Chapter 6 #7
The thought surfaces unbidden, toxic and true, and I can’t shove it back down.
My parents kept me out of obligation. Ironhold kept me out of need.
But Karax—Karax watched me for sixteen years, orchestrated my suffering, manipulated every aspect of my existence—because he wanted me.
Specifically me. Not just any omega, not just any warm body to fulfill a prophecy.
Me.
That’s fucked up. That’s so fucked up I can’t even begin to untangle it. But somewhere in the wreckage of my chest, in the hollow space where my heart used to be, something responds to it anyway.
I was chosen. I was wanted. I was seen, even if the seeing was monstrous.
That’s more than my parents ever gave me.
The sixth day, I can barely walk.
The bond sickness has progressed beyond anything I imagined.
My legs shake when I try to stand. My hands tremble too badly to hold a cup.
I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror and barely recognize the creature staring back—gaunt, hollow-eyed, skin stretched tight over bones that seem sharper than they should be.
I’m dying.
Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Actually dying, piece by piece, because my body has decided that existence without him is not worth sustaining.
I think about the old woman’s words: The law exists because no one has ever drawn the Guardian’s blood. It’s meant to be a death sentence dressed as a chance.
She was wrong about one thing: I did draw his blood. But she was right about everything else. It was never a chance. It was a trap, baited with my own desperation and sprung the moment I thought I’d won.
And now the trap is killing me.
I think about Ironhold. About the village I gave everything to protect. They’re safe now—Karax put them under his personal protection after the Greymun confrontation—but they don’t know why. Don’t know what I sacrificed, what I lost, what I became.
They think I’m dead. Or worse, that I abandoned them.
Part of me wants to laugh. I spent eight years killing myself for that village, and they probably didn’t notice I was gone. Just like my parents never noticed when I left the forge. Just like no one ever notices when the useful tool gets put back in its drawer.
But there’s another part of me—a smaller, quieter part—that needs to see it one more time. The forge. The village. The place where I learned what it meant to be needed, even if I was never loved.
I need to know if there’s anything left of me that isn’t defined by what other people wanted from me.
The decision crystallizes in my mind like frost on glass.
I’m leaving.
Not forever—I don’t know if “forever” is even possible, with the bond tying me to him—but long enough to find myself. Long enough to figure out if any of what I feel is real. Long enough to prove that I’m more than the broken thing this separation has made me.
And if I die on the road to Ironhold?
At least I’ll die choosing something. At least I’ll die free, instead of wasting away in a stone box because my own biology has betrayed me.
I dress in the fighting leathers I wore on the day of my trial. They hang loose on my frame now—I’ve lost weight I couldn’t afford to lose. The leather smells faintly of mountain stone.
Of him.
I push the thought away and head for the stables.
The guards don’t stop me.
Maybe Karax ordered them not to. Maybe they can sense through some Stone Court magic that I’m the Guardian’s omega and therefore free to come and go as I please. Either way, they step aside when I approach the gate, their bronze faces carefully blank.
I see the way they look at me, though. The way their eyes widen at my gaunt frame, my trembling hands, the death-pallor of my skin.
“Where are you going, my lady?” one of them asks. His voice is gentle. Too gentle. The voice you use with someone who’s dying.
“Ironhold.” The word feels strange in my mouth—home, but not home anymore. Was it ever home? Or was it just another place that used me? “I need to see my village.”
“Shall we arrange an escort? You seem…” He hesitates. “Unwell.”
“I’m fine.” The lie tastes like ash. “I’m going alone.”
The guard exchanges a glance with his companion. I see the conflict in his expression—duty to the Guardian warring with whatever orders he’s been given about my freedom.
“The Guardian will want to know,” he says finally.
“Then tell him.” I gather the reins in my hands—and almost drop them, my grip is so weak. “Tell him I’m going home. Tell him—” My voice catches. “Tell him I don’t know if I’m coming back. Tell him I might not survive the journey.”
I stop. What is there left to say?
Tell him I need him. Tell him I hate him. Tell him I can’t tell the difference anymore. Tell him he’s the first person who ever chose me, and I don’t know how to forgive him for making that matter.
“Tell him I’m sorry,” I finish. “For whatever that’s worth.”
The guard nods slowly, something like respect flickering in his ancient eyes. Or maybe pity. I can’t tell anymore.
I ride through the gates before I can change my mind.
The mountain path stretches out before me, winding down toward the human territories, toward the village I sacrificed everything to protect. Every step the horse takes sends waves of pain radiating through my bond-sick body.
Behind me, I feel the bond pull taut like a rope around my heart.
I don’t look back.
If I look back, I’ll turn around. And if I turn around, I’ll never know if I’m choosing him or just surrendering to the sickness. I’ll never know if what I feel is real or just another cage, another burden, another weight that someone else strapped to my back.
The road ahead is long. I might not survive it.
But at least I’ll die trying to find out who I am when I’m not being useful to someone else. Chapter 22: Karax
I feel the moment she passes through the gates.
The bond stretches impossibly thin, a thread of agony connecting us across growing distance. Every instinct I have screams at me to follow—to catch her, bring her back, drag her to my chambers and pin her beneath me until she remembers who she belongs to.
I don’t move.
She asked for space. She’s taking it. And if I have any hope of keeping her—truly keeping her, not just caging her—I have to let her go.
Even if it destroys me.
The first night, the mountain screams.
Not literally—not in any way the court can hear. But I feel it in my bones, in the magic that’s been woven through my flesh for seven centuries. Stone Court responds to my emotions, always has, and right now my emotions are tearing themselves apart.
Crystals crack in their settings. Walls groan with stress they’ve never experienced. The floor of my chambers splits in a jagged line from the door to the bed—the bed where I claimed her, where I held her through three days of heat, where I thought I was building something that would last.
I stare at the crack and feel it mirror something inside me.
Through the bond, I sense her suffering.
The burning skin. The nausea. The way her body is turning against her because she dared to separate from her Alpha.
I feel echoes of it in my own flesh—a phantom ache that has nothing to do with physical injury.
My hands shake when I try to pour wine. My appetite has vanished.
Sleep comes in fragments, broken by dreams of gray eyes and the smell of her hair.
I did this.
Not just the manipulation. Not just the sixteen years of engineering her isolation.
This—the bond sickness that’s consuming her right now—is my fault.
I claimed her knowing what the separation would do.
Knowing that if she ever tried to leave, her own biology would punish her for it.
Knowing that the bond would turn her body into a cage more effective than any stone walls I could build.
I told myself she’d never want to leave. Told myself the bond would be enough, that the pleasure would outweigh the cage, that she’d eventually stop fighting and accept what she was.
I was a fool.
The first day, I try to function.
Guardian duties don’t stop because my omega has left me. Territorial disputes still need resolution. Resource allocations still need approval. The endless politics of Stone Court hierarchy still grind on, indifferent to my personal catastrophe.
But I can’t focus.
Every few seconds, I reach for the bond—checking her location, her emotional state, her physical condition.
She’s still in Stone Court, holed up in some servant’s quarters on the far side of the fortress.
She’s in agony. She’s fighting it with everything she has, building walls against the pain, refusing to give in.
She’s so fucking strong.
Stronger than I gave her credit for. Stronger than I needed her to be. I spent sixteen years breaking her down so she’d have no choice but to become unbreakable, and now that strength is turned against me. The weapon I forged is being used to cut herself free, even if it kills her in the process.
I excuse myself from a council meeting halfway through.
Lord Varen is droning on about mining quotas, and I realize I’ve been staring at the wall for ten minutes without hearing a word.
The other lords exchange glances. Let them think what they want.
Let them whisper about the Guardian who can’t control his own omega.
I need to be alone with the weight of what I’ve done.
The second day, I feel her try to train.
The bond carries everything—her determination, her failure, her collapse.
I feel her hit the floor of the training room, feel the impact shudder through her exhausted body.
Feel her rage explode outward in a scream that echoes through the stone around me even though she’s on the opposite side of the fortress.
I’m in the hallway outside my chambers when it happens. The sound tears through the bond like a blade, and I stagger against the wall, my hand pressed to my chest where her fury is burning a hole through me.