Page 55 of Fathom

My iron levels must be low.

Eun’s parents each received a matching plate. Barathice, ever poised, picked up her steak with her fingers and began to nibble it in delicate bites, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

Then the server placed a different plate in front of me. Another salad. This one had what looked like roasted tubers tossed in.

Everyone else got meat, and I got plants.

A message that I was prey.

“You know I won’t eat this,” Eun said, his voice low and trembling with barely restrained fury. His ears were pinned flat against his skull. “This is evil.”

My heart sank. He’d said the word aloud,evil,and with it came the weight of what this meal represented.

This wasn't meat from some cow raised on a fat field of grass, happy and content for most of its life.

Something was wrong with this meat.

“Listen, son,” his father said, tone maddeningly reasonable. “Change has to go both ways. If your plate is clean by the end of this meal, I’ll hand over Wolf Enterprises to you, after a proper transition, of course. We’ll help you take care of your little pet. You can even keep her on the side, of course. You don't have to beget an heir directly; there are other ways around that if youand Barathice can't stand each other, but you'll have to be publicly married. Agree to our terms, and everything will work out for you.”

Pet.

The word hit like a slap, and my body tensed. My skin crawled. I wasn’t a pet, and I sure as hell wasn’t little. I had survived being kidnapped, dropped on an alien planet, and hunted like prey. I had learned their language with nothing but a pencil, a television, a tutor, and a smile to keep me going. I hated the way they spoke to him, as if he were some rebellious child in need of correction. But Eun wasn’t a child. He was a grown man, calm, competent, honorable. He had a job. He protected me. He made sure I was fed and safe, and gave me the space to make my own choices.

I looked around the table and understood, more clearly than ever, why he had walked away from all this. The luxury and power were poisoned with pride, sharpened with casual cruelty. They hadn’t stopped watching him even after he left. They’d waited. And now, the moment he came up for air, they were ready to pounce.

"If you walk away from us while there is food still on your plate, your pet dies," his mother said. "You might be able to defend her right now, but our claws run deep, and you can't protect her in every moment of every day. You think that the guard decided to leave and run a restaurant right when you were thinking of leaving? How do you think we knew about your little pet? There is nowhere you can go on any of the planets that you will be able to escape us. Make the right choice Eun."

Eun turned to me, his eyes meeting mine.

Sadness and shame flickered in them, carving straightthrough me like a blade slicing living flesh; behind it, a layer of despair and determination.

He didn't know how to get out of this.

I had learned so much about him over the last month, in all the quiet, careful moments we’d shared. And I could read it in his face now, in the way his eyes softened when they met mine. He was trying to protect me, but we were in the den of the beast, and asking him to fight his way out through his family, through dozens of guards... then after that, how could he protect me from his family's wealth?

His jaw clenched as he looked down at the slab of meat, facing a trap that had no exit.

Because of me.

“Marriage is about taking on each other’s burdens,” I said, my voice steady. I picked up Eun’s plate, swapped it with mine, and set the salad down in front of him. Then I dropped back into my seat like nothing had happened and spent a moment looking at the steak now in place before me.

I knew what it was.

I knew the truth the moment Eun’s mother had dismissed the people she called prey from the room. I knew it from the warehouse, from the way that body had hung above me, sliced, sectioned, butchered. I knew it from all the shows I’d watched, the ones where prey species were torn apart the moment they made the mistake of trusting a predator. I knew it from the way predators were portrayed when they got addicted, how they spiraled, how they broke. How they shook in withdrawal.

I had seen that same tremble in Eun, the night he pinned me, the night I quieted something inside him by taking him in my hand. I'd seen it when he chained himself to the wall.

I knew what that meat was. It was pain, addiction, andsuffering. His family wanted him to eat it because it was another leash they could hold on to him.

Just like I knew I couldn’t wait for someone else to save me.

I was Eun’s anchor, the weight that kept him from drifting back into their orbit, the weight that caused him to crash back into their world. It was up to me. It was time to pull us both into something new.

No one was going to change the way they saw me, not even Eun, unless I forced them to.

I didn’t look at Eun as I picked up the steak with both hands.

I sank my teeth into the steak, and the entire table gasped. Eun let out a low, strangled groan.