People swarmed around, the smell of the market was very thick with leather, roasted chestnuts, spices and perspiration. Shoulder to shoulder they walked, bawling prices, haggling, laughing and cursing each other.
Elara lowered her hooded head. Each step was treacherous. Each breath was temptation.
She had taken her tranquilizers in the morning, as she did every morning. Just in case she had increased the dose twice. her odor was hidden--buried--destroyed. Any Alpha should not see her.
But yet her heart could not decelerate.
Somebody had told her several years ago in her village: suppressants were not all-powerful. They may remove the sting out of her temper, but never remove it altogether. And in a place of Alphas--greedy, huge, carnivorous--there never was safety.
Elara was gripping the little wicker basket between her fingers, which turned white at the knuckles. One or two herbs, a novel knot to her cloak, and away she would go. She would go back to the tranquillity of the cottage and hide another week.
That was the plan.
Until he came.
There was a surge among the people like a wave through a storm. They cleared the way, people spoke very quietly, and some of them, almost against their own will, scrambled out of the way.
Tall. Wide. Dark.
He wore black and had his shoulders bound together with a cloak of wolfs fur. His step was gradual and conscious as that of a hunter who was certain that nothing could stop him.
Kael Draven.
The Alpha King.
Elara was standing motionless and with icy blood.
What was he doing here?
She had read the stories--all had read. The Northern Alpha who ruled the earth with savage skill. The conqueror who took entire packs in his possession. He could make a man naked with his eye, they said, and the most vigorous Alphas too could tremble when they saw him.
And now that eye pricked to attention, and was on her.
Silver eyes. Sharp, unyielding, ravenous.
Almost the knees of Elara gave way. She bent her head down, and drew her hood up till she could no longer see. No. He didn't see her. He doesn't know.
Her suppressants—
Then she sensed it.
The sharp tug of his aura. Crushing. Crashing. As with a tempest pressing on her bosom, And withholding breath from her.
He had smelled her.
The hands of Elara went numb, and the basket slipped out of her fingers. She pulled away, her heart racing up her throat. She turned, and besought to be swallowed up in the press, but the crowd parted-not to her.
For him.
Footsteps were striking the cobblestone, thud, thud, thud. The mob dispersed readily, and a passage was cleared between the hunted and the hunter.
Elara, she said, and her ribs were filling with fear. Move. Run. Now.
But her legs would not obey. She was held there by the lead of his presence, the rope of his Alpha aura. Her frame failed her, and trembled, not with fright alone but with something still more perfidious.
In a few moments he was upon him.
Large-shouldered and towering over her. All of his angles appeared to contain power, authority, threat.
Close up, his smell hit her like burning--smoke, pine, steel. Male. Alpha. It wound round her nerves, and buried itself deep, pulling at impulses she had long repressed.
"You."
The word was vulgar, low, as rock rubbing along stone.
Elara opened his mouth and nothing came out. The words choked out, and she shook her head.
"M-me?"
His head turned, his eyes were drawn up. He bent over so near that she could feel the breath of his warm breath upon her ear. He was sucking in the air, strongly, slowly, like a mouth that had tasted the wrong thing.
Drawing back, his lips curved in to a sort of growl and a smirk.
"Mine."
One word destroyed her.
Gasps spread throughout the marketplace. Whispers were fire-spurts.
An Omega. He'd found an Omega.
Elara shuddered and shook her head. "N-no. You're wrong."
Silver eyes glared even hotter, brighter, pinning her in place.
Refuse to recognise the bond? His voice was thunder and it cut the air with its sharpness.
She panted. She had to refuse it. She had lived her entire life in the shadow concealing, struggling, repressing. To be characterized by an Alpha--by this Alpha--would be to be in bondage.
But her body betrayed her. Her heat began crawling under her skin, her pulse jumped a beat too high, her smell began to ooze out even with the numbing advantage of the suppressant.
Kael opened his eyes and his jaw worked. His hand shot forward, and caught her by the wrist. His fingers were gripping, firm without being crushing, and his thumb followed along the inner edge of her wrist where her pulse raged painfully.
Elara's breath caught.
"You sense it too," he growled. "The pull. The connection. Don't lie to me, Omega."
Omega.
The term was just a death sentence to him. People were already staring at the crowd. She was able to hear their murmurs, the shock, the wonder.
"No." It was hard to get out, and she was trembling. "I don't belong to you."
A deadly cold glint came into his eyes. He got close enough to have his mouth an inch away from her ear.
Wrong, he growled possessively. Since the time I smelled you It was all over with you.
She could feel her heart beating so strongly that she was sure her chest was going to explode. All instincts cried to make an escape, to resist, to say no.
Another, more antique and savage, was whispering a truth which she could not repress.
The connection was real.
Elara tore her wrist open, desperately in shock, and drew away, pushing space between them. Her hood came down in the swing, and dropped aside to reveal her face.
His cut breath told her. He had seen her now.
The mouth of Elara cracked.
"I will never be yours."
The first time Kael had smirked out of his face. His face grew dark, and dangerous; but in the storm of his eyes was another--obsession.
He took one step nearer, and his voice forbade her blood.
"You can struggle against it, little Omega… but I will find you. Repeatedly. Until you'll at last embrace what's already destined in our blood."
Elara spun around, basket abandoned, and ran through the crowd.
But even as her feet propelled her away, her heart thudded with fear… and something much, much worse.
Desire.