. “Because my fight-or-flight response is currently trying to do both at the same time and it’s really messing with my blood pressure.”
A corner of his mouth lifts.
Just barely.
Then his eyes drop to my arm.
His jaw tightens again.
“You need a medic,” he says quietly. “I did what I could, but you should be in a hospital.”
A hysterical laugh bubbles out of me.
“Oh yeah, sure,” I say. “Let me just stroll into Novaria General and explain that I was rescued from a mob firebombing by a seven-foot-tall bone demon and could they please give me a room with a view.”
His gaze flicks back up to mine.
“Surveillance drones are already searching the district,” he says. “If I take you to a hospital, Oversight will have both of us in containment before your IV finishes dripping.”
Oversight.
The word lands like a cold hand closing around my spine.
“…Right,” I say slowly.
We stare at each other across the small, concrete room, two deeply traumatized strangers connected by blood and fire and a truly unhinged sequence of events.
Every survival instinct I own is fully lit now, screaming at me to run, to hide, to get as far away from this not-man as possible.
None of them are telling me how.
None of them are telling me where.
And none of them are telling me that he’s lying.
The pressure in my chest flares faintly again, low and strange and inexplicable.
I ignore it.
I have never been more aware in my life that I am injured, alone, and at the mercy of a being I do not understand.
Every survival instinct I own lights up at once. None of them are offering me a viable exit strategy.
None of them are explaining how I’m supposed to outrun someone who tore through armed men like they were wet cardboard.
And none of them—traitorous, inconvenient little assholes that they are—are telling me that he’s lying.
The silence between us stretches until it starts to feel like pressure on my eardrums.
“So,” I say finally, my voice hoarse and dry and sharper than I intend it to be, because if I don’t keep talking I might start screaming.
“Oversight. Surveillance drones. Mob firebombing. Bone spurs. Glowing eyes. You not having a good answer for what you are. I feel like there is a whole lot of context missing from this situation.”
He inclines his head slightly, like he’s acknowledging a valid customer complaint.
“There is,” he says quietly.
“Cool,” I mutter. “Love that for me.”
I shift on the cot, immediately regret it as pain rips through my arm and down my side, and hiss through my teeth while my vision goes sparkly at the edges.
He moves without thinking.
One step toward me.
I tense so hard it feels like my muscles are trying to crawl off my skeleton.
“Don’t,” I snap, my voice going sharp and ugly. “Do not take another step toward me.”
He freezes instantly, like I just slammed a switch in his spine.
“Okay,” he says. “I won’t.”
Good.
Good.
My pulse is still roaring in my ears, but at least my nervous system stops trying to eject my soul out through my mouth.
“Talk,” I say, because if he doesn’t start explaining things right now, I am going to invent explanations that are going to make this situation much worse for both of us. “Slowly. In real words. No apocalypse poetry.”
Something like relief flickers across his face, quick and gone.
“I’m a Reaper,” he says.
The word hits the room like a dropped plate.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just sudden and irrevocable and very, very breakable.
“A… what,” I say blankly.
“A Reaper,” he repeats, still quiet, still not moving any closer.
“Alliance-engineered. Biologically augmented. Designed for black-ops containment and deniable enforcement work. We were built to survive things normal soldiers don’t.
Heal from things normal soldiers don’t. Kill things normal soldiers can’t. ”
My stomach drops.
Hard.
“You’re—” I stop myself, swallow, start again. “You’re an experiment.”
“Yes.”
There is no defensiveness in his voice.
No pride.
Just a flat, exhausted acceptance that makes my chest tighten in a way I don’t like.
“They started building us generations ago,” he continues. “Selective breeding. Genetic splicing. Neural conditioning. Instinct engineering. Most of us don’t even know the full extent of what they did to us.”
I stare at him.
At the ridges under his skin.
At the faint, metallic sheen to his flesh.
At the scorch marks on his shirt that used to be my restaurant.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
He exhales slowly through his nose, like he’s bracing for impact that already happened a long time ago.
“I don’t work for them anymore,” he says. “I ran. I’ve been off-grid for years.”
“Because they did this to you,” I say.
“Yes.”
The utility light buzzes overhead.
The antiseptic smell feels stronger all of a sudden, sharp and invasive.
“And the thing,” I say, my voice dropping. “The thing you called it. The… jalsha—”
“Jalshagar,” he supplies quietly.
My mouth twists.
“Yeah. That horror movie bullshit.”
His jaw tightens.
“That is not what it is.”
“Then what is it,” I snap. “Because from my extremely limited, extremely traumatized perspective, it looks a whole lot like your body deciding I belong to it without asking my opinion.”
The pressure in my chest flares again, low and hot and deeply unwelcome.
His eyes darken.
He doesn’t look away from me.
“The jalshagar is a biological bond response,” he says. “It’s older than the Alliance. Older than written civilization. It predates even the first Reaper program. They didn’t invent it. They discovered it. Then they weaponized it.”
Of course they did.
“Some Reapers develop it,” he continues. “Some never do. When it triggers, it means our nervous system has identified a specific individual as… compatible. Stabilizing. Essential.”
My stomach turns over.
“You’re saying your body decided I’m your emotional support human,” I say faintly.
A corner of his mouth twitches.
“It’s not inaccurate.”
I bark a laugh that comes out half-hysterical.
“Oh my God. Oh my God, this is so much worse than I thought.”
He swallows.
“The jalshagar bonded to you in the restaurant,” he says. “When I picked you up. When your blood hit my skin. When your heart rate spiked and mine spiked with it. It was… immediate.”
Immediate.
Fantastic.
“And what,” I ask carefully, because my hands are starting to shake and I don’t trust my voice not to shatter if I raise it yet. “Does bonded mean, exactly.”
His shoulders tense.
“It means my instincts identified you as mine.”
There it is.
The word slams into my chest like a punch.
Mine.
The pressure in my ribs flares hard enough to steal my breath for half a second.
My fear detonates into fury so fast it almost gives me whiplash.
“Oh, absolutely the fuck not,” I say, my voice climbing. “Nope. No. You do not get to drop that sentence into the room like it’s a neutral fucking fact.”
He stiffens.
“You asked what it means.”
“I did not ask what your prehistoric murder DNA thinks it owns,” I snap. “I asked what bonded means in the real world where women are people and not magical prizes handed out by the universe.”
“That is not what I’m saying.”
“It is exactly what you’re saying,” I shoot back, heat flooding my face. “You’re telling me your body saw me, decided I was useful or soothing or breedable or whatever the hell else, and now I’m supposed to just… what. Accept that I’ve been assigned to you like a goddamn emotional support animal?”
“That is not—”
“Don’t,” I cut in, my voice cracking now, raw and hoarse and ugly with adrenaline and terror and rage. “Do not try to soft-sell this like it’s romantic fate instead of a biological trapdoor you just fell through that I didn’t even know existed.”
His hands curl into fists at his sides.
Not in anger.
In restraint.
“I am not happy about this,” he says tightly.
“Oh, I’m so relieved,” I spit. “Truly. That makes me feel so much better about the part where you just told me your instincts think I belong to you.”
“You do not belong to me,” he says immediately.
The words come out sharp.
Absolute.
“I said the jalshagar identified you as mine,” he continues, his voice low and controlled and vibrating with something dangerous he is very clearly keeping in a cage. “Those are not the same thing.”
My laugh comes out broken.
“That is the most hairsplitting bullshit I’ve heard in my entire life.”
He takes a slow step backward instead of forward, putting more space between us, not less.
“I am telling you what my biology is doing,” he says. “Not what I believe you are.”
My chest heaves.
My arm throbs.
My head is pounding.
“Then what do you believe,” I demand.
He doesn’t answer right away.
He looks at me.
Really looks at me.
Not like prey.
Not like property.
Like a person who just survived something unspeakable and is now sitting on a cot bleeding and furious and trying not to fall apart.
“You are a human woman who ran a restaurant,” he says quietly. “Who told a mob boss to go fuck himself. Who tried to get strangers out of a burning building instead of saving herself. Who does not deserve any of this.”
My throat tightens so fast it almost closes.
“And what,” I whisper, “am I to you.”
His jaw flexes.
“My problem,” he says bluntly. “Because my instincts have decided to imprint on you like an idiot dog, and I am now responsible for making sure that does not ruin your life.”
I stare at him.
“…That was not the answer I expected.”
He exhales.
“I will protect you,” he says. “Even from my urges if need be.”
The words land in the room like something carved into stone.
No drama.
No flourish.
Just a flat, terrible sincerity that makes my chest ache in a way I do not appreciate.
“I am not going to touch you without your consent,” he continues. “I am not going to make decisions about your life. I am not going to use this bond to cage you. And if you tell me to leave, I will leave, even though every part of my nervous system is screaming at me not to.”
I swallow hard.
My fear is still there.
It hasn’t gone anywhere.
But something else is rising under it now.
Anger.
Grief.
The incandescent, incandescent fury of a woman who just had her entire life set on fire and then woke up in a concrete box being told her existence tripped some ancient biological switch in a government murder experiment.
“Oh, I’m not done,” I say, my voice shaking now, but steadying as the words come. “Not even close.”
He nods once.
“Good.”
“You do not get to make decisions for me,” I say. “Ever. Not about where I go, not about who I see, not about what I do with my life because your lizard brain thinks I’m emotionally stabilizing.”
“Agreed.”
“You do not touch me without my permission,” I continue, heat burning behind my eyes. “Not in panic mode. Not in monster mode. Not in ‘I’m bleeding out and you think you know what’s best for me’ mode.”
“Agreed.”
“You do not use whatever this bond thing is to pressure me into anything I don’t want,” I say. “Not sex. Not a relationship. Not staying here with you. Not forgiving you for existing in my life at all.”
“Agreed.”
“And if at any point I tell you to get the hell away from me,” I finish, my voice cracking hard now, “you do it. Immediately. No arguing. No tragic monologues.”
He inclines his head.
“Agreed.”
The room feels like it exhales.
I sag back against the pillow, suddenly exhausted in a bone-deep way that makes my limbs feel like they’re made of wet sand.
My mouth tastes like blood and antiseptic.
My arm feels like it’s full of lava.
The pressure in my chest simmers low and confused and angry and very much not resolved.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Then here is the reality we are both stuck in.”
He waits.
“The Nine tried to kill me,” I say. “They will try again. I am injured, broke, homeless, and apparently now a walking supernatural trigger event for a traumatized super-soldier with bone knives in his arms.”
He winces faintly at that description.
“And you,” I continue, “are the only reason I am not dead in a pile of burning falafel right now.”
Silence stretches between us again.
Brittle.
Necessary.
“So,” I say quietly. “We are going to work together, because we don’t really have another option.”
He nods once.
Slow.
Controlled.
“Yes.”
I close my eyes for half a second and then open them again, because unconsciousness feels like a bad strategic choice right now.
“Great,” I mutter. “This is the worst alliance I’ve ever agreed to.”