The air in the processing center hummed with the kind of recycled sterility that made Kael’s skin prickle. He stood in line behind seventeen other men, all of them trying very hard to look like they weren’t sizing each other up. The fluorescent panels overhead cast everything in flat, unforgiving light—the kind that turned even the healthiest complexion sallow and made the shadows under everyone’s eyes look like bruises.
Kael’s shadow, at least, had definition.
His reflection in the polished steel wall panel showed a man who had spent the last eight years constructing himself into something difficult to ignore. Five-foot-nine—not tall, and he’d made peace with that somewhere around his third deployment—but carrying a hundred and eighty-three pounds at eleven percent body fat. The numbers mattered. In a world where the Phage killed nine out of every ten men who contracted it, the numbers mattered more than anything.
He caught himself cataloging his own body the way the intake examiners would. The trapezius muscles sloping from his neck to his shoulders like thick cables under the skin. The deltoids that gave his frame that coveted V-taper, pulling the eye down from his twenty-nine-inch waist to the dense quadriceps that strained against the fabric of his uniform trousers. His chest measured forty-four inches relaxed, and he could bench four-oh-five on a good day. Four plates a side. Sometimes more, when the gym was cold and his joints were warm and something primal in him needed to prove a point.
Shoe size: eleven. Waist: twenty-nine. The numbers ran through his head like a litany, a prayer against what was coming.
The line shuffled forward.
Kael’s jaw worked, the muscle in his cheek jumping under skin that hadn’t seen a razor in three days. The stubble coming in was dark—nearly black, like the hair on his head—and it grew in patches that never quite connected. A permanent five-o’clock shadow that made him look older than thirty-one, or maybe just more dangerous, depending on who was looking. His eyebrows sat thick and straight across a brow ridge that the Army medic who’d patched him up after the Kessel raid had called “Neanderthal-chic.” The nose between them had been broken twice—once in basic, once in a bar fight he didn’t like to talk about—and healed slightly crooked, tilting maybe two degrees to the left. It gave his face a faint asymmetry that photographers hated but women had always seemed to find interesting.
The hair on his head he kept short, military-short, a dark crop that revealed the shape of his skull and the slight flattening at the back from too many years on too many hard bunks. The same dark hair covered his forearms in dense, almost fur-like patterns that thinned at the biceps and disappeared over the shoulders. His chest was mostly smooth, just a narrow trail of dark hair that started between his pectorals and traced a straight line down the center of his abdominals.
His abs were his best feature. He knew this the way other men knew their own names—had spent so many hours carving them into existence that they’d become the first thing his mind reached for when he needed to remember who he was. The rectus abdominis separated into eight distinct segments, each one ridged like the plates of some ancient armor, the linea alba between them a deep canyon that caught shadows and held them. The obliques swept down on either side in diagonal striations that vanished into the waistband of his trousers like secrets.
A man could survive the Phage if his body was strong enough. That was what the research said. Muscular density, cardiovascular efficiency, metabolic resilience—these things tipped the odds from near-certain death to something approaching a coin toss. But “survival” meant something very specific when it came to the Phage, and that specificity was why Kael was standing in this line instead of lying in a quarantine ward somewhere, waiting for his organs to liquefy.
The Phage didn’t kill you. Not anymore. The first strain had, back when it emerged from whatever godforsaken laboratory or meteorite or divine punishment had spawned it. The first strain had turned seventy percent of the global male population into fever-wracked corpses within eighteen months. But viruses evolved, and the Phage had evolved toward something almost elegant in its cruelty.
It rewrote the endocrine system. Specifically, it attacked the body’s ability to produce and process testosterone. The mechanism was complex—Kael had read the papers, understood maybe half of it—but the result was simple. A man infected with the Phage would slowly, inexorably lose his body. The muscle mass he’d spent years building would catabolize. The bone density would drop. The metabolism would crash. Within two years of symptom onset, the average Phage patient had lost forty percent of his lean body mass and gained enough visceral fat to qualify as metabolically obese, regardless of what he ate or how he trained.
The psychological toll was worse. Imagine being a man who had defined himself by his strength, his physique, his physical capability—and watching all of it dissolve like sand through your fingers. The suicide rate among Phage patients was forty-four percent. Higher among former athletes. Higher still among soldiers.
Kael was all three.
The line moved again. He was sixth from the front now, close enough to see the intake desk and the woman behind it—gray-haired, efficient, the kind of bureaucratic gatekeeper who had seen every variation of human desperation and had ceased to be moved by any of them.
“Next.”
The man at the front stepped forward. He was Kael’s height but probably thirty pounds lighter, with the kind of physique that came from recreational jogging and moderate portion control. His hands were shaking.
“Name and identification number.”
“Marcus Webb. 4427-8893-Delta.”
The woman typed something into her console. Her expression didn’t change.
“You’ve been approved for the Sponsorship Program. Your assigned Provider is O-773. Report to Suite 1400 in the East Tower. Next.”
The man—Marcus—looked like he wanted to ask questions. The woman’s gaze lifted from her screen, flat and final, and he thought better of it. He collected his chit and walked toward the elevators with the slightly stunned gait of a man who had just signed away something he couldn’t name.
Kael watched him go.
The Sponsorship Program.
That was the official name, the one that appeared in government briefings and public health announcements. The media called it something else. The tabloids had a dozen names for it, each more lurid than the last. The underground forums where Kael had done his research before making this decision called it the Rent. Because that was what you were doing, essentially. Renting your body to someone who could afford to keep it alive.
The science was straightforward, even if the implementation was anything but. The Phage’s damage could be halted—not cured, never cured, but halted—by a steady infusion of tailored androgenic compounds harvested from a healthy male donor. Not synthetic testosterone, which the Phage-altered endocrine system would simply reject. It had to be biological. It had to be human. And it had to be administered through a medium that the body would accept without mounting an immune response.
Semen. Specifically, semen donated through direct, repeated intimate contact. The kind of contact that created a mucosal absorption rate high enough to deliver the necessary compounds into the bloodstream.
The Providers were always male. The research had been clear on that point—female partners simply couldn’t deliver the necessary hormonal payload, regardless of frequency or enthusiasm. The Sponsorship Program had been designed accordingly. Healthy, uninfected men with verified androgenic profiles could apply to become Providers. Sponsors. They would be matched with infected men—Recipients—and the arrangement would continue for as long as the Recipient needed to maintain his physical integrity.
In exchange, the Provider received a monthly stipend that rivaled the salary of a senior corporate executive. Tax-free. No questions asked about what happened in the private suites where the “treatments” took place.
Kael had done the math. A Provider could earn more in two years than Kael had made in his entire eight-year military career. And all they had to do was have sex with men who were, by definition, desperate enough to agree to it.
He’d seen the Provider applicants in the waiting room downstairs. Forty-something men in expensive suits and carefully cultivated physiques, filling out their paperwork with the casual confidence of predators who knew they were at the top of the food chain. Some of them had the look of former athletes. Others had the sleek, polished appearance of men who treated their bodies as another form of capital—maintained, optimized, ready to be leveraged.
They had all looked at Kael when he walked through. He’d been in enough hostile environments to recognize the weight of that collective gaze. Assessment. Calculation. A certain kind of hunger that had nothing to do with food.
He’d kept his eyes forward and his shoulders squared and let them look.
“Next.”
Kael stepped up to the desk. His boots—standard-issue combat boots, polished to a shine that the processing center’s fluorescent lights turned into twin mirrors—made no sound on the polished concrete floor. He’d learned to move quietly a long time ago.
“Name and identification number.”
“Kael Maddox. 7901-2256-Charlie.”
The woman typed. Her fingers paused.
Something flickered across her face—the first expression Kael had seen her make that wasn’t bureaucratic indifference. It might have been surprise. It might have been recognition. It vanished before he could categorize it.
“You’ve been flagged for Priority Placement.”
Kael waited. The military had taught him that, too. How to stand still and silent while someone else figured out what to do with him.
“Your physical evaluation scores are... exceptional.” Her eyes scanned whatever was on her screen. “Top two percent of all Recipient applicants. Your Provider match has been pre-selected.”
“Pre-selected.”
“You’ve been assigned to O-001.”
The number meant nothing to Kael. But the way the woman said it—the slight pause before the digits, the way her gaze lifted to meet his for the first time—suggested it should have.
“Is that good or bad?”
“O-001 is the Program Director’s personal designation.” She handed him a chit. The plastic was heavier than the one she’d given Marcus Webb. Gold-edged. “Suite 3000. Top floor. The elevator will require retinal verification.”
Kael took the chit. His fingers—thick, calloused, the knuckles slightly enlarged from years of impact training—dwarfed the slim rectangle of plastic.
“Anything else I should know?”
The woman’s expression did something complicated. Settled, finally, into something that looked almost like sympathy.
“The Director has been waiting for someone with your profile for a long time,” she said. “I hope you know what you’re agreeing to.”
The elevator didn’t feel like an elevator. It felt like a decompression chamber, the kind of airlock you passed through before entering an environment that would kill you if you weren’t properly prepared. The walls were mirrored, which Kael assumed was deliberate—a final opportunity to look at yourself before you met the man who was about to own you.
He used it.
The body in the mirror was the same one he’d been building since he was nineteen years old and had realized, with the sudden clarity of a religious conversion, that his physical form was the only thing in his life he could truly control. He’d been a skinny kid—one-forty soaking wet, with the kind of metabolism that burned through everything he ate before it could stick to his bones. The Army had changed that. The Army had given him structure. Discipline. Access to weight rooms and nutritionists and the kind of physical demands that forced his body to adapt or break.
His body had chosen to adapt.
Now, at thirty-one, he looked at himself and saw the cumulative result of twelve thousand hours of deliberate suffering. The deltoids that rounded his shoulders into smooth, dense caps. The trapezius that rose on either side of his neck like the slopes of a mountain. The pectorals—defined, striated near the sternum, the lower insertions sharp enough that you could trace the muscle’s attachment to the ribcage with your finger. His nipples sat small and dark against the pale terrain of his chest, the areolae tight from the elevator’s aggressive air conditioning.
He could deadlift five-eighty-five. Squat four-ninety-five. Run a six-minute mile without losing his breath.
None of it mattered. The Phage was already inside him—confirmed by the blood test three weeks ago, the one that had sent his entire life into a tailspin—and without the treatments, all of it would be gone within two years.
His hand went to his stomach. His abs tensed under his palm, the familiar topography of hard-won muscle. The skin was smooth there, the hair trail from his chest narrowing to a dark line that disappeared beneath his waistband. His obliques—those hard-earned diagonal ridges—flared slightly as he pressed his fingers into the flesh, testing, as if he could feel the Phage already starting its work.
The elevator chimed.
The doors opened onto a space that didn’t look like it belonged in the same building as the processing center downstairs. The processing center had been institutional: gray walls, fluorescent lights, the smell of industrial cleaner and human anxiety. Suite 3000 was something else entirely.
The floors were hardwood—actual hardwood, dark and gleaming, the kind that would have cost more per square foot than Kael’s monthly housing allowance during his last deployment. The walls were painted a deep charcoal that absorbed light rather than reflecting it, making the space feel simultaneously intimate and vast. The furniture was leather and chrome, arranged in configurations that suggested conversation rather than transaction. A wall of windows looked out over the city skyline, the late-afternoon sun turning the glass towers into rectangles of gold.
And the man standing in front of those windows was looking at Kael like he’d just received a gift he’d been expecting for years.
“Kael Maddox.”
The voice was smooth. Warm. The kind of voice that made you want to lean closer rather than step back. The man turned away from the windows and Kael got his first look at the person who was going to be fucking him for the foreseeable future.
Callum Voss—because that was his name, Kael had looked it up in the elevator, had pulled every scrap of public information he could find in the ninety seconds before the doors opened—was not what Kael had expected.
He was tall. Six-two, maybe six-three, with the kind of lean, rangy build that suggested swimming or tennis rather than weightlifting. His shoulders were broad but not heavily muscled, the line of his clavicles visible under a charcoal sweater that probably cost more than Kael’s entire wardrobe. His waist was narrow—maybe a thirty-two—and his legs were long, encased in dark trousers that had been tailored to break perfectly over polished leather shoes. Size twelve, Kael guessed. Maybe twelve and a half.
His face was interesting. Not handsome in the conventional sense—his features were too sharp for that, too angular—but compelling. His jaw was strong and clean-shaven, the bone structure visible under skin that had the faint olive undertone of someone with Mediterranean heritage somewhere in his lineage. His nose was aquiline, slightly prominent, the kind of nose that would have made him look arrogant even if he wasn’t. His eyebrows were dark and expressive, arching slightly over eyes that were an unusual shade of hazel—more gold than green, more green than brown, shifting as the light caught them.
His hair was dark brown, cut short on the sides and left longer on top, swept back from his forehead in a style that managed to look effortless and deliberate at the same time. There was gray at his temples—not the silver of aging but the stark white that sometimes appeared in men who had been through something. The contrast against the dark hair was striking. Intentional, maybe. The kind of thing that made you look twice.
He was forty-two, according to the public bios. Forty-two and single and, apparently, the architect of the entire Sponsorship Program. The man who had designed the system that Kael was now, willingly, entering.
Callum Voss smiled. His teeth were perfect. Of course they were.
“I’ve been reviewing your file,” he said, and his tone was conversational, as if they were meeting for coffee rather than for the negotiation of Kael’s bodily autonomy. “The physical evaluation scores are remarkable. Genuinely remarkable. Do you know how many Recipient applicants achieve a ninety-fifth percentile or higher in all twelve metrics?”
“No.”
“Four. In the eighteen months since the Program launched. You’re the fourth.” Callum took a step closer. His movements were unhurried, deliberate, the gait of a man who had never needed to rush toward anything because everything worth having eventually came to him. “The other three were professional athletes. Olympic-level. You’re the first soldier.”
“Ex-soldier.”
“The body doesn’t know the difference.” Another step. Close enough now that Kael could smell him—something woody and clean, expensive but not aggressive. “You’ve maintained a hundred and eighty-three pounds at eleven percent body fat for six consecutive years. Your VO2 max is sixty-two. Your bone density is in the ninety-seventh percentile for your age cohort. Your testosterone levels were seven hundred and forty nanograms per deciliter on your most recent panel—which, given the early-stage Phage markers in your bloodwork, is frankly astonishing.”
Kael said nothing. The numbers were accurate. He’d been tracking them for years, charting the rise and fall of his own physiology with the obsessive attention of a man who had made his body his only asset.
“The Phage is going to destroy all of it,” Callum said, and his voice held something that might have been regret or might have been anticipation—Kael couldn’t tell which. “Within eighteen months, you’ll lose the muscle. Within twenty-four, the bone density will start to go. The metabolic changes will follow. You’ll watch yourself become something you don’t recognize. Something you’ve spent your entire adult life trying not to be.”
“I know what the Phage does.”
“Do you know what the treatments do?”
Kael had read the literature. He knew the mechanism, the absorption rates, the biochemical pathways through which the androgenic compounds would halt the Phage’s progression. He knew that the treatments had to be administered through repeated intimate contact. He knew that “intimate contact” was the clinical term for what was going to happen in this suite, on a schedule that Callum Voss would determine.
“I understand the process.”
Callum’s smile shifted. Became something slightly sharper at the edges.
“The process,” he repeated, as if tasting the word. “That’s a very clinical way to put it. I wonder if you’re being clinical on purpose. A defense mechanism, perhaps. It’s easier to think about ‘the process’ than it is to think about my cock inside you.”
The words landed like a slap. Deliberately. Kael felt his jaw tighten, felt the muscle in his cheek jump again.
“I’m not here to be your therapist.”
“No. You’re here to be my Recipient.” Callum moved again, circling now, and Kael felt the weight of his gaze like a physical pressure. “Let me be clear about what that means. I’m going to describe the arrangement, and you’re going to listen, and at the end of this conversation you’re going to make a choice. But I want you to understand exactly what you’re choosing.”
He stopped. He was behind Kael now, close enough that Kael could feel the warmth of his body, the displacement of air. Kael’s shoulders tightened. Every instinct he’d developed in eight years of combat situations told him to turn around, to keep the threat in front of him.
He stayed still.
“The treatments require direct mucosal absorption,” Callum said. His voice was lower now, pitched to carry only to Kael’s ear. “That means my semen needs to enter your body through a route that provides sufficient surface area and vascular access. There are really only two options. Oral administration is possible but less effective—the stomach acids degrade too much of the active compounds. The preferred method is anal.”
He let the word hang there.
“I’m going to fuck you, Kael. Regularly. On a schedule that your physiology requires—initially four or five times a week, decreasing as your body stabilizes and the Phage retreats into dormancy. I’m going to put you in whatever positions I prefer. I’m going to take as long as I want. I’m not going to prioritize your pleasure—the treatments work regardless of whether you enjoy them, and your enjoyment is not the point of this arrangement.”
Callum circled back into view. His expression was calm, curious, watching Kael’s face the way a scientist might watch a test subject’s response to a stimulus.
“There are things I particularly enjoy,” he continued. “I enjoy bodies like yours. The density of them. The way developed muscle feels under my hands—the resistance it offers, the way it yields and doesn’t yield at the same time. I’m going to touch you extensively. I’m going to explore every part of your physique that interests me, and I’m going to do it for my own gratification, not yours.”
Kael’s hands, which had been at his sides, curled into fists. He made them uncurl.
“Your abdominal development is extraordinary,” Callum said, and his gaze dropped to Kael’s midsection as if the fabric of his shirt weren’t there. “The definition, the symmetry—you clearly know what you’re doing in the gym. I’m looking forward to examining that more closely. The texture of well-developed abdominals under my palms. The way the muscles contract involuntarily when the body is under stress.”
He smiled again. This time it reached his eyes.
“I enjoy pushing limits. Finding the edge of what someone can tolerate and then pressing just past it. I’m curious about whether your military training has given you a higher pain threshold than the average Recipient. I suspect it has. That’s going to make things very interesting.”
“You’re talking about hurting me.”
“I’m talking about causing discomfort,” Callum corrected. “Pain is such an imprecise word. What I’m describing is more like... an adventure. A shared exploration of what your body can experience. Some Recipients find that they eventually enjoy it. The intensity of it. The way it strips away everything else and leaves only the physical moment. Some don’t. Either way, the treatments work.”
He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was lighter, almost casual.
“There is one other thing. A personal preference of mine. I don’t touch Recipients’ cocks.”
Kael blinked. Of all the things Callum had said, that was the one that caught him off guard.
“What?”
“I don’t touch your cock. During the treatments. Ever. It’s not a hygiene issue—the Program requires extensive testing, and everyone is clean. It’s simply a preference. A boundary. Your cock is your own. I won’t touch it, I won’t stimulate it, I won’t acknowledge it. If you want to touch yourself during the treatments, you’re welcome to. But my hands will be elsewhere.”
The specificity of it was strange. Almost stranger than everything else he’d described. Callum was going to fuck him, going to feel up every inch of his body, going to push him past the point of comfort into something that might be pain or might be something else entirely—but he wasn’t going to touch his cock.
“Why?”
“Does it matter?”
Kael considered the question. Decided, after a moment, that it didn’t.
“What happens if I say no?”
“Then you walk out of this suite, and you go back to the processing center, and you’re matched with a different Provider based on availability. It might take weeks. Months, possibly. The Phage will continue to progress while you wait. And whatever Provider you end up with will almost certainly not have my resources. My facilities. My... particular skillset.” Callum spread his hands. “I’m very good at what I do, Kael. I’ve been doing it since before the Program existed. I know exactly how to maximize absorption rates, how to position a Recipient’s body for optimal delivery, how to ensure that every treatment achieves its intended biochemical effect. My Recipients maintain their physical condition longer than anyone else’s. That’s not a boast. It’s data.”
The words settled into the space between them. Kael could feel the weight of them, the truth of them. He’d read the Program statistics. He knew what the success rates were, broken down by Provider. O-001’s data was an outlier in every category.
“You enjoy this,” Kael said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“You enjoy having men who are desperate. Men who don’t have other options.”
“I enjoy the dynamic,” Callum said. “The power of it. The knowledge that someone like you—someone with your discipline, your physical capability, your obvious pride in what you’ve built—would choose to submit to me. Not because I’ve forced you. Because the alternative is worse. Because the Phage is going to take everything from you, and I’m the only one who can stop it.”
He tilted his head, studying Kael’s face.
“Is that honesty enough for you? I can be more honest if you’d like. I can tell you exactly how much I’m going to enjoy feeling those abdominal muscles contract when I push inside you for the first time. How curious I am about the sounds you’ll make. Whether you’ll try to stay silent or whether your body will betray you.”
Kael’s heart was beating faster. He could feel it in his chest, in his throat, in the pulse that was starting to make itself known at his temples. His body was interpreting this conversation as a threat. His adrenal glands were activating, dumping cortisol and adrenaline into his bloodstream, preparing him for fight or flight.
There was nowhere to fly to.
“The alternative,” he said. “What you said before. The worse alternative.”
“Losing your body. Losing everything you’ve built. Watching your muscles atrophy, your definition soften, your strength disappear. Becoming one of the Phage’s statistics. Another former athlete who couldn’t cope with what the virus took from him. That’s the alternative.”
Kael’s hand went to his stomach again. The gesture was unconscious, a habit he’d developed in the weeks since the diagnosis. His fingers traced the ridges of his rectus abdominis through his shirt, the familiar topography of eight years of discipline and sacrifice.
Callum watched the movement. His eyes tracked Kael’s hand with an intensity that made Kael’s skin prickle.
“You love your body,” Callum said. “I can see it. The way you touch yourself—not sexually, but reverently. Like you’re checking to make sure it’s still there. Still yours. I understand that feeling. I’m offering you the chance to keep it.”
“In exchange for letting you use it.”
“In exchange for letting me enjoy it. Yes.”
The room was silent. The windows showed the sun beginning its descent toward the horizon, the gold of the sky softening into orange. Below them, the city was going about its business—people who didn’t have the Phage, people who didn’t have to make choices like this, people whose bodies would simply continue being their bodies without anyone else’s intervention.
Kael thought about the seventeen other men in the processing center line. The forty-something Providers in the waiting room downstairs, evaluating the applicants with the cool assessment of buyers at an auction. The three other Recipients who had tested in the ninety-fifth percentile—Olympic athletes, Callum had said, men whose entire identities were wrapped up in their physical capabilities the same way Kael’s was.
Men who had presumably made the same choice Kael was about to make.
“If I agree to this,” Kael said, and his voice came out steadier than he felt, “I have conditions.”
Callum’s eyebrows rose. “Do you.”
“I don’t stop training. The Phage might be dormant, but I’m not going to let myself deteriorate just because the treatments are working. I need gym access. Proper nutrition. Whatever equipment I need to maintain my condition.”
“The suite includes a private gym. Fully equipped. You’ll have twenty-four-hour access.”
“And I want to know your physical stats. Your panels. Your androgenic profile. If you’re going to be inside me, I want to know exactly what I’m putting in my body.”
Callum smiled. This time it seemed genuine—or at least, genuinely amused.
“You can have my complete medical file. Updated monthly. I have nothing to hide.”
“And the treatments.” Kael paused, choosing his words. “You said you’re going to push limits. I want to know what that means. Specifically.”
“Specifically?” Callum stepped closer again. This time he didn’t circle. He stopped directly in front of Kael, close enough that Kael had to tilt his head up slightly to maintain eye contact. The height difference wasn’t much—three or four inches—but Callum made it feel significant. “Specifically, Kael, I’m going to put you in positions that give me deep access to your body. I’m going to take my time. I’m not going to stop just because you’re uncomfortable. I’m going to let the discomfort build—let it become something you have to push through, something that requires all that discipline and control you’ve spent so many years cultivating.”
His voice dropped lower.
“And through all of it, I’m going to be touching you. Your chest. Your back. Your abdominals especially—I wasn’t exaggerating about that, your abdominal development is genuinely remarkable. I’m going to feel every ridge, every contraction, every involuntary response your body makes. I’m going to learn your physique better than you know it yourself.”
Kael’s breathing had changed. He was aware of it—aware of the slight shallowness, the way his chest was expanding and contracting faster than normal. His body was still interpreting this as a threat. His mind was having trouble disagreeing.
But underneath the threat response, there was something else. Something he didn’t want to examine too closely.
“And my cock,” he said. “You really won’t touch it.”
“I really won’t touch it.” Callum’s smile was knowing. Almost mischievous. “That’s going to bother you more than you expect. I’m curious to see how you handle it.”
Kael looked at him. This man who was offering to save his body in exchange for the right to use it. This man who had designed an entire institutional framework around the sexual domination of desperate men and was completely unapologetic about enjoying every aspect of it.
This was the choice. This was the price.
The sun was lower now. The orange was deepening into red. Suite 3000 had seemed vast when Kael entered; now it felt small, the space between them compressed into something almost suffocating.
Kael’s fingers found his abdominals again. Pressed into the familiar ridges. Counted them, automatically—one through eight, the eight-pack that had been his obsession and his pride and his identity for as long as he could remember.
“Okay,” he said.
Callum’s smile widened. Became something that Kael would learn, over the coming months, to recognize as anticipation.
“Okay,” Callum repeated. “Let’s begin.
