Shadowlands Omega (Beasts of Gatamora Book 2)

13 | Kiandah

On a mission

I’m nervous as I clutch the list of supplies in my pocket in a trembling fist and sneak through the bustling castle halls. No, I’m not nervous. I’m downright terrified. I can’t believe I let Audet, of all people, talk me into this.

Since my family was moved from the dungeons to the kitchens twelve days ago, things have strangely returned to normal. Well, our new normal. In addition to the location having changed, our stuff being gone — all of our belongings and trinkets, my sketches and a paltry few possessions handed down from the ancestors that came before — there’s a sort of…undercurrent of tension that exists between us that makes things…not so easy. And things have always been easy. The easiest, really, between my family members and me. Now, there are things unspoken that make me want to rant and rage at them — at Owenna and my parents — but I have never dared talk back to the three of them, so I just don’t say anything at all.

My father and mother seem meeker than they did, a little cowed, which also keeps me biting my tongue. I can feel their guilt. It’s like a new cousin that’s moved in with us that nobody really likes, but we can’t turn out into the cold.

They haven’t spoken about why they did what they did, only uttered meek apologies for “us being in this mess” and saying they “wish we could have done better for you” but these words feel so hollow. Owenna’s response has been worse. She’s shown almost no contrition at all. I overheard Cyprus ask her what was wrong with her in a harsh tone I’ve only heard him use a couple times before, and her response shocked me. She said, “You think we’re the only ones helping them? We’re just the only ones who got caught. I’m trying to figure out how that happened…”

Cyprus had been shocked. He and I had shared a look. We’d always been able to communicate without words. Owenna hadn’t just shocked us, either. It felt as if even my parents were on edge around her.

It was painful to watch. These golden beings who I viewed with reverence and love, brought down to this mortal plane. They were human, it seemed, after all. It wasn’t a pleasant realization.

Not like realizing Lord Yaron was only human. The discoveries I’ve made of him have been…incredible.

So things continued on. We resumed our duties in the kitchens, working with the limited supplies and stock we have. Because the other thing that’s changed? Our supply lines have been cut. Our suppliers for so many of the foods, spices and tools that we rely on to do our jobs won’t come near us. The farmers who bring us fresh vegetables and meat have been ordered to resume operations, but they won’t. Neither will our normal wine merchant or the handyman we need to repair the oven. Something’s wrong with the chimney and it fills the kitchen with smoke anytime we light it. We’ve had to get creative with our meals, but our creativity is meeting its end. If we want to keep the castle fed, we need to convince Orias’s villagers and merchants to resume trade. And they hate us. Many of them are Alphas or are friends with Alphas or married into Alpha families. They received the order from Radmilla to work with us, sure, but so far most things that have been sent to us have been the dredges of the stock, or even worse — spoiled and rotten. The butcher sent us a pig’s head with maggots in the eyes. The wine we got from the merchant was vinegar caked with sludge. The fruit had worms. The vegetables were slimy. The last shipment made Audet vomit.

That’s why she suggested I leave the castle to go to the market to try to make repair.

My family told her she was insane, told me not to listen, but the moment the words left her lips, I couldn’t unhear them. “He ordered us bound to the castle, but you he lets galivant about, traipsing through his keep as if you’re his Lady,” she scoffed. “If you weren’t an Omega, I’d think he even likes you. But since you are, it’s clear that his oath to protect Omegas must be stronger than his swift hand of justice. He won’t touch you. So you have to go to the market and convince them to send us good food. Otherwise, we won’t be able to cook and if we can’t even do that, then we’re doomed. Lord Yaron will truly have no more need of us, and even if he freed us tomorrow, no one would work with us for any amount of coil. We’re just a trio of murderers and their accomplices.”

My sister Zelie had pushed her. She’d been pissed. My brother had broken up the tussle. Owenna had seethed, lashing Audet with her tongue. My parents had sulked, offering nothing in the way of guidance, and it had been their lack of fight that gave me mine.

List clutched in my fist, I cross the quad. Here, in the open courtyard in front of the castle, between the castle doors and the keep gates, Riders train in small groups, swords clash, dogs bark, nobles and Lords converse as they make their way across the cobblestones with purpose, some flashing me curious glances. Vendors bring their carts and wares in and out of the gates where they are stopped by various castle staff and directed on where to go.

I approach the open gates of the keep just as a small contingent of Crimson Riders make their way through it. They stop talking when they see me and though they continue walking, they watch me over their shoulders in silence as I pass them. I’m wearing a cloak I found in Yaron’s closet and tug down on the hood to help hide my face. It’s black and heavier than sin. I bustled the hem it so that it won’t drag on the ground when I walk, but there was nothing I could do for its width short of cutting it — which I wouldn’t dare. It envelops me.

Beneath it, I’m wearing one of Yaron’s tunics tucked into a pair of his trousers. Everything is huge on me, but I did my best. The only thing I couldn’t find were shoes, so I had to borrow Owenna’s. She’s barefoot now in the kitchens, which are still a mess. It’s clear the staff haven’t been keeping the kitchens up to date given that the old keep’s kitchens were in operation.

Radmilla’s been kind, giving us time to get ourselves and the kitchen in order while staff make do with a very threadbare kitchen outside of the great hall and some prepared food that had been stockpiled for emergencies and in case of war to supplement what we’ve been able to provide. I worry that the stockpiles will run out before we can resume full operations, but there isn’t much more we can do without workers willing to help us. We’re also down a dozen staff.

I think of Justine, then of Farro. Our friends who made it and survived the burning of the church. We haven’t seen them since, but I know that they are alive and that, after a brief interrogation, they were released from the dungeons. They probably hate us for the terror we brought unto them. Tor… I blink and can feel the way his hot blood had soaked into my palms… How will they ever forgive us? My parents and Owenna cost us everything because they cost us everyone…and all for coin.

Squeezing my eyes shut tight and clutching the list to my chest, I step through the gates. They tower over me, two imposing doors that swivel open on hinges in their centers. Against the black wood are carvings that I’m too scared to examine in great detail now. But I catch a flash of monsters with fangs and beasts with wings and scales in scenes of war and I shiver. Spikes jut out from the doors at even intervals. Lord Yaron is known to behead his enemies and slam the backs of their skulls onto the spikes, like sick polka-dots. I shudder, hoping to the ancestors watching over me that my head doesn’t become one of them when Lord Yaron discovers I’ve left.

The gates behind me now, I’m surprised with every step that no one stops me. The guards clearly saw me — so many people clearly saw me — but maybe, Audet was right? Maybe, Lord Yaron really is giving me run of the castle just because of my Omega nature, the signature of my pheromones that marks me different from the rest of them.

I don’t exhale fully until I’m all the way at the base of the knoll, taking the highway line north, towards Orias, even though further north, past Orias and past Paradise Hole all the way to the docks and the infamous Night Market is where I yearn to go. That’s where the richest spices and the most exotic produce and the fanciest syrups and the most decadent butters are sold. Silks and fabrics, too, would be useful. My family’s clothing is in a state. They haven’t been given new clothes or material to repair what they wore out in the storm. We look, together… Well, we look like prisoners.

Sadness blisters my chest, making something swell inside of it. I know Yaron doesn’t like me. I know that. He all but told me before he rutted me to the brink of death that he didn’t like me then and never would like me. But there’s a small part of me, so small as to be almost invisible, that sees that he released my family, though he didn’t need to, that he put me in his chambers, though he didn’t need to, that he…checks up on me — with decreasing frequency, yes, but that he checks on me at all is surprising — that wonders if he doesn’t like me just the tiniest bit. Or at least, he gives me some leniency and honors me in small ways because I am an Omega. I am not sure, but I wish…I wish…for things I have no right to wish for.

It’s not a long walk to town, and a short distance through town to get to the marketplace set up in the central town square. Narrow roads full of smiling faces that fall when they see me are what I’m greeted with upon my arrival. I tug my hood lower and hasten my pace, taking a left near the spice stalls to go see Marnie first. She tosses a fistful of cayenne in my eyes the moment I pull my hood back. Trying not to scream bloody murder, I sprint to where I know the horse troughs to be near the stables. I shove my face into the water and scrub my eyes furiously until the stinging abates.

Well. That went about as expected. I glance down at the list in my hand, the charcoal now all smudged and bleeding, and laugh bitterly as I right myself and pat my damp skin dry with an edge of Yaron’s cloak. I vowed not to get it dirty, but I realize now that was a fool’s hope. He hasn’t checked on me in a couple days, though, so I’m not too worried. I’ll have time to clean and dry it before he can see what I’ve done to it. What I will do. Because I don’t doubt that having hot pepper thrown in my eyes is the least that the Alphas of Orias will do to me. And I’m not wrong.

The vegetable farmer charges me with his rake. I trip and fall on the cobblestone, bruising the heels of my hands and cutting a bloody streak across my right palm. The weaver throws her shed rod at me so hard it breaks skin where it connects with my forehead. Blood leaks into my eye. The pig farmer is the kindest — the one who sent the maggot-infested pig skull. He only throws dung. I use Yaron’s cloak to block most of it, but he’s persistent and he’s got a big shovel. If I still had hair, this would have been a catastrophe. As it stands now, I can wipe most of the shit off of my head with the backs of my wrists.

I’m sure I can find some way to clean myself up when I get back to Yaron’s room. I haven’t had the courage to ask yet for the staff to draw me a bath, but I’ve been wanting one. Sponge baths are all my family has, though, so even though I’ve been in the Lord’s private chambers, I still find solidarity with them in this. It’s one way that I can.

A group of Beta children whisper as I walk by. A pack of Alpha boys heckle me lasciviously in a way I don’t like. I make it to the fountain in the center of the marketplace, a stone statue of a Berserker beast lunging out of its center, water spraying from its massive maw. Children play here during the warmer months, but even though it’s a warm day and the fountain is running, there aren’t any children out today. I cup the water in my hands and splash some on my face to try to clear the blood and — I’m going to go with dirt — hanging from my eyelashes. I’m still staring up at the stone Berserker when I hear a loud blast. I freeze and jerk back, eyes wide, searching for an explosion.

Instead, my gaze snags on the blacksmith shop, a stone structure built right on the square. Its wooden door hangs open, looking like it’ll fall right off of its hinges as the blacksmith barrels through it. He charges straight at me and the distance between us disappears so quickly, it feels like time leapt forward, leaving me behind. Maybe it’s just the shock of it. Because even for as hated as I am right now by the town, I never expected Olac to put his hands on me.

He grabs me by the neck with both hands and lifts me off of the ground. He shakes me, spewing hate as he whips my body around. I’m distantly aware that I have Omega gifts now and that I could save my own life right now if I wanted to, but maybe it’s the wanting that’s the problem. I don’t want to die, that’s for sure, but I also don’t think he’s wrong for wanting to hurt me. He knew the family. I deserve this. No, I don’t. But I still don’t stop it.

The sound of whooshing in my ears is all I can hear, until the sounds of shouting override them. There’s a push and a pull and my body is flung from the grip of the blacksmith. I hit the fountain, my body slamming into cold, hard stone at the waist. It knocks the breath out of me and though I try to clutch the fountain to keep upright, I’m shaken and drop to my knees. For a second, I panic. I can’t breathe. Then air slowly returns to me. It burns like fire, but it returns. I thank the ancestors and inhale again, feeling grateful and ashamed. On my next inhale comes a greater whooshing, which finally makes way for the sounds of a vengeful world.

“…shows her leniency just because she’s an Omega… Where was leniency for Gwyn? For Yonel? For Gretchen? Gwyn was just a kid! They were a happy family. I hammered the wedding bands for Yonel when he got down on one knee and proposed to Gretchen when they were just wee children themselves! I was there when Gwyn was born. I was Gwyn’s godfather!” His rage dwindles from there and when I open my eyes, I see a man in a red cloak holding Olac by the wrist. His body is jolting forward, but when his gaze meets mine, I can see no real fight in him. Only grief.

“I’m sorry, Olac,” I mean to shout, but my voice comes out raspy and weak. “My family didn’t…”

“They may not have lifted the axe, but they did not need to. Your bloody, conniving parents — your sister worse than the lot of ‘em — ruined lives all the same.”

He’s right and I know it. His leathery brown skin is worn with lines that are always smiling. But not today. “I’ll make it right, Olac.”

My response only enrages him further. He surges against the grip of the Crimson Rider, who looks back over his shoulder at me with disdain. “Leave, Omega. Lord Yaron may have released you temporarily from your punishment, but if you don’t hurry back, I’ll have your ass here over the edge of this fountain.”

Olac’s fury momentarily shifts from me to the Rider. He shoves the man off and says angrily, “This quarrel has nothin’ to do with you.”

The man’s face twists, expression becoming more hawkish as he stares the other Alpha down. “No? Then perhaps our Lord would like to know who bruised his precious Omega.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him who offered to rape his Omega in the town square, too. We’ll see which he finds the greater offense.”

The Crimson Rider stands as tall as he can, but the tips of his spiky black hair don’t even come up to Olac’s meaty jawline. He’s a slender male besides, where Olac is pure muscle. “Fine. I’ll drag her back myself.”

The Crimson Rider is on me. He fists the front of my tunic and drags me down the road. My feet kick up loose stones as I fight to stay on my feet. I still have my gaze trained on Olac and a fiery sense of misguided righteousness fills me up when I say words I want to mean, but can’t possibly. “I’ll find Trash City. I’ll make sure Lord Yaron holds the guilty party responsible.”

Olac just laughs spitefully, his shoulders jolting up by his long earlobes, the wrinkles in his face flattening in defeat. “Who are you to hunt killers? You’re just a killer yourself. And come the Red Moon Festival, you’ll be even less than that. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, Omega.”

He turns away from me, and the crowd that I hadn’t even noticed gathering parts around him. Warm hands of villagers that I used to call friends coalesce on his back, offering him encouragement and comfort. Tears well in my eyes as it hits me then — the true magnitude of what my family has done. They’ve made us among the most hated people in all of Gatamora. We’re ruined. Not just our reputation, our chances to ever find partners and husbands and wives and have kids — our chance at happiness. To have what that Alpha family had before Trash City took their lives from them. And my family helped.

The ancestors won’t help me now, will they? We’ve ruined their entire line and tarnished their legacies. There are no ancestors for me, now.

I’m sick to my stomach as the Crimson Rider escorts me out of the village. He’s handsy and it hurts where he gouges his nails into my stomach and ribs. He whispers nasty things into my ear the whole time. It takes too long for the last of the buildings fall away and the highway line to open up before us, leading up to the next cresting hill before it descends and crests again at the keep. But the strange thing is…traffic here between the edge of the village and the next crest has thinned. The sky is dimming and the highway line is empty. The trellises of the castle loom too far away, peeking up over the crest of the following hillside. We’re alone and the rage he radiates causes a short, sharp panic to spike within me.

“I can walk…” I tell him, but he abruptly pushes me away from his body and as I turn to face him, he slaps me.

I fall, hitting the ground hard enough to choke on my next breath. As my vision comes to, I still struggle to make sense of what’s happening… I’m on my back, my legs splayed. The Rider is looking down at me with disgust, but it doesn’t seem to have done anything for his erection, which pokes out of the slit in his trousers, angry and veined and red.

I turn and try to run, but he catches my cloak easily, the pin I found to clasp it cutting against my windpipe. He releases me with a kick to the backside and I collapse into a muddy depression on the side of the road. Pain lances through my back and through my wrists, which buckle under my weight. “That’s right,” he says, no humor in his tone at all. Only menace. “Present for me, like a good little whore.”

I look over my shoulder and I don’t feel as afraid or angry as I should. I don’t even know what’s going on. My brain is firing slowly, my thoughts struggling to understand as the Rider flings his cloak back and tugs his trousers down further. “Lord Yaron may be bound by his oaths to protect Omegas, but I’m not.”

Ancestors help me, I’m going to have to fight. I’m not…not prepared. I gulp, tasting mud on my bottom lip. Yaron’s cloak is heavy, weighing me down. My fingers are slick as I try to unclasp it so I can better crawl away, turn around, and fight him. But even if I could right myself and turn to face him…there’s no magic here. I can’t feel it anywhere.

I can feel the jerking at the front of my already bruised throat as the Rider grabs the bottom of the cloak and tosses it to the side, exposing my backside. I yelp as his hand finds my trousers. He pulls my tunic free of my pants and the breeze that touches my lower back gives me the chills. I feel a strange and distant yearning to present in the presence of an Alpha, but even my Omega nature knows that this is not the Alpha it wants. It wants Yaron. I want Yaron.

I open my mouth to say something — anything I can think that might stop this — but a crisp, calm voice cuts between us just as he touches my bare hip. “Ugaros.”

A full-body chill runs through me. I keep my gaze pointed to the ground and I blink slowly, several times. I don’t dare look over my shoulder at the owner of the voice, because it is unmistakably Yaron. The Shadow Lord will punish me for this. So I stare down at the mud between my fists. As still as I am, I can see my reflection in the small pools that have formed in the divots. My eyes are wide and round and white around the edges. My ordinarily round face looks slimmer than usual, gaunt. I’m not well, comes the distant thought.

“M-m-m-my Lord.” The Rider, with all his confidence, now stutters like a boy caught torturing animals behind the school yard. Evil little cretin. Evil little coward. “You…you’re here.” I can hear the sound of fabric rustling, of his trousers being retied. The latch of a buckle.

“I am.” Lord Yaron doesn’t say more.

“I didn’t hear you come. You’re without horse.”

“I am,” he says again.

“You-you-you’re alone.”

“Yes.”

“D-do you have business in the village, my Lord?”

“My business, ordinarily, would be none of your concern. However, as you presently seem prepared to rape the business that I am here for, I shall enlighten you. I am here for the Omega.”

The Rider says nothing.

Lord Yaron asks, “Do you deny that you intended to rape the Omega?”

“No, my Lord.” He answers so quickly, with such honesty, it catches me off guard.

“And you were aware that the Omega was not to be touched, as per my edict?”

“I…” he starts, then seems to think better of it. “Yes, my Lord.”

“Very well. For your honesty, you will be offered a choice.”

“Thank you, my Lord.”

A choice? He was going to let him…

“Agony, or a swift death. Should you choose agony, you will survive it.”

He takes a moment to decide. I don’t even breathe. I don’t understand what’s happening. Lord Yaron is so casual, it’s as if he’s asking the Rider to choose between a slice of pie or cake. “Agony.”

“Good. Then present for me. Like a good little whore.”

“Wh-what?”

Heavy fabric shifts, and I hear the sound of a latch released. I know that sound. Lord Yaron freeing his axe from where it rests beneath his cloak, across his spine. “Present for me. I will not ask you again.”

“I-wh-how-you…” He stammers again and again. I can hear the sound of his feet shuffling. I wonder if he’s going to try to run. I wonder if I should try to run, but the thought is immediately cut short by my overpowering will to live and the understanding that, if I run, the Shadow Lord will cut me down.

Don’t run, I long to shout at the menacing Rider, my feeble attempt to spare us all from the violence to come, but the words don’t make it past the gate of my teeth. Shuffling steps are punctuated by much louder footfalls. Thud…thud…thud…

“You will present for me like a good little whore, and I will impale you with this blade, just as you would have impaled my Omega.”

I’m going to piss myself as emotions clash over and through my body. A bitter, icy cold is what makes sense upon hearing what Lord Yaron has in store for the Alpha, but what’s strange is the heat that washes over me right after. My Omega.

“N-no.”

“No?”

“No.”

Thud.

Lord Yaron comes to a stop. He’s close to me now. There’s another sound, this one more daring. A slicing sound. The Alpha, he wouldn’t, would he… He wouldn’t have drawn his sword, would he?

There’s a horrible thwack very close to me and I dare a swift glance to the right and see Lord Yaron’s axe embedded in the dirt. It’s half sunk into the road, like it’s demarcating the boundary line between life and death. Beyond it, the Alpha holds a sword aloft while Lord Yaron now stands weaponless. I kneel, prostrated at the inflection point, waiting for my sentence.

“Is this your choice? To fight?”

Hesitation. So much of it. Finally followed by a warbled, “Yes.”

“Very well. Kiandah.” Kiandah. It does things to me when he says my name. Makes me want to dole out praise and issue commands that I know he’ll want to obey.

“My Lord.” I’m surprised that my voice comes out whole, rather than in tattered pieces.

“Can you stand?”

Choked with fear and emotion, I don’t dare bet I’ll have the same luck speaking as I did before. So I nod rapidly.

“Rise.”

I stand up. I have to fight my way there, but after an eternity, I make it onto my feet. I don’t want him to see how ragged I look. I know he will, but maybe it’s that I just don’t want to see him see it. I keep my gaze trained on the axe in the road.

He doesn’t say anything for a prolonged moment. “Can you walk?”

I nod.

“Come stand behind me. I want you to face the keep and continue to face it. Don’t turn around, no matter what you hear.”

I take a step, but his cloak is soaked through with mud and weighs a bloody ton. My left knee gives out on my second step and I collapse onto the bank of the road, my feet still in mud, but my hands finding dry, packed earth. I lurch forward, determined, but when I find my feet — on the road this time — one of them is bare. I lost Owenna’s shoe, but I’m not going back for it. I keep my chin tucked, my gaze down, my hands fisted, my arms tucked tight against my sides. I lurch up the hill, where he told me to go, but before I can take another step, a shadow falls over me. I know it’s the Lord of them. He looms larger than he ever has before.

I flinch back and continue to tremble as his massive hands reach for the pin at my throat that chokes me. “I’m sorry…for your cloak. I’ll…repair…” I whisper.

“Shh.” His voice is sharp and he presses his thumb against my lips. His fingers slip under my chin and he tips my face up. I close my eyes so as to avoid his gaze. Not that it helps. I can feel the soft burst of his rage. It puffs out of him like a cloud and envelops me completely, even as his other hand drops to the cloak and, ignoring the pin entirely, rips it free. It hits the ground with a thwunk and I feel a thousand pounds lighter. But I don’t stand up any taller. If he’d let me, I’d hide beneath the cloak he let fall. Instead, his hand on my chin doesn’t relent. He tips my face back, then to the left and the right. He inspects me all over. I can feel the cold sweep of his gaze.

“Which of these injuries did this Rider here cause?”

I gasp, “None.” But my hands move to my stomach. Why did I do that? It came so involuntarily.

Lord Yaron rumbles deep in his chest. He closes the distance between us by half and we were already standing so close. His huge hand caresses the outside of my tunic — his tunic. He presses his full palm against my stomach. I inhale and can’t stop my eyelids from fluttering open. I look up, meeting his gaze directly, drawn there by something unearthly. He’s looking right at me, too. His expression is terrifying. So cold. So emotionless. I cannot see rage there, but I can feel it. He cannot conceal that. It pulses in waves that come thicker and thicker. Too thick to breathe through.

“You do not lie to me,” he says.

I wither. “I’m sorry.”

“Where did he hurt you?”

Tears well in my eyes. Not because I’m scared, even though I am that, too. So many people hurt me today. I didn’t expect it. I should have, but I’m naive and an idiot. I didn’t do anything wrong. And these are my people. My fellow villagers. My neighbors and friends. Why can’t they see that? I am not my family. I am not my family? The thought stutters and stops short and I’m not given time to inspect it further when Lord Yaron prompts, “Kiandah, speak to me.”

His storm cloud eyes are so deliriously spellbinding. And not just because of their color, their shape, the inky black lashes that frame them. Because they look at me like he sees me and the shape of my soul, all the colors of my heart. Beneath my fingertips, I feel the pull of a distant magic beat like a pulse.

“Just my stomach,” I whisper, voice barely there. “He grabbed me too hard when he was carrying me from the village…” I rub my hand over the back of his. His hand on my stomach tightens. I can feel it tense beneath my touch. “And here…” I lift my hand to my cheek. “He slapped me.”

Yaron’s nostrils flare. His gaze is pure brutality, there’s no other way to describe it. But I don’t wilt this time when that shadowy grey gaze slams into me. I want to, but the warm pressure of his hand on my stomach grounds me. “And your other injuries?”

“Other people in town… I thought I could talk to them, but they’re too angry.” I lick my lips. They feel swollen and taste like blood and dirt. I look like hell and I’m embarrassed. I want to reach up and touch my hair, wipe the shit off of my scalp, but my hands are shaking too badly and I know anyways that it wouldn’t help.

“It’s not their fault.” I move my hand back over Yaron’s. His fingers flex and tense. His body looms closer. We are inches apart. Close enough that our noses would press together if we were the same height.

Yaron drops his tone and speaks loud enough only for me to hear. “And Ugaros? Was the fault his?”

I know what he’s asking and it’s not fair. “I’m no justice dealer, Yaron.”

His eyes widen, his pupils flare. “Answer me, Kiandah.”

“Don’t make me hurt anyone. Ask anything of me, my Lord, but not that. Please, not that.”

He releases a harsh roar and pulls away from me so quickly, I sway into his vanishing warmth. “Then I will draw my own conclusions and make his suffering a thousand times worse than what you feel he deserves.”

I wince, hating him a little bit for his words, which are at odds with the way my Omega preens inside. She loves his violence. She has no embarrassment. She wants him and doesn’t care that she’s covered in shit and blood and has no clothes and no hair and is at his complete mercy.

“Walk twenty paces up the road. Keep your gaze towards the castle and cover your ears.” He withdraws from me entirely, taking back his shadows and his warmth. He looks back over his shoulder at me. “I want you to hear nothing. Hum to yourself, if you must. I’ll return to you quickly.” He turns again, but seems to hesitate. His hands are forming fists, clenching and unclenching. Fur is popping up on the sides of his face, his ears shifting to that of his beast, his hands forming claws before resettling.

His uncertainty makes me hesitate. I glance down at the road. “Yaron, you…you forgot your axe.” I feel silly pointing to it, but when I turn, I see that the Rider is still standing there, looking prepared, looking determined that he might actually be able to take down Yaron. It makes me uncertain.

Yaron is staring at me with a bewildered expression.

“I…” I start, but as I speak, the Rider uses the advantage to edge towards Yaron on light feet. He wouldn’t be so dishonorable as to attack while Yaron’s back was to him though, would he? Yes, a coward would do that. I shout, “Yaron, your axe! Be careful!”

But Yaron doesn’t move. He just stands there staring at me like I’m an alien thing while the Rider advances with the tip of his sword aimed to kill. Yaron’s eyebrows are knitted together so neatly they nearly make a complete line, his gaze moving across my face like I’ve got the secrets of the universe tattooed across it and he’d know them, if only he could read the language. I wipe the blood dripping in my eye away with the back of my hand. A muscle below his left eye twitches and I don’t miss the clenching of his hands.

I point at the approaching Rider, now only five long paces away and looking prepared to lunge… “Yaron!”

The Rider attacks, but Yaron bats the blade away with a paw, sending the Rider spinning to the side and shocking the hell out of me. His eyes never leave my face. He says softly, “I don’t need my axe for this.”

My lips fall open. Warmth cascades through me. Little bubbles that burn every place they pop.

“Wait for me, Kiandah.” His expression softens, his brow smoothing as the Rider behind him struggles back upright. He’s clenching his teeth, spittle flying out between them. Yaron doesn’t look bothered at all. “Please.”

Please. I start to move without intending to, but before I’m out of earshot and he turns away from me completely, I manage to squeak out a quick, “Be careful.” It sounds trite, saying something so glib to him, the Berserker Lord of the Shadowlands, and I fully expect him to ignore me. He doesn’t.

Instead, he stiffens. His expression twists in and out of that furrowed, soft look he seems to be wrestling with before finally settling on something so severe it looks painful. That same muscle high on his cheek ticks. “Move, Kiandah,” he barks, his voice harsher.

I jolt, wondering what I did wrong, and — determined not to do anything else to displease him today — I place my hands over my ears and limp up the hill. I sing the Beta song quietly under my breath to drown out anything I might hear. It doesn’t really help. “Alphas say grrr…Betas say bliss…Omegas say….Omegas say boom.” The lyrics are punctuated by the muffled sounds of a struggle behind me. Thud, thud, thwack, slice.

The battle doesn’t feel like it lasts that long, but it doesn’t help me any. I feel overexposed, my dewy skin blistering in the wind that I don’t think is really that cold, but it feels it to me. My face is hot. My throat burns. And I can still feel every place that Rider touched me. My bare, mud-encased toes curl into the dry road as I think of what could have been if Yaron hadn’t found me.

Screams fight through the barrier of my palms and my song and my scratchy voice fades when I see a small contingent of Crimson Riders cresting the hill. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I don’t know if he’s noticed them and my scratchy voice rises, “Yaron?”

I shrink, my shoulders curling inward as they advance and so many sets of eyes sweep my body. The male in the front, a white man with reddish hair, looks stunned at the sight of me. And then an axe flies over my shoulder towards him.

I nearly jump out of my goddamn skin as the axe sinks deep into the highway line, right where the red-haired Rider’s horse had been about to take its next step. His horse rears up and the Rider hisses as he struggles to get his horse back under control. Behind him, the other Riders’ horses roughly scatter.

I turn, worried that something’s happened — worried that I should be worried about the approaching Riders. Like the one he called Ugaros, do these others mean me harm? I open my mouth, but I don’t manage any words.

Lord Yaron is standing there, the breadth of his shoulders covered in dark, torn fabric. Black strands of his hair slash across his face and hang past his cheeks. His arms are held slightly out to the sides and his sleeves are torn, missing too, which means I have no problem at all seeing that his hands are covered in blood up to the biceps.

He’s staring straight into my eyes, even as he points at the approaching Riders and roars, “Do not cross that line.” To me, he lowers his tone and speaks so gently. “I’m nearly finished. I’m sorry to make you wait, but please turn back around and wait for me another moment more. You’ve been such a good girl.”

I could faint. I’m nodding absently and as I turn back around, I pretend that my gaze doesn’t stray to the sight of the bloody mess of a person on the ground behind him. My stomach churns. My throat is too ruined to sing anymore so I hum loud. As loud as I possibly can. Yaron…he…. Did he dismember the man?

The Riders that had been approaching are all stopped on the road, fourteen of them in two lines of seven spaced well away from Yaron’s axe in the road. The first two Riders of each line are male, both Alphas, and both watching me fixatedly despite the carnage that’s taking place past me down the road.

It’s the man with skin a slightly darker shade of brown than my own who says, “Are you alright?”

I meet his gaze briefly and shake my head. “No.”

The second the word leaves my lips, I feel the temperature of the air change. It heats with Yaron’s rage and I notice the horses and the Alphas that ride them stirring. But I don’t. I feel my shoulder blades sag down my back, strangely soothed by it.

I feel him before I see him. I feel him through the sole of my bare foot. His feet thud so loudly on the ground, I can feel the vibrations. And then he swivels around my body, appearing like a gathering storm against a backdrop that seems suddenly too bright. I hold fast as my gaze tracks the blood droplets pouring down his face. It looks like he bathed in the other man’s blood. The carnage is spectacular and like nothing I’ve seen before. And it’s for me, in my name and in my honor even though I’m his prisoner and he’s supposed to hate me. At least…that’s what I thought. I waver, but somehow catch myself on the bruised heel of my foot. I don’t breathe, but I don’t fall.

His gaze is locked on the ground and when he follows it, dropping suddenly to one knee at my feet, I jolt. In the absence of my humming, the world is starkly quiet when he reaches forward, his thick, rough fingers caressing the back of my left calf. He gives my foot a tug and I look down to see that he’s holding Owenna’s shoe. It’s not clean by any stretch of the imagination, but he handles the slipper as if it’s made of the finest crystal.

“May I?” he says without meeting my gaze.

I don’t speak, breathe, move. But I do let him pull my left foot out from under me, and I place my full weight on my right. He slides my shoe on my foot and I thank him. Well, I try. My voice comes out as puffs of air with no coloring. Yaron’s gaze snaps up and locks on my lips momentarily before traveling lower.

He rises to stand and his fingers reach forward and trap my face tenderly. His blood-soaked fingers are so warm. So warm and violently careful as he tilts my head side to side. He’s already inspected my wounds thoroughly though, so I don’t know what he’s looking for. Especially not when his expression changes — not to rage or worry, but to something harder to interpret. He makes a choking sound in the back of his throat, his nostrils flare and then he swallows stiffly.

“Come, Kiandah. Let me take you home.”