8 | Yaron
Heart Forest
The sky crackles with thunder and, against my bare back, I feel the soft woosh of an icy wind. Where is she?
My eyes open on a pounding panic, frantic and worried for my Omega. Where is she? But the moment I move my arms — my limbs, for they are completely covered in fur, as is the rest of me — I hear a soft sigh. I look down and, past my snout, can just see the top of the Omega’s head. Her limbs are curled against my beast’s torso, tangled in silver fur, and I exhale.
She’s warm. She’s dry. My beast did well. I did not, rutting her out here in the woods like a savage. I hit her, harmed her, while my beast provided shelter. It is…not much of a shelter — better than nothing, but certainly not sufficient enough for her to stay here, no matter how peacefully she may be sleeping at the moment.
Gathering the reserves of my strength from deep, I rise with the Omega cradled against my chest. I hold her in one of my arms, which forces me to walk uncomfortably on three legs. It is a great distance to the keep, but I have no other choice. I’ve torn the hunter’s hole to pieces. There is nothing left but a few posts still miraculously standing. The fire that she lit is gone. The rains have stopped, but the air is still heavy with their memory. It is my favorite weather, but I wish for something else now. I wish for sun. I need it for her, because her skin is cool even though she smells of a bonfire roaring in the daylight.
She sleeps the entire way back to the keep. I would be proud of my gracefulness that I made it possible for her to sleep so well and so continuously, but I wasn’t graceful and still, she sleeps. The swelling in her face has not gone down and her body temperature seems too low for her having been pressed against me for all this time. Her heartrate is persistent, but slow. It feels like…like her body is shutting down.
I’ve never experienced panic like this before. True fear. A harrowing horror. My body is consumed and physical pain shoots through my heels as I pick up speed, eventually reaching the far edge of the Heart Forest, which gives way to the darker terrain of Paradise Hole, which ends at the highway line that leads to Undoline. But I don’t take the roads. I sprint across the farming villages, across the sodden ground, through cornfields and flat farmlands until finally, I see the keep on the horizon.
I kick up clods of soil the size of boulders as I race until the gates cast a shadow long enough for me to fall beneath. The gates are black and imposing, studded with spikes that usually boast the heads of my enemies — and will boast the head of the Trash City female soon enough — but right now the spikes are all vacant. The guards, spying me, immediately issue orders to open up.
I advance into the courtyard of the keep and become aware of the Alphas that number among my staff. I don’t like their presence, don’t like them here. On a snarl, I race inside with her, the towering stones of the keep swallowing us whole. My beast is still here. My other form is nowhere to be found.
My staff all stare and duck out of my path as I charge down the open corridors into the main vestibule. The keep is structured poorly, despite it being new. Four outer walls contain a courtyard which surrounds a massive castle, but the castle has been expanded and then expanded again. An entire partition has been built out down the southern hill and the western wall curves clumsily to meet it. A lower floor half submerged in earth holds the upper dungeons, where the Omega’s family was held, and below that there is a lower dungeon for the more insidiously aligned prisoners who will never see light again.
Inside the vestibule with its vaulted ceilings, airy walkways branch out in every direction. A double helix staircase wraps around itself before me and ascends all five floors of the castle. I take it, my claws scratching at the carpet and the stone beneath it, up to the second floor. I go east, down to the farthest point of the longest hallway, and then through the double doors up the grand staircase that leads to the east wing and my private quarters. I take her to my private quarters without thinking. Thought does not matter, anyway. It’s where I would have taken her had I thought about this decision for a year.
My beast form is too large to fit through the doorway to my chambers so, reluctantly, I reach deep within the recesses of my sanity to find my bipedal legs and furless limbs and draw them forward. Still cradling Kiandah, I throw open the door and barrel inside, but it’s here that I hesitate. Standing just inside of my private chambers, surely looking like a wild man with skin covered in dirt and mud and hair in tangles, I’m uneasy. Whispers echo up the stairs from below and are followed by the sound of footsteps, trudging up here to my private quarters. How dare they.
“Back,” I hiss, edging further into my room, prepared to defend it as if it were a castle and she the treasure in my arms they intend to plunder. Over my corpse. The trespassers have reached the door, which still hangs open. Shielding Kiandah from view, I look over my shoulder, my face half monster, half man. My gaze narrows on Radmilla — one of only four individuals ever allowed into my private quarters and only with permission, a permission she does not now have. The other two with her are not on the guest list and Horace…Horace is an Alpha. If I were not carrying the Omega with such delicacy, I’d cross the threshold and tear him down where he stands.
He must sense how close he is to danger because he speaks first, despite being the most junior member of the cluster, and stops dead in his tracks. He’s going to be dead in his tracks. “My Lord, I mean no harm. I am only here to support Okayo in assessing your injuries and tending to the Omega, if that’s what you wish…”
“That is not what I wish. Get out!” I release a roar so loud it causes Radmilla to trip.
Okayo catches her upper arm, but he is fearless. He continues a casual advance through the doorway to my quarters. Casual, all but the swallowing. He swallows many times. Perhaps, not so casual. “My Lord, we heard alarming reports from the Crimson Riders in the Heart Forest. It seems that you defied standard protocol and bred the Omega over the course of two days.” Two days. “A little more.” A little more. “I’m assuming she went into heat.” He continues speaking, but I am too stunned to hear him. I am astounded. Both that we were gone for so much time and that we were gone for so little. A two-day heat is short for an Omega. The standing record for an Omega heat is twelve days.
“…in the hunter’s lodge you’d have found provisions, yet she may still be undernourished.”Undernourished. Provisions. I fed her nothing. I gave her no water. “Most Omegas tend to suffer from poor nutrition after a heat, especially when serviced by a single Alpha and not a pack. Dehydration, as well.” Dehydration.
He’s a dozen steps away from me now and reaches up to scratch his throat. But he dares to meet my eyes. “Were you able to feed her at all or did the rains interfere? I’m assuming you were able to give her water, given the abundance.” He tries a smile, which illuminates his youthful face, but I’ve begun to panic. I stop where I am and lay the Omega down on the thick black fur at my feet. My beastly claws scratch at my chest, morphing back into nails. My beast is retreating on whimpers I can hear in my skull, but that do not rise in my throat. My two legs feel suddenly inadequate. I’m shaking. My heart beats erratically.
“I offered her neither food nor water. Her heat came on strong and I was lost to it.”
Radmilla, somewhere nearby, gasps. I want to claw out her esophagus to keep her from making such a sound again. It fills me with so great a shame I have not the emotional depth to process it. She has been more of a mother to me than my own mother ever was. To hear her disappointment now would have crushed me, if I were not already crushed by the sight of the Omega in my grasp.
“You…” Okayo starts, sounding flabbergasted for a moment before he straightens and points with authority. “Get her on the bed unless you’d like to bond her here.”
I would like to bond her here and it is not a sense of duty that stops me from it, but a memory of a story that was told to me once by the Berserker of Dark City. My heart is hammering. Venom drips into my mouth from fangs that have yet to fully retract. I look at Okayo, mud and sticks whipping off of my hair and splattering his skin as he crouches beside her and looks down at her body with worry and anger.
“What if it does not work?”
His neck snaps up. The three beings in the room besides the Omega and me go so still it feels as if they’ve been frozen by time. Then a cool breeze filters up from the stairwell below and through the open door. “I…” Okayo begins. His mouth opens and closes several times.
Radmilla comes to his rescue, shuffling further into the room, pink high in her otherwise pale cheeks. She looks at Okayo, speaking to him directly and subsequently ignoring me. It is a foreign sensation. “What medical equipment do you need?”
That snaps him out of his trance. “Horace, you know what we need. Fetch it now. Bring Finn to help. Radmilla, we’ll need hot water, potable water, and food prepared for when the Omega wakes. Something soft and easy to chew for now.”
“Of course. In the meantime, Lord Yaron, I suggest you bathe. I’ll be in shortly with sustenance for you as well…”
“No.” I’m still seething, panic riding me hard, making me clench so violently I’m concerned I’ll splinter all of my teeth. “I’m not leaving her.”
The world goes still again, but for a shorter beat. Okayo is in motion. Horace is racing backward down the stairs and I’m carrying the Omega to the only place I can think to bring her — my bed. And as my feet trip over one another, struggling to maintain human toes as I continue to fight with my beast, I make him assurances to regain control…assurances that I am not sure how I will keep. Because all my beast wants in this moment is a guarantee that my bed will be the only place she ever sleeps.