This had been a bad idea.
The room was too cold, the stone walls were too plain, and the triple-sized mattress flatter than I had asked for. And where in the Goddess’s hells were the bedclothes for my mate’s nest?
I scowled down at the insufficient mattress with its single sheet, solitary blanket and two meager pillows. From what I had read, I knew an Omega’s nest required much more than this. Mounds of pillows, dozens of fabrics… Someone would pay for not carrying out my orders. They didn’t call me the King’s Executioner because I was merciful.
Not that my mate would forgive me if I killed a servant. They were all her friends, according to her. Bah! If they were truly her friends, they would have readied this room.
Frustrated, I released a deep, angry Alpha growl, and the sole manservant who had come to help me prepare the finest guest suite in the castle this afternoon whimpered and inched toward the door. I bared my teeth. He spun on his wooden-heeled shoes and ran, clopping like a runaway pony down the long hall.
I cursed my own stupidity. Of course, he had run; when I got angry, heads literally rolled, not that I had thought about chopping off that particular servant’s head.
Well, not seriously.
Now who was going to help me build a nest worthy of an Omega? It had to be perfect, as perfect as the woman I loved, though I knew in my heart that was impossible. Vali was the Goddess come to life.
I pictured Vali’s dark ringlets, her flashing brown eyes, the way her brow wrinkled when she was curious—and she was frequently very curious about naughty things, which made my heart roar with delight. I envisioned her small, quick feet as she raced through the castle, her lady’s maids constantly shouting at her to act like the queen she now was.
I remembered the way she chewed at those soft, pink lips when she valiantly promised to try harder to act like a queen. How she gazed at me and her other mates, her eyes going wide with passion, the air filling with the scent of peaches and honey as she…
Damn. I’d let myself think about her lips.
I crossed to the enormous fireplace and began stacking kindling and logs on the paltry flames as I remembered my first time with Vali. She hadn’t even had a mattress, merely a pile of cloth on the floor of the dungeon beneath the keep, tossed over the rough, filthy stones to keep her skin from being scratched as we made love.
We hadn’t understood then how imperative it was for Omegas to have access to clean bedding and pillows and time to arrange it. Before they took a mate, Omegas needed softness, a quiet place that was their own. At least Vali did, and she was the only one left in the world.
The world had believed Omegas to be extinct before she had blossomed in the back streets of Turino, the capital of Rimholt. The last known Omegas had died from the Great Plagues hundreds of years before, and the books that held information about them had vanished, either hoarded or destroyed.
Some king or warlord had wanted the breed to be forgotten, erased from every record, their magic to remain an enigma. When my brother, King Rigol, and I found her in The Rutting Sow, the brothel where she had been raised, Vali had been more than a mystery.
She had been a miracle.
In the short months since I had made her my own, left my claiming mark at the base of her throat and sworn my life to protect her, I had fought to prove that I deserved her. Taller than any other man in the kingdom, too big in many ways to be attractive to most women, with a harsh face and a wicked scar at my neck that drew the eye, unable even to speak, for fuck’s sake! I looked the Beast to her Beauty, and I knew it.
Old Sorcha, the laundry mistress, liked to say that every man mates above his station. The old expression never rang more true, now that I’d mated a goddess like Vali.
Why had she chosen me? The other generals, my brothers in all but blood, had much more to offer. I wasn’t a scholar like Lorn, clever and perceptive like Tarn, or wickedly handsome like Vilkurn.
I sure as hell wasn’t the king, like my true half-brother Rigol.
“Are you certain you have enough bedding here, brother?” Rigol called out from the door, his voice muffled behind an enormous stack of soft blankets, sheets, and velvet pillows.
Thank the Goddess! I left the now-roaring fire to help Rigol as he struggled over to the bed. Together, we dumped the collection of soft blankets and great sacks filled with pillows in a heap and stared down at the mass of linens. His green eyes glittered with amusement. I had a feeling mine only reflected my dissatisfaction. What had looked like a great deal of cloth in his arms seemed pitifully meager now. Rigol bent down, pulling two velvet bolsters from a sack.
I tapped his shoulder to gain his attention and signed, “You’re right. We need more. Tell Sorcha—”
He slapped his forehead with the heel of his palm. “Axe, it’s a nest for one tiny Omega, not the whole of King Milian’s harem.”
By the Goddess, I had forgotten the harem was coming to the castle. “They’re not here yet, are they?” I pictured all twenty-odd blond beauties descending on the keep, giggling and fluttering and keeping Vali from coming to me.
Maybe I should bar the gates. It was my night, after all. When a woman had five mates, they very quickly learned to share, but also jealously guard the time that was theirs alone. When I mentioned the plan to Rigol, though, he laughed and called a servant to bring wine.
“What if they do arrive?” I asked. “You’ll keep them away, right? Feed them in the Great Hall, give them rooms in the other wing—”
“Brother, calm yourself,”he signed back. “You’re acting like it’s your wedding night.”
I almost smiled. A wedding night. Now there was a thought. We had mated Vali in the traditional way, exchanging claiming bites. But she would look incredible in a wedding dress, a red one that clung to her slender curves, maybe.
Rigol snorted and gestured to my trousers. “Stop thinking so… hard.” He waited for me to laugh.
