Prologue #13
The impact jars up my arm, vibrating through muscle and bone, and I’m already flowing into the next attack before the shock fades.
Strike, feint, spin, thrust—combinations I’ve developed over eight years of combat, techniques that have kept me alive against things faster and stronger than any human.
None of them land.
He moves like water around stone, turning aside each blow with minimal effort. His expression stays calm, almost bored, while I pour everything I have into attacks he dismisses like they’re nothing. Like I’m nothing.
I know I can’t beat him. I knew that before I walked in here. But there’s a difference between knowing something intellectually and feeling it in your bones—the absolute, undeniable reality of just how outmatched I am.
“Your footwork is good,” he observes, blocking a thrust aimed at his throat with one hand. “Creative. You’ve learned to compensate for fighting larger opponents.”
“Save your critique.” I spin into a new sequence, trying to find an angle he hasn’t covered. “I’m not here to impress you.”
“You’re here because you belong to me.” He catches my blade on his, locking us together, his strength holding me in place as easily as if I were a child. “The sooner you accept that, the easier this will be.”
“I don’t—”
He moves.
One moment we’re locked together. The next I’m on my back with his weight pressing me into the mat, my sword clattering away across the floor.
His body covers mine like an avalanche—I’m drowning in bronze skin and hard muscle, my entire frame swallowed by his.
He’s braced on one arm to keep from crushing me, but there’s still so much of him, everywhere, blocking out the light and filling my lungs with his scent.
My wrists are caught above my head. One hand. He’s holding both my wrists with one hand, and his grip isn’t even tight—just inescapable, like the stone of the mountain itself has wrapped around my bones.
I can’t breathe.
Not because he’s crushing me—he’s left me enough room to draw air.
But his scent floods my lungs with every gasp, his heat soaks into my skin through layers of leather, and his hips press mine into the mat with a weight that makes escape feel like a fantasy.
His face is inches from mine, close enough that I can see the silver veins pulsing beneath his bronze skin, close enough to see the ancient patience in those golden eyes.
And pressed against my belly, hard and huge even through our clothes, I can feel—
“This is what complete control feels like,” he says, his voice low and rough.
“Your opponent decides whether you move, whether you breathe, whether you fight back.” His hips shift against mine, and I feel that hardness drag across my stomach—something thick, ridged in patterns I can feel through the leather.
Something that sends a bolt of heat straight to my core despite every rational thought screaming at me to fight. “Everything.”
I should be clawing at him. Screaming. Doing anything to escape.
Instead, my body melts into the mat like it’s been waiting for exactly this.
No.
“Get off me.” My voice comes out breathy, weak—nothing like the command I intended.
“Make me.”
I try. I buck my hips—and realize immediately how stupid that was when I can’t even shift his weight, when the movement just grinds me against that terrifying hardness and sends sparks shooting through my nervous system.
I twist my shoulders, but his grip on my wrists doesn’t budge.
I try every escape technique I know, and he absorbs each movement like I’m a child throwing a tantrum, keeping me pinned while his body presses against mine in ways that make my thoughts fragment into useless pieces.
The size difference has never been more obvious. I’m not weak. I’ve fought chaos-beasts, killed bandits, held my own against threats that would have broken lesser warriors. But against him, I’m nothing. A doll he could pose however he wants.
“You’re fighting wrong,” he murmurs, his mouth close enough to my ear that I feel his breath on my skin.
“You’re using your muscles against mine.
You’ll never win that contest.” His voice drops lower, and something in my hindbrain responds to that tone—responds in ways I don’t want to examine.
“Use leverage. Use timing. Wait for the moment when I shift my weight to create an opening.”
He’s teaching me. Even while pinning me beneath him. Even while his cock hardens against my stomach. Even while my traitorous body responds to every point of contact with heat I can’t suppress.
I hate that it’s working.
“Try again,” he says. “Wait for the shift.”
I force myself to stop struggling. To breathe. To pay attention instead of panicking. His weight settles more fully against me as he relaxes his guard, and I feel the exact moment when he adjusts his position—
I explode into motion, using his momentum against him. For one glorious second, I have space—
He recaptures me before I can escape fully, but his grip is different now. Approving.
“Better.” The word sends warmth flooding through my chest, and I hate myself for the way it makes me feel. Hate the traitorous spark of pleasure at his approval. Hate that some part of me wants to try again just to hear him say it.
“Again.”
We repeat the exercise over and over. Each time, I get a little further.
Each time, he teaches me something new about leverage and timing and exploiting an opponent’s assumptions.
Each time, his praise lands in my chest like a small sun, warming me from the inside despite every attempt to stay cold.
And each time, I’m pinned beneath him—drowning in his scent and his heat and the shameful wetness building between my thighs.
By the end, I’m shaking with more than exertion.
“Enough.”
He releases me and rises, extending a hand to help me up. I ignore it, pushing myself to my feet without his assistance. My legs feel unsteady. My whole body feels unsteady—like I’ve been taken apart and put back together wrong.
“Same time tomorrow,” he says. “We’ll work on escapes from different positions.”
Different positions. My mind supplies images I don’t want—his body against mine in a dozen variations, each one more intimate than the last. The heat between my legs pulses at the thought, and I clench my jaw against the wave of shameful want.
“I’m not going to become whatever you want me to be.” The words come out defiant, but my voice wavers on the last syllable.
“You’re already becoming it.” He moves closer—close enough that I have to crane my neck to look up at him, close enough that his scent wraps around me like a physical thing.
“You felt it just now, didn’t you? The way your body responds when I pin you.
The way your resistance softens when I praise you. ”
“That’s just—”
“Biology.” He cups my face in his hand—his palm covers my entire cheek, his fingers curling around to brush my ear.
The touch sends electricity cascading through me, heat and want and something terrifyingly close to the surrender he keeps promising.
“The same biology that made you wake up wet this morning, dreaming about things you’d never admit to wanting. ”
My face flames. “You don’t know what I dreamed about.”
“I know exactly what you dreamed about.” His smile is dark, knowing, absolutely certain. “I could smell your arousal from across the fortress. Could feel it through the bond that’s already forming between us, whether you want it or not.”
I jerk away from his touch, my heart hammering. “Stay out of my head.”
“I’m not in your head, Hannah.” He lets me go, stepping back to give me space I don’t want to need. “I’m in your blood. In your body. Getting deeper every hour you spend breathing my scent, sleeping in my bed, learning to respond to my voice.”
“I’ll fight it.”
“You’ll try.” He moves toward the door, then pauses at the threshold. “The dreams won’t stop. They’ll get stronger, more vivid, harder to wake up from. Your body knows what it needs, little warrior. Eventually, you’ll stop fighting it.”
“My body doesn’t get to make decisions for me.”
He looks back at me with those ancient golden eyes, and something in his expression sends a chill down my spine even as heat continues to pulse between my legs.
“No,” he says quietly. “But eventually, it won’t have to. You’ll make them yourself.”
He leaves me standing in the middle of the training room—covered in sweat, shaking with fury and arousal, my wrists still tingling where he held them.
I hate him.
I hate him so much it burns, a cold clean fury that should be strong enough to override everything else.
But as I walk back to his chambers—our chambers, the word choice making me sick—I can’t stop thinking about the way it felt to be pinned beneath him.
The weight of him. The heat. The way my body melted instead of fought, like some part of me has been waiting my whole life for someone strong enough to hold me down.
I hate him.
I hate what he’s doing to me.
But most of all, I hate myself for the part of me that wanted him to keep going. Chapter 8: Karax
She fits perfectly beneath me.
I’ve imagined it for months—calculated her dimensions through the scrying crystal, mapped the way her body would feel pinned under my weight.
But imagination is a pale shadow of reality.
When I press her into the training mat for the first time, her entire frame disappears beneath mine like she was designed to be held there.
Her wrists fit in one hand with room to spare.
Her hips slot between my thighs like a key turning in a lock.
And she responds.
Not with the trembling submission of the omegas who came before—women who went soft and pliant the moment I touched them, surrendering before I’d earned anything. Hannah trembles too, but not from fear. Not from trained compliance.
She trembles from want. And she hates it.
I can see the fury burning in her gray eyes every time her body betrays her.
Every time she melts instead of fights. Every time her breath catches when I press against her, when she feels my cock hardening against her belly, when she realizes that all her warrior’s pride means nothing against the biology that’s slowly remaking her from the inside out.
“Get off me,” she demands, her voice rough and unsteady.
“Make me.”
She tries. Her hips buck against mine—a mistake, because all it does is grind her against me. I watch her eyes widen as she feels it, watch the flush spread down her neck, watch her go still beneath me with something that isn’t quite fear.
I teach her about timing. About leverage. About waiting for the moment when I shift my weight to create an opening. I tell myself it’s combat training—and it is, partially. She needs to know how to escape a larger opponent’s hold.
But every time I pin her, I’m also getting her body used to my weight. Teaching her muscles what it feels like to have me pressed against her, inside her space, surrounding her completely.
And every time I praise her progress—better, good, again—I watch that warmth flood her chest despite her best efforts to stay cold.
After the session, I cup her face in my hand and tell her the truth: the dreams won’t stop. Her body knows what it needs. Eventually, she’ll stop fighting.
She jerks away from my touch and flees the training room.
I let her go, breathing in the scent she leaves behind—sweat and steel and the sweet musk of arousal she can’t hide.
My cock aches against my breeches, demanding relief I’m not going to give it.
There’s something useful in the unsatisfied want. Something that keeps me focused on the goal. I could take myself in hand, chase the fantasy of what she’ll feel like when she finally surrenders. I’ve done it before.
But today I let the ache sit.
Soon enough, I won’t have to imagine.
Days pass. Then a week. Then two.
The routine settles into place like stones finding their position in a wall.
Every morning, I train her. The sessions grow longer as her stamina builds, more complex as she masters the basics.
She’s a quick learner—adapts to Stone Court techniques with the same stubborn efficiency she brought to teaching herself how to fight chaos-beasts.
By the end of the second week, she can escape my basic holds three times out of ten.
Not enough to matter in a real fight. But enough to make the training interesting.
Every evening, I share a meal with her in our chambers. She ate in hostile silence the first few nights, refusing to speak, refusing to look at me. But I’m patient. I’ve been patient for seven centuries.
And slowly, grudgingly, she begins to talk.