Knot the One They Want (Claimverse Book 1)

The bow slices across the strings of my violin in a furious arpeggio, my fingers dancing and leaping across the fingerboard. Passion, frustration, longing—it all pours out of me in a torrent of notes, the music flowing easier than it has in months. Not since Daria shattered our hearts and left us broken and disconnected, even from each other.

But now, a new image sears itself into my mind. Evie, our perfect golden flower, nestled in her nest and offering herself to us with trusting eyes and parted lips. The memory of her intoxicating scent, like warm honey and summer rain, threatens to bring me to my knees.

I grit my teeth, forcing the notes to bend to my will as I pour every ounce of my tangled emotions into the music. Each phrase is edged with yearning, with the agony of denying my very nature. Of walking away from the one omega who could be our salvation.

Fucking Damien and his ruthless machinations.

I understand his drive to succeed, his need to prove himself worthy of the Blackwood legacy. And a part of that is ensuring that nothing that’s his gets away from him. From us.

I don’t even think he realizes that’s the true motivation behind his feelings for Daria, and why he can’t let her go, but it’s plain to me. His best friend. The one who knows him better than anyone. But to use an innocent omega as a pawn in his power games? It makes me sick.

The music builds to a feverish crescendo, my arm burning with the force of each stroke of my bow. I want to hate him. A part of me does, the part that rails against the cruel mask he wears and the pain he callously inflicts.

But beneath the anger simmers something far more dangerous. An aching sorrow for the man I once knew, the bond brother who shared my love of beauty and art and music before the world hardened him. The alpha who hides his true self behind a facade of ice, even as he slowly drowns in his own darkness.

With a final snarling note, I lower my violin and bow, my chest heaving. The silence rings in my ears, broken only by the rasp of my breathing.

Evie’s face swims before my eyes again, taunting me with impossible dreams. I want nothing more than to lose myself in her sweetness, to kneel at her feet and worship her until the pain fades away. She’s the key to unlocking the music in my soul, the muse I’ve been waiting for all my life.

But Damien will never allow it. He’s too proud, too fixated on the past and the future to see the gift that’s being offered to us. And as much as it kills me, I can’t betray him. Not even for a chance at heaven.

I place my violin back in its case with shaking hands, overflowing with adrenaline, each movement precise and deliberate. I’d hoped the music would give me an outlet for the alpha instincts coursing through my veins, demanding action, but it didn’t. Every note simply drove the hunger in deeper. The click of the latches sounds like a gunshot in the oppressive silence.

Fuck it all, and fuck Damien.

Evie is everything I’ve ever wanted. Everything we’ve ever needed. And Damien… he might as well be the other half of my soul, as vital to me as my own heartbeat. We share a bond. A brotherhood, forced by choice, not by blood. And now that I’m caught between these two impossible forces, I feel like I’m being ripped apart.

There has to be a way to heal the fractures between us. To convince Damien to open his eyes and see Evie as the gift she is rather than the burden he thinks she is. I refuse to give up on him, on the future we could all have together.

But right now, all I know is that I have to find a way to distract myself. From following my instincts and doing the one thing that’s guaranteed to finally tear our pack apart forever.

No matter how much my instincts are screaming at me to take her.