Chapter 23 Kess
Kess
I don't make it far.
The corridor stretches before me like a throat, stone walls pressing close, torchlight throwing shadows that flicker across my path like living things.
My feet carry me forward without conscious direction—away from him, away from his study and his careful logic and the devastating explanations I can't shake loose from my skull.
At what point does trust become stupidity?
The words echo through me, refusing to fade. He wasn't wrong—that's the worst part. Forty-seven omegas trusted they could survive, and forty-seven omegas died screaming in his arms. His fear isn't irrational. It's earned. Paid for in blood and carved names and three centuries of loss.
But that doesn't make what he did right.
I can feel him through the bond even now—weakened by weeks of his poison tea, but still there. Not his grief this time, but something harder. Resolve. The iron will it takes to let me walk away when every alpha instinct must be screaming at him to follow.
He's giving me what I asked for.
I hate that it makes me respect him more.
The main staircase looms before me, and I make it three steps down before my legs buckle. I sink onto cold stone and press my hands against my face, trying to breathe past the tightness in my chest, trying to think past the storm threatening to tear me apart.
Pregnant.
I'm pregnant with his child.
The child of a man who lied to me for weeks. Who drugged me without my consent. Who defended those choices with logic so cold and brutal that I can't entirely dismiss it.
I'd make the same choice again if it meant you lived.
Would I want him to? If some god appeared and offered me that terrible bargain—my survival or his honesty—which would I choose?
I don't know.
And that uncertainty feels like its own betrayal, a crack in my righteous fury I don't know how to repair.
I stand slowly, muscles protesting, and keep walking.
Down the main staircase, through the great hall with its empty hearths, past startled servants who take one look at my face and step aside.
My feet know where they're going even if my mind hasn't caught up—back to the storage room where I found the hidden books, back to the hollow behind the cracked armoire where I stashed food in the early days when I trusted nothing and no one.
The supplies are still there. Dried meat, hard cheese, a waterskin I filled weeks ago and forgot about. I shove everything into a rough sack, muscle memory taking over, my body preparing to run even as my heart screams at me to stay.
Old habits. The ones that kept me alive before I came here, before I let myself believe I could have something other than survival.
I sling the sack over my shoulder and head for the gates.
The night air hits me like a slap when I finally reach the courtyard—cold and sharp, carrying the scent of pine and distant snow. I drag it into my lungs and try to clear my head, try to think past the bond still pulsing between us like a second heartbeat.
I need to get away. Need distance. Need to figure out what I'm feeling without his presence overwhelming my senses.
The gates are unguarded this late—or maybe the guards saw me coming and decided not to interfere. Either way, the heavy iron swings open at my touch, and then I'm through, the forest rising before me like a wall of shadow and the path winding away into darkness.
I run.
Not gracefully—my body is still adjusting to the pregnancy I didn't know about, still fighting the transformation the contamination is forcing on me.
But I run anyway, feet pounding against packed earth, branches whipping at my face and arms as the trees close in around me.
The cold air burns my lungs and the bond stretches behind me like a tether, thinning with distance but never breaking.
I make it maybe half a mile before I feel him.
Not through the bond this time—through something more primal. The displacement of air. The rush of wings. The shadow that passes between me and the stars, blotting out the sky.
He lands in the path ahead of me, the impact shaking the ground beneath my feet.
The dragon form is massive—I forget sometimes, when he's human-shaped and merely tall.
But now his neck arches above me like a ship's mast, scales gleaming black opal in the moonlight, eyes burning gold in the darkness.
Heat rolls off him in waves, and his scent hits me like a wall—smoke and stone and something rawer underneath, something that makes my hindbrain light up with recognition even as my conscious mind screams at me to run.
Rut.
The shift takes him between one breath and the next—bones cracking, scales flowing into skin, until he's standing before me naked and human-shaped and barely in control. His eyes are still gold, pupils slit like a cat's, and I can see claws trying to push through his fingernails.
"You promised," I manage, backing up a step. "You said you wouldn't follow."
"I tried." His voice comes out wrecked, barely recognizable.
"I lasted as long as I could. But your scent—the pregnancy hormones and the fear and the way you ran—" A shudder runs through him.
"My rut hit the moment you left the castle.
I can't—Kess, I'm trying to control it, but you need to keep running.
Get as far from me as you can before I—"
The heat slams into me without warning.
One moment I'm backing away, every rational thought screaming at me to run.
The next I'm on my knees in the dead leaves, gasping, slick flooding between my thighs so fast it soaks through my leathers.
The bond—weakened as it is—roars back to life, and I feel his rut like it's my own, his desperation and need pouring through the connection until I can't tell where he ends and I begin.
Flash heat. Triggered by his rut, by the bond, by the pregnancy hormones flooding my system.
"Kess—" He's frozen in place, every muscle locked, claws fully extended now and digging into his own palms hard enough that blood drips onto the fallen leaves. "Run. Please. I can't hold back much longer—"
"I can't." The words come out broken, desperate. My thighs are slick, my core clenching around nothing, my whole body screaming for him despite everything. "The heat—I can't move—"
He makes a sound like a dying thing and crosses the distance between us in two strides.
His hands grip my hips and haul me up against him, and the moment our bodies touch, something snaps in both of us. His cock is already hard, pressing hot and insistent against my stomach, and the smell of him—smoke and musk and rut-sweat—floods my senses until I can't think past the need.
I should fight this. Should hate him enough to resist the biology trying to override my brain.
Instead my hands fist in his hair and I drag his mouth down to mine.
The kiss is all teeth and fury. I bite his lip hard enough to split it, taste copper on my tongue, and he growls into my mouth and kisses me harder.
His hands are already tearing at my clothes—claws shredding leather, ripping fabric—and I'm doing the same to what's left of his, desperate to get skin against skin.
"I hate you," I gasp when we break apart for air.
"I know." He yanks my leathers down my hips, claws scraping welts into my thighs. "I hate me too."
"This doesn't mean I forgive you."
"I know that too."
This isn't forgiveness. Isn't reconciliation. This is biology and betrayal and two people burning each other down because they don't know how to do anything else.
He spins me around and shoves me against the nearest tree.
The bark bites into my palms, my chest, scraping against my nipples through the ruins of my shirt.
His hands grip my hips and yank them back, positioning me, and I can feel his cock sliding through the slick coating my thighs, the head nudging against my entrance.
"Do it," I tell him. "Don't be gentle. Don't pretend this is anything but what it is."
He drives into me in one brutal thrust.
Even with the slick from my flash heat, the stretch burns—his cock forcing me open, thick and hard and so deep I feel it in my throat.
I cry out, fingers scrabbling against bark, and he doesn't give me time to adjust. Just pulls back and slams in again, setting a punishing rhythm that drives the air from my lungs with every stroke.
"Fuck—" The word tears out of me, half curse and half prayer. He's so deep, hitting something inside me that makes stars burst behind my eyes. "Harder—"
He gives me harder. His hips snap against my ass with bruising force, the wet slap of flesh on flesh obscene in the quiet forest. One hand fists in my hair and yanks my head back, exposing my throat, and his teeth find the claiming mark and bite down hard enough to make me scream.
"This what you wanted?" His voice is barely human, a growl that vibrates through my bones. "Wanted me to fuck you like the monster I am?"
"Yes—" I shove my hips back to meet his thrusts, taking him deeper. "Yes, fuck, just like that—"
He releases my hair and his hand slides around to my front, finding my clit and rubbing in rough circles that make my whole body jerk. Too much sensation—his cock pounding into me, his fingers on my clit, the bark scraping my palms raw, the claiming mark throbbing where he bit it.
"I trusted you," I gasp, and I don't know if it's accusation or confession. "I trusted you completely."
"I know." He twists his fingers and I keen, clenching around him. "I'm sorry. Gods, Kess, I'm so fucking sorry."
"Sorry doesn't—ah—doesn't fix this—"
"I know that too."
He shifts his angle and hits something that turns the world white.
I come without warning, orgasm crashing through me, my inner walls clamping down on his cock so hard he groans against my shoulder.
But he doesn't stop—keeps fucking me through it, keeps rubbing my clit, keeps driving into me like he's trying to crawl inside my skin.
"Again," he growls. "Give me another one."
"I can't—"