I lifted my knife to make sure he’d seen it. “You lie. How did you know I would be on this ship?” Valerie must have a spy in her house, someone close. I’d have to inform her somehow.
“How could I have known?” He backed up slightly, his free hand resting on the pommel of the sword at his waist. “It is true that I came with my warlord king, Wulfram, to Verdan City. His goal was to find you and take you back to Starlak. But truly, I did not know you would be here.”
“I know—to rape me for the rest of my life, sell off the parts, bleed me dry.”
He went pale at that but went on. “If he couldn’t get you to agree to the mating he had planned, I do not know what he would do. Wulfram is very… Alpha.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “My orders were to help apprehend you. When you could not be found, I convinced him to allow me to take this boat to the island of Havira, where Cerise, the mother of Queen Novalia, was born. There are tales of Omegas there as well.”
A shock went through me at that. I had heard stories of Havira from my earliest years. Had Valerie known where this boat was headed? She must have paid a fortune to get the captain to change his plans and sail for Mirren.
“Apprehend me?” I mocked when I felt the Alpha’s intense gaze on my face. His scent drifted to me, tart apples again, and something more intoxicating. Maybe it was the vodka. Why was I even thinking about how he smelled?
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving under his beard. “I promise, I was not going to give you into his hands in the market. You are sacred. What my… What Wulfram intends is a sin against the Goddess and the ancient laws of Starlak.”
That was saying something. Starlakian laws were precious few, and mostly to do with land disputes between warlords.
“I swear to you,kralovna, this is my cabin, and I am not your enemy. I will never raise a hand to you or betray you, even if you forbid me to answer the call of your lure and—”
“What lure?” I interrupted, not letting my knife drop an inch. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His green-blue eyes went wide. “What do you mean? The call. The lure of the Omega.”
I felt like panicking now, but didn’t. I took a slow breath and tried to solve the puzzle this man presented. In the alley, he had hidden me from the assassins looking for me. He was here, which was suspicious, but his things had been in the cabin already, so he would have been on the ship before me. He was explaining patiently, not getting angry, even if I had punched him in his privates with a potato not that long ago.
And he had a stack of books that made me think… “Are you a scholar?” He didn’t look like I thought one would, but maybe in Starlak, scholars were tall, broad, and well-muscled, or at least how he was always portrayed in paintings.
He bowed. “I am. Most recently, a scholar of Alpha and Omega dynamics, although I have previously studied agricultural methods, animal husbandry, medical herblore, and languages.”
“I like languages,” I said, but didn’t show off my own skills. Knowledge was every bit as much a weapon as a poison, and more vital than a dagger when in unfamiliar lands.
He smiled, those straight white teeth glimmering again in the cabin light. “Can we sit? I would be delighted to explain the Omega lure. You must understand what’s happening. It’s through no fault of your own, but you will be inundated with compatible Alphas very soon. I’m not sure why you’re not being thronged by them now.”
I snorted a laugh. “Thronged? Is that what you call being stalked these days?” He blushed, and looked down. “Well, I’ve been keeping those pesky, gnat-like Alphas away so far with natural methods. But what is this lure you spoke of?”
“Ah, yes.” He grabbed a book off the desk and carried it to the bed. “There is much we have forgotten about Omegas and Alphas, and their interactions. But I found a text in my studies that indicates when a young Omega approaches her first heat… How old are you, if I may ask?”
“You may not,” I snipped. “Keep talking.”
“Ah, yes. Of course, n-never ask a lady’s age and all that,” he stammered, but went on. “When an Omega approaches her first heat, which is usually at age eighteen, she sends out a lure.”
A lure? “Her scent?”
“No, that is there beforehand. But in the few weeks leading up to her first heat, the Omega’s nature senses the need for protection, and begins to call strong Alphas to her side. The process is not well understood.”
I fought to keep my face from showing my feelings. A heat? Like I was some sort of dog. Goddess, being an Omega was horrific.
Kavin opened the tome and began reading sections that described the scents of Omegas, and then the feeling that Alphas had when they felt the call of an Omega’s lure. He blushed reading about the effects it had on young Alphas especially. “If a young Alpha has not experienced a rut before feeling the call of a compatible Omega’s lure, the male’s knot may form and… um.” He chewed at his lower lip.
I lifted an eyebrow, challenging him to continue. His leg was hot against mine on the quilt, and I had to stop myself to keep from squirming.
“The swelling may remain until the Alpha has found another Omega willing to take his knot. During the reign of Karvalten the Lesser, in the days of the final Omega Plague, the young crown prince felt a lure coming from a dying Omega. When he reached her, the female had already gone to the Goddess. The prince’s first sexual rut had been triggered by her presence and he died soon after, from…”
He had turned an interesting shade of green. I leaned over to finish the passage.
“Ouch,” I said. “He died of sexual frustration that led to a twist… Am I reading this correctly? Hmmm. It translates roughly to exploded knot. Sounds awful.”
“A type of torsion,” he explained quickly. “I should not have read this to a woman. I apologize, I am…”
“How old are you, Kavin?”
