Her eyes close. Her head tilts into my palm, seeking more contact, more of my skin against hers. The warrior who slapped me two days ago has vanished. In her place is something softer, something needier, something that’s been fighting so long it’s forgotten what it feels like to stop.
“Please,” she whispers, and I don’t think she even knows what she’s asking for.
“Please what?”
Her eyes open. Gray meeting gold, desperation meeting patience. “I don’t know. I don’t—” Her voice breaks. “I can’t think when you’re touching me. I can’t think at all anymore. Everything is justyou—your scent, your voice, the way it felt when you—” She stops, swallowing hard. “I’m losing my mind.”
“You’re not losing your mind. You’re finding something that was always there.” I stroke my thumb across her cheekbone, and she shudders. “The omega underneath all that armor. The woman who’s been waiting her whole life for someone strong enough to hold her.”
“I don’t want to be an omega.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to need you.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why—” Her voice cracks. “Why does it feel like I’m dying when you’re not touching me?”
The question hangs between us, raw and honest in a way she hasn’t allowed herself to be since she arrived. I could answer with biology—explain the hormonal cascade, the neurological rewiring, the ancient magic that binds alpha and omega together. I could tell her it’s all chemistry, all instinct, nothing personal.
But that would be a lie.
“Because you’re mine,” I say instead. “You’ve been mine since you walked into my arena. Your body knew it before your minddid, and now your mind is catching up.” I lean closer, my lips brushing her ear. “Stop fighting it, Hannah. Let yourself fall. I’ll catch you.”
For a long moment, she doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Just stands there trembling in my grip, balanced on the edge of something she can’t take back.
Then she pulls away.
The separation clearly costs her—I see the way her face contorts, the way her hands shake, the way her whole body strains toward me even as she forces herself backward. But she does it. Finds some last reserve of stubborn pride and uses it to put distance between us.
“Not yet,” she says, and her voice is wrecked. “I’m not—I can’t—”
“I know.” I let her go, even though every instinct screams at me to pull her back, to pin her down, to give her what we both know she needs. “When you’re ready, you know where to find me.”
She turns and flees the arena.
I let her go.
She won’t last much longer.
I stand in the empty training room, breathing in the scent she left behind—desperation and arousal and the first sharp notes of heat breaking through her defenses. Two days, I estimated before. Maybe less.
I was wrong.
By tomorrow night, she’ll come to me. Not because I forced her. Not because the heat left her no choice. But because she finally stopped fighting the truth she’s known since the first moment our eyes met.
She’s mine.
She’s always been mine.
And soon, she’ll be ready to admit it.Chapter 11: Hannah
The fever hits that night.
I wake in the dark with my skin on fire, drenched in sweat that’s soaked through the sheets and pooled in the hollows of my body. My heart slams against my ribs like it’s trying to escape. My nipples ache where they press against the damp silk. And between my legs—
Between my legs, I’mdripping.
