She is nothing like a typical Omega, but that makes her all the more precious.
With great effort, I lift myself up enough that I can look down into her face.
She looks almost… sad. Then she clocks me watching her, and her features harden.
“Motherfucker!” she spits, her beautiful green eyes wide with an expression I cannot interpret. “Youbitme!”
“I am sorry it hurt you, little Omega,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to her smooth forehead, “but it had to be done. We are bonded now. We belong together.”
“Like hell!” She struggles beneath my weight, her little fists pummeling my back. Resistance is futile, when will she learn that? “Get off of me!”
“Only if you promise not to run.” Her skimmer was wrecked when she crashed it, so her only option would be to steal mine. I’d like to think she wouldn’t dare, but she would. The guards I had posted outside the palace obeyed their orders and notified me as soon as they saw her walking out. They said she didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and might just be going for a stroll, but I knew the truth. She was trying to make good her constant threats to escape.
“For the last time, asshole, I wasn’t running away! I was exploring!”
I am used to deference and respect, and Kim’s insults only serve to remind me how different she is from Ulfarri females. From a proper Omega. “Watch your words,” I say sternly, slowly extricating my cock from her and tucking it back into my breeches before rising to a crouch and offering her my hand.
She ignores it, scrambling to her feet without my help. “I’ll say what I like! Jesus!” Her fingers go to the wound on her neck. “Is it bleeding?” Her voice has softened, and the sudden switch from adorable fury to abject vulnerability makes my heart clench in my chest.
“No,” I tell her gently. “I cleaned it carefully, and will bandage it when we’re back at the palace.”
“You licked it,” she mutters. “That wasn’t cleaning it.”
“The claiming bite is a biological process,” I explain. “There are healing and antibacterial properties in my saliva.”
“Oh.”
“Still, you shouldn’t touch it.” I reach out and take her hand from her shoulder, clasping her palm. My huge hand swallows hers as I lead her to the skimmer. “We should return. It’s getting late.” Indeed, the suns are sinking lower, toward the horizon.
“You still didn’t tell me where you were this whole time,” she says quietly, “and I’m still mad at you for leaving me.”
Should I tell her the truth? That I was called to an emergency council meeting with the other kings, as we recently received word that enemy ships were spotted heading towards Ulfaria? “I will explain once we are home,” I say, deciding that this is neither the time, nor the place. I need her back in my bed, safe.
Stepping onto the skimmer, I tug her alongside me and wrap a possessive arm around her waist, taking the controls with my other hand.
“I’m sorry I crashed mine,” Kim mutters. She is not actively pulling away from me, nor is she leaning in. I’m struggling to interpret her thoughts. Strange. Khan said I would be able to feel her emotions through the bond once I had claimed her.
“No matter,” I say. “The important thing is that you’re not hurt—aside from that nasty bump on your head, which I will have the magicians look at.”
“And the nasty bite on my neck,” she adds. Her pretty little face is set in a scowl.
“Again, I am sorry that hurt, but it was necessary.” I draw the joystick up and slide it forward before turning us around so we can head home.
“Why? You don’t care about me! I’m just a walking womb to you.”
“That is untrue!” Outrage makes my voice loud, and I force myself to reel it back, to remain calm. “Why do you think that?”
“I don’t think it, I know it. Juno and the others said as much, as did Emma. You need an Omega to breed with. It doesn’t matter what she’s like as a person. Her thoughts, feelings, happiness, are irrelevant. You don’t involve me in anything—I’m just your Omega pet. You don’t care about me once you’re done rutting me. You tell me I’m a disappointment as an Omega—”
“When did I say that?”
“You’re not what I expected, Kim,” she bites off in a high-pitched mockery of my voice.
“Well, you are not…” I start, and stop when her eyes blaze with livid fire. “But you are not a disappointment.”
“You don’t mean that,” she scoffs. “You don’t have to say it—you showed it. I don’t mean anything to you. You rut me, and then leave me like a dog in a cage. The second I stop behaving like a perfect little Omega, you send me back to the harem.”
Every word of her tirade is like a needle to my heart. It’s true. Her stubborn defiance and lack of respect made it easy for me to focus on her status as an Omega, nothing more. But something has changed since then. How to explain it? “I may have treated you that way in the beginning,” I concede, steering us through a copse of trees, relieved when the glittering palace appears, shimmering in the distance, “but you made it hard to get to know you as a person. All you did was disobey me, and talk of escape.”
