7
IRIS
He won without laying a hand on me. Three days of watching me burn, and he never once reached for the door. Not out of honor. Not out of respect. He waited because he could. Because he wanted me to understand that when he finally takes me, it will be on his terms, not my biology's.
I don't know how to carry that knowledge. I don't know how to look at him without remembering the sound of my own voice begging through that door, or the way his footsteps never wavered, never approached, never gave me what I was desperate enough to die for.
Three days of agony. Three days of burning alive from the inside out while he stood guard and refused to touch me. And now I'm supposed to just... what? Thank him? Hate him? Pretend it never happened?
I stare at the ceiling of my room and try to remember who I was before the heat stripped me down to nothing but need. That woman had a plan. That woman was going to find a way out of this fortress and this blood pact and this impossible situation. That woman didn't know what it felt like to want something so badly that death seemed preferable to denial.
I'm not sure she exists anymore.
The nest I built surrounds me, pillows and furs arranged in careful layers that I don't remember creating. Omega instincts surfacing through the cracks in my humanity, reshaping me into something I never asked to become.
I should tear it apart. Scatter the pillows and strip the furs and prove that I'm still in control of something. Instead, I burrow deeper into the softness and breathe in the scent of my own desperate wanting, still clinging to the fabric like a ghost I can't exorcise.
The knock at my door makes me flinch.
"It's Signe." The healer's voice carries through the wood, clipped but not hostile. "I have food and clean clothes, and information you'll want to hear."
I pull a fur around my shoulders and cross the room on unsteady legs. The door is unlocked, just as Stellan promised. I could leave anytime I wanted. The freedom feels like another kind of trap.
Signe enters with a tray balanced on one arm and a bundle of fabric tucked under the other. She sets both on the table by the window and turns to study me with those pale, assessing eyes. Whatever she sees makes her expression soften slightly.
"You survived," she says. "That's not nothing, for a first heat without a mate to ease it."
"Is that supposed to be comforting?"
"It's supposed to be factual." She gestures toward the tray. "Eat. Your body burned through more calories in three days than most humans consume in two weeks. You need protein and fat and sugar, in that order."
I don't argue. The smell of roasted meat makes my stomach clench with a hunger that borders on painful. I sink into the chair and tear into the food with a desperation that would haveembarrassed me a week ago. Now I'm too tired to care about dignity.
Signe watches me eat, her arms crossed over her chest. When I've demolished half the tray, she speaks again.
"The heats will come regularly now. Every three months, sometimes more frequently if you're around your mate often. They'll be intense but manageable with proper preparation." She pauses. "Or they'll be significantly easier if you let him help you through them."
"I don't want him anywhere near me during a heat."
"Want doesn't enter into it. The pact binds you both, and he's not a man who waits forever." Signe's voice holds no judgment, only fact. "An omega in heat without her alpha suffers. You experienced that. It doesn't get easier with repetition. If anything, it gets worse as your bond strengthens."
"What bond? We haven't bonded."
Signe's lips curve in something that isn't quite a smile. "Haven't you? He's been guarding your door for three days straight. He attacked his own beta for suggesting someone else do it. And you built a nest in a room that smells like him, surrounded yourself with furs from his bed, and screamed his name for seventy-two hours." She tilts her head. "The formal bond happens with a bite during mating. But the connection? That started the moment you walked into his hall."
I don't have a response to that. I don't want to think about connections or bonds or the way my heart rate still spikes when I catch his scent on the air.
Signe gathers the empty dishes and moves toward the door. She pauses with her hand on the frame, her back to me.
"He's been fixated on you for years, you know. Long before the blood pact activated. You should ask him about his study."
The words hit me like a slap. "His study?"
But she's already gone, the door clicking shut behind her, leaving me alone with a question I can't ignore.
I wait until evening. Until the noise from the commons tells me the pack has gathered for their meal and the corridor outside Stellan's private wing falls silent. I watched him head toward the great hall twenty minutes ago, his stride unhurried, no indication he planned to return soon.
The lock on his study is sophisticated. Three tumblers, reinforced mechanism, the kind of hardware designed to keep out anyone without a key or serious training.
