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I’ve never felt closer to death. Could feel it breathing down my neck.

Then I saw her standing at the tree line. Elsbeth.

I nearly fell to my knees in thanks.

I shouted her name across the burning clearing until my voice gave out and I could barely breathe through the smoke coating my lungs.

Just hours before, she’d looked at me with big brown eyes brimming with tears and begged me to take her home with me when I returned. She’d admitted how afraid she was. She told me the only time she felt safe was with me.

Her eyes had been as bright as honey.

Now, they were dark as pitch.

Through the flames, she looked straight at me with cold, dead eyes. A Severed—high-ranking—stepped out of the trees behind her.

And placed a hand on her shoulder.

I should have seen it then, but still—STILL—my first instinct had been fear—for her. That’s how fast she rewrote my instincts, turning my self-preservation against me with a well-placed whine and the scent of her Omega perfume.

Like a fucking chump I knelt there as her mouth tilted into a smirk. She turned to the Severed and placed her hand over his.

Then he pulled the neckline of her chemise aside.

Through the burning, crackling flames that took the lives of five on my team and nine innocent Omegas, a perfectly placed Mating Bite was revealed on her shoulder.

That’s when it finally hit me like a boulder to the chest.

She’d used me. A pretty little Omega planted alongside the innocents, she took one look at my vainglorious showboating and knew I’d be the perfect mark. She knew just how to use her Omega wiles against me, and she did. She used her biology to lure me in until I was ready to Mate and Mark her in less than a week.

And I fell for it all. The pretty smiles, the demure, searching gazes, the trembling lips, the Omega whines and need for safety and comfort, the moments when her perfume would burst in the air around us, making her interest clear.

Every. Fucking. Thing.

I reach for my shovel and slam it into the dirt again, relishing the ache in my shoulders. Hatred, that old familiar emotion, resurfaces all too easily when I think about Elsbeth.

But it’s been a really, really long time since I’ve allowed myself to relive it like I am now.

I make myself sit with the most shameful moments now. I deserve it. I fell for the way she used her Omega to manipulate me. To get me to let my guard down. To spill my secrets.

The submission.

Thunk.

The pheromones.

Thunk.

The whines and the breathy tones.

Thunk.

The desire for my Scent.

Thunk.

All of it—fucking manipulations.

When Idril showed up with those trembling hands and big, beautiful blue eyes and submissive nature, I did what I’ve done for centuries—Treated her like an enemy.