Greymun backs away, his face ashen. He bows—properly this time—and retreats into the crowd.
I turn back to Hannah. She’s staring at me with an expression I can’t quite read—anger and something else, something that makes her scent bloom with warmth despite the fury still crackling through our bond.
“Anyone else?” I address the hall, letting my gaze sweep across every face. “Anyone else wish to comment on my omega’s worthiness?”
Silence.
“Good.” I extend my hand to Hannah, and after a moment’s hesitation, she takes it. Her fingers are small in my grip, callused from years of combat. “Then let me introduce you properly. This is Hannah Mitchell, protector of Ironhold village, the only person in seven hundred years to draw Guardian blood. She ismine, and any disrespect shown to her is disrespect shown to me.”
The warriors are the first to bow. Then the nobles. Then even Greymun, his face still pale, his eyes fixed on the floor.
Hannah stands beside me, surrounded by hundreds of Fae bowing before her, and I feel something shift in our bond. Not quite gratitude—she’s too proud for that. But acknowledgment. Recognition that I defended her not because she couldn’t defend herself, but because what’s mine deserves to be defended.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
We’re in the training room now, alone, and Hannah rounds on me the moment the door closes. Her eyes are blazing, her cheeks flushed, her entire body vibrating with emotion.
“Do what?”
“Threaten to tear his arms off. Make them all bow.” She stalks toward me, and despite her size—despite how easily I could stop her—she backs me against the weapons rack with nothing but the force of her fury. “I can fight my own battles.”
“I know you can.” I let her push me, let her feel like she has control even though we both know I could reverse our positions in a heartbeat. “That’s not why I did it.”
“Then why?”
“Because you’re mine.” I catch her wrist when she tries to shove me again, holding it gently but firmly. “Because every insult to you is an insult to me. Because I’ve waited seven hundred years for someone who would stand in my arenaknowing she would lose, and I will not allow petty lords to diminish what you did.”
She stares at me, her breath coming fast, her pulse racing under my fingers.
“You’re proud of me,” she says slowly. “For drawing your blood. For… hurting you.”
“I’m proud of you for facing me.” I pull her closer, and she lets me. “For being brave enough to walk into certain death for people you love. For being the first person in seven centuries to surprise me.”
“I hate you.” But her voice has lost its edge. Her body has gone soft against mine.
“I know.” I lean down, my lips brushing her ear. “And you’re wet right now, thinking about what I’m going to do to you for talking back to me.”
Her breath catches. I feel her pussy clench through the bond.
“I didn’t—”
“You pushed me against a wall. In my own training room. After I defended you in front of two hundred warriors.” I tighten my grip on her wrist, and she gasps. “Did you think there wouldn’t be consequences?”
“Karax—”
“On your knees, omega.”
She drops before she consciously decides to obey—I feel the moment her body overrides her mind, responding to my command with trained obedience. She looks up at me from the floor, her gray eyes dark with want, her lips parted.
“This is what you are when we’re alone,” I remind her, freeing my cock from my breeches. I’m already hard, have been since she pushed me against the rack with all that furious fire. “Out there, they see the warrior who drew my blood. In here, you’re my omega. Mine to command.”
“I hate you,” she whispers, but she’s already leaning forward, her mouth opening for me.
“I know.” I guide my cock to her lips, feeling the heat of her breath. “Now show me how grateful you are that I defended what’s mine.”
She takes me into her mouth.
The wet heat of her nearly undoes me—her lips stretching around my girth, her tongue dragging along the underside of my shaft, her throat working as she tries to take me deeper. She’s learned what I like over the past weeks, learned how to hollow her cheeks and use her hand on what she can’t fit in her mouth and look up at me with those gray eyes while she works my cock.
