“Aveline—” Thane’s voice was softer now, laced with concern that made my chest ache. “Please. We can help. This is normal, this is?—”
“Nothing about this is normal!” I shouted, my voice breaking. “I’ve been alone for years and I was fine, and now you’re here and everything is wrong!”
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
I buried my face deeper into the furs, breathing in short, sharp gasps as my body continued its betrayal. Each touch of cloth on my skin sent a jolt through me. Every breath seemed to carry their scents, even through the closed door. My nipples had hardened into painful points against my gown, and the ache between my thighs was becoming unbearable.
“We’ll stay out here,” Thane said finally, his voice gentle. “We won’t leave, but we won’t force the door. Just, if you need anything. We’re here.”
I heard the soft sound of bodies settling against the wall outside my door. The rustling of leather and fabric. Their breathing slowly evening out.
They weren’t leaving.
Part of me—a part I didn’t want to acknowledge—was grateful for that. Because even through the pain and confusion and humiliation, some deep instinct recognized their presence as safety rather than threat.
But the larger part of me, the part that had learned to survive alone, that had been taught my very existence was dangerous, wanted them gone. Wanted the tower empty again. Wanted to go back to the silence and solitude where I couldn’t hurt anyone.
Another wave of heat rolled through me, and I curled tighter, my hand sliding between my thighs without conscious thought, seeking relief from the pressure building there.
The moment my fingers made contact, I gasped.
The sensation was overwhelming—too much and not enough all at once. I pulled my hand away quickly, my face burning with shame even though no one could see me.
This was a heat. The books had described it, though I’d always thought those passages were fiction, exaggeration, a metaphor for something else. Omegas experienced heats, cycles where their bodies demanded to be filled, to be bred, to be claimed by an alpha.
My stomach cramped again at the thought, and fresh slick dampened my thighs.
I had denied what I was for so long. Father had never used the word omega, had only said I was dangerous, that I needed to be contained. But the books I’d found, the histories I’d read, they’d all pointed to the same truth.
I was an omega.
And my body had just woken up to that fact because two alphas had walked into my tower and made it impossible to ignore anymore.
Outside the door, I heard Thane and Malric murmuring to each other, too quiet for me to make out the words. Their scents drifted under the door, wrapping around me even here in my nest, and my body responded with another surge of slick, another wave of desperate, aching need.
I pressed my face into the pillow and tried not to sob.
The tower hummed beneath me, steady and patient, as if it had been waiting for this all along.
As if everything that had happened—the thorns opening, the men arriving, my body awakening—had been planned by forces older and wiser than any of us.
And I was trapped in the center of it, burning from the inside out, with nowhere to go and no idea what came next.
Chapter Seven
THANE
Isat with my back against her door and listened to her suffer and didn’t move.
The stone floor was cold through my leathers. I had dressed quickly after she bolted the door—tunic unlaced, boots not quite settled—and the discomfort of it was something to focus on when the alternative was the sound coming through the wood.
Her scent had changed.
What had been moving through the tower all evening—honey and silver blossom, warm and present but still contained—had opened into something rawer. Deeper. The sweetness was still there, but underneath it now was heat in the literal sense, something biological and urgent that bypassed every rational thought I attempted and landed directly in my alpha instincts with the subtlety of a blade.
I kept my hands flat on my thighs, breathed through my mouth, and stayed where I was.
Malric paced.
