I let my head fall back against the weapons rack, one hand fisting in her hair to guide her rhythm.
“That’s it,” I groan as she takes me deeper, gagging slightly before adjusting. “Such a good girl. Taking my cock so well.”
She moans around my shaft, and I feel the vibration all the way to my spine. Through the bond, I feel her arousal spiking—feel how wet she’s getting just from having me in her mouth, just from being on her knees and serving me. The warrior who faced me in the arena, the woman who just pushed me against a wall in fury, is now kneeling at my feet with her lips wrapped around my cock.
And she loves it.
I fuck her mouth slowly, savoring the sensation, watching her jaw stretch around my thickness. Tears leak from the corners of her eyes as I push deeper, hitting the back of her throat, and she takes it. Takes everything I give her.
“You’re going to swallow every drop,” I tell her, my voice rough with approaching release. “Going to drink my cum like a good omega and then thank me for it.”
She moans her agreement, her hand working the base of my shaft while her mouth does obscene things to the head.
The orgasm builds at the base of my spine, and I let it come. Let myself spill down her throat in thick pulses while she swallows around me, her throat working to take everything I’m giving her. I groan her name as I come—Hannah—and I feel her pussy clench through the bond, feel her own pleasure spiking in response to mine.
When I finally pull out of her mouth, she’s panting, her lips swollen and wet, her eyes glazed.
“Thank you, Alpha,” she whispers without being prompted.
I pull her to her feet and kiss her, tasting myself on her tongue. “Good girl.”
Seven hundred years of waiting.
Seven hundred years, and I finally have an omega worth keeping.Chapter 17: Hannah
The days settle into a rhythm I didn’t expect.
Mornings: training with Karax, our bodies learning each other in combat the way they’ve learned each other in bed. He doesn’t go easy on me—never has—but there’s something different in it now. Pride when I land a hit. Satisfaction whenI escape a hold. The bond pulses between us with warmth that feels dangerously close to affection, and I’ve stopped fighting it. Stopped pretending I don’t lean into his touch, don’t crave his praise, don’t feel something loosen in my chest when he calls me his good girl.
Afternoons: I’m left to my own devices while he attends to Guardian duties. Court sessions, territorial disputes, the endless politics of Stone Court hierarchy. He offers to include me, but I’m not ready. Not yet. The memory of Lord Greymun’s contempt still burns, even though Karax humiliated him for it.
Evenings: we eat together. Talk. He asks about Ironhold, about my parents, about the girl I was before I became the village’s protector. I find myself answering honestly, sharing pieces of myself I’ve never shared with anyone—not the elders, not the villagers I protected, not even the memory of my parents. And when we’re done talking, he takes me to bed and makes me forget everything except his name.
It’s almost comfortable. Almost… happy.
That’s what scares me. That’s what I should have paid more attention to.
Three weeks after my first heat, I start exploring.
Karax has made it clear I’m not a prisoner—I can go anywhere in the fortress except the war rooms and the treasury. The freedom feels strange after weeks of being confined to his chambers, but I make myself use it. Make myself walk the halls, learn the layout, catalog exits and choke points the way I would any unfamiliar territory.
The warrior in me never fully sleeps. Even when the omega in me has started to feel at home.
Stone Court is vast—carved into the mountain itself over millennia, layer after layer of stone rooms connected by corridors that seem to follow no logical pattern. I find training halls and armories, kitchens and servants’ quarters, libraries filled with books in languages I can’t read. I find gardens growing impossible flowers in underground caverns, fed by phosphorescent light. I find a hall of trophies from seven centuries of victories, weapons and armor from enemies long dead.
And on the fourth day of exploration, I find the locked door.
It’s deep in the fortress, down a corridor that feels older than the rest—the stones worn smooth by centuries of footsteps, the phosphorescent crystals dimmer and more scattered. The door itself is unremarkable except for the lock: a complex mechanism that pulses with mountain magic when I touch it.
I should walk away. Should respect his boundaries the way he’s respected mine. Should go back to our chambers and wait for him like a good omega, like the woman I’ve been becoming.
Instead, I press my palm flat against the lock andpush.
The bond recognizes me. I feel it—a questioning brush against my awareness, like the mountain itself is asking if I belong here. And because I’m Karax’s omega, because his claim runs through my blood and bone, the door decides I do.
It swings open.
The room is full of crystals.
