“Hey. Are you okay?” Tirzah asks softly, and I look up to see her standing in the doorway of the break room. “I feel like I should apologize on behalf of the captain. I’ve known him for more than eight years, and he’s never been anything less than a gentleman.”

I blink up at her from my seat, trying to figure out what she’s talking about as I crunch through a cheese puff from the packet on the table in front of me.

“Definitely not the kind of guy to rip a woman’s clothes off in front of an audience. Or at all,” she continues, leaning back to glance down the hallway, toward the communal bathroom. Where Carson is showering.

I wanted a shower too, but I was a little afraid to wash his scent off of me until I’m sure he’s done being unreasonably jealous.

“Oh. Yeah. That was intense, but I’m fine.” I kick out the chair next to mine, and Tirzah sinks into it, then leans back to grab a packet of cheese crackers from the section of the countertop designated as community property. “Carson wouldn’t hurt me. I was more worried about him hurting Vaughn.”

Tirzah snorts as she rips open her crackers. “Coleman can take care of himself. We all can.”

“I’d still hate to see it come to blows.”

“Well then, in the interest of full disclosure, I feel like I should tell you that Sotelo and I are...somewhat intimately acquainted.”

I blink at her for a second, trying to absorb an unexpected jolt of jealousy. “You two were together?”

“No. I gave my heart away years ago, and it died along with Daire. Sotelo and I… It wasn’t like that.” She stretches her right arm out on the table, showing me a series of thick scars in flesh that’s missing the distinctive seams the men on her team have. “Did Sotelo tell you about the breeding room? What it was used for before you got here?”

“Oh. Yeah. Vaughn said they locked the two of you together in there.”

She nods slowly. “It wasn’t just him. Brennan rotates the guys out every month.”

“All of them?” I can’t quite screen horror from my voice. “Including Carson?” They made her sleep with her entire team?

I had to service many more men than that at the Resort, but I didn’t know them. They weren’t platonic friends and coworkers forced into my bed. Into my body.

Tirzah nods. “I just thought you should know, in case whatever is making him act like a possessive asshole is doing the same to you. But it wasn’t voluntary.” She runs one finger over the thickest scar. “These are from where I tried to dig the stimulant capsules out, before I realized that was impossible.” She meets my gaze with a frank one of her own, but the tense line of her jaw reveals how nervous she is about my reaction. “So anyway, I hope we can still be friends. But either way, I thought you should know.”

“I’m not...” I’m not sure how to tell her this. “It’s not affecting me like it is him. He’s...struggling. Evidently the beast has a different idea of what romance should look like than we do. I don’t have a beast.”

“So, you’re not drawn to him like he’s drawn to you?”

“Oh, I am. God help me. Just without that bonus shot of possessive rage. But even if I did have that, I wouldn’t be... I mean, I wouldn’t think that what they did to you was your fault. Or any of theirs.” I toss a glance out the door, including all five of our fellow lab rats. “I...um. I have a bit of experience in coerced sex. In being locked in a room with someone you don’t want to sleep with.”

“At that resort?” she says.

“Yeah.”

“But Sotelo’s not like that, right? Not even when he gets worked up?” There’s an answer she clearly needs to hear, to preserve her opinion of the man who led her team for years. And I’m happy to be able to give it to her honestly.

“No. Don’t get me wrong. He’s aggressive. But the beast seems to think he should...earn my affection. If you know what I mean. Not take it. He’s basically a teddy bear with a gigantic…ego.”

“Unless someone else touches you.”

I nod. “Unless someone else touches me.”

Tirzah leans closer over the table and whispers, “Okay, I wasn’t going to ask, but since you brought it up, how big an ‘ego’ are we talking? Because I wouldn’t say he was ever a modest man, but I’m also not sure I’d sure the word ‘gigantic’ is appropriate.”

“Circumstances have changed.” I glance up at the doorway, to make sure no one else has snuck up on us. Then I give her a visual. With both hands.

“Holy fuck,” she whispers. And I can’t resist a quiet smile. “That doesn’t seem possible. Is that because of whatever’s happening to him? Hormonally? I mean, is that going to go away if this mating phase ever passes?”

I can only shrug. “His beast seems to believe it’s a ‘gift’ only available to his mate. But I have no idea what that means for the post-mating period of our relationship. Or how we’re ever going to get there.”

“No kids, huh?” she whispers.

“No.” I push back painful memories and cling to the logical side of what is, for me, a largely emotional position. “I understand that the culture of childrearing is different on Tethys than on my homeworld, but I don’t understand how he can even think about kids, while we’re locked up in a place like this.”

Tirzah gives me a quiet smile. “He’s thinking about it because for Sotelo, captivity in an experimental lab is just a challenge to be overcome. He has never once assumed that this is where he would spend the rest of his life. Or raise a family. He’s thinking about family because he’s looking forward.”

“What if he’s wrong about us getting out of here?”

“What if he’s right?” she counters.

“This is no place to raise a baby.”

Tirzah nods as she stuffs another cracker into her mouth. “You’re preaching to the choir, hon.”

“Hey, you ladies up for a game?” Thiago Zamora leans into the break room, and I wonder how long he’s been standing in the hall. But Tirzah’s hearing is great. Surely she’d have known, if he was eavesdropping. “That is, if Sotelo’s ready to let you out of his sight.”

“He’s not the boss of me.” I push my snack aside and kick out another chair for him.

“Me neither. Anymore.” Thiago comes in and Vaughn follows him. Five minutes later, we all have snacks and the cards have been dealt.

“What are we playing?” Carson rounds the doorway and his gaze finds me first, as if to make sure I’m okay before he greets everyone else in the room.

But the tension is palpable. “Maybe I should—” Vaughn stands. “You can take my place, Sotelo.”

Carson shakes his head. “Stay. And I owe you an apology.”

“You really don’t,” Vaughn says as he sinks back into his chair.

“I do.” Carson rounds the table and pulls the extra chair close to mine. “I’m truly sorry,” he says as he sits. “I don’t know how to explain what’s happening to me, but I had no right to go after you like that.” He turns to me. “Or to…accost you in the hallway.”

“No big deal,” Vaughn says

Thiago grins. “Hell, Coleman, accept the man’s apology before he tries to make it up to you like we all heard him make it up to Lilli. In the shower.”

I throw a cheese puff at him, and Thiago bats it back at me. “So, just how long will we be blessed with Hyde’s presence?”

Vaughn snorts.

“What?” Thiago shrugs. “That’s what Lilli calls him. From that old book. Jekyll and Hyde?”

Carson takes my hand, and with it, my attention. “You nicknamed my beast after a literary brute?”

I have no idea what to say. I can’t tell whether he’s irritated or amused. But Tirzah takes one look at my face and grins. “No, Captain. That’s what she calls your giant cock.”

For a second, no one moves. Then Carson bursts into gregarious laughter, and suddenly the whole room echoes with it. Thiago nearly falls out of his chair.

“What’s going on?” Burke asks from the doorway, with Everett peering over his shoulder.

“Not a damn thing,” Carson says, still grinning as he drops a kiss on my forehead. “Somebody deal the fucking cards!”

Light shines through my eyelids, casting the world in a bright red glow. I groan at the throbbing in my head, and dimly I’m aware that it was already throbbing before I woke up. That maybe it’s been throbbing my entire life.

That’s certainly what it feels like right now.

I open my eyes, and the world seems to tilt around me. Walls aren’t where they should be. Somehow, I’m staring at the floor.

I blink, and finally I understand. I’m not in my bed at the Sorority. Or on my cot in zone X. Or even in the bed in the breeding room. I’m sitting slumped over in a chair, my wrists bound to the arms. My ankles bound to the legs.

Lab A. Fuck.

At least I’m not on the table.

“She’s waking up,” a male voice says, and Justin, the assistant director, kneels in front of me. He pulls my head up with a handful of my hair and shines a bright light into my eyes.

“Donyoufugging tuhsh her,” Carson growls. But his words sound slushy. When Justin lets me go, I look to the right and find Carson bound to the chair next to mine.

“Give it a minute, Captain Sotelo.” Dr. Brennan walks her rolling stool closer to his chair, without looking up from her tablet. “They gave you a sedative, because you started waking up before we were ready. So you might feel sluggish for a few minutes.”

“Whathefuck?” he demands, irate words all smooshed together. “Whyrwe’ere?”

“Hey.” I tap my heel against the leg of the chair it’s secured to, to get his attention. “It’s okay.”

“Oh, it’s better than okay!” Dr. Brennan finally stands from her stool and leans against the lab table, facing us both. “I have good news! Justin, would you like to do the honors?”

He looks up from his work in surprise. “Sure.” He crosses the room toward us, his swagger inflated with the unexpected task. “I’ve never been the bearer of news like this before, but…you’re going to have a lab rat!”

“What?” Carson frowns, his eyes still only half-focused. “We have rats?”

“No, that’s not what he’s saying.” I dismiss Justin and turn to Dr. Brennan, my heart beating so hard I can see my breasts jiggle on the lower edge of my vision. “Are you sure?”

She rolls her eyes. “I can assure you that a pregnancy test is by far the simplest test ever to be run in this lab. And yes, I’m sure.”

“Preg—” Carson tries to twist in his chair to face me, but he can’t move more than his head and shoulders. “Are you…?”

“She is!” Dr. Brennan’s grin is obscenely wide. She looks like she’s about to break into applause. For herself.

“And I’m—?”

“Yes, of course you’re the father,” she assures him.

“It wasn’t…?”

“Sergeant Coleman? No.” Brennan gives him a magnanimous smile. “He and Ms. Malone didn’t even oblige us with an effort.”

I grit my teeth and bite my tongue.

“But how could it be me? I pulled out…”

“Carson, that was only yesterday. Please wake up.” I can’t be in this moment alone. Not again.

“She’s right,” Dr. Brennan says. “We drew blood two days ago, while she was unconscious. While we were moving her into the breeding room with Coleman. We got the results yesterday, and we let her out of the breeding room as soon as we found out she was pregnant. The hormone levels are still faint—too faint for the biochip to pick up—but it’s definitely a positive. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be able to confirm with an endovaginal ultrasound, but we thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.” She glances at her tablet. “We’re estimating that conception took place almost a week ago, likely from the first encounter you two had here in the lab. It takes a few days for the fertilized egg to actually implant, you know.” She frowns as she turns to me. “Well, I guess you probably do know that, since this isn’t your first.”

“Leave her alone,” Carson growls, and I exhale. He’s finally fully alert. “You okay?” he asks, twisting again so he can see me.

No. I am definitely not okay. But I can’t break down here. Not now. So what if they’ll only see me cry later, on the cameras. At least it’ll be on my terms. So, I focus on my anger, to get through this moment.

“You’re lying,” I grind out through clenched teeth.

“About what?” Brennan asks as she digs through one of the laboratory drawers.

“If you took my blood two days ago—while you were locking me unconscious and half-naked in a room with a man I barely know—then why didn’t you have results until yesterday? Home pregnancy tests take less than a minute, so why the hell would yours take a full day?”

An aggressive sound rumbles up from deep in Carson’s throat. “You left her in there with Coleman while she was already pregnant? What the hell for?”

“You were testing Carson’s reaction, weren’t you?” I demand. “There’s no other reason. If I’m pregnant, then the mating frenzy is already over, and there would have been no chemical signals from my body for Vaughn’s body to react to. And you would have known that within minutes of taking my blood. You put us in there to see what Carson would do!”

“While that would certainly have been a valid event to study, I can assure you that is not what happened.” And the stiff line of Dr. Brennan’s jaw makes me think she’s telling the truth—and that she’s not very happy about it. “Your pregnancy is in such early stages that the initial reading was…unclear. We had to run it again to verify the results, and that didn’t happen until you’d already been in the breeding room for a full day.”

“Why did it take so long to retest?” I demand.

Dr. Brennan’s gaze flickers toward Justin, who’s suddenly staring intently at his tablet. He fucked something up. And we weren’t supposed to know about it.

“That’s enough of this.” Brennan pulls a bottle from the drawer she was digging in, then she dumps a pill from it into her hand. “It’s never too early for prenatal vitamins.” She drops the pill into Justin’s open, waiting palm, and he heads for me with a paper cup of water.

“If you bite me, you will regret it,” he warns, holding the tablet up for me to see.

“Touch her, and I’ll kill you,” Carson growls.

“I’m not going to take that,” I snap. “That could be anything!”

Dr. Brennan rolls her eyes at me. “It’s a vitamin. If we wanted to hurt you, we could easily have done it while you were out.”

She’s right about that, and Justin’s not going anywhere. So I open my mouth and let him drop the tablet onto my tongue. He holds the cup to my lips and tilts it up. I swallow, then suck in another mouthful, and when he removes the cup, I spit it the rest of the water right in his face.

“You bitch.” He wipes his face on the tail of his white lab coat, then he grabs my chin, but before he can say another word, Carson snarls so fiercely that the assistant director actually jumps, with my chin still in his grip.

“Justin!” Dr. Brennan shouts. “Let her go.” He glares at me and reluctantly releases my chin, leaving bruises in the shape of his fingers. “Ms. Malone has had a trying day, and you are a professional! We do not abuse the subjects!”

“Well then I’m puzzled by how you’d classify isolating your ‘subjects’ for days on end, denying them fresh air and sunlight, and coercing them into unwanted sexual acts.”

Dr. Brennan’s eyes narrow. “You have an odd way of showing gratitude, Ms. Malone.”

I can only blink at her. “Okay, just to recap, I’m currently strapped to a chair in a science lab where I’m being held and tested against my will, pregnant with a child I didn’t ask for, waiting for it to be harvested from my womb for the purpose of scientific study and experimentation. Which part of that am I supposed to be grateful for, exactly?”

“The part where you’re still breathing, despite the fact that you’re now privy to information that is well beyond your non-existent security clearance,” Justin snaps.

Dr. Brennan lifts her tablet and taps through a couple of menus, and the wall connecting this room with Lab B fades in color until it becomes a clear barrier between us and Tirzah Dreyer, who is bound to a lab table, loosely draped in a cloth. With her feet strapped into a set of raised stirrups.

What the fuck?

Her eyes are closed. I think she’s unconscious.

“Ms. Malone, the research you’re a part of will help save millions of lives.”

“By making more dangerous soldiers, sold to the highest bidder? How do you figure?”

“Soldiers like Captain Sotelo are estimated to be five-to-ten times more effective than standard soldiers,” Dr. Brennan says. “Which means five to ten times fewer soldiers will be sent into combat. And once their effectiveness becomes public knowledge, just the threat of facing an army of men like Sotelo in the field might prompt a more focused attempt at discourse to settle disagreements, rather than resorting to violence. And all of that is without even mentioning the advances expected to come from the discovery that something in his genes enables the human body to repair itself. The implications for medicine—both on and off the field of battle—are endless and mind-blowing. Studying your little family could save millions of lives. Which is exactly why we’d like to increase our experimental yield.” She gestures through the transparent wall at Tirzah, as Lena the lab assistant rolls her stool up to the table and disappears between Tirzah’s raised legs.

Outrage brings my blood to a roiling boil. Carson begins to growl, and I can’t tell whether he shares my fury or is reacting to the change in my scent. Or both.

“What are you doing to her?” I demand.

“Right now, we’re simply observing and taking samples. To compare to data gathered from our latest test subject.”

A chill races through my veins at her implication. “You examined me while I was unconscious?”

“Many times,” Justin chimes in from his work station. And suddenly I want to twist his testicles until they pop off.

“I…will…kill…you,” Carson growls, and Justin casts a telling glance at the thin metal cables holding Carson to his chair. As if he’s not sure they’ll hold.

But Dr. Brennan looks unfazed. “The most fascinating—and ultimately helpful—aspect of this whole transition,” she says, pacing as she directs her explanation at Carson. “Is that exposure to your bodily fluids has not only made Ms. Malone fertile, it seems to have altered the functionality of her reproductive system.”

I blink at her. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Whereas a human woman’s fertility cycle is characterized by a menstrual phase, wherein she sheds the unused endometrial lining if conception does not occur, Ms. Malone seems to have transitioned to an oestrous cycle. Are you familiar with the term?”

I shake my head, and when a soft whirring sound finds my ears, working like a metaphysical massage on my tensest muscles, I realize my scent must be sending frantic, distressed signals to Carson.

Dr. Brennan’s brows rise as her gaze rakes over him, obviously searching for the source of the sound, and without a word, she taps the “record” icon in one corner of her tablet, capturing several seconds of the sound before she continues, looking right at me now.

“Oestrus comes from the Greek word oîstros, the figurative meaning of which is ‘frenzy’ or ‘madness.’ Sound familiar?”

“You’re saying this ‘mating frenzy’ is real? Because we already knew that.”

“I’m telling you why and how it’s real. And beyond that, Justin has come up with a fascinating theory about the timing of your brand new oestrous cycle.”

While I drown in horror and coldly informative biological trivia, she waves at Justin with a one-armed fanfare.

“Induced ovulation,” he says. Then he just smiles, as if he’s waiting for applause. “You’d probably be most familiar with the phenomenon in the domestic house cat, whose ovulation is triggered by the very act of copulation.”

“You’re saying that I ovulated because we had sex?”

Dr. Brennan nods, her eyes bright and eager. “That’s the theory. We think that your initial ‘interactions’ with Captain Sotelo were enough to repair your reproductive function and to transition your body into an oestrous cycle, which we can only assume is more favorable to the conception of a child with Sotelo’s particular genetic code. And once that was accomplished and you’d woken up from a coma induced by the biological stresses of the transition, you likely ovulated during the very next instance of copulation.”

Carson’s whirring sound gives way to an angry, low-pitched growl, but I can only blink at Dr. Brennan. Then I burst into what probably sounds like hysterical laughter. “You really need a hobby. Both of you.” I let my focus slide from her to Justin, then back. “Maybe if you were getting laid, you’d be less inclined to obsess over my sex life.”

Brennan’s excitement hardens into a fleeting glare, and I wonder if I hit a nerve. But beneath my bravado, I’m fighting alternating waves of confusion and terror.

If having sex with Carson makes me ovulate, then using the rhythm method of birth control will be completely impossible. Not that that matters anymore…

“Our theory further hypothesizes that once your pregnancy is far enough along for Captain Sotelo to scent, this mating frenzy will end. At least until your body has recovered from pregnancy and childbirth and is ready to conceive again. We look forward to testing that hypothesis. And not just on you.” Dr. Brennan gestures toward the transparent wall again. “Test results indicate that Lieutenant Dreyer will reach peak fertility next week. To increase her chances, we’re administering a fertility drug, and until her body is ready, we’ll be isolating her in the breeding room, which will be pumped full of a synthetic version of Captain Sotelo’s mating pheromones, which we were able to chemically replicate from samples taken the day of his return to the lab.”

“Why would you do that?” Why would she tell us all of this?

“No,” Carson snarls, and I realize he’s already figured it out. “I won’t do it.”

And suddenly I understand. “You’re going to lock him in there with her?”

“Not until she’s fully ready for fertilization.”

“I won’t,” Carson repeats, his voice a dangerous grind of harsh syllables.

“Well, that’s up to you. But if our little experiment goes as planned, we don’t think you’ll be able to help yourself. Or, more accurately, we don’t think your ‘beast’ will be able to help himself. That’s what you call it, right? That collection of impulses that makes you attack your own men and strip the woman you claim to love, in front of all of your roommates.”

Her cruel smile makes it clear she already knows the answer.

“In the two years I’ve observed you in this lab, and the year or so before that, while we were screening potential subjects in the field, I have never once seen you turn on your own. Our staff psychologist tells me that the bond you and your teammates share is that of a surrogate family, based on the time you’ve spent together, the trust you had no choice but to place in one another, and the fact that—at least out in the field—you had no real family to lean on. We’ve watched that connection grow even stronger here in the lab, where you have nothing but each other. We were both starting to believe that bond could not be broken. That it would, in fact, eventually inhibit our research.

“And then Ms. Malone came along and changed the game. Something about her sent your body into a state of procreative frenzy, which, in turn, led to a biological restructuring of her reproductive system. We’re theorizing that the same thing will happen to Lieutenant Dreyer, if we expose her to pheromones your body produced. And that if your pheromones induce oestrus in her, you won’t be able to resist conceiving a child with her, just as you couldn’t with Ms. Malone.”

“That won’t work.” I’m surprised by how much like a growl my own voice sounds, as I cling to Vaughn’s theory. Which I like much better than Dr. Brennan’s. “You’re only seeing the scientific side of this, which means you’re missing the other half.”

“Love?” Justin sneers. “Did he wake you from a coma with love’s true kiss? No. He put you in a coma by injecting you with genetic material that is biological driven to replicate itself. To propagate a species that doesn’t even exist anymore. This isn’t a bedtime story, princess. This is science. And you should feel privileged to be a part of it, considering that we could have left you unconscious in a filthy, half-demolished building in zone three, where you would have woken up and begged the first available rapist to scratch an itch Sotelo left you with.”

Carson’s low growl becomes a fierce snarl.

“Justin,” Dr. Brennan says, as if she can’t see him baring his teeth at her co-worker. “There’s no need to get hostile.”

“I’m just laying out the facts for her,” he insists. And Dr. Brennan doesn’t dispute any of his “facts.”

“I won’t do it,” Carson insists.

Dr. Brennan nods. “If our theory fails—” Meaning they can’t force Carson and Tirzah into bed together. “—we’re prepared to artificially inseminate, then carry out the rest of our research from there. Which should be pretty simple, considering you’ve already provided us with a sample of the requisite biological material.”

Oh my god. “This isn’t science. This is reprehensible.”

“People have said the same thing throughout history, about groundbreaking research.”

Carson’s snarl echoes through the lab as Dr. Brennan approaches me. She reaches out to stroke one finger down my cheek and look right into my eyes. “Ms. Malone, Justin’s right. You should consider yourself privileged to be carrying the universe’s first alien hybrid embryo.”