ARATUS
DAY 33
She wakesup screaming my name.
Not in terror—in desperate, aching need that echoes through the palace corridors like a song. I'm in the chair outside her room where I've spent the last two nights, listening to her fight what her body demands. But this morning is different. This morning, she's fully in heat.
Her scent floods the palace like a drug. Pure omega in full heat, ripe and ready, begging to be claimed. It makes both my cocks strain against my leathers until the pressure is almost painful. Makes my ice magic surge in response to her need, frost spreading from my fingertips across the chair arms in crystalline patterns.
Through the door, I hear her tearing apart her room. The crash of furniture being overturned, the rip of fabric, the desperate sounds of someone following instincts older than civilization. She's building a proper nest from the wreckage because her body knows what's coming.
What I'm going to do to her.
"Please," she gasps, and the sound goes straight to my groin. Her voice is already different—breathier, more desperate, touched with the musical quality that omega vocal cords develop during heat. "Please, I can't—it hurts?—"
But she's not begging me yet. Just begging the universe to make it stop, to give her relief from the biological imperative now controlling her every breath.
I could end her suffering right now. Walk through that door and give her what she's desperate for, what every instinct is screaming at me to provide. My alpha nature roars at me to claim what's mine, to answer her call with the dominance she needs.
But I don't move from the chair.
Because I want her to break completely first. Want her so far gone that she'll take anything I give her and be grateful for it. Want her to surrender not just her body, but every last fragment of pride and resistance.
Patience, I remind myself. Six centuries of waiting have prepared me for this moment. I can wait a few more hours.
An hour later, she's sobbing my name.
"Aratus," she cries, and I can hear the desperate sounds of her trying to find relief. The rhythmic movement against fabric, the broken gasps that tell me exactly what she's doing to herself. "Aratus, please, I need?—"
But she can't say it yet. Can't bring herself to admit what she needs from me, what specific acts will end this torment. Her human conditioning still fights against omega biology, creating a war she can't possibly win.
The palace responds to her distress. Ice formations bloom across the walls of the corridor, complex patterns that pulse with her heartbeat. Even the building itself recognizes its omega's need and calls for her alpha to answer.
Two hours in, and she's begging properly.
"I'll do anything," she gasps, her voice breaking on the words. "Anything you want. Just make it stop burning."
Better. Much better. But still not specific enough. I want to hear her say exactly what she wants from me, want the words torn from her throat by need so desperate she can't hold them back.
I settle deeper into the chair and wait. Patience is everything in moments like this. The complete surrender I'm waiting for can't be rushed or forced—it has to come from her, freely given because she has no other choice.
Three hours, and she's lost to the heat completely.
"Please fuck me," she moans, and my entire body goes rigid with want. "Please, alpha, please make it stop."
Alpha. She called me alpha.
The word hits me like lightning, sending electricity through every nerve ending. It's not just submission—it's recognition. Acknowledgment of what I am to her, what she is to me. The biological imperative that's been building between us for over a month finally given voice.
I'm through the door before I realize I'm moving.
The room is destroyed. Furniture overturned and scattered across the floor, curtains hanging in shreds from the windows. Frost covers every surface in chaotic patterns that speak of magic spinning completely out of control. The very air shimmers with omega pheromones so thick they're visible.
In the center of it all is her nest—rough but serviceable, lined with every soft thing she could find. Pillows and blankets and furs arranged in an instinctive circle, creating the safe space where she needs to be claimed.
And there she is.
The sight of her stops me in my tracks. She's naked, positioned in perfect submission—on her hands and knees, back arched, presenting herself in the pose every alpha dreamsof seeing his omega take. Her skin has the shimmer I've been waiting for, magic radiating from her pores like starlight. Her hair carries streaks of silver now, the transformation accelerating, and when she looks at me over her shoulder, her eyes have flecks of ice blue.
