Chapter 12 Malachi #3
She was exhausted, and exhausted omegas made mistakes. Mistakes opened doors other men walked through, and Meridian Security could not afford an omega collapsing on camera while my enemies watched for angles.
I ended the directive briefing with a sentence that left no room for negotiation.
“You will work the ledger until sunrise,” I said, “and you will not leave this floor without clearance. If you feel your body slipping, you tell the guard. Do not outlast biology to impress me. It is a very short audition.”
Nyx’s eyes lifted, steady and guarded, the look a woman gives when she is tired of being managed.
I left her there with guards outside and cameras inside, and I told myself it was a discipline that mattered. The lie held until I was alone in the corridor and my alpha kept tracking her scent through steel and glass, restless at the thought of an omega inside my walls running herself hollow.
It was not tenderness that pulled me back. It was instinct demanding I put what I owned back into regulation before the pack felt the imbalance and turned it into violence.
It was after midnight when I returned, and I did not pretend the timing was a coincidence. My alpha had been tightening in my skin for hours, irritated by her hunger, aggravated by the forced bond fallout, and unwilling to let an omega in my house destabilize the air and call it pride.
Feeding an omega was not charity. It was control. It was a quiet way to tell my instincts I still governed what mattered. The building had quieted into its night rhythm, the kind of stillness that made every small sound meaningful.
Nyx sat alone at the table in the conference room, a laptop open in front of her and papers spread. Her shoulders were tight. Her braids had loosened, and a few strands framed her face, making her look softer than I allowed myself to acknowledge.
Softness had cost men their lives in my world, and I had no interest in paying for it twice. I stepped into the room, anyway.
She looked up the moment I entered, as if she had been counting my steps with no need to hear them.
“You’re back,” she said.
“I am,” I replied. “You have not eaten, and your scent is thinning. Do not make me repeat myself.”
The words were clinical, but the reaction in my body was not. An omega running on empty made the air wrong, too sharp, too vulnerable, and my alpha hated it with a viciousness that did not fit the situation and did not match my age.
Her jaw worked once. “I’m working. That’s the point.”
“That is not an answer,” I said, and I set a covered tray on the table between us. “It is a performance, and I am not amused.” The kitchen did not ask questions when I made requests, and I did not ask permission to keep my omega asset upright.
The cover came off with a simple lift. Protein, fruit, rice, a bottle of water, and electrolyte packets, enough to steady an omega body that had been running on spite.
Nyx’s eyes flicked to the food, then back to me. “You didn’t have to do all that.”
“No,” I said. “I did.”
Her omega stirred in the room, not slick and not heat, but the quiet tightening that came when an omega decided whether to fight or fold. Nyx did not fold, but the scent of fatigue sat under her defiance.
“I’m not your pet,” she said.
“I know what you are,” I replied. “And I know what deprivation does to omegas who insist on being brave at the expense of being alive. Eat, or your body will decide for you, and my alpha will not sit politely and watch it happen in my house.”
Her gaze lifted, sharp. “You keep wrapping concern in threats. Pick one.”
“I care about stability,” I said. “Yours. Mine. The pack’s. Call it selfishness if it helps you swallow.”
She stared at me for a long beat, and the defiance on her face was clean enough to respect. Then she reached for her laptop instead, fingers moving.
I stepped closer and closed the laptop with two fingers, not hard and not dramatic. Final.
Nyx’s breath hitched. Her shoulders went tense, and for a second her body leaned back.
I did not strike her. I let the silence speak instead, and I let my alpha settle into the room.
“You will not break in this room,” I said quietly. “Not from starvation and not from stubbornness. You are not collapsing on my floor because you wanted to prove you can outlast me, and you are certainly not doing it where my men can watch.”
Her throat worked. “You already said I was expendable.”
“I said what I needed to say to keep you from believing you had leverage,” I replied. “That does not mean I will lose you, and I resent that you have made it relevant.”
Nyx’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not what you mean.”
“It’s what you’re getting,” I said.
I picked up a fork and speared a piece of chicken, then angled it toward her without offering my hand. I did not move.
“Open your mouth,” I said. “You may hate me while you do it.”
Her gaze flared. “No.”
I leaned down until my shadow cut across her face. “Do not mistake my restraint for softness,” I said. “You want agency. Take it. Choose to eat, or I choose for you, and neither of us will enjoy how that looks.”
Nyx’s breath went shallow. Her omega pushed against the air, peaches and cream tightening into something sharp.
“I hate you,” she said.
“I can live with that,” I answered. “Open.”
For a moment she held my stare. Then her throat worked, her lashes fluttered once, and the smallest shift rolled through her scent.
Her omega chose survival over spite.
Her jaw flexed, and she opened her mouth with a slow, deliberate motion.
I fed her the bite.
The act was simple. The result was not. The moment she swallowed, my alpha eased by a fraction and the relief hit so hard I felt weak.
I had governed empires, ended wars inside back rooms, and watched men beg without flinching. I should not have been affected by the swallow of an omega I barely trusted, and yet my body reacted as if her steadiness belonged to me. The confusion was not sweet. It was insulting.
Her tongue brushed the fork, and my body reacted with a brief surge of heat that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with instinct. I crushed it down before it could show, because instincts were not excuses.
Nyx chewed. Her eyes stayed on mine, daring me to call it anything but necessity.
“Again,” I said. “We are not negotiating with your pride.”
She swallowed. “You’re enjoying this.”
“I am managing you,” I replied. “Do not confuse control with pleasure. I have made that mistake once in my life, and I do not intend to repeat it.”
The lie sat in my mouth, bitter and familiar, and I accepted it because accepting it kept my hands clean.
I fed her another bite, then another. I kept the cadence steady and unemotional, the way you handled medicine, the way you handled triage, and I monitored myself as much as I monitored her.
With each swallow, her scent rounded out, less thin and frantic, and with each swallow my alpha settled further, soothed by the simplest proof that she was no longer spiraling toward collapse. The change was immediate.
It was not love. It was not tenderness. It was instinct recognizing regulation and rewarding me for it, and I hated that I understood how much power her scent held over the room when I was the one who had built the room to obey me.
When she tried to pull away, I set my palm on the back of her chair, not touching her body, only the boundary.
Nyx’s shoulders trembled once. “Stop watching me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re deciding what parts of me you can keep,” she said.
My throat went tight. That was too close to the truth.
“I decide what keeps my pack alive,” I said instead. “Drink.”
She took the bottle, but her hand shook. Not from fear of me. From exhaustion she refused to admit, the kind that made an omega’s body beg for comfort while her mind kept swinging fists.
I watched her swallow, watched color return to her face in small increments. I watched her omega settle by a fraction, not trusting me, but responding to being fed because biology did not care about pride.
“You’re doing this because you want me weaker,” she said.
“I’m doing this because I need you functional,” I replied. “A hungry omega makes mistakes. Mistakes invite men to test boundaries, and my boundaries are not a game.”
Nyx’s mouth tightened. “You talk like I’m a problem you have to solve.”
“You are,” I said. “And you are also a person who has survived enough to mistake deprivation for strength. I will not allow that mistake in my house.”
The words hung between us. She stared down at the tray.
“I’m not grateful,” she said.
“I did not ask you to be,” I replied. “Finish, then you sleep.”
Nyx’s eyes lifted again. “I don’t have permission to sleep.”
“You do now,” I answered. “From me, and I will have the guard log it. If anyone questions why you stopped working, they answer to me.”
Her lips parted as if she meant to argue. Then she shut them and looked away, swallowing something that was not food.
I left her with the tray and the silence, and I left myself knowing that feeding an omega should not have felt as good as it did. That made it dangerous.
I had almost reached the corridor when the guard outside her room cleared his throat.
“Sir,” he said, voice low, posture straight. “She asked to speak to you before you leave.”
I did not turn back because I wanted to. I turned back because a woman like Nyx did not ask twice unless the numbers had bled.
When I re-entered, she was standing, not seated, as if she refused to let this become a scene where she looked small. The tray was half cleared. Her hands were steadier. Her scent was still sharp with dislike, but the exhaustion had loosened its grip enough for her mind to sharpen again.
Nyx tapped a paper in the stack without offering it to me. “I found something,” she said. “It’s not a mistake.”