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"I see," I manage to say, trying to keep my composure as I think through what this means. "Should I... change my duties during this time?"

"We'll talk about arrangements," Fritz answers, keeping up the professional distance despite talking about something that should be intensely personal. "Keep to your normal schedule for now."

I nod and turn to leave before my body betrays me any more in this public place where we both have to maintain our careful roles—him as commander, me as trade liaison, neither of us acknowledging the claiming bond that pulses stronger between us as my heat gets closer.

The next few days pass in a weird tension, my body's preparation speeding up despite my attempts to ignore it. The symptoms feel both familiar and different from my first heat—less desperate panic, more focused awareness. My skin gets more and more sensitive, like my nerve endings are reaching for a touch I both crave and fear. My temperature keeps climbing, giving me a constant flush that gets knowing looks from the few other claimed omegas working in the fortress.

The worst part is the dreams—vivid ones that leave me gasping awake in tangled, sweat-soaked sheets. Not nightmares about being claimed against my will, but shamefully detailed dreams of pleasure I never wanted to admit to. In these dreams, I arch eagerly into Fritz's touch, welcome the burning stretch of his body inside mine, beg for his knot with a desperation that horrifies me when I wake up.

I jolt awake from one such dream to find my own fingers between my thighs, my body trying to find relief that my mind still fights against. The realization sends me stumbling to the bathroom where I stand under cold water until I'm shivering instead of burning up.

It doesn't help. Nothing helps except what my body really wants—the alpha whose bite marks my throat, whose scent has worked its way into my own, whose body has changed mine to fit him.

The choice hangs over me with growing urgency as my symptoms get worse. I could give in again, accept what the claiming bond demands now that I better understand what's coming. Or I could run—try to escape toward dragon territory even knowing the truth behind my old fantasy, even knowing the claiming bond would punish me with pain that would get worse and worse until I came back.

Not much of a choice, but somehow having even the illusion of one matters.

I find myself standing at the western gate as sunset turns the stone walls blood-red, staring down into the valley where Blackridge's lights start to glow in the growing darkness. Beyond them, mountain passes lead to territories where dragons wait—not the majestic saviors I once imagined but predators whose calculated cruelty I've seen with my own eyes.

The claiming mark throbs at my throat, warning me that Fritz is coming before I can hear or smell him. He moves with that creepy silence that makes no sense for someone his size, appearing beside me without a sound that would've made me jump a few weeks ago.

"Thinking about running?" he asks, keeping his voice low so the guards ten feet away can't hear us.

I don't bother lying. What's the point? "Is it still running when there's nowhere to go?"

"There's always somewhere." His answer surprises me. "Even terrible options are still options."

I turn to look at him fully. His face is more open than I've ever seen it outside our most intense moments together. The claiming mark pulses between us, carrying feelings I'm still figuring out how to read—his control, my confusion, both of us knowing what's coming.

"What choice did I have when you claimed me?" I don't say it with the bitterness I would have six weeks ago. I honestly want to know how he saw it.

"You didn't." His blunt honesty somehow stings less than a comforting lie would have. "I took that from you. But now..." He gestures toward the valley, the mountains beyond. "Now you know what's really out there. Now you have choices, even if they all hurt."

His acknowledgment catches me off guard. I didn't expect this from the alpha who claimed me against my will, who could command me through biology or military authority but instead gives me this weird space to decide.

"I could run," I say, testing how far this goes. "Try to reach one of the settlement's hidden shelters before the full heat hits. Hide until it passes."

Fritz doesn't growl or flash his fangs like I half-expected. He just nods. "You could. I know there are several hidden shelters in Blackridge's records. You know paths my scouts haven't mapped. With enough supplies, you might survive it alone."

The way he lays out my escape possibilities both gives me power and unsettles me. "You've thought about this."

"I've thought about everything," he says, a low rumble entering his voice. "Including what happens when a claimed omega rejects the bond."

"And you'd just let me go?" I need to understand where the limits are in this unexpected freedom.

His eyes lock with mine, pupils shrinking to thin slits in the fading light. "I wouldn't chase you—not right away." Something shifts in his scent—stronger, wilder. "The bond would do that for me. The pain would drive you back long before being alone killed you."

The cold way he says it should terrify me—reminding me of chains I can't break no matter what choices he pretends to give me. Instead, I find a weird comfort in his honesty. No false promises, no manipulation. Just truth I can work with, coming from the same commander who refused to kill innocent people despite orders, who protected Blackridge when others would have abandoned it.

"Or I could stay," I whisper, feeling the weight of those words. This isn't just about biology anymore. "I could face this with my eyes open instead of lost in heat-madness."

"You could." His voice drops deeper, sending shivers across my skin that have nothing to do with the evening chill. "It would be different. A real choice rather than just biology."

That difference matters more than it should—the gap between being forced to submit and choosing to surrender, between taking and giving. My body responds with another flood of slick between my thighs, my scent changing in a way that makes Fritz's nostrils flare, his pupils shrink to thin lines.

"When?" I ask. When will I lose myself? When will the omega take over the woman I'm trying to become?

"Two days." The certainty in his voice comes from experience and those inhuman senses. "Less if something speeds it up."