Our intelligence placed the king’s hidden weapon within the Wyrdwood. Something old. Something powerful. The reports were imprecise, as such reports always are. No one who carried details back had seen the source directly. They had felt it. We all knew the king had exhibited power beyond his own levels, inconsistent at times. Rumors told of a funnel, feeding him power and strength, possibly from this weapon. We had to cut off the source or leverage it for our own. Or our cause would fail.
The king held numbers and sanctioned brutality. What he didn't hold was legitimacy. He had no omega. No heir. The Unseelie lines thinned because he had made certain they would. Decades ago, he purged what he couldn't control. The remaining omegas vanished into hiding or crossed borders to the Seelie or human lands to escape, and those borders refused the Unseelie entry.
The Seelie Queen sealed her lands and refused every overture. She ruled with an omega at her side and heirs secured. She wouldn't risk her stability to mend ours. If we destroyed each other, she would conquer the remnants without effort.
The king had broken our future long before we raised banners against him.
Thane closed the distance between us. I felt him before he touched me, the heat of his magic along my back, steady and familiar. We had moved beside one another for years. I knew the cadence of his steps the way I knew the balance of my own blade.
His hand caught my arm and turned me. His grip tightened when I met his gaze.
“We have not paused since we left camp. Many days ago,” he said.
“We will pause when the objective is secured.”
“That is not what I meant.”
I tugged free, but he stepped forward rather than back, invading my space. The forest grew quiet, no bird songs or animal sounds. Even the wind held itself still. He rarely pressed, but when he did, I listened.
His hand slid to the leather strap across my chest, fingers closing there. Not a challenge. Claim. A reminder that I didn't carry this alone. Hunger and need surged forward. It had been too long since we’d been together, too long since I had been focused on the mission and not my mate.
I gripped his vest and drove him back against the nearest tree before he could finish the thought. Bark struck his shoulders as I pressed against him. His breath left him in a rush that shifted when my weight followed.
The bond surged, hot and dizzying. Magic tangled, seeking the shape it knew too well.
My hand dropped, closing hard over his groin through worn fabric. His head fell back against the trunk, teeth catching his lower lip as a low sound dragged from his throat.
“Malric,” he said, my name pulled thin.
I kissed him before he could say anything else.
It was not gentle. Teeth and breath and the clash of frustrated passion that had nowhere safe to go. He answered with equal hunger, hands sliding to my shoulders, then my neck, holding on like I might vanish.
For a moment the forest, the tower, the king, all of it thinned to the heat between us and the pulse of the bond demanding more. My hand cupped his surging cock, stroking it firmly, almost roughly.
I tore my mouth away first.
His eyes were unfocused, chest heaving, hands still gripping my leather vest as if he could anchor me in place.
“We don’t get distracted,” I said, voice rougher than I liked.
His fingers tightened. “We’re not distracted. We’re bound.”
“Later,” I told him, stepping back.
The loss of contact was almost painful in its absence, but we had a mission to complete. Thane stayed against the tree a second longer, gathering himself, then pushed off and straightened. His expression shuttered, but the charge in the air didn't fade.
The mark at my wrist burned faintly beneath the bracer—a constant reminder of restraint, of the binding placed on my power. My mother had set it there when I was young, to protectme from the king, so he would not take me to his court and use me as a weapon as he had done to Thane. But around Thane, when power flared, it answered with a painful stab, as if trying to break the binding. A reminder that he was not my true mate, which was a constant burr in the bond between us. Only my true mate, an omega, could break the binding and let me come into my full powers. I learned to fight within its boundaries. Contained does not mean diminished.
Thane’s gaze dropped briefly to the bracer before returning to my face.
“You could have accepted the Seelie Queen’s offer,” he said. “A place in her court. Protection.”
“I don’t abandon my people so easily.”
“She offered safety, status. An omega.”
And there it was. The thing that was coming between us more and more frequently. Thane knew the pressure I was under to produce an heir for my seat and omegas were unavailable in Unseelie lands. I have been offered many things in my lifetime. Power. Rank. A politically convenient bond that would secure lines and quiet dissent. The queen’s court would have given me legitimacy, heirs, and a future insulated from the king’s retaliation.
