Chapter 1: Lena
Ialways knew my heat was coming long before they did.
My body warned me during quiet moments with trembling hands, oversensitive skin, and jittery movements I couldn’t still. Every sign was an omen that soon I would be in an immeasurable amount of pain.
By the time my guards informed Marco and he came to visit me, it was too late to pretend I wasn’t afraid. Even in the beginning, my fear was always visible, but it never outweighed my resolve. Marco tried every angle. Pain, lies, manipulation, and pressure. All to make me sayyes.
But in five years, I never had.
What did he want me to agree to?
To be willing.
The first few times Marco tried to take me, he enjoyed my fight, anger, hostility, and refusal to submit. I'm sure he thought eventually I would, but the longer I resisted, the more obsessed he became with breaking me.
That's when therealgame began for him.
It wouldn't satisfy him to have me by force. He wanted me willing, pliant, and wanting.
The way every other omega "wife" in his harem was.
Marco was a prince, the prodigal eldest son of the Bellini crime family. His father, Enzo Bellini, maintained a truce with New Arca's Government and rose quickly through the Falcon City underworld, becoming the most powerful entity beneath Arca themselves.
Enzo spoiled his son without restraint. I don't think Marco had ever been denied anything in his life, and that I resisted him, again and again, consumed him.
I looked up as a click of the deadbolt announced his arrival. Marco was deliberate about timing. He never visited me too early, when the pain was only a warning hum, and never too late, when the pain stripped me of all control, making me desperate enough to agree to anything, just to end the heat contractions.
He understood that kind of desperation was not true submission.
Every month he waited until I reachedthispoint. Doubled over in pain with contractions rolling fully through me. My body burned while my mind still remained clear.
Thatwas when he asked.
“My Lena, you know why I’m here. Look at me.”
Even his nickname for me implied ownership.
His voice was calm and restrained. Now and then he still used his alpha bark out of habit, despite knowing it no longer reached me. Whatever part of my mind and omega instinctsthat had once responded to it had fractured long beyondrepair.
I kept my eyes on the floor, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. When I took deep breaths, the contractions hurt less. I wrapped my arms around my knees, drawing my thighs tight against my chest, trying to ease the pressure coiling in my abdomen.
His hand slid beneath my chin, tilting my face upward until he forced me to look at him. My whole body shuddered, a pained cry slipping past my lips. Even the smallest touch had become unbearable for me now.
He knew well my aversion to touch, often using forced proximity as punishment.
His fingers squeezed my chin,hard.
"Open your eyes!" he barked.
I did as he asked, not because he used his alpha bark, but because I was afraid he might break my jaw as the pressure mounted. My eyes snapped open, locking onto his.
I hated looking at him. It was so much harder to resist when my eyes were on his face. So gorgeous and chiseled with deep brown eyes, sharp cheekbones, and dark hair curling across his forehead. Marco possessed the kind of beauty that sent women into a frenzy. I suppose his looks made it easier for the other omegas to submit to him.
But my refusal had nothing to do with his appearance. It didn’t even have much to do with his cruelty. I’d always assumed alphas were cruel. When I enlisted with Arca, signing up for the Omega Training Center, I’d prepared myself to endure that, eventually.
No, it wasn't his beauty or his cruelty.
What stopped me from submitting was something else entirely.
