“Hop out, little queen. I need this barrel.”
I hopped out—or flopped out, really—trying to leave as much of the sour mash in the barrel as I could, but my shoes were filled with the stuff.
“Help me,” Thorn instructed, and I blinked at the body on the ground.
“You killed him?” Ash lay dead at our feet, his throat now completely slit. Blood ran across the cobblestones into the gutter.
“Mmhmm.” Thorn lifted Ash’s arms. “You get his legs?”
Together, we manhandled Ash’s still-warm corpse into the barrel, and Thorn nailed it firmly shut, rolling it to the back of the alley, and situating it at the bottom of the trash pile. I kicked dirt and trash over the bloodstains, trying not to vomit at the smells.
“Better go now,” he murmured, eyes always moving. He pulled the hood off his own head and stuffed it over mine to disguise my hair, then took my hand and dragged me along behind him. “Act the part of the beaten servant. We’ll have to avoid Wulfram’s men.”
“Do they know what we look like?”
“They know you. No one knows me.”
For a moment, I was distracted. His face was revealed. It was a good face, dusted with dark stubble, his brown hair and eyes glinting gold. His lips were firm and slightly chapped from the wind. One of his eyebrows had a scar through the center that disappeared into his hairline, and an old scar traced a crescent from his hairline to under his chin: a souvenir from his father, an Alpha who had gone insane.
He shook my arm, cursing me out rather fluently in the peasant’s dialect of Verdan. “Ya gon’ git yer arse whipped ten times a day a’ this rate! Gettin’ drunk in a dangerous city like tha’. Ye’re lucky yer da’s my brother, Goddess’s truth, or I’d haul ya to the docks and sell ya for nothin’.”
As he ranted, he yanked me past a large group of men dressed like the man Kavin had been, in fur jerkins and woolen pants, with sturdy boots that had seen some miles. One of the men, taller than the rest, had a steel-gray beard and scanned the crowd as if a diamond had been lost somewhere on the ground. His eyes passed over me, stopping for a second, but I made sure to keep the cloak pulled down and my own eyes hidden.
As a natural blonde in a country of mostly darker-haired inhabitants, being recognized as one of Milian’s old harem was always a danger. But this man was sniffing the air like a hunting wolf, and I knew it didn’t matter if I hid my face and hair. If I couldn’t hide my scent in Verdan City, this Alpha would find me.
Suddenly, I was glad for the soured mash that filled my shoes and dirtied my clothing. It kept me anonymous all the way to Valerie’s.
She met us at the door. “Thank the Goddess you’re safe.” She grabbed my hands and nodded at Thorn, unsurprised to see him, though she did a double take at his missing hood. “You must leave tonight. Both of you.”
ROYA
Thorn immediately ushered us all through the door, checking every corner for hidden listeners and locking all entrances.
“What happened?” I demanded. “Why must we leave?”
Valerie answered, her eyes darting to the windows as if enemies might suddenly begin to tumble through them. “The warriors from Starlak. They know who you are and why you’re here, and Roya? They have a bill of sale for you from the Guild.” Her usually seductive alto voice was shaking with emotion. “A sold bride, dowry paid to your Guildmaster. You’re Warlord Wulfram’s property in the eyes of Starlakian and Verdanian law, and if he catches you, there will be very little we can do. And his warriors are not just here in the city. I’ve had reports of Starlakians massing along the border of Verdan and Rimholt. They’ll catch you if you cross overland.”
“There have been whispers that the Guild has emptied out every spy they have into Verdan to find us both,” Thorn added softly.
“You’re outnumbered, and virtually surrounded.” Valerie’s face was a mask of rage and sorrow. “I can’t keep you safe here.”
I had nowhere else to run. I kneeled, my breath rushing out of me like I’d been punched in the stomach. “Where will I go?”
Thorn’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “We’ll take the long way around. By boat to the south of Mirren, then we’ll cut through to Rimholt. Queen Vali’s men, the king and his generals, can keep you safe. They don’t recognize the barbaric Starlakian laws on bride ownership.”
“And Starlak is terrified she’ll bring the Goddess’s golden fire against them if they attack King Rigol,” Valerie said. “If her men can’t do the job, Vali will use her gifts to keep you safe. No one can touch her, or anyone she decides to protect.”
I knew what she meant, but it was still hard to fathom. Somehow, Vali’s Omega gifts had awakened when she’d mated her men, and her powers had been passed on not only to her lovers, but to the entire army, at least during the Battle of Rimholt. The Goddess sometimes worked in peculiar ways, but making the petite, good-natured Vali a military force to be reckoned with was almost incomprehensible.
Strength and invulnerability were prizes worth killing for. Quite a few had tried and died in the attempt, including—if rumor was correct—the previous Guildmaster six years ago. I had heard Vali showed other gifts—mostly relating to fertility, for everything from cattle to people to the land itself. Those didn’t appeal to me one bit. But the strength of the Goddess? Now that might be the only thing that made being an Omega bearable.
Who was I trying to fool? This whole situation was unbearable. Even if Vali could protect me, it was everything I had wanted to avoid—running back to a cage, to a kingdom where I would be kept hidden away again with others like me.
Well, not exactly. As far as I knew, none of the other Failed Omegas had begun perfuming. And I was almost positive none of them had the biological difference that I’d discovered the first and only time I’d tried to have sex with one of the older trainees at the Guild. I shook that embarrassing memory away. At least the man I’d chosen had left on a long-term mission to northern Starlak the next day, so I didn’t have to see him at training and be humiliated on a regular basis.
Vali ruled Rimholt with King Rigol and her first consort, General Axe, who was Rigol’s half-brother. I’d heard dozens of people labelling her a whore for having more than one mate, and the fact that she’d grown up in a brothel didn’t help. But they were jealous. Vali was stunningly beautiful—small, dark-haired, and dark-eyed—and adored to a ridiculous degree by her two official mates… and by the three unofficial ones, the king’s other generals.
I loved Vali, but I couldn’t live there. Her castle would only be another cage.
