A chill ran through me. “That someday, we’ll have… children? Little warlords and warqueens?” I shouldn’t have tried to joke. I realized that as I looked down to see the blade had gone through the meat of my left forearm. “My goddess?”
“Stop callin’ me that.” She grabbed the pink silk robe I’d given her for our one-week anniversary and began pacing in the small cave. It was decently furnished for a cave, though I hated the necessity of using it. But my wife’s beautiful scent had been blooming more and more since we’d consummated our love. If I hadn’t known her to be fearless, I would have believed her fearful of the change.
But no matter how many times I’d asked, she hadn’t shared her thoughts. Perhaps…
Another chill ran through me. Was she coming into her fertility cycle? My cock was the only part of me that thought that was a good idea. I’d learned enough about Omegas to know that they had heats once a year at least, and they often needed more than one mate to survive. Rada would require a group of worthy mates, and a safe nest, and protection for the week or two where she would become insatiable, driven by lust to do all sorts of wild acts.
As if she knew what I was thinking about, she stalked across the cave and dug a vial out of her cloak, drinking it in one gulp before grimacing. I knew what it was: a tonic to stave off her cycle. Keeping my features still, I reached down and discreetly wiped the droplets of pre-cum off the end of my cock. I could never let her know how I longed to be with her during that time.
Someday, I would be. She’d married me, even if she’d refused to exchange mating marks. She was the Warqueen of All Starlak, and I was her Warlord. Even after she chose her other mates, we would be together until the end of our?—
“I can’t do this. I’ve got work to do. A mission. I’m not meant to be livin’ in a cave or a castle, with babies slidin’ out of me every ten months. I’m not a wife, I’m a spy. How’d I forget that?” She scowled at my cock. “You made me forget. You and that nine-toothed demon.” Something like regret flashed over her face as she stared at the rungs on my warrior’s ladder. Ithad been the first of many sacrifices I would make for her, but the bliss it brought to her made the past suffering worthwhile.
“I’m leaving ya,” she announced, already moving across the cave and grabbing the leather satchels where she kept her stored herbs.
I approached her slowly, like I would a skittish horse. “Rada, my love, my goddess. I don’t want you to be anything but what you are.”
“You want children.” Her voice was too quiet. Too calm. “You want me to have your children.”
I blinked, sensing the trap. “I assumed…” My mouth dried up at the sheer disgust in her expression. I had to try again. “I don’t need anything from you but to stand by your side. I want to support you. Protect you.” I plucked the knife out of my arm and threw it toward the mouth of the cave, where it clattered across the stone floor into the darkness. “Omegas are the ones who choose, my dear wife. You know that. I will forever be amazed that you chose me.”
It was true. I woke every morning knowing how blessed I was. Not only that Rada had deemed me worthy to lie with her, but that the Goddess had found me deserving.
Did I want children with Rada? Maybe someday. But only if she wanted them as well.
Her eyes rose to mine. “You swore you’d give me anything I asked for as a wedding gift. If I asked for your life, your throne, your soul.”
I nodded, suddenly terrified. “I did.” I’d done it the night she gave herself to me, vowed it on my family’s name, and to the Goddess. We’d braided each other’s hair with the beads, and she’d allowed me to mark her arm afterward with a sign of myliebehald.As long as she wore it, I would give her whatever she asked. “Anything you ask.”
She stared down at the vines and flowers on her arm now. “I don’t want those things. I want somethin’ else.”
I dropped to my knees. “If it will make you happy, I’ll give it to you. Just tell me.”
“I want you to let me go.” Those mysterious, haunted eyes pinned me in place. “Let me leave Starlak and be the spy I was born to be. I don’t want marriage, or anniversaries, or babies. I want to be Ratter of Rimholt again.” Her breath caught. “I want my name back. I want my life back. I want you to absolve me of my vows and let me go.”
I couldn’t breathe. I was bleeding from my arm, but that pain was nothing. I felt like she’d found an invisible poisoned dagger and plunged it into me again and again. “Please. Rada—” Her lip curled, and I tried again. “Ratter. Please, anything but that.”
She shook her head and pulled her black-jeweled dagger out of its sheath, setting it to her skin at the place where she wore my tattoo, the proof of my vow. Of my debt. “You promised. You need to let me go. And I’ll let you go, too.” A line of blood rose.
“Stop!” I fell to the cave floor, panic and pain and anger flooding me. I thought she’d loved me. I’d done everything for her, all she’d asked. Was she testing me? “I’ll do it. I’ll give you back your name, and let you leave in peace. You don’t need to bleed.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You won’t follow me?”
“I will not. I’ll let you go.” It wasn’t a lie, not completely. I would never be able to let her go. But I could give her time.
She was only nineteen, a few years younger than me. If she went out into the world, she would come back to me someday. She had to. She would never find another man who would love her as wholly as I did.
Time would make her see that. I only needed to know she was safe. I could send someone to watch over her, from a distance. I would find a way to protect her.
“Good.” She pulled the three narrow braids from behind her neck to the front and set her dagger to her hair, slicing them off and offering them to me. I stared at them in her hand like it was my heart she’d cut out. It may as well have been. “I’m no longer Rada, wife of Goran,” she said firmly. “I’m lettin’ you go.” She hesitated. “That’s it, right? Once I cut the braids, it’s over?”
I gave a shaky nod, taking the braids when she thrust them at me again. She was right, more or less. Once she cut hers and mine, we would be parted in the ways of my people. But I would let her cut my throat before I surrendered my marriage braids.
“It’s not that I didn’t…” She hesitated, staring at the beads I’d woven into the braids on my palm. I’d plundered my royal treasury for the rarest gems—star sapphires in two shades, one the color of my eyes and one closer to hers, and a dragon’s-blood ruby—then had them set into bands of gold. When I’d told her I loved her, she’d let me weave them into her hair.
She’d never told me she loved me, not even at our wedding. I hadn’t thought I needed it. I’d imagined we had time.
A shadow passed over her face. “It’s not that we weren’t good together, Goran. If I was gonna love any Alpha in the world and have his babies, it would’ve been you. But that’s not for me, no matter how hard the Goddess pushes me.”
