Page 124 of The Drama King

Dorian's control was starting to crack, I could see it in the tension around his eyes, the way his hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides. "You're overthinking this," he said, his voice carrying undertones of Alpha command that made my spine straighten instinctively. "The bond is simple. Natural. Right."

"For you," I said, refusing to be cowed by his dominance display. "It's convenient for you. Solves all your problems with minimal effort on your part. But I'm not a problem to be solved. I'm a person with my own desires and goals."

"What goals?" Dorian demanded, stepping closer to the doorway. "What could possibly be more important than a fated mate bond? Than the rarest connection biology can create?"

The question revealed everything. Not just how he saw me, but what he thought I was worth. My dreams, my goals, my entire individual existence. All of it secondary to what I could provide them.

"You want to know what's more important?" I asked, my voice deadly quiet. "Being able to look at myself in the mirror. Being able to respect the person I am instead of hating what I've become."

"What you've become is precious," Oakley said desperately. "Rare. Someone who—"

"Someone who gets wet when you touch me against my will?" I cut him off brutally. "Someone whose body betrays her every time you're near? Someone who's been reduced to a set of responses you can manipulate whenever I disagree with you?"

The crude language made them all flinch, but I wasn't done.

"That's what I've become to you. Not a person with thoughts and feelings and dreams. A fucking biology experiment that happens to be compatible with your dicks."

"That's not—" Dorian started, but I was past listening.

"It is exactly that," I snarled. "You don't love me. You love what I am. You love that I'm rare, that I'm yours, that I make you special. But you don't know the first thing about who I am as a person."

"We know you're stubborn," Corvus said coldly. "Irrational. Willing to cause yourself and us unnecessary suffering out of spite."

"Do you know what I wanted to be when I was little?" I asked, ignoring his clinical assessment. "Do you know my favorite memory with my father? Do you know what makes me laugh, what makes me cry, what I dream about when I'm not being fucked senseless by Alphas who think biology equals destiny?"

Silence.

"You don't," I continued. "Because you never cared. You cared about breaking me, then you cared about claiming me, and now you care about keeping me. But you've never cared about knowing me."

"The bond will teach us those things," Dorian said, but his voice lacked conviction.

"The bond will teach you how to use me," I corrected. "How to manipulate my responses, how to keep me compliant, how to make me grateful for beautiful chains. But it will never teach you to see me as an equal."

"Get out," I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline flooding my system. "All of you. Now."

But instead of leaving, they stepped forward. All three of them, moving into my space without invitation, their combined presence overwhelming in the small dorm room. The doorclosed behind them with a soft click that sounded like a prison door slamming shut.

"We're not going anywhere," Dorian said, his voice carrying absolute authority. "And neither are you. Not until you stop this ridiculous tantrum and accept reality."

"Tantrum?" The word emerged sharper than I'd intended. "Is that what you call refusing to surrender my autonomy to the people who tortured me for months?"

"We're past all that," he dismissed, as if months of systematic cruelty could be erased with a wave of his hand. "The bond changes everything. Makes everything else irrelevant."

"Not to me," I said, backing up until my legs hit the edge of my packed suitcase. "To me, it makes everything worse. Because now you think you have the right to own me."

Oakley looked genuinely confused, his cedar scent carrying notes of distress. "It's not ownership," he said. "It's partnership. Biology designed us to complement each other perfectly."

"Biology," I said slowly, "designed males to be aggressive and females to submit. Should I accept that too? Should I surrender my personhood because some ancient programming says it's natural?"

"That's different," Corvus said, though his analytical certainty was wavering.

"How?" I challenged. "How is this different from any other drive that we've evolved beyond as thinking beings? Why is this the one imperative that I'm not allowed to resist?"

The question hung in the air, and I could see them struggling with it. Could see the cracks in their carefully constructed justifications, the moment when they had to confront the fact that they wanted the bond to be unbreakable because it benefited them, not because it was genuinely right.

"Because," Dorian said finally, his voice dropping to that low, dangerous register that made primal fear spike through my system, "you're ours. And we don't let go of what's ours."

The mask was completely off now. No more pretense of partnership or inevitability or mutual benefit. Just raw, possessive claiming of something they saw as their property.