I woke up in confusion.

  I was in my bed. I could feel the comforting give of my mattress and the soft floof of my pillow beneath my head. I felt the plush, heavy weight of my comforter draped over me. But when the tail-end of an exhaustion headache forced me to finally open my eyes and confront the world, I didn’t see my ceiling.

  I lived in a small apartment in a forgettable complex in my district. The government was paying my rent for me, but they weren’t springing for any additional décor or hominess, and South San Francisco wasn’t famous for apartment units that came pre-furnished. Kind of the opposite, in fact. I hadn’t bothered. I just couldn’t find the motivation to care that much about a room I was pretty sure I was going to get kicked out of. So, I left the walls and ceilings undecorated, still the same boring off-white color they’d been when I moved in.

  And I was not looking at boring off-white popcorn anymore.

  Instead, it looked like sheets of… silk? Or something silk-adjacent, maybe? Whatever it was, panels of the material had been draped along the walls and ceiling. I looked around at what should have been my bedroom in bewilderment, because what was happening? I hadn’t done any of this! Some of the sheets dangled down into the room itself, almost giving the illusion of columns surrounding a pavilion. It was kind of embarrassing to remember that I was still just lying in a second-hand mattress on a beaten-up IKEA frame, and not some majestic, four-posted, wrought-iron thing.

  I slipped out of bed, trying to fathom how I could have slept through all of the work someone had done. Who would even care enough about my existence to do any of this?

  Right away, though, I had to put that train of thought on hold. My bare skin hit the cold Bay Area air and I discovered that I wasn’t wearing anything. Like, nothing-nothing, not even the giant t-shirt and boyshorts combo I usually slept in. I ducked around a silk column, looking for the robe that sometimes hung on the wall, but, nope, it wasn’t there, and it wasn’t in a pile on the floor, either. I grumbled at myself as I settled for pulling a pair of sweats out of my dresser.

  …Which also wasn’t there. After turning around in confusion, I tried opening the door to my closet to find someone had shoved my dresser into the far back corner, and completely vanished every other shred of clothing I owned.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The top drawers of my dresser were now filled with a few stacks of neatly-folded ce bralettes and panties much skimpier than I’d ever chosen to wear before. I didn’t want to think about how they might have gotten there – and why they looked like they were all in my sizes, ick! – so, I went without. There was a towel in the bathroom across the hall, which would hold me over long enough to call up Dispatch and find out how I’d gotten home after the…

  After…

  Oh, holy shit. What even happened after the kaiju? Wait, where was the –

  I tore out of my bedroom in a rush, and then immediately slid to a halt.

  I wasn’t in my apartment anymore.

  Well, like, yeah, I was literally still there. I didn’t have any reason to doubt I wasn’t occupying the same chunk of spacetime that my apartment had previously inhabited. But everything inside it had changed.

  In the same spirit of not decorating my bedroom because I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be keeping it, I’d chosen a minimalist aesthetic for the main room of my apartment. In other words, my broke ass couldn’t afford shit. I had a small couch that I’d gotten third or fourth-hand along one wall, and a folding table next to it that held my ptop for when I wanted to sprawl out. Across from that was a pstic wn chair pulled up to the counter of my kitchenette, which were both piled high with the junk mail I never quite got rid of. Cribs was going to call me for a feature any day now.

  But that was all how my apartment had been: empty walls and cheap furniture. Now, it was completely different. The furniture had all vanished, repced by more of the dangling silks from the bedroom. The room felt dimmer, like some of the silk was obscuring the lights in the ceiling, but I barely paid attention to that. I stared at the corner of the room, where someone had installed a new fixture. It was technically a chair, I guess? A thick central column supported an extravagantly wide seat and highs arms, but the back was low, more of a suggestion than actual support. The whole thing was built from a single, uniform piece of a shiny, bck material. Obsidian, maybe? It looked lighter than that, almost like the carapace from a –

  I stopped caring about the chair the moment I noticed its occupant.

  A woman I’d never seen before was seated nguidly in the chair, doing something on a ptop.

  She was stunning.

  She lounged, legs tossed over one arm of the chair while she leaned against the other. She was rest her cheek in a gloved hand, while the other fiddled with the ptop she’d perched on her knee. And oh my god, her legs. They were covered in a dark, glossy armor all the way from her hips to the tips of her feet. Wait, no – I could see her toes. Her legs were the armor. And so were her hands, actually. That wasn’t a glove, she had more of the same carapace stuff covering her arms all the way up to her shoulders. Her long, silver hair – not grey, actually silver – dangled down over the side of the chair, and god, I wished I had hair like that.

  The woman set aside the ptop – my ptop, I realized with a start – and looked me over with piercing, bck eyes. No, bck wasn’t the right word, her eyes were too deep for that. Her eyes were the color of jasper, or maybe midnight, or some other unreal perfume commercial of a color. They would have been beautiful – no, they were beautiful. I could admit it. They were also, at that moment, sizing me up like a cut of meat. The corner of her lips twitched into a smirk, and I suddenly remembered I was still naked. I gasped and turned away from her in a panic, trying to cover myself with my hands. To my increasing horror, nothing worked. I didn’t have enough hands to keep both of my breasts and my pussy covered if I was facing her, but turning away just exposed my bare ass. Face burning, I gave up on modesty to look at the woman head-on and hoped my hands would be enough.

  The woman hadn’t moved. She was still staring at me, smirking and hungry. Her eyes lit up even more as I tried to face her while hunching over to cover myself.

  “You really shouldn’t bother, Emma.”

  Her voice was silky, smooth and deep. I shivered again as it ran over me, and tingles flickered through the rest of my body. Her voice was as arresting as the rest of her.

  “Wh – wh – why not?” It took a couple of tries for me to find my voice. And – wait, how did she know my name?

  Her smile deepened. “You don’t have any secrets from me.”

  I blushed even brighter as I came to the obvious conclusion. Someone had put me in my bed and gone through my apartment. She’d seen me –

  God, she’d stripped me –

  “Who are you?! How do you know my name? What are you even doing here? And what did you do with all of my stuff?!”

  Indignation lit a fire in me. That’s right – I wasn’t just some victim, alone in her house. I was Chosen, and I was never really disarmed or not ready to fight. I pulled power from Source, ready to Call Serenity Paradox.

  “Serenit –“

  “That’s enough of that,” the woman interrupted me. She waved her hand and the power I’d been gathering slipped away.

  The channel fizzled out of being, leaving me nothing to channel and with nothing to fight with.

  I pushed aside looming terror I was sure I’d be revisiting ter when I found out what she’d done to me. Power comes into us from our souls, which is supposed to be basically impossible to break into without doing, like, a bunch of evil stuff. If she was stopping me from channeling power, that was, like definitionally bad news, and I needed to do something about it now.

  I couldn’t channel any power, and I wasn’t in my Raiment. Serenity Paradox was still a faceted red gemstone, probably lying in a pile of dirty clothes, and absolutely nowhere useful for me right now.

  So, my options were…

  Like, hit her? With a punch? Or, wait – I could pick up something heavy and use that. And maybe if she was stunned, I could try channeling again?

  On the other hand, running away was an option. I could try running away. The door was just right over there and –

  “You’re not in danger, pet,” the woman said, and a wave of relief washed over me. Oh, thank god, I wasn’t in danger, and I didn’t have to fight the woman. She looked really badass, and there was no way I could have taken her.

  So, yeah, it was a really, really good thing I wasn’t in any danger. I felt my heartbeat slowly returning to a normal rhythm.

  “To answer your other questions, well. You won’t be needing your possessions anymore,” the woman said, straightening up in her chair.

  “I – what?” I felt like I should be angry, but another wave of calm wrapped around me like a bnket, and I decided to let it go.

  “Clothing is a privilege, pet, and you certainly haven’t earned it. Now come here.” The woman beckoned me with a finger.

  “But what about – “ I tried again as I stepped closer to her.

  “Shhh. You can’t possibly miss the junk cluttering your space up, can you. Now arms up, pet.”

  I raised both of my arms, uncovering my breasts and pussy for the woman.

  Wait – what did I do? Why the fuck did I - ?!

  More calm. Peace. I could float in it, as much and as long as I wanted. I didn’t need to worry, because there was always going to be tranquil peace here for me. Just as long as I do what I’m told. I can do that, can’t I? I’m very agreeable. I just like making people happy.

  And it was almost fun, wasn’t it? Showing myself off for a stranger? I didn’t need to pretend I didn’t enjoy the fluttery burn creeping down inside me.

  “Spin for me,” the woman said absently, twirling one finger. “Mmmm, good girl.” Her eyes never left me, but I noticed they’d drifted lower.

  “No, really, though. Who are – “ I asked as I completed spinning around, then jerked to a sudden stop. Without making a sound, the woman was now standing right in front of me, so close we were practically touching. And then we were. The woman shushed me with a finger on my lips.

  “Ah, ah,” she said, and I stopped speaking, only watching her. She was at least a head taller than me, just tall enough that I would perfectly fit if she held me closer. I let my gaze wander down, following the bck, armored finger she slowly dragged down my neck and between my breasts.

  She wasn’t wearing anything, either, I realized. Except for the gloves and leggings covering her arms and legs, she was completely exposed, and I had a perfect view of her breasts, which she was openly dispying. They were stunning as the rest of her – full and lush, but they still sat obnoxiously high on her chest. A subtle teardrop curve ended with pert, lickably-pink nipples. They probably tasted –

  “Do you like what you see?” she asked me, and I could hear her smirk without needing to look up and check.

  “Yes,” I murmured. I did. Whoever she was, I still wanted to –

  “Hands behind your head,” she said, and I found myself moving again without thinking. Of course she’d want my hands out of the way. All the better to show – wait a minute. Calm flowed in again, but it couldn’t drag me away in the face of all my unanswered questions.

  Why was I doing whatever she said? And without question? What the hell did she do to me?

  “Oh, you noticed.” The woman traced a finger along the curve of my breast and then hefted it. I gasped at the sensation when she kneaded it. A fsh of fire ran through me as she massaged me and – no! No, this was her doing. I was onto her, and this was all something she was making me feel, and it obviously was a trick of some kind. I wasn’t feeling anything real, this wasn’t my choice, and the woman had to be doing something to me. I clenched my teeth and tried to twist away from her.

  Laughing, she caught my shoulder and held me in pce. “None of that, now, pet. Now why don’t you bend over? Legs straight.”

  Her hand on my shoulder ignited a new fire inside me and I moaned helplessly. I wanted to resist – I did. I was sure of it. But regardless of what I wanted, my body stayed loose and rexed as the woman guided me down, until I was bent over at a full ninety degrees with hands still csping the back of my neck and my legs now spread for bance.

  “What – what did you do to me?” I bit out, trying to convince me body to straighten back up. It wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I wasn’t clenching my muscles, I wasn’t paralyzed, or held in a spell, or anything. My body was almost perfectly rexed, just holding myself in the pose the woman had put me in.

  “I didn’t do anything.” The woman said absently as she palmed my dangling breast. She hefted and massaged it again, then pinched my nipple between two of her pointed cws and I had to bite my lip to keep from reacting.

  “You really did hide yourself away from the world, didn’t you, pet? We’ll have to fix that.”

  A new flush ran through me. I wasn’t sure what the woman meant by that comment, by I was sure I didn’t like it.

  The woman released me before she had tricked me into embarrassing myself further, and then I felt a single nail drag down my across my ribs and over my hip. The same cwed, invading hand grasped a cheek of my ass and squeezed.

  “Really, pet, you did this to yourself,” the woman continued. “Spread your ass open and hold it.”

  “Stop,” I tried to shout at her as my hands left my neck for the cheeks of my ass. Both the woman and my hands ignored me, and I felt myself flush even deeper as I spread myself wide open, completely revealing my ass and the lips of my pussy to the woman.

  “Please, stop! Don’t look, please – “ I cut off with a whimper as the woman dragged a cw across my lips.

  “Don’t what, pet?” the woman cooed at me.

  “Please – just don’t touch – ”

  “Touch this?”

  The woman slipped a finger inside me and my body locked up. Oh my god, she was inside me – I didn’t want her there – I didn’t want anyone there – And she was –

  Oh, god! Her fingers ended with those pointed cw tips. And they were inside me. Any second now, I was going to feel the blinding pain of her slicing me open from the inside. God, and I couldn’t even do anything to stop her. It was going to hurt so bad, and I couldn’t – and –

  “Shh, pet. Rex.” The woman worked another finger in and pumped them back and forth. Before I could flinch, another finger brushed over the hood of my clit, and I couldn’t help myself but scream. I was shaking, despite what she’d told me to do, and I was I was instants away from agony.

  But with a satisfied hum, the woman withdrew her finger and returned to her seat. I watched as she licked her glistening finger off and hummed happily again.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I asked, trying not to cry. I had no idea what was happening or my, but surely, she could tell me that much? It wouldn’t tell me who she was, but it might begin answering why she was here.

  “I have some rules for you, pet,” she said, ignoring my question. “We’ll start simple, but you will obey. First, you will only speak when spoken to or given permission. Do you understand?”

  “Who are you?” I tried again, and I felt frustration welling up into tears. To my horror, one fell and trickled down my face, followed by another.

  The woman clicked her tongue. “Not starting well. Your second rule is that unless I tell you otherwise, you will kneel. If you need to move, you will crawl.”

  As she spoke, I crumpled to my knees before her. I could feel the muscles still shaking and quivering, but I thought they might still work if I needed them to. No, they would work. The moment I had a chance, I was running as fast as I could. I had to get away from this crazy woman and whatever she was doing to me.

  “Come here, pet,” she said, and forcing me into a dilemma. I could take my chances running right now, or I could py along and wait for a better opportunity ter.

  I didn’t want to py along. Just on principle, I didn’t want to do anything the woman said. I didn’t want to give in, or act like a person I didn’t know and had never seen before could just walk into my apartment and act like she owned me.

  But my legs were still shaking, just like the rest of me. And I didn’t know anything about her, so even I got away, I wouldn’t have any way of stopping her from doing something like this again.

  My cheeks flushed bright red as I leaned onto my hands and slowly crawled towards her. I decided I wouldn’t look. I didn’t want to see her expression as I acted like her pet, didn’t want her to think I was okay with any of this. I kept my face down, and tried to focus on just my movements. Hand forward. Knee forward. Hand forward. Knee forward.

  And then I was in front of her. I sat back on my heels and kept my eyes lowered. I still wasn’t ready to look at her. I was sure I’d see some kind of satisfied smirk, or something, and just the thought of that made me want to shrivel up into a ball and die. If I actually knew she was – eww – enjoying making me crawl? Or even getting off on it? That would be unbearable.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked her again, head still pointed down.

  “Because I want to, Emma,” she said. “And because you need it.”

  “I don’t need this.”

  “Shhhh, Emma. Yes, you do.”

  “Who are you? Why can’t you just tell me that?”

  “You know who I am,” she said softly.

  I stopped. No, I didn’t. I was sure I’d never seen her before.

  Something tugged at me. Not in my body, something deeper. It felt like –

  I pushed that thought away. I didn’t know what it was, and I’d figure it out ter. Once I was out of this mess.

  “Are you Chosen, or something…?” I tried.

  “No.”

  “Well, I am, and someone will come by to check up on me.” Maybe. Probably. Dispatch would notice if I missed a patrol. The Government didn’t care all that much about whether its Chosen survived fighting off kaiju, but it sure cared that we stayed sane in our downtime, so we didn’t go rampaging through the city. Someone was going to come by. And as long as they got back out, they’d have to tell someone about all of this. And then they’d send in a Chosen, who could rescue me. It’d be embarrassing, sure, but none of the other Chosen cared about me all that much to begin with, so it wasn’t like things would get worse. I just needed to wait until –

  “Someone did come by, pet. You’re on medical leave until you’ve recovered.”

  “What – but – why – “ They just left me here? With this crazy woman? Who definitely didn’t look human. Why on earth would they have done that? What could she have said to them?

  Something tugged at me again. I brushed it off more forcefully.

  “Come on, pet. You know why.”

  There was no reason for a protracted medical leave. The magic Chosen wielded was pretty effective at helping us recover. Usually, we either died outright or we’d be back to fighting fit in a day or two. And I wasn’t badly injured. The fight with the kaiju had been tiring, but that had never been enough of an excuse for a break. Indefinite leave? That never happened, unless a Chosen was recovering from, like, crippling injury. Well, that, or bonding with a –

  Something tugged harder. I tried to ignore it.

  But I couldn’t remember what had happened after fighting the st kaiju. I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten back to my apartment, or how this woman had gotten in here, or why anyone would let someone with her obviously inhuman features, like that armor –

  Armor, or it could have –

  The room was covered in silk –

  And that meant –

  I felt the tug again.

  “Say it, pet.”

  I didn’t want to. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be possible. I knew what was supposed to happen, and it wasn’t supposed to be anything like this. Nothing was supposed to be like this.

  “No,” I whispered. It wasn’t true.

  The tug again.

  “Say it.”

  “No.”

  The tug was even more insistent. At something inside me. Deeper, like it was a bond to my –

  “It can’t be true.” I whispered. I was shaking harder.

  “And yet. Say it, pet,” the woman’s voice was softer.

  “You’re not supposed to be. It doesn’t work like this,” I choked and swallowed.

  “It does for me. Now, say it. Emma, what am I?”

  I screwed my eyes shut. It couldn’t be true.

  Another tug at the bond inside me, pressure building.

  It couldn’t be true.

  And yet.

  A new tear leaked out.

  The intensity of the bond was too much to ignore. I couldn’t push it away and longer. My mental walls colpsed, and sensation flooded into me. A wave of emotions that weren’t mine. Hunger, frustration, amusement, desire, and one more on top of all the rest. Control.

  I felt her hand tilt me head up to look at her. Through bleary eyes, I could see her staring at me. Waiting. For me to acknowledge what she’d known for days. What I should have known from the start. What had happened to the kaiju.

  “You’re my familiar,” I whispered.

  “Almost, pet,” the woman smiled. She stroked a tear away from cheek. “You didn’t st past the uplift, so I’m afraid I was forced to establish the bond all on my own.”

  I whimpered. This was worse than I could have imagined.

  “Which is why, Emma, I’m not your familiar.”

  I felt something wrap around my neck. I reached up to touch it without really comprehending, and I felt a thick band of smooth fabric. Maybe like what woven silk would feel like? It wasn’t important.

  It was a colr.

  “You’re mine.” The woman smiled as she leaned back in her chair.

  I had a colr on me. She put a colr on me, because I had bound my soul to a kaiju.

  And now she owned me.