Chapter 6

Protective Custody

I came back to myself in stages.

First the weight of a firm mattress under my back. Then the coolness of clean sheets against overheated skin. Then the soft, constant hum of medical monitors and the sharper scent of antiseptic trying—and failing—to cover the three Alpha scents that still clung to me.

Cassian’s winter-steel was strongest at my throat. The place where his teeth had pressed felt tender, marked, already beginning the biological process I had spent years avoiding. Darius’s smoke-and-cedar temporary claim still sat warm on the inside of my wrist. Elias’s colder rain-and-ink note lingered in the air of the room like he had only just stepped out.

I opened my eyes.

Restricted medical wing. Private suite. No windows. One door with a visible electronic lock. Soft lighting that did nothing to reduce the sense of being sealed in. My academy blazer and shirt were gone; someone had changed me into a thin white medical top that left the side of my throat exposed. The letter and the Council documents were nowhere in sight.

I sat up too fast. Heat still rolled under my skin in heavy waves, not the full peak yet but close enough that every movement felt magnified. The claim site at my throat pulsed in time with my pulse. Incomplete. Dangerous. Already rewriting the rules of my body without my permission.

The door opened.

A medical attendant in pale gray stepped in, followed by two security officers who remained just inside the threshold. The attendant checked the monitor readings, made a note on a tablet, and only then looked at me.

“You are awake,” she said. “Heart rate elevated. Temperature elevated. Claim site active. You are not cleared to leave the wing.”

“I am leaving anyway,” I said. My voice came out rougher than I wanted.

She did not react. “Grand Master’s decree was issued twenty minutes ago. You are under formal Crown protective custody until the claiming window closes or a permanent bond is registered. Security will not open the door for you.”

The officers did not move. Their expressions stayed blank. I tested the edge of the bed with my bare feet, stood, and felt the heat surge harder in protest. My knees held, but only just. The attendant watched without offering help.

“Where are the three Alphas?” I asked.

“Outside the suite,” she answered. “They have been granted continuous access. You have not.”

She left. The officers stepped out after her. The electronic lock engaged with a soft, final tone.

I was alone for less than a minute.

The lock released again. Darius entered first, followed by Elias. Both had changed into cleaner dark clothing, but the tension in the room arrived with them. Cassian was not present yet.

Darius’s gaze went straight to the mark on my throat, then to my face. “You collapsed in front of half the university. The footage is already restricted, but the story is not.”

“I noticed,” I said. I remained standing, one hand resting lightly on the bed frame for balance I refused to admit I needed. “Get the door open.”

“No,” Elias said. He closed the door behind them and leaned against it. “The decree is active. Even we cannot override it without consequences that would land on you first.”

The heat under my skin climbed another degree. I could feel the incomplete claim working like a low-grade fever that refused to break. Every breath pulled their scents deeper. Smoke and cedar. Cold ink and rain. The missing winter-steel made the absence feel deliberate.

“I reject the claim,” I said. “All of it. Temporary marks. Public performances. Custody. All of it.”

Darius stepped closer. Not touching. Close enough that his scent thickened. “Rejection does not stop biology. The bite started a bond process. Your heat is accelerating because of it. If it peaks without resolution, the medical risk becomes severe. That is not a threat. That is a fact.”

“Then give me proper suppressants and a locked room that is not this one.”

“Suppressants will not fully take while the claim site is active,” Elias said. His voice stayed measured, almost academic, but his eyes tracked the flush I could feel rising along my neck. “We are past the point of ordinary chemical control.”

I hated the calm in his tone. I hated the way both of them looked at me—like a problem that required containment rather than a person who still had the right to decide.

Footsteps approached in the outer corridor. The lock released a third time.

Cassian entered carrying a small metal case. He looked exactly as composed as he had in the atrium, except for the faint tension at the corner of his mouth. He set the case on the side table, opened it, and removed a single injector filled with clear fluid.

“Antidote-grade suppressant,” he said. “Strong enough to blunt the peak for several hours. Not strong enough to erase what has already started.”

He did not offer it immediately. He held it and looked at me, waiting.

The room felt smaller with all three of them inside it. Their scents layered until the air itself seemed heavier. The mark at my throat throbbed. The temporary mark on my wrist answered. Heat moved through me in a slow, insistent wave that made standing still an effort of pure will.

I needed distance. I needed control. Neither was available.

Darius spoke first, voice low. “He cannot stay incomplete through the night. The bond will keep pulling. If one of us does not finish it before the peak, the medical team will recommend sedation and forced stabilization. That option is worse.”

Elias’s reply came without hesitation. “Finishing it requires his agreement under current Council interpretation of the decree. We do not have that.”

“We may not get it,” Darius said. “And the Grand Master will not care.”

They were discussing me like I was not in the room. The heat made their words feel louder than they were. I watched Cassian’s hand around the injector and felt the claim site at my throat pulse again, harder.

Cassian’s ice-blue eyes met mine over the small metal case.

“You have a choice with limited time,” he said quietly. “Take the antidote and buy hours. Or refuse and let the heat decide for you while the three of us are still in this room.”

Outside the suite I heard the faint murmur of additional security and medical staff. The electronic lock remained engaged. The Grand Master’s decree sat over all of us like a sealed lid.

I was not leaving.

The bond had already started.

And the three of them were still deciding, in low voices that carried too clearly, which of them would be the one to finish it.