BALINAR;
The room still smells like him.
Faintly… barely… but enough to make my teeth grind together as I step inside.
Dust settles where his knees once touched the ground…
The walls keep the echoes of his breath trapped in their veins and they release it as I walk in.
Even the stones seem to remember the tremor of his voice when he used to answer me quietly, stubbornly… beautifully.
I close the door behind me and, for a moment, I just… breathe.
The air is stale. Cold from disuse. But beneath all that, there is that familiar, haunting fragrance…
The scent of the only Omega who ever dared to defy me.
Elien.
My fingertips trail along the edge of the table where he used to kneel, his wrists chained, his head bowed only because I pressed it down.
Not because he was weak.
Not because he feared me.
But because he refused to break unless I forced him… He never bowed to me. Not willingly at least…
He was a defiant little thing. A temptation I could never rid myself of…
