He looks at me like I'm the predator.
Like he's been waiting three hundred years for something that could finally end him.
Good.
He moves toward me.
Not walking—stalking. Every step deliberate and predatory, designed by instinct to trigger every omega nerve I possess. His feet make no sound on the moss. His shoulders roll with each stride, muscles shifting beneath scarred skin. Power coiled in every line of him, visible and threatening.
He's beautiful the way a wildfire is beautiful. The way a flood is beautiful. The way you can't look away from destruction even when it's coming to consume you.
The heat surges in response, fever spiking until I'm burning alive, until the warm stone at my back feels cool by comparison. Slick floods between my thighs, soaking through the thin white dress until it clings to me obscenely. My body preparing for him, betraying me, screaming for him even as my mind catalogs kill zones.
And changing.
My canines are lengthening—I can feel it happening, bone and tooth extending, sharpening into points. Not true fangs like a dragon's, but close. Predator teeth. Made for tearing flesh. My nails are changing too, growing harder and sharper at the tips, no longer the blunt human things they were this morning.
Wild omega traits.
The things my grandmother warned me to hide. The things that mark me as wrong, as other, as something that shouldn't exist.
The things that might keep me alive long enough to kill him.
He reaches the altar. Stops. Stands there looking down at me.
I must be a sight—chained to ancient stone, dress soaked through and clinging, hair wild around my face, teeth bared, eyes burning with hate. Stinking of wrong-omega scent that should repel any alpha with sense.
His nostrils flare as he breathes me in.
His pupils blow wide—not the slow expansion of arousal but instant, violent, golden iris swallowed by black in a single heartbeat. His whole body goes rigid, every muscle locking tight.
Then he shudders. Hard. A full-body tremor that looks almost like pain.
"Run," he says, and his voice is gravel and smoke, rough as if he hasn't spoken in years. "I'll break your chains. Run fast and don't look back."
I bare my teeth at him—my new, sharp, predator teeth.
"Make me."
He stares at me. Really stares. Like I've spoken in a language he'd forgotten existed.
"You don't understand." He reaches for the manacle on my left wrist, and his fingers are shaking. "I've killed?—"
"Forty-seven omegas." I yank against the chains hard enough that the metal bites into my wrists, drawing blood. "I know. I counted your scars. I don't care."
Something flickers in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or something deeper.
"Either claim me or get the fuck out of my way," I snarl, "so I can kill you myself."
His hand freezes an inch from the lock.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. Neither of us breathes.
"What's your name?" The question comes out rough. Raw. Almost desperate.
"Why?" I let my lips curve into something that's more threat than smile. "Planning to carve it in stone with the others?"
Pain flashes across his face—so raw and naked that it makes my chest ache despite the rage burning through me. For just a second, he looks less like a monster and more like a man carrying a weight too heavy for any shoulders to bear.
