Chapter One #2
He rose and crossed the space between us. His hand cupped my cheek and he lifted me to my feet. His skin was warm and I leaned into the touch before I could stop myself, closing my eyes, seeking the solace of his touch, the only touch I had been allowed in years.
His other hand settled at my waist. The warmth beneath my ribs surged—then shifted.
It didn't settle but shifted outward, sharply.
Almost painfully. As though something within me had narrowed and was being drawn through an invisible thread.
My knees weakened. Dizziness washed over me, soft and disorienting.
He pressed his nose to my throat and inhaled, holding his breath for a moment, then he exhaled, the breath tickling the strands of my hair.
His fingers flexed once at my waist. When he stepped back, he looked troubled, unsettled, as if I were a puzzle he had not seen before and could not solve.
“That is enough,” he murmured. “You are tired. Possibly a little feverish. You need rest. Go to your nest tonight. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
He released me, and the room dimmed as he vanished.
I stood there for a moment, gripping the back of the chair to steady myself. My limbs felt heavy, my pulse thready and rapid. It was always like this after he left. As though I had run a great distance without ever moving.
I meant to return directly to my chamber, to stubbornly ignore his suggestion.
Instead, my feet carried me upward into the nest. I collapsed into the furs and pillows, too weary to question it.
I needed the comfort that my nest provided.
The softness eased the weight pressing down on me, but it didn't fill the space that felt newly empty.
Moonlight spilled silver across the low table beside me.
A book lay there, one that I was certain had not been there before.
A History of Omegas.
The word stirred something quiet and buried. Recognition. Unease. Curiosity.
My fingers brushed the cover.
Sleep claimed me before I could read the first line.
Malric
The Wyrdwood didn't welcome intruders. Previous search parties had been led in circles within the forest, blocked by vines, shifting branches, and strange creatures that made it clear the fae were not welcome here. That’s how I knew this was where the weapon was.
Only the tyrant king had the magic to enchant the entire woods to keep people out and protect his most valuable weapon in the war.
Whatever that weapon was. It was my job to find it, steal it, or destroy it. Our lives and the lives of all Unseelie Fae depended on it.
I expected the same reaction from the woods that my predecessors received, yet so far, there had been no tricks.
Thane and I had entered the forest and braced for the subtle attacks, yet all had been quiet.
The canopy knit overhead so tightly that light filtered through in narrow, deliberate strands.
Moisture clung to the bark of blackened oak, catching against the grooves like old scars.
Ferns pressed against our boots as we advanced, their fronds brushing leather and steel, parting to let us pass.
The entire wood pressed on us like bars in a prison.
Iron bars, damp stone, air that tasted of rust and blood. I shut that memory down before it gathered shape. Now was not the time for the past to rear its ugly head. I didn’t have the time to kneel to the horrors of the past.
Behind me, Thane adjusted his pace. His breathing roughened, not from exertion.
He had marched longer distances under heavier burdens than this.
What pressed against him was the same thing that pressed against me.
Even though we had not experienced the trickery of the Wyrdwood yet, this was no ordinary forest. The air was heavy with old magic, not wild but restrained.
Watching. Measuring. The forest listened.
“Slow your stride,” he said quietly. “Nothing here is fleeing.”
“Time is,” I replied.
The rebellion was losing ground and forces, and our support was waning. We had lost three strongholds in the past month. The king’s forces were disciplined, well-supplied, and driven by fear. Fear is efficient. It does not hesitate.
We relied on loyalty. Loyalty bleeds more easily.
Our intelligence placed the king’s hidden weapon within the Wyrdwood.
Something old. Something powerful. The reports were imprecise, as such reports always are.
No one who carried details back had seen the source directly.
They had felt it. We all knew the king had exhibited power beyond his own levels, inconsistent at times.
Rumors told of a funnel, feeding him power and strength, possibly from this weapon.
We had to cut off the source or leverage it for our own. Or our cause would fail.
The king held numbers and sanctioned brutality.
What he didn't hold was legitimacy. He had no omega.
No heir. The Unseelie lines thinned because he had made certain they would.
Decades ago, he purged what he couldn't control.
The remaining omegas vanished into hiding or crossed borders to the Seelie or human lands to escape, and those borders refused the Unseelie entry.
The Seelie Queen sealed her lands and refused every overture. She ruled with an omega at her side and heirs secured. She wouldn't risk her stability to mend ours. If we destroyed each other, she would conquer the remnants without effort.
The king had broken our future long before we raised banners against him.
Thane closed the distance between us. I felt him before he touched me, the heat of his magic along my back, steady and familiar. We had moved beside one another for years. I knew the cadence of his steps the way I knew the balance of my own blade.
His hand caught my arm and turned me. His grip tightened when I met his gaze.
“We have not paused since we left camp. Many days ago,” he said.
“We will pause when the objective is secured.”
“That is not what I meant.”
I tugged free, but he stepped forward rather than back, invading my space. The forest grew quiet, no bird songs or animal sounds. Even the wind held itself still. He rarely pressed, but when he did, I listened.
His hand slid to the leather strap across my chest, fingers closing there. Not a challenge. Claim. A reminder that I didn't carry this alone. Hunger and need surged forward. It had been too long since we’d been together, too long since I had been focused on the mission and not my mate.
I gripped his vest and drove him back against the nearest tree before he could finish the thought. Bark struck his shoulders as I pressed against him. His breath left him in a rush that shifted when my weight followed.
The bond surged, hot and dizzying. Magic tangled, seeking the shape it knew too well.
My hand dropped, closing hard over his groin through worn fabric. His head fell back against the trunk, teeth catching his lower lip as a low sound dragged from his throat.
“Malric,” he said, my name pulled thin.
I kissed him before he could say anything else.
It was not gentle. Teeth and breath and the clash of frustrated passion that had nowhere safe to go. He answered with equal hunger, hands sliding to my shoulders, then my neck, holding on like I might vanish.
For a moment the forest, the tower, the king, all of it thinned to the heat between us and the pulse of the bond demanding more. My hand cupped his surging cock, stroking it firmly, almost roughly.
I tore my mouth away first.
His eyes were unfocused, chest heaving, hands still gripping my leather vest as if he could anchor me in place.
“We don’t get distracted,” I said, voice rougher than I liked.
His fingers tightened. “We’re not distracted. We’re bound.”
“Later,” I told him, stepping back.
The loss of contact was almost painful in its absence, but we had a mission to complete. Thane stayed against the tree a second longer, gathering himself, then pushed off and straightened. His expression shuttered, but the charge in the air didn't fade.
The mark at my wrist burned faintly beneath the bracer—a constant reminder of restraint, of the binding placed on my power.
My mother had set it there when I was young, to protect me from the king, so he would not take me to his court and use me as a weapon as he had done to Thane.
But around Thane, when power flared, it answered with a painful stab, as if trying to break the binding.
A reminder that he was not my true mate, which was a constant burr in the bond between us.
Only my true mate, an omega, could break the binding and let me come into my full powers.
I learned to fight within its boundaries. Contained does not mean diminished.
Thane’s gaze dropped briefly to the bracer before returning to my face.
“You could have accepted the Seelie Queen’s offer,” he said. “A place in her court. Protection.”
“I don’t abandon my people so easily.”
“She offered safety, status. An omega.”
And there it was. The thing that was coming between us more and more frequently.
Thane knew the pressure I was under to produce an heir for my seat and omegas were unavailable in Unseelie lands.
I have been offered many things in my lifetime.
Power. Rank. A politically convenient bond that would secure lines and quiet dissent.
The queen’s court would have given me legitimacy, heirs, and a future insulated from the king’s retaliation.
It would also have required me to break my word and lose Thane. Unacceptable.
I was bonded to Thane. I would not break that for an omega, even as I knew Thane suspected I would. And the Seelie Queen didn’t want Thane, or his wild magic, in her lands.
“I'm not unbound,” I said.