So you did. #3
“You smell different today.” He moves closer, and I force myself not to retreat. “Sweeter. More satisfied.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” He circles behind me, and I feel his breath on the back of my neck. “You touched yourself last night. Thinking about me.”
I don’t answer. I can’t—my throat has closed up with humiliation and something else I refuse to name.
“There’s no shame in it,” he says, and his voice is almost gentle. “Your body knows what it needs. Fighting those needs only causes unnecessary suffering.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were.” His hand comes to rest on my hip, massive and warm through the leather of my training clothes. “And you’ll do it again tonight. And the night after. The need will grow, Hannah. The ache will deepen. And eventually, your own fingers won’t be enough.”
I shudder at his words—at the truth of them.
“When that happens,” he continues, his hand sliding from my hip to my belly, pressing me back against his chest, “when you’re desperate enough to admit what you really want—come to me. I’ll give you what you need.”
I feel so small against him. The top of my head barely reaches his collarbone, and his arm around my waist makes me feel like a doll.
His cock is hardening against the small of my back—that impossible thickness, those ridges I’ve felt through our clothes so many times.
It presses against me, huge and hot even through layers of leather, and I realize with a jolt of panic and arousal that it would split me in half.
But my body doesn’t seem to care about what’s possible.
My body just wants.
“You’ll come to my bed willingly, Hannah. You’ll beg me to take you. And when I finally sink inside you—when you feel what it’s like to be stretched around a cock designed to claim you—you’ll understand why fighting was never an option.”
His other hand comes up to cup my throat again—the same position from yesterday, the same reminder of how completely he controls me.
My pulse jumps against his palm, and I feel that same terrible peace wash over me.
That same relief at being held by someone stronger than me.
Someone who could break me but chooses to keep me instead.
“But not yet,” he murmurs against my ear, his breath hot on my skin. “I want you desperate. I want you aching. I want you to remember exactly how it felt to resist, so you understand what you’re surrendering when you finally give in.”
He releases me and steps back.
The cold air hits my skin where his warmth had been, and I actually whimper at the loss. The sound escapes before I can stop it—small and needy and pathetic—and I see his eyes flash with satisfaction.
“Now. Position one. Show me what you’ve learned.”
I turn to face him on shaking legs, my body screaming for something I refuse to ask for.
And I know—with a certainty that settles into my bones like stone—that he’s right.
I’m going to break.
It’s only a matter of time. Chapter 10: Karax
Two days since she broke.
Two days since I watched her shatter in my bed, calling my name, begging for permission to come. Two days since I smelled the change in her scent that morning and knew the heat was close—building in her blood like a storm gathering on the horizon.
I’ve kept my distance since then.
Not out of mercy. Out of strategy. Every hour I deny her my presence, the need grows sharper.
Every night she spends alone in my bed, surrounded by my scent but unable to reach me, her body winds tighter.
I want her desperate when she finally breaks completely.
I want her so far gone that pride doesn’t even occur to her—only need. Only me.
So I train in the private arena. Attend to court matters I’ve been neglecting. Sleep in my secondary chambers, leaving her alone with the ache I’ve cultivated so carefully.
And I wait.
She comes to me on the third night.
Not to surrender—not yet. But close. So close I can taste it.
I’m running drills in the private arena when I hear her footsteps in the corridor. It’s well past midnight, the fortress quiet except for the night guards on their rounds. She should be in bed, trying to sleep, failing to ignore the heat building under her skin.
Instead, she’s here.
The door opens. She stands in the entrance wearing her training leathers, a practice blade already in her hand.
Her hair is damp—she’s been in the cold bath again, trying to douse the fire that won’t stop burning.
It hasn’t worked. I can see the flush on her cheeks from across the room, can smell the desperate sweetness of her arousal cutting through the stone-and-steel scent of the arena.
“I need to train,” she says. Her voice is steady, but her hands aren’t. “I can’t sleep.”
“So train.”
She hesitates, clearly expecting me to leave. When I don’t move—when I simply stand there, blade loose in my grip, waiting—something shifts in her expression. Resignation, maybe. Or exhaustion too deep to fight.
She steps onto the mat.
We circle each other in silence. The torchlight throws shifting shadows across the walls, painting her face in gold and darkness.
She looks like she hasn’t slept in days—bruises under her eyes, tension in every line of her body, the barely-contained tremor of someone holding themselves together through sheer stubbornness.
She’s beautiful like this. Desperate and defiant and so close to shattering.
“First to three touches,” I say. “Standard rules.”
She nods and attacks.
Something’s wrong with her.
Not wrong—different. Her movements are off, her timing fractured.
She’s faster than she was two weeks ago, stronger, more fluid in her transitions between forms. The training has done its work.
But there’s a looseness to her now that wasn’t there before, like her body has stopped listening to her mind’s commands.
She overextends on a thrust, and I tap her ribs with the flat of my blade.
“One.”
She resets, jaw tight, and comes at me again. A combination she’s drilled a hundred times—high feint, low strike, spinning follow-up. I’ve seen it before. Should be easy to counter.
But when I catch her arm to redirect the spin, she doesn’t pull away.
She leans in.
Just for a heartbeat. Just long enough for her body to press against mine, for her breath to catch, for her eyes to flutter closed like she’s savoring the contact. Then she wrenches herself back, face flushing darker, and I see the horror in her expression as she realizes what she just did.
“Again,” she says, her voice rough.
I don’t comment. Just reset and let her attack.
It happens twice more. A block that brings us chest to chest, and she freezes instead of disengaging. A grapple that puts her back against my front, and her hips roll against me before she can stop them. Each time, the contact lasts a little longer. Each time, she pulls away with more difficulty.
Her body is seeking mine without her permission. The omega instincts are taking over, overriding her warrior’s training, turning every combat exchange into an excuse to touch me.
She knows it’s happening. I can see the fury and shame warring on her face, the desperate attempt to control responses that have slipped beyond her control.
“Two,” I say, tapping her shoulder when she fails to dodge a strike she would have evaded easily a week ago.
“Fuck.” She backs away, breathing hard, and I see tears of frustration glittering in her eyes. “What’s happening to me?”
“You know what’s happening.”
“I can’t—” She shakes her head, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I can’t make it stop. I can’t make my body listen.”
“Your body is listening. Just not to you.” I lower my blade, watching her struggle. “It’s listening to instincts older than language. Older than thought. You’re fighting a battle you can’t win, Hannah.”
“I won’t just give up—”
“I’m not asking you to give up. I’m asking you to understand what you’re fighting.
” I move closer, and she doesn’t retreat.
Can’t retreat—her feet are rooted to the mat, her body swaying toward me even as her mind screams at her to run.
“The heat isn’t your enemy. It’s not punishment or violation.
It’s just biology. Your body preparing itself for something it was designed to want. ”
“I don’t want—”
“You do.” I stop in front of her, close enough to touch.
Close enough that my scent wraps around her like a physical thing, and I watch her pupils dilate, watch her lips part, watch her hands tremble at her sides with the effort of not reaching for me.
“You want it so badly you can barely stand. The only thing stopping you is pride.”
“Pride is all I have left.”
“No.” I cup her face in my hand, and she makes a sound—a broken little whimper that goes straight to my cock. “You have me.”
Her eyes close. Her head tilts into my palm, seeking more contact, more of my skin against hers. The warrior who slapped me two days ago has vanished. In her place is something softer, something needier, something that’s been fighting so long it’s forgotten what it feels like to stop.
“Please,” she whispers, and I don’t think she even knows what she’s asking for.
“Please what?”
Her eyes open. Gray meeting gold, desperation meeting patience.
“I don’t know. I don’t—” Her voice breaks.
“I can’t think when you’re touching me. I can’t think at all anymore.
Everything is just you—your scent, your voice, the way it felt when you—” She stops, swallowing hard. “I’m losing my mind.”
“You’re not losing your mind. You’re finding something that was always there.” I stroke my thumb across her cheekbone, and she shudders. “The omega underneath all that armor. The woman who’s been waiting her whole life for someone strong enough to hold her.”
“I don’t want to be an omega.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to need you.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why—” Her voice cracks. “Why does it feel like I’m dying when you’re not touching me?”