2 | Yaron
Orias Village
Mara gives me one last questioning look. “There are no children inside, my Lord?”
“None.” If there were, my beast would scent them. Inside are thirty-three Betas. Twenty-two female, eleven male. All mature enough to scent strongly. All destined for a death I am eager to administer for crimes as heinous as these were. “Burn it down.”
Mara does not question me again. She tosses the torch and the rest of my Crimson Riders immediately get to work setting the church ablaze. I watch for the minutes it takes for the age-battered wooden structure to disintegrate. It feels therapeutic. It feels like justice. Justice for the fallen family. Justice for all of the Alphas whose lives have been taken by Trash City scum and the Mirage City Fates who employ them and deploy them for nefarious purpose and malignant gain.
The Fates intend to swallow Gatamora whole by ridding it of one Alpha at a time, killing them only to bring them back as mindless venom-soaked pawns in their growing army. I didn’t believe it, at first, did not believe the stories of my villagers of strange attacks by even stranger aggressors. But now, after venturing to the darkest corners of the North Island, where once lush and green forests have entirely been overrun by the rot now known as Paradise Hole…I believe.
I have seen the zombie army. A perversion of Omega magic. My predecessors should have challenged Mirage City centuries ago — the moment Paradise Hole began to spread up the river. The moment it was carried south by Mirage City ships onto our shores. We cannot prove it was thus that Paradise Hole crept across the South Island. No one can prove definitively the provenance of the infection that has killed so much life across all of Gatamora…but we could feel it.
When I met Berserker Maengor — the male I thought he was — as a child at my very first Red Moon Festival, I felt the disease of his presence. It was also borne by the Fated Omegas who never left his side. I’d felt it then just as loudly as I’d felt it at the Dark City Omega’s Ball that took place so recently — the last time I’d met Lord Maengor before I knew who he really was. Shortly thereafter, I allied myself with Dark City to share in the common goal of rooting out the rot borne by Mirage City, its Fates and its imposter Berserker. I intend to raze them all from the shores of Gatamora and inflict brutal punishment on any who ally themselves with the city and its spreading sickness.
Starting with these Betas here. My very own people.
Cooks, they call themselves. Chefs. Their food might please me, but right now, their howling cries please me more. Were they pleased at the cries of the children they murdered? Young Gwyneth? She was only sixteen when they broke into her home, slit her neck and stole her corpse.
I know Trash City is behind the attacks on my villages. I know it’s Merlin who leads them, as well. She was clever coming here, to the home of the one who burned her garbage world to ruin. Too clever. I have never known a Beta to be so clever. Few Alphas and Omegas have been so clever, either. Too few. That she was able to convince these spawn to hunt for her, hurt for her, kill and enslave for her is equally mesmerizing. What promises did she make them? What luxuries did their greedy hearts burn with? What kindling did she set fire to and with what spark?
In what way did I fail them? Have I not given them my life? My vows of protection? I am their servant. Have I not given enough —
The door flies open as two men attempt an escape. My bow hangs off of my saddle. I swing it up, notch an arrow and fire before any of my Alphas can claim the kill for their own. One Beta man sails backwards through the air amidst a chorus of shrieks and screams.
Mara looks to me and I nod once. She issues the order and my Crimson Riders circle the church, notching and loosing arrows, ensuring that no Beta escapes alive. It takes some time for the church to burn, for their screams to tarnish the wind, for the blaze to scar the sky. I wonder if the contingent of Crimson Riders who I sent into Paradise Hole have found any who might have escaped. My hunters deduced that some ran. I do not doubt Merlin would have. She is not one to cower and hide. She was not in Trash City when I burned that to the ground, either.
I growl. And then —
“My Lord,” Dorsten says, his horse rearing wildly beneath him. All of the horses are agitated, Brega beneath me included. Brega is rarely ever swayed, but now he neighs and shakes his mane. “Should we…”
“Silence,” I hiss as the first punch of energy hits me, followed almost immediately by the second. It feels like a fist to the gut then an uppercut to the chin. My head swivels, my cock swells. “No…”
Rage simmers beneath my skin. Anger. Violence. And worst of all, desire. My desire engages in ways that are entirely unwanted and though I attempt to ignore the most potent of my emotions at present, ignoring them doesn’t change the fact that I’m so hungry. So fucking starving. My beast rears beneath my breast, my Berserker form surging forward and my head changing form for an instant — growing a snout and fangs and thick black and grey fur — before returning to my Alpha state.
The pressure of the first wave of energy has faded, though I recognize the marker as one that’s strange. It draws a reaction out of me and incites my beast to challenge every other Alpha here. I urge Brega forward, but he stamps his feet in protest, his hesitation reminding me that, no matter the scents I smell or the sensations they stir, a murderer is still just that. It is my duty as Lord here to leave whatever Betas — or Alphas or Omegas — that are within the church to burn.
“My Lord…”
“Lord Yaron!”
“What in the saints…”
My Crimson Riders’ voices reach me from the depths of my strain. Sipho, atop his horse, trots up to my side and points to the thatch roof that had been a great big ball of red-hot fire a moment ago. “The flames are receding. As if drawn into the church by magic.”
He’s right. The fire seems to be migrating to the lowest point of the roof, where it disappears inside, like a mouse crawling through a small hole. The thatch roof may have all been eaten by the flames, but the bones of the church still remain, blackened and ruined. A tingling in the air seeps into my skin, affecting not just me, this time, but the other Alphas among my guard. One of them, Dorsten, perhaps, says, “Omega magic.” The others whisper like schoolchildren.
“Silence,” I order, though my erection is straining my trousers and my beast is claiming my hands for his claws. “Brega,” I growl, but even Brega is no match for my beast’s wants and as he surges, Brega lowers his neck in submission, forcing me to either control my beast or slide off.
My beast is in a feral state as I swing my leg over Brega’s mane and kick off of the traitor’s back, landing hard on the cobblestones below. I stow my crossbow and drop my axe. Anyone alive inside will be no match for me, but I am not immune to flame. I will fight my way inside of the collapsing structure, retrieve the Omega who, regardless of their sudden ascension, will still die by my hand, and finish razing the traitors from the island.
“My Lord, the foundations are weak,” Malik shouts.
I don’t care, the suddenness of my desire to be inside and to find the Omega making the rest of me weak. I punch through the flimsy pieces of the door, which flake to my feet in chunks and ash, and make my way across perilously charred floorboards. I don’t have to travel far to find the ascended pair.
The newly ascended Alpha is male and shouts up at me, warning me away from the female in a way that makes my beast want to tear his head off until I register his words. Sister. Yet I know she must be more than that to him. Twins. That is the only thing that would explain twin ascensions.
I dismiss the Alpha male. He’s caught beneath a heavy sheet of wood. His hands are burned, but strangely. Almost as if they were burned a long time ago and have already begun to heal over. The female beneath me should be a mess of gooey, molten flesh, but isn’t. I lift the piling off of her back and roll her over, wondering how she could possibly be alive. Her dress is all but disintegrated and even her hair has caught fire in most places and is burned all the way down to the follicle. But her skin is unblemished by flame. Her skin is rich and smooth and dark brown and fucking beautiful.
My hand on her shoulder becomes beastly when I meet her gaze head on. She’s awake and watching me as if she’d been merely lying here among the ruins awaiting my arrival. Her eyes are huge and round. “Omega,” I say.
“Yaron,” she answers.
Yaron. No one calls me Yaron. My erection presses at my leathers, a tickle forming in my knot, a tickle of need. She’s staring right at me, meeting my gaze in a way few are apt to, and in a way no villager ever does. The only ones who meet my gaze directly are Radmilla and a select few Crimson Riders, and of course the other Berserkers.
Dragnovic’s Omega looked me in the eye, and so did the witch of the woods. Now, this Omega looks at me like they did. Like we’re equals. She speaks to me like we’re lovers. Like we’ve met each other already in every one of our lifetimes that came before.
But then I remember her crimes and know that it is my duty to imprison, torture and kill her.
“That is my Lord to you, murderer.” I grab her by the neck, fighting the urge to kill her here and now, just end this. End this. My beast takes over and stays my hand. I cannot. Why the fuck can’t I kill her? “I should leave you here, Omega.”
She makes no move to defend herself or beg for her life. Instead, her gaze pans to the right. She says, “Cyprus. Save him. Innocent.” Four words that seem to take every ounce of strength she has left. Her eyelids flutter. The lashes have burned off. She has ash on her cheek and cuts on her face. I wonder what she looks like, truly. It’s difficult to see through the carnage.
It doesn’t fucking matter. My beast and I war and rage together in my chest. He is me and I am he — we have been since I was four years old, among the earliest Alphas ever to ascend — and we have never been at odds like this before.
Claws form on my hands. I will them back, but they remain. “You may be an Omega, but that will not spare you or your family’s punishment. For your crimes, you are sentenced to life imprisonment and I will take great pleasure in inflicting every torture onto you and your kin that you inflicted onto those Alpha families. You will suffer. You will rot.”
She coughs up blood. I pick her up, knowing that the floor won’t hold for long and even now strains beneath my weight. Other Beta bodies have already fallen through. I can hear them screaming near the pulpit at the rear of the church. My awareness is tickled by the fact that the fire has dissipated and I can feel the room swollen with Omega magic. She did this. She ruined my chances for revenge. She denied the slain Alpha family their due. And now I must kill her myself. But to do that, I must first ensure that she lives.
I am careful where I place my feet as I dance between patches of flooring that are more stable than the rest until I arrive at the exit and move down the steps. I place her on the wagon with Okayo and Horace — the medics responsible for caring for my Crimson Riders, brought along in case the well-armed Trash City had wanted to battle. Now, I use Okayo for this. It feels wrong.
“Care for her,” I grunt at him before issuing orders I despise to the rest of my guard to retrieve the Betas from the church and take them to the keep. I want them all tossed into the dungeons and interrogated until we determine exactly which ones of them were responsible for aiding Trash City and killing the Orias Village Alphas.
I turn to Brega, prepared to mount my horse once more…however, her words echo in my skull and I can’t shake them. I hate them. I hate them more than I’ve ever hated anything before.
Cyprus…innocent…
Before I return to Shadow Keep, I trudge back into the church and retrieve the brother myself. I carry his inert body out to the medical cart to lay him down beside the sister who fought for him with her fading breaths. Why, here and now and in the face of my wrath, should an Omega appear to torment me like this? I cast my beast’s most primal desires aside, return to Brega, and do not look at her again.