Page 28

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."

Two days of losing control as heat takes over my mind. Two days to get ready for a claiming that'll make this bond even stronger—a bond I'm still trying to accept. Two days to make sense of this commander who captured me but now looks at me like I'm more than just a problem to solve.

"I need to think," I tell him, stepping back from his overwhelming presence.

He nods, respecting my space even though his alpha instincts must be screaming at him to take charge. "My room or yours," he says simply. "Your choice. Though the medical staff says familiar surroundings help."

The practical reminder brings me back to reality. Whatever emotional mess I'm dealing with, my body's needs can't be ignored. "I'll tell you tomorrow," I say, needing room to breathe, to think.

As I turn to go, Fritz speaks again, his voice rough like he's fighting something inside himself. "Aria." He waits until I look back. "Whatever you decide, I'll keep you safe. That's not negotiable."

His words shouldn't comfort me—this is possession, not caring. Alpha instinct, not connection. Yet something in his eyes, in the way his massive shoulders are set, in the careful distance he keeps despite what his biology must be demanding, suggests there's more going on than just dominance.

My mind flashes back to yesterday's battle—Fritz launching himself against dragon forces not to protect military stuff but to defend human settlements with no strategic value. His words echo in my memory: "Conquest without protection is just destruction. I won't become what I despise."

For the first time since my claiming, I wonder what Fritz truly wants beyond tactical advantage and territory.

What desires the alpha beneath the commander's mask might have if given choice instead of duty.

Whether what started as biological necessity might become something neither of us saw coming.

The claiming bond pulses between us, carrying questions without answers, possibilities without guarantees, choice that matters precisely because it changes nothing about the physical realities awaiting us both.

I leave him at the gate, returning to quarters that feel simultaneously like sanctuary and prison as heat builds beneath my skin with inexorable patience.

Whatever I decide tomorrow, biological imperatives will soon overtake rational thought—not with the desperate madness of first unclaimed heat, but with focused need for the specific alpha whose claiming bite has marked me as his.

The realization that I'm beginning to think of Fritz as my alpha rather than the alpha who claimed me creates the most disturbing symptom yet—not physical preparation but emotional shift I never anticipated when fighting so hard against a claiming I now find myself reluctantly anticipating.

As I curl into bed, my hand drifts to the claiming mark at my throat, fingers tracing the pattern of teeth marks that once represented captivity. Now they feel like something else—a connection I don't understand but can no longer pretend to hate.