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What he's really doing is teaching me escape routes. Showing me how to navigate these mountains if I need to run—with or without him. The contradiction makes my head spin. If I'm just his claimed property, why waste time on survival lessons? If I'm breeding stock waiting for Council retrieval, why risk these dangerous flights that could end with us both splattered across jagged rocks?

"Why are you showing me all this?" I finally ask, wind stealing half my words as we spiral higher on a thermal updraft.

His massive wings catch the rising air with practiced ease, dark feathers rustling as they adjust to minute changes in air pressure. "Knowledge keeps you alive when circumstances change."

The careful phrasing sends ice through my veins. He's preparing me for something—maybe for when he's not around to protect his territorial claim anymore.

As we climb higher into the thin mountain air, my body betrays me with ruthless efficiency. The adrenaline rush, the vibration of his muscled torso against my back with each powerful wingbeat, his wild alpha scent intensified by altitude—it all triggers responses I can't control.

Slick dampens my inner thighs despite the cold wind whipping past us. The claiming marks scattered across my neck and collarbone burn with pulsing heat that matches my racing heartbeat. I understand the science behind it—flight triggers primitive omega instincts, adrenaline amplifies arousal responses, pressure changes at altitude increase blood flow to all the wrong places.

Knowing why it happens doesn't make it stop happening.

Vex's nostrils flare as my scent reaches him, carried on wind currents that swirl around his massive frame. His yellow eyes narrow to predatory slits—the look that means he's either going to fight something or fuck it. Usually both.

He changes course without warning, powerful wings beating hard as he heads for an isolated peak crowned with a flat plateau barely large enough for his wingspan. The landing is surprisingly graceful for something that weighs as much as a small truck, his clawed feet finding purchase on wind-scoured stone while his feathered wings fold with precise control.

The moment he releases me, I stumble backward on unsteady legs, even as every omega instinct screams to move closer to the source of heat and protection.

"We should return to the den," I say, trying to inject authority into my voice while another wave of arousal crashes through me. "You mentioned checking the eastern borders before noon."

Vex folds his wings halfway—not the complete closure that signals relaxation, but the partial display that shows their impressive span. Dark feathers catch the sunlight, revealing subtle patterns in the black plumage that shift as he moves. A dominance posture I've learned to recognize with growing dread and anticipation.

"Not yet," he growls, those inhuman eyes locked on mine with predatory focus. "I want to show you something first."

There's nowhere to run up here. The plateau offers maybe twenty feet of solid ground in any direction before dropping into thousand-foot voids. The air is so thin each breath pulls his musky scent deeper into my lungs, making my head spin with more than just altitude.

"What exactly did you want to show me?" I ask, backing away until my heel finds empty air at the cliff edge.

He advances with the fluid speed of an apex predator, stopping close enough that heat radiates from his scaled skin like a furnace. "Your reaction to flight," he states, voice dropping to that deep register that seems to vibrate directly through my bones. "Every time we're airborne, you get wet. The adrenaline, the height, depending completely on me not to let you fall—it makes your omega biology desperate to submit."

I want to spit defiance like I did that first night in the storm. Tell him to fuck off and leave me alone. But the evidence of my arousal is literally dripping down my thighs, making any denial a pathetic lie.

"It's just stress response," I say, grasping for clinical detachment. "Basic physiological reaction to perceived danger."

His rumbling laugh holds no humor. "Is that what your scientific mind tells you?" One massive hand reaches out to cup my face with dangerous gentleness, razor claws carefully retracted. "Is it just 'stress response' that makes your cunt drip every time we're in the air together?"

I should slap his hand away. Every shred of pride and resistance demands I fight back, maintain some fragment of dignity. Instead, I find myself leaning into his touch like a flower seeking sunlight, the claiming marks on my throat pulsing with molten heat.

My traitorous body remembers every claiming—against rough cave walls while storms raged outside, on his fur-covered sleeping platform in the depths of his den, suspended in midair during that first terrible night when he stole everything I thought I was. It remembers how his thick, ridged cock stretches me beyond what should be physically possible, how his knot locks us together while that specialized secondary organ latches onto my clit with maddening precision.

"Your pussy is begging for me right now," he observes with absolute certainty. His free hand moves to my waist,claws extending just enough to slice through my shirt without touching skin. The fabric falls away in precise strips, exposing my flesh to air that should feel freezing but somehow burns.

I want to deny it. Want to be the defiant nurse who'd choose death over submission to a monster. But that woman feels more distant every day, replaced by someone I don't recognize—someone whose body responds to this alpha's touch with eager hunger that terrifies me.

When his hand shoves between my thighs, finding me soaked through my pants, I make a sound that's pure need.

Vex's answering growl vibrates through his chest and into mine where we're pressed together. "Look at how wet you are," he rumbles, curved fingers pushing through damp fabric to stroke my slick folds. "Your mouth says no while your omega cunt screams yes. When will you stop lying to yourself about what you need?"

His wings snap fully open behind him—fifteen feet of powerful feathers stretched against the brilliant blue sky. The display hits something primitive in my brain that has nothing to do with rational thought—alpha showing his strength, his ability to protect, his genetic superiority over every other male I might encounter.

He spins me to face the cliff edge, the thousand-foot drop yawning beneath my feet as he tears away what remains of my clothing with efficient brutality. I should be terrified—naked at the top of the world with nothing but his grip keeping me from death. Instead, the danger makes everything sharper, more intense, like my nerve endings have been stripped raw.

"Present for me, omega," he commands, one massive hand between my shoulder blades pushing me forward until I'm bent over at the very edge of oblivion. "Show me how badly you need your alpha's cock."

My hands brace against cold stone as my back arches without conscious permission, my ass lifting in the presentation pose that would have made me vomit with rage weeks ago. Now my body adopts it eagerly, desperately, every line screaming submission to the alpha behind me.

"That's it," he approves, his palm spanning the small of my back with possessive heat. "Show me that wet omega cunt that belongs to me."