Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
TORION
Brigid's face was peeking over the edge of the loft as I carried in the last basket of food from the keep Maggie had sent with me.
I'd been ashamed to realize that I'd been too bothered by Brigid's abandoning me to wonder how she would manage here at the cottage.
And given the ecstatic expression on my omega's face when I'd mentioned there was a bag of tea in the cart, Maggie had been right to worry about her mistress.
I set the basket down and tried not to let all the hope I was feeling rise up into my expression as I looked back at Brigid.
I had expected a prickly, cautious, stubborn Brigid upon arrival, was perversely looking forward to teasing and poking at her until she relented and offered me another half smile or a roll of her eyes.
The hunger my omega met me with—a rival to my own for her in the dark nights and dragging days that had passed—had shocked me nearly to my knees.
Anger had followed. Anger that she'd even thought to deny us one another, that she'd stayed away when I couldn't stand to, that I would forgive her the neglect if she would only kiss me again.
I missed you.
"Torion?"
I blinked and focused on the Brigid above me, not the aching memory from less than an hour ago.
"Will you stay here tonight?" she asked softly, shyly.
I swallowed hard and locked my knees to keep from crumbling to the floor in a pathetic display of gratitude.
"I know I shouldn't ask," Brigid continued, wincing slightly, interrupting me before I might blurt out the cry of yes that rested on the tip of my tongue.
"Why shouldn't you?" I asked instead, turning to the basket and pulling out the bag of tea. There was a kettle hanging near the fire, and with a nudge, I could hear the slosh of water inside.
"You're meant to be at the keep," Brigid murmured. Out of the corner of my eye, a lock of auburn hair slipped over the edge of the loft, and I busied myself making tea to keep from twining it around my fingers.
"I've kept busy this week" —distracting myself from your absence— "enough so that there's nothing that really requires me for the next day or so."
"Really?"
If she hadn't sounded so pleased, I might've had the sense to guard myself, to offer her the night but leave in the morning. With a single word and a hint of hope, my will crumbled.
No, that wasn't true. My will wanted to be wherever Brigid was.
It was the voices of betas like Francis Keane and even Ned MacIntyre in my head, hissing that it shouldn't be the alpha chasing down his omega but the other way around.
My father had deferred to my mother's whims at the expense of his reputation, if not also his duty.
Brigid doesn't have whims, she has worries, I reminded myself. Worries I wanted to erase.
"Really," I answered.
Her arms folded in front of her, and I suspected she hid a smile in them. "Are you making me tea? I can do that—"
"No, stay up there and rest," I said, a weight lifting off my shoulders as the matter was settled.
I would stay at the cottage "for a day or so," as I'd said.
I would observe Brigid here in this place that she felt safest, and try and do my best to find ways to make the keep such a place for her as well.
"Very well. Catch me up on the keep," Brigid said, rolling back from the edge of the loft. I wanted to call her back just to savor little hints of her as I puttered around her cottage, but I bit my tongue and took the opportunity to study the space unobserved.
"For the most part, it's been uneventful, but Alpha Worthington and Francis Keane brought me a scheme," I said.
"A good scheme?"
I huffed. "For them, if I fell for it."
"Tell me," she bossed, sitting up slightly, her frown just visible.
I ducked my head to hide my smile, and filled my omega in on all of the news.
"Is it too late, then?"
I paused before reaching the cottage window, the quavering, feminine voice startling me out of my thoughts.
Brigid had sent me to bathe out by the river while she organized all the goods I'd brought into their proper places, saying she would join me.
I'd floated aimlessly until my curiosity—and my desire to be back in Brigid's company—had made me too impatient to wait.
She'd received a patient, apparently. I knew I shouldn't snoop, but I also didn't want to interrupt them. Preparing to turn back to the water, I caught Brigid's answer.
"It would've been better if you'd come to me before the rut, you know," Brigid said, the words softened by a gentle tone.
"I could hardly arrive at the alpha's keep asking for the preventative! And it's not as if anyone expected you to be claimed, you must admit."
I bristled on behalf of my omega, my mind racing to catch up to the conversation. Brigid's sigh carried out of the cottage windows to my ears.
"Fair enough."
"P-please, say you can help. I won't survive another son. I'll drink the tea everyday—"
"The tea only helps before," Brigid said, and the other woman sobbed before my omega interrupted her once more. "But there are other herbs. Their effectiveness is less reliable, but it's what I can offer."
I crept back slowly, careful not to be seen or heard, mulling over their conversation.
Preventing a pregnancy, especially during a rut, was illegal for dragonkin women.
If Brigid had ever offered such services to women before, and that information got back to the betas of the territory, it would be expected that I would punish her at the very least, if not imprison her.
Of course, one of the women she helped would have to admit to such an act and receive the same judgment.
Fang's fire, I hoped it would never come to that.
If it did, I would burn every last remaining splinter of a bridge left between myself and the betas by refusing to act against Brigid.
My head spun, racing to consider new options, ways I might adjust the law before Brigid could be exposed.
As long as anyone knew what she'd done, both she and I were in danger of retaliation, if not simple blackmail.
The sound of carriage wheels churning over gravel was muted under my thoughts where I waited by the gate, watching the sunset, but the soft slip of footsteps on the ground roused me.
I turned toward Brigid as she approached, her face stony and guarded.
I stretched my hand out in her direction and the shield fell away, her eyes widening and welling slightly.
"I didn't mean to overhear," I said.
"Torion, I swear to you, I did not break my promise—"
I caught her hand and tugged her to me, stopping the worried words with a soft kiss, wrapping my free arm around her trembling frame until she sighed and sagged against me.
"I know that," I mumbled against her lips, claiming another, firmer kiss before adding, "I wouldn't care if you had.
" Brigid winced and jerked at that, and I hurried to recover.
"Well, I would, but only because all your talk of our parcel of children has me excited to have them running wild about us.
But I wouldn't begrudge you the choice, and it wouldn't change my resolve to keep you at my side as my omega. "
Brigid was burrowing into my chest before I'd fumbled my way through the speech, her ragged breaths puffing against my skin at my open collar.
One of her hands slid up my chest to find my jaw, rubbing there, before she leaned back, arching in our embrace.
"Torion. You are intolerably good," she said, voice weak and eyes wet.
I frowned, unsure if her words were meant to be praise.
I caught one of her tears with my thumb and wiped it away.
"As long as I am good to you." The words fell out of my lips without thought, precisely the sort of sentiment a council of advisors would warn me against. My duty was to the Hills, not to my omega.
But I hadn't taken a true council yet, and if I did, the first person I would call to my side would be Brigid.
She let out a choked cry and rose up on her toes, shaking hands clasping my head, fingers tangling in my hair, drawing me down to fuse our mouths together in hunger and succor.
The cottage was barely big enough to accommodate us together, so when a small family arrived to consult Brigid on their daughter's cough, I kept myself out of the way outside, brushing down and watering the horse that had pulled them in on a cart.
I could hear them speak, Brigid's gentle and precise questions, the way she sweetly teased the nervous little girl until they were giggling together.
I watched her through her windows, quick and competent as she grabbed jars from shelves, filled a small cloth bag with herbs, and instructed the family on the preparation of baths and teas.
"If I write out my instructions and the herbs I've given you, will that help?" Brigid asked.
"Aye, miss," the mother said, studying Brigid's scribbles over her shoulder with quick nods. "We can find those easy enough."
I ducked out of view again, rounding the back of the cottage and listening as my omega made her farewells to the family. I slipped back inside as their cart rolled out of view of the cottage and watched Brigid carefully arrange the jars she'd pulled back onto shelves and in cupboards.
"Why are only some of them labeled?" I asked, finding my usual spot out of her way in the rocking chair by the fireplace.
"Most I recognize by sight or smell, but some can be easily confused with one another, so I make sure to paint the name on the jar," she said.
"And do you gather every herb yourself?"
She shook her head. "There are merchants who travel the Hills. Mine brings herbs from farther south or north that I don't find here, and I trade him for those which only grow by water beds or in these particular woods."
I hummed as she continued her work, tidying everything away. I considered my own careless habit of leaving things out wherever I finished with them, knowing some maid or other servant would come along and put things to right again in my wake.
"Is this just how you would keep things organized in any space, or do you have it this way to suit this cottage's size specifically?"
Brigid flashed me a narrow-eyed look over her shoulder, and I was a little embarrassed at the pang of desire that sharp look conjured in my loins. "Why are you asking so many questions?"
I shrugged. "I like to watch you."
Her lips pursed. "It's just…it's just how things were organized when I came here. I suppose it's this way just because that's how it can be in such a small space. I don't know how I would change it, now that it is what I'm used to."
"It was your mother's cottage?"
Brigid nodded. "My mother left my father's house so he could take another omega, and came here where her own mother, my grandmother, was still living. She was lucky in that way, that she didn't inherit the property until after my father had dismissed her."
"How old were you?"
"Four," Brigid said softly. "They had me between ruts. And then when another rut passed without my mother bearing a son, their union was dissolved."
"Did you see her often?" I asked, frowning.
Brigid shook her head. "Rarely, in truth.
And she was so…" Brigid paused in her path through the cottage, blinking into a mirror and then laughing ruefully before turning back to me.
"Well, I suppose she was what I have become—a bit roughened and countrified.
At the time she seemed rather wild to me, and raggedy.
I didn't mind my father's new omega, Janet.
She was young and sweet and treated me like a little doll.
It wasn't until after my union with Malcolm that I saw more of my mother. "
Brigid helped herself to my lap, and I tried not to preen as her arms looped around my shoulders, her legs folding around my own. I wasn't sure if I was imagining that her ease was greater with me here in the cottage, but I was certainly relishing the change.
"If I'm honest, she terrified me," Brigid said softly, tucking her head down beneath my chin.
"I thought if I wasn't careful with Malcolm, I would end up in her position.
I…" She sighed. "Well, needless to say, after she passed, after I had enough of the life I'd chosen, I came here.
It was a punishment for myself at first, until I realized what independence she had.
I wish I'd had the same accord with her while she was alive. "
I planted my feet firmly on the floorboards, rocking the chair beneath us, cradling my omega.
Any inclination I'd had to order Brigid back to the keep with me vanished.
This place was her sanctuary. She would return to the keep when she was sure it was safe, and as long as she did not bar the doors, I would meet her here where she was comfortable.