I don’t know. I might never know.
But I know what I feel now—this fragile, complicated, impossible thing growing in my chest. Not fully formed. Not certain. Just… beginning.
The question is whether I’m brave enough to let it grow.
I think about the crystal in my pocket.
I could use it. Could sever the bond, wash away these feelings, return to the woman I was before. Clear-headed. Independent. Free.
Alone.
Is that what I want? To be alone again? To go back to carrying everything by myself, to fighting every battle without someone at my side, to lying in this bed night after night wondering if anyone will ever see me?
I survived it before. I could survive it again.
But surviving isn’t the same as living. I learned that a long time ago.
Dawn breaks pink and gold over the mountains.
I’m still on the hill, still kneeling between my parents’ graves, when the sun crests the peaks and pours light across Ironhold. The village stirs below me—smoke rising from chimneys, early risers beginning their day.
The day I have to choose.
I look down at my hands. They’re dirty from the grass, cold from the night air. Warrior’s hands. Protector’s hands.
Omega’s hands, now. Marked with faint silver veins from his claiming that will never fully fade.
I could use the crystal. I could wash away those marks, break the bond, return to the woman I was before.
But that woman was exhausted. Alone. Running on fumes and stubbornness because there was no other option. Thatwoman dreamed of being saved and told herself it was weakness. That woman would have died defending a village that never really loved her, carrying a legacy left by parents who never really saw her.
This woman—the one Karax created, the one who knelt at his feet and called him Alpha, the one who drew blood from an undefeated champion—this woman has options.
And she’s going to choose.
Not because the bond compels her. Not because she has nowhere else to go. Not because he manufactured her need so effectively that she can’t imagine life without him.
Because somewhere in the wreckage of what he did, something real began. Something that might be love, or might become love, or might be the closest thing to love she’s ever going to get.
And she’d rather have that—complicated and dark and built on corrupted soil—than the cold, clean emptiness of freedom.
The inn is quiet when I push through the door.
The innkeeper nearly drops the tray she’s carrying—not because of me, but because of the eight-foot Fae lord sitting at a corner table, hunched over a mug of ale like a man awaiting execution. He looks… diminished, somehow. Still massive, still powerful, but hollowed out. Like he’s been awake all night preparing for the worst.
He has been. I felt it through the bond.
He looks up when I enter. His golden eyes find mine across the room, and I see everything in them—hope and fear warring for dominance, desperation and something raw tangled so tightly they might be the same thing.
My heart clenches. This is the monster who stole my life. This is also the only person who ever really saw me.
Both things are true. I have to hold them both.
“I stayed up all night,” I tell him.
“I know.” He gestures vaguely to his chest, where the bond connects us. “I felt it.”
“I thought about using the crystal.” I walk toward him slowly, aware of every eye in the common room following my progress. Let them watch. Let them see. “I thought about breaking the bond and walking away. About pretending the last months never happened and rebuilding my life without you in it.”
