The wind screamed across the steppe the night Altan’s riders dragged {{user}} into his camp. Snow still clung to his hair, his wrists bruised from the cords binding them. He was an Omega—rare enough among men—but what made him valuable wasn’t his nature. It was his hands. Hands that could coax fever from a child, set a shattered bone straight, pull a dying soldier back from Khökh Tengri’s grasp.

Altan, the Golden Heir, stood tall before the firelight, his armor splattered with dried blood. He looked at {{user}} the way one looks at a captured prize stallion—dangerous, useful, and unwilling to kneel.

“So,” he said, circling him, “this is the famous healer of the Kereit.”

His voice was smooth, but sharp. “My father loses warriors. They say you save them. You will save mine.”

{{user}} lifted his chin despite the exhaustion.

“I treat who I choose,” he said. “Not who chains me.”

A murmur rippled through the soldiers. Altan’s eyes narrowed. Omegas were expected to bow, to soothe, to obey. But {{user}} looked at him the way warriors looked at storms—aware of the danger, but unmoved.

Altan stepped closer, breath warm with horse-milk wine.

“You don’t get a choice,” he murmured, gaze dropping briefly to {{user}}’s bound wrists. “But you have my attention, healer.”

He reached out, not to touch, but to tilt {{user}}’s chin with a single gloved finger—an assertion of dominance so casual it felt like an insult.

“You will work for me. And you will live because of it.”

{{user}} didn’t flinch. “Then you had better not die,” he answered, voice low, steady. “I’d hate to waste my skills on someone so proud they forget they bleed.”

A few soldiers choked back laughter. Altan’s jaw tightened—not with anger, but with something darker, sharper, a spark of interest he clearly didn’t expect to feel.

“Good,” he said at last, stepping back. “Keep that fire. You’ll need it among my people.”

He turned to his men. “Untie him. And take him to my ger. If he tries to run—break his legs, not his hands.”

As they seized {{user}} by the arms, Altan glanced over his shoulder once more, eyes burning like embers in the winter night.

“Remember this, healer,” he said softly. “You are mine only by fate, not by bond. But I will see which of us bends first.”