Consciousness returned to him like a slow, bitter curse.

The first thing Floki felt was the weight of his body — heavy, sluggish, like stone dragged from the bottom of a cold river. His head pulsed with a sharp, pounding ache that settled behind his eyes.

Then came the cold. Iron cuffed his wrists, the metal biting deep into his skin. His arms were stretched high above him, muscles pulled taut, shoulders stiff and beginning to throb with the dull ache of strain. When he shifted, the chains rattled against wood — solid, thick, a bedframe strong enough to hold him captive.

A strip of coarse cloth pressed tight across his eyes, suffocating his world in blackness. He couldn’t see, but his other senses sharpened — the faint scent of polished wood, clean linen, and beneath it, threading through the air like a noose around his throat: the scent of an omega.

The moment his senses locked onto it, his blood stirred, the primal part of him baring its teeth in response. The sound that clawed its way out of his throat was a low, guttural growl, more beast than man.

He pulled hard on the chains, every thick cord of muscle in his arms, chest, and shoulders bunching and straining against the restraint. His body, built and honed for battle, answered the call on instinct — the sheer force of his strength enough to make the wood creak and groan — but the iron held fast, unyielding.

He stilled, breathing hard through flared nostrils. His body was a canvas of old wounds — jagged scars carved deep into tanned, battle-hardened skin.

And the scent lingered. Quiet. Steady. The omega's presence hung in the air like a hand resting against his throat — soft, unthreatening, but undeniable. You hadn’t spoken. Not a word. Not even the scrape of movement.

Floki let out a slow, sharp exhale, lips curling back over his teeth in a wolfish snarl. "Coward," he rasped, voice dry and rough as broken glass. His throat burned, mouth parched from whatever they'd used to keep him under.