Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
TORION
For three days, I caught flashes of Brigid around the keep, always darting around the corner of a hall.
I'd tried calling out to her twice but received no response, and the pointedly averted gazes of our servants was too galling to continue the process.
Had she changed her mind about our bargain? She only needed to say so.
Lie.
I blinked, staring down at my muddied fingers, my arms and shoulders and back aching from hauling stone. I'd been standing out in this field, burning under the sun and mulling over my wayward omega too long.
Was she skittish? Shy? Reluctant?
Whatever the answer, if she did ask me to be released from our arrangement, I wasn't sure how readily I might agree. Not that I would force her to remain my omega. But I might try to persuade her to stay.
If I could get my hands on her.
My hands on her waist and soft hips, fingers digging into thick auburn locks, teeth nibbling at a long pale throat.
Grasses rustled behind me as someone approached, and I cleared my throat, putting another rock on the wall I was rebuilding.
"This is fine work for our new alpha," a rattling old voice greeted me.
I grinned and brushed grit from my hands before turning to face old Ned MacIntyre, my father's former advisor for many years and as close to a grandfather as I'd ever known.
"Don't tell the betas vying for my wings, but it's the kind of work I prefer, truth be told."
Ned huffed and held out a waterskin in one hand and an open flask in the other. "Expected as much, since you're out here yourself rather than sending folk as you ought to do. Not that you ought—"
I stopped him, taking a quick draught of water and a grateful sip of whisky. "I'm doing just as I ought, and what my father should've taken care of years ago."
Ned only grunted at that. My father had told me stories of his youth, following Ned MacIntyre about, constantly underfoot, and when my father had risen as alpha, he'd credited Ned's support and guidance to his success.
Ned had served as my father's most trusted advisor for decades, even when they were at odds.
But when my mother'd grown ill and my father's already tenuous attention to the territory had turned exclusively to his omega, Ned had finally delivered the harsh dressing down my father refused to heed, and they'd parted ways.
Ever since I'd reached my majority, I'd found myself wanting to push my father in new directions as alpha, then wanting to claim the position for myself, but I'd never been so disappointed in his leadership as when he'd abandoned his oldest, closest friend.
"My herd isn't so large as to matter," Ned reasoned, helping himself to a seat on a partially finished wall.
His yellow sage wings hung a little loose and low these days, and I expected they wore on him because he stood stooped now.
They certainly wouldn't support flight, even for his bony old frame.
"You'd be better served to seeing to the Roberts blocked well. "
"I sent folk to him this morning," I said, grinning as Ned chuckled. I joined him on the wall, passing the flask back, staring out at the rising green and gray landscape in front of us, speckled with the warm rust of Ned's herd of cattle. "I like your lands. You have the best views."
There was a long sloping falls running down the rocky hill that bordered his estate, and it turned into a stream that cut through his property, where I'd spent hours catching newts and toads as a boy.
I'd wash there later, before flying back to the keep to try and fail to catch another glimpse of Brigid.
Maybe I could even be lordly and demand she join me at dinner.
It'd be worth it to see her annoyed at least, that snarl that caught her upper lip that she always tried to hide away.
"I'm too old to be serving you up advice like I did your father—"
"I didn't ask for any," I said, laughing, knowing there was more coming, and it would certainly be advice.
"—but I can't say as I would've advised you to claim another dragon's woman. Even if he was doing a piss poor job of keeping her."
I grimaced and drank more water to avoid the conversation. "I'll admit it wasn't my most well thought out decision."
"She's a fine looking creature. I don't fault you that," Ned said with a shrug.
And Brigid was, indeed, fine looking. She was soft one moment and dagger sharp the next, which I found appealing, like I was preparing for potential battle just to kiss her but might instead find unexpected treasure in her sweetness.
"It wasn't about that. She came to me for help in avoiding him," I said.
Ned sighed. "Ah, was afraid that might be it. You'd be better off not to take after your father in that way."
"My father?"
"Aye, falling into a woman who needs you when your people need you more."
I stiffened at that. Ned had always been polite to my mother, although he'd also always pushed my father to be more attentive to the Hills. But was there more to it than that? More resentment than I'd been able to glean as a child?
"Brigid's…independent. She might need me to avoid Barr, but she doesn't need me," I said, frowning. Doesn't want me is more like.
Ned stared at me for a long time, long enough to have me squirming like a boy again. "Ah, I see. You're a fool then."
I huffed, crossing my arms over my chest. "Ned, I thought you didn't want to give me advice—"
"Well, if you can't see the obvious—"
"Ned!"
He rolled his eyes dramatically and took a long helping of whisky before I grew too impatient and stole it away from him. He hid his grin, but poorly.
"A woman who's been so thoroughly scorned by the man who shares her bed will take a special touch, a little extra assurance, before she trusts the next man," Ned said slowly.
"Scorned?" I asked, sitting up straighter, trying to ignore the irritated heat in my chest at the mention of Brigid and Barr together. It was distant past, according to her.
Ned met my eyes, his own rheumy wet blue ones astonishingly keen and sharp.
"Barr was a fine dragon, well into his prime and already having dismissed two omegas from his house, when he set his eye on that girl.
And girl she was. He had his scent on her by the time she was sixteen.
Her father was only too pleased to arrange the match, and she looked at that man like he hung the moon just for her each night. "
I swallowed the fire in my throat and focused my stare out at the streak of white water rushing down between the hills.
"But Barr's never been satisfied. I don't know how long it took him, or if he never was faithful to that girl, but I could see the moment she knew, and it wasn't even a year since she'd been claimed."
I startled at that, blinking. "He had other women?"
"Doxies, widows, other men's omegas, servants, you name it. He bedded any willing woman he could find. All while she kept his house, and hosted his guests, and looked like her heart had been kicked from here to Skybern."
My fists clenched on the stone, little pieces crumbling under my grip. I could imagine my words in the bath to Brigid now, why she heard dismissal rather than concern. I'd been assuming she didn't really want to bed me. Replaying our words in my mind, the conversation sounded more complicated now.
"They reconciled for a time. Barr wants an heir, of course, and she was still young and ripe. But he wouldn't have kept true for long, just through a rut cycle, and this next time, she left him for good."
She'd been betrayed twice by the same man. "She's not going to trust me easily," I said.
"Surely not. Likely doesn't trust herself, either."
I thought of the kiss, how careful I'd tried to be, how gentle, how she'd melted for a moment and the wild victory that had made me tight and eager, just before she'd torn herself away. I turned to Ned, and I didn't even care that the old man looked smug.
"What do you suggest, Ned?"
He took in a deep breath and set his hands on his old knees, frowning and pretending to think, when I knew full well he'd already decided exactly what I needed to do.
"Be patient, of course. Listen when she has a mind to speak. But don't be afraid to show that woman you want her. Barr was a small man that wanted to feel big, and I think he did so by crushing that girl—her heart, her spirit. You ought to see what happens when you do the opposite."
I sipped at the whisky flask, enjoying the heat burning its way from my tongue down my throat and into my belly, like dragon fire. Like desire for a woman.
"I'll see what I can do," I said.
I startled at the sound of the knock, wincing as water splashed from the tub onto the floor. Get it together, Torion.
"Come in." I cleared my throat and rolled my shoulders and wings, settling back into the hot, shallow water. I'd taken Ned's advice, mulled it over for a night and a day, and come to one slightly self-serving conclusion. A plan, to be exact. I would rewrite the night I'd erred with Brigid.
The door creaked open, and a sharp silence that rang in my ears. Her voice broke it softly. "You asked for me?"
I turned my head just enough to get a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, resisting the urge to drink her in fully. I'd have plenty of time for that later if this went well.
"I did." I only watched her enough to know that she closed the door and approached me in the tub, giving myself a last moment to catch my breath and prepare for my plan to go terribly awry or…
not. When she reached the side of the tub and remained standing, I looked up, catching her eyes fixed on the water, on what it distorted and revealed. "You've been avoiding me, Brigid."
That roused her enough, her cheeks warming with color even as she straightened and hiked her proud little chin. "I've been busy taking care of the keep."
We remained silent for a moment, me staring at her and her staring anywhere else.