Omega's Revenge

CHAPTER FOUR

Chapter Four

Darius

It was a low sound.

The growl of a wolf pushed past its breaking point.

My wolf snarled in annoyance, not liking the challenge — and before my mind had formed a response, I had closed the distance between us, shoving her toward the wall.

She reacted faster than someone with a wounded side had any right to be, ducking the first reach with her whole body and putting the table between us.

Papers fell to the floor. She glared at me.

"Don't," she muttered, but her eyes glowed, the beast in her threatening to break free.

"Don't," I growled, my wolf rising to the surface, a hazy rage filling my gut as my teeth sharpened and lengthened.

I went around the table.

She moved in the opposite direction, putting a chair between us, and for a moment we just did the same thing, evading each other — reading the other's moves and adjusting to them.

She was good at this.

But I was better.

The room got small too fast. I was already bursting out of my clothes, fur running over the back of my legs and hands.

I caught her at the edge of the table and slammed her into the wall — her wrist in my hand, my forearm across her shoulders, her back against the stone before either of us had fully finished moving.

She twisted hard, pushing back against my forearm with her whole frame, teeth bared, grey eyes wide and furious. She got one hand free and drove an elbow back into my gut.

I would have been worried if I wasn't halfway shifted.

For half a second my grip on her wrist loosened — an unwanted reaction to the warmth of her skin against mine — and I tightened it again immediately, furious at myself.

My wolf surged.

No one fought me like this in a long time — not even the nobles who challenged my authority in court, who folded the moment I stepped toward them.

And there was something else.

This close, with no space between us, the smell of her reached me past everything — past the blood and the dust and the scent of the borderland fog still sitting on her clothes — and underneath all of it was something my wolf recognized before I did.

Arousal.

It made me angrier.

I leaned down until my voice was close to her ear, dropping into the register that wasn't quite human.

"Submit," I growled hoarsely, "or I cannot guarantee you'll live long enough to see the Valens answer for a single thing."

Her breathing changed, her body loosening from the stiff way she held herself against me.

Her wolf was still at the surface.

I held tighter.

"I am not asking," I said.

Her chin dropped — not in full submission. Just enough.

"Will you help me?" she whispered softly, her voice echoing in the quiet room filled with only our heavy breaths.

My wolf was still warm from the fight.

I was still furious. And she still smelled like something I had no name for and no intention of examining.

"It all depends on you," I growled.

She lifted her eyes to mine.

Grey and sharp and utterly, infuriatingly unafraid.

And then she submitted — fully, this time.

Her head bowed, the line of her shoulders dropping in the way that had me pulling her closer without realizing it.

Heat rose in my gut and filled my veins, warmth moving through me like something snapping into place.

I released her — because another second of her pulse under my hand, her scent that close, and I wasn't certain what my wolf would do next.

She straightened the moment I let go. She rolled her shoulder once and turned to face me like nothing had happened.

"Well?" she said.

I looked at her.

She looked exactly as she had when she walked in — bloodied, composed, like the last ten minutes had been a mild inconvenience she was already moving past.

Something moved in my chest. I looked away from her first.

"Tonight," I said. "You tell me everything. Names. Evidence. The full account. Nothing held back."

"And the Valens?"

"If what you bring me holds, you'll have what you want."

She studied me the way she'd studied everything in this room.

Then she nodded. Once. Not gratitude. Not relief.

Acknowledgment.

She opened her mouth to speak.

The window behind her exploded inward.

Glass and cold air hit the room at the same time — then the whistle of something fast and sharp cutting through both. I was already moving — my wolf carrying me forward as my body followed, crossing the chamber in two strides and pulling her down behind the table as the bolt buried itself in the stone wall where she had been standing.

Silence.

Her breathing was fast where her head pressed against my shoulder.

I looked at the bolt. Black-shafted. No markings. The angle told me the shot had come from the east wing — from inside the palace.

"Are you hit?" I said.

"No." Her voice was steady.

She hadn't made a sound.

I held her there — her back against my chest, my arm across her, the both of us low behind the table.

The instinct to mark her stopped me cold.

I shoved her away and stood before my wolf finished forming the thought.

She stood with glass in her hair, looking at the crossbow bolt in my wall like it was a minor irritation.

She looked at the bolt, then back at me.

"Still think there's nothing left of the Valens worth destroying?" she said.

I didn't answer.

Three knocks landed against the chamber door.

The pattern belonged to the closest of my circles in my pack — reserved for things that couldn't wait for a better moment.

I crossed to the door. He was already holding the dispatch before it fully opened, his face arranged in that specific careful expression that meant the contents were the kind that changed things.

"Intercepted an hour ago," he said, quietly enough that his voice didn't carry. "Addressed to Lord Cassian Vire. Originated inside the border territories, we believe."

I took it. Broke the seal.

One line, written in a hand I didn't recognize.

The girl knows. Move before the wedding.

I read it twice and folded it.

Behind me, Lyra had not moved. When I turned, she was watching my face with those grey eyes, reading whatever she could find there.

"What is it?" she asked.

I held her gaze.

"It seems," I said, "that someone else is already very interested in what you know."

"Who?"

"Someone who wants you dead before you can tell me."

"They can get in line," she huffed.