DESIGNATION PREY

Daniel Burrows is a submissive. When he’d signed up for the military’s Designation program that would turn him into a soldier with enhanced abilities, he’d been reassured the odds were good that he’d come out a Dominant. In fact, his odds of becoming a Dominant were almost 10 to 1.

Much to Daniel and his father’s dismay, that isn’t what happened.

And he isn’t just submissive— his designation is Prey.

Daniel has no idea what that will mean when it comes to finally being with a Dominant.

He’s about to find out.

This is a 54,000 word story with a guaranteed HEA, featuring two super strong, hot men and lots of biologically kinky hanky-panky. Incinerate at your own risk….

PROLOGUE

Private Daniel Burrows knows the advantages of getting a designation. His ranking in the military would be higher, and he’d get promoted faster. He’d get a large enough signing bonus that he could put a down payment on a house.

If he had any interest in buying a house, that would be more alluring.

He could get engaged and prepare to start a family… if there was someone he had any interest in being engaged to.

Daniel’s pretty sure he can’t have a family. After. Though he isn’t sure. How in the hell would that work? That’s the sort of thing he doesn’t want to think too much about. Would he want to marry a man?

Anyway.

There are benefits to being a lab rat aside from the financial aspects—the benefits his father and brother focus on.

He’ll be stronger, smarter, and faster. He’ll build muscle more quickly than a normal man. He might never catch a cold again. He’ll heal faster, have increased longevity (so long as he doesn’t have to be put down or frozen), and his hearing and vision will be perfect. There are definitely benefits.

And if he became a Dominant then his father would be proud of him.

The man would have no choice in the matter. For once in Daniel’s life he might hear the magic words: “Good job, son. I’m proud of you.”

Failing that, he might get a shoulder squeeze of approval. Or maybe a grunt of acknowledgement. The bar of what Daniel would take as “praise” is embedded in the floor.

The problem is that becoming a Dominant isn’t a certainty. The military has gotten better about predicting who will be submissive and who will be Dominant, but it isn’t exact. And Daniel hasn’t quite decided what’s an acceptable level of risk. What if there’s a five percent chance of becoming submissive? That’s five out of every hundred men. Those are pretty good odds, but they’re still not great.

Maybe one in five thousand would be good enough odds. Definitely ten thousand.

Daniel’s father is about to tell him the likelihood of him becoming a submissive. Surely if it’s too high then his father won’t want him to do it, right?

“Eight percent,” Daniel’s father says, looking at him sternly across his large mahogany desk. Daniel hates this desk. He’s been whipped with a branch over this fucking desk more times than he can count.

That’s terrible, he thinks about saying. It isn’t worth the risk. I don’t want to do it.

His father turns his gaze to Daniel’s brother Logan. “Twelve percent.”

Ah, hell.

Daniel can see Logan grip the chair tightly, knuckles white against the carved wood. “What do you think I should do, Sir?” Logan asks, leaving it up to their father.

Daniel wants to punch him.

“Our family has been in the military for five generations. We have always fought with integrity and bravery. We do not run from our duty. No boys of mine would turn down this opportunity to become the best of the best, no matter the odds. Your grandfather’s odds on D-Day certainly weren’t above fifty percent chance of survival. That’s how heroes are made. Real men take the risk.”

Logan nods in agreement. “Yes, Sir.”

Daniel wants to howl in protest. He wants to get up and run from the room, but how can he when he only has an eight percent chance of becoming a submissive while Logan is at twelve percent?

“That is the right decision,” their father says. And then he turns to Daniel.

“I want to make you proud,” Daniel tells him, voice wavering. He has to clear his throat—it’s so terrifying to argue with his father. But he’s an adult. He needs to do better than this.

“This is a good start,” their father says, and stands up.

“But I can’t do it,” Daniel forces himself to say. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to risk it.” Bile fills his mouth. He might throw up all over his father’s desk.

“It’s a matter of will, Daniel. If you are steadfast in who you are, if you have no moral failings, then you have nothing to worry about. Do you have the will to become a Dominant?”

Daniel is almost positive “will” doesn’t have anything to do with it. “I do believe in myself, but it’s a… risk. All sorts of good men come out wrong, I mean submissive⁠—”

“Not my sons,” his father retorts, voice a low hiss of rage.

He can feel Logan looking at him, shocked at his display of disobedience.

“Your brother Aaron will be the head of this family. You two are meant for the military. I will not be shamed by you, Daniel. If you don’t have the courage to do your duty⁠—”

“He does. Of course he does,” Logan cuts in, getting to his feet.

“First thing tomorrow, then,” their father says before he strides from the room. Their time is up. His father is a busy man, probably has to talk to someone from the Department of Defense or Homeland Security. Someone more important than his two sons.

Daniel stays seated, stunned at Logan’s betrayal, the destiny that is yawning open in front of him.

“You’ve fucked me. Do you understand? I don’t want to do it. You shouldn’t want to do it! It isn’t going to go well. I can feel it. This is a mistake. And do you know what we will get for this sacrifice? Nothing. He won’t love us more. He won’t give us approval. I can’t believe you,” he whispers. His brother’s betrayal is the worst part. His father has always been an asshole. Of course he doesn’t give a shit what Daniel wants. However, Logan is not just blood but his best friend in all the world.

He hadn’t expected this from his brother.

“Daniel. You’ve heard the odds. What can we do? Do you want to be disowned? Disinherited? You know he’ll turn his back on us for dishonoring the family name if we say no.”

I’ll walk away if you will. That’s what Daniel wants to say. Because Logan is his twin. If they walk away together, then Daniel can survive anything. But what if Logan says no? He can’t stand the possibility of such a rejection.

For all his life, he’s had one person on his side. What if Logan doesn’t choose him?

“We’re still his sons. He couldn’t stand to have submissive sons. He says the odds are good and I believe him,” Logan continues. “We’ll have the best doctors. He’ll make sure of it. He’ll use his connections and we’ll be fine.”

“That man has never given us special treatment. Why the hell would he start now?”

“Because he doesn’t want to have submissive sons. His pride won’t allow it.”

Daniel wants to howl and throw something. Run away. What if he just walked out and never came back? Got a job at a fast-food place or bussing tables? Anything. He looks at his twin and the look of determination on his face. Seeing the mask covering up the fear on Logan’s face that he also feels is enough for Daniel to make his decision. How could he let his brother undergo such a thing on his own?

He sighs heavily. “Shit. I guess there’s no other choice,” Daniel says, voice rough. “You’ve both decided.”

Logan sighs as well and sits back down in the chair. “If you want to leave, I’ll support you.”

“But you won’t go with me?”

“I can’t,” he admits, wincing. “And hell, my odds are worse than yours.” Logan manages an insincere chuckle at the end.

Daniel leans forward, waiting until Logan is looking him in the eyes. “Aren’t you worried that we won’t be ourselves anymore? How can they change so much of us and say we’re the same? Do you want to suck dick, or get fucked? Because I don’t. But apparently, we’re going to be okay with it when this is all over. I’ll have the urge to fight or get on my knees, I’ll be drawn to men and need things that….” His breath stalls in his chest. It’s impossible to say. To even think. “How could we want those things? What if we don’t even want them, but do them anyway? I don’t understand why we’re letting it happen. Are you really not afraid? Not fucking terrified?”

The problem is they’re brothers. They’ve been best friends their entire lives. Daniel knows Logan better than he knows himself, and if Logan is going to go through with this, then somehow, Daniel is too.

“No, I’m not worried. And you shouldn’t be either,” Logan says, and Daniel knows he’s fucking lying.

For some damn reason that makes it easy. Everyone is scared and they do it anyway. Surely his great-grandfather who fought in World War One was terrified to leave the trenches and go over the top, but he did it anyway. His grandfather was on Normandy Beach and raced out of the water while his brothers were gunned down around him. The seas were red with blood and those men still got out of their boats and did what they had to do.

This is easy by comparison. All Daniel has to do is walk through a door and lie down. When he wakes up it will be over, and he will be a hero. The odds are he’ll be Dominant. If he has urges to be with men, if he “needs” that, then so be it. There will be benefits which outweigh that possible side effect.

All he has to do is have faith. And maybe his father will finally be proud of him.

1

Three Years Later

Daniel wakes up nauseous in the middle of the night and barely makes it to the bathroom to throw up nothing but bile. He forgot to eat. Again. He calls medical like he’s been ordered to and gets patched through to Dr. Chang, the doctor who’s been put in charge of his case. He’s probably sick of hearing from Daniel. Lord knows Daniel’s damn sick of calling him.

“Daniel, what’s wrong?” he asks, trying to sound awake.

“I’m sorry to bother you. I think I’m dropping again.” That’s an understatement. He feels terrible. He’s shaky and his ears are ringing. He shivers. Oh good, he also has the chills. Which means he probably has a fever, too. It just doesn’t seem fair to feel like he’s freezing to death while burning up from the inside out.

“Okay. Can you get to medical or should we send transport?”

He thinks about getting off the floor. “I’ll make it,” he says, because of course he can. It’s in the building, for crying out loud. He just needs to stumble there. How hard can it be? How pathetic is he if he can’t make it a few dozen feet?

Okay, it’s farther than that, but he’s a soldier, an elite warrior, and he can practically hear his father telling him to get up and be a man. So, he will do that.

Until he can’t. Until the day comes when he drops so hard and so far that he just doesn’t wake up again. That’s the future that’s coming for him. Everyone knows it, but they’re all just pretending he’s somehow going to live a semi-normal life one of these days and be able to serve his country.

“Okay. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes and I’ll make sure they’re expecting you.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“It’s fine, Daniel. Don’t fixate on it,” he says, voice firm.

Not fixate. Ha! That’s easier said than done.

He manages to shove to his knees and then uses the porcelain throne for support to stand, but the room spins so much Daniel has to lean against the counter for long moments before he can walk to the bedroom. Pants. Shirt. Shoes. Medical.

Pants. Shirt. Shoes. Medical.

Easy.

He makes it to his bedroom and gets a pair of sweats on. He’s overcome with dizziness in the living room and tries to collapse onto his couch. He hears the glass of the coffee table shattering, feels it all along his side and his face as glass gouges into him. Hot and sharp, then wetness as he bleeds.

I forgot a shirt, he thinks. Because the pain hasn’t quite set in yet.

Get up. 

Daniel can’t stay on the ground. He needs to get to medical. He can’t move. He whimpers. His side is on fire where the glass is cutting him to ribbons, and there’s blood under his hand and his side.

It’s spreading. Daniel can see it creeping along the floor in an ever-widening circle. How odd. Maybe his body wants to die. Maybe this isn’t actually about him at all. Maybe it’s just the end of this terrible experiment and his body has decided that death is the only way out.

Okay.

Okay, he thinks, and no other emotion rises up within him. No fear, no anger. Nothing.

He watches the blood spread along the ground. Someone will have to clean that up. It won’t be him. What a relief. To have this whole nightmare of an existence just be over.

And he doesn’t hurt all that much. There are definitely worse ways to go. Like Everest. Or drowning. Being held captive and getting tortured. At least he’s in his apartment.

At least it’s finally fucking over.

His brother Logan had managed to come out null—a unique designation that somehow meant he didn’t need to submit or dominate. Daniel came out not only submissive but so damn low on the submissive scale he’s heard a few people call him “prey.” They mutter it or speak in whispers. The doctors and his father don’t speak about it but it’s a disaster. If he were anyone else, he might have gone straight into a deep freeze or given to some Dominants as a chew toy at some far-flung base.

But he’s the son of an important man and so he has options other soldiers don’t. He can be experimented upon and improved while others can’t.

The last few years of his life have been one awful experiment after another. Can’t experiment on a dead submissive.

The pool of blood reaches his travel bag, soaking into the bottom. He’s been so sick he hasn’t even unpacked.

He closes his eyes and waits for the end.

2

Liam is awake when the call comes in to report to medical. It’s just after three a.m.

“Do I have time to take a shower?” he asks, voice rough from lack of sleep. He’s much too good at tossing and turning.

“Yes. But don’t use a neutralizing bodywash. It’s a submissive in crisis.”

“Got it, I’m on my way,” he says, and gets out of bed, takes a shower, brushes his teeth, and then puts on the most comfortable sweats and softest t-shirt he owns. A submissive in crisis will be very sensitive to everything—including touch—and something like wool or denim would be too rough. The same with zippers or buttons.

Liam’s in medical ten minutes later. They’ve been waiting for him, a nurse hovering around the intake desk, and an extra guard in the corner of the room. He doesn’t know the night nurse on duty, but she must know him because she buzzes him back and tells him to go to room three.

The medical ward is fairly quiet. Most of the patients are seen during the day, and anyone seriously hurt will be transferred off base to a better equipped medical facility. A light flickers overhead as he walks down the hall and passes an empty nurses’ station with the computers all turned off.

The door to room three is open and he peers inside. There’s no one in there. Room three stinks of blood and misery and hasn’t been cleaned yet. There’s bloody gauze on a tray, and a pile of used stitch kits.

“Commander Stone,” Dr. Chang declares, sounding relieved. “Good. We’re over here. A clean room with a bit more privacy.” He looks tired. Is it the patient that’s exhausted him, or the fact that it’s the middle of the night? Probably both.

“Patient is a submissive who is designationally off the charts and very difficult. Well, the circumstances surrounding him are difficult; I don’t think he actually is.” He shrugs and puts his hand in his pocket then realizes there’s blood all over his jacket. “Sorry, it’s late. I’m not speaking clearly. I’m at my wit’s end with this one. Well, with the whole damned situation, if I’m being honest. But you didn’t hear me say that.”

“Okay,” he says, curiosity already piqued. He’s become friendly with Dr. Chang over the last couple of years and has found him to be calm and competent. Finding him frazzled and annoyed about a patient is a new one. “What can you tell me about the patient?”

He sighs and closes his eyes for a moment as he gathers his thoughts. His gaze flicks around the empty hallway to make sure no one is listening. “He’s got a complicated presentation. Probably one of the most unusual I’ve ever seen.”

Liam doesn’t bother to hide his surprise. Chang is an expert on submissive health. Soldiers are flown from all over the country to see him, and he thought the doctor would have seen it all. “Wow. Okay.”

“You’ll see what I mean when you meet him. He’s just about as submissive as you can get. Which is rare nowadays but not impossible.”

“I’ve handled very submissive soldiers.”

“I know. That’s where he started. Since he became submissive, he’s had an incredible amount of experimental treatment performed upon him, all of it attempting to correct his submission. From surgeries to brainwashing, conversion therapies, and drugs. Any agency that had a treatment lying around they wanted to try out, this poor boy was an available guinea pig. Frankly, if you told me his father hated him and did this to torture him, I’d believe it. Everything they did just made him worse.”

His curiosity intensifies. The submissive designation isn’t new. And it isn’t reversible. God knows the military has tried to fix the problem over the years and it always ends badly. Policy nowadays is to leave the soldiers alone whenever possible.

“Unless there’s some radical new treatment I don’t know about, what’s done is done. You can’t unbake a cake and get it back to separate ingredients, and you can’t unmake a submissive. I thought the science was pretty settled.”

“I haven’t heard the cake analogy in a while. I try not to use metaphors because they are imprecise, but this poor boy….”

Liam is pretty sure he knows where the doctor is going with this, but raises an eyebrow in interest anyway, wanting to hear his take on the submissive he’s about to meet. “Go on?”

Dr. Chang sighs. “Sure. Why not? I find this example trivializing and unscientific, but I understand the appeal. And I actually tried telling this to his father. I was so desperate to get my point across—not that it made any difference,” he says, and then takes a deep breath. “Before the designation process, a soldier is basically clay. He goes through the designation process and he emerges as a durable plate. Microwave safe, dishwasher safe, can withstand various temperatures, shatterproof, etc. Further modifications to get a better plate weaken the creation. You get chips, cracks, and if the plate breaks, then a very good glue can be used to piece it back together, but it will never be as strong as it was in the first iteration. Just like you can see where the plate is broken, we can see where further attempts are made upon the body and the DNA to alter the soldier, and the improvements aren’t there. It isn’t possible. Once you get the plate, you have to accept the plate and move on.

“This poor boy has the unfortunate honor of being the son of a very high-ranking military official who does not like the word no. It’s clear no one has told him no in a long time. He also appears to hate plates and wishes his son had been a cup. So he has smashed him to pieces and glued him into something and it’s not worked. At all. And the plate might believe he is a cup or could be a cup.” Dr. Chang glares at him. “Do you perhaps see why I dislike using metaphors for people? He is a person and deserves respect and to be accepted for who he is. He isn’t a disposable piece of crockery.” He shakes his head, running out of words.

“Who is his father?”

“General Burrows.”

Liam whistles. “That’s unfortunate. I met him once. I think he’s a psychopath. And I mean that he literally meets the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy.”

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