Yes. I can grab it. Can pull it free.
The only question is if I'll have the time to strike once he gets close enough.
The sun is sinking lower every second, painting the sky in deeper and more vibrant shades of orange and red and purple.
Not long now.
My skin is starting to warm up. But it's not the stone beneath me—this time, the warmth is coming from inside my body. The fever is building, and just like clockwork, my heat is starting.
Right on schedule, like my body knows what's coming. Like it's been waiting for this moment.
Normally I try to suppress the feral part of me, but this time, I close my eyes and feed the rage. I recall every slight I'veexperienced, every fear, every time the village looked at me like I was something dangerous that needed to be contained.
My aunt's blood-soaked dress, her death when she was eighteen, even younger than me. Phern's terrified face and a future that would've been taken from her. The forty-seven others who no one wants to remember.
All of it.
All ofthem. Every omega who the world decided didn't matter when the treaty with the Beast King was signed. Every girl, and they were girls, not women, who was sent to slaughter like a sacrificial goat.
I'll carry their ghosts with me into this claiming and let their unfair deaths fuel my strike.
The heat builds. My vision sharpens in the center and blackens at the edges. Rage rises inside me like a tide.
Good.
I'm ready.
4
Kess
My heat is building fasterthan it ever has before, faster than a forest fire spreading with the wind and just as destructive.
With the building heat, my senses heighten, bringing the world around me into sharp focus. The smell of the forest gets stronger: earth and moss and decaying things, and underneath it all something wild, something that makes the predator part of my brain sit up and take notice.
My scent is changing too. It's still wrong, not like the sweet omega scent that's meant to soothe alphas. Blood and rage and burning cedar, all of it growing stronger by the moment. The kind of scent that makes an alpha angry instead of pacified.
Let him smell it when he arrives.
Let him know what kind of omega they sent him. The feral kind. The wild omega.
The sun has moved even lower now. The sky has turned a deep, dark red, fading to a rich purple at the edges. There are minutes until it's completely dark—minutes untilhearrives.
The ache that comes with the heat grows more intense. Slick is starting to gather between my thighs—just a little, not much yet, but enough that I can feel it.
It's humiliating to know that my body does that, that it betrays me by preparing for an alpha I don't even want.
I grit my teeth and ride it out. The full rage-heat won't hit until the sun sets, and usually that's when I black out. I have a few precious minutes where I'll be consciousandstrong, and those are the minutes I plan to use to kill him.
Until then, I just have to breathe and wait through it.
Deep breaths in through my nose. I hold the air in my chest, try to let my pulse slow. Breathe out slowly through my mouth.
My hands clench into fists, fingernails biting into my palms. The iron cuffs around my wrists have grown warm—whether from my body heat or the altar's dark magic, I can't tell. Everything is getting warmer. The fever crawls under my skin like something alive, something trying to claw its way out.
But I'm still here. Still conscious. Still in control.
I just have to stay present a little longer.
