27

After a moment's hesitation, she taps the stone on her chains again.

I growl and bark at her across the cavern, and she screams in fear. At first, when she was cornered, she snarled and bared her teeth at Kadmon, but she knows better than to try that shit on me.

Still, she deliberately challenges me. It's like she wants to be punished.

Well, I won't give you that much pleasure.

I snatch the stone from her small, fragile hand and throw it. It clatters and clatters on the stone floor.

"I said stop it," I hiss angrily.

My face is close enough to hers that my words stir a few curls of red hair. She flinches and her lip trembles in fear.

When I'm sure she's got the point, I settle back down.

But the omega insists on pissing me off.

She fumbles with her chains and mutters something in her ugly foreign dialect that I can't make out.

"What?" I grumble.

She gives me that challenging look again. Even though she's so scared that her body is shaking, she clearly has courage, I'll give her that. "