Blood and Fate

The wolf beneath me stopped moving.

Good.

I unclenched my jaw. Blood ran hot down my chin, copper and iron, the taste of survival. My third kill this month. They kept coming. They kept dying.

I wasn't the omega they remembered.

Movement in the trees.

I whipped around, still crouched over the corpse. Another wolf. Massive. Black as midnight.

My hackles rose.

Territory, my wolf snarled. Ours.

But this wasn't my territory. I didn't have territory anymore. I was rogue. Packless. The walking dead.

The black wolf didn't attack.

He just... watched.

I shifted.

Better to face him human. Better to see what kind of death this was going to be.

"You're on my land." His voice came from everywhere. Deep. Rough. Like something dragged over broken stone.

"Didn't see your marks."

"Didn't look hard enough."

The black wolf shifted too.

My lungs locked.

He was massive. Scarred everywhere, face, arms, chest. Eyes the color of glacier water, holding the kind of stillness that comes after too much violence. He moved like a predator. Like something that ate other predators for breakfast.

This was the Rogue Alpha.

The wolf mothers warned their pups about.

Knox.

"You killed my scout." He nodded at the body.

"He tried to mount me."

"Ah." His nostrils flared. Not quite approval. Not quite anything. "That explains the missing throat."

"Self-defense."

"Is that what omegas call it now?"

The word hit like a blow.

"I'm not..."

Pain.

Sharp and sudden and everywhere.

I doubled over, gasping.

The mate bond.

No.

No, no, no.

I'd already had a mate. I'd already been rejected. The bond was supposed to be dead, burned out, gone forever.

But something was waking up inside me. Something that looked at Knox and said mine mine MINE.

"What the hell." His voice had changed. Rougher. Angrier. "What did you do?"

"I didn't..." Another wave of pain. "I didn't do anything."

He crossed the distance between us in three strides. Grabbed my chin. Forced my face up.

I looked into him.

The world exploded.

I saw everything.

His past. His pain. Fifteen years of running and killing and being alone. A mate bond he'd thought was dead. A heart he'd buried with his pack.

He was seeing me too. I felt him in my head, the rejection, the death walk, three months of survival that should have killed me.

We were the same.

Broken. Feral. Done with being prey.

He released me like I was on fire.

"No."

I stumbled back. "I didn't ask for this."

"Neither did I." He was breathing hard. Fighting something. "The bond doesn't, mates don't get second chances."

"Tell that to whatever just happened."

He stared at me.

I didn't look away.

The bond hummed between us, demanding, hungry.

Neither of us moved.

"Who were you?" His voice was dangerous now. "Before."

"Shadowmere Pack. Omega."

"Rejected?"

"Three months ago."

"By who?"

"Alpha Draven." The name tasted like poison. "My mate. My former mate."

Knox's chin lifted. A predator catching a familiar scent.

"Draven," he repeated.

"You know him?"

"I know what he's done." He circled me. Slow. Assessing. "Killed three of my rogues last winter. Tried to claim this territory."

"He claims everything. That's what he does."

"And you were his."

"I was nothing to him." I lifted my chin. "That's why he threw me away."

Knox stopped circling.

We faced each other across the dead scout's body.

The bond screamed at me to close the distance. To touch him. To claim what was apparently mine.

I stayed still.

"I don't want a mate." His voice was flat. Final.

"Good. I don't want one either."

"Then we ignore this."

"Fine."

"Fine."

Neither of us moved.

The bond laughed at us both.

"You can't stay here." He pivoted toward camp. "This is rogue territory. Pack wolves aren't welcome."

"I'm not pack."

"You're Shadowmere..."

"I'm nothing." The words came out harder than I meant. "I'm a dead wolf walking. No pack. No mate. No one."

He paused.

"You're surviving."

"Barely."

"That's more than most omegas can say."

He looked back at me.

Scarred face. The most dangerous wolf in five territories.

And the bond was telling me he was mine.

"One night," he said. "You can stay in the camp one night. Then you're gone."

"I don't need your charity."

"It's not charity." His voice dropped. "It's curiosity."

"Curiosity about what?"

"About how an omega survived three months alone." He started walking. "And killed one of my wolves with her teeth."

I looked at the body.

Then at Knox's retreating back.

Then at the forest around me, dark and dangerous and full of things that wanted me dead.

"One night," I said.

He didn't look back.

But warmth leaked through the bond. Amusement, sharp and unwilling.

Bastard.

I followed him into the dark.

And tried not to think about what the hell I'd just gotten myself into.