Goran stepped out of the room and left through the kitchen. Mother pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes welling.
A spark of jealousy ignited in me as Rada laughed down at Kellin. I wanted her to look at me like that. With humor and compassion, even lust.
“Such a flirt. Who would’ve suspected?” She finally pulled Kellin to his feet. He was taller than she was by a few inches, and their long, dark hair almost matched perfectly. He was darker where she was pale, though, and his shy smile came more easily as she lifted a hand to his forehead, pushing away a lock of dark hair.
Mother cleared her throat. “Enough lovemaking and lollygagging. What was it out there, and is there a chance it could come ashore and kill us and Goran’s men? What do we need to do to prepare?”
The Omega I’d tried to hate sighed, even the sound musical in a mysterious way. “It could. I don’t think it’s a sea creature. It felt like… it was ice and water and snow.”
“An elemental god?” Alexios mused aloud.
Rada laughed, but she still didn’t look at me. “Well, that makes it easier. I know exactly what to do when you’re being chased down by a deity. Run.”
RADA
Stellina wasn’t hearing me when I told her I needed to get my bags packed and then get out of her house before the storm that rattled the shutters started ripping the stones off. “You’re my daughter-in-law now, nearly twice over, and I don’t care if it’s the god of mean old selkies knocking on my door tonight. The storm out there is raging, and you’re exhausted. Tomorrow is soon enough to talk about running from gods, or what have you.”
We all slept hard that night as the storm battered the house. Goran had gone back to his camp, and Alexios had brought Dustin inside to sleep in what was apparently Goran’s room. Alexios insisted on sleeping outside my door, claiming that my snoring was worse than the storm. I had a suspicion it was out of respect for Kellin, though. When I woke the next day, he was slumped outside the door as well, only a few steps from where Alexios had made his bed.
I had no idea where Lachlan was and told myself I didn’t care.
Stellina insisted on reading raunchy novels by the library fireplace as the storm continued to hammer the coast throughout the day. Kellin worked on some household accounts,then mentioned something about a special project and vanished into the back rooms, coming and going, even in the rain all day. After a lunch of soup and bread in the library with just the women––me, Stellina, and Lorana––he popped his head in and mentioned going out to check on “the others.”
I assumed that meant his brother. I didn’t ask.
Stellina gave me an old book on selkie mating rituals, which I ignored in favor of the booklet I’d found on grafting vines to produce new strains of fruit. “This might work with starflower vines,” I muttered, taking a few notes. Starflowers had once produced the most potent poison in the world. “They died out, but if I grafted them onto grapevines…”
“You don’t need to take notes, Rada,” Stellina suggested. “Keep the book.” She grinned. “The whole library is yours anyway.”
“Mine?”
“You’re mated to both my sons. This library, this house, the gardens outside. It’s all yours now.”
“Not yours?”
“By the tides, no! I have a palace in the Eastern Seas. I bought this place for the boys. Well, Lachlan mostly. He discovered his nature a few years back, though he tells me it started about ten or eleven years ago, when we first traveled to Wren’s.”
For some reason, an odd thought occurred. He’d changed after we met. How soon after?
But she was still chattering. “...wasn’t obvious what was going on at first, but Kellin and Lachlan swam straight back to the Eastern Seas that night. By the time they reached our home, Lachlan was already—well, it’s his story to tell. But I bought this house when we discovered that the cold seas suppressed his Omega scent, and the, ah, the urges. Then one day, Goran came to visit, and ended up moving his warrior’s camp here that summer.”
I almost laughed. “You know Goran had me thinking he lived here with an Omega lover? That’s why I tried to kill Lachlan. Though there’s really no excuse.”
“You were jealous?”
“He said he’d been living with an Omega for years. His best friend. They looked happy together.” I shrugged.
She wrinkled her already wrinkled face up in a terrible frown. “That idiot! If ever an Alpha pined, it was that one. I told him a hundred times to go looking for you—” She stopped at my raised eyebrow.
“I left him, Stellina. I dumped him and used his vow to me to make him promise not to come after me. I’m not the hero in our story.” I picked another book, an old copy ofQueen Travalya’s Fiery Harem TalesI’d read years ago.
“Your story’s not done yet, sweet girl,” Stellina said, opening her book as well. She didn’t turn any pages, though. “He went after you in Mirren to get medicines for Wren. Her herb garden isn’t as well tended as ours. You should pick a few things for her before you go to Drakonspear.”
I didn’t tell her that I might not be able to go. But in the end, I agreed that if the rain stopped, I’d spend the next day harvesting for the remedies I knew Wren might need. After all, she was pregnant by her kraken mate, a beast that could grow twice the size of the largest whale. Even if I couldn’t be there to deliver the baby myself, I owed my mentor that much and more.
Dinnertime came,and Kellin finally finished moving things around in the back room and joined us for the meal, asking me about my childhood in Rimholt, and paying the kind of closeattention most males never did. By the end of the meal, I was flushed not with the wine, but the attention.
I thought I’d felt Lachlan close by and hated the idea that I could feel the arserag in my heart, or mind. But he and Goran stayed gone. After dinner, Alexios brought Dustin to the dining room table and began training him to care for my things, starting with sock darning.
