I sit up slowly, and everything hurts.
My thighs ache from being spread open for days. My pussy is swollen and tender, still leaking his seed despite how many times I clenched around nothing in my sleep. My breasts are covered in marks from his mouth—bites and bruises that throb when I move. My throat is raw from screaming. My hips bear the imprint of his fingers, bruises in the shape of his grip.
I look like I’ve been fucked within an inch of my life.
Because I have.
I pull my knees to my chest and try to breathe through the wave of… something. Not quite shame. Not quite grief. Something more complicated than either—a tangle of emotions I can’t separate into neat categories anymore.
Three days ago, I was Hannah Mitchell. Warrior. Protector. A woman who needed no one, who carried her village’s safety on her shoulders, who would have died before surrendering to anyone.
Now I’m something else.
I can still feel the ghost of his cock inside me, still feel the stretch and the fullness and the way my body shaped itself around him like it was made for exactly that purpose. I can still hear myself begging—please, Alpha, please let me come—and the worst part is that I meant it. Every desperate word. Every shameful plea. I meant all of it, and I would have said worse if he’d asked me to.
I wanted him. I still want him. Even now, even sore and exhausted and hollowed out, some part of me aches for his hands on my body, his voice in my ear, his cock filling the emptiness that seems to have taken up permanent residence in my core.
The bond pulses with his presence, and I feel my pussy clench in response.
Traitor, I think. But I’m not sure if I mean my body or my heart.
I find the bathing chamber and spend a long time in the water.
It’s hot, fed by the mountain’s thermal springs, and I sink into it until only my face is above the surface. The heat seeps into my aching muscles, loosening knots I didn’t know I’d been carrying. His seed keeps leaking out of me—I can feel it, a slow trickle that reminds me with every movement of what we did. WhatIdid. How I spread my legs and begged and came so many times I lost count.
I press my hand to my belly, feeling the slight swell that might be fullness or might be something else entirely.
You might already be carrying my child.
The thought should terrify me. Should send me spiraling into panic, into desperate plans for escape or prevention or something,anythingto stop this from becoming even more permanent than it already is.
Instead, I feel… nothing. A strange numbness where the horror should be.
Or maybe not nothing. Maybe something buried so deep I can’t name it yet. Something that stirs when I imagine a child with bronze skin and gray eyes, something that feels dangerously close to—
No.I’m not going to think about that.
I stay in the water until my fingers prune and the heat has seeped into every sore muscle. Then I climb out, dry myself with the soft cloths left beside the pool, and face the mirror.
The woman looking back at me is a stranger.
Not because of the marks—though there are plenty of those, a map of his possession written across my skin in bites and bruises. Not because of the dark circles under my eyes or the swollen lips or the tangled mess of my hair.
It’s something in my expression. Something softer than I’ve ever seen there before. The hard edges I’ve carried since I was sixteen—since I picked up a sword and became Ironhold’s protector—have been worn away, leaving something more vulnerable underneath. Something that looks almost… peaceful.
I hate it.
I turn away from the mirror and go to find clothes.
There are dresses laid out on the bed when I return.
Soft fabrics in deep jewel tones—sapphire, emerald, garnet. Nothing like the practical fighting leathers I’ve worn my whole adult life. These are clothes for a lady. For an omega who belongs to a powerful male and wants everyone to know it.
I stare at them for a long moment, then pull on a simple shift instead. It’s meant to be worn under the dresses, barely decent on its own, but it covers everything important and doesn’t make me feel like I’m playing dress-up in someone else’s life.
Small rebellions. It’s all I have left.
The door to the chamber opens.
