Page 26 of The Brotherhood

Harlow. Quantum. Skul.

Standing. Waiting. Terrified.

Their eyes fell on Poppy, seeing what he’d done.

They were more than shocked, they were rattled. Skul was on the verge of murder and Handy adjusted his grip on her. “It’s done.” His voice was hoarse. Final.

Skul’s nostrils flared, his fury barely contained. “What did you do to her?”

Handy’s jaw clenched, rage flickering behind his exhaustion. “What I had to.” He looked at Quantum. “The imprinting process failed. The demons inside me destabilized,overriding containment. I shut the system down before they could take full control. Poppy—” His grip tightened around her unconscious body. “—intervened. She triggered the sexual phase of the imprint, stabilizing my system by redirecting the excess energy.”

Quantum’s eyes sharpened. “How?”

Handy exhaled through his nose. “She forced me to recognize her as my anchor in the only way that would work under extreme conditions. Direct contact. A full neural recalibration.”

Harlow scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Shit. That wasn’t supposed to happen yet.”

Quantum nodded slowly, already analyzing. “And now? Are you fully synchronized?”

Handy’s jaw ticked. “My system is stable. No backlash. The containment holds.”

Quantum studied him carefully. “And the bond?”

Handy’s grip on Poppy tightened, his entire body going still as he processed it. “She’s mine.” Handy’s voice was dark, unforgiving. Absolute. “No other man will touch her and live.” This, he said to Skul, his voice vibrating with an undeniable promise.

Harlow glanced between them, then finally exhaled. “Take her to the south wing. Last room on the right. She can rest while we run your tests.”

Handy still eyed Skul. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Only when he was certain it was understood—Poppy was his—did he turn and carry her out.

****

The south wing was quiet and dimly lit as Handy carried Poppy inside the room. It was simple—small, functional. A bed against the far wall, a kitchenette tucked into the corner, a singlechair beside a reinforced window. A place meant for him, for his new body.

Carefully, he lowered her onto the bed, eyes scanning her face. Even in sleep, she looked delicate, small against the dark sheets. His lips pressed into a thin line as he pushed a damp strand of hair from her forehead.

Their first time and he was a monster. He could never undo what had happened. What he had done. And yet… she had been everything.

His first attachment to existence had been through his brothers, bound in a way no other could understand. He had only ever been a piece of something greater. A fractured part of a whole. He had never stood alone, never truly belonged to himself.

Until now.

And in his first moment of true being, she had been there.

Not as a replacement. Not as a substitute. But as his.

His mind, his body—his demons—they had all reacted to her. She had steadied him. Everything he had longed for while being nothing more than a fragment, a whisper inside another man’s body—he had found it in her.

She had made him real.

His body hummed in response to her presence, the neural mesh binding to the imprint, reinforcing the claim. The demons inside him, once a storm, were silent now. Still. Content. They had taken the bond as law, as a ruling absolute.

But the man inside him—the one who had been forced to exist as something less than whole for so long—was not content. Because he knew. The way he had taken her—brutal, consuming, reckless—was imprinted just as deeply as the bond itself. The way her body had responded, the raw, animalistic need that had burned between them—he would never be able to forget it, never be able to undo it. Worse, he would never stop wanting it thatway. The sheer perfection of it, the unfiltered rightness, the way she had clung to him, accepted him, ruined him—

It had awakened something he could never put back to sleep.

He exhaled sharply, knowing the truth. His punishment was himself. Wanting what he had taken in his worst moment. Hungering for it. More. Again. Forever.

****

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