Chapter 23 Lachlan
LACHLAN
Thank you, Goddess, I repeated again and again in my mind as I dove beneath the surface for the twelfth time in an hour to find another fish to feed Skadi. Ice god, my left flipper. You’d think an ice god could get his own fish from the nearly-frozen ocean. But at least he’d let me live.
I wasn’t feeling grateful, as the arrogant beast was still ravenous, no matter how many fish I presented him with. He seemed to think the ten-foot-long tuna I’d brought him the last time was bordering on insult. It had been the biggest fish I’d caught on my own in years, and I hadn’t wanted praise.
Well, maybe a bit of praise. But apparently, allowing me to live and serve him was all I’d get.
It would have to do. I needed to give my mate time to rest, hoping she wouldn’t regain consciousness while I was diving for fish, of course.
Because if she woke up and saw Skadi, he’d probably finish the job of killing her. Though, who knew? She was lethal.
But not cruel, as I’d thought. I’d been inside her soul, and she was nothing like the heartless viper I’d decided five years ago when I’d taken my best friend’s side and begun hating her.
Though I’d really started hating her over ten years ago, when I first met her. When I’d drawn her scent into my lungs, and my life had been turned upside down.
If even half of what I’d learned about her since we’d mated and I’d fled from her in shame was true, Goran had misjudged her almost as badly as I had. How the beast had known of her reputation, I wasn’t sure.
Spy, he’d called her. A spy who smelled of fire.
I didn’t know what that meant, but it had to be bad.
She had secrets—I could feel them swimming in her emotions—but almost no fear at all.
She might need to learn to show some fear, or fake some penitence, when she woke.
She’d stabbed Skadi the other night in the sea, and he knew she’d done it.
I’d seen him toying with the wickedly sharp hairpin moments ago, muttering about a little enemy and a hoard.
A school of fish flashed through the water ahead of me, and a pulse of energy in the mating bite she’d inadvertently given me told me she was awake.
I felt her confusion and a small pulse of fright.
I put on a burst of speed, my teeth closing on the back of an oversized herring. It would have to do.
My own fear rising, I swam back to the surface and leaped ashore, changing into my human form before my feet hit the rocky ground, my pelt in hand.
Skadi had risen to his scaly feet, poking his snout into the opening of the ice house he’d built.
One wing was pathetically broken, and he held the other as if it bothered him as well, though I wondered if he felt pain like mortals did.
It seemed so, because he winced and gave a small whimpering roar as he backed away from the cave.
The echoing emotions faded instantly with a sense of numbness coming from my mate mark, as if Rada had fainted. “What happened?” I demanded. The creature whirled on me, taking a breath to blast me with ice. I dropped the fish in front of me and bowed again. “Is she awake, Your Eminence?”
“She cried out,” he admitted after a moment. “She cried out for a goddess.”
“She is Her daughter.”
Those giant, glacier-blue eyes blinked. “The daughter of…”
“The Goddess of the moon and stars and earth,” I explained as calmly as I could. I needed him to understand why he shouldn’t kill the woman he’d captured. “Eat, Your Eminence, and I will tell you about the Goddess, and about Rada, the spy you have injured.”
“Who is this goddess?” His gaze moved to the ice house before he settled on the rocky shore, but he began eating the fish without complaining, and I spoke quickly.
“Every sentient creature in the world has stories of the Goddess, who they say lived in the moon. My kind says She grew lonely, looking down at the world. She heard the singing of the ocean and the merfolk and seal kin who lived in it, and longed to join Her voice with ours. She dove through the skies into the seas and met the first of Her mates, an Emperor. The humans call them krakens, and only know them from legends, if at all. I have met one of them, though. Leviathan, the Emperor of the Deep Waters.”
I didn’t mention the other one that I’d not been there to meet, Lusca. He was the Emperor of Emperors, and Mother had spoken of him in hushed tones. He was the oldest of his kind, and he’d come for the coronation of his youngest brother’s mate.
“At first, the Goddess and Her kraken mate lived in peace, until one day She drifted toward the surface, curiosity driving Her to consider the skies. She spied a flying dragon and fell in love.” Skadi had gone perfectly still, like an ice statue, and I wondered what he was thinking, but I went on.
“Eventually, She walked with Her mates onto the land and found all seven of those who would become Her consorts.”
Slowly, ice crystals dropping away from his scaled neck, he bent down. His eyes were a flurry of disbelief and distrust. “She left, you say.”
“Yes?” Somehow, I wasn’t able to put any certainty into my answer.
Skadi snorted, snow swirling around me as he lay down. “And this female, this little spy who smells of the enemy—she is the daughter of the missing Goddess.”
“In a manner of speaking. She is an Omega. They’re called the daughters of the Goddess by my kind.”
“What makes them Omegas?” He lifted the scaled ridge that served as an eyebrow, so I went on, my cheeks heating as I spoke about the markers of female Omegas.
I muddled through the fertility cycles and lure of their scent to Alphas in particular, and an awkward description of their abundant, sweet slick and the magical nature of their intimate parts, before I got stuck describing Alpha’s knots.
“They, ah, have a knot at the base of their penis. Their mating member.”
“Two knots,” he stated.
“No. I mean, I have never heard of that.”
“No, this form has two knots, if that is what they are called, at the base of the mating member.”
“The cock? Are you sure?”
His only answer was to sneeze at me, leaving my bare human skin covered with a wet coating of slush. I shivered, half-hoping he would ask me for more fish. I didn’t feel the cold in my sealskin like I did now.
“Your Eminence, do you mind if I shift?”
“Do so. I require more fish.” He lay down, his enormous head only a few feet from the opening of the ice house, and waited.
“At your service,” I grumbled, and went back to work.
But the next time I surfaced, Skadi was asleep…
and Rada was not. I’d been prepared for her to be awake; I’d felt her in our bond again, my own soul lighting up with another short burst of panic and terror before she’d replaced those emotions with anger and resolve.
But I hadn’t been able to sense her movement, and when I surfaced, she was almost to the edge of the water, her cloak bundled under one arm, her body naked and too pale.
The dried blood on her hair and face, the tattoo on her arm, and the blue-green pendant on her neck were the only colors on her nearly gray-white skin. The nautilus shell was so unique, though my eyes kept wanting to slide off to one side if I focused on it.
I swam to her, placed the small tuna on the rocks, and shifted. “Stop staring at my tits,” she whispered when I was close enough to hear her over the pounding of the waves on the sharp black rocks. Her teeth chattered so loudly, I was surprised the noise hadn’t woken the dragon.
Fuck. Sharp rocks. I could smell the blood from the deep scratches she’d opened crossing to the water, and could see it on the palms of one hand when she raised it to make a rude gesture.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, gathering her up and wrapping her in my pelt.
She resisted a little, then relaxed into the warmth of the fur, her gray cloak cradled against her bare middle.
“Hush.” I carried her away from the sleeping dragon and toward a small outcropping of rocks that made a tiny harbor from the waves and wind.
She berated me in a whisper the entire time.
“I hate you, Lachlan. I’m not even surprised to see you here.
You probably helped the overgrown icicle steal me off my boat so you could take turns torturing me.
Why does this feel so warm?” She snuggled deeper into my fur.
I stopped and held still for a moment, not sure what to say or even where to begin, the sensation of her hands on my fur lighting up every nerve.
Or how to concentrate on speaking when she was in my arms, and my soul felt like it had been missing a vital piece that had suddenly been slotted into place.
She made an impatient grunt. “That better not be your Omega stink I smell.” I swallowed, sniffing to check if I was perfuming, but she went on. “Oh, no. It’s just fish breath. You reek.”
“You really are a brat, aren’t you?” I didn’t put her down, but I leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Be quiet, brat, and listen to me. I did not take you. I will never harm you. Like it or not, you’re my mate, and my brother’s mate, and the love of my best friend’s life.
I will get you to safety somehow, but you need to trust me. ”
She gave me a look like I’d asked her to eat a live shark. “Trust you? Not even if I’m bleeding out and you’re holding a bandage. Not if I was on fire and you—ow! Fucker, I said I was coming.” She pressed against the cloak and opened a pocket. “Did you steal my anchor bark tincture?”
I shook my head. “I don’t use painkilling herbs. I’m a selkie.”
“Oh, I’m a big, strong selkie,” she mocked in a sing-song voice, still going through her cloak, her face growing more flushed by the second.
Finally, she stopped, her cheeks a healthier pink, but her eyes shimmering with what might be tears.
“Who took my herbs, then? There’s practically nothing left! ”