Chapter Three
AVELINE
When they disappeared inside the tower, I didn’t know what to do.
The tower had been guiding me without effort before, its awareness brushing mine like a hand at my back, urging me toward the windows, toward the balcony, toward the truth I had not been ready to see.
Now that sensation disappeared, leaving me unmoored, as if the structure itself had turned its attention inward, folding its awareness around something moving through its lower levels.
Them.
I pressed my palm flat against the inner wall, fingers splayed, breathing shallowly as though sound itself might betray me.
The stone was warm beneath my skin, warmer than it had ever been before, not the cool, distant temperature I had known all my life, but something closer to body heat, steady and deliberate. The tower was not alarmed.
That realization unsettled me more than the knowledge that they were inside.
Even when my father visited, the tower was tense, alert, watchful. Poised on the knife-edge between peace and danger. This was none of those things. This was controlled, purposeful, and worst of all, permissive, leaving me to feel unsteady and unsure of how to react.
I stepped back from the wall, then stopped, uncertain where to go when I felt exposed in the chamber.
The upper level of the tower had always been mine alone, wide and bare in its simplicity, stone floors worn smooth by my pacing, tall windows letting in filtered light.
I had never thought of it as a place that could be entered.
Now it felt like a threshold I was standing on the wrong side of.
They had vanished from my senses when the tower folded them inward, but the absence didn't last. It shifted instead, resolving into something else entirely. A pressure change. A subtle thickening of the air that made my breath catch halfway through an inhale.
The scent reached me then.
It was faint at first, just a suggestion riding the warm current spiraling up the tower’s core, but it slid past thought and straight into my body, settling low beneath my ribs in a way that made my knees soften before I could stop it.
I grabbed for the edge of the nearest window ledge, fingers digging into the stone as my breath stuttered.
No.
The word formed without sound, a reflexive denial that came too late to matter.
Alpha.
I had not spoken the word aloud since childhood, not since Father’s voice had gone sharp with warning, his lessons clipped and incomplete. Omegas were dangerous, he’d said. Bonds were dangerous. Desire was a weakness the world exploited, especially in those it sought to control.
This wasn’t desire.
This was recognition, my body sensing something before I consciously understood it.
Warmth bloomed low and sudden, my body reacting as if it had been waiting for this exact stimulus, every nerve sharpening in response.
My skin constricted, too aware of the air brushing it, the fabric of my gown grazing my thighs.
My breath came shallow, then deeper, as if my lungs had decided I needed more oxygen than before.
I didn't understand what was happening to me.
I only knew that my body did.
I forced myself to straighten, to step away from the window ledge and stand on my own, even as a tremor ran through my legs. Panic threatened to rise, sharp and familiar, but it tangled with something else, something warmer and more insistent that refused to be ignored.
Another scent followed the first.
This one struck harder, cleaner, charged in a way that made my pulse skip and then race. The air itself was altered by it, prickling against my skin, raising fine hairs along my arms. My breath caught again, this time on a soft, involuntary sound that startled me enough to clamp my lips shut.
I pressed my thighs together without meaning to, the motion instinctive and mortifying, as heat coiled lower, tight and restless.
Alpha.
Another.
My hand drifted to my stomach, fingers splaying there as if pressure might contain the sensation, as if I could physically hold myself together long enough for this to pass.
I had been alone for so long. My body had been quiet, dormant in ways I had not questioned because there had been no point in questioning them.
Now it was as though something inside me had been nudged awake and didn't know how to lie still again.
The tower hummed beneath my feet, a low vibration that traveled upward through stone and bone alike. It was not warning me. It was carrying them.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs.
The sound hit me like a physical blow, my pulse leaping into my throat as I turned toward the doorway. They were not rushing. They were not creeping. The cadence was steady, deliberate, the pace of men who knew exactly what they were doing and where they were going.
The first set of steps carried weight. As if the owner had authority. Control so deeply embedded that it molded its surroundings.
The second followed just behind, lighter in rhythm but no less present, energy crackling at the edge of my awareness, restless and barely restrained.
I backed away until my shoulder blades met stone, the contact grounding and cold against skin that was overheated and too sensitive all at once. The doorway remained empty for one suspended heartbeat: the tower holding its breath with me.
Then they appeared.
The first man stepped into the chamber as if it belonged to him, his presence filling the space without effort.
He was taller than I had expected, broad through the shoulders, built for armor and command rather than ornament.
His movements were economical, every step placed with intention, his gaze sweeping the room in a practiced arc that cataloged exits, angles, and threats before ever lifting to meet mine.
That should have comforted me, but for the sword that preceded him into the room, held down but still a threat.
My stomach clenched.
His face was carved in hard lines and restraint, dark hair framing a gaze that missed nothing. There was something contained about him, something locked down so tightly it pressed outward, a pressure that bore down on me even from across the chamber.
His scent followed him fully into the room, then, no longer diluted by stone and distance. Warm and grounded. Sun-warmed stone and steel worn smooth by years of use. My body froze as a heavy sensation washed over my senses, despite my racing heart, and a part of me instinctively knew him.
Mine.
The word slid through me, uninvited and terrifying in its certainty.
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry.
The second man lingered just behind his shoulder, half a step back but no less present. His attention snapped to me the moment he crossed the threshold, eyes bright and intent, as though he had been expecting me even before I appeared.
Power clung to him, restless and electric, the air around him charged in a way that made my skin prickle. He looked less contained than the first, his energy pressing outward despite the obvious effort he was making to hold himself in check.
When his scent reached me, it did so all at once, sharp and clean, threaded with heat that sent a shiver through my spine before I could stop it.
Stormlight and open sky, something dangerous barely restrained.
It made my knees weaken, my breath hitching as my body reacted with alarming enthusiasm to something my mind couldn't yet accept.
Mine.
An echo of the first one, confusing me. I had never felt this.
Not once in all the years I had lived alone in this tower.
My hand tightened at my stomach, fingers curling into the fabric of my gown as though I could anchor myself there. My thoughts tangled, fear and awareness spiraling together, each feeding the other until it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.
The men stopped just inside the doorway.
Neither spoke.
Their gazes fixed on me with different intensities.
The darker man’s eyes were sharp, assessing, his posture subtly shifting as though he were placing himself between me and an unseen threat.
The other looked startled despite himself, his focus locked on me in a way that felt less controlled, less filtered.
The air between us thrummed, heavy with unspoken recognition.
I pressed my back harder against the stone, the tower humming around me, alive and watching. It didn't shield me from them. It didn't push them back.
It had brought them here.
My breath came shallow and uneven, my body caught between the instinct to flee and the impossible pull that made my attention snap back to them, no matter how I tried to look away.
They hadn’t come for a weapon.
The truth settled into my chest with chilling clarity.
They had come for me.
Thane
The stairs narrowed as we climbed, the tower’s inner spine tightening around us until our shoulders nearly brushed the outer wall with each turn.
Stone held the warmth of something living, not heat from the sun or hearth, but a steady pulse that seemed to rise with us, as if the tower’s breath flowed upward and we were caught inside it.
The scent grew stronger the higher we went.
It wasn’t the sharp bite of Malric’s leather and steel, or the familiar undertone of my magic that always carried the edge of rain I could never fully scrub away.
This was something else entirely, a sweetness that threaded through the air in a way that made my lungs deepen automatically, my tongue pressing to the back of my teeth as my senses sharpened with unwanted urgency.
Warm honey. Sweet spice. Silver blossom.
The last note struck like a hook, subtle and bright, and my body reacted before I could decide what it meant. Heat pulled low in my belly, a sudden awareness that made my thighs tense and my grip on my sword tighten hard enough to whiten my knuckles.