The bustle in the hospital had not lessened in the slightest by the following day. If anything, it had worsened. Patients were being transferred from other hospitals to the facility where Sienna worked, all seeking better treatment. The corridors were a river of chaos: gurneys rushing past, doctors calling out orders, and the constant beeping of machines merging with the cries of the wounded.
In the midst of this, Sienna's phone beeped.
She glanced at the screen, and as expected, it was a message from Isaac.
"We are in the hospital waiting area"
They were earlier than she had anticipated but that was only a good thing. She slipped away from the crowd of medical practitioners, weaving through the packed hallways until she reached the waiting area.
It was seriously overcrowded. But she spotted them easily.
Isaac and Craig sat in the far corner, away from the main flow of people. They were dressed like ordinary Dilrik citizens, unremarkable clothing and face masks like half the sick people in the room, but their presence was impossible to hide. People gave them occasional glances as they passed, drawn by their impeccable aura.
They noticed her too. Without a word, they rose and followed her through the hospital, down quieter corridors, until they reached her office.
The first thing Isaac noticed as he walked into the office was the state of the room. It was large, spacious enough to accommodate her work but books and papers had claimed every surface. Stacks towered on her desk. Files spilled from chairs. The sofa was buried under journals. It was chaos, the chaos of a mind too busy to tidy.
"What a place, Dr. Rivers," he said, pulling down his mask.
Sienna understood immediately. "This is a habit I can't control. Please just bear with it for the time being."
"I can't."
She shot him a dark look. "Are you going to get treatment or not?"
He ignored her completely. "Craig. Fix the place."
"Yes, Master."
Craig moved immediately, gathering stacks of papers and organizing with efficiency. Sienna watched in annoyance.
"You are so unbelievable," she said.
"You should be appreciative, Dr. Rivers."
She shook her head, snatched a document from the desk, and dropped onto the sofa to read while Craig worked. Isaac remained standing, his gaze sweeping the room with an expression that might have been disapproval or patience. He did not sit until Craig was finished.
"Now let's get to business, Dr. Rivers."
He settled onto the sofa adjacent to hers. Sienna looked up, and for a moment she simply took in the room. The office looked better, much better. In fact, she couldn't remember when it had last been this organized. She refused to admit that out loud, especially to this man.
"That night at the hotel," she began, trying to be as professional as possible, "was my scent as calming and soothing as it is now?"
"Not really." Isaac's tone was matter-of-fact. "With the way you were pressing against me, I was rather hungry and hot than calm."
Her face flooded with heat. She cleared her throat audibly, ignoring the way her pulse had jumped. "So my scent only became soothing and calming after."
"Yes. Though sometimes I get unnecessarily hungry."
She turned an even deeper shade of red. What was wrong with him? How could he speak so bluntly, so casually, about something that made her want to sink through the floor?
She glanced instinctively at Craig. He had noise-canceling headphones on and was gazing out the window but she doubted they were working at all.
"That night was your first, right?" she pressed on.
"Yes. Just like you."
She wanted to shove something into his mouth. A journal, perhaps. A whole stack of them.
"If that's the case," she said, forcing herself to focus, "I have an understanding of why my scent suddenly became an anchor to your ailment. It's likely the result of biological imprinting that occurred during that intimate contact. Naturally, your beast state is a regression to a primal predator; it makes you perceive everyone as an enemy or prey. But my scent now serves as a biological anchor. When you smell it, your brain is being chemically hijacked back into a human state by my genetic signature."
She paused, letting the words settle.
"During intimacy, the brain floods with oxytocin, the bonding hormone. Because your brain is already unstable due to your condition, it latched onto my scent during that peak hormonal state. The result: your amygdala, the rage center, created a permanent safe zone around my scent. Even if your beast takes over and your sense of reasoning shuts down, your brain remembers my scent as peace, pleasure, and safety."
Isaac's expression remained unreadable. He simply watched her, as if he knew she had more to say.
"However," she continued, "this has significant risks. If you remain in beast mode for too long without exposure to my scent, you might lose the ability to recognize anyone but me when you eventually calm down. Unlike before."
She expected some reaction this time. A flicker of concern, perhaps. A shift in that infuriating calm.
He gave her nothing.
"You do understand what I'm saying?" she pressed, raising an eyebrow.
"I do." A pause. "Should I stuff you in my bag and take you to Subrind now?"
She gave him a bland look. "To heal you now, I would have to be part of your healing process. Not just as your doctor, but as an anchor."
"That's fine."
Something in his tone made her pause, but she chose not to pursue it.
"My treatment plan goes thus," she continued, reaching for the file beside her. "Since you can't always be around me, I can give you something of mine that holds my scent. That will keep you in check while you're in Subrind."
She opened the file, flipping to the relevant pages.
"Secondly, I will work to tame your beast so you no longer have to depend solely on my scent to stay sane. Eventually, I aim to extinguish it entirely. To do that, I will introduce a trigger to activate your beast mode. The moment it surfaces, I step in using a combination of deep pressure therapy, a firm hug, direct skin contact, and melodic voice. This forces your parasympathetic nervous system to kick in and regain control."
Isaac listened in silence.
"Finally," she said, meeting his eyes, "we have two options. Either you learn to stare down your beast side while fully conscious when I trigger it. Or, if you can't, I perform surgery. I would implant electrodes in your amygdala. These electrodes emit a constant, low-level electrical pulse that muffles the amygdala's activity, a permanent, internal pacemaker for your emotions. If your brain tries to flip the switch to beast mode, the DBS unit detects the spike and sends a counter-pulse to neutralize it instantly."
She closed the file. "Are you fine with this?"
"I am."
She stood to place the file on her newly organized desk. "Excuse us, Craig," Isaac said from behind her.
She thought nothing of it, some private matter, perhaps, something he needed to discuss away from his subordinate's ears. She heard the door open and Craig walk out.
Then she heard Isaac rise.
She turned
And he was suddenly there.
Before she could react, he had her pinned against the table. His hands locked around hers, his body pressed against her with no room to move. Her breath caught in her throat.
"We should start with the second stage of treatment now," he said, his voice lower than before, his azure eyes holding a glint she recognized with a flash of heat through her chest. "To hasten the process."
Second stage of treatment. This pervert.
She slammed her head toward him in a headbutt and he dodged it.
"Doctor Rivers, you are trying to injure your patient."
"You are a bastard and a pervert."
"I know," his lips curved. "You told me that before."
She opened her mouth to curse him, to demand he release her immediately…
And he took the opportunity.
His mouth claimed hers before she could form a word of protest, deep and demanding, stealing her words and her breath in one movement. She lost all sense of reasoning immediately. Her mind emptied of everything but the feel of him, the taste, the unstoppable heat that flooded through her limbs.
It was a wild kiss; his lips moved against hers with desperate hunger.
His hands moved, they found her lab coat pushing it back from her shoulders, then his fingers found the hem of her shirt, pulling it loose from where it had been tucked into her shirt, and when his palm finally made contact with the bare skin of her waist, She gasped against his mouth a sound she barely recognized as her own, and he swallowed it greedily.
He became agitated, he wanted more. He had been hungry for more since that night, and the restraint he had shown until now was crumbling. His fingers hot against her moved, tracing her spine, tracing upward, registering every curve and dip.
She should stop him but her body had stopped listening to her, instead her hand found its way into his hair, fingers threading through the pale strands.
His thumbs brushed against the underside of her breast, and she moaned; it seemed to unlock a new fire in him, and he groaned, his grip on her waist tightening with a possessiveness that made her breath skip. He pressed closer, the hard length of him on her abdomen, and she could feel him, the evidence of his desire pressing against her, undeniable…
Suddenly the door burst open.
Craig stood frozen in the doorway.
The moment shattered. Sienna shoved Isaac away with a force that surprised them both, her chest heaving and her face burning.
"I am so sorry, but someone is heading for this office, Dr. Rivers," Craig said, his voice admirably steady for someone who had just walked into what he had.
"Understood. Thank you." Sienna straightened her clothes, refusing to meet either of their eyes. She turned to Isaac with all the coldness she could muster. "You can leave now. I am done with you."
"You haven't given me something of yours to keep me in check."
She gritted her teeth. He was perfectly calm, his voice almost teasing, as if nothing had happened.
She strode to her drawer, pulled out a folded shirt, and thrust it at him. "Goodbye."
He took it, but he didn't leave. Instead, he leaned in close. Her fist clenched, ready to strike, but he caught her wrist before she could move.
"You don't have to feel bad," he murmured. "It's a psychological response. I'm sure you can understand that better than anyone."
She glared at him, wishing her eyes could set him on fire.
He straightened, pulling his mask back into place. "Also, have a good rest, Dr. Rivers. Your dark circles are quite obvious."
He walked out before she could throw something at his head.
Craig followed, pulling the door shut behind him.
Sienna stood alone in her suddenly too-quiet office, her heart still racing, her skin still burning where his hands had been. She pressed her fingers to her lips and cursed under her breath.
Her sense of control and reasoning seems to disappear everytime something like this happens, she thought the last time was because she was drugged but this time she had been very clear headed.