“Why would they⁠—”

“Because you’re a little too beautiful for your mate’s peace of mind.”

“Lennart is beautiful, too,” I say weakly.

A soft snort. Once again, he nuzzles the hinge of my jaw. “You could do better. You deserve better.”

“Is that what mating is about? A race? Acquiring the best you can?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea about mating. Now, fucking…” His teeth close gently around my throat. A groan rises from his chest. “I take it back. This is going to be nice. It’s going to be more than nice.”

“What is?”

“Fucking you. I’ll try to break you in gently. So you’ll be able to take a couple of rounds. Hell, I might need more than that from you.”

I close my eyes, mortified—and warmer than I’ve ever felt. Something pulsates at the base of my stomach in liquid bursts. “I hope you enjoy it,” I manage to say.

Which makes him pull back. Again, there’s that look of surprised amusement on his face. “You hope I enjoy it?”

I nod, realizing how weird and backward this sounds, but… “I don’t know if I would be able to enjoy sex anyway. And since I’m only here as a pawn in a game between two Alphas…I understand that I cannot be afforded the privilege of being wanted for myself. But if my body has to be defiled, I’d at least hope for the defiler to enjoy the process.” I exhale a laugh.

He listens to me open-mouthed, eyes all pupils. And when I’m done, he asks, breathless, “What are you doing to me?”

I blink, confused. Then shake my head.

“Where the fuck did they even find you? Are you some kind of—weapon that they built to take me out?”

“I don’t understand.”

“The fucking scent. And the face. The tits, and these outrageous things you keep saying, like I haven’t been thinking of putting my knot so deep inside you, you’ll feel in it in your throat⁠—”

A chime interrupts us. A beat later, the automatic doors swish open.

I half expect his brother to walk in, or maybe the head of his guard. Instead, a slight Omega man of average height takes a few steps inside the chambers. From my cage made of Gabriel’s arms, I scan his curly hair and thin lips, unable to place him. “Sir,” he says, “something happened.”

With a deep, displeased breath, Gabriel straightens to his full height. He doesn’t look away from me as he adjusts the ridge of his cock through his combat suit, then asks, “What?”

I feel cold. Empty. As if rudely awakened in the middle of a particularly good dream.

“The drainage system.” The man glances at me. I’ve experienced disapproval before, but I now know what it’s like to be held in absolute contempt. “South wing.”

“Shit. I’ll be right there.” He runs a hand through his hair, stares me down for a few moments, as if trying to figure out what to do with me, and then simply orders, “Stay.”

I pout. “What if I want to take a night stroll around the military quarters?”

“You will be killed on sight, that’s what.”

I glance at the beast who seems on the verge of taking a nap while lounging at his feet. “Will your…guard cat be here to ensure my continued presence?”

“I told you—she does whatever she wants.”

Alex yawns in response, then begins to lick her paw as her master leaves the room.

“Gabriel,” I call when he’s at the entrance. I was, at least to a degree, responsible for his most recent erection. I think we’re on a first-name basis.

But I still don’t know what it is that prompts me to say, “Tomorrow, when Lennart comes to collect me…if you send me back to him untouched, all this theater will have been in vain.”

He smiles, predator-like. “In that case, maybe I won’t send you back at all.”

My stomach flips. I watch Gabriel cross the threshold with Alex in tow, and tell myself that I’m relieved to be left alone.

Chapter 10

THE PROBLEM Gabriel

Ivar meets me on our way to the south wing, a cautious, bracing expression on his face. “How bad was it?”

I shrug, struggling to shift my focus from what happened back in my room. Her words echo through my brain. Is this the part where I take off my dress? Reckless. And foolish. And much more fuckable than I could have imagined. That, I might be able to forgive. The fact that she made me laugh…I’m going to make her suffer for that.

“Come on,” my brother continues. “It can’t have been that terrible. I’ve seen her holos.”

“The holos don’t—” I shake my head, still fuzzy from her lingering scent. “I saw her holos, too. It’s not the same.”

“Still. She can’t be that ugly.”

“She’s not ugly at all.”

“Then what… Oh.” For once, he seems at a loss for words.

I press my lips together and nod, finding that I have nothing to add either.

“Well,” he says at last, “that’s not new. You’ve been with lots of beautiful women.”

Not like her, I want to snarl, but then what? Ivar would ask for an explanation, and I would have to tell him that I had to force myself to sit across from her to stop myself from touching her. That leaning closer to her was like traveling through space and time. That I’d never felt as out of control as when her scent was in my nostrils, not even in the throes of a rut.

“Gabe?” Ivar calls. Irritated, like it’s not the first time.

“What?”

“I said you don’t smell like you went through with it.”

Because I didn’t. Because I was fucking interrupted. Because she was looking up at me with those gorgeous green eyes and daring me to do my worst. Because she smelled better than any Omega in heat I’ve ever had—just on the edge of ripe, but unfinished, interrupted. Because I despise the noble-born. They’re the scum of the earth, and I have never, not once in my life, experienced anything but contempt toward them.

But now I think of Lennart Larsen, and all I feel is envy. Envy of a Beta, for his cold Omega who doesn’t feel cold at all.

“Gabe?” my brother is asking.

I turn to him, exhale a breathless laugh, and say, “We have a big fucking problem. And I’m going to need more time.”

Chapter 11

THE DREAM Sofia

Gabriel’s bed doesn’t smell like him because, soldier boy that he is, he never uses it. The blankets that make his pallet, however, are another matter. I drag them to the bed after hours of his absence, after trying and failing to open the automatic door and break out, and I quickly fall asleep wrapped in them.

As a cold Omega, my sense of smell has always been abysmal. No more acute than a Beta’s. And yet, Gabe’s scent stands out. It’s immediately distinctive, instinctively recognizable, incongruously familiar. A single sniff, and it embedded in the folds of my brain.

That may be the reason I dream of him.

We’re on the outside during a Low, one that has lasted for weeks, so long that the grass has had time to dry. The marsh has taken on a musty yellow color, and we lie in it, belly up, letting the sun warm our faces.

He is still the general. He has no time for this. But he snuck away to be with me, and my heart thrashes around my chest as we laugh about someone named Bastian searching for him, about the flock of birds of prey that mistook the engineers for fish, about my colleague who almost mixed up narcotics and vitamins.

The sun paints his skin golden. He reaches out, his hand warm against the skin of my throat, tracing a scar I don’t remember getting, and it’s like a dam bursting, ferocious, tender, sending a rush of electric heat and love through my nerve endings. With his palm open wide, he caresses up and down my spine, and I close my eyes to savor every second of his touch, to analyze it and commit it to memory and store it deep within me, where it will stay alive, pulsating, forever. For a while, we are silent.

“You can fall asleep,” he murmurs against my forehead. “I’ll keep watch.”