Page 363 of Immune

Hale looks around and sees it and I smile slowly. Good. Let him see where this leaves him.

“She is reactive to NOVAC markers,” Hale announces, voice rising for the first time. “Her blood could change things. Stabilize things. We can’t afford sentiment.”

“I’m not sentiment,” she snaps suddenly, her voice cracking over the yard like a whip. “I’m a fucking person.”

“You’re potentially the first Immune Omega we have ever seen.”

There it is.

Public.

Sharp.

Dangerous.

The word ripples through the courtyard. Immune.

Mercer swears under his breath and Ellis goes very, very still beside him. One of the council members says something too quietly for the rest of us to hear, but Valeria turns her head just enough to make him shut up.

Good.

I feel Dakota’s fear strum through the bond, fast and bright, and buried under rage before it can own her.

She pushes herself up until she’s standing, Maine’s arm sliding from her shoulder. Fletcher moves like he might reach out and hold her up, but she doesn’t lean back. Not yet.

“I might be,” she says. “And if I am, what I choose to give might help people.”

Hale fucking leaps on that shit. “Exactly.”

Her eyes narrow. Oh, she’s fuming now. “I wasn’t agreeing with you, you clipboard-hugging dick-licker.”

A startled laugh breaks out from someone near the back of the crowd, and I have to put a hand over my mouth, wiping the smile away. Now is not the time, Ewan boy. Not the time. But it also kind of is, because my girl is a funny little cactus.

Hale flushes red, fury bleeding into his face. “You’re behaving like a child.”

“And you’re behaving like every other man who thinks putting humanity in a sentence makes him less of a kidnapper.”

That shuts him up beautifully.

Dakota’s voice shakes again, but she keeps speaking.

“My body is not compound property. My blood is not public stock. My heat is not a resource. My bonds are not weaknesses you get to manage. My future is not something you can trade away just because you memorized a few scary speeches about survival.”

The courtyard holds its breath and Dakota looks at all the people watching.

Not at Hale.

Them.

All of them.

“If I give blood for research, it is because I choose to. If Mercer tests anything, he does it with my consent, in front of me, with my name on it and my limits written down. No secret samples. No codes. No outside transfers. No sharing my information with anyone unless I say yes.”

Mercer nods instantly. “Agreed.”

Ellis nods too, sharper and meaner. “Written consent. Witnessed. Logged. Locked.”

Dakota points at her weakly. “See? Even the spooky wall ghoul understands paperwork.”