Chapter 13
MAYA
The fire starts between my legs and spreads outward like poison in my veins.
One moment I'm walking to the laboratory for our morning session, and the next I'm on my knees in the hallway, gasping for air that burns my lungs. My skin feels too tight, like it's trying to peel away from my bones. Every nerve ending screams with need so intense I want to claw at my own flesh.
This isn't the gradual building I've felt for days. This is agony.
"Maya!"
Thorian's voice cuts through the roar in my ears, and his scent—God, his scent—hits me like salvation. Pine and earth and something wild and ancient that makes my mouth water and my pussy clench with desperate need. The moment it fills my nostrils, the fire becomes bearable.
He scoops me up in arms that feel impossibly strong, and I bury my face against his throat, breathing him in like a drug. Up close, his scent is even more intoxicating. There's something inhuman about it, something that makes my hindbrain recognize predator even as my body melts with relief.
"What's happening to me?" I gasp against his skin. "I feel like I'm dying."
"You're not dying," he says, his voice rougher than I've ever heard it. "Your body is finally doing what it was designed to do."
He carries me into the laboratory and sets me on the examination table, but the moment his hands leave me, the agony returns. I grab for him desperately, clinging to his shirt with shaking fingers.
"Don't let go," I beg. "Please, when you're touching me it doesn't hurt as much."
His golden-green eyes go dark with something that might be hunger, and when I look closer, I can see they're not quite human. Too bright, too knowing, with flecks of actual gold that seem to move in the light. Fae eyes. Ancient and wild and utterly inhuman.
The realization should terrify me. Instead, it makes the ache between my legs pulse stronger.
"This is heat, isn't it?" I whisper, the admission torn from somewhere deep in my chest. "I'm having my first heat."
He goes very still. "Maya..."
"I know what this is." My scientific mind finally stops fighting what my body has been trying to tell me. "The wetness, the fever, the desperate need for an alpha's touch. I'm omega. I've always been omega, and now I'm in heat."
The words hang between us like a confession. All those denials, all that insistence that the testing was wrong, that I was just human—lies I told myself because the truth was too terrifying.
"Say it," I demand, my fingers fisting in his shirt. "Tell me what I am."
His massive hands frame my face, thumbs stroking across my burning cheeks. "You're omega," he says softly. "Perfect, beautiful omega in her first heat."
The words hit like a drug, making me arch against him with a desperate sound I don't recognize as my own voice. This is what I am. What I've always been. And this magnificent Fae male is my alpha.
"I don't care," I whisper, shocking myself with the honesty. "I don't care that you lied, don't care that you've been conditioning me. I just need—"
"What do you need, little omega?"
The endearment makes my pussy clench and gush more slick. I'm soaking through my underwear, through my dress, and the embarrassment is lost in the desperate need for his touch.
"You," I gasp. "I need you. Your hands, your mouth, your—" I can't finish the sentence, but the way his eyes darken tells me he understands.
"My cock?" he suggests, voice rough with barely controlled hunger. "My knot? My seed filling you until you're bred properly?"
The explicit words make me whimper and spread my thighs without conscious thought. "Yes. All of it. Everything."
"Such a perfect little omega," he murmurs, his hands beginning to work at my dress. "Finally admitting what you are. What you need."
The fabric falls away, leaving me naked and shaking on the table. I should be embarrassed, but the relief of cool air on my fevered skin makes modesty impossible. Besides, the way he looks at me—like I'm the most beautiful thing he's ever seen—makes shame irrelevant.
"Look at you," he breathes, his voice carrying that inhuman quality that makes my omega nature sing. "Virgin omega in full heat. Do you have any idea how rare you are? How precious?"
His hands begin mapping my overheated skin, and everywhere he touches, the fire transforms into something bearable. More than bearable—into pleasure so intense I can barely breathe.
"Your skin," he murmurs, tracing patterns across my ribs that make me arch desperately. "It's starting to shimmer. Do you feel that? The magic responding to your heat?"
I look down and gasp. There's a faint luminescence under my skin, like starlight caught beneath the surface. As his fingers trace my stomach, the glow intensifies, following his touch with golden light.
"What's happening to me?"
"You're becoming what you were always meant to be." His voice carries centuries of authority, making my body want to submit without question. "Omega. Mine. Ready to be claimed and bred and filled until you're perfect."
The possessive words make me clench around nothing, desperate for something to fill the aching emptiness inside me. But when his fingers finally brush between my legs, I scream at the intensity of sensation.
"So wet," he growls, and there's something inhuman in the sound that makes primal fear spike through me.
But it's the kind of fear that comes with arousal, the thrill of being prey to something magnificent and dangerous.
"Slick everywhere. Your body preparing itself to be taken by something much bigger than any human male. "
His fingers part my folds, and I can feel how swollen and sensitive I am, how my body has changed in preparation for claiming. The slick coating my thighs is different too—thicker, sweeter, designed to ease the way for an alpha's knot.
"Please," I beg, my hips moving against his hand. "I can't take much more of this."
"You can take everything I give you," he says with absolute certainty. "Your omega body was made for this. Made to stretch and accommodate and accept whatever your alpha demands."
When his finger slides inside me, I nearly black out from the relief. But it's not enough—nowhere near enough. I need more, need something bigger, need to be filled and claimed and bred until this terrible emptiness stops.
"More," I gasp, clutching at his massive shoulders. "Please, I need more."
"Soon," he promises, adding another finger that makes me cry out. "But first, I'm going to teach you exactly what it means to surrender to a Fae alpha."
Fae alpha. The words echo in my heat-addled brain as his fingers work inside me, stretching me carefully while his thumb finds the sensitive bundle of nerves that makes me scream with pleasure.
I'm about to be claimed by something inhuman. Something ancient and powerful and utterly otherworldly. And instead of terror, all I feel is desperate anticipation.
"That's it," he murmurs as I fall apart around his fingers. "Let go, omega. Show me how perfectly you respond to your alpha's touch."
So I do. I let go of everything—my scientific denial, my human pride, my desperate need to be more than my biology. I let the omega nature I've fought for so long take control, and it feels like coming home.
"Good girl," he praises, and the words make my body clench with renewed need. "Such a perfect little omega. Ready to learn what it really means to belong to a Fae?"
I nod desperately, beyond words. Beyond everything except the need to be his.
"Then let me show you," he says, and there's promise in his voice that makes my whole body shiver with anticipation.
His hands move to the hem of his shirt, and when he pulls it over his head, I gasp.
His chest is magnificent—broad and powerful, with skin that seems to glow with its own inner light.
But when he leans down to kiss me, his mouth claiming mine with devastating thoroughness, I remember this is only the second time we've kissed.
Everything is so new. Every sensation, every touch, every response my body makes—it's all uncharted territory. When his tongue slides against mine, longer and more dexterous than any human tongue should be, I whimper at the unfamiliar pleasure.
"I love the sounds you make," he murmurs against my lips. "Every gasp, every moan—they're all mine. All new."
He's right. No one has ever heard me make these sounds before because no one has ever made me feel like this. The kisses become deeper, more demanding, and I can taste something wild and green on his tongue that makes my head spin.
But it's what happens next that steals my breath completely.
Vines begin emerging from his forearms, unfurling like living tattoos coming to life. They're beautiful—deep green with small flowers that bloom as I watch, releasing a scent that makes my mouth water and my pussy clench with desperate need.
"Don't be afraid," he murmurs, though I'm anything but afraid. I'm fascinated, aroused, desperate to know what those vines can do to me. "This is part of what I am. Part of what makes me Vine Court."
The vines move with their own intelligence, reaching for me with obvious intent. When the first one traces along my collarbone, I cry out at the sensation. It's like being touched by silk and velvet and the promise of pleasure all at once.
"The flowers," I gasp as another vine trails down my arm, leaving blooms in its wake. "They smell like..."
"Like everything you've ever craved," he finishes. "Fertility magic, concentrated and designed specifically for omega pleasure."
More vines emerge, and suddenly I'm surrounded by them. They caress my skin with perfect pressure, learning every sensitive spot while the flowers release their intoxicating scent directly onto my fevered flesh.
"Oh God," I moan as a vine traces around my nipple, the flower at its tip releasing pollen that makes the sensitive peak throb with need. "What are they doing to me?"