Chapter 15 Rada
RADA
Stellina wasn’t hearing me when I told her I needed to get my bags packed and then get out of her house before the storm that rattled the shutters started ripping the stones off.
“You’re my daughter-in-law now, nearly twice over, and I don’t care if it’s the god of mean old selkies knocking on my door tonight.
The storm out there is raging, and you’re exhausted.
Tomorrow is soon enough to talk about running from gods, or what have you. ”
We all slept hard that night as the storm battered the house.
Goran had gone back to his camp, and Alexios had brought Dustin inside to sleep in what was apparently Goran’s room.
Alexios insisted on sleeping outside my door, claiming that my snoring was worse than the storm.
I had a suspicion it was out of respect for Kellin, though.
When I woke the next day, he was slumped outside the door as well, only a few steps from where Alexios had made his bed.
I had no idea where Lachlan was and told myself I didn’t care.
Stellina insisted on reading raunchy novels by the library fireplace as the storm continued to hammer the coast throughout the day.
Kellin worked on some household accounts, then mentioned something about a special project and vanished into the back rooms, coming and going, even in the rain all day.
After a lunch of soup and bread in the library with just the women––me, Stellina, and Lorana––he popped his head in and mentioned going out to check on “the others.”
I assumed that meant his brother. I didn’t ask.
Stellina gave me an old book on selkie mating rituals, which I ignored in favor of the booklet I’d found on grafting vines to produce new strains of fruit.
“This might work with starflower vines,” I muttered, taking a few notes.
Starflowers had once produced the most potent poison in the world.
“They died out, but if I grafted them onto grapevines…”
“You don’t need to take notes, Rada,” Stellina suggested. “Keep the book.” She grinned. “The whole library is yours anyway.”
“Mine?”
“You’re mated to both my sons. This library, this house, the gardens outside. It’s all yours now.”
“Not yours?”
“By the tides, no! I have a palace in the Eastern Seas. I bought this place for the boys. Well, Lachlan mostly. He discovered his nature a few years back, though he tells me it started about ten or eleven years ago, when we first traveled to Wren’s.”
For some reason, an odd thought occurred. He’d changed after we met. How soon after?
But she was still chattering. “...wasn’t obvious what was going on at first, but Kellin and Lachlan swam straight back to the Eastern Seas that night.
By the time they reached our home, Lachlan was already—well, it’s his story to tell.
But I bought this house when we discovered that the cold seas suppressed his Omega scent, and the, ah, the urges.
Then one day, Goran came to visit, and ended up moving his warrior’s camp here that summer. ”
I almost laughed. “You know Goran had me thinking he lived here with an Omega lover? That’s why I tried to kill Lachlan. Though there’s really no excuse.”
“You were jealous?”
“He said he’d been living with an Omega for years. His best friend. They looked happy together.” I shrugged.
She wrinkled her already wrinkled face up in a terrible frown. “That idiot! If ever an Alpha pined, it was that one. I told him a hundred times to go looking for you—” She stopped at my raised eyebrow.
“I left him, Stellina. I dumped him and used his vow to me to make him promise not to come after me. I’m not the hero in our story.” I picked another book, an old copy of Queen Travalya’s Fiery Harem Tales I’d read years ago.
“Your story’s not done yet, sweet girl,” Stellina said, opening her book as well. She didn’t turn any pages, though. “He went after you in Mirren to get medicines for Wren. Her herb garden isn’t as well tended as ours. You should pick a few things for her before you go to Drakonspear.”
I didn’t tell her that I might not be able to go.
But in the end, I agreed that if the rain stopped, I’d spend the next day harvesting for the remedies I knew Wren might need.
After all, she was pregnant by her kraken mate, a beast that could grow twice the size of the largest whale.
Even if I couldn’t be there to deliver the baby myself, I owed my mentor that much and more.
Dinnertime came, and Kellin finally finished moving things around in the back room and joined us for the meal, asking me about my childhood in Rimholt, and paying the kind of close attention most males never did. By the end of the meal, I was flushed not with the wine, but the attention.
I thought I’d felt Lachlan close by and hated the idea that I could feel the arserag in my heart, or mind. But he and Goran stayed gone. After dinner, Alexios brought Dustin to the dining room table and began training him to care for my things, starting with sock darning.
“He’s just joined your service?” Stellina asked, trying not to laugh as Dustin muttered rhyming words for “fragrant sock” as he stitched the toe.
I told her the story, but had to back up and share what I’d been doing in Mirren when Kellin asked, “You mean you’ve established an apothecary there?”
“Not just there,” Stellina interjected. “She’s set up apothecaries in Verdan, Rimholt—”
I ticked off all the countries I’d been to on my fingers. “Gael, Wyngel, Havira, and Mirren.”
“And you found someone to run them?”
I grinned at his wide eyes. “Not just someone. Omegas. There aren’t many of them, and some are less…
powerful? Maybe the word is obvious. But at least every city has one or two in hiding.
In Mirren, I ran across an older Omega and her two mates.
She’d been living in the underground sewers of that city for her whole life.
She’d had four babies of her own, though three died as infants.
They helped set up not one but two safe houses.
She didn’t need much help, to be honest. Just some funding, a little medical and weapons training for her guys, and enough herbs to see them through until their own gardens are established. ”
“Gardens?”
I grinned. “Dried herbs and tinctures only last for a while. Half of my cloak is filled with seed packets, not poisons. Or it was, at least.”
“How many more apothecaries are you planning to start?”
“One more on this side of Starlak, if I can.” I sipped my tea. “Then I’m done.”
Kellin was fascinated with my story, asking dozens of questions about all the places I’d been, and I let myself bask in his admiration for a moment. “You know, Lachlan is an herbalist,” he said, too casually.
Stellina and I exchanged glances. “So I discovered. I’m planning to ransack his garden tomorrow for new supplies.”
He grinned, showing slightly pointed canines and mischief in his dark eyes. “I’ll help.”
He was too damned cute. I half-stood and leaned over the table, dropping a kiss on his mouth before he knew what I was doing. His lips were soft and warm, and he touched them again and again for the next half hour while we cleaned up, like he could still feel mine on them.
The men were all in the kitchen finishing the dishes when Stellina grabbed me by the hand and pulled me down the hall. “Come on. Tradition time,” she said, then opened a door to a room where Lorana was preparing a bath.
“Did you do all this?” I asked, delighted.
“Ah, no, Miss Rada. That was your mate.” She dimpled when I narrowed my eyes. “Kellin. That one’s quiet, but he thinks of everything.”
The small room was filled with tables, all of them covered with candles and polished stones, though one held a silver carafe of water and a matching silver tray covered with small bits of dried fish, cheese, olives, late summer berries, and sliced sourdough bread.
In the center of the room stood an enormous bronze clawfoot tub, easily large enough for three people, or two Goran-sized ones.
“This is an ancient selkie tradition, more or less,” Stellina said, sprinkling flower petals into the steaming bathwater.
“Usually, the mother and mother-in-law of a moon mate share in the preparation before the mating bites are exchanged, and answer any questions they have. But Kellin insisted on setting up the room for you himself as a courting gift.”
“Courting gift? Isn’t it already… done?”
Her eyebrows flew high. “Are you turning down a month of bliss?”
“Bathtime to begin a month of foreplay sounds smart.” I grinned at her small, crinkled nose. “I guess I skipped a few steps when I gave him my blood. On the next new moon, I was meant to decide if I want to stick around, right? He was supposed to work for it.”
I didn’t think it was possible for Stellina to add another wrinkle to her creased face, but one more dented the area between her brows. “He still must. He’s not marked. You don’t have to fully claim him, like you did Lachlan.”
“Lachlan.” I scowled.
She shrugged, but her tone was sharp. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with him. You marked each other, and you accepted his pelt and claimed him three times. The time for that choice has passed.”
“I was lying to the ice dragon to get him to let Lachlan go!” I half-shouted, as Lorana dragged the robe off me and rubbed scented oil on my rough hands, then up to my elbows, tutting at the nicks and scars that littered my body.
My calves had healed almost completely, thanks to the fenrick and my tinctures, so she slathered it on them, too.
I sniffed and recognized the herbs in the oil: lavender, mint, rose, and a drop of chrysforin pollen, a very mild aphrodisiac. I rolled my eyes. There would be none of that going on tonight.