He nods in agreement and he’s given a shot in his arm. Why the hell not? It stings going in. Thirty seconds later, he’s woozy and can’t see very well. People are speaking but it’s like they’re underwater; nothing is distinct. Are they talking to him? Does it matter?

“Liam.” He isn’t sure if he’s saying the name or asking for him, but his words are slurred, and it doesn’t matter. “No,” he says.

“It’s alright,” someone murmurs, very close to his ear. He climbs in, foot sinking into the padding. A hand on his shoulder urges him to lie down.

“No,” he repeats. He lies down and the cover lowers. There’s a buzz, and then cold air at his feet. Daniel breathes, tasting metal at the back of his throat, the air smelling like oranges and ozone.

And then he’s very, very cold.

17

Three 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?”