Nikolai stormed through the hangar, still bare-chested with the laces of his pants undone, and slammed his palm against the scanner of his private elevator, the beauty of his home lost on him for once as the omega over his shoulder, wearing nothing more than a thin sheet as a dress, hissed insults and did her best to squirm from his grasp.
Normally, he took pleasure in what he’d accomplished. Abzal was far from the backwater post it had once been. Through blood, sweat, and tears—his sweat, others’ blood and tears—he’d turned the former ice land into one of the most glamorous travel destinations in the galaxy, filled with luxury resorts and casinos built of composite ice, glass, and crystal that glittered finer than any vralish gem. No fucking wood in the whole damn place. He’d made sure of that. Plus, the composite ice meant the structure was sturdy but not as frigid as ice alone would have been, making it habitable for tourists as well as Abzalians.
The insides were equally grand, with huge crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, composite ice sculptures and sparkling gems carved into the walls, and opulent furs draped over elaborately decorated tables and chairs. It was beauty and decadence combined, and a far cry from the broken sewage pipe where he and his family had taken refuge in order to survive.
Even better, atop the entire glittering city, looking down on it all, was the family’s private compound. Built into the largest of all the majestic ice-covered mountains in the vicinity, the composite ice palace had its own security, private elevators, medical center, three hangars, food sources, and a staff as big as the entirety of those employed in the resorts below.
The compound was so big it housed many of the soldiers and servants that made up the core of the Skolov crime family.
Nikolai had a long memory, and he took care of every single one of the planet inhabitants that had helped him and his family rise to the top.
As for those who’d gotten in the way, most were buried deep under the icy ground—after a stay in the less luxurious cells beneath his home.
The dungeons were where he and his men took care of the less glamorous side of their business.
It was also where he was determined to break one tiny, defiant omega who refused to follow his commands, denied him her visions, and stole tracker removers when she thought no one was looking.
This was not exactly how he’d imagined this reunion going, but he was nothing if not flexible. He’d had to be to get where he was.
This was one battle he could not afford to let the omega win, for all their sakes.
The elevator door pinged, and the doors slid open at the lowest underground level.
Even he, who was used to Abzal’s temperature, shivered. Down here there was no temperature regulation. Or composite material. Just ice. And the dark.
“Where are you taking me?”
The fear in the omega’s voice had him slowing his pace.
Fuck. He didn’t like her fear.
The urge to comfort her rode him almost as hard as the urge to fuck her.
He didn’t recall much about the rut, but his cock remembered all too well. Permanently erect and throbbing, it was ravenous to be inside her again. To hear those sweet sounds she made. Feel the silk of her skin against his.
Fuck. Control was everything to him. Control was how he’d survived.
He could not afford to lose it now. He could not afford for her to make him weak.
Breathing deep, he fought off the rut.
Damn Dr. Randalff. He’d suggested fucking the omega might help him think better. Instead, it was harder for him to think at all. All he wanted was to throw her to the ground, spread her legs wide, and do whatever it took to hear that damn purr of hers again.
He didn’t know why the sound affected him, but when that soft contented hum vibrated from her to him, it sounded like nothing else in his whole life. He felt better, stronger, cleaner than the male he knew himself to be.
It also made him rabid to protect her. Comfort her. It had him wanting to spend every moment of every rotation fucking her as she screamed his name, clawed his back, and melted against him while her body shook with pleasure.
But those idiotic urges would not get him any closer to his goal.
He needed to activate her damn visions.
He needed her to tell him and everyone else, especially the Brotherhood, what had happened the rotation of the fire.
“What is this place?”
This time, bolstered by the remembrance of his ultimate goal, neither the fear in her voice or the chattering of her teeth bothered him.
Sort of.
Pushing the cell door open, he strode inside and set her down.
The fact that her toes curled, and she hissed, hopping from foot to foot as the ice seared her soles, didn’t bother him either.
With a growl, he spun around and grabbed a fur blanket from the now vacant guard’s station. No way was he having any other males anywhere in her vicinity when he wasn’t around, even if they were his own men. He was back before she’d made it to the thick bars of composite ice and crystal that lined the cell, a hundred times stronger than solid steel.
Barring the door, he tossed the fur at her. She caught it with icy fingers and immediately wrapped it around herself, overtop the sheet.
“You will remain here until you decide to be more obedient.”
Cocooned in the snowy fur, she glared up at him. “Then I will be here a very long time.”
“We will see.” Stalking forward, he rubbed his thumb over her trembling lips. “Lundin skin is fragile compared to my people. You don’t do well with this kind of cold.” She shivered as if to prove his point. “You won’t be able to bear it long. Few do.” He took a step back. “By the time my meeting is done, I predict my newest dungeon guest will have seen the error of her ways and decided to rid herself of whatever that block is and behave as a proper omega should toward her Alpha.”
He grabbed her hand and slid the teething ring into her hold.
She tried to shake him off, but it was undercut by the huge shudder that wracked through her.
He stifled a growl. “When I return, I will take you to a warm cozy room in your new home and you will bow at my feet, present, and be ready and willing to try for another vision.”
“I won’t.”
She’d only grown more defiant over the years.
But she would soon be hungry and thirsty, too.
The madness of the heat slowed down other bodily functions, but once the haze dissipated, all other urges would return with a vengeance.
He was already ravenous enough to eat an entire wolverbear himself, and those beasts were huge. Her growing hunger should help her become more malleable too.
There was the issue of her soreness as well.
She’d been a virgin, and he’d used her tight little hole hard.
But that’s what omegas were made for. And hadn’t he already told Lundin he was no one’s Alpha bitch?
He could not afford to weaken. Especially before the spawn of his enemy.
Her discomfort was exactly what he was after.
The more miserable she was, the faster she would break. Once broken, she’d be willing to do whatever it took to be as helpful as possible.
He wasn’t asking for much. Just one specific vision. Then he didn’t care if she never had another view of the past again. It would be better, in fact. He had no interest in her rooting around in his memories.
The reminder of what she’d already seen inside his head helped him hustle the rest of the way out of the cell and slam the door shut.
Still, the sight of her small shivering form framed through the crystal bars had his chest going tight.
“Tell me now that you’ll submit, and I’ll take you from here. You don’t have to spend another moment of your punishment in this cold.”
Her chin only tipped higher. “I’d rather spend a thousand rotations in this cold than one more riding your cock and betraying my family.”
Fury coated everything red. See what came of softening?
He fought to retain control. “I’ll tame that mouth soon enough. While I’m gone, you’ll have time to think hard about whether it would be smarter to have me as an ally or an enemy.”
“It doesn’t matter either way.” A surge of frustration reached him through the fated-mate bond. “I can’t control my gift or remove whatever is blocking it.”
Defiant as ever, she proved her resourcefulness by letting a piece of the fur slip to the ground and then stepping on top, curling her toes into the pelt and buffering her feet from the worst of the ice. Trouble was, the blanket wasn’t big enough to serve as boots and a hood, leaving her arms and head exposed.
He curled his hands into fists to resist throwing her another blanket. “You can. You will. Like you, your gift is strong. I can sense it inside you, clawing to break free. You just have to let it.”
“S-Strong? Like me?”
His confidence knocked her off guard, he could tell.
He remembered how surprised she’d been all those years before when he’d said something nice to her. He wondered if anyone had ever told her anything kind since.
He doubted it.
Her father was a bully. He suspected Dahlia’s mother had been beaten down long ago.
The urge to counteract her parent’s failings and whisper more nice things in his omega’s ear hit hard.
He clamped his jaw shut instead.
In the resulting silence, her doubts returned to the fore. “You want to believe my gift is still strong, but that won’t make it so. The vision I recently had could have been a one-time freakish occurrence. I might have been filled with power once, but that was a long time past.”
His scowl deepened. He didn’t like the resignation in her voice. That didn’t sound like the omega who’d swung at his head with a globe and tried to steal his tracker remover from under his nose.
But he didn’t need her to believe in her abilities, only follow his commands.
“I haven’t gotten where I am by taking no for an answer. You have the power to rid yourself of the block.” He took a step back, doing what had to be done. “I’m betting it’s a matter of incentive.”
“What do you mean?” Worry sharpened her features.
“If the cold doesn’t convince you, perhaps the image of your little sister suffering the same misery will.”
Her grip on the teething ring grew knuckle white. “Congratulations. I didn’t think I could hate you more than I already do.”
Fast as lightning, he leapt forward and snaked his arms through the ice, grabbing the edges of her blanket and yanking her to the bars. “I don’t care how you feel about me as long as you obey me.” She struggled in his hold, but he kept her pinned where she was, doing his best to ignore the sweet scent filling his lungs. “I have spies everywhere. It would be easy enough to give them the signal and take your sister from the omega compound.”
Her bottom lip trembled, but her eyes held nothing but suspicion. “If that’s true, why didn’t you do that before with me?”
“We both know your father kept you under a far more careful watch because of your rebellions. Plus,” his lips curled upward in the facsimile of a smile, “I thought it would be a hells of a lot more satisfying to take you from him through his own arrogance and stupidity and with the Brotherhood’s blessing. And it was. All his schemes to secure an alliance and gain you a prime omega placement destroyed. It’s one of the few hundred slices of pain and humiliation the male is owed.”
He let her go.
She stumbled back out of reach, the faint pink line at her cheek where it had touched the ice-cold bar searing itself onto his chest even as he told himself it meant nothing.
“He is owed your revenge.” She took another step back until she was out of arm’s reach. “Not my sister.”
“The twins Zaya and Mikhail were innocent, too. That didn’t prevent them from being burned alive. They never got to have the fifteen years your sister has.”
“That doesn’t make what you’re threatening right.”
“I’ve never been a huge fan of right and wrong. It’s a complication I don’t need. I prefer results.” He forced his boots back another step. “Your father is finally going to get what he deserves—and you are going to be the one who makes that happen. How much suffering happens along the way for you and yours is up to you.”
“You are a monster.”
“True enough, but I’m your monster now.” Their gazes locked. “I told you I’d come for you and I did. I told you you’d be mine and you are. Now I’m telling you, you will drop the block and you will give me the vision I require. That is as real and true as it gets.”
“You know what’s sad? I was so devastated when they said you’d died in that fire. I mourned for you. Cried my eyes out for you. And when my father started cursing your name, and I learned you hadn’t died after all, I was so . . . happy. I cheered every one of your successes. I . . . I thought: maybe he will come for me, after all. Maybe we can still escape together.”
He refused to let her words affect him. “There’s no escape now for either of us. You will break. It’s only a matter of time.”
Before she could utter another word—or shiver again and make him change his damn mind—he hustled into the elevator and slammed his palm on the top floor designation.
If he took a few moments to type out a request on his comms regarding food and water for a certain cellmate, he decided to forget it the instant it was done.
Dr. Randalff better have some answers, especially about how Nikolai could regain his damn control and spark more of her visions.
Because the embarrassing truth was, it turned out he did give a damn how she felt about him.
Because leaving her in that ice cell was a hells of a lot harder than expected.
And if this gamble didn’t work, he wasn’t so sure whether it would be the omega, or him, who would break first.