To my mate. He dared to touch… my mate.
I don’t fucking think so.My hand moved faster than the wind, the poisoned dart flying past Goran’s face as he leaned forward, his expression one of horror.
Grandma Stellina shouted, “No!” but the Omega selkie was already in the path of my dart.
At the last minute, a shadow moved across the frozen tableau, faster than thought, interposing itself between the dart and its target. The shadow crumpled to the ground.
“Kellin!” the Omega screamed, throwing himself down as well. Over the body of a second selkie, one I’d just killed.
“I’m sorry, Grandma,”I murmured a few moments later, staring down at the unconscious body of her eldest son on the dining table. I ignored everyone around me, as well as the food that had been unceremoniously dumped on a side table, as we all waited to see if the antidote I’d given him had been enough. “I’m so sorry.”
“You will be if you’ve killed my child. Ratter, how could you?Why?” Stellina had gone straight to a chest and unlocked it, pulling out a selkie skin. When we’d first brought him in, he’d stopped breathing. After she’d wrapped it around him, he’d started again, but the breaths were the gasping, erratic ones heard on deathbeds.
“I… I didn’t mean to.” It was a bullshit answer, and I deserved her glare.
“Yes, you meant to killme,” Lachlan spat from the far wall. He’d been asked to stay away, and Goran stood in front of him, in case whatever demon that had possessed me to attack recurred.
The demon being my own Omega nature.
Goddess, I was a disaster. I’d always been possessive, but I’d never snapped like that before. And I knew better than to snarl like a dog with a bone over Goran. I’d given him up. He had a right to move on, even though it had shocked me to see him with another male.
I couldn’t lie to myself. Even if Goran had taken a new mate, I wouldn’t have gone half-feral just because he was a male. More than a few of his warriors had found love with other men. Goran’s easy acceptance of it was one of the things I’d admired about my former husband. “Love is love, under the same moon and stars,” he’d said to two of his most capable warriors when he’d performed their marriage ceremony. I’d always felt the same.
No, I’d lost my mind seeing another Omega––a male Omega, the first I’d ever heard of––touching him. What had come over me? It had felt like possession, but…
I rubbed at the flare of heat in my abdomen. The pain had subsided for a moment, like it was satisfied with the violence. Had I been tainted, infected with some evil?
“It’s my fault,” Goran said, his voice raw, his claim ridiculous.
“Of course it wasn’t,” I replied, my hands on the pulse of the selkie’s left wrist. My own pulse was almost as frantic as the one I could feel there. “I did this. I’m only glad I didn’t kill your mate.”
Lachlan gasped. “His what?”
Goran stiffened and repeated in an odd tone, “My fault.”
On his other side, Alexios quietly inserted small silver needles just under the selkie’s skin. He’d taken off Kellin’s shirt, and lean lines of muscle gleamed on his smooth, brown abdomen. But what caught my eye were the dark red lines radiating from his mouth and the odd, pale shade his fingers were turning.
Stellina watched Alexios with approval, but when she turned to me, her voice was arctic. “This might be a time for you to call upon the Goddess, child.”
“I… I can’t,” I replied softly, dropping my gaze back to the dying selkie in front of me. He was the image of his brother, but the sparkling energy that Lachlan had carried in his aura were nowhere to be seen. My hands itched to touch him, and not just on his wrist. I moved one hand to his forehead, pushing back the long, black hair. He was far too warm. “Do selkies run cool?” I wondered aloud. I hated not knowing how to treat a patient. “Alexios, we need more antidote.”
“You’ve used all the antidote we had prepared,” he murmured. “It would take days to distill enough for a single dose, even if we had all the ingredients. We should all pray.”
“Do something,” Stellina demanded, her voice shaking. “He can’t die. I can’t lose him.”
“If we could wake him up somehow, if he shifted into his seal form, could that help him heal?” I tried to remember the things I’d read over the years about shifters, though most of it had been from fairy tales.
“For wounds, yes. Poisons? I don’t know. But he’s weak. He couldn’t shift earlier today,” Stellina admitted, and when I raised an eyebrow, she went on. “He said he hadn’t shifted in half a year.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. He was always a serious young selkie, but something changed in him years ago. He never shared with me what it was.” She sighed.
“I met him at Drakonspear.” I thought back to the day I’d met them all. “He was quiet then.”
Stellina and her two sons had arrived at the castle to meet Wren. I’d ignored them shamefully at the dinner that night, messing with Goran under the table. After dinner, I’d tried to make up for my poor manners, but it hadn’t gone well.
“I tried to speak to him then, but he didn’t seem interested.” Remembering it still stung. I’d felt something strange when we’d been alone in the hallway for those few moments. His attention on me had been almost overwhelming, until he started choking, or coughing. I’d given him whiskey and made it worse. Then, for some unknown yet mortifying reason, I’d blurted out a demand to know if he liked me.
