Page 49 of Claimed

Something owned.

Movement behind him pulls my attention, and the moment I see who it is, my breath falters.

Dr. J steps into view, his expression as detached as ever, his presence hitting me like a physical blow.

“You were right,” Dr. J says, his tone clinical as he looks at me. “Her response is stronger than before.”

Blaze’s lips curve faintly, but his eyes never leave me. “Of course it is,” he replies smugly. “She’s exactly what we thought she was.”

My ears flatten harder, confusion and dread tangling together as I shift my weight back, trying to put even an inch more distance between us.

Blaze crouches slowly, his movements unhurried, controlled.

“You feel it, don’t you?” he asks softly.

A flicker of something stirs beneath my skin at his words, faint and wrong and warm in a way that doesn’t belong here.

I don’t understand it.

I don’t want to.

I bare my teeth again, a warning that feels hollow even as it leaves me.

His smile deepens.

“That pull,” he continues, his voice dropping, turning quieter, more intimate. “The way everything in you reacts.”

My chest tightens as that strange warmth flickers again, just beneath the surface, like something trying to break through. For a split second, it glows—soft, golden, alive. Then it fades. Gone like it was never there.

Blaze leans closer, his gaze locking onto mine.

“You’re an omega,” he says quietly.

The word settles over me, heavy yet familiar. Did I know that?

“Do you know what that means?” he asks.

I just stare at him as my mind tries to find an answer to his question, as if it’s just out of my reach.

“It means you’re special,” he continues. “You strengthen. You bind. You make everything better.”

His lips curve, something sharp slipping into his expression.

“You make me better.”

Revulsion floods through me, hot and immediate, pushing back against the cold for just a second. I snarl, throwing myself at the back wall, desperate to get away from him, from his voice, from the way he looks at me like I belong to him.

Blaze doesn’t move, watching me with that same unsettling calm, like my struggle is something expected. Something inevitable.

Behind him, Dr. J shifts, already turning away. “Enough,” he says. “We proceed as planned.”

The words send a fresh wave of panic crashing through me.

Not again.

Blaze straightens slowly. “You can run as much as you want,” he says, his voice steady, certain. “It doesn’t change what you are.”

My claws scrape harder against the stone, my body trembling as I press into the corner of the cage, trying to make myself smaller, trying to disappear.