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“Careful,” I murmured. “You use that voice again, and I won’t promise to keep my wolf on a leash.”

She didn’t back down. She leaned in further, eyes gleaming, and gave me a sharp, wicked grin.

“Oh no,” she whispered, mock-innocent. “What will happen, Alpha? You’ll rut me in front of your guards to prove I’m yours?Claim me, knot me, breed me?” Her tone turned to poison wrapped in silk. “Isn’t that whatyourkind lives for? Find the broken little omega, wrap her in chains, and fuck the fight out of her?”

My smile was slow. Dark. Dangerous.

“That’s exactly what I’d do,” I said, voice like gravel soaked in sin. “To any other omega.”

I leaned in, close enough that my breath traced the shell of her ear.“But not to you.”

She stiffened beneath me, still pinned against the stone wall, her wrists bound and her chest rising and falling with each shallow breath.

“With you,” I whispered, “there would be no control. No performance. I’d tear the magic from your skin and defile you with no mercy. No knots. No claiming. Just ruin. Until there’s nothing left but the sound of you breaking.”

Lexa slowly tilted her head, her lip curling into a sneer as she looked down at her chipped nails, as if bored.

“Are we done here?” she asked flatly, unimpressed.

Gods, I wanted to laugh.

Instead, I stepped back, giving her space, just enough to pour myself a drink. The dark red wine glinted in the goblet as I raised it to my mouth, took a long sip, then offered it to her with a nod. She arched a brow.

“I don’t drink with the enemy,” she said coldly.

I took another sip, eyes never leaving hers.

“Just a curiosity,” I murmured. “A personal one.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t move.

“You’re what... almost thirty?” I asked casually, swirling the wine. “In all these years of running, hiding, bleeding... have you ever—”

“Is this your way of asking if I’m avirgin?” she cut in, voice dripping with scorn. Her lips curved into a mocking smile.“Sorry to disappoint you,my Alpha—”

There it was again. That voice. Thatfuckingvoice.

My wolf growled inside me, clawing at the inside of my skull, demanding. It didn’t care that she said it with sarcasm. It only heard the submission it was bred to crave.

“I’m not,” she continued, calm as frost. “Whatever fantasy you’ve been building behind that wine and that scowl, kill it.”

I raised a brow, lips twitching into a smirk. “Let me guess. Only humans. Makes sense—since you hate your own kind so much.”

Her eyes narrowed, green and cutting like broken emeralds.

“What do you care?” she snapped. “Or do you just get off on imagining it?”

I chuckled, low and slow, finishing my drink.

“Now,” she said, voice hard, “are we done here? Or do you want me to mop the floor with another one of your delusional little omegas?”

As she turned her back on me, chin high, chains clinking with every calculated step, something dark uncoiled in my gut—something base and vicious and entirely wolf.

I didn’t let it show. Instead, I set down the empty goblet and called out, calm and clear, “Guards.”

The doors opened immediately.

“Take her back,” I ordered, not looking at her now. I didn’t have to. “Lock the door. No visitors. No distractions. Feed the boy. Watch her.”