Chapter 6 #3
“But you were watching the day before. And the day after.” She wraps her arms around herself like she’s trying to hold herself together—and the sight of her, so small and wounded and broken, makes me want to destroy something.
Preferably myself. “You’ve been watching my whole life, Karax.
Sixteen years of it, captured in crystal. Why?”
I don’t have an answer that will satisfy her. The truth is too complicated, too damning—sixteen years of observation, of watching for opportunities, of nudging circumstances when I could.
She’s asking me to justify the unjustifiable.
“I was looking for you,” I say finally. “For someone like you. The prophecy requires specific bonds, Hannah. Specific omegas. I searched for decades before I found potential candidates.”
“Candidates?” She laughs, and the sound is bitter, broken—nothing like the warm sounds I’ve grown to treasure over the past weeks. “I was eight. A child playing in the mud. And you decided then that I might be useful?”
“I decided you had potential. That you might become what the prophecy required. I didn’t—” I stop, forcing myself to be honest even though every word feels like cutting myself open. “I didn’t plan it all out from the beginning. I just… watched. And when opportunities arose, I took them.”
“Opportunities.” The word comes out flat. Dead.
“To shape circumstances. To encourage certain outcomes.” I can hear how hollow it sounds even as I say it. “I didn’t orchestrate your life, Hannah. I just… nudged it. When I could. When the chance presented itself.”
“You nudged it.” She stares at me, and I watch the horror deepen in her eyes as she processes what I’m telling her. “You watched a child grow up for sixteen years, and whenever you saw a chance to make her life harder, to isolate her, to break her down—you took it. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“That’s not—”
“That’s exactly what you’re telling me.” Her voice is rising now, cracking with fury. “You didn’t have some master plan. You just saw opportunities to hurt me and you seized them. The chaos-beasts that kept attacking our walls—did you send them?”
“Not all of them. But some—”
“The plague that killed a dozen people, including our healer?”
I can’t meet her eyes. “I didn’t cause the plague. But I may have… ensured it reached Ironhold.”
“The border raids? The bandits?”
“Some of them were already going to happen. I just—”
“Made sure they happened to us.” She’s shaking now, her whole body trembling with rage. “Made sure they happened to me. Sixteen years of watching and waiting and nudging, and you want me to believe you didn’t plan this?”
“I didn’t plan to—” I stop. Swallow. Force myself to meet her eyes. “The fever. The one that kept you home the day your parents died.”
The silence stretches between us, terrible and absolute.
“That wasn’t an opportunity,” I admit, and the words taste like poison. “That was… deliberate. I needed you alive. I needed you to survive what was coming, and the only way to ensure that was to keep you home.”
“You poisoned me.” Her voice is dead. Flat. “You poisoned me so I’d survive. So I’d be alone. So I’d have no one left to protect me and nothing left to hope for.”
“I saved your life—”
“You destroyed my life!” The words explode out of her, raw and anguished. “You took everything from me! My parents, my village, my future—and then you had the audacity to stand in that arena and let me think I had a choice?”
“You did have a choice—”
“I had the choice YOU gave me!” She’s screaming now, tears streaming down her face, and the bond is flooding with so much pain I can barely stand.
The stone beneath my feet cracks—my magic bleeding out, reacting to the devastation I’m feeling through our connection.
“You spent sixteen years making sure I’d have nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to, and then you put a sword in my hand and told me I could fight for my freedom?
That wasn’t a choice, Karax. That was a trap. And I walked right into it.”
I reach for her—instinct, need, the desperate urge to comfort—but she flinches back like I’m made of fire.
“Don’t touch me.” Her voice is cold now. Controlled. The tears are still falling, but she’s locked them away somewhere, buried the grief beneath ice. “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
“Hannah, please—”
“I need to think.” She’s backing away, putting more distance between us with every step. “I need—I can’t be here right now. I can’t look at you without seeing—”
She breaks off. Shakes her head. Turns and walks toward the door.
“Hannah.” Her name tears out of me like a plea.
“I’m sorry. I know that’s not enough. I know nothing I say can fix this.
But I need you to understand—I didn’t expect this.
I didn’t expect you. The prophecy required an omega, and I spent sixteen years watching and waiting and taking opportunities when they arose, and I never—I never expected to feel anything.
I never expected you to be more than a means to an end. ”
She stops at the door. Doesn’t turn around.
“That’s supposed to make it better?” Her voice is quiet. Devastated. “That you did all of this—destroyed my entire life, murdered my hope, broke me down piece by piece—without even caring who I was? That you would have done it to anyone who fit the prophecy’s requirements?”
I don’t have an answer. Because she’s right.
“You’re telling me I was just… convenient.” She laughs, and the sound is hollow. “The right bloodline in the right place at the right time. And you watched me suffer for sixteen years without feeling anything at all.”
“I feel something now—”
“Now.” She finally turns, and her eyes are red-rimmed but dry. The ice has frozen everything. “Now that you’ve fucked me. Now that you’ve knotted me and bonded me and made me beg for your cock. Now you feel something.”
“Hannah—”
“Was that part of the plan too? Getting me to need you?” Her voice cracks on the word. “Getting me to crave you so badly I can’t think straight? Or was that just another opportunity you seized?”
I can’t answer. Because she’s not wrong. The heat, the bonding, the conditioning—I planned all of it. Executed it deliberately. Turned her body against her mind until she had no choice but to surrender.
She sees the answer in my silence.
“That’s what I thought.” She turns back to the door. “Don’t follow me. Don’t look for me. I need to decide what to do about the fact that I’m bonded for life to a monster who spent sixteen years turning me into his perfect victim.”
She walks out.
The door closes behind her, and I’m left standing in the cracked stone of my training room, feeling her grief and rage and devastation flooding through the bond.
I did this.
Not just the years of manipulation. Not just the circumstances I nudged into place. This—this moment of shattering, this destruction of trust—is my fault. I had the chance to tell her the truth. Had weeks, months even, to explain what I’d done and why.
I chose not to. Chose to let her believe our meeting was fate, our bond was destiny, whatever was growing between us was something pure and untainted by my scheming.
I was a coward.
I told myself I was taking opportunities.
Told myself I wasn’t really planning, wasn’t really orchestrating—just watching, waiting, nudging when I could.
As if that made it better. As if the distinction between a master plan and opportunistic predation meant anything at all to the woman whose life I destroyed.
She’s right. I would have done it to anyone who fit the requirements.
And that’s the worst part. Because somewhere in the last three weeks, she stopped being a means to an end.
Stopped being just a prophecy requirement or an omega to claim.
She became Hannah—fierce and brave and so fucking tired of carrying everyone else’s weight.
She became someone I wanted to protect, someone I wanted to see smile, someone whose laughter made something long-dead stir in my chest.
But I didn’t start feeling that until after I’d already destroyed her.
I stand in the training room for a long time, feeling her move through the fortress, feeling her pain like a blade in my own chest.
And I don’t know how to make this right.
I don’t know if I can. Chapter 19: Hannah
I don’t go back to our chambers.
The words echo in my head as I walk—our chambers, like we’re something, like any of this was real. The thought makes bile rise in my throat.
I wander the corridors of Stone Court until the training room is far behind me, until I can barely feel Karax’s presence through the bond. He’s not following—I would sense that—but he’s aware of me. Concerned. The emotion bleeds through our connection like water through cracks in stone.
I don’t want his concern. I don’t want anything from him except answers.
He admitted to the fever. Admitted to “nudging” circumstances. Admitted he saw opportunities to hurt me and seized them.
But he was vague about the details. Evasive about the scope.
I need to know everything. Need to see the full shape of what he did to me, even if it destroys whatever’s left of the woman I thought I was.
The scrying room draws me back like a moth to flame.
This time, I don’t let myself feel the horror. I push it down, lock it away, become the cold strategist who kept Ironhold alive for eight years. Emotion is a luxury I can’t afford right now. What I need is information.
I light more crystals, gather the ones I scattered in my earlier rage. Some are cracked but still functional, the images inside fragmented but visible. I organize them by date, by location, by what they show.
I’m a tactician. I’m a survivor. If there’s a pattern here, I’ll find it.
It takes hours.
But I find it.
And it’s worse than anything he admitted to.
The oldest crystals show Ironhold as it was when I was young. Peaceful. Prosperous. My parents alive and happy, running the forge that had been in our family for generations.