Chapter 15: Primal Praise
The walk back to the fortress was a blur of silent, shifting ground. James drove, the quiet between them no longer filled with instructional potential, but with the weight of what had been revealed. Rowan stared at his hands in his lap. They looked the same. Slender, a bit grimy from the dirt of the grounds. They didn’t feel like his hands. They felt like weapons left out in the sun, dangerous and too hot to touch.
He was returned not to the servant’s quarters, nor to the hospital’s stark supply closet. Instead, James led him through a part of the central keep Rowan had only ever glimpsed from a distance. The air grew cooler, the stone darker. Polished obsidian walls reflected the flickering glow of sconces filled with low, blue flame. The scent changed utterly. No more sweat, bleach, or dusty corridors. Here it was ozone, like the air after a lightning strike, and beneath it, something primal and dense—the smell of deep woods, of unchallenged authority, of Mark.
They stopped before a set of double doors fashioned from aged, black iron and riveted steel. No guards stood outside. Their presence was apparently unnecessary. James pushed one door open. It moved silently on perfect hinges.
“Wait here,” James said, his voice a low rumble. He didn’t meet Rowan’s eyes before stepping back, melting into the gloom of the hallway. The door closed with a soft, final click.
Rowan was alone in the Alpha King’s private quarters.
The room was vast. A cathedral of power. A massive hearth dominated one wall, flames dancing over logs of dense, black wood that gave off more heat than light. Their glow danced across walls of polished stone and over trophies of a violent reign—antlered skulls, banners of conquered packs, swords mounted in positions of silent threat. The floor was strewn with furs so thick his boots sank into them. At the room’s center stood a bed that was less a piece of furniture and more a raised dais, heaped with more pelts and dark linens.
And the scent. It was everywhere. It invaded Rowan’s lungs with every breath, a crushing, cedar-and-frost wave that made his head feel light, his skin too tight. His omega biology, so long suppressed, twisted inside him, a confused, fearful ache.
“You’re standing like you’re still in the hallway.”
The voice came from the shadows near the hearth. Mark emerged, having been still enough to become part of the architecture. He had shed his training clothes. He wore only loose, black trousers, his torso bare. The firelight played over the dense musculature of his chest and arms, highlighting old, silvery scars that mapped a history of conflict. He was holding a heavy crystal glass of something amber, but his eyes were fixed on Rowan.
“I…” Rowan’s voice died. There were no words. He was a cleaner in the bone throne-room of a king.
Mark took a slow sip, his gaze tracing Rowan from his dusty boots to his frightened, upturned face. “You moved today,” he said, the words a statement of fact that hung in the air. “After you thought. After you tried. You stopped thinking. You just… did.” He set the glass down on a stone ledge with a deliberate click. “That’s what I need to see.”
He crossed the space between them. Rowan forced himself not to retreat, though every instinct screamed to. Mark stopped close enough for his body heat to be a tangible force. He reached out, his fingers not quite touching the fresh, darkening bruise on Rowan’s shoulder from James’s training blade.
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” Rowan whispered.
“Good. You’ll remember it.” His hand shifted, those strong, calloused fingers skimming down Rowan’s arm, leaving a trail of fire on his skin even through the fabric of his shirt. “You held a live blade to a man’s throat today. A man who could break you in half. And you didn’t shake. Not until after.”
His palm came to rest on Rowan’s chest, right over his frantically beating heart. “But you’re shaking now.”
Rowan swallowed, a dry, painful click. “This is different.”
A dark, knowing smirk touched Mark’s lips. “Is it?” He leaned in, his nose brushing the hair at Rowan’s temple. He inhaled deeply, a low rumble starting in his chest. “Your scent… it’s all fear. Bright and sharp. Like a trapped rabbit.” He pulled back just enough to look into Rowan’s eyes. His own were pools of hungry, bottomless blue. “But there’s something else underneath it now. Something hot. Metallic. Like the blood you almost spilled.”
He leaned in again, his mouth a breath away from Rowan’s ear. “Does it excite you, little omega? The almost killing?”
“No,” Rowan gasped, but it was a lie, and they both knew it. The adrenaline was still in his system, translated now into a different, more terrifying current.
“Liar.” The word was a hot puff against his skin. Mark’s hand on his chest slid down, over the flat plane of his stomach, making Rowan jolt. It didn’t stop. It pressed firmly, lower, until the heel of his palm was cupping the hard, undeniable evidence of Rowan’s arousal through his pants.
A full, predatory growl vibrated from Mark’s throat into Rowan’s very bones. “Look at that.” He applied pressure, a rough, grinding circle that made Rowan whimper, his hips bucking forward involuntarily. “Your body knows the truth. It knows what it’s for.”
Mark’s other hand came up, tangling brutally in Rowan’s hair, yanking his head back to expose the long line of his throat. Rowan cried out, a short, sharp sound of pain and submission.
“Good omega,” Mark murmured, the praise filthy and devastating. He licked a hot, wet stripe along the exposed column of Rowan’s throat, from collarbone to jaw. It was a claiming, animalistic and raw. “Mine.”
Then his mouth was on Rowan’s, swallowing any other protest. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a consumption. Hard, demanding, all teeth and possession. He tasted of expensive whisky and wild, untamed power. Rowan’s mind fragmented. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He was melting and burning all at once. A small, broken sound escaped him, and Mark drank that, too.
The hand in his hair kept him locked in place. The hand on his cock squeezed, once, brutally, through the fabric, before releasing. Then both of Mark’s hands were on him, dragging the worn shirt over his head, shoving his trousers and underwear down his legs in one rough motion. The cool air of the room hit his naked skin, followed immediately by the searing heat of Mark’s gaze.
He was spun around, pushed forward. He stumbled onto the edge of the massive bed, his knees hitting the furs. He caught himself on his hands, bare ass in the air, utterly exposed. He heard the rustle of clothing behind him, the clink of a belt buckle. Shame and wild, unwanted need warred in his gut.
A large, hot hand landed on the small of his back, pinning him in place. He felt the thick, blunt head of Mark’s cock nudge against his entrance, already slick with his own helpless, omega arousal.
“You wanted this,” Mark’s voice was a guttural rasp behind him. “The second you bared your teeth in my armory. The second you showed me that pretty, vicious slash. This is what you were asking for.”
He pushed in.
There was no gentleness, no preparation beyond Rowan’s own trembling wetness. It was a brutal, splitting invasion. Rowan screamed, the sound muffled by the furs. It burned, a searing, stretching agony that stole the air from his lungs. He was filled, impossibly, completely, torn open.
Mark didn’t pause. He let out a ragged, choked groan above him, a sound of pure, unrestrained hunger. “Fuck. So fucking tight.” He withdrew, almost all the way, and then slammed back in, deeper.
The pain crested, a sharp, white-hot spike, and then began to transmute. The relentless, pounding friction sparked something else, a brutal, shameful pleasure that built with each punishing thrust. Mark set a vicious, driving rhythm, his hips pistoning, his balls slapping against Rowan’s skin with each deep plunge. The room filled with the raw, wet sounds of the act, of skin on skin, of ragged breathing and guttural curses.
“Take it,” Mark snarled, one hand fisted in Rowan’s hair again, yanking his head back, arching his spine. “Take every fucking inch. That’s it. Milk my cock with that tight little omega cunt.”
The filthy words, the utter degradation, collided with the overwhelming physical sensation. Rowan was sobbing, tears soaking the fur beneath his cheek, but his own hardened cock was trapped between his belly and the bed, leaking onto the pelts with each brutal slam. He was coming apart, his body no longer his own.
Mark’s pace became erratic, frantic. His breathing hitched. He leaned over, his chest pressing against Rowan’s sweat-slicked back, his mouth against Rowan’s ear. “You feel that? You feel me filling you up? Marking you from the inside?” His thrusts became shallow, grinding. “This is what you are now. Mine. My weapon. My bitch.”
With a final, hoarse roar, he buried himself to the hilt, his body locking, shuddering. Rowan felt the hot, sudden pulse of his release, flooding deep inside, a claiming more intimate than any bite. The sensation, so visceral and final, tipped Rowan over his own edge. His orgasm ripped through him, silent and violent, a seizure of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain, painting the dark furs beneath him with his own spend.
Mark collapsed on top of him for a moment, his full weight crushing, his breath scorching against Rowan’s neck. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire and their harsh, ragged panting.
Slowly, heavily, Mark pulled out. Rowan whimpered at the sudden, sore emptiness, the sickening trickle of fluid down his thigh.
He was rolled onto his back. Mark loomed over him, his expression unreadable in the low light, his blue eyes dark and intent. He looked down at the mess between Rowan’s legs, at the bruise on his shoulder, at the tear-tracks on his face. He leaned down and licked a salt-stained cheek.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his voice rough but calm, the King once more. “We see if you can do it again.”
He stood, turning his back, walking naked toward a doorway that led to what Rowan assumed was a bathroom. As if what had just happened was routine. Concluded.
Rowan lay amidst the tangled, stained furs, the scent of sex and alpha and his own humiliation thick in the air. His body throbbed. His soul felt scraped raw. He stared up at the obsidian ceiling, where the firelight danced like mocking spirits.
The fear hadn’t left. It had just been fucked deep into his marrow. And the King was right. He would remember it.