“Unknown?” Roya spoke as quietly as Thorn had. Their care when speaking by water revealed their training. I wondered what it would be like—if Roya let me stay with her—to love such a dangerous woman.
Thorn’s answer was almost a breath. “What I have heard is not good. Vali’s mother, Cerise, was taken by or possibly sold to pirates just after Queen Nesta’s death. And she was not the only one. Whether the regent was responsible—”
“Hello the boat! Whence cometh?” Their old-world Mirrenese was startling, and Roya let out a laugh. The bell-like sound made every figure on the shore grow strangely still.
“Thou art well met, dear friends,” Thorn shouted back, in the same ancient dialect. “Willst thou welcome storm-struck travelers to your shore?”
In moments, we were in shallow enough waters to pull the boat to shore, and a few men waded out to do exactly that. These men weren’t armed, obviously of a lower social class, and they met us in the waist-deep water with smiles on their sun-browned faces.
One of them was older than the rest, and murmured a welcome to Roya, his back to the shore. “I know what thou art, Honeyed One, and honor you and your kin. But trust not Gullen, milady. Not food nor drink, nor safety in sleep.”
Roya kept her smile plastered on, but her eyes hardened. “Are Omegas not safe here?” Her dialect was modern Mirrenese, but the man understood her question.
“There art none left, milady.” His voice was a rasp of pain.
“I will keep you safe, Roya,” I whispered. She raised one eyebrow, unimpressed. But I knew my vow was true. Anything I could do, even if it meant losing my own life, I would.
After all, I was the reason she had been forced to flee her homeland.
Then we were on shore, silently bracing ourselves for violence as a man dressed in golden robes and bearing a matching scepter in one hand, called out. “An Omega comes to our shores, with two Alphas!” His voice was booming, filled with challenge and bluster, though he didn’t have the demeanor or stature of an Alpha. “From what country?”
“Truth, but not too much,” Thorn murmured to Roya without moving his lips. “Act the fool. Flush out the snakes.”
“From Verdan,” Roya called back, smiling broadly. “Are we welcome?”
The man switched to Verdanian to answer. “Of course, dear Omega, you most especially. Blessed be the Goddess! It’s been many years since we’ve seen one of your kind here. May I ask your name?” He motioned for one of his guards to help Roya over the sands. More than a few eyes grew wide, taking in her tight-fitting trousers. I caught a young Alpha sniffing at her as she was lifted to the dry sand and gave him a sharp growl.
On shore, Roya took the edges of her cloak in her hands and presented a perfect curtsey. “I am named Roya, sir. And you?”
“Regent Gullen.” He reached out a hand as if he wanted to touch her hair. It was glinting like gold in the sunlight, and he wore enough gold cloth to evidence a bit of a fixation with it. “Roya… That means queen, yes?” His gaze was cunning as he glanced at her, then Thorn and me in turn.
She tilted her head, suddenly transformed into one of a thousand silly girls, like the ones who had filled my father’s hall in Starlak, vying for the warriors’ attentions. What was she playing at?
“Oh, I wouldn’t know all that, sir! Maybe my mother had high hopes?” She giggled again, and I thought I saw Thorn wince. “I haven’t met my prince yet, but who can tell? Perhaps the Goddess blew that storm into our lives so I could find true love, and the man of my dreams!”
When the regent’s lips curved in a smirk and the wrinkle in his brow smoothed, I stifled a smile. Roya had hidden her most effective weapons from this man: her intelligence and grasp of languages. “Dear girl, I welcome you to Havira. You are invited to stay here, and your companions…?” He lifted a brow.
“Oh, this is my Uncle Thorn,” she said, her eyes wide. Thorn’s lips flattened at the title. “And my suitor, Kavin of Starlak.”
The regent nodded to Thorn, offering only a thin smile. When his beady eyes fell on me, I slumped my shoulders. “Um, sir, I’m so very glad to be here. I get terribly seasick, and I threw up on my Omega last night, and now I’m afraid she won’t love me…”
All the men around me—more than a few of them Alphas—gazed at me in disgust. Thorn, however, couldn’t hide the twinkle in his eye.
“Ugh,” Roya said, flouncing over to the Beta regent and taking his arm with her small hand. “Do you have any potential suitors who might be better sailors, Regent?”
“We might indeed,” he answered, and we trailed behind him. “Tell me now, where did you grow up in Verdan? The city, or a farm? I want to know everything about you.”
I listened with half an ear while she gave a series of frivolous half-answers in character with her vapid persona. Thorn had dropped back to converse in low tones with the fishermen who had brought in the boat.
Two of the guards veered closer to me. “Need help with that chest?” one of them asked in passable modern Mirrenese.
The other answered before I could. “Nah, let him carry it. He needs muscles for his Omega.”
Then they switched into a language I had only heard once, years ago, from a traveling scholar who had brought many of the books on Omegas to Starlak. I could make out about half of what they were saying, and none of it was complimentary.
I fought back my smile. I might be a scholar, and in Starlak Iwouldbe considered weaker than many—though I towered over these men when I stood upright—but every warlord’s son was trained to be a hunter. And hunting was best done in stealth, camouflaged from one’s prey.
We might be in a strange land, but a trained warrior was always the predator.
