“You’ll try.” He moves toward the door, then pauses at the threshold. “The dreams won’t stop. They’ll get stronger, more vivid, harder to wake up from. Your body knows what it needs, little warrior. Eventually, you’ll stop fighting it.”
“My body doesn’t get to make decisions for me.”
He looks back at me with those ancient golden eyes, and something in his expression sends a chill down my spine even as heat continues to pulse between my legs.
“No,” he says quietly. “But eventually, it won’t have to. You’ll make them yourself.”
He leaves me standing in the middle of the training room—covered in sweat, shaking with fury and arousal, my wrists still tingling where he held them.
I hate him.
I hate him so much it burns, a cold clean fury that should be strong enough to override everything else.
But as I walk back to his chambers—ourchambers, the word choice making me sick—I can’t stop thinking about the way it felt to be pinned beneath him. The weight of him. The heat. The way my body melted instead of fought, like some part of me has been waiting my whole life for someone strong enough to hold me down.
I hate him.
I hate what he’s doing to me.
But most of all, I hate myself for the part of me that wanted him to keep going.Chapter 8: Karax
She fits perfectly beneath me.
I’ve imagined it for months—calculated her dimensions through the scrying crystal, mapped the way her body would feel pinned under my weight. But imagination is a pale shadow of reality. When I press her into the training mat for the first time, her entire frame disappears beneath mine like she was designed to be held there. Her wrists fit in one hand with room to spare. Her hips slot between my thighs like a key turning in a lock.
And she responds.
Not with the trembling submission of the omegas who came before—women who went soft and pliant the moment I touched them, surrendering before I’d earned anything. Hannah trembles too, but not from fear. Not from trained compliance.
She trembles from want. And shehatesit.
I can see the fury burning in her gray eyes every time her body betrays her. Every time she melts instead of fights. Every time her breath catches when I press against her, when she feels my cock hardening against her belly, when she realizes that all her warrior’s pride means nothing against the biology that’s slowly remaking her from the inside out.
“Get off me,” she demands, her voice rough and unsteady.
“Make me.”
She tries. Her hips buck against mine—a mistake, because all it does is grind her against me. I watch her eyes widen as she feels it, watch the flush spread down her neck, watch her go still beneath me with something that isn’t quite fear.
I teach her about timing. About leverage. About waiting for the moment when I shift my weight to create an opening. I tell myself it’s combat training—and it is, partially. She needs to know how to escape a larger opponent’s hold.
But every time I pin her, I’m also getting her body used to my weight. Teaching her muscles what it feels like to have me pressed against her, inside her space, surrounding her completely.
And every time I praise her progress—better,good,again—I watch that warmth flood her chest despite her best efforts to stay cold.
After the session, I cup her face in my hand and tell her the truth: the dreams won’t stop. Her body knows what it needs. Eventually, she’ll stop fighting.
She jerks away from my touch and flees the training room.
I let her go, breathing in the scent she leaves behind—sweat and steel and the sweet musk of arousal she can’t hide.
My cock aches against my breeches, demanding relief I’m not going to give it.
There’s something useful in the unsatisfied want. Something that keeps me focused on the goal. I could take myself in hand, chase the fantasy of what she’ll feel like when she finally surrenders. I’ve done it before.
But today I let the ache sit.
Soon enough, I won’t have to imagine.
