Chapter 6: Strip!

Alpha Veyron Mordane:

I caught her before she could take another step.

My hand closed around her throat, and I shoved her back against the wall hard enough to crack plaster. She gasped, eyes bulging, her painted lips parting in shock.

I leaned in until I could see the fear dilating her pupils, until I could smell my own scent still marking her skin.

"Have I been lenient with you?" My voice was barely above a whisper, and that made it worse. "Is that why you've decided to play stupid in front of me?"

"Your Majesty—" she choked out.

I tightened my grip, my claws pricking just enough to draw a single bead of blood.

"Don't." I pressed my forehead against hers, staring into those winter-frost eyes that suddenly looked less like ice and more like panic. "I know military strategy like the back of my hand, Morgana. I know how many soldiers are required to hold a border. I know how many are needed to crush a rebellion. I know how troops are moved, supplied, divided, and where they are stationed."

I let that sink in, let her feel the weight of three centuries of warfare pressing down on her throat.

"So do not stand there and insult my intelligence with numbers that reek of preparation for something other than defense."

She swallowed beneath my palm, and I felt the lie trying to form on her tongue before she even spoke it.

"The number of troops your father has gathered," I continued, my lips brushing her ear, "is excessive for what you claim he needs them for. Unless..."

I pulled back just enough to watch her face crumble.

Her expression shifted. Only for a second—a micro-expression, there and gone—but it was enough.

Fear. Guilt. The flicker of someone who had been caught.

"So I'll ask you one more time." I let my wolf bleed into my voice, let the rumble of it vibrate through my chest and into her bones. "Why does your father need that many soldiers?"

"Supreme Alpha, you're misunderstanding—"

"Am I?" I laughed, and the sound made her flinch. "Then enlighten me. Tell me I'm paranoid. Tell me I've spent three centuries ruling this continent and suddenly forgotten how to count."

She fell silent.

I stared into her eyes, searching for the truth she was trying to bury beneath layers of perfume and submission.

"If those troops were gathered without my authorization," I said slowly, each word a nail in her coffin, "then there are only a few possibilities."

I stepped closer, crushing her against the wall until I could feel her ribs flex against mine.

"Either your father has been secretly building an army of his own..."

Her breathing caught—a hitch so slight she probably thought I wouldn't notice.

"...or someone has been diverting my soldiers to him without my knowledge."

She said nothing.

That silence told me everything.

Someone had sent her. Someone had placed her here deliberately, believing that having his daughter warming my bed would make her useful, would make her my weakness. They thought they could distract me with her mouth while they moved their pieces across my territory like I was some green boy who couldn't see a battlefield forming in my own fucking house.

They had made one mistake.

They had underestimated what I was willing to do to those who lied to me.

"Who sent you?" I demanded.

Her lips parted—

A sharp knock struck the chamber doors.

My eyes narrowed, my grip tightening reflexively.

Another knock followed, urgent, insistent.

"Alpha."

Kael.

My Beta.

There was a note in his voice I had heard only three times in two hundred years. The kind of urgency that preceded war.

I released Morgana abruptly, shoving her so hard she stumbled, falling to her knees on the marble.

"Leave."

She scrambled up, one hand flying to her throat, her face streaked where my seed had dried and her tears had wet it. "Supreme Alpha, please, I can explain—"

"Now."

She hesitated, her eyes darting to the door, calculating if she could use this interruption to her advantage.

I looked at her, really looked at her, and let her see exactly what I was contemplating—how slowly I could kill her, how loudly she could scream before I allowed her to die.

She didn't need another warning.

She fled, her silk gown whispering against the floor like a snake retreating into grass.

I stood there for three seconds, staring at the door she had disappeared through, my suspicion not fading but deepening, calcifying into certainty.

Then I moved.

The dressing room was cold, . I dismissed the maids before they could fuss with buttons or bows—I had no patience for ceremony when treason was breathing down my neck.

I dressed myself.

I slipped black gloves over my hands, adjusted the wide belt around my waist, and secured the final clasp.

When I opened the chamber doors, Kael was waiting. His face was the color of old ash.

We walked in silence to my office, his boots keeping time with mine, the rhythm wrong—too fast, too urgent.

I stopped at my desk but didn't sit.

"What happened?"

Kael didn't answer immediately. He stepped closer and lowered his voice, as if the walls themselves might be listening.

"Alpha, one of our eastern military outposts has gone silent."

I went still. "Silent?"

"For nearly two hours. No response to the command center. No response to the patrol units sent to establish contact."

My eyes hardened, my wolf rising to the surface with a snarl. "How many soldiers?"

"Three hundred and forty-two."

The number hit me like a physical blow. Three hundred and forty-two of my men. Three hundred and forty-two families waiting for letters that would never come.

"And?" My voice was dangerously soft. "You don't summon me for supply shortages, Kael. You don't interrupt me for every inconvenience."

"Of course not. I dare not." He hesitated, then spat the words like they tasted foul. "The authorization for emergency supplies was denied."

I turned fully to face him. “By whom?”

"The Minister of Healthcare had it rejected."

I stared at him, certain I had misheard. "You mean to tell me a minister rejected a proposal made by my Beta?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Kael's jaw tightened. "The Minister claimed that the balance of need isn't equivalent to the total supply. Indirectly saying that he doesn't have enough for health supplies—for three hundred and forty-two men."

I felt something cold settle in my chest, a rage so absolute it burned like frostbite.

"Arrest him," I said. "Arrest the Minister of Healthcare. Arrest the Minister of Defense—Morgana's father. Arrest anyone who signed off on that denial. Take the authorization from my seal, draw from the emergency funds, and send supplies to that outpost immediately. If those men are dead because some bureaucrat wanted to save coin, I want heads on pikes by nightfall."

Kael bowed, sharp and military. "Yes, Alpha."

He turned to leave, then stopped. "There is one other matter."

I raised an eyebrow, my patience frayed to threads.

"You requested the Omega girl be brought to you. She waits in the eastern receiving room."

I had forgotten I ordered that. In the chaos of treason and silence, I had forgotten the one thing my wolf had not stopped screaming for since the blood moon.

"Bring her," I said. "Now."

_

She entered like a ghost trying not to disturb the air.

Small. Pale. Long dark waves falling over shoulders that trembled beneath the weight of an elegant gown she clearly had not chosen for herself. Delicate features, large soft eyes framed by dark lashes that looked wet—had she been crying? Or was that fear, glittering in the corners like trapped diamonds?

Loose strands of hair rested against her cheeks, making her look fragile, breakable, like something that had already been shattered once and was waiting for the second blow.

Pearls and delicate jewels were woven through her hair, catching candlelight, while long jeweled earrings brushed her neck—markings of possession, not decoration. Someone had dressed her like a doll. Someone had prepared her for me.

The moment I saw her, I rose from my seat.

In the space of a heartbeat, I crossed the room.

She stopped before me, her fingers curling nervously against the fabric of her dress, knuckles white, her gaze fixed firmly on the floor.

"So it's true..." My voice came out rough, ruined already by the sight of her. "You're alive."

I reached for her, my hand closing around her jaw with a grip that was probably too hard, probably painful, but I couldn't gentle it. I couldn't gentle anything with her.

She tried to look away, her eyes darting to the side, her lower lip trembling.

Sobbing.

"Look at me," I commanded.

"Your Majesty..." Her voice was barely a whisper, broken glass in honey. "I'm just a slave... looking at you directly is a punishable offense by death. I can't—"

"I said look at me."

She shook her head, a tear escaping down her cheek.

I snapped.

My other hand shot up, grabbing her face with both palms, forcing her to turn, forcing her eyes to meet mine. "Look at me!"

She lifted her gaze slowly, terrified, her entire body shaking beneath my hands.

I stared into those eyes—green, I realized, not brown, green like forest depths—and felt something inside me crack open, something hungry and ancient and absolutely fucking feral.

I pulled her closer, burying my face in her neck, and inhaled.

*Fuck.*

Rain. Wildflowers. Something else—something that smelled like hope and ruin and the moment before lightning struck. My cock was already hard, straining against my trousers, throbbing with a need that made my vision tunnel.

I dragged my tongue up the column of her throat, tasting salt and fear and that impossible scent that had haunted me for days.

"Your fucking little Omega..." I growled against her skin, my hands sliding down to grip her waist, my thumbs pressing into the soft flesh of her hips. "Driving me nuts, aren't you? You wish for your death, right? That's why you survived? To torment me?"

"No..." she whispered, her voice breaking. "I... I don't."

"You do." I licked her again, long and slow, from the hollow of her throat down to the neckline of her gown, tasting the sweat gathering there, the frantic pulse of her heart. "You want me to kill you. You want me to end this."

"Please..." She was crying now, full tears streaming down her face, her hands coming up to push against my chest—weak, useless, devastating. "I don't want to die..."

I pulled back just enough to look at her, to see the mess she was making of my control, the way she stood there trembling and alive and *mine* in a way that Morgana could never be, that no one could ever be.

My hands moved to the neckline of her gown.

"Strip," I commanded.