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17

T hree Years Later

The phone call comes in while Liam is in a meeting, and he doesn’t have a chance to return the call until late afternoon. The message is from a Dominant he met at a conference several months back, although there have been so many conferences over the last while, and so many people he’s talked to about prey submissives, that he has no idea who Robert Hanson might be.

“Hi, this is Liam Stone, I’m returning your call.”

“Hello, yes. We met at a designation conference last year and I was hoping you might give me some advice. My partner’s brother has a prey designation and has been in stasis for the last few years. His custody status has changed and we want to bring him out with the least number of complications. We’d like for him to have a Dominant available for his reintegration.”

Robert sighs heavily, squeezing the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “I don’t have any recommendations to give you off the top of my head. It’s very hard to find a Dominant who can give a submissive with a prey designation the appropriate care they need. Any Dominant can fuck a submissive, but to put a submissive with those needs first is not something a lot of Dominants are capable of. Prey submissives in particular are hard to resist and require a Dominant that has an unusual level of restraint. On the rare occasions a Dominant is good enough to be with a prey submissive, they usually wind up bonding. Most often the Dominant is unable to walk away once he’s been with a submissive oriented that way. And I’d argue that the prey submissive is so docile and oriented towards being owned that they would have great difficulty not choosing the Dominant they initially interact with. You have to choose the Dominant wisely. How soon do you need someone?”

There’s a long pause. Liam is afraid he knows what’s about to happen. This man is going to ask him to help.

“Oh. I sort of hoped you would be there. We don’t know if he’ll be looking for someone permanent, and we expect his ability to resist his designation is quite high, he’s done it for so long?—”

“He will want someone permanent,” he interjects. “And just because he’s been denied doesn’t mean he has the desire or will to continue resisting.” Liam can feel his blood pressure rising.

He hears a male voice in the background. “Daniel needs one man and that’s it. That’s all he’s ever wanted,” the person says.

Prey designation is rare. Rare enough that hearing about a submissive named Daniel makes his heart clench in grief.

He will never get over the loss. His own failure and culpability led to Daniel’s death. He’d been told by General Burrows that Daniel died, didn’t make the transition to stasis, and he’d tried to find out if that was true, but had gotten nowhere.

And yet. Part of him has always wondered if that was a lie. And now he’s getting a call about another prey submissive with the same name who would have gone into stasis a few years ago….

Liam knows it’s unlikely, but he’s instantly hoping that somehow this is about his Daniel.

It’s foolish. “I don’t think you mentioned. What is Daniel’s surname?”

“Burrows.”

Liam sits down heavily on the couch. His voice is rough. “The person you’re with now, Daniel’s brother… is he Logan Burrows?”

“How do you know that?” Robert asks.

His eyes are welling with tears and he has to clear his throat. “Because Daniel told me when we were together. Daniel Burrows was my submissive. But Daniel’s dead. That’s what I was told. I don’t even know if I believed it, but there wasn’t anything I could do,” he says. It sounds like an excuse to his own ears, though he doesn’t know what he could have done to discover the truth. “He’s been gone for three years now.”

“Who told you he was dead?” Logan demands. He can tell Robert has put him on speakerphone.

“Your father. The general. He called me a week after Daniel left and said he’d been put into stasis but that he hadn’t made the transition. That can happen if the submissive has a bond. With Daniel’s extreme designation, it was… it was believable.”And he’d been so sure it was his fault, already so swamped with grief at his own failure that he’d accepted the lie.

He’d hoped Daniel was in stasis somewhere. He’d scoured death records and never found anything but couldn’t find any proof he’d survived and was in stasis, either. The last three years his life have been an unpleasant blur filled with regret and nightmares, punctuated by work—a desperate quest to make sure other submissives with a designation like Daniel’s get a chance for happiness when his boy didn’t.

It made sense for Daniel’s father to tell him Daniel had died so he’d stop looking. Daniel’s father was a powerful man and Liam had been blocked at every turn.Eventually, he’d had no choice but to accept that Daniel was gone.

“Daniel was your boy,” Robert repeats.

Logan says, “Daniel isn’t dead. My father was just an asshole with too much power, and he probably told you Daniel was dead so you’d go away. My father put him into stasis, but now he’s gone and we’re bringing him out.”

“When?” Liam demands. “I have to be there. He—He’ll need me. And I need him. My god. I won’t believe he’s alive until I see him,” he says, voice rough with emotion.

“Did you love him?” Logan asks.

“I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone,” Liam rasps. “I did love him then and I still do.” I just didn’t know it , he thinks. Didn’t say it because the relationship was too new and Daniel wasn’t in a position to make choices for himself. And because they’d thought it was temporary.

Daniel is Liam’s biggest regret. He didn’t deserve Daniel and didn’t treat him like he deserved, like he was loved and cherished. In hindsight, he’s examined their time together and can see so many mistakes.

“He’s perfect just as he is, you know. Gorgeous and smart. Funny and wise about people. But he’s shy, and it took him a while to come out of his shell. And I miss him every single day. He loved you so much, Logan. Loves, I suppose.” A sound comes from his chest that could be a laugh. “I can’t believe he’s alive.”

They plan to meet up the following day to get Daniel out of stasis. Liam doesn’t sleep a wink. He paces and finds himself lost in thought and memory, staring at nothing. He goes to the gym at three a.m. but starts crying on the treadmill and walks the city until the sun rises instead.

Daniel is alive. Daniel has been so badly abused by the people who were meant to care for him. By his father and even the military, both conspiring to change and ruin him rather than accept him as he was.

Liam eats breakfast, showers, and then shaves. He can’t help but look at himself critically in the mirror, assessing how he looks now compared to three years ago when he first met Daniel.

When they’d met, he’d been a man entering his prime. Muscular, fit, confident, and handsome. He’d been a good-looking Dominant who had the respect of his peers and a job he loved.

He’d helped a lot of submissives, partnered with them, encouraged them, but he’d never wanted any of them to be his own. He’d always known he was a temporary partner and that had been fine.

And then there’d been Daniel. They wound up having five days together in total. Just five. And Liam has never been the same since. Daniel was it for him. And Daniel wanted to be with Liam, though he’s aware that Daniel was susceptible to bonding with any Dominant he was put with due to his designation.

Three years ago he’d argue he was a suitable match for the deprived young man. He was confident and cocky enough to believe it.

But their bond is gone now. And the last few years have been hard for Liam. So hard that he wonders if Daniel deserves better than him. What if the kindest thing he can do is give Daniel a chance at finding happiness with another Dominant? One who wouldn’t let him go?

The man looking back at him in the mirror isn’t someone he recognizes. What will Daniel think when he sees Liam again, sees how hard the last few years have been for him?

His illustrious military career went up in smoke when he was informed that Daniel had died. He’d gotten a phone call from Daniel’s father himself, been told the news and… well, he doesn’t remember much of that time.

Liam had been hospitalized with grief. He’d been given a general military discharge and then he’d floundered for a while. Drank too much, got into fights when he shouldn’t. He’d even wound up in jail after a particularly nasty brawl.

His own brother had come to bail him out, had gotten him straightened out, and Liam has spent the last year or so speaking to anyone who will listen about prey submissive needs, because he thinks Daniel would have wanted that. Because someone needs to speak up for them. He hopes that would have made Daniel happy.

Though he doesn’t really know. He’d known Daniel for a matter of days and their relationship had been intensely sexual. They’d known each other, but it was their designations that had really bound them to each other.

In Liam’s memory, Daniel was the most perfect submissive. Sweet, biddable, hungry for his Dominant and eager to please. He’d also been emotional, traumatized by the denial and surgeries he’d endured, and it had made him shy and afraid.

He should have run away with Daniel.

But he didn’t. He was a coward and a rule follower, and he didn’t take Daniel or Dr. Chang seriously. What sort of monster would torture his own son the way General Burrows did?

If Liam had been a better man, a worthy Dominant, and what Daniel deserved, he would have gone on the run with him. There are resources, rumors of submissives and Dominants who live off the grid and beyond the reach of the military.

That’s the Dominant Daniel deserved. One who would put his safety first, prioritize him above everything.

But that isn’t what Liam did, and he’s regretted it ever since. He’ll regret it until the day he dies. It weighs on him heavily, and the failure and loss of his submissive is etched into the lines of his face, the premature gray of his hair. The tremble of his hand as he accidentally nicks his jaw with the razor.

Jesus Christ. He’s probably aged a decade in the last three years. He doesn’t sleep, doesn’t interact with the world beyond work, and while he doesn’t get into fights like he used to, he still drinks too much. His brother described him as maudlin.

Is it cruel to try and claim Daniel again? The bond is severed, so it’s possible Daniel could be with another Dominant—not likely, but possible—and what if he owes that to Daniel? A chance to finally make one decision for himself, to get a Dominant who will fight for him?

Liam goes to his closet. What does one wear to meet the submissive they bonded to after years of separation and a cryogenic freeze between them?

He’s lost so much weight in the last three years that he isn’t even the same size of clothing anymore. Daniel might not even recognize him. He might not want Liam. If Daniel were meeting him for the first time today, he wouldn’t choose Liam. Not that he chose him before. Liam was just the Dominant Dr. Chang trusted in the moment.

Their bond is gone, of course. It was faint, just forming, and now years have passed. Daniel has a chance of choosing another.

And there are a lot of Dominants who don’t survive without their submissives. They take their own lives. Liam had thought about it, more than once. His brother would say his actions were so reckless that he might as well have been trying to die.

Surely Daniel deserves a Dominant who’d die for him? Run away with him, face military discharge and personal ruin to be with him? That’s what a boy like Daniel deserves.

Daniel deserves better than him. Though finding the right Dominant won’t be easy.

He dresses in a suit, wanting to make a good impression on Daniel’s brother and husband. What will Daniel think of him in a suit? Or will he be so distracted and repulsed by Liam’s descent that it won’t make a difference?

Daniel won’t be bonded to him anymore. Liam has to be prepared for the possibility that Daniel will take one look at him and be so angry that Liam didn’t fight for him that he won’t even give him the time of day.

But.

If Daniel is willing to give him a chance, if he is willing to be held by Liam, wouldn’t he prefer something more comfortable?

He has to sit down, the very idea of it overwhelming. What if he gets to hold Daniel in his arms? He can’t let himself think about more than that.

Bringing Daniel home, taking his boy to bed, keeping him safe, making Daniel his—he can’t let himself hope. He won’t survive the loss if he dares to hope Daniel might choose him.

Liam changes. Just in case. A soft, well-worn t-shirt, comfortable black joggers, knot-suppressing underwear that are at the back of his drawer. He isn’t sure what will happen when he meets Daniel again, but his boy deserves a Dominant who can be what he needs. Liam needs to at least try.

He takes his suppressants, the pills he’s on so he can function from day to day, and leaves the house.