Chapter 11
Worth Protecting
Damon
“I need to go to the laboratory.”
Cora stood in the center of the conservatory, her fists clenched so tightly the knuckles were white. She’d abandoned the nest and its comfort to stalk among the plants like a caged animal. The air itself felt charged, thick with the scent of her distress.
“No.” The word was a wall, an instinct. I stopped several feet away, reading the fury radiating from her in waves. My instincts screamed to contain this, to soothe her, to keep her locked away where the world couldn’t touch her. Where he couldn’t touch her.
“I wasn’t asking for permission.” She spun to face me, her amber eyes blazing with a fire that could have burned down forests. “If Alexander did something to trigger my heat, the evidence will be in my research. In my compounds. I need to see them.”
“It’s too dangerous.” My shadows bled from my feet, spreading across the moss-covered ground. “He could be waiting for exactly that. For you to expose yourself.”
“Then come with me.” She took a step forward, a tremor running through her arms. “Bring your entire security force. Surround the building. I don’t care. But I am not sitting in this beautiful cage while he has access to everything I’ve built.”
The plants responded to the word cage. Vines snapped taut against the walls, the sound like sinew tearing.
The bark of the central tree groaned under a sudden, invisible pressure.
She didn’t seem to notice, too focused on me to recognize what her own emotions were doing to the living world around her.
“Cora—”
“He violated me, Damon.” The four words held more desperation than she’d shown throughout all our time together.
“He reached into my body and twisted my biology for his own ends. He made me something I wasn’t, forced a process that shouldn’t have happened.
And you’re telling me I can’t even look at my own life’s work to understand how? ”
Something in my chest twisted, a cold, sharp knot of fury directed not at her, but at Stormwright.
At myself, for not protecting her from this in the first place.
She was breaking, I could see it. The careful, fragile control she’d maintained since the heat broke was fracturing under the weight of what Cassandra had revealed.
“I’ve had security watching the laboratory since the moment I took you,” I told her, my tone low and steady, trying to project a calm I didn’t feel. “Watching Theo. There has been no unusual activity.”
“Then it’s safe,” she shot back immediately, seizing on the information. “We can go. I can see him.”
Everything inside me screamed to give my Omega what she wanted, to erase the pain from her face.
But it wasn’t that simple. I shook my head, hating the fresh wave of hurt I was about to inflict, but knowing there was no other way.
“It means House Zeus is planning something else. Stormwright doesn’t abandon his objectives.
He adapts. The silence from his camp makes me more concerned, not less. ”
“I don’t care about your concern!” She jerked away from me, her shoulders hitting the conservatory wall with a dull thud. “I need to make sure Theo is safe. I need to check if Alexander tampered with my formulas. I need to figure out what he used to do this to me.”
“In a few days, when Cassandra has the results—”
“A few days?” The question was a shriek of disbelief. She buried her hands in her hair and pulled, so hard I feared she might tear the strands from her scalp. “You expect me to just sit here and wait more?”
The vegetation around her convulsed. One thick tendril curled around her wrist, a serpentine caress she didn’t even feel. She didn’t realize her powers were reacting to an emotional turmoil she couldn’t express any other way.
“I think I’ve been more than patient,” she spat, the confession tumbling out in a torrent of pain.
“I accepted staying here, letting Theo think I’m dead or worse.
I agreed to trust you, even while I’m terrified of what else Alexander might do.
What in Eurydice’s name am I supposed to be waiting for now, huh? ”
“Cora, you need to calm down—”
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down.” She shoved away from the wall, resuming her frantic pacing.
“You kidnapped me. You claimed me against my will. And now I find out Alexander may have forced my heat, manipulated my biology like I’m some lab rat, and you want me to just wait patiently while you decide if it’s convenient to let me investigate? ”
The plants were going wild now. Flowers bloomed and withered in the space of a heartbeat. The moss around her nest rustled and churned as if something was moving beneath it. And still she didn’t notice, too consumed by her own rage and fear to see the chaos she was creating.
“I need to understand what he did to me.” Her lungs heaved, each gasp harsh and ragged. “I need to see it with my own eyes. I need to know. I need—”
Her plea died in her throat, her panic suddenly too vast to be contained by language.
The air crackled with a sudden pressure drop.
The sound was a sickening crack, not of wood, but of stone.
Roots, thick as pythons, ripped from the conservatory floor, tearing chunks of inlaid rock with them.
A furious vine whipped through the air and slammed into a thick iron support beam with enough force to make the entire structure groan, the metal shrieking in protest. Splinters of stone and dust exploded outward, raining down on us both.
Cora’s power, raw and uncontrolled, was lashing out. She was doing this without conscious thought, her divine legacy responding to her pain the way a body flinches from fire.
She stared at the dented beam without really seeing it, her entire frame quaking. “I need to go to the laboratory,” she whispered, the fight gone, replaced by a desperate, hollow plea. “Please, Damon. Please.”
That final, desperate ‘please’ undid me.
It wasn’t the first time the word had fallen from her lips.
But when she’d begged in the past, it had been because her biology had forced her to.
This was different. This was Cora, the brilliant, defiant scientist, stripped of everything but her own helplessness.
I thought about Cassandra’s warning, about the darkening mark on Cora’s throat, and the exhaustion that clung to her like a shroud. If I didn’t agree to this, the pressure would continue to build until she didn’t just crack, she shattered completely.
“Tomorrow morning.” The answer was rougher than I intended. “Early, before Alexander can know we’ve moved. It will be a supervised visit, with my full security detail.”
Relief crashed over her features so violently she swayed on her feet.
I moved fast, crossing the distance between us in two long strides to catch her before she could fall.
I gripped her arms as her knees gave out, all that rage and fear draining away at once, leaving nothing but a profound, boneless exhaustion behind.
“Thank you,” she breathed against my chest, her forehead resting against my shoulder. The aftermath of her outburst was a fine tremor that ran through her entire body.
I held her while she fell apart. I felt the frantic pace of her lungs ease, the tension releasing from her shoulders muscle by muscle as the reality of what I’d agreed to settled in.
The plants around us calmed with her, the vines going slack against the walls, the leaves settling back into place as if they’d never moved at all.
She didn’t cry. Just stood there in my arms, letting me hold her weight while she tried to remember how to be anything other than fury and fear.
The silence that settled afterward was heavier than the humid air. We stood like that long enough for the shaking in her limbs to fade, long enough for me to feel the exact moment she started putting herself back together, piece by careful piece.
When she finally pulled back to look up at me, her eyes were still too bright with unshed tears, but the raw desperation was gone. “I feel like I’m shattering.”
“I know.” I tilted her chin up so she had to meet my gaze fully. “But you’re not shattered yet.”
“How do you know?” The question was small, vulnerable in a way I’d never heard from her before.
“Because you’re still fighting.” My thumb traced along her cheekbone, brushing away the dampness she’d refused to let fall. “Still demanding what you need instead of surrendering to what’s been done to you.”
She leaned into my touch, her eyes closing as she took a shuddering inhalation. Her fingers closed around my wrists, holding me there like she needed the anchor. We stood like that while the last of the panic and rage bled out of her, leaving something softer, more fragile, in its place.
When she opened her eyes again, something had shifted in her expression. The raw desperation had transformed into a different kind of need, quieter but no less urgent. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”
The admission cost her. I could see it in the way her jaw tightened slightly.
Asking for comfort from the man who’d kidnapped her went against everything her pride demanded.
But she was asking anyway, because the alternative was facing the aftermath of her breakdown alone in this jungle she’d created.
“You don’t have to be.” I brushed a strand of auburn hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear with careful fingers.
She didn’t move away. Just watched my face like she was searching for something, trying to decide if she could trust what I was offering. “Will you come back to the nest with me?”
The offer made me balk. After everything that had happened today, after what she’d learned about Alexander and his actions, I’d expected anything but that. I’d thought she wouldn’t want an Alpha anywhere near her space.
But she clearly did, so I didn’t hesitate. “Of course, Cora.”