Take. Claim. Fill her. Breed her. Put a child in her belly so all will know she belongs to me.
The thoughts were not my own. They were a feral, possessive litany from the oldest part of my being. My hips instinctively pressed down, a phantom, possessive thrust against the juncture of her thighs.
A small, choked whimper escaped her lips. A sound of pure terror.
It was the only thing that could have broken through the red haze of my lust.
Terror.
The realization hit me like a splash of glacial water. I was terrifying her. I looked down at my hand,the one pinning her wrists—my one hand, easily encircling both of her wrists with room to spare. I could feel the delicate, bird-like bones under her skin. I could snap them. Without even trying. I could crush her ribs with my weight. I could tear her apart. The image, so vivid and horrifying, shattered the beast’s control. My own strength, my own size, became a thing of horror. I had given her a dagger to protect her from me, and here I was, moments from breaking her with my bare hands.
Shame and self-loathing, cold and sharp, cut through the lust. I had given her my vow.
With a hoarse cry that was torn from my own throat, I shoved myself off her, scrambling backward in the sand as if I had been burned. I got to my feet and, without a single look back at her or the stunned faces of my warriors, I fled. I didn't just walk away. I ran. I fled the training ring, fled the questions in my men’s eyes, fled the scent of her on my skin, and the terrifying, beautiful weakness she had revealed in me.
I did not stop until I was back in the echoing silence of my longhouse. But it was not silent. Her scent was everywhere. On the furs of the bed whereshe slept. In the air where she had stood that morning. It was a torment.
I stood in the center of the hall, my body trembling, my breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. The spar had solved nothing. It had only wound the spring tighter. The memory of her body pinned beneath mine was seared into my brain, a brand of pure fire. Her scent, her heat, the terrified look in her eyes… it was all I could see.
The beast was still roaring, demanding release. My vow held it back from her, but it could not be contained forever.
My control shattered.
With a guttural snarl, I went to my knees before the cold hearth. My hand, shaking with a desperate, violent need, fumbled with the ties of my breeches. I freed myself, my cock already painfully hard, aching with a need that was a physical agony.
My eyes squeezed shut, but all I saw was her. Her flushed face, her defiant eyes, the feel of her legs tangled with mine in the sand. I imagined peeling my tunic from her body, revealing the secrets of her form. The curve of her breasts, the flare of her hips. My hand closed around my length, my movements rough,punishing, a desperate attempt to exorcise the demon she had woken in me.
My thoughts were a feral flood.Mine. I will fill you. I will stretch you around me until you scream my name. I will mark your skin with my teeth, with my seed. Mine.
I remembered her gasp, the whimper of fear, and a fresh wave of shame and desire crashed over me. The memory was both a whip and a spur. I imagined changing that fear to pleasure. I imagined her writhing beneath me not in a struggle to escape, but in the throes of ecstasy. The thought was my undoing.
With a final, guttural groan that was half pain, half release, I came, spilling my seed in a hot, thick rush over my own fist and onto the cold stone floor.
I knelt there for a long time, trembling in the aftermath, my head bowed. The beast was quiet now, sated for the moment. But I knew it was not gone. It was just resting.
I had kept my vow today. I had not broken her.
Chapter 11
Kael
The chains I wore in the Orc stronghold were invisible, but they were no less real. They were forged of silence, of staring eyes, of a language that was a locked door. Korvak had granted me what he likely considered a great deal of freedom. I was no longer confined to the longhouse. I could walk the stronghold, could even venture into the surrounding woods, as long as I didn’t go past the ancient, carved marker stones that delineated the borders of the main valley.
He called it freedom. I called it a larger cage.
Everywhere I went, I was a spectacle. Thehuman. The General’s prize. The other Orcs watched me. The warriors’ gazes were heavy with a mixture of suspicion and a crude, assessing curiosity. The females… their stares were the worst. They were sharp, analytical, their eyes lingering on the way I walked, the way I wore my borrowed tunic, the way my hair was the color of fire. I was an alien creature, a strange mare brought in to sire a new line of foals, and they were judging the quality of the stock. I felt their judgment like a physical weight, and it drove me to seek the solitude of the forest.
The woods were the only place I could breathe. The sharp scent of pine and cold stone was a clean slate, a place where I wasn't the General's mate-to-be, but just… me.
It was on one of these walks, following a rushing stream up into the higher hills, that my mind kept betraying me, dragging me back to the training ring. Back to the sand, the steel, and the heat.
Back to the moment I was pinned beneath him.
My body remembered it with a clarity that was infuriating. The sheer, immovable weight of him. The solid cage of his arms and legs. I was a soldier, trained to fight, to control a situation, to never give up an inch of ground. And he had taken all of it in a single, fluid motion. He had stripped me of my weapon, my footing, my control, and left me utterly, completely helpless.
It should have been terrifying. And it was. The part of me that was a soldier, the part of me that had fought for every scrap of autonomy, had screamed in silent, primal terror.
But there was another part of me, a deeper, more traitorous part, that had… responded. It was the feeling of absolute surrender. Of being so completely overpowered that the fight simply… ceased to be an option. There was a strange, dark freedom in that moment of helplessness. For one heartbeat, under the crushing weight of his body, the burden of fighting, of pretending, of being Kael the grunt, had been lifted. There was only him, a mountain of undeniable power, and me, the one who had finally been stopped. The jolt that had gone through me hadn't just been fear. It had been something else. Something hot and liquid and deeply, deeply shameful.
