I know what you need. #3
Two hundred warriors and nobles, all of them turning to stare at the human woman walking at my side. I feel their assessment like a physical weight—measuring her size, her strength, her worth. Some look curious. Some look hungry in ways that make my hand itch for my blade.
Some look… dismissive.
I note those faces. Remember them.
“Guardian.” Lord Greymun steps forward from the front ranks, his bronze skin gleaming with the silver veins that mark Stone Court nobility.
He’s old—nearly three hundred—and has been angling for increased power since before Hannah’s grandmother was born.
“We’ve heard rumors of your… acquisition.
I confess, we expected something more impressive. ”
The insult lands exactly as he intended. I feel Hannah stiffen beside me, feel the flash of anger through our bond. But she doesn’t respond. She’s smart enough to know that reacting to provocation is weakness.
“Lord Greymun.” My voice carries through the hall, cold as mountain stone. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion on my omega.”
“Forgive me, Guardian.” He bows, but his eyes stay fixed on Hannah with open contempt. “I merely meant that Stone Court’s standards are legendary. We expected a woman of… greater stature. Greater power. This one looks like she’d snap in a strong wind.”
Laughter ripples through some of the gathered nobles. Not the warriors—they know better—but the politicians. The courtiers who’ve never held a blade in genuine combat.
Hannah’s hand twitches toward her hip, where a sword would hang if I’d allowed her to carry one. I feel her rage through the bond, feel her desperate desire to prove herself. To fight.
But before she can move, I’m already stepping forward.
“This woman,” I say, and my voice makes the stone floor tremble, “walked into my arena knowing she would face me. Knowing no challenger has survived more than thirty seconds in seven hundred years. Knowing the blood debt law would bind her to me if she succeeded.”
The hall has gone very quiet.
“She didn’t come hoping to escape. She came prepared to sacrifice herself for her village. And when she faced me—” I let the memory surface, let them see it in my eyes. “She drew my blood.”
Gasps echo through the hall. Lord Greymun’s face goes pale.
“First blood in seven centuries,” I continue. “Drawn by a human woman you think would ‘snap in a strong wind.’ Perhaps, Lord Greymun, you’d like to test your assessment? Step into the training ring with her. See how long you last.”
Greymun’s jaw works, but he doesn’t respond. He can’t. Refusing the challenge would be admitting cowardice. Accepting it would mean facing a woman who accomplished what no Stone Court warrior has managed in seven hundred years.
“No?” I step closer to him, letting him feel the full weight of my presence.
I tower over him—eight feet to his seven—and my shadow swallows him entirely.
“Then perhaps you should reconsider how you speak about what belongs to me. The next time you insult her in my presence, I won’t offer you the courtesy of letting her fight you. ”
I lean down, my voice dropping to a growl only he can hear.
“I’ll tear your arms off myself.”
Greymun backs away, his face ashen. He bows—properly this time—and retreats into the crowd.
I turn back to Hannah. She’s staring at me with an expression I can’t quite read—anger and something else, something that makes her scent bloom with warmth despite the fury still crackling through our bond.
“Anyone else?” I address the hall, letting my gaze sweep across every face. “Anyone else wish to comment on my omega’s worthiness?”
Silence.
“Good.” I extend my hand to Hannah, and after a moment’s hesitation, she takes it.
Her fingers are small in my grip, callused from years of combat.
“Then let me introduce you properly. This is Hannah Mitchell, protector of Ironhold village, the only person in seven hundred years to draw Guardian blood. She is mine, and any disrespect shown to her is disrespect shown to me.”
The warriors are the first to bow. Then the nobles. Then even Greymun, his face still pale, his eyes fixed on the floor.
Hannah stands beside me, surrounded by hundreds of Fae bowing before her, and I feel something shift in our bond.
Not quite gratitude—she’s too proud for that.
But acknowledgment. Recognition that I defended her not because she couldn’t defend herself, but because what’s mine deserves to be defended.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
We’re in the training room now, alone, and Hannah rounds on me the moment the door closes. Her eyes are blazing, her cheeks flushed, her entire body vibrating with emotion.
“Do what?”
“Threaten to tear his arms off. Make them all bow.” She stalks toward me, and despite her size—despite how easily I could stop her—she backs me against the weapons rack with nothing but the force of her fury. “I can fight my own battles.”
“I know you can.” I let her push me, let her feel like she has control even though we both know I could reverse our positions in a heartbeat. “That’s not why I did it.”
“Then why?”
“Because you’re mine.” I catch her wrist when she tries to shove me again, holding it gently but firmly.
“Because every insult to you is an insult to me. Because I’ve waited seven hundred years for someone who would stand in my arena knowing she would lose, and I will not allow petty lords to diminish what you did. ”
She stares at me, her breath coming fast, her pulse racing under my fingers.
“You’re proud of me,” she says slowly. “For drawing your blood. For… hurting you.”
“I’m proud of you for facing me.” I pull her closer, and she lets me. “For being brave enough to walk into certain death for people you love. For being the first person in seven centuries to surprise me.”
“I hate you.” But her voice has lost its edge. Her body has gone soft against mine.
“I know.” I lean down, my lips brushing her ear. “And you’re wet right now, thinking about what I’m going to do to you for talking back to me.”
Her breath catches. I feel her pussy clench through the bond.
“I didn’t—”
“You pushed me against a wall. In my own training room. After I defended you in front of two hundred warriors.” I tighten my grip on her wrist, and she gasps. “Did you think there wouldn’t be consequences?”
“Karax—”
“On your knees, omega.”
She drops before she consciously decides to obey—I feel the moment her body overrides her mind, responding to my command with trained obedience. She looks up at me from the floor, her gray eyes dark with want, her lips parted.
“This is what you are when we’re alone,” I remind her, freeing my cock from my breeches. I’m already hard, have been since she pushed me against the rack with all that furious fire. “Out there, they see the warrior who drew my blood. In here, you’re my omega. Mine to command.”
“I hate you,” she whispers, but she’s already leaning forward, her mouth opening for me.
“I know.” I guide my cock to her lips, feeling the heat of her breath. “Now show me how grateful you are that I defended what’s mine.”
She takes me into her mouth.
The wet heat of her nearly undoes me—her lips stretching around my girth, her tongue dragging along the underside of my shaft, her throat working as she tries to take me deeper.
She’s learned what I like over the past weeks, learned how to hollow her cheeks and use her hand on what she can’t fit in her mouth and look up at me with those gray eyes while she works my cock.
I let my head fall back against the weapons rack, one hand fisting in her hair to guide her rhythm.
“That’s it,” I groan as she takes me deeper, gagging slightly before adjusting. “Such a good girl. Taking my cock so well.”
She moans around my shaft, and I feel the vibration all the way to my spine.
Through the bond, I feel her arousal spiking—feel how wet she’s getting just from having me in her mouth, just from being on her knees and serving me.
The warrior who faced me in the arena, the woman who just pushed me against a wall in fury, is now kneeling at my feet with her lips wrapped around my cock.
And she loves it.
I fuck her mouth slowly, savoring the sensation, watching her jaw stretch around my thickness. Tears leak from the corners of her eyes as I push deeper, hitting the back of her throat, and she takes it. Takes everything I give her.
“You’re going to swallow every drop,” I tell her, my voice rough with approaching release. “Going to drink my cum like a good omega and then thank me for it.”
She moans her agreement, her hand working the base of my shaft while her mouth does obscene things to the head.
The orgasm builds at the base of my spine, and I let it come.
Let myself spill down her throat in thick pulses while she swallows around me, her throat working to take everything I’m giving her.
I groan her name as I come—Hannah—and I feel her pussy clench through the bond, feel her own pleasure spiking in response to mine.
When I finally pull out of her mouth, she’s panting, her lips swollen and wet, her eyes glazed.
“Thank you, Alpha,” she whispers without being prompted.
I pull her to her feet and kiss her, tasting myself on her tongue. “Good girl.”
Seven hundred years of waiting.
Seven hundred years, and I finally have an omega worth keeping. Chapter 17: Hannah
The days settle into a rhythm I didn’t expect.
Mornings: training with Karax, our bodies learning each other in combat the way they’ve learned each other in bed.
He doesn’t go easy on me—never has—but there’s something different in it now.
Pride when I land a hit. Satisfaction when I escape a hold.
The bond pulses between us with warmth that feels dangerously close to affection, and I’ve stopped fighting it.
Stopped pretending I don’t lean into his touch, don’t crave his praise, don’t feel something loosen in my chest when he calls me his good girl.
Afternoons: I’m left to my own devices while he attends to Guardian duties.
Court sessions, territorial disputes, the endless politics of Stone Court hierarchy.
He offers to include me, but I’m not ready.
Not yet. The memory of Lord Greymun’s contempt still burns, even though Karax humiliated him for it.
Evenings: we eat together. Talk. He asks about Ironhold, about my parents, about the girl I was before I became the village’s protector.
I find myself answering honestly, sharing pieces of myself I’ve never shared with anyone—not the elders, not the villagers I protected, not even the memory of my parents.
And when we’re done talking, he takes me to bed and makes me forget everything except his name.
It’s almost comfortable. Almost… happy.
That’s what scares me. That’s what I should have paid more attention to.
Three weeks after my first heat, I start exploring.
Karax has made it clear I’m not a prisoner—I can go anywhere in the fortress except the war rooms and the treasury.
The freedom feels strange after weeks of being confined to his chambers, but I make myself use it.
Make myself walk the halls, learn the layout, catalog exits and choke points the way I would any unfamiliar territory.
The warrior in me never fully sleeps. Even when the omega in me has started to feel at home.
Stone Court is vast—carved into the mountain itself over millennia, layer after layer of stone rooms connected by corridors that seem to follow no logical pattern.
I find training halls and armories, kitchens and servants’ quarters, libraries filled with books in languages I can’t read.
I find gardens growing impossible flowers in underground caverns, fed by phosphorescent light.
I find a hall of trophies from seven centuries of victories, weapons and armor from enemies long dead.
And on the fourth day of exploration, I find the locked door.
It’s deep in the fortress, down a corridor that feels older than the rest—the stones worn smooth by centuries of footsteps, the phosphorescent crystals dimmer and more scattered.
The door itself is unremarkable except for the lock: a complex mechanism that pulses with mountain magic when I touch it.
I should walk away. Should respect his boundaries the way he’s respected mine. Should go back to our chambers and wait for him like a good omega, like the woman I’ve been becoming.
Instead, I press my palm flat against the lock and push.
The bond recognizes me. I feel it—a questioning brush against my awareness, like the mountain itself is asking if I belong here. And because I’m Karax’s omega, because his claim runs through my blood and bone, the door decides I do.
It swings open.