Chapter 6: The Red Pendant

"Long-term. High-concentration. The surface is riddled with hardened knots. A healthy Omega gland is soft. Elastic. Yours has already shriveled. It's a piece of dead meat, pickled by drugs."

I bit my lip.

Bit until it blanched white, the taste of rust filling my mouth.

"Keep taking those drugs, and your heat will disappear completely. You'll be a barren, sexless husk."

Everything he said was true.

Suppressants bought on the black market. Three times the concentration of hospital prescriptions. I split one vial into three doses, adjusted the dosage myself, and injected them into my gland in the alley behind the laundry room. Sometimes I miscalculated the dose. I'd seize up afterward, hug a trash can and vomit, then get up and go wash the next load of clothes.

An Omega without a family's protection who lets her heat arrive has two possible fates. Dragged into an alley and marked by a passing Alpha. Or sold to an underground brothel. Suppressants were my shield. The price was my womb and my gland. I could afford it.

"Who prescribed them?"

"Bought them myself."

"Dosage?"

"Adjusted it myself."

Silence.

The hand gripping my nape suddenly shoved my head forward. I was forced to bow my head, my forehead pressed against his collarbone, my nape utterly exposed to the air.

Then his lips pressed against it.

He spoke against my skin, his mouth moving over the swollen gland. The words vibrated through the tender flesh, sinking into the bloodstream his fingers had just awakened.

"Do you have a death wish?"

Every syllable of breath gusted against my gland, swollen and blood-flushed from his kneading. Hot. Wet. Like a second hand sinking through the surface of the gland, into my veins, coursing through my entire body. My shoulders trembled. My knees sagged another inch. The arm locked around my waist tightened, hauling me up. My stomach pressed against his belt, and through my wet dress and his trousers, I could feel the hard, unyielding outline of his abdominal muscles.

"I don't want to die."

I shoved at him. My palms slammed against his chest, pushing back with all my strength. His heartbeat pounded through the shirt fabric into my palms, steady and powerful, mingling with the cold sweat seeping from my own hands.

He let go.

I stumbled back two steps. My back hit the arm of the sofa, my legs gave, and I sank into the seat. The spot on my nape where he'd kneaded me still throbbed and swelled, the gland pulsing beneath the skin. Every pulse released a faint wave of numbing sensation that trickled down my spine and pooled in my lower belly.

He stood where he was.

The fire roared behind him, throwing his shadow huge against the black stone wall. A wolf standing on its hind legs.

"I want to live." I leaned back into the sofa and looked up at him. "In this world, an Omega with no background has two choices to survive with any dignity. Kneel and beg an Alpha for protection. Or turn herself into a useless, sexless thing. I chose the second."

He took a step closer.

"Now you don't have to choose."

He bent down. His forefinger hooked the red pendant around my neck, his thumb slowly stroking the surface of the stone. The pad of his thumb traced the curve of the blood-red gem, then hooked the chain and pulled upward.

The chain bit into the skin of my nape. He dragged me forward.

"You're my personal maid. No one dares to touch you."

"What's the price?"

"Wear it. Don't ever take it off."

I locked eyes with him. "That's it?"

"That's it."

I laughed. The corner of my mouth curved up, but there was no mirth in my eyes.

He laughed, too.

It was the first expression I'd seen on his face all night. The curve of his lips barely lifted, no thicker than a matchstick. But something moved in those ice-blue eyes. An undercurrent surged beneath the ice, revealing a flash of the boiling heat below.

"You're smarter than I thought." He released the pendant and straightened. "I do need you to do something. Not now. When your knee heals, I'll tell you."

"What is it?"

"You'll find out when the time comes."

He turned. His boots were nearly silent on the black stone tiles. At the doorframe, he paused and turned his face in profile. The fire split his face into two stark halves. One in the light. One in the dark.

"Second room on the left, upstairs. Hot water's ready. Tomorrow morning, seven o'clock. Join me for breakfast."

"Do I have another choice?"

"No."

The door closed.

Softly. But the sound echoed in the empty stone fortress, like something finally locking into place.

I sank deeper into the sofa. The gauze on my knee had seeped a small patch of pale yellow fluid. The gland he'd crushed and kneaded throbbed beneath my skin, a hibernating beast stirring awake, pumping raw heat into my blood with every pulse. I reached back and touched my nape. My fingertips came away carrying a faint, cloying sweetness, mixed with the bitter hint of cedar. Not mine. His pheromones had seeped into my gland.

The red pendant pressed against my collarbone, heated by the fireplace until it felt searing hot. I closed my fist around it. The stone was warm. Like it had just been pulled out of someone's flesh.

I pushed myself off the sofa and dragged my injured leg up the stairs.

Second room on the left. Unlocked. I pushed it open to a bedroom carved from the same black stone. A black iron bedframe. Dark gray linen sheets. On the nightstand, a lamp, a glass of water, a roll of gauze, a bottle of iodine. Neat. Orderly. Like a barracks.

The bathroom door was open. Steam wafted out, carrying the scent of cedar-scented shower gel.

Cedar.

Just like his pheromones.

I stood in the bathroom doorway, staring at the full tub of hot water. The surface was still, no bubbles, so clean I could see the black stone tiles at the bottom. Steam drifted against my face, thick with the crisp scent of cedar. The same scent as his fingertips. The same scent that had seeped into my skin when he locked his hand on my nape. An invisible net stretched from every corner of this fortress, wrapping around my entire body.

I peeled off my wet dress. The fabric clung to my skin, making a faint, sticky sound as I pulled it away.

I put on the clean nightgown left on the bed. White. Cotton. The collar just covered my nape. The instant the fabric settled against my body, I knew he had chosen it. It fit perfectly. Clung to my waist. Hugged the curve of my chest. Stopped just above my knees. It was no standard retail size. It had been cut and stitched to my exact measurements, every seam a declaration of possession. The cotton pressed against my skin, as precise, as perfectly fitted, as merciless as the fingers he'd locked around my nape.

I walked to the wall. A rectangular ventilation shaft had been carved out, no glass, only iron bars. Through the gaps, I could see the cliffs to the north and the black sea below. Waves crashed against the rocks, shattering into white foam before the tide swallowed them whole.

No windows. Iron gates. Three layers of lockdown. Hot water. A perfectly fitted nightgown.

This fortress was a prison. A prison disguised as a private domain.

And he had hung the prison key around my neck.

I lay down on the bed. The rough linen scraped against the gauze on my calf. The wound beneath the bandage throbbed softly. The kneaded gland on my nape still ached and swelled, that numbing, electric hum not fully faded, like an extremely fine needle buried under my skin, scraping me with every turn. The cedar scent from the bathroom hadn't dissipated. It mixed with the smoke from the fireplace, seeping through the crack under the door, pouring into my nose.

And something else.

Beneath the cedar and the gunpowder, a faint, cloying sweetness hung in the air. My own pheromones. Locked away by suppressants for three years, they had begun seeping from deep within my gland the moment his fingers crushed those hardened knots.

Sweet. Damp. Cloying. Like the juice that spurts from an overripe berry crushed between someone's fingers.

I closed my eyes.

Tomorrow morning, seven o'clock. I would see exactly what this insane Wolf King wanted.

But first, I had to survive tonight. The gland he'd crushed and kneaded with his fingers was pulsing frantically beneath my skin, bleeding out a scent I hadn't smelled in three years. The heavy, musky perfume of an Omega sliding into her fertile window. Every throb was a wordless invitation saturating the air—the scent of prey broadcasting its heat to the only predator within these walls.

I clenched the red pendant in the darkness.

The stone burned like a fistful of fire. It seared through my palm. It seared through the walls of this prison.