1. Sabine #2
He's an Orc. A massive, terrifying, absolutely enormous Orc with skin the color of storm clouds and silver piercings glinting from his left tusk and eyes the shade of amber honey that are currently fixed on me with an intensity that makes my stomach flip.
His dark leather armor creaks as he breathes, and those breathing patterns suggest he's just as startled as I am, though his version of startled apparently involves looming rather than stammering.
Behind him, I catch a glimpse of two DMI security guards who look roughly as small as action figures in comparison, their hands on their weapons but their expressions suggesting they know those weapons would be about as useful as throwing marshmallows at a mountain.
"Ma'am, I'm going to need you to step back to the counter."
I tear my eyes away from the Orc's body—when did I start staring at his muscles?
—and turn back to find Margot holding my Form 8B between two fingers like it might explode.
Which, given the way those tattoos on the paper are now radiating the same color as the ones on the Orc's skin, isn't entirely outside the realm of possibility.
"The ink," Margot says slowly, as if explaining to a particularly dim child. "The ink you used to fill out this form. Where did you get it?"
"I—" My mind races back to the waiting room, to the moment I realized I'd forgotten my own pen in my rushed departure from my apartment, to the helpful pixie who'd offered me a quill from seemingly nowhere with a smile that I now realize had far too many teeth.
"Someone gave me a quill. A pixie. I didn't think—"
"Blood-magic ink." Margot stamps something on the form with aggressive finality. "Registered to the Ironjaw clan. Activated upon completion of official DMI documentation. Binding the moment the signatory makes physical contact with the original blood-source."
The Orc behind me makes a sound that might be a word in a language I don't speak, but it sounds less like communication and more like a glacier deciding to calve.
"I don't understand. What does that mean? The blood-source?"
Margot looks at me, then at the Orc I had just collided with, then back at me with the expression of someone who really, truly, deeply does not get paid enough for this.
"Ma'am, sir." She gestures between us with her pen.
"You signed the form with his clan's blood-ink, and then you physically crashed into him.
The magical circuit is complete. You are now legally, magically, and eternally bound as fated mates.
Congratulations. Take a number for the Soul-Bond Registry; they'll need your signatures on Forms 12 through 47-C. "
The floor beneath my scuffed beige pumps seems to tilt sideways.
The fluorescent lights flicker again, casting the Orc's shadow across me like a blanket made of doom, and somewhere in the distance, a pixie's laughter echoes through the air vents with the distinct sound of someone who knows exactly what they've done.
"That's not legal. There has to be a process. An appeal. Something!"
"Form 8B is irrevocable." Margot has the audacity to look bored.
"Blood-magic binding has been recognized by the Department since 1847.
The Ironjaw clan's specific strain creates a fated-mate bond upon bureaucratic completion.
It's quite rare, actually. Most people don't fill out tax forms with enchanted quills from strange pixies.
" She pauses. "You might want to reconsider that habit. "
The Orc—my apparent eternal fated mate, according to the Department of Magical Integration's absolutely insane interpretation of contract law—steps forward, and the security guards behind him tense visibly.
He's close enough now that I can see the individual lines of his tattoos, the way they trace patterns across his skin like a map to somewhere I've never been, and his amber eyes haven't left my face since I crashed into his considerable body.
"Jagger Ironjaw. I didn't—this wasn't—"
"Mr. Ironjaw."
A new person cuts through the chaos, and we both turn to find a small, immaculately dressed man approaching from a door marked DIRECTOR in letters that definitely writhe when I look at them.
His suit probably costs more than my car, and his smile contains the precise warmth of a shark who's spotted a wounded swimmer.
"And Miss Lin, I presume." He extends a hand that I don't take because my own hands are currently occupied with gripping the counter hard enough to turn my knuckles white.
"I'm Director Pemberton. I oversee special circumstances, and I must say, this is quite special indeed.
A blood-ink mating bond formed accidentally in a government building. The paperwork alone will take months."
"Months?" I hear myself say, as if from very far away.
"Until then, the bond is fully active and legally recognized.
" Pemberton's smile doesn't waver. "I understand Mr. Ironjaw's profession makes this somewhat complicated.
He's a registered bounty hunter, you see.
Dangerous work. Many enemies. The bond means that any harm that comes to one of you will affect the other.
Quite romantic, really, in a medieval sort of way. "
Jagger makes that glacier-calving sound again.
"There must be a way to break it," I manage. "Some kind of annulment. A supernatural divorce."
"Ah." Pemberton's smile finally shifts, and somehow that's worse.
"There are methods, yes. Unregistered methods.
Dark magic. The kind of thing that gets people thrown into Supernatural Containment Facilities.
" He adjusts his cufflinks with the casual air of someone discussing the weather.
"Ten years minimum for both parties, if you're caught.
And you would be caught. The bond leaves traces. We always find them."
The waiting room seems to shrink around me.
The werewolf has completed his transformation and is now howling at a vending machine.
The pixie dust on my shoulder sparkles mockingly.
My phone buzzes in my purse, probably my mother asking about my dating life with the worst possible timing in human history.
And beside me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his slate-grey skin, my accidental eternal fated mate lets out a long, slow breath that sounds exactly like the death of every plan I've ever made.
"Well," Director Pemberton says cheerfully, producing a stack of forms from seemingly nowhere.
"Shall we begin the registration process?
I'll need your emergency contacts, blood types, and preferred method of communication with your new spouse.
The Department recommends weekly check-ins, but given Mr. Ironjaw's occupation, we might want to increase that frequency. For your protection, of course."
I look at the forms. I look at the Orc. I look at my coffee-stained blouse and my scuffed pumps and my glitter-covered fingers.
My carefully organized life has just been blown apart by a pixie's pen and government paperwork.