Eight nights after meeting the General
With my lucidity at the time, I barely registered that it must have been days since I had succumbed to my heat.
I had been awake since the early hours of the morning, and three nights had passed since I saw the General leave the castle.
My heat came early. My body betrayed me.
I remembered only fragments of those last few days.
I hoped no one heard me whining but Espen.
Magics don’t scream the way werewolves do.
It was a much more intimate, internal process.
Less loud and less messy. At least, that was what I had always assumed, since no one had heard me before.
The bathwater that was left in the tub smelt too strongly of slick, and I felt dirty even after taking another bath.
At least Espen left me new clothes that morning.
A lingering sensation in my stomach let me know that I was not fully done with this heat.
I distracted myself the only way I could, by sitting in the rocking chair near the barred doors, looking out the window.
Rocking back and forth until the warm and desperate feeling of heat subsided.
I saw soldiers marching through the courtyard, looking ragged and tired. They looked almost as bad as I imagined myself to look. Covered only in furs, they carried bows and arrows, and large beasts of prey. It was a view that could only be admired in the Oaklands. The sight of a successful hunt.
A scent caught my attention. One far stronger than the muted scents of the guards in the tower, or even the young alphas that were training on the grounds.
It was the scent of wood burning. It was stronger than before.
The General was back, and he was close by.
Every moment, he drew closer. I could barely contain myself when I heard footsteps down the hall.
Whether from excitement or fear or something much worse, I could not tell.
The scent got overwhelming and right at my door was the sound of a wolf growling.
The door rattled and rumbled and before I knew it, cracks appeared in the wood.
A violent shake broke one of the planks on the door, and it took two more of those before the beam that barred the door must have broken as well, for the door in its entirety fell towards me.
If I was seated only just an inch closer to it, there would have been splinters in my hair.
Instead, I was seated, frozen in shock, as the man who put me in this tower was standing in the doorframe.
This was my first time seeing him up close, and he was more intimidating than I imagined.
He was not bigger than most other alpha werewolves, yet much more imposing than most men I had met.
It was the way he moved, the fur on his coat, the scar that ran across his eye.
It was his catlike eyes searching for mine with a purpose.
And it was the worst time for an alpha whose scent I wanted to lose myself in to appear at my door.
I betrayed my own mind with the want of my heat.
Why did he have to be the only alpha in the castle that made me want to get closer?
The strength he must possess, to rip apart the oak with his bare hands.
His hands, of course, were nothing like mine, and could not be harmed by splinters of wood.
Where my delicate and pale fingers were frequently plagued by cuts from glass shards, his fingers were calloused and rough.
I had imagined them before, in the throes of my heat, tracing a path from my bellybutton to my flat chest. I hated how much I wanted to feel his hands on me.
To be touched in ways too intimate for me to dream up.
The presence of an alpha, the limitless imagination that must come with his experience, made me picture unspeakable things. I hated him for it.
He closed in on me. I didn't move away from the rocking chair.
I didn't dare move a muscle, frozen like a deer in the face of a wolf. There I sat, waiting, hoping for something I couldn’t quite place.
I stopped a noise from moving through my chest towards my throat, signaling my frustration when he stopped in his tracks before any part of his skin landed on mine.
"Have you been good?" he asked. I could do nothing but nod.
My senses were screaming at me to please him.
And in that moment, I would have done anything for him.
A not insignificant part of myself that wanted nothing but to be obedient for an alpha revealed itself to me.
It made me want to surrender to the unknown that was sure to follow.
I knew that part was made up of the last remnants of the heat that I had succumbed to days before.
I knew the scent of it was what drove General Axel to this tower.
It drove him to speak to me in this way.
I also knew that it meant that for some reason, the General could identify my scent, yet not see me for what I was.
“I know it was hard for you.” His hands were on the armrests of my chair, his body towering over me.
“An alpha always knows.” Whether he was speaking about my status as an omega, my unexpected heat, or what I imagined during my more desperate moments, I did not wish to know.
I stood up from my chair, trying to meet his eyes, making him take a step back in doing so.
I gathered what was left of my sanity and channeled it into defiance.
“How could you know?” I asked. I bit my lip. “What are you, really?” He ignored my question.
“You were in heat,” he said instead, and I took a deep breath.
I drowned in his scent for a moment too long.
He knew too much to be anything but magic.
His scent was too much like a werewolf for him not to be one either.
It was confusing and my stomach was twisting in much the same way it had during the heat that should never have come.
The General did this to me. He must have.
He decreased the distance between us ever so slightly again, until I could see his chest move up and down with each breath that he took.
My defiance got stuck in my throat, and the sound I let out instead was high and needy.
It made the alpha before me take in a deep breath, that would unmistakably reveal the scent of a desperate omega. “You still are.”
That was the moment that I felt his touch for the first time.
His fingers, trailing from my ear down my neck to my collarbones.
The touch was soft, but the nails of a werewolf were not.
I could not look up at him to meet his eyes, but I could feel his eyes on me.
I could scent the heavy musk of an alpha that was trying to make an omega submit.
A scent new to me that I instinctually recognised.
I wanted nothing but his touch and his undivided attention.
But I also wanted nothing to do with him.
A man so powerful could lock me up here forever if he so pleased, and have his way with me whenever he wanted.
It was not a fate I was keen on, even with the remnants of a heat clouding my judgement.
But why would he want me, if he was a wolf?
“I am.” I rocked back in my chair. “So you need to leave.” And he let me go. When I finally met his gaze, his eyes widened. The cloudiness in his gaze made way for clarity. He stepped away from me, and I could breathe again.
“What have you done to me?” Such misplaced anger, and a baseless accusation.
I stood up from the chair. What could I have done to someone with the power to lock me up in here?
The General was as terrified of me as I was of him.
“A curse?” he asked. I walked away from his outburst towards the window, so there was a bed separating us.
I avoided his gaze by peering out at the courtyard.
I held back any comments that would ensure my continued imprisonment.
“I am not a sorcerer,” I said.
“Enchantment, then?”
“I am not a siren.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “You’re not a normal omega.” His unintended confession startled me. I turned towards the alpha.
“The omegas here are not like you,” I said.
This was a realization as much as a response.
Axel was a werewolf, no doubt about it. Yet unlike the other alphas in the castle, he identified me as an omega.
He was drawn in by the scent of my heat.
The General with his flaming sword, without a sorcerer at his court.
How does the steel catch fire? I did not even think it possible to be multiple beings at once.
How would a man like that come to be? His scent carried notes of werewolf musk, and pine trees burning on a pyre.
Did everyone in the castle know that their General was as much like them as he was like me?
But if he was made from a similar magic, why could he not see through my human disguise?
“I’m a wolf.”
“And I am not.” The exchange left much unsaid, but we both understood that we knew each other's secrets.
But he did not know which element birthed my magic.
For all he knew, I was a dark creature, hiding pitch black eyes.
How a sorcerer could not recognise the scent of old forest following me, I did not know.
What I knew is that for once, I had the upper hand.
“You’ll tell me soon,” he said. It made me want to stop speaking forever. “Address me properly.”
“You expect me to call you alpha?” The idea made me furious, and it made me blush. There was no smile on his face, but his eyes were full of mirth. It felt degrading.
“By title, not by rank.” I wanted to fly through that window, not to be looked at in this way. Longing and belittlement should not go together.
“You do not have a title. You are not a king.” Instead of moving further away, he closed in on me.
He stopped mere inches away from my face.
He grabbed my wrist. I expected it to hurt, as if I was bruised by the ropes that would have bound me if the empire had taken me instead.
It did not hurt at all. The touch was too gentle for the look in his eyes. It confused me.
“It’s my lord to you,” he said. A soft voice, an intense stare. He let me go. I had little fight left in me. I wanted to be alone. I wanted him to touch me again. I wanted to one day leave this tower.
“As you wish, my lord.” I could have sworn that for a split second, his eyes turned red. Not the glowing amber of an alpha werewolf that encountered a threat. They were instead a bloody crimson.
“Good boy.” I should have hated it when he said it.
I should have felt even more disrespected.
But he did not speak in the tone he had before.
He sounded pleased, and I was still weak to the words of an alpha in my state.
I let out a sound I did not recognise. High-pitched and weak, a little too needy.
Then his hand was on my neck, as his thumb caressed my cheek.
“Come see me soon.” I could no longer respond.
All I could do was keep myself from begging for him to take me to bed. “Come tell me what you are.”
He let me go. I wanted to cry. I could not let myself ask anything of that man, as I did not know what type of man he was yet.
I had to let him leave. I had to let the last of this heat leave my body before saying another word.
He did leave. It was excruciating. He walked right out of the door, leaving the broken wooden bar that held the door on the floor.
I saw him walk out of the hall through the stone entrance to the spiral staircase.
I knew better than to try to escape. There were guards at the bottom of the staircase, and many more stalking through the halls of the castle.
The truth was simple, the General was my only way out of there.