“Temper, Roya.”
“I’ll show you temper.” I’d show them all. But I needed a weapon. My eyes went to Thorn’s belt, and I lunged. He anticipated the move and twisted, using the hand fighting techniques he had taught me years before. I couldn’t beat him this way. But I was so damn tired of being the weak one. Not having my voice be heard.
No. These fuckers—all of them—would listen to me.
I felt a strange heat began to fill me, my anger like fire that was bursting free, lending me strength and speed. As we grappled, I grabbed his daggers from his belt, and palmed them both. Thorn dropped back, cursing, to avoid being nicked. I panted, ready to fight a far more dangerous foe. If Wulfram hurt Kavin, I would gut him. If even so much as one drop of his blood spilled…
“You’ll what, Roya? Fight his battle for him?” Had I spoken aloud? I assumed so, as Thorn’s eyes were fixed on me. “Why did you bother to mate with him, if you don’t even believe he can win a fight for your honor?”
“I didn’t mate him so he could fight for my honor. I can fight for myself.” I shook him free and planted my feet in the sand. “I didn’t mate him because he was good with a sword. I mated him, Ichosehim, because I love him. Everything he is—his knowledge, his kindness, his sense of humor, his vulnerability—that is why I love him. And if his father spills one drop of his blood, I will tear the gray warlord’s head off his shoulders and spit down his bleeding, Goddess-damned neck.”
Thorn laughed, his eyes behind me, and I roared, whirling to see why. As I spun, I realized my wings had appeared again, great sheets of light blazing on both sides. But there was lightning flashing elsewhere, golden sparks, coming from… My gaze dropped to my hands, and I blinked, not sure what was happening. The daggers I held had begun to glow as well, the golden light that made up my wings trailing down my arms and wrapping around the blades like snakes made of power. Longing to reach out, to lick their enemy, taste their blood.
And that enemy was the silver-bearded warlord who had tried to hurt my mate. A strange roar emerged from my throat, a double-toned sound that promised retribution and pain, and I ran forward, stopping a few paces in front of my mate.
“Roya, darling?” Kavin’s eyes brimmed with pain and… something deeper. “My love?” he whispered.
Yes, that was it.Love.I shot him a glance filled with promise, and turned to the other side of the circle. To his father.
Wulfram stood as if frozen, his sword hanging loose at his side, his mouth gaping open, eyes wide. “Son?” he murmured to Kavin, though he never dropped my gaze. He set his sword down on the sand and took a few shuffling paces back as I advanced. “I concede. Please ask your mate not to kill me.”
Kavin stepped in front of me. I fought back a snarl at being kept from my prey, and darted around him. But Icarus was there as well suddenly, his own wings spread wide to block my view.
“Let me kill him,” I growled.
“No, little dove,” Icarus insisted, the wyvern in his eyes ascendant. “He is our youngest mate’s sire. Show mercy.”
“He must leave this island, leave us,” I demanded. “If he threatens my love again, I will end him.”
Behind Icarus’s wings, Wulfram muttered, “I thought Omegas were meant to be meek and biddable?” And then grunted, as if someone had punched him.
“Did you mean it?” Kavin’s eyes were less wild, but still full of reserve and pain. “What you said just now. That you loved me? It wasn’t just something you said in your heat. But truly.”
The golden light fell away as he came close enough to reach, sliding between me and Icarus, who bowed his head. I slipped the daggers, no longer glowing, into the sash at my waist. “Yes,” I repeated. “I love you. I choose you.”
Kavin nodded, but didn’t approach, and I felt a twist in my gut. I had damaged something that wouldn’t be repaired that easily.
“I know you didn’t mate me for my power,” I said. “You have never seen me as a thing, as an object to be possessed.”
Thorn’s voice rose over the sound of the surf, “Why is it so vital, Wulfram, to have her return to Starlak? Why can’t she be here, with her mates?”
Icarus took hold of my arm, his wings enfolding us both, more to keep me from killing Wulfram, I thought, than for affection. “A very good question,” Icarus murmured, as we waited for the answer.
“Well, beyond the hundred thousand goldani I paid for an Omega…” Everyone around us gasped. My blood went cold.
In the stillness that followed, Thorn asked, “Why did you pay that much? Surely not for a mate for your son.”
“No, though it made a good story,” he admitted, rubbing his silver-dark beard with one hand. “I’ve been searching for an Omega for decades. When I first tried for Roya, Kavin was a toddler. The Omega wasn’t to be his mate at all.”
Kavin ground his teeth, his breath coming fast. “You lied to me?”
“Son, I hoped. Those stories of yours, they say Omegas can take more than one mate. I knew you wouldn’t bring her if you knew she might be… a sacrifice.”
Thorn’s voice rose over the surf. “A sacrifice?”
“A debt owed. I wouldn’t have let him go into that damned nest if I’d known she’d accept him.” He cursed. “He was to bring her back to Starlak… to be given to another.”
“Mated?” I hissed. The warlord merely shrugged.
