Chapter 24 Rada #2
“Your eyes,” I gasped. There was no way to mistake this being for a human, not with those.
The pupils weren’t just black; they were the darkness of the longest night, starless skies, and silence.
The irises were a blue so vivid, it made me wonder if I was imagining the shade, and the whites of his eyes were the color of freshly fallen snow.
Then the ice god straightened, showing off his whole form.
He had to be close to eleven feet tall, and proportional in every way.
His skin was every shade of winter, from the light grays to the icy blues to the silver sparkles when winter sunlight stretched over the landscape.
Those might be scales, I thought as he rolled his shoulders back, silently preening.
He had a lot to preen about. His muscles were long, lean, defined even at rest, with not a strand of hair growing below his collarbone.
His entire body was an uninterrupted study in muscular perfection, with only one flaw.
His cock was… well, it was the right size for the massive frame, and I may have clenched my thighs together from equal parts lust and trepidation at the thought of going near anything that immense.
But there was something at the base. I squinted to see it better.
“What is wrong?” the ice god demanded.
I just shook my head. “It’s got an extra…”
“Two knots,” Lachlan supplied helpfully. “I thought that was a dragon thing.”
“I should not have this?” For some reason, the ice god—no, Skadi—seemed nervous. His perfect, muscled feet shuffled on the icy floor of the room. “I can change it.”
“No!” I shouted, shuffling forward on my own.
When I was up on my knees, his cock was still above my head, and I looked up at it, wishing I had permission to touch.
“No, no, don’t get rid of them. They’re perfect.
They’re lovely…” As I cooed at his cock, the two smooth lumps at the base began to expand slightly.
The balls underneath it all, hidden in shadow, drew up as well, as the length of him began to shift, like an enormous ice snake.
“Do not touch it,” Lachlan hissed, and I blinked. My hand had risen on its own.
“Touch it? Of course not,” I breathed as it continued to grow.
Slowly, but inexorably, pushing toward me.
Like a glacier. “Skadi is not a sheep, Lachlan,” I whispered, getting control of my curiosity and dampening my absolutely inappropriate flare of lust. “But I can see how you made the mistake. That thing is the size of a lamb all on its own.”
Lachlan began coughing. Skadi shuffled his feet again, but set them wider, thrusting his hips forward.
“You like this form. That is good. I will keep it.” I nodded, unsure what to say.
But he moved to the fire, snatched an entire side of the roasted tuna faster than my eyes could track, and retreated to the wall furthest from the flames.
In minutes, it was gone. “Seal man, I require more sustenance.”
“Of course you do,” Lachlan grumbled, holding out a hand for his sealskin. “I’ll need that back.” For some reason, I growled at him, grabbing the edge of the pelt. That smile transformed Lachlan’s face again. “Please, mate. I’ll find some food for you in the sea and return within the hour.”
I let it go, and Lachlan snatched it up, pressing a quick kiss to my hand, then racing out the door. In his absence, the pain in my middle began to flare again. “Ow,” I said aloud, as I felt something tear inside. Were they literal hooks the fire fucker had set inside me?
Suddenly, the room seemed to grow colder, even with the fire. No more ogling the abductor, I lectured myself. I need to get back to Alexios, get to Pict, and make sure the last of the Omegas there are taken care of.
“Little enemy.” I turned to the ice god, whose expression had grown thunderous, his eyes homing in on my necklace, then dropping to my gut. I scowled back, oddly annoyed he hadn’t stared at my boobs even a little.
“Ice man?” I replied, doing my best to hide the waves of fiery, bloody pain that were quickly growing impossible to ignore.
“Ice god,” he corrected smoothly, turning back and forth and moving his legs like he wasn’t sure how to sit. I sat on my cloak with my legs together, but listed to one side when the hooks began another wave.
“I’m not calling you that. Skadi, right? I’m Rada.”
“Your name doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are carrying the seed of my enemy.”
“Nope, no seed here. I swore off all dicks—human, god, or otherwise—until… five and a half months from now.”
He blinked and shifted again, sitting cross-legged.
I didn’t mind. It gave me something to stare at, and I tried to think about the logistics of two knots while the pain fought to drag me under.
“You are not pregnant with his physical seed. But he has prepared you for his spawn. That is the fire you feel inside.”
“Fire? There’s actual fire in me?”
He wiggled his head back and forth while I tried not to vomit. “It is metaphysical fire. God fire. The worst kind. Mortal frames cannot bear it for long.”
“Yeah, well, apparently the gods all want to get a piece of this mortal frame.” I almost managed a smile, but inside, I was screaming. This was exactly what I’d been running from. I didn’t want a Goddess or a god inside me.
I just wanted to be me. To sneak around places I wasn’t meant to be, get drunk on potato whiskey and steal secrets and pretty things, maybe get railed by a few well-equipped Alphas and one sweet, sexy Beta, and not be some sort of avatar or incubator.
“Fuck.”
“Yes, that is what my brother intends, I am certain.”
I swallowed. “Your what now?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment, deep in thought.
About the time I wondered if he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open, he stated, “You are mated with the seal man who serves me. It will kill him when you join with Edan. Hmm. I do not want to lose a good servant.” He scratched his chin, then his chest, then his balls for some reason.
Then he leaned up on one leg, scowled, and scratched his ass for a long while.
I cleared my throat. I’d thought there wasn’t anything this guy could do to be unsexy, but here he was, proving me wrong already. “Ah, are you itchy? You have… snow mites or something?”
“The mild discomfort. That is itchy?” I nodded, and he glared past me at the fire. “I do not do well around flames.”
“Huh. I’ve felt that way myself for the past decade or so. So, Edan, you said?” I glanced at the fire. It didn’t flare up or turn dark, and I relaxed. “I’ve heard that name. I had a run-in with your brother when I was younger. He likes to listen in on things.”
“You are his spy, then?” Frost formed on my eyelashes.
“No. I’m the Goddess’s servant, or I was. He’s been hunting me ever since then, but I kept out of his way.”
“How?”
I shrugged. “Went by other names for most of my life. Kept my secrets away from open flames. Made sure I was always ready to run when he found me again. Learned how to hide from anything godlike.”
“You did not hide very well.” He nodded at my abdomen. Not my womb. I refused to think in terms of wombs and seeds.
“I had an off day. A little incident with a pyre and a stake and a crowd who wanted to roast marshmallow candies over my corpse. I had to make a deal. A vow,” I explained when he tilted his head in a very dragon-like mannerism.
“You are the daughter of the Goddess?” I wanted to ask how he knew about Her, but he went on. “If you were Her servant, why did She not rescue you?”
“I may have made a slight miscalculation on that. I cut a deal with Her, too. If She left me alone for ten years so I could do what I needed…” I chewed at my cold lip, trying to make it simple.
“I had a task given by my first boss, a general from a country called Rimholt. He sent me away to apprentice in other countries to become a master spy. But I already had a more important mission, one I’d been doing since I was young. ”
“You are still young. Young, frail, and deceptive, little spy.”
I ignored his tone. “I wanted to help Omegas like Lachlan and me… well, like me, anyway. I’m not sure there are any others like him out there.
But I planned to go all over and help them become more powerful.
Give them safe homes and secret jobs. Medicines and herbs they needed to stay hidden.
But then, I started… showing signs of my own Omega nature.
” I did my best not to think about the helplessness I’d felt in those first, truncated heats with Goran, but I had a feeling he saw more than I wanted him to.
“Anyway, I told the Goddess if She let me off the Omega hook for ten years, then I’d be fine with being Hers again. ”
“So you lied to your own Goddess?”
“Of course not. I’ll stop traveling; I’ll stop taking the herbs and let my body do its stupid thing.
Even if I hate it. Even if it makes me feel like…
like I’m not my own. I swore I’d let Her have me, and I will.
” I snarled, but he only lifted a thick, frosted eyebrow.
“So I went my own way, and She held up Her end of the bargain. A little too well. When I tried to call for Her in the fire, She wasn’t there. ”
“Are you certain?” Something in his tone had me wondering what he knew.
“Why?”
“Gods and goddesses don’t give up their children easily.” He straightened when I rubbed at my abdomen again, groaning in pain. “Itchy, yes?” He managed a rueful smile. The expression on his otherwise sharp face was unfairly attractive, even when he scratched his nostril right after.
“Yeah. Not sure I can reach where it really itches.”
“Let me,” he said, and reached across the space between us, not with his hand, but a tendril of ice, a long, whiplike, silver thread that came from somewhere behind him, embedded itself in the skin of my stomach, and burrowed in.
“What in the holy fucking—” I began to scream, but then fell silent. Not because I’d stopped screaming, but because he’d placed a large, cold hand over my mouth.
“Quiet, little enemy.”
I kept screaming and tried to stab him with my sharpest fingernail—since that was the only weapon I had left—but it was more for the principle of the thing.
From the moment his ice needle had pierced my skin, the pain had started to abate, like there was something cold and numbing spreading inside me.