Page 20

For a moment, I didn’t speak. I just held her. Pressed against me, bare-skinned and breathless, the runes carved into her back like a language only pain could write. My hand rested just below her shoulder blades, fingers grazing over jagged curves of ink and scar. They thrummed faintly beneath my touch. And yet, she didn’t tremble from my nearness. Didn’t flush. Didn’t react at all. My wolf, however, was losing its mind.

She was so close. Her scent tangled in my breath, subtle but undeniable—pure Omega, buried beneath rot and ash and that cursed magic. The beast in me clawed, snarling, begging to sink teeth into her neck, to claim what every part of me now recognized as mine.

But still—nothing from her. The runes were too strong. Too deep. And her silence felt… unnatural. Unforgivable. Her body was fire against mine, but she stood there like a ghost, untouched by heat.

I remembered her voice—low, fierce, furious.

Every. Month.

The truth settled in slowly. And then it hit. My grip tightened.No. No, it wasn’t possible. She didn’t look older than thirty, maybe late twenties. But still... That would be…no,that would be over a decade. Thirteen… fourteen years of this. Of taking a blade to her back, every cycle, every moon. Bindingherself in silence. Suffocating her wolf. Destroying what she was just to stay hidden. Just to run. My jaw clenched, the taste in my mouth turning to rust and bile.

“You’ve been doing this… since you were fifteen?” I asked, voice barely human.

She didn’t answer at first. Then she gave the smallest nod. My breath turned to ice. Fifteen. A child. A girl on the run from her own blood. From the truth in her bones. And no one stopped her. No one saved her.

“Why?” I whispered. But it didn’t come out gentle. It came out wrong. Rough. Broken. Violent with disbelief. “Why the fuck would you do this to yourself?”

Still, she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“I had to,” she said finally, her voice shaking—not with weakness, but with the kind of strength that’s earned in hell. “Because if I didn’t, I’d end up just like the rest of them.”

“The rest ofwho?” I snapped, grabbing her jaw and forcing her to look at me.

Her lips curled. Not with fear—but hate.

“Your kind,” she hissed. “Your alphas. Your packs. I watched them cage my sisters. Watched them train them like animals, mould them into perfect little mates to be bred and broken. That’s the life that waited for me. So I ran half way through the world and I carved it out of myself instead.”

Her voice cracked. And gods help me— For a second, I couldn’t breathe. She had gutted her own nature. Her own birthright. To be free ofus.

The room felt too small. My own skin itched with fury I didn’t know where to put—at her, at myself, at a world where an Omega had tobutcherherself to stay free.

I took a step back. My body screamed to keep her close, to stay wrapped in her scent, in the ragged heat of her pain, but I needed control. Needed distance. Just enough to remind myselfI was still the one holding the leash—even if she didn’t know it yet.

“Garrick!” I barked. My voice echoed like a blade unsheathed.

The door opened fast. He stepped in, eyes darting from me to her, reading the tension thick enough to drown in.

“Bring men,” I ordered. “Now.”

Garrick nodded once and disappeared. She turned toward me slowly, suspicion already flickering in her eyes. Her lip still bled from where she bit it during the fight. Her dress hung in tatters. Her back—those carved runes—were still visible in the flicker of firelight.

I stared at them. Ather.

“Move her and the boy out of the dungeon,” I said when Garrick returned with two more wolves. “Put them in a guest chamber, north wing. Top floor. Lock the door. Post guards day and night.”

Garrick blinked. “Both of them?”

“The boy can walk the halls if he wants. He’s human. Harmless. Butshe… She stays in that room. For the next thirty nights.”

She stared at me like I’d just sentenced her to death.

“What?” she breathed. “Why?”

I smiled. It was not kind. It was not merciful.

It was predatory.

“Because I want to see what happens,” I said. “When those runes begin to lose their power. When your little ritual is denied, when your precious carvings don’t return in time to bind your wolf again.”