He sized up the ramped-up, bitter crime boss heading his way.
In truth, his chances were grim, his body one third the size of a full-grown Alpha. Olan would rip him to pieces the instant Nikolai challenged him for dominance.
Still, there was nothing he wouldn’t risk for his family.
He should have known Olan wouldn’t play fair.
“Seize the worm,” he told his men. “Bring him inside and hold him down. It’s too cold for my dick out here and I want to make him suffer for every heartbeat that bitch is not found.”
Nikolai shot out with his fist. The first soldier to reach him staggered back. He wasn’t so lucky after that. Fists pounded his stomach, ribs, and jaw. Bones cracked as his attackers slammed him to the ground.
His chin bounced along the steps as he was dragged up the outpost steps and tossed inside the entrance hall crowded with bags of money and little else.
He struggled to stand, digging his horn into the first fucker stupid enough to come at him again. But there were too many.
They were on him again before he knew it.
“Get those fucking rags off him. I want to hear him squeal.”
“Alpha Lord, the omega property has been found.” The beta’s nervous announcement cut through the snarls and roars. “She is with the Kuril crime boss in the private residential quarters.” There was a long pause as if he was bracing himself. “They are with your bride, the prime omega.”
“With my prime omega?” The windows rattled with the force of Olan’s roar. “What the hells is Kuril doing with them both? If he thinks to take what’s mine, he’ll regret it.”
His rage redirected, Olan stormed down the corridor.
His crew scurried after him.
Shit. Naytalia was in for it now.
Free, Nikolai pushed to standing—or tried. His broken arm gave out, and he slumped back down, his chin knocking the floor. With a snarl, he forced himself up, grinning as blood dripped into his eye. Take that, you fucking Lundin Alpha pussy. Nothing keeps a Skolov down.
He needed to get to the twins, but he needed to be smart. The whole Lundin crew was currently mobbing the private quarters. It hadn’t escaped Nikolai’s attention that the beta had been deliberately vague about exactly where in the private quarters Naytalia had been located. Nikolai would just have to hope that wherever Naytalia was entertaining the Kuril head and the Lundin prime omega, it wasn’t in her own room where the twins were sleeping. She wouldn’t be so reckless. Crying babies were a cockblocker and Naytalia wouldn’t want to risk displeasing the Kuril head, right?
His nerves grew. He really never knew with Naytalia.
His gaze lit on an ugly gold sconce on the wall that hadn’t been there during his father’s reign. Adding expensive shit to the place only made the ugliness of it stand out more and, constructed of the same cheap, brittle imported timber as the rest of the outpost, Nikolai’s old home had never been much to look at in the first place.
Fighting a grimace, he rolled his shoulders and worked through the soreness in his arm, his bones already snapping back into place thanks to his Alpha regenerative abilities.
Time to sneak into Naytalia’s room from the side window, get the twins, and get out. For good. After this incident, coming back wouldn’t be smart.
He wished he could have done more for Naytalia, but she was the one who insisted on staying with Olan. She’d made her choice long ago.
On his way out, he grabbed the ugly gold piece and ripped it from the wall.
“Are you okay?”
The lyrical sound had him spinning around.
Standing in the entranceway was a vision straight out of the old-timers’ tales about dazzling ice-fairies who bewitched a male and made him lose his way in a snowstorm.
Except this ice-fairy was real.
She had wide blue eyes, full pink lips, pointed ears, porcelain skin, and white-gold blond hair that shimmered like snow crystals as it fell in waves to her waist. Ethereal and elegant, she was swathed in fine metallic silk from her shoulders to the tips of her white, laced boots.
A perfect, delicate, untouched omega girl.
Though she had the look of a Lundin, he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
Shame slammed through him. He’d never been more aware of the dirt and blood on his face and the torn rags on his body.
Something else burned inside him too, though . . . something he had yet to feel until this very moment. The brutal surge of the rut, a flood of heat that slammed through his veins, ripping his fangs from his gums while his cock went hard and the glands at the back of his mouth dripped. Hells, even he could scent the sudden burst of testosterone saturating the air.
“Come here.”
The girl swayed in place, her eyes going wide, and then, as if he’d yanked an invisible string, she scurried forward until she was standing in front of him, so tiny the top of her head only reached his chest.
Slender neck bowed, her pulse fluttered wildly as her gaze fused to the ground. Like any good omega, his dominance had triggered her biological responses.
She didn’t speak again.
Her clean, pure scent filled his lungs. Potency rushed through his veins. His first taste of true power, of the Alpha birthright that would be his if he survived adolescence to wield it. The rush of it made him dizzy.
He was invulnerable. Powerful. Hard as hells.
His cock, which until that moment had been pretty useless to him, was suddenly the beginning and end of his existence.
But more powerful was the surge of an altogether different instinct, a possessive, protective compulsion to protect the girl in the same way he did his siblings. As if she too were bound to him by blood.
He wanted to master her. Dominate her. Guard her. Mark her. Keep her.
“Tell me your name.” His voice was a lower growl than he’d ever used before.
“Your eyes were amber. Now, they’re red.”
“Your name,” he demanded. His eyes had never changed before, but he’d never experienced the stages of a rut before, either.
“D-Dahlia Lundin.”
First daughter omega of the male who’d killed his father and fucked his mother.
He could forgive her even that.
“Look at me.”
Her gaze lifted at his command.
Up close, she was prettier. Long thick lashes framed eyes that sparkled with flecks of silver. And her scent . . . it was flawless, pristine, unique, like a snowflake melting on his tongue. He wanted to taste her everywhere.
“Did you see what I was doing?”
She swallowed hard. He could tell she wanted to lie.
He growled once, a low, primal rumble born of instinct.
“Yes.”
“You tell anyone what you saw and,” he repeated the threat he’d had hurled at him more times than he could remember, “I’ll find you, hold you down, ass-fuck you, knot you, and give you a whipping you won’t forget.”
She paled. “I won’t. I swear.” Her gaze flickered to his before dropping once more. “There are some inner-planetary coins in the top drawer of the bureau. You could take those too, and no one would realize until too late.”
His gaze narrowed. “Why would you tell me that?”
This time, her stare rose to meet his. “Why not?”
She might look delicate, but she had spirit. He liked that.
He shoved the sconce into the waistband at the back of his pants. “I won’t always be getting my ass kicked, stealing small crap, and wearing rags.”