Enzo
The Great Hall felt like it was shrinking. The air, once filled with the familiar, boring scents of sycophants and old stone, had been poisoned by something—or healed by it. I couldn't tell which.
My wolf was pacing. Not the usual, restless pacing of a predator in a cage, but a frantic, desperate search. Where is she? Where did the scent go?
"Enzo! You cannot be serious!"
Zora's voice was a jagged glass shard, tearing through my concentration. She stepped into my line of sight, her face twisted in an ugly mask of Beta fury. She smelled of sour cinnamon and desperation. It was a scent that usually made me want to snap her neck just for the silence.
"The Council is staring," she hissed, grabbing my forearm. Her nails dug into the fabric of my sleeve. "You just humiliated the woman who is supposed to be your Queen for a Null. A servant who cleans the grease from the kitchen stones! Have you finally lost your mind to the Grip?"
I looked down at her hand. Then I looked at her.
I didn't use a Command. I didn't need to. The sheer weight of my intent made her hand drop as if she'd been burned.
"The Grip is my burden to carry, Zora," I said, my voice vibrating with a growl I couldn't quite suppress. "And my mind is my own. Do not presume to tell me who is beneath my notice."
"She's a spy," Zora spat, her eyes darting to the door where Dash had led Anaelia away. "She's been hiding something. No Null has a pulse like that. No Null makes a High Alpha forget his own gala. I'll have her questioned. By the time I'm done with her—"
I moved so fast the humans in the room wouldn't have seen it. I was in her space, my hand hovering inches from her throat. The room went dead silent. The Obsidian Council members—Cal and Idris among them—shifted uncomfortably, their hands moving toward their ceremonial daggers.
"If you touch her," I whispered, my voice a low, lethal promise, "if you even breathe the same air as that tower tonight, I will forget our families have an alliance. I will forget you are a Beta of rank. Do I make myself clear?"
Zora paled, her scent turning to pure, acrid fear. She nodded once, a jerky, terrified movement.
"Good."
I turned on my heel, ignoring the whispers that broke out like wildfire behind me. I didn't care about the Council. I didn't care about the succession. For the first time in a decade, the screaming in my head—the "voices" of a thousand ancestors demanding blood, the roar of the Feral Fever—had dimmed to a hum.
All because of a girl who smelled like lightning and lilies.
I stormed out of the hall and toward the North Tower. Every step I took, the "Grip" clawed at me. It felt like hot lead in my veins, a pressure behind my eyes that made me want to tear the world apart. It was the madness that took every Alpha eventually. The lack of an Omega meant we were all ticking time bombs.
But as I reached the heavy door of the guest suite, the pressure began to lift.
I dismissed Dash with a sharp nod. He looked like he wanted to say something—likely a warning about the Council or the girl's mysterious biology—but he knew better. He vanished into the shadows of the corridor.
I stood at the door for a long minute, my hand shaking. I was the High Alpha of the Iron Dominion. I had killed men twice my size. I had led wars. And I was afraid to open a door.
When I finally stepped inside, the scent hit me again.
It was stronger now. The lye and the floor wax were gone, replaced by heavy jasmine and cedar, but beneath it... beneath it was her. It was a scent so pure it felt like a physical weight in my lungs. It was the scent of a fated mate.
But that was impossible. Omegas were dead. Extinct.
Then I saw her.
She was standing in the center of the room, draped in silk that was far too fine for a servant, looking like a moonbeam captured in a stone cage. She looked fragile, terrified, and yet... she was looking at me. Not with the blind worship of the Betas or the greed of the Council, but with the raw, honest fear of a prey animal that was also, somehow, my equal.
I walked toward her, my wolf screaming CLAIM. PROTECT. HIDE. When I took her hand, it was so small in mine. She told me I was terrifying. She was right. I was a monster on the verge of losing my soul.
I pulled her hand to my chest, letting her feel the riot of my heart. I leaned my forehead against hers, closing my eyes.
The silence was absolute. The madness was gone. For this one moment, I wasn't a King or a beast.
"You're shaking," I whispered, and I realized I was holding onto her as if she were the only thing keeping me from drowning.
"You're terrifying," she said.
"Then we are both terrified," I replied. I felt her warmth, her pulse under my palm. I could smell the truth now. The perfume couldn't hide it.
I pulled back just enough to look into her eyes—eyes that were wider and deeper than any I'd ever seen. "The Council thinks you're a Null. Zora thinks you're a spy."
I leaned down, my lips brushing the shell of her ear as a low, possessive growl rumbled in my chest.
"But you're an Omega, aren't you, Anaelia? You're the miracle everyone says is a myth."
I felt her entire body go rigid. She tried to pull her hand away, but I tightened my grip—not to hurt her, but because if I let go, I knew the screaming in my head would come back, and I might never find my way out of the dark again.
"Tell me," I commanded, my voice cracking with a vulnerability I hadn't felt since I was a boy. "Tell me you're real."