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Her fingers are in my hair instantly, desperate and demanding, nails scraping across my scalp like she needs the pain to anchor her. Like she’s not sure any of this is real unless it hurts. My hands grip her hips hard enough to bruise, dragging her flush against me as my hips press into hers with a groan that borders on unhinged.

This isn’t a kiss.

It’s a claim.

A message to every feral watching—every Alpha twitching with chemically induced madness and base-level hunger—that this omega isn’t available for consumption.

Not a prize.

Not an experiment.

Mine.

All fucking mine.

She whimpers into my mouth—breathless, broken open—and I swear the walls vibrate with the sound. My pulse detonates against my ribs. My knot aches with brutal urgency, pushing against the sharp edge of control I’ve held for six long years, and can already imagine her beneath me, my cock thrusting and waiting for that golden moment to lock in. It’s too dangerous to dare think of after never being able to go that far the first time around.

Now it’s different.

She’s no longer a child…

She’s no longer off limits.

We can finally claim her as we had every intention of doing so, the moment we escaped this treacherous place of challenges and endless suffering.

I tear my mouth from hers only to drag it down her jaw, over the fragile column of her throat, where her pulse pounds beneath fragile skin.

“Say it,” I snarl, voice fraying at the edges, trembling with restraint. “Say you came back for me.”

For us…she returned for our pack.

Her breath stutters. Her nails dig deeper. She tilts her head, baring her throat like instinct still remembers me even if the world forgot.

“For you,” she whispers, voice wrecked. “Doubted me?”

Something in medetonates.

A sound leaves me—low, guttural, terrifying in its finality. I surge back up to claim her mouth again, this time slower, deeper. Less frenzy, more possession. Her lips part on a broken gasp, and I take it —take everything— like I’ve been starved for it.Because I have.Because every minute without her has been a slow bleed.

Behind us, the ferals don’t move.Don’t breathe.Their frenzy chokes on its own hunger as they witness something they’ll never taste. Something that doesn’t belong to them. Something sacred and violent and forbidden.

Her.

Us.

This kiss, in a corridor built for blood, between a reaper and the omega who named him human—this is the crime I’ll gladly die for.

And if they try to take her again?

They’ll die before I do.

The bite of her lips along my bottom lip is the only thing to snap me out of the spiral desire of ownership that fights to consume my instincts, leaving me staring back at her with a possessive hunger that only contributes to her growing smirk of satisfaction.

"We need to move," she states with characteristic precision, tactical assessment never completely absent despite emotional context or physical proximity. "Your cell?"

When I think about it, it’s technically the only place they can’t necessarily “do” worse than they already have.

The directness might seem cold from anyone else, prioritizing strategic necessity over emotional acknowledgment or conventional reunion protocols.