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There—a small figure picking her way up the treacherous slope with determined precision. Her movements betray tactical thinking despite obvious injury and escalating heat symptoms. Not the panicked flight of broken prey, but strategic retreat toward defensible ground.

Mine, whispers the ancient voice that lives in every alpha's hindbrain. Mine to claim. Mine to breed. Mine to keep.

I circle higher, using the storm's fury to mask my presence while studying my unexpected prize. Her scent grows more intoxicating with each breath—like night-blooming flowers that open only during lightning strikes, their sweetness sharpened by electricity and danger.

My body responds without conscious permission. Wings extend to their full threatening span, scales darkening as blood rushes to the surface. The dual organs that mark my Chimeric heritage begin to emerge from their sheaths—not fully, not yet, but enough to remind me exactly what I want to do with this gift the storm has brought me.

Years of solitude have made me selective about which Council laws I enforce in my territory. The mountains are vast enough to hide things—resistance cells, escaped omegas, the occasional political refugee. I maintain plausible deniabilitythrough selective blindness, and the Council tolerates my independence because I deliver when they demand it.

But this is different. This omega isn't hiding in my territory—she's been delivered to it, injured and entering dangerous heat, needing exactly what I'm equipped to provide.

What I'm hungry to provide.

She reaches a pathetic excuse for shelter—a shallow depression beneath an overhanging cliff that offers minimal protection from the storm's assault. Even from this height, I can track her struggle through scent and sound. Blood mingles with heat pheromones as she tends her wounds with careful efficiency.

Medical training, perhaps. Interesting.

I descend in slow spirals, maintaining enough distance that my alpha scent won't betray my presence. Not yet. First, I observe—gathering intelligence, measuring potential, deciding whether this omega deserves the protection of my claiming or merely the mercy of quick death.

Lightning illuminates her fully, and I see her clearly for the first time. Human, late twenties or early thirties, dark hair plastered to her skull by rain. Her clothing bears Feline transport insignia, but she moves with too much intelligence to be simple cargo. The way she binds her wounded leg, the calculated efficiency of her movements, speaks to tactical awareness uncommon in captured omegas.

Her scent surges suddenly, carried upward on a wind gust that hits me like a physical blow. The heat is progressing to its next phase—her body producing slick regardless of her mental state, preparing for claiming whether she consents or not. The chemical signature is becoming dangerously unstable, her suppressed biology fighting to reassert itself against years of artificial control.

Time for observation has ended.

I've seen omegas die from rebound heat syndrome—watched their systems burn themselves out in hormonal cascades too violent for human physiology to survive. Hyperthermia leading to seizures, cardiac arrhythmia, organ shutdown. Death preceded by madness as their bodies consume themselves from within.

This omega's scent profile suggests she's approaching that threshold.

I dive through the storm, angling my descent for maximum psychological impact while maintaining precise control. Let her sense the inevitable before she sees it. Let her understand that resistance will be futile against what approaches.

I strike the cliff above her shelter with deliberate force, the impact sending vibrations through stone that will announce my presence more effectively than any roar. My wings spread automatically as I drop to the cave entrance—not for balance, but for intimidation. The span of my wingspan blocks her only escape route while demonstrating exactly what kind of predator has found her.

Lightning flashes, illuminating me in stark relief against the storm-dark sky.

I watch her reaction with predatory satisfaction—the widening of pupils, the sharp intake of breath, the instinctive press of her body against stone. Fear, yes, but underneath it, her omega biology recognizes what her human mind rejects. Safety in submission. Protection through claiming.

Survival.

"I can smell what you are," I tell her, voice carrying easily over the storm's howling.

Her scent shifts—fear spiking higher, but accompanied by the unmistakable chemical signature of unwilling arousal. Another heat wave crashes through her system as I speak, her body betraying her mental resistance with humiliating honesty.

"An unmated omega in my territory," I continue, nostrils flaring to catalog every note of her pheromone profile. The complexity fascinates me—intelligence layered beneath instinct, defiance woven through desperation.

She tries to escape—a tactical error born of desperation rather than strategy. Her injured leg betrays her as she lunges forward, seeking to slip past me into the storm. My tail responds instinctively, whipping out to encircle her waist, lifting her small frame effortlessly from the ground.

"The storm washed away your little chemical tricks," I growl, drawing her close enough to breathe along the scent glands at her throat. The pheromone concentration there tells me everything about her condition—and her prognosis. "Your heat's building by the minute. Without an alpha, it'll drive you mad with pain before killing you."

"I'd rather die than be fucked by a monster," she spits, struggling against my tail's unbreakable hold with impressive strength given her deteriorating condition.

Laughter rumbles through my chest—genuine amusement at her spirit. So many omegas have been broken by Council conditioning, reduced to compliant breeding vessels without fire or fight. This one still has claws, metaphorically speaking.

I like claws.

"Your mouth says death, but your body begs for life." I cup her face with careful precision, retracting my claws to avoid adding injury to injury. She's bleeding enough already; additional wounds would only complicate the claiming process. "I'm offering you survival through claiming. The choice is simple—my mark or the mountain's mercy."

Even as I speak, another wave of heat crashes through her system with visible force. She doubles over in my grip, her scent spiking to dangerous levels—omega distress signals that trigger protective instincts I rarely have occasion to exercise.The biological cascade is accelerating beyond safe parameters. Hours, perhaps less, before her suppressed system begins shutting down.