Kaelen scoffed, shaking his head. “Not that it’ll save her.”
Her fingers curled slightly against his chest. “Castiel didn’t tell me everything, but I know this—he’s not working alone. The coup was just a means to an end. He wants to dismantle the entire caste system, and he believes Omegas are the key.”
“What does he plan to do with them?”
A shadow flickered over her features. “Up till the end, he wouldn’t say.”
Kaelen’s expression darkened. “Only that it’s something monstrous. So monstrous that, in his mind, death at sea was kinder than letting you face it.”
Alarik’s stomach twisted. He thought he’d burned through all his rage tonight, but somehow, hearing it made it surge back tenfold.
His brother exhaled slowly. “Whatever it is, we’ll discover it, and deal with it piece by piece.”
He nodded, still trying to push down the sickening weight in his chest. His hands ached to keep her in his arms, to comfort her, to dosomething—but she’d need space to process, to breathe, not smothered in the aftermath of a fight.
So he watched her instead, taking in the subtle shifts of her posture, the way her fingers trembled slightly when she ran them over her wrist, over and over.
The way she swallowed, as though her throat was suddenly dry.
The way she exhaled slowly, as if steadying herself, but?—
Her scentchanged.
At first, he barely noticed, still too caught up in the night’s events. But then it grew, sweet and potent and headier than before, curling through the air with a warmth that didn’t exist moments ago.
Alarik’s pulse stuttered.
He turned to her fully now, his senses sharpening.
“Reiya?”
She met his gaze, her blue eyes lambent with a fevered glaze.
“I—I’m alright,” she said, but the hitch in her voice gave her away.
Beside him, Kaelen stiffened.
Alarik didn’t need to glance at his brother to know he’d caught it too—the subtle shift in her scent, the faint tremor in her hands, the delicate flush creeping up her neck, blooming across her cheeks.
Recognition slammed into him like a fist to the chest.
Her Heat had arrived.
She seemed to realize it at the same moment. Her lips parted, sharp breath shuddering through her as her knees wavered, balance faltering for the first time all night.
He moved without thinking, hands closing around her arms to steady her—but the moment his skin met hers, a jolt ripped through him. His body tensed, need surging up with feral force, instinct roaring awake.
Her eyes fluttered shut, a soft gasp slipping past her lips as she pressed closer, needing him. He bit back a curse, every muscle straining with the sudden, brutal urge to drag her against him, to pin her to the cave wall, to feel the clutch of her thighs and the desperate clench of her body around him.
But not here. Not like this. Not in some barren cave, with cold stone at her back and no softness to catch her.
Kaelen’s voice cut through the haze, tight and low. “The strain from the abduction—it must’ve brought it on.”
Alarik’s gut clenched. Of course.
The kidnapping. The fear. The exhaustion.
She’d been running on sheer will, pushing herself past every limit, and now that the danger had passed, her body was seizing control—dragging her under.