Page 13

Her jaw clenched. She looked away for half a breath, then back again, her eyes colder now, harder.

“The rune,” she said.

I raised a brow.

“It broke. It—it messed with my mind. My control.” She bit the inside of her cheek like she hated even saying it. “I lost my temper. That’s all it was.”

I didn’t believe her. Not for a second. But gods, I liked the sound of her scrambling for composure. Then she tilted her head, and her entire expression changed. Her voice dropped into something silken, warm honey over steel.

“My apologies,” she said sweetly, lips curving into something dangerous. “My Alpha. ”

The sound of those words in that voice… It punched straight into my gut.

My wolf reared, clawing at the inside of my chest like it recognized the tone.

That purring, submissive lilt was the kind of music he was bred to obey.

To take. To own. I smiled slowly. Darkly.

Stepped closer until we were breath to breath.

“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 what your kind 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 a virgin ?” 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. That fucking voice.

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.”

She turned her head just enough to flash me one last smirk—sharp, cruel, satisfied. The kind of look that belonged on a wolf with blood on her teeth.

And then they led her out. The door closed behind them, the silence folding in around me like a tomb.

I sat down heavily, the fire cracking in the hearth the only sound left.

The scent of her still clung to the room—not her body, no.

That had been scrubbed clean. But the aura of her, the storm she carried in her voice, still stirred the air.

I stared at the stack of reports on my desk—border updates, trade supply shortages, Crescent Moon loyalists in hiding—but the words blurred into nothing.

My hand gripped the edge of the desk until the wood groaned. It wasn’t her defiance that haunted me. It was the mockery in her voice.

My Alpha.

She’d said it with venom, with a sneer. And still… fuck. My cock twitched.

Not because of her words—because of the way she said them. That silken purr, that bitter surrender laced with scorn, the sound of submission spoken like a challenge.

My Alpha.

I could see it. Clear as the moon at midnight. Lexa on her knees before me. Blood on her lip. Runes half-broken and glowing beneath her skin. Her mouth parted, her eyes wild, and that voice—that voice—whispering those same words with heat instead of hate.

My Alpha. Gods. I raked a hand through my hair, breath shallow, skin burning with something primal, filthy, and wrong. She hated me. Hated wolves. Hated what she was. And still I wanted her—on her knees, chained or not, ruined or raging—mine.

And the worst part? I didn’t want to tame her. I wanted her to stay wild so I could be the one to break her.