9 | Yaron
Shadow Keep
I am not the male I was before the rains. Before the hunter’s hole. Before she asked me to do something damning — to drop to my knees and crawl. My entire world has been thrown off of its axis and I do not know who I am anymore.
I am shame.
I am need.
It’s been hours and the Omega’s vitals are scarcely improving, even though Okayo and fucking Horace and Finn, a medic and a male Beta, have been working tirelessly to keep her pulse steady, her lungs pumping and her temperature up. Yet, for all of their efforts, the only visible displays of their progress are the doctored wounds on her feet and hands, the smaller cuts on her lip and cheek. She’s still slipping away, a small, contented smile on her face, like she’s at peace. Like she’s perfectly fine to leave this plane of existence and that’s not going to fucking work for me. It cannot.
The males look to me. Radmilla hovers in the room, standing awkwardly some feet away from the foot of the bed. She’s uncomfortable in here, but there are places she could have chosen in the center of the wide-open space to sit. No, she’s worried. She wants to see what’s happening to the Omega, too. To me. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.
Radmilla’s fingers fumble over her lips uselessly as she prays to the old gods. Many worship the old gods, some the new, some revere animal gods, while others worship their ancestors. Like the Ubutus. I wonder if Kiandah’s ancestors are here with her now or if they abandoned her in the heart tree or even, before that — the moment that they brought the dead into their kitchens for purposes only the damned can guess at. I glance at Radmilla, hoping that for the Omega’s sake, she calls to them, too. Because if any moment calls for prayer, it is this one. We’ve exhausted other options.
“Lord Yaron, what’ll it be?” Okayo says to me.
I open my mouth to reply, but all I can think about is a memory that isn’t even mine, but that belongs to Berserker Dragnovic. He failed his Omega when he attempted to force his bond.
“My Lord, we dont have much time. What do you decide?” Finn says, out of turn and out of line. He is the lowest ranked person in this room, but I do not reprimand him for it. Not now. I look up at the room full of worried stares with one single looming worry of my own. They think I have a choice to make, but they’re wrong. I have already chosen. But I am not certain that she has.
“It is understandable for you to decline to bond this Omega,” Horace says softly. Fucking Horace is the last person I’d like to hear from now, especially when it comes to the topic of cutting this Omega free for another Alpha pack to ravage her and worship her and breed and bond her and take her away from me. I release a low snarl, which Horace promptly misinterprets or ignores. “No Shadow Lord has bonded an Omega in six hundred years. It is a heavy choice to make simply to spare this one, especially knowing that she and her family are criminals…”
“Is there a way to test its efficacy?” I say, ignoring Horace entirely and focusing on Okayo so that I dont do something drastic. Like bite Horace’s head clean off.
Okayo blinks at me from over the Omega’s sleeping body, looking strained, looking stunned. He has beads of sweat coalescing along his hairline. His hair is short, a shock of tight black curls and coils. His nostrils, wideset already, flare further. “You aren’t hesitating because she’s a criminal or because of tradition, are you?”
A dawning comprehension changes his face entirely, its shape rounds. He softens. He looks like he’s aged in reverse a decade or more, and he already looked young before. Now, he looks at me with all the green novelty of a boy discovering a fictitious deity was real all along. And then the smile he wears falls as he turns over my words. His brows knot. He whispers, “You dont think it will work.”
Hes right. And one more drop of blood lost could be what kills her. “I wish to be certain before I tear open her throat.” As Berserker Dragnovic did once. My voice sounds far more ragged than I intended.
A look of grim determination replaces the surprise Okayo wore before. He reaches across the Omega’s body and pulls her wrist out from beneath the black blanket. “We’ll try to be direct. See if we can’t ensure that you inject your venom into her vein as directly as possible. The puncture wound you create will have to be precise and small.”
I nod, understanding what he means and hating it. This is not how I dreamt of bonding my Omega. Though of course, as Lord of the Shadowlands, I’d never, ever have dreamed or hoped or longed for this. Never.
After securing a band around her upper arm, he guides her wrist to my mouth and instructs me to open. He uses his own goddamn hand to position my fang and I hate it. Hate it. Having to rely on another to bond my Omega properly. My Omega. Mine. I meet Okayo’s gaze and it’s as if we share the same thought at the same time because we both look down at Kiandah’s face.
“She’ll be your Omega, Lady of the Shadowlands, if this works, Lord Yaron — and a criminal besides. The fallout will be…”
“I know.”
Okayo nods. “Then, are you ready?”
“You don’t have to do this,” Horace insists and it’s that insistence that does it for me.
I bite down softly. I can feel the moment her blood meets my fang because the venom within my glands surges, feeling cool on the inside of my fang and hot on the outside in a rare combination that’s painful and only soothed when the fang is fully submerged in the flesh of its target, which mine is not.
“That’s enough,” Okayo says, guiding me away. “Let’s see how she handles it.”
I pull back, unspent venom filling my mouth and forcing me to swallow the slightly bitter taste. I don’t like it. I don’t like any part of this. I especially don’t like Okayo administering to my Omega when that responsibility should now be mine, and I truly loathe the way Horace is looking down at her with his head slightly cocked as if he remembers her from somewhere he can’t quite place.
“What is it?” I bark, startling the three medics.
Okayo rounds the bed and pushes me out of the way, leaving Horace to take his place. Okayo is staring down at her wrist while occasionally looking up at Horace, a silent conversation that I hate passing between them.
“Your Lord asked you a question,” Radmilla tuts, having come closer to the foot of the bed. She takes a seat upon it and reaches out to touch the Omega’s foot through the blankets. Like a mom. A good mom, though she never had any of her own children and it’s too late now. Her husband died young, in a battle with Hjiel that took place before I was born and whose casualties caused our two cities to finally sign the Treaty of the South Island. Though there are still lingering tensions and skirmishes among tribes and villagers at the borders, there haven’t been battles between our cities since.
Radmilla’s gaze is soft — and it is never soft — as she stares down at Kiandah, wearing a frown. Her grey hair is unbound down her back. It was once raven-black, though few traces of that remain. Her skin, which holds a pale, peachy hue, is now flushed. She looks like there is much she’d like to say but she manages to hold her tongue, for once. For the most part.
“Is our Lady well?” Lady. Our Lady.
Gods. The warm pride that surges through my chest is wholly unexpected. It pulls and strains, like stitching pulled taut over a wound. My tongue feels bloated in my mouth and my stomach fills with butterflies. Butterflies. I look down at the female and stroke the back of my hand over her still-dirty cheek. Her face, which had been impassive, eerily so, twitches and turns towards me. She’s mine. Of course she would react to…
Okayo makes a clicking sound. “It’s unclear.”
“Unclear?” Radmilla says, brows furrowing.
The three medics nod. Finn, having pulled a desk over, closer to the bed, seems to be painting small dabs of the Omega’s blood over strips of fabric. He shakes his head. “Her blood is coagulating properly, her temperature has come up and her lungs sound clear — they weren’t before.”
My heart beats harder. Slower, but more forcefully. Does that mean…
“Her heart arrhythmia has also faded. Her pulse is steady and stable,” Okayo says, listening once again to the scope he has placed on her chest. “She’ll make a full recovery.”
“But…” Horace. Fucking Horace. “She doesn’t scent of you, m’Lord.” He turns his gaze to meet mine, but doesn’t hold it for long. I’m distracted from wondering whether Kiandah would find Horace good-looking with his thin build, slick black hair, naturally tanned skin, round face, wide set nose and narrow eyes that I don’t immediately understand what he’s said. Would he be her good boy? “My Lord.” He has spent so many years among high born classes, yet his accent still slips.
“What.” My tone is flat, not a question at all.
“Her external wounds also aren’t closing.” Okayo shakes his head and, beneath his breath, mutters curses. “Her body is using your venom for some things, but not others. And you say she doesn’t have a deterring scent marker?” he asks Horace, though that infuriates me. He could ask me. I don’t smell it, either.
Horace glances at me again with black eyes and rosy cheeks. “No. In fact, she still kind of smells like she’s in heat.”
I growl and feel my shoulders rise. Okayo speaks over my restrained threat. “That’s normal. Her heat cycle only just ended, the scent will clear in a day or two, in which time she’ll be sequestered here anyway, healing. Hopefully Lord Yaron’s venom has healed her most significant wounds. As for the rest, we’ll continue to administer to them. Lord Yaron, you should be relieved to know that it seems you haven’t successfully bonded the Omega, you’ve…sort of bonded her. And at least, the worst of the damage seems to be healing, albeit slowly. Really slowly.”
Relieved?
I hear his words, but they filter to me slowly. So slowly. The trickle of rain droplets over a smooth stone. The warmth in my chest dies, though the butterflies in my stomach don’t.
“It would seem that this Omega has the same problem the Fallen Earth Omega did when Berserker Dragnovic attempted to bond her. It looks like she’s the one calling the shots.” Yes, she does, I think to myself, though I don’t have any clue what Okayo is referring to. “It looks like it isn’t just about whether you’ve chosen to give her your bond. This Omega will need to choose the Alpha she’ll be bonded to.”
Choose. Choice. Desire. The words feel flimsy and foreign to me, and yet, I can feel that warmth kindling in my chest once more, fanned by the urgency to make her mine.
In my reluctance to speak and voice these thoughts aloud, Radmilla steps up to my left shoulder and lowers her voice to a near whisper. “My Lord, you should also know that while you were gone, the Crimson Riders were able to recapture the Omega’s family. They have been returned to the dungeons.”
Choose — she will never choose the Lord who keeps her family in chains.
Choice — there is none when it comes down to me against allegiance to her kin.
Desire — is moot. Hers will never be again. Mine? Mine will fade as I arm myself with the knowledge that I can never have her. This Shadow Lord will remain like all the rest. Unmated. Alone. History will not be rewritten on this day and it is for the best. “It is for the best.”
“My Lord?” Radmilla says. The medics are no longer looking at me but conferring amongst themselves.
“Okayo is right. It is for the best that the Omega and I were not able to complete a true bond. I will see her to good health and she will be mated with an Alpha or pack beneath the next red moon.” Over my dead — “Meanwhile, I will handle her family.” As I say the words aloud, I batter my beast down, forcing him to heel. Him. He feels like an outsider for the first time since my ascension thirty-eight years previous.
He howls and spits and bays. I ignore him. I douse the glow in my chest. I take all of the tattered pieces of that boyish desire I’ve never dared hope to hold and gather them up, lock them in a chest, and toss that chest to the bottom of the ocean. Because I did have such hopes. A hope, singularly.
The hope of having one thing that belongs, not to all of my people, but just to me. The hope of having her, Kiandah, look down at me with fire in her eyes and flames at her back and bring all my yearning to the fore. The hope of serving the Lady Kiandah as a good Lord should serve the Omega that belongs to him and only him. That is his and only his. The good Lord who is only hers.
Mine. What would it be like to call her mine in longing and in life? No. That moment is over. My beast howls.I tuck my grief away. It has no business with me now. I am the Shadow Lord.
“Let me go now and deal with the traitors.” I nod once to Radmilla and struggle to my feet. The greater struggle is leaving the room, leaving the Omega behind, and leaving that one singular hope behind forever. Where I go now and what I intend to do, she will never forgive and I do not need her to.
I remember who I am.
I am Lord of the Shadowlands and she is not my Omega.