Chapter 25 Rada #2
He made an odd sound, maybe agreeing. I went on.
“Not too long afterward, one of the older krakens fell in love with a dragon queen.
She saw the same jealousy in him that the Goddess had seen in Her cruel mate, so the queen rejected him from her harem.
In his rage, that kraken went to the sea witches and ordered them to brew a spell that would poison all the future dragon queens and their eggs.
In only two generations, the dragons were as good as extinct.
Desperate, they created wyverns by mating with human Omegas, in hopes of continuing their line.
But the wyverns were born males and with a deeply possessive streak.
“Most went feral as soon as they scented their mates. Some caused their own Omegas’ deaths by refusing to allow others to enter their nests when they suffered through their heats.
Eventually, the dragons drove the wyverns out, across the Wyngelian Sea.
But the madness lingered. In Starlak, some wyverns had shared nests with human Omegas.
When they were forced to fly south, some of those women were pregnant.
They gave birth to Alphas, who grew up with a seed of madness buried inside. ”
Skadi nodded to my abdomen, and I groaned. I’d been trying my best not to think about the “seed of evil” inside me. Maybe it was in my bowels, not my womb. Maybe I could give myself a very strong laxative…
“The madness caused the plagues?”
“They didn’t begin the sickness,” I replied after a moment. “That was started when the Omegas who were sky bonds with the wyverns were left alone to suffer through their heats alone.”
“Heats? I dislike that word.”
I found myself smiling. “You would. Fertility cycles, then. The week or two every year when Omegas are fertile. The scent of them can drive men of any kind to desperation.”
“You have had these cycles, then? The selkie said you were both Omegas.”
“I’m not sure about Lachlan. I mean, I suppose he could have a heat… a fertility cycle. But it doesn’t exactly work that way for humans. I’ll ask him.” I snorted. “What if he’s like a seahorse male and can carry babies to term? Damnit, now I want to go find him and ask.”
“And you? You appear to be a mature human female. Have you had a cycle?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve done everything I could not to succumb, including half-killing myself with heat suppressants, starving myself, and avoiding Alphas for years.
I don’t have time to lie in a nest and get railed by a bunch of males for weeks at a time.
I’ve got shit to do.” I grabbed a piece of tuna that was stuck to the wood plank Lachlan had cooked the fish on, and chewed angrily.
“You would not enjoy this cycle? You despise the thought of being… railed, by males who would give you pleasure for weeks?” the ice god half-purred.
I glared at him, making certain not to stare below his chest. I could tell something was moving in the shadows of his lap, and I did not want to encourage it.
Or me.
“I don’t relish the idea of having a dozen babies in the next ten years and giving up everything I’ve worked for, just to become a brood mare for the Goddess.” I slammed my mouth shut, not wanting to share all my feelings with a stranger.
Skadi waited for a moment before he spoke again. “He plans for you to breed for him, Omega,” he murmured, almost sadly. “He will not care about your consent, or your dreams.”
“I know. That’s why I have to…” I broke off before I said my plan out loud. I wasn’t sure Skadi could be trusted.
But I knew that the small fire in the room with us definitely couldn’t be.
I grabbed a small cup of meltwater and drank, then went on with the story.
“The first Omegas who succumbed to the sickness weren’t terribly contagious.
Only a few dozen women were struck down at a time.
All who died were Omegas, though, and it drove their males to try and protect them.
The Omega Plagues began not far from where we first met, the Eastern Reaches of Starlak.
“They didn’t know what Omegas needed to survive.
That being alone in a heat would kill them.
War had broken out as the plagues began to carry their mates away.
So the Eastern Chieftains took all the living Omegas they could find, seven hundred of them, in a castle with everything they believed they would need to be safe
I closed my eyes as I spoke, seeing it from above, as if I were sitting in the sky as it all happened. Too far to stop it. Too weak to return to the world I’d left and…
No. Not me. Her. This was the nightmare I’d had so often during the years when I’d lived with Her inside me, the one that haunted Her, and had me waking in tears more than once. She’d watched Her daughters die and listened helplessly to their prayers.
I pinched my leg, opened my eyes, and spoke softly.
“They said it was for their protection, but it was to secure them as breeders for Starlak.” I exhaled, trying to remember how Alexios had taught me to control my emotions.
“It was the worst torture imaginable. One by one, the Omegas died. Some took their own lives. Some begged their sisters to kill them, to end the agony. They say the wind carries their screams to this day, pleading to be let loose.”
“They heard them dying and did nothing?”
“No, by then the Alpha guards were all dead.”
Lachlan’s voice filtered in from outside, and I realized he’d returned and was listening. He sang in a clear, pure tenor.
“They threw a net around their mates, the stone pool was too shallow,
the stagnant stench washed o’er the dry, Her human line went fallow.
Abandoned and bereft, the young Omegas wept in pain,
their dying cries came to the seas washed down by sorrow’s rain.”
I waited for him to come through the tunnel, but he stayed out, so I finished the story.
“Marauders came from Pict while the Chieftains were away fighting. They killed the guards, entered and stole the treasure from the vault, but stories say they left the Omegas. That they locked them inside to die slowly.”
We were all quiet, until Skadi asked, “Pict?”
“An island to the East of the continent, formed by a volcano.”
For some reason, Skadi growled. Lachlan chose that moment to enter, carrying long, cleaned filets of a fish with red meat.
“I always thought that part unlikely,” Lachlan said, glancing at Skadi.
“That they left the Omegas there to die. Why steal one treasure, but leave a greater one?” He kneeled by the fire and began laying out the fish on the empty boards, sprinkling something that looked like rosemary and salt on the meat before he placed it close to the fire.
“I agree with the selkie.” Skadi moved to the tunnel as the fire flared. “That is a sad tale. Is it true?”
Lachlan shrugged. “No one knows exactly. When they returned and found the Omegas dead, and the plagues sweeping the land unchecked, killing even Beta women in new ferocity, the Eastern Chieftains ordered all the books and stories of Omegas—from the simplest fairy tales to every legal document that referred to them—to be burned. They wanted to hide their crime.”
Skadi left without another word. I waited for a moment, then followed the ice god out.
“Where are you going?” Lachlan asked.
“I need some privacy.” It was true. But after I’d taken care of my body’s needs, I stayed outside, spying on my captor. He’d moved a few dozen feet away and stopped at the water’s edge, his head hanging as the waves lapped at his feet.
When he walked down the shoreline, his back to me, I went to the spot where he’d stood and looked down. There, in the shallow water of the stark, black rock beach, a handful of tear-shaped gems glittered. I reached into the water to fish them out and rolled them over in my hand.
They were diamonds, but perfect ones, shaped with angular and only slightly rounded edges, like the face of the one who’d left them there.
I wondered what could make an ice god cry. But the world was full of enough sorrow for all of us. I hadn’t earned his secrets, and I hadn’t shared all of mine.
So I tucked the tears into a pocket of my cloak, left him to the wind and sea, and crawled back to the ice house and the fire just as the storm began.