The more she talked to Professor Mordecai, the more Mercy found herself liking him. He’d alluded, at least a little, to what he thought of the situation they found themselves in; he was willing to listen to her as a colleague with her own knowledge and perspective; he didn’t seem unable to look beyond her history. And that… well, it was certainly surprising.

She’d say this for him, though: mutual respect felt good. And what she was now experiencing as mutual respect underlined for her, for the first time, that the quiet camaraderie among the villainous set, which she’d always taken for respect, was no such thing.

“I guess if you went back to the past,” she said, “like he is, from his perspective, you might be thinking your knowledge was going to allow you to take over.”

“Sure, but he’s not going back. He’s just having a kid in the past,” Mordecai said. “Might be a predestination paradox, but-”

Mercy was frowning.

“What is it?”

“Just…” She sighed. “Something about that is bugging me…”

The door to the medbay swung open, and Maxine Power strode in. Mercy barely spared her a glance at first - her attention on her unconscious friend - and didn’t even take in the figure behind her, but a half-second later her head snapped back to full attention and her jaw dropped, staring back. She’d fought Maxine a few times, and she’d seen her in a dozen or more different moods - and something about the stride told her Maxine was riding on high emotion and spoiling for an excuse to throw a punch.

Then she properly registered the figure behind her, who definitely wasn’t Stormcaller. Or Bulwark, which also wouldn’t have been ideal.

Vivian realised suddenly that, without realising it, she’d reflexively placed herself between Maxine and Amy. “Prof,” she said, “if you’ve got any ideas…”

Maxine swung from the shoulder, putting all her power behind it. Vivian had enough time to think, but if she’s obeying anybody she should only obey me, and - barely - enough time to intercept the blow with her forearm. She felt the impact rattle all up and down her arm, wincing at the hit, and fell back a step.

Instincts took over and one foot lifted from the ground, arcing forward toward Maxine, but it stopped before connecting. Vivian nearly lost her balance at that, and certainly would have if she wasn’t able to fly under her own power; when you can do that, keeping yourself upright is rarely too much of a challenge.

She was relieved to feel her Master’s control on her in her inability to strike a hero or heroine, but at the same time, it was a problem, and she felt herself getting scared. The adrenaline of her fear flooded her system.

She caught Maxine’s next swing with her hand, gripping the heroine at the wrist. She had a slight power advantage over the other woman, but just as she’d found against Bulwark, being compelled not to fight back was going to cause serious issues.

When she’d made it through this, she decided, she was going to approach Master on her knees and beg him to change this part of her programming. If this had happened with Siren, Amy would have had her child without the Justice Guard finding out - and who knows what might have happened then?

Professor Mordecai had said something, but Vivian hadn’t registered a single word. Hanging on to one wrist, she ducked her head under the haymaker Maxine unleashed with the other, the result of which was the other woman turning her back on her from her own momentum. She caught the other hand, pulling Maxine in against her body, her own arms straitjacketed across her.

“Hold still!” Vivian barked, and with the other woman so close she felt the sudden shift in how Maxine held herself, suddenly ramrod-straight. Her ass was suddenly right against Vivian’s belly, and if her cheeks hadn’t already been flushed thinking of Master they would have been. She shouldn’t be nearly this aroused during a fight; it wasn’t how she behaved.

Except when-

Sudden realisation flooded through her. With a fury built of certainty, she released Maxine, shoving the suddenly motionless woman aside, and lunged at the man who’d come in with her.

He blocked her punch with one upraised arm and raised his leg, planting his foot in her belly and kicking her backward the length of the medbay, slamming into the wall. The same counter she’d tried to use on Maxine, that her conditioning hadn’t let her.

Biologically, he was Ms Miracle’s son, and the power of the Memphis Miracle was his by genetic right. But as she’d realised, that wasn’t the only advantage he had.

He’d turned his attention to Mordecai. He smiled, a shining god on earth as his face lit up. Secure and serene in his power.

Vivian accelerated.

It was somewhere between running and flight, and it was mostly an effort of will. In this confined a space, getting up to speed was more important than how you did it; she was banking on her opponent being unsure in his powers, not having the reaction time he’d need.

Finally, someone she could hit.

She caught him with the point of her shoulder right into the kidneys and slammed him back to the far wall of the medbay in turn, coming to a full halt. “Mordecai,” she gasped, “I know what he did. You’ve got to think like a villain to see it-”

But the man was coming right back at her, roaring forward at speed. His problem was that he was up against someone who’d spent years battling someone with all the power he had, and more experience in wielding it. She was already pivoting, her left foot planted firmly, braced against thin air in the way only a flier could, and as he came in her booted right foot connected with his shoulderblade. Suddenly he was skidding sideways, ploughing into one of the other beds, thankfully empty.

“He did come back to the past,” she carried on. “He just wanted to do it like a god. Someone with powers.”

As Aitan struggled out of the wreckage of a bed that was half high-tech scanner, pulling himself upright, she went on. “How am I doing, huh? You know, most people, if they even know their brother or sister has powers, it doesn’t get to them. But you, you must have been jealous as anything-”

He threw the bed at her, and Vivian didn’t even bother to bat it aside. It crashed into her and bounced off, and she held her space in the air. Maybe he didn’t know who she really was, maybe Mercy hadn’t rated a footnote in the history books - maybe he had no idea that he was just as powerful as she was, so if she could make him believe she had his number, this could end.

“Get her!” he howled, and Maxine, still motionless, whimpered, caught between the lustful compulsion she knew he had her in and the hypnotic compulsion Vivian had already laid down.

But Vivian felt, too, a sudden urge to get herself, a strange desire to just follow the whims of his thought. She bit her lip to fight it, hoping Mordecai would pick up on the rest of what she now saw clearly; the psionic effect just before birth was Aitan’s mind being injected into the child, overwriting whatever might otherwise have been there.

Unfortunately Aitan picked up on at least as much as Mordecai, and the tantrum-tier fury gave way to confusion and then at last to the thing Vivian least wanted to see there; confidence.

“Oh, so you do feel it,” he said softly. “That’s lovely. That’s splendid.” It felt like praise; it felt exciting; it washed over her in pleasure and tingles, and at her core was a tiny voice of upset that she was feeling this way about someone who was not Master.

She didn’t think she had long left before everything went wrong. She glanced to her side, saw Amy still in the induced slumber. Didn’t want what she felt sure was coming to happen.

Did she want that less than she wanted to avoid the consequences of her actions?

“Maxine?” she said quietly. “Go fetch Bulwark. Tell him to come prepared.”

And in moments, Maxine was gone.

Vivian locked eyes with Aitan. “That’s one of us you can’t mess with right there,” she said. “Even having her powers wasn’t enough, huh? You had to-”

“Give himself pheromones,” Professor Mordecai finished. “Yes. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction; I can follow the logic chain from there. So that’s what one of these gadgets buried in her does.”

“Yeah, that’s enough out of you,” Aitan said. He hadn’t looked away from Vivian, who was beginning to find that a problem. There was so much of his pheromonal musk in the air, especially now he’d exerted himself, and the longer it went, the hotter the need between her legs (and the need at the back of her mind, into the bargain). She was more turned on than she’d imagined she could still get outside her Master’s presence, and having Amy’s fetish for submission bound into her mind wasn’t helping. “All I need from you is you to wake her up.”

Vivian held her breath. Professor Mordecai was rarely involved in any fighting; if he was, it was usually deploying a gadget on the edge of a fight. She was pretty sure he wasn’t any hardier than the average man of his age, and that meant someone with Amy’s powers could kill him in a heartbeat if they chose. It wouldn’t exactly be hard for Aitan’s threats to break his spirit entirely.

“I won’t be doing any such thing,” she heard him say, and she felt her heart jump with a mix of excitement and concern for him. Feeling concern for others was definitely the most frustrating part of having been brainwashed; she had been much more cavalier in her decisions before Master.

Aitan frowned, and her thighs squeezed together in spite of herself. By now, she figured, her lungs and her rapidly-flooding brain must be saturated with his pheromones. She didn’t want to risk rushing him again; he’d shown he was a quick learner. But this wasn’t a standoff, not when she was more and more distracted the whole time.

Macabre had enjoyed a reputation, in the criminal fraternity, for an iron will, a determination that some thought of as a superpower, for the focus it gave her. When she was on teams, there would occasionally be people who lost sight of their goals, but Macabre would never be one of them. To Vivian’s mind, Mercy had never had that same focus; on the other hand, she reflected, she wasn’t humping the furniture from the lust Aitan was marinating her in. So perhaps having her mind broken hadn’t also broken her will.

“Do you know how to wake her up?” Aitan asked. Vivian clenched her jaw, struggling against the need to satisfy him, the needy hope he would satisfy her in turn. If she told him she did, he wasn’t going to want Mordecai there to cause problems. She didn’t think he’d be allowed to run off and lick his wounds, either.

“I think so,” she managed. Lying… lying completely was beyond her.

“Then take him out,” she said. Vivian nodded, turning toward Professor Mordecai. She stepped in close, then swung -

- and her arm stopped short of its mark. Frustrated, and with a direct order still echoing around in her head, she swung again, with her other hand, and that didn’t make contact either.

Her Master’s programming still held true. It had become part of who she was, and her needy, controlling lust couldn’t overcome that.

Mordecai smiled at her and, her back to Aitan, she managed to smile back.

“What the hell are you doing?” Aitan demanded.

“I’m trying to do what you said,” she offered through gritted teeth.

“Oh, for - stop that,” he ordered, and soared forward herself, grabbing her by the shoulder and pulling her out of his way.

She promptly punched him in the side of the skull, something that would have been agony if she wasn’t as inhumanly tough as she was. It rattled him, rattled him hard; it was the kind of shot that would finish a fight between Ms Miracle and Macabre, but the kind of shot neither of them ever left themselves open to if they could avoid it.

He staggered and went down to one knee, and Mordecai took the opportunity to get clear of the fight. Vivian went in for another swing, but he managed to blurt out “Stop,” and she stopped her attack before it could happen.

“Stand still and just do what I say,” Aitan elaborated. He struggled back to his feet while Vivian tried to find a loophole in her latest instructions - and with the fact that she’d been given a liking now, bordering almost on an addiction, for that giddy feeling she got when she was effectively helpless.

Now he had all the time he needed to collect himself and form a plan. “Right,” he said. “Wake her up, and don’t let him stop you.”

She couldn’t trick her way through that any more than she could trick herself through being able to do only what he said. So she had to obey - and with that settled in her mind she moved to obey with a speed that even surprised herself.

She hadn’t worked with any of the devices in the medbay before, but they were all Mordecai designs - of course they were - and even if he hadn’t been a big believer in user-friendly design, she’d stolen enough of them for use in plots before now that she was confident she could do something with this. It wasn’t at all hard to disable the field that had been scrambling Amy’s brain in just the right way to keep her slumbering; it was a flick of a switch.

*

As she came to, Amy thought she must still be dreaming. The first thing she saw as she opened her eyes was Aitan, large as life, bare-chested, smiling possessively down at her, and something deep inside her purred in contentment and rolled onto its back in submission. The air was heavy with a musky perfume, a wonderful aroma that seemed at once like and more than the scent of his body she’d come to know so well.

“They tried to tell me you’d taken my mind,” she mumbled, “but I knew what we have is real.”

“Certainly it is,” Aitan said with a smirk. “How are you feeling?”

“A… a little sore still…”

“That’s okay,” he told her. “You’ll be back to fuckably fighting fit before too long.”

Amy was aware she should probably find that remark disgusting but she beamed, so happy she had his attention. Her eyes refocused slightly and she saw that Mercy was there, too, in the Justice Guard medbay, without her facemask, completely recognisable.

Well, then, there was no question that it was a dream, was there? Vivian would hardly reveal herself like that.

“Get up,” Aitan told her, and she obeyed with the reflex action of someone whose brainwashing and pheromone-led impulses were following in the same direction. Standing before him, the hospital gown that had preserved some modesty slipped away, and being naked so close to him made her weak in the knees.

At least her powers meant she didn’t need to worry too much about overexertion so soon after giving birth.

Aitan wrapped his arm around her neck and pulled her in for a kiss, and she melted against him, her mind dripping with pheromones, her body a puppet to her lusts. She ground against his thigh; there was something different about it, something resilient yet yielding, like her own superhuman physique.

“God, I missed you,” she said quietly, burying her head against his chest. He laughed, and it rumbled through her. Breathing in his pheromones, she thought she really wouldn’t mind if he did take her mind.

“I’ve got you now,” he said. “You’ll stay by me the rest of our lives, loyal and obedient, no matter what.”

“Yes,” she said simply, and her eyes felt like they were shining with stars, but it was only tears of happiness.

“Your friends want this for you too. Tell her,” he instructed Mercy, and Amy wondered why the woman was even hesitating.

Then the medbay doors opened, and her dream became a nightmare.

*

Maxine watched as the doors opened, worried that the pheromones might get her again - and indeed, the moment the doors opened, she caught his scent and her head swam, like the chemicals still in her head just needed revitalising to come back just as strong.

Coming back had been a mistake, but…

…but she couldn’t abandon Ms Miracle to him.

Bulwark strode into the room ahead of her. “I think we’ve had just about enough of this,” he said firmly. “Aitan, I recommend you do this the easy way and stand down until we can sort this out. The hard way won’t be pleasant.”

Maxine watched as Aitan’s jaw clenched. You saw this sometimes with people who’d just been given power. The urge to pay the world back for every indignity that had been visited on them, and the foolishness to believe themselves invincible.

“The three of you,” he said, “beat him down.”

She registered the surprise in Bulwark’s body language as Ms Miracle and Mercy both took flight toward him obediently. And she tried to stop herself.

But she couldn’t; her hands clasped together and she hit him with a spinning two-handed blow that sent him hurtling toward the others. She saw Ms Miracle lining up a midair spinning kick, but Mercy pushed it, moving even faster. She grabbed Bulwark by the shoulders and moved him out of the way of the blow, then released him; Bulwark righted himself just before he would have hit a wall.

Maxine swore and lunged forward, but Mercy was waiting. She caught Maxine with one arm, around the waist, sapping her speed, and yelled “Go!” to Bulwark, who surged forward only for Miracle to intercept him with a shoulder tackle.

“You see, my love?” Aitan gloated. “You can’t trust your friends. They want to stop this. You won’t let them, will you?”

“No, my love,” she echoed. Maxine was still struggling to get past Mercy; struggling right up until Mercy got close enough to urgently hiss “Sleep” in her ear, and Maxine’s eyes rolled back into her head and she went limp in the other heroine’s arms.

*

Vivian was hopeful that Aitan wouldn’t react quickly enough to shut her down again. It was taking everything she had to push against his commands as it was, and the only reason she was making any headway was because she couldn’t possibly obey his latest order - she was incapable of beating down a hero.

Bulwark was trying to handle both the Miracles - hard not to think of them as a pair, although if she’d heard anyone else say it they’d have had to answer to her for insulting her friend - but it wasn’t exactly going his way. It was common knowledge in the villain community that Ms Miracle alone could usually beat him, so long as whatever control method was being used didn’t overwrite her skills. Having two people with that power level, one of whom had the skills, was a challenge he probably couldn’t beat - but that never stopped Bulwark trying.

Vivian watched carefully, waiting for an opening - any opening - where she saw a legitimate chance to change the way the fight was going. She couldn’t afford to be nullified, and it could happen with a word…

So long as Bulwark could stay upright long enough, Aitan would eventually make a mistake. There just had to be enough time for that mistake to happen…

“Miracle,” Bulwark was saying, “If you can’t have faith in your friends, you can’t trust anyone. If this really is what you want, we can work that out - but we need to be -”

He didn’t get to complete his comment; enraged, she drove an elbow through his defences and into the bridge of his nose first. He stumbled blindly backwards in midair, and Aitan dived after him. That, Vivian decided, was her moment, and she surged forward, catching up some of the two-inch-thick power cabling that had been exposed when Aitan ripped up a floor.

Amy’s attention - due to a command - was all on Bulwark. She didn’t see Vivian coming. A bodycheck took them both against the wall; she punctured the wall with a punch and thrust one end of the cable into it, drawing it tight across Amy’s chest and arms, around at the elbows. Then she started tying it off.

It wouldn’t stop her, of course. But Vivian was banking on Amy following an earlier command closely, and finding her mind a little too fractured when she had to solve a problem to obey.

It was all a long shot. But everything was. She hesitated for a moment, looking at the anger in Amy’s eyes, and said “I’m sorry. It really is for your own good.”

Abruptly, the empty air beside them said “Ah. Good work, Mercy.” She jumped, but even as she jumped she recognised the voice.

There was a thunk, and a sudden pneumatic hiss, and she saw the skin just below Amy’s shoulder ripple, and then Mordecai seemed to materialise beside her.

“Sorry. Portable invisibility field never runs for long. Not sure why.” His face smiled very briefly, the way a doctor will smile while hard at work, just for a moment, not because smiling is appropriate but because it’s the quickest way to reassure people. He was holding a large pistol-grip device with a small canister on the back. Rather than a traditional barrel, it tapered to a nasty looking spike.

He lifted it as if offering it to her. “Pheromonal neutralisation agent,” he said. “Give me your arm.”

Somehow it felt like, not a security precaution, but instead an offer made by someone concerned. Hesitantly, she offered her arm, and Mordecai administered the injection. It stung, but then the spike was made of some advanced compound, the injector delivered it into the body with incredible force; it was built for superhumans.

She put her hand on the temporary restraint she’d improvised for Amy, but barely loosened it before, now she could move, Amy flexed hard enough to snap that thick cable.

Their eyes met. Vivian’s head was spinning, and her body felt cold where the serum coursed through it, but the needy, mind-altering lust was ebbing from her.

“Sorry for doubting you,” Amy said quietly. “Shall we?”

“Let’s finish this,” Vivian agreed fervently.

The two of them took flight together. Aitan turned to face them at the last moment, reeling from taking Bulwark’s blows. He met two fists coming the other way, but Mercy would always think that he broke in the split-second before impact, when he realised that Ms Miracle wasn’t his, and would likely never be his again.

*

She didn’t go back to the holding rooms, but she didn’t leave, either; now that Amy was safe she gave her time with her team, and she sat in another room with a coffee machine and an output from D.A.N.I.E.L. and she tried to solve the riddle of how you made small talk with an AI. From what Amy had told her of the future, it was a riddle she’d eventually solve - there was a point in the future where they called one another friends, if she could find the way to get there.

Eventually there was a tap at the door to the room she was in and Stormcaller poked his head through. He carried a healthy black eye; finally, Vivian understood why he’d been nowhere to be seen during the fight, having been taken out beforehand. “We’re ready for you,” he said, and she followed him in.

She couldn’t tell from his tone whether the Justice Guard’s decision would be good or bad for her, but she was damned if she’d show worry. She’d promised herself only one thing, which was that if they wanted to remove Mercy, she’d flee rather than allow it to happen. Snatch up her Master and ferry them both somewhere else in the world. Start a new life.

She wasn’t going back.

The entire Guard was assembled now, except for Soothsinger, who was off in space, still tracking down leads from the Earthbreaker incident. Even if she’d decided to fight, this wasn’t a fight she could win.

Most of them were hard to read. Amy, though… Amy had given her a smile, just a small one, just enough to try and set Vivian at ease. She wasn’t sure whether to read that as encouraging or a silent plea not to take bad news badly.

But Bulwark didn’t look mad, and that might actually be a bigger positive.

There was an awkward silence as she stood on the carpet in front of their big meeting room table and their masked faces behind it. Multiple people shifted, like they would speak first, then fell silent. Finally, Bulwark cleared his throat.

“We know more about you than we do about many of our members,” he said. “Secret identities are something we usually take very seriously. I hope you can understand why I initially made an exception for your case?”

Vivian nodded.

“So now that information is out. It was clearly known to people here already, and usually, a villain changing their identity is something I’d want to know about, if one or more of the team does. However…” He cleared his throat. “May I ask a question?”

Vivian nodded again. How could she possibly stop him?

“How is it that you and Ms Miracle are so close so quickly?”

Vivian shrugged. “I think if we’d started on the same side, we always would have been,” she said. “Although I didn’t realise it until these last few months.”

Bulwark nodded. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he was accepting it as the truth. “Under the circumstances,” he said, and he rose, and floated over the table to touch down in front of her, and he held out his hand, “it’s good to meet you, Mercy. And thank you, on behalf of the Justice Guard, for helping to keep our member - our friend - safe.”

Mercy shook his hand. “I might have a new helmet, next time I’m out,” she said, “but if anyone wants to spread the rumour there’s a human under the suit, it could cover me against this kind of thing. If that’s a thing you’d be willing to do.”

She could see Maxine nodding behind Bulwark, and she smiled inwardly. She knew she hadn’t misjudged Maxine.

“Of course,” Bulwark said.

“And… thank you,” she said. “But she’s my friend too. Nobody here was going to abandon her.” She cleared her throat. “Now… I’m definitely the rookie in this room, and I know some of what I’ve done even after putting on this costume looks suspicious. But I was thinking, and I don’t think I can keep this information to myself even if I came by it through dubious means.

“I think we need to discuss the fact the Ophidian Circle think Maxine’s their sleeper agent.”

Amid the immediate commotion, Maxine Power could be heard reciting “The Ophidian Circle can go fuck themselves,” and Mercy wished she could better hide her smile.

*

The night after the Justice Guard, joined by the two minor heroines Siren and Mercy, surprised the Ophidian Circle before their plan to enslave the Supreme Court was even half complete, two fast-flying women soared over the Tennessee skies on their way to Memphis. So well matched were they in speed that anyone tracking their flight might have believed they saw one figure, double-imaged by some trick of the eye, especially as their descent arcs began at the same point and headed for the same building.

“Tell him hi from me,” Ms Miracle said, breaking off from their shared trajectory and settling down, light as a feather, on her balcony. Vivian smiled behind her mask, setting down directly opposite. She punched the combination into the number pad and, as the door unlocked, slid it aside. Came face to face with a woman in early-middle-age who was vacuuming the living room, dressed only in a small blue-and-white-striped apron around their hips and a pair of maroon high heels.

Whoever she was, she kept herself in great shape, and she carried herself - straightening up to assess this new arrival - with an air of authority that was completely at odds with the fact Master was using her as a topless maid service.

“You must be Maeve,” Vivian said. “Don’t worry - I’m here because he wants me here.” She wondered if the other woman would pick up on the quiet reverence that came out of her whenever she referred to her (their) Master.

Maeve nodded. “That’s me. And I’m glad not to worry. Don’t think I could kick you out if I tried.”

“Is he in?”

“The Master is here, yes.” She was almost haughty as the corrected Vivian, and the old Vivian would have quietly marked her down to be paid off at the earliest opportunity. Now she took a very different tack.

“I’m sure you’re a wonderful person and well worth me getting to know,” she said. “And I hope I will do. But you wouldn’t hold it against me if I hurried to him, would you?”

The arrogance in the other woman’s face seemed to flicker and then just crumble, and she smiled, a thin smile but surprisingly warm. “No,” she said. “I won’t.”

Vivian stepped by her and found Master in his office, where he was seated at his desk. Reading glasses reflected the light from his laptop screen.

He looked smaller whenever she encountered him like this. To her he could never look like just another person, but the presence he had was diminished when he was caught up in his work.

He really wasn’t cut from the same cloth as a supervillain, even if he had the powers to be one. He didn’t like to stand out.

All the same, he looked up when she came in, and he smiled. She took three quick steps forward and settled to her knees beside him, and he sat back and looked at her thoughtfully.

“Take off your mask,” he instructed.

“Yes, Master.” She unclipped the fractured mirror from her mask and looked up at him. It wasn’t so long ago that she’d done the exact same thing, trying to hide the weariness and the pain that was in her, thinking Master shouldn’t be bothered with these things.

This time she simply looked up at him, silent, and allowed him the choice of how far to press her. Any choice involving her was, after all, his right.

“This one was rough, huh?”

“Yes, Master,” she nodded. She looked back at him steadily.

“Look into my eyes, Mercy,” he ordered, and of course she did. The glow of green power was already welling up into him, and within moments she could not have looked away even if she’d wanted to.

His power didn’t capture instantaneously; it was slow, and comfortable, and it insinuated its way into her head, and before she knew it she was lost in a helpless, blissful fog, her worries and wondering left far, far behind.

“I don’t know what you’ve just done,” he said. “But when you come to me like this, I know things have been rough. I know you’re coming to me because you’ve been told to. And I’m sure I’ll be happy with you.”

He let those words hang in the air.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” she said, and she did understand.

“Get up,” he instructed her, and she stood, her flying powers allowing her to straighten directly to vertically upright from kneeling.

“Yes, Master.”

“Strip,” he said, and she obeyed, taking it slowly until she stood before him, completely nude. He took off his reading glasses, set them aside, closed down his laptop.

“Yes, Master.”

“Lead me to the bedroom,” he said.

“Yes, Master.” She pivoted on the spot and began to walk to the bedroom, her slow, hip-rolling progression one that almost nobody ever saw, completely unrecognisable as body language from either Macabre or Mercy.

His hand reached out to squeeze and stroke her ass as he followed her, and Vivian found her head was happier and more peaceful than it had felt in days. She found, too, that her arousal felt stronger than it had done even under the pheromones. It wasn’t, of course; it was just that no part of her wanted to fight it.

“You can tell me about it afterwards,” he said. “Then we can think what we’ll do.”

“Yes, Master.”