Page 22

CHAPTER 22

POV: Briar

Every footstep sends shards of pain between my thighs, the evidence of last night's claiming making itself known.

Morning light fractures through the canopy, turning the forest into a disorienting patchwork of shadow and gold. I stumble toward the promise of running water, following the distant sound of a stream. My body catalogs new aches in places I didn't know could hurt, marked from hip to collarbone with the unmistakable signs of a Winter Court prince's possession.

Hunt lore says the first day after claiming is supposed to be easier. Even the most feral alphas need recovery time, their bodies depleted from the fever of rut. I should be using this precious window to put leagues between myself and the Winter Prince.

Yet the claiming bond refuses to let me forget him. North and slightly east, the invisible tether pulses between us like a second heartbeat. He's not following me—yet—but I know that he will, no matter how far away I get.

I touch the markings spiraling across my collarbone, expecting them to feel foreign, invasive. Instead, they feel like they've always belonged there, melded to my skin like any other birthmark. They feel as natural on my skin as the alpha who branded me felt inside my body, and I hate that more than anything.

My scent has changed. I catch notes of it when the wind shifts against my skin—my natural omega pheromones now carry winter pine and metal beneath the familiar forge fire and iron. To any alpha who crosses my path, the message couldn't be clearer: claimed by Winter Court royalty.

"That should buy me time," I rasp to myself, my voice raw from the sounds that were torn from me throughout the night.

I desperately need water. Not just to drink but to wash away the evidence painting my inner thighs—dried blood and Cadeyrn's seed that flakes away as I trudge forward. When I finally break through the undergrowth into a small clearing, the sight of a stream running over smooth stones nearly buckles my knees with relief.

The forest is holding its breath today, strangely quiet, as if it's gotten what it wanted by bringing me and the Winter Prince together. It concerns me, this change, but I'm so exhausted that all I care about right now is the water.

Stripping off the thin shift Cadeyrn made for me feels like peeling away a layer of skin, that's how close it skims to my naked body. As soon as I'm naked by the cool water, a breeze stirring in the air, goosebumps prickle across my skin and the hair on my arms stands on end.

The water is a relief as I wade in, shocking and perfect against my feverish skin. I sink to my knees in the middle, letting the current wash over my shoulders as I scrub at the dried evidence of the night. Pink tendrils snake downstream, my blood and the prince's seed mixing together.

"Gods, that's better," I sigh, submerging completely to wet my tangled copper hair.

When I surface, wiping water from my eyes, I'm no longer alone.

Lord Varen Halvesbain stands on the opposite bank, watching me with detached interest, like he has all the time in the world. His white-blonde hair falls to his waist in elaborate court braids, not a strand disturbed despite weeks in the forest. His face would be beautiful if it weren't for the predatory, calculated expression on his face.

But it's his eyes that freeze me in place—so pale blue they're nearly colorless, completely without emotion. Compared to Cadeyrn, who lights up with fury and frustration, with charm and arousal, Halvesbain is an ice crystal in a blizzard.

And the coldness of his gaze makes my pulse race like I'm a rabbit startled from the underbrush by a dozen hunting hounds.

"Remain still," he commands, his voice flat and clinical. "Cillae. I've read of them, but never seen them. They present a... unique opportunity for discovery."

I sink lower in the water, arms crossing instinctively over my breasts. My knife lies with my discarded clothing, impossibly far away on the bank. "Get away from me," I growl, trying to mask my terror with aggression. "You won't be discovering anything."

He dismisses me completely, stepping closer to the water's edge. As he approaches, I notice with mounting dread that he's already aroused, his loose trousers doing little to conceal his growing interest.

"Fascinating," he murmurs, those empty eyes fixed on the cillae spiraling across my left side from collarbone to hip. "Cillae like that have been almost unheard of for centuries. And the way they carry his scent... how they pulse and move... quite extraordinary."

His cold words feel more violating than raw lust would. I edge toward the bank where my knife waits, but he raises a hand almost lazily, and the water around me begins to freeze. Delicate ice ferns spread across the surface, forming a cage that traps me in the deepest part of the stream.

"I wouldn't move if I were you," he says, expression unchanged despite the casual display of power. "I've spent half my lifespan documenting the biological implications of claiming and I've never seen cillae like that before. This is a rare opportunity for me to study more."

"I'm claimed," I remind him, voice tight with fury and fear. "That's the entire fucking point of these marks."

Lord Varen tilts his head, eyes narrowed. "Indeed. Which raises so many questions." His hand drops to the growing bulge in his trousers, touching himself with dispassionate curiosity. "Such as, would a secondary alpha be able to override the claim? Or would the cillae move from the omega to the alpha? Either way... I wish to know."

My stomach plummets. "You're not testing your theories on me."

"I don't believe you have much choice in the matter." He steps into the stream, pulling his loose trousers down to expose the hardening cock beneath. "And you, little omega, are simply too unique to pass by."

The ice continues spreading as he wades toward me, trapping me in an ever-shrinking circle. I push against it but earn nothing but sliced palms and cold skin. My fear spikes further as I realize this is real, that I'm really going to be claimed by this monster.

Panic claws up my throat as he reaches me, one cold hand gripping my jaw to immobilize me while the other continues to stroke his length. His fingers dig into my skin, forcing my face up while those empty eyes examine the claiming bite on my neck.

"The Prince's techniques are surprisingly sloppy," he observes, thumb pressing painfully against the puncture wounds. "He's been... careless with you. And the way you smell... it's changed, but I recognize that scent beneath his markers. You're Willow from Thornwick, aren't you?" My expression must give me away. "And yet you look nothing like you did at the start of the Hunt, which can only mean one thing: magic. I'll find out more once I'm inside your body and your mind."

He strokes his cock harder, faster. It's massive like Cadeyrn's rut-swollen length, but somehow more unnerving, the tip dripping precum and the shaft bulging with blue veins.

"I believe that Winter Court magic may overwrite Winter Court magic," he informs me, tone unchanged as if discussing weather patterns. "The response of your cillae will tell me more."

"I'll fucking gut you," I promise, fighting against his grip with renewed desperation.

"I'd like to see you try," he replies, unmoved as he positions himself between my forcibly spread thighs. The water has gone completely still around us, frozen into an unnatural basin that holds us suspended. "No omega has ever resisted my claim and kept her life. Though I'd be sorely disappointed to see such an opportunity be wasted, I'm sure another similar one will arise... in a century or two."

I feel him press against me, cold and clinical, and something inside me fractures. Not surrender but its opposite—a wild, desperate fury that burns through every rational thought. I slam my forehead directly into his face, feeling cartilage give way beneath the impact.

Lord Varen doesn't cry out—he merely blinks, a single drop of silver-blue blood tracing a path down his flawless face. His expression shifts slightly towards frustrated annoyance.

"You'll only wind up dead," he reprimands, fingers digging bruises into my jaw as his other hand grips my hip, positioning me more firmly. "There's no way for you to kill me with your weak human strength. Not even if you were able to reach that knife."

I'm still struggling, fighting with every ounce of strength I possess, when the temperature plummets so drastically that the air crystallizes around us. My breath emerges as white vapor, each water droplet on my skin freezing instantly. Lord Varen goes still, his colorless eyes widening in what might be the first genuine emotion I've witnessed—recognition.

"You're interrupting another alpha's claim, my prince," he states without turning, though his grip on me doesn't loosen.

"I'm interrupting my own execution," comes Cadeyrn's voice, transformed by rage into a deep and predatory snarl.

I look past Lord Varen's shoulder to see wrath incarnate emerging from the treeline. The Winter Prince looks like destruction itself—his eyes swallowed entirely by black pupils, killing frost radiating from his bare feet to consume everything in his path. Trees shatter as he passes by, sap freezing within their trunks, and small creatures flee in panicked waves before him.

It’s infuriatingly fucking hot.

Lord Varen finally turns, one hand still restraining me as he faces his prince. “You have an… unbecoming attachment to this omega. It’s getting in the way of discovery. Let me claim her, so we can see how the cillae respond to a secondary alpha’s claim.”

Cadeyrn doesn't respond with words. Instead, he makes a subtle gesture with his fingers, frost trailing in the air where they pass, and the stream bed beneath Lord Varen splinters. Ice erupts from the fractures, growing with unnatural speed to encase the elder alpha's legs.

“Release her," Cadeyrn commands, each syllable visible as frozen vapor.

For one terrifying heartbeat, Lord Varen tightens his grip, and I fear he'll drag me down with him into the frigid waters. Then, after a long moment, he steps back, releasing me completely. The ice holding me prisoner shatters, water rushing downstream like nothing happened.

I scramble backward, finding purchase on slippery stones to haul myself toward the bank. Lord Varen remains perfectly still as ice climbs steadily up his body, his eyes narrowing as he stares up at Cadeyrn’s furious expression.

“You’re deviating strongly from court protocol," he says as ice reaches his waist. “Something about this magic… it’s Wild Magic. From before our courts were divided by seasons.”

"Your observational skills remain impressive," Cadeyrn replies, stepping onto the surface of the stream, which solidifies beneath his feet. “But you shouldn’t have touched my omega.”

What follows is methodical and brutal.

The Winter Prince doesn't just kill Lord Varen—he goes further than that in his clearly enraged state. The ice penetrates him, freezing from within, crawling across his body like it’s alive. I watch in horrified fascination as blue veins turn white then transparent beneath his skin, blood crystallizing in delicate fractal patterns that spread upward from his legs toward vital organs.

Throughout this terrible demonstration, Cadeyrn's gaze repeatedly finds mine, something fierce and possessive burning in those black eyes. He wants—needs—me to witness this. To understand what will happen to anyone who dares touch what he considers his.

When the ice reaches Lord Varen's heart, the elder alpha doesn't scream or plead. He simply takes a final breath and holds it as his heart freezes mid-beat, his chest ripping open with a sound like shattering crystal.

Only when Lord Varen has been completely transformed into a grotesque ice sculpture, made of torn flesh, dripping blood, and exposed bone, does Cadeyrn approach to circle his creation with predatory grace. He strides into the water and studies it from every angle with a smile on his face, adjusting the stance just so, making sure that Varen’s frozen face stares outward.

When he's satisfied, Cadeyrn places his palm against the ice-covered chest, murmuring words that skid painfully across my eardrums. Cillae like my own emerge across the corpse's surface and spread across the water, so that the stream flows on either side of the corpse—but leaves it exactly where it is, a warning and a promise all in one.

I finally gather enough sense to move, grabbing my discarded clothing from the bank and pulling it on with trembling fingers. I should be running while Cadeyrn is distracted. Instead, I find myself unable to look away at the savage horror of what he’s done.

This is far, far more than just rutting.

When he finally turns to face me, his expression has shifted from blind rage to something more controlled but no less intense. "I allowed that to happen," he says.

"What?" I clutch the torn clothing around myself.

"I felt him touch you through our bond," Cadeyrn continues, approaching me with predatory calm as he lifts himself out of the stream. "I permitted him to approach that closely to teach you a necessary lesson."

Outrage flares through me, hot enough to temporarily override my fear. "You let him nearly rape me as a fucking lesson?"

"I was never going to let it get that far.” His certainty is infuriating, absolute. "But you needed to understand what awaits unclaimed omegas in this forest."

"I am claimed," I snarl, jabbing a finger toward the bite mark on my neck. "Your mark is everywhere on me."

"And yet you bathed away my scent," he counters, closing the distance between us. "Naked. Exposed. Washing away my seed while your heat still simmers beneath the surface."

"So this is my fault?" I gesture toward the grotesque ice sculpture. "He dies because I dared to clean myself?"

"He dies because he tried to touch what is mine. Because he disobeyed me,” Cadeyrn crowds me against a tree, rough bark pressing into my back as he looms over me. "As you seem determined to do."

His body radiates cold that somehow burns wherever it passes close to mine, the contrast disorienting—heat and ice, terror and fascination, revulsion and unwilling attraction all warring within me. He growls, “You forget that you belong to me.”

"I haven't forgotten anything," I say, lifting my chin in defiance. “Especially that this claiming was coerced."

Something flickers in his eyes—anger, certainly, but beneath it, something that might almost be pain. "Coerced? Your body welcomed me so eagerly I thought you'd perish from need if I didn't claim you."

Heat floods my cheeks at the memory, at the humiliating truth beneath his words. My body had betrayed me utterly in that moonlit clearing, omega biology overriding every shred of self-preservation and dignity.

"That wasn't me," I insist, though the excuse sounds hollow even to my ears. "That was heat-madness and Hunt magic."

"It was you." His hand rises, not touching but hovering near my face, close enough that I feel the cool energy emanating from his skin. "The authentic you, beneath all your careful defenses. The omega who recognized her alpha and responded exactly as nature designed."

"I'm not just an omega," I say, the words coming out fiercer than I meant them to. "And you're not my alpha. This"—I gesture to the frost marking on my collarbone—"doesn't change that."

His expression darkens, territorial rage flickering beneath his control. For a heartbeat, I think he might claim me again right here, pin me against this tree and remind my body of the pleasure it found in surrender.

Instead, he steps back. I should be relieved. Instead I just feel… frustrated.

"You've been running all your life, little deceiver," he says, the nickname somehow more intimate than my actual name would be. "From what you are. From what you want. Don't imagine that changes now."

He turns away, moving back toward the frozen corpse that stands as a testament to his possessive nature. "Run if you wish. Hide if you can. But remember this"—he gestures to the corpse—“when you consider letting another alpha near enough to scent you."

The dismissal in his tone ignites my stubbornness. "And if I do? Will you kill every alpha in the forest? There are dozens still hunting."

His smile is terrifying in its certainty. "If necessary."

"The courts won't permit it. Even a prince must follow the rules.”

"The courts," he says, the words dripping with dark contempt, "have fabricated many things. What this rutting would do to me. What claiming would mean. What flows in my blood—and now in yours." He looks back at me, ice-blue eyes burning with intensity. "Run, little omega. I'll chase you down and show you how much you need my claiming."

With that, he turns and vanishes into the forest, frost melting from the trees with each step he takes. The air temperature rises gradually as his presence fades, though the ice sculpture remains, an unmistakable warning to any who might cross this path.

I stand alone by the stream, shivering despite the warmth. The claiming bond pulses between us, stretching as Cadeyrn moves away. My fingers rise to touch the cillae on my collarbone, the patterns seeming to writhe beneath my fingertips.

What have I gotten myself into?

And why does part of me still want more?