The Cursed Omega's Revenge

Chapter Fourteen

GRAY

The bell tower stairs groan beneath my weight, each step a small betrayal announcing my presence. But I can't stop climbing, drawn by the inexorable pull that's been growing stronger each day—a gravitational force centered on one golden-eyed omega who refuses to break.

I find her silhouetted against starlight, perched on the window ledge like she's contemplating flight. The moon paints her skin in shades of amber and shadow, highlighting the elegant line of her throat, the sharp wings of her collarbones visible above her threadbare dress. Wind plays with escaped strands of her hair, and for a moment she looks mythical—something wild that accidentally took human form.

"You shouldn't be here." Her voice carries bone-deep exhaustion, but she doesn't turn. Always knows when it's me, the same way I can find her by scent alone in a compound of hundreds.

"Neither should you." I duck beneath ancient beams that remember when this bell called wolves to worship. Now it's abandoned, forgotten—perfect for clandestine meetings that taste of danger. "Hector woke up an hour ago. He's... unwell."

A smile ghosts across her face, there and gone like heat lightning. "Shame."

"Keeps muttering about silver fire in his veins. About omega bitches who need to learn their place." I move closer, each step deliberate, watching how her shoulders tense and relax as I approach. "You wouldn't know anything about that."

"Must have been the moonshine. Heard it was a bad batch."

She finally turns, and the sight of fresh bruises painting her throat purple-black makes my wolf test every chain. In the moonlight, she's devastating—all sharp angles and hidden softness, lean muscle and fragile bones, strength and vulnerability in a package that makes my hands ache to touch.

"Let me see." The words emerge rough as gravel.

"I'm fine."

"You're never fine." I close the distance between us, and her scent hits full force—lightning before rain, sorrow aged into determination, and something silvery-sweet that makes my head swim. "You just pretend better than most."

Her chin lifts, defiant even now. "What do you want, Gabriel?"

What I want. Such a simple question with such a complicated answer. I want to paint over every bruise with my mouth until she forgets anyone else ever touched her. Want to feed her from my own hands until those sharp bones soften. Want to discover every sound she makes when pleasure replaces pain.

"This."

I cup her face between my palms, feel her pulse flutter hummingbird-fast beneath my thumbs. Her golden eyes go wide, pupils dilating until only a ring of amber remains. Those lips—bruised and bitten but still defiant—part on a breath that sounds like surrender.

"We can't—"

"Tell me to stop." My thumb traces her bottom lip, still swollen from Holly's fist, and she shivers. "Tell me to leave."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to." The admission falls between us like a match in gasoline. "Because you're all I think about when the pain stops long enough to think."

The honesty of it staggers me. I lean closer, giving her time to remember why this is dangerous, why an omega and an investigator—

She rises up on her toes, closes the distance, and thoughts scatter like startled birds.

The first brush of lips is electric—soft, questioning, a hypothesis tested with scientific precision. She tastes like moonlight and secrets, like the lightning her scent promises, with an underlying sweetness that makes my wolf surge against his chains. Then her hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer, and tentative becomes desperate.

I lift her from the ledge in one motion, spin us so her back meets the ancient stone wall. She gasps into my mouth, the sound shooting straight to my groin. Her legs wrap around my waist with surprising strength, and suddenly she's pressed against me everywhere—soft heat and lean muscle, delicate bones and iron will, silk skin barely concealed by worn cotton.

"Samira." Her name tears from my throat as I trail kisses down her jaw, finding that spot where pulse meets collar that makes her whole body arch. She tastes of salt and sweetness, of endurance and need, with that strange silver note that grows stronger with her arousal.

"Don't stop." Her fingers thread through my hair, nails scraping my scalp in a way that makes me growl against her throat. "Please. I've never—no one's ever—just don't stop."

As if I could. As if anything short of the compound burning could make me release this woman who's haunted my days and invaded my dreams. I press her harder against the wall, feel stone bite into my palms where I brace myself, careful of her even lost in this haze of want.

She shifts against me, seeking friction, and her dress rides up to reveal thighs that tell stories in scars. I run my hands up those thighs, tracing damage with reverent fingers, and she moans into my mouth—a sound of pure need that snaps what's left of my control.

I claim her mouth like I've wanted to since that first morning, since I watched her serve breakfast with empty eyes and steady hands. Deep, demanding, pouring weeks of frustrated want into the slide of tongue against tongue. She meets me with equal fervor, nipping at my bottom lip hard enough to sting, then soothing it with her tongue in a way that makes me see stars.

"Wanted this." She gasps when we break for air, her chest heaving against mine. "Even when I was empty, even when everything was numb, I wanted you. Wanted to know what your hands would feel like without medical supplies between us."

I silence her with another kiss, can't bear to hear her reference that hollowness. Not when she's so vibrantly alive in my arms, meeting passion with passion, making soft sounds that drive me to the edge of reason. My hand slides higher on her thigh, finds the edge of practical cotton underwear worn soft with age.

She freezes for a heartbeat, old trauma warring with new desire. I start to pull back, but then she's pressing into my touch, head falling back against the wall with a soft thud.

"Yes." Single word carrying the weight of trust I haven't earned. "Please. I need—I don't know what I need but please—"

I trace the edge of fabric, feel her tremble like a leaf in a storm. She's so responsive, every touch drawing out gasps and shivers that make me drunk on the power of giving her pleasure instead of pain. The cotton is damp, evidence of her arousal that makes my mouth water.

"So wet." Wonder and worship combined. "Is this for me?"

"Only you." Breathless confession. "Never felt—my body never—god, Gabriel, please—"

I brush my thumb over her center through the cotton, light as butterfly wings, and she cries out. The sound echoes in the bell tower, bouncing off stone that hasn't heard anything but wind in years. Her hips buck, seeking more pressure, and I give it to her, circling the spot that makes her whole body string tight.

"Sensitive." I murmur against her throat, feeling her pulse race beneath my lips.

"Everything's more. Since the injection." She's panting, rolling her hips in a rhythm that speaks of instinct, not experience. "Like my nerves are raw. Like—oh god, right there, don't stop, please—"

I've found the spot that makes her whole body sing. I focus there, alternating pressure and rhythm while she falls apart in my arms. She's incandescent like this, all that careful control shattered, revealing the fire she's kept banked for twenty years of survival.

"Look at me." Command wrapped in plea.

Her eyes fly open, molten gold in the moonlight. The vulnerability there—trust and need and something deeper that might be recognition—nearly brings me to my knees. This woman who's been brutalized, degraded, treated as less than nothing, is giving herself to me with complete abandon.

"You're beautiful." The words aren't enough, could never be enough. "So f*****g beautiful it hurts to look at you."

She laughs, breathless and disbelieving. "I'm scarred. Underfed. Broken."

"Perfect." I press harder, feel her climbing. "Strong. Incredible. Mine."

The last word slips out without permission, possessive and primal. Her eyes flare wide, then she's dragging my head down, kissing me like the world's ending. I slip my finger beneath the cotton, find slick heat that makes my vision blur. She's so wet, so ready, and when I slide one finger inside her, we both groan.

"Gabriel." My name becomes a prayer as I work her with my hand, thumb on that sensitive bundle of nerves while my finger explores virgin territory. She's so tight, muscles clenching around the intrusion. "I'm—something's—I feel—"

"Let go." I curl my finger, finding that spot that makes her eyes roll back. "I've got you. Let go for me."

She shatters with a cry that probably carries to the main house, body bowing off the wall, internal muscles clamping down on my finger in rhythmic waves. I swallow her cries with my mouth, work her through it, marveling at the trust of this gift. Her first orgasm, and she gave it to me in a bell tower with danger all around.

She slumps against me, boneless and trembling. I carefully withdraw my hand, and she whimpers at the loss. Without thinking, I bring my finger to my mouth, taste her essence. Lightning and silver and woman—she tastes like everything I never knew I needed.

Her eyes track the movement, and fresh heat blooms in those golden depths. "That's... is that normal?"

"Nothing about this is normal." I gather her close, turn so my back's to the wall and she's cradled in my lap. We're both breathing hard, and I'm painfully aroused, but this—holding her as she comes back to herself—is almost better than my own release would be.

"I didn't know." She presses her face into my neck, lips moving against my skin as she speaks. "Didn't know my body could feel like that. They always said I was broken, defective. But with you..."

"You're perfect." I stroke her back, learning the knobs of her spine through thin fabric. "They lied to keep you down, to keep you from knowing your own power."

She pulls back to study my face, and I see wheels turning behind those golden eyes. "You talk like you know things. About me. About what I am."

Dangerous territory. I trace her bruised lip, buying time. "I know you're extraordinary. Know you're worth more than this entire compound combined."

"Pretty words." But she's smiling, the first real smile I've seen from her. It transforms her face, hints at who she might have been in a kinder world. "I still don't know what you really want from me."

Everything. The word burns, but I swallow it. Instead, I shift her in my lap, let her feel the evidence of what she does to me. Her eyes go wide, and she rocks experimentally against me, drawing a groan from deep in my chest.

"You want me." Wonder in her voice, like it's inconceivable that anyone would desire her.

"Since the moment I saw you." Truth stripped bare. "Even before my wolf recognized what you are to me."

She stills, those clever fingers that had been mapping my chest through my shirt pausing. "What am I to you?"

The question hangs between us, heavy with possibilities I can't voice. Not yet. Not when telling her the truth—about her parents, about what she is, about the mate bond—could get her killed.

"More than I can say." I catch her hand, press it over my racing heart. "More than you're ready to hear. But when this is over—"

Footsteps on the stairs below, heavy and purposeful. We freeze, her still straddling my lap, both of us disheveled and reeking of arousal. I shift her behind me, placing my body between her and whoever's coming.

The footsteps pause halfway up, then retreat. Someone deciding the climb isn't worth it, or perhaps sensing the danger of interrupting an Alpha on the edge of claiming.

"I should go." She extracts herself from my hold with obvious reluctance, straightening her dress with shaking hands. In the moonlight, her lips are swollen from my kisses, her skin flushed with satisfaction. She looks thoroughly debauched, and my wolf preens at the sight.

I catch her hand as she moves past, pull her back for one more kiss. Softer this time, promise rather than passion, but she melts into it, opening for me with sweet surrender.

"Be careful." I murmur against her lips. "Hector won't forget what happened, even if he can't remember clearly. He'll be looking for someone to blame."

"I know." She touches my face with wondering fingers, tracing my jaw, my lips. "Thank you. For seeing me as more than mud. For making me feel..."

"Alive?"

"Human." The word falls between us, weighted with years of being treated as less. "For the first time in so long, I feel human."

Then she's gone, leaving me hard and aching and completely destroyed. I sit in the bell tower until my body calms, until I can think past the taste of her, the phantom pressure of her thighs around my waist, the sound of her coming apart in my arms.

My wolf paces, confused and elated in equal measure. He knows she's ours but can't understand why we didn't claim her fully. Why we let her walk away unmarked.

Soon, I promise him. The auction's in three days. Then we spring the trap, burn this place to the ground, and claim what's ours in fire and freedom.

The walk back to our quarters feels endless, each step away from her a small betrayal. I find my brothers awake and waiting, and I know from their expressions that I'm not hiding anything.

"You smell like omega." Maddox's voice carefully neutral, but objects around him tremble with suppressed energy.

"And arousal. And... satisfaction." Paxton adds, judgment clear in every word.

"It's complicated."

"It's dangerous." Maddox rises, power crackling around him like static. "If Remus finds out you're involved with her—with Liwon's daughter—"

"He won't."

"And if he does?" Paxton presses. "If he discovers you're compromised? That you're f*****g the daughter of the man whose murder he helped orchestrate?"

The crude word makes me bare teeth. "I'm not—we didn't—"

"Yet." Maddox cuts me off. "But you will. We can smell it on you, the claiming instinct. You're halfway to mated already."

He's right. The bond hums between us now, strengthened by her pleasure, by the trust she showed. Three more days feels like an eternity when every instinct screams to go back, to finish what we started, to claim her before another sunrise.

"Three days." I force the words out. "The auction happens, we move, and then—"

"Then you tell her the truth?" Paxton's voice gentles. "Tell her that her parents died the same night as our father? That she's been serving their murderer for twenty years?"

The weight of it sits heavy. How do you tell someone their entire life has been built on lies? How do you explain that the blood in her veins makes her worth kingdoms, but she's been treated worse than dirt?

"After." I sink into a chair, exhaustion hitting like a tide. "After Remus is dead and she's safe. Then I'll tell her everything."

My brothers exchange glances but don't argue further. We return to planning, to finalizing details for the coordinated strike that will bring this whole empire down.

But I taste silver on my lips, feel phantom heat against my palm, see golden eyes dark with pleasure every time I blink. Three days suddenly seems like a lifetime when she's out there, unmarked and unprotected, with wolves circling who can sense weakness.

Three days.

Then the truth comes out, blood spills, and I claim what's mine.

If she'll have me once she knows what I've kept from her.