Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Me?!
As in… me?
What. The. Fuck?!
Terrible silence swells through the room. No one moves. No one breathes—except for one blue male, on the far side of the Dome.
Cylus.
He slowly stands, but doesn’t approach. Mortana notices him and shakes her head sharply. Norabi leans into my side and rumbles, “Do not move.”
She’s never given me an alpha command before. And while I’m intelligent enough to know the fact she’s using one now is a bad sign, I’m too horrified to care.
“What is this?” I hiss back, my gaze flying from Rask’s enraged expression to Zolkan’s ashen grimness.
Norabi hesitates just a second too long. Shrink-wrap engulfs my lungs. “My brother has issued a formal challenge,” she whispers, nearly inaudible. “If Zolkan accepts, they will fight for you.”
My jaw drops open. “Rask!” I gasp, lurching halfway out of my chair. As if I have any power to stop either of these enormous, angry aliens.
Rask locks his quicksilver eyes on mine. His plated pink brow lowers, his expression beaming true regret and the deepest longing.
Pain pinches my heart just before guilt wallops my gut.
Oh God.
This is all my fault.
I let them share me. I made them spend time together. I still can’t understand my attraction to either of them—let alone both.
And now Cylus, too.
But what does this mean? Is one of them going to die?
That’s what Zolkan said, right? Roktusian alphas fight to the death?
The voice inside me—ah, hell, fine. My Omega—screeches. Frantic and furious. Torn between wanting to slap their plated faces and fall to our knees.
But Zolkan nods with solemn acceptance. He moves deliberately, removing his own signet ring and placing it on the stone surface beside his General’s.
He stands. “Very well.”
I recoil, unable to process.
They’re going to fight now? Here?
My shoulders hit Norabi’s waiting arm. She herds me back toward the table, bending over to mutter, “Do not panic, omega. I will manage them.”
Rask snaps a growl at his sister, more vicious than I’ve ever seen him in her presence. “You will ‘manage’ nothing.”
Zolkan is less heated, but just as serious. “This is a long time coming, Norabi,” he agrees. “It will be done the proper way.”
I have no idea what that means, but the rest of the room seems to relax. As if relieved—or, at least, resigned to the fact that they apparently won’t be observing. Not when the king scoops the rings from the tabletop and waves toward an exit. “After you, General.”
Rask hesitates for less than a breath, sparing me a final moment. He lowers his horns in a Roktusian show of remorse as he murmurs four familiar words.
“Forgive me, little one.”
Oh God.
My chest wrenches, lungs aching while my eyes sting. Zolkan hums quietly and turns to me, pausing to rest his forehead against mine. Paying no mind to the hundreds of eyes on us, he meets my gaze with eyes of the deepest, purest violet.
“I will return to you, stryllas,” he vows. By the time his final promise rings through my mind, he’s walking away.
“In this life or the next.”