My father coming home exhausted, eating dinner in silence, going straight to bed without asking about my day. My mother bent over account books, too busy with numbers to notice I’d learned a new fighting technique. The two of them talking over my head about ore shipments and commission deadlines while I sat at the table and practiced being invisible.
I thought leaving would feel like coming home. Instead, it feels like finally seeing a house I always knew was empty.
On the fourth night, I dream of Karax.
Not a nightmare—that would be easier. Instead, I dream of the good moments. His hand on my throat, gentle despite its strength. His voice in my ear, telling me I was good, I was perfect, I washis. The way he held me after the heat, like I was something precious instead of something broken.
I wake up gasping, my hand between my legs, my body aching with need that has nowhere to go. The orgasm I chase provides no relief—just emptiness, just the hollow certainty that nothing except him will ever fill this void.
I hate him for that. I hate him for making my body into a traitor, for conditioning me to need him so completely that even my own pleasure is meaningless without him.
But underneath the hate, there’s something else. Something that feels too much like grief. Like I’m mourning something I never really had, or something I had and didn’t recognize until it was gone.
The village elder finds me on the fifth day.
I’m sitting on the hill where I buried my parents, watching the sunset paint the mountains in shades of gold and amber. The view is beautiful. I can’t feel it. The graves at my feet are well-tended—someone’s been caring for them in my absence—but looking at the headstones doesn’t bring the grief I expected.
Just… emptiness. The same emptiness I felt standing in their house. The same emptiness I’ve carried my whole life without understanding what it was.
“You’re not eating.”
I don’t turn at Miriam’s voice. She was old when I was a child—ancient by human standards—but she moves with a quiet strength that defies her years. She’s one of the few people in this village who ever looked at me like I was a person instead of a tool.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re not sleeping either.” She settles onto the grass beside me, her joints creaking in protest. “The whole village can hear you pacing at night. And crying. And calling out for someone who isn’t there.”
Heat floods my face. “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t come here for an apology.” She follows my gaze to the mountains, to the peaks where Stone Court rises invisible in the distance. “I came to ask you a question.”
“Ask.”
“What are you doing here, Hannah?”
The question hits harder than it should. “I came home.”
“No.” Her voice is gentle but firm. “You came to hide. And maybe to die, from the look of you. There’s a difference.”
I finally turn to look at her. She’s watching me with eyes that have seen too much, that saw me grow from a grieving teenager into a desperate protector. Eyes that might have seen more than I realized.
“He manipulated me,” I say. The words feel hollow, rehearsed. I’ve been saying them to myself for days, trying to make them feel like enough. “For sixteen years. He engineered my isolation, my exhaustion, my desperation. He made sure I had no choice but to walk into his arena.”
“I know.”
I blink. “You know?”
“I’ve suspected for years.” She picks at the grass with gnarled fingers. “The way people kept leaving. The way attacks always came when we were weakest. The way every door seemed to close until you were the only one standing between this village and destruction.” She shrugs. “I’m old, not stupid.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything?”
“What would I have said? ‘Hannah, I think an ancient Fae lord is manipulating your life to ensure you become his perfect omega’?” She laughs, dry and humorless. “You would have thought I’d lost my mind. Besides—” Her expression grows more serious. “Would it have changed anything?”
I open my mouth to say yes, of course, I would have done things differently—
And I realize I don’t know if that’s true.
“He engineered the circumstances,” I say slowly. “But… the choices I made within them were mine. I chose to protect this village. I chose to train, to fight, to sacrifice. He didn’t make me do those things. He just made sure I had no other options.”
