So you did. #2
The thought slides through my mind like poison, and I feel my body soften against his grip. My shoulders drop. My breathing slows. Some deep, traitorous part of me recognizes that I’m safe in his hands—that he could destroy me, but he won’t. Not yet. Not until I’m ready.
Instead of fighting, I tilt my head back.
The movement is small—barely noticeable—but we both feel it. A surrender I didn’t mean to offer. An acknowledgment that some part of me wants this, wants him, wants to be owned in ways I’ve never admitted to anyone.
His golden eyes flare with satisfaction.
“Good girl.”
The words hit me like a physical blow—heat and shame and desperate, unwanted pleasure all tangled together.
My skin flushes hot, the warmth spreading from my cheeks down my neck to my chest. I feel myself clench around nothing, feel the slick gathering between my thighs, feel my nipples tighten against the leather of my training clothes.
My whole body responds to his praise like it’s been waiting my whole life to hear those words from him.
And underneath all of it—the shame, the arousal, the fury at my own weakness—there’s something else.
Peace.
For one perfect, terrible moment, I don’t have to fight. Don’t have to be strong. Don’t have to carry anything. I’m just a body held in his massive hand, my life resting in his grip, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
It feels like coming home.
“I’m not your—”
“You are.” He leans closer, his face inches from mine while his hand stays firm around my throat.
“You’ve been mine since you walked into my arena.
Every day you spend in my chambers, surrounded by my scent, your body becomes more mine.
Every time I pin you, every time I touch you, every time I praise you—you’re being rewritten, Hannah.
Remade into something that belongs to me. ”
“That’s not—”
“Tell me you don’t feel it.” His thumb presses against my pulse point, feeling the frantic rhythm of my heart. “Tell me you’re not wet right now. Tell me you don’t dream about me every night, doing things that would make you blush to describe.”
I can’t.
I can’t tell him any of those things, because they’re all true.
“Your silence is answer enough.” He releases my throat and steps back, leaving me swaying on unsteady legs. The absence of his hand feels like a loss—my neck suddenly cold where his warmth had been, my skin aching for contact I refuse to ask for. “Same time tomorrow.”
He walks away, and I don’t watch him go.
I definitely don’t press my thighs together and try not to moan.
I definitely don’t miss the feeling of being helpless.
That evening, I find him in the library.
I don’t mean to—I was looking for somewhere to be alone, somewhere that doesn’t smell like him. But Stone Court’s library is vast, and he’s tucked into a corner near the fire, reading something ancient and leather-bound.
I should leave.
Instead, I hear myself ask: “What are you reading?”
He looks up, something flickering in his expression—surprise, maybe, that I sought him out. “A treatise on mountain philosophy. Stone Court’s founding principles.”
“Can you read it? The language, I mean.”
“I wrote parts of it.” He sets the book aside. “Three hundred years ago. The council wanted to codify certain traditions.”
Three hundred years ago. Longer than most human kingdoms have existed.
“How old are you?”
“Seven hundred and thirty-four.” He says it simply, without pride or shame. “Young, by Fae standards. Lord Oberon predates the Sundering itself.”
I try to imagine living that long. Watching civilizations rise and fall. Watching me, a mayfly by comparison, flutter through her brief existence.
“Does it get lonely?”
The question surprises us both. His eyes sharpen, studying me with renewed interest.
“Yes.” The honesty in his voice catches me off guard. “Lonelier than you can imagine.”
“But you’re surrounded by people. The court, the warriors—”
“They fear me. Or worship me. Or want something from me.” He gestures to the empty chair across from him, and I find myself sitting without meaning to. “No one has had a genuine conversation with me in longer than most human civilizations have existed.”
“That’s…” I don’t know how to finish the sentence.
“That’s why I watched you for so long before claiming you.” He leans forward, firelight playing across his features. “You weren’t afraid of dying. You weren’t trying to manipulate me. You just saw a problem and tried to solve it. Do you know how rare that is?”
“I’m not rare. I’m just stubborn.”
“You’re remarkable.” He says it like a fact, not flattery. “And now you’re sitting in my library, asking about my feelings, like I’m not the monster who trapped you.”
“You are the monster who trapped me.”
“Yes.” He doesn’t flinch from the accusation. “I am. But you’re talking to me anyway.”
I don’t have a response to that.
“You can hate me and be curious about me at the same time,” he continues. “You can resent your captivity and still want to understand your captor. Emotions are complicated, Hannah. Especially the ones that scare us.”
“Nothing about you scares me.”
“Liar.” But he says it gently, almost fondly. “Everything about me scares you. Especially the parts you’re starting to like.”
I stand abruptly, my heart pounding. “I should go.”
“You should.” He doesn’t move to stop me. “But Hannah? The book in the case by the window—it’s a history of human-Fae relations. One of the few texts written in a language you can read. You might find it illuminating.”
I leave without taking the book.
But the next evening, when I’m sure he’s not watching, I go back for it.
That night, I break.
Not completely. Not the way he wants. But enough that I can’t pretend anymore.
The dream is the same as always—his weight on top of me, his hands pinning my wrists, his voice in my ear telling me to surrender.
But this time, I don’t fight. This time, I arch into him, wrap my legs around his massive hips, beg him to fill me with the cock I’ve felt pressed against me every morning for weeks.
“Please,” I gasp in the dream. “Alpha, please—”
I wake up with my hand between my legs and my fingers already moving.
I should stop. I know I should stop. Every time I give in to this, I’m proving him right—proving that my body is being rewritten, that the transformation is working, that I’m becoming the omega he wants me to be.
But I’m so fucking empty.
The ache has been building for days—a hollow need in my core that nothing satisfies. I’ve tried ignoring it. Tried cold baths and exhausting myself in training and thinking about anything other than bronze skin and golden eyes and the way his voice drops when he calls me a good girl.
Nothing works.
And tonight, alone in his bed, surrounded by his scent, with the memory of his hand around my throat still burning on my skin—
I stop fighting.
My fingers find my clit, and the pleasure is so sharp it almost hurts.
I’m soaking wet, have been since he touched me in the training room, and the slide of my own fingers feels like relief and surrender and betrayal all at once.
My skin is hypersensitive everywhere—my nipples aching where they brush against the sheets, my inner thighs slick with want, every nerve ending screaming for something more than my own inadequate touch.
I think about him.
I don’t want to—I try to think about anything else, anyone else—but my mind keeps returning to Karax. The way he looks at me with those ancient eyes. The way his hands feel on my body, so big I disappear inside them. The way he says good girl like it’s both a reward and a promise.
The way I felt with his hand around my throat. Helpless. Owned. Safe.
My fingers move faster.
I imagine him here, in the bed, watching me touch myself.
Imagine the hunger in his golden eyes as he sees what he’s done to me—how desperate I’ve become, how much I need something I refuse to ask for.
Imagine him pinning my wrists above my head with one hand while the other explores my body, touching me wherever he wants because I can’t stop him.
Because I don’t want to stop him.
“That’s it,” dream-Karax murmurs. “Show me how much you want it.”
I bite my lip to keep from moaning out loud.
My hips rock against my hand, chasing a pleasure that feels just out of reach.
I need more. Need to be filled, stretched, claimed.
My fingers aren’t enough—they’re too small, too gentle, nothing like the thickness I’ve felt pressed against me through our clothes.
“You’re so wet, little warrior. So ready for me. But you’re not going to come until I say you can.”
My fingers falter. Even in my fantasy, he’s controlling me.
Even in my own head, I can’t escape the conditioning that’s been rewiring my responses for weeks.
And the worst part—the part that makes me want to scream—is how good it feels to be controlled.
How right it feels to wait for his permission.
“Ask nicely.”
“Please,” I whisper to the empty room, my voice cracked and desperate. “Please let me come, Alpha.”
“Good girl.”
The orgasm crashes through me like an avalanche—so intense I see stars, so overwhelming I forget to be ashamed of what I’m doing. My body convulses around my fingers, my pussy clenching desperately around nothing, needing something bigger and thicker and more.
Needing him.
The pleasure fades, and the shame rushes in to fill the space it leaves behind.
I just got myself off to fantasies of my captor. Called him Alpha. Begged for his permission to come.
I stare at the ceiling of his bedroom—our bedroom—and try to remember what it felt like to be free.
I can’t.
He knows.
He doesn’t say anything the next morning, but I see it in his eyes when I walk into the training room. The satisfaction. The hunger. The absolute certainty that I’m breaking exactly the way he planned.
“You slept well.” It’s not a question.
My face burns. “Well enough.”