Chapter Seven

His words hung in the cold war room like a freshly drawn blade.

“They want me to execute you for it,” Zion repeated, his thumb still resting against the curve of my jaw, his thumb pressing just hard enough to feel the frantic, rabbit-fast thud of my pulse.

My chest heaved against his heavy chest armor. Outside, the distant horns blared again—a low, mournful drone across the frozen valley—but inside the chamber, the silence was suffocating.

"If you know the banner is a fake, why lock down the keep?" I demanded, my voice sharp despite the adrenaline flooding my throat. "Why drag me into a war room surrounded by generals who want my head on a spike?"

"Because half those generals take silver from Silas," Zion growled, his obsidian eyes burning into mine with an intense, unyielding heat. "And the other half are stupid enough to believe whatever flag is flying across the river. If I don't give them a lockdown and an army on the march, they'll call it treason and try to take my crown before nightfall."

"So I'm your shield," I rasped, glaring up at him. My wolf clawed at the inside of my ribs, furious at the realization, furious at being a pawn on his map. "You're using me to keep your Council from rebelling."

"No," Zion said softly.

He didn't release my jaw. Instead, his other hand came up, wrapping around my waist and pulling me so close there wasn't a breath of air left between us. His heat burned through my clothes, thick, suffocating, and terrifyingly warm.

"You still think this is a contract, Emerald," he whispered, his low voice vibrating straight through my ribcage. "You still think you bargained your way into my tower with a broken knee and a bleeding palm."

"I did bargain my way in!" I spat, my hands slamming against his breastplate to push him back. He didn't budge an inch. "I signed your blood-pact! I traded my body for my father's exile!"

"You didn't trade anything," Zion growled, his dark aura flaring outward—not to crush me, but wrapping around us like an impenetrable wall of shadow. "The moment your palm met mine in the grand hall, the moment our blood hit that silver bowl... your wolf didn't submit to my dominance. She matched it."

My breath hitched. My hands froze against his cold steel armor.

"You think I didn't feel it?" Zion leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, his scorching breath making my skin prickle. "A normal Omega would have been forced to her knees by my mark. Her wolf would have broken under the weight of my power. But you? Your blood burned through my veins like liquid sun. It nearly blew my own wolf out of his chest."

A cold, sharp shockwave raced down my spine, turning my limbs to ice.

He knew.

He had known from the very first night. From the exact second the binding pact flared crimson between our palms. All the interrogation, all the threats about my silver ring, all the dark glares in the high tower—it hadn't been an Alpha trying to figure out a suspicious captive.

It had been an Alpha watching a hidden predator pretend to be prey.

"You knew..." I whispered, my voice barely a thread in the quiet room. "You knew I was a Supreme Alpha."

"I knew you were the rarest, most dangerous bloodline left in this realm," Zion corrected, his dark eyes locking back onto mine, pitch-black and burning with a terrifying, possessive fire. "A Supreme Alpha carrying a suppressed dormant mark. Do you have any idea what Elder Silas would have done if he felt a fraction of what I felt when our blood touched?"

My jaw locked, the sheer weight of his words crashing over me.

If the Council had known... if Silas had sensed that the disgraced daughter of Marcus Kirby carried the extinct, royal Supreme Alpha line... they wouldn't have debated my father's treason. They would have chained me in the dark, harvested my blood, or executed me on the spot to ensure the Kirby line never rose again.

"He would have slaughtered you on that marble floor before the ink on the parchment was dry," Zion murmured, his fingers tightening on my waist, pulling me so hard against him I could feel the thunderous, heavy thud of his own heart beating against his ribs.

"So you locked me in the high tower," I rasped, my mind spinning as months of suspicion and fear suddenly rearranged themselves into a terrifying new picture. "You put guards at my door. You banned Sylvia and the Elders from stepping near my stairs."

"I put my six most loyal officers outside your room," Zion said, his voice dropping into a dark, rough rumble that sent a strange, electric shiver straight through my core. "I told the entire keep you were off-limits under pain of death. I let them think I was keeping a stubborn surrogate caged."

My jaw dropped as the final piece of the puzzle slammed into place, the truth unravelling in the shadows between us.

Zion tilted my head back, his dark eyes consuming my entire vision, leaving no room for doubt, no room for my carefully built walls.

"I didn't keep you here to rot, Emerald," Zion admitted, his voice laced with a raw, brutal honesty that shattered every defense I had left. "I kept you here so the Council wouldn't kill you."