Page 55 of Claimed By the Wolf Prince
My omega reads the new alpha signature and produces a fresh spike of slick so fast my knees buckle. I lock them and breathe through my mouth because the alternative is going to the ground on a command ridge in front of every wolf I'm supposed to be leading.
He is the wolf I was almost traded to. The wolf whose bed I would be in right now if Torben hadn't walked into Stellan's study and committed treason to keep me.
Grimnir scans the ridge, and his gaze finds me. Even at this distance I can see the predatory satisfaction that reshapes his posture, the straightening of a wolf who has located what he came for.
"Torben!" His voice carries across the valley with the force of an alpha projecting dominance, and the sound is thick with contempt. "You're guarding my property. Step aside and I'll only break the arm you swing with."
He delivers the wordpropertycasually, the way a man describes a horse he's bought sight unseen. This is the wolf who knew what I was before the exposure, the wolf who negotiated a diplomatic mating to quietly acquire a breedable omega. And the word he chose for me is the word that makes the contrast with Torben sharp enough to cut. Torben said'just you'like it wasthe hardest thing he'd ever admitted. Torben touched me this morning with hands that shook from the effort of being gentle when every instinct in him was screaming to bite down and claim.
Below me, Torben doesn't answer with words. He transforms.
Silvery mist swirls around him, and the wolf that hits the ground is bigger than the last time I saw him in this form. My proximity did this, reshaped his biology, unlocked the alpha DNA that was coded into his blood and waiting for the right trigger. The wolf moving through the tree line toward Grimnir is the physical manifestation of what my scent built.
The possessive satisfaction of watching my wolf engage the alpha who just called me property is fierce enough to cut through the biological noise for a full, clarifying second. I just thought the wordsmy wolf.I tuck the observation away for later.
Grimnir transforms to meet him, and the Ashvald alpha's wolf form matches the human: scarred, massive, carrying the brute authority of a wolf who settles every dispute with his jaws. The two wolves collide in the tree line, a tangle of fur and teeth and snarling that I can hear from the ridge, and the valley floor shakes with the impact.
Grimnir goes for the throat immediately, the dominant alpha's finishing move, meant to end fights fast and establish hierarchy through overwhelming force. Torben slips the attack and drives his shoulder into Grimnir's ribs, using the larger wolf's momentum against him. They separate and circle and collide again, and this time Torben's jaws find the back of Grimnir's neck, the submission hold, the grip that saysyield or die.
Grimnir doesn't yield. He twists free with a roar that echoes off the valley walls and launches himself at Torben with theabsolute commitment of a wolf who has never lost a dominance fight.
Torben takes the hit. He plants his legs and absorbs the full force of Grimnir's charge, and the impact drives him back through the undergrowth but doesn't put him down. He digs in and pushes back, and the struggle between them becomes a grinding, primal contest of force and will, two wolves locked together in the dirt with their teeth bared and their muscles straining and neither one willing to break first.
Watching two wolves fight over me while my body weeps with omega biology is the most disorienting experience of my life, and my life has included hiding my designation through a war council and climbing an unclimbable cliff in the dark. The heat pulses at the base of my spine with each impact, each snarl, each surge of alpha pheromones that floods the valley and soaks into my unprotected biology.
My thighs are wet. My skin burns. The omega screams at me to get down off this ridge and go to the alpha who's winning, and the strategist screams back that I'm commanding a battle and the biology can take a number.
Torben breaks through.
I don't see the exact moment the balance shifts. One second they're locked, and the next Torben has Grimnir on his side in the mud with his jaws clamped on the soft underside of the Ashvald alpha's throat, the hold that turns a dominance fight into an execution if the teeth close.
Grimnir goes still. The massive body stops fighting, and the sudden absence of resistance is more dramatic than the combat. The valley seems to hold its breath.
Torben holds the grip. He doesn't close his jaws. He holds, and the holding is the message:I could. I'm choosing not to. Remember who showed you mercy.
Then he releases and steps back.
Grimnir scrambles to his feet. From the ridge I can see the coiled tension in his body, the readiness to lunge again, the Ashvald alpha poised between death and humiliation. Then he turns and runs, and the retreat starts with him and cascades outward through his wolves. I watch it spread like a wave through the tree line, the formation collapsing from the center as each Ashvald wolf reads the outcome and breaks.
I watch them go. The mountain stretches out below me, the timber dark in the fading light, the valley floor churned with the evidence of combat. My hands are shaking. My thighs are shaking. Everything below my waist is slick and hot and completely inappropriate for a war counselor standing on a command ridge surveying the aftermath of a territorial defense.
On the fortress wall behind me, I catch a glimpse of Erla standing at the battlements, her white hair catching the last of the light. The elder who watched me pitch the holdouts in the barracks has now watched me command the battle from the ridge, and the stillness in her posture tells me the recognition from earlier has deepened into something that doesn't need words. She came to see what her dead friend's daughter would do with the truth. She saw.
Iris's words return with a clarity that belongs to this moment and no other:'I stopped surviving it and started choosing it.'
I have survived captivity. Survived the exposure. Survived the destruction of the identity my mother spent her life building for me. I've been surviving since I was fourteen years old, and the survival has been relentless and exhausting and necessary, and it got me here, to this ridge, to this battle I designed and won, to this fortress full of wolves who know what I am and fought because of what I can do.
The surviving got me here. It doesn't have to be all I do.
Below me, silvery mist swirls through the tree line as Torben transforms back to human form. He stands in the churnedmud of the battlefield, naked, the combat transformation having taken his clothing the way it always does. Blood from the gash across his ribs runs dark against the muscle of his chest. His shoulders heave with exertion.
He doesn't move to cover himself or find clothing because he's looking up at the ridge, looking for me, and the alpha pheromones rolling off his bare skin are the strongest I've felt from him, sharpened by combat and victory and the territorial imperative of a wolf who just put an alpha on his back to keep what's his.
My omega hits its knees. The biological response to the sight of him, bloody and bare and victorious, slams through me with a force that makes my vision blur. The flush that's been building across my chest spreads to my throat, my face, the insides of my thighs. The slick between my legs is thick enough to run, and the heat at the base of my spine surges from a simmer to something that will become ungovernable within hours.
My body doesn't care about the battle, the politics, the war council, or the carefully maintained distinction between omega and woman. My body looks at the naked alpha standing in the mud with blood on his hands and saysgo to him, right now, let him put you on the ground and finish what the biology started.
The woman agrees. That's the part that matters.
