“I’ll even sing them for you,” he promised, dropping a kiss on my wrist before he taught me that music could be as seductive as a striptease. All the shyness he’d shown before had dissipated a little more each night, as he worshiped my body, and each day as we slowly became friends. Alexios liked him, too, and I caught them sharing recipes and stories of their own childhoods as well.
The next few days were much the same. Every morning, Kellin got up and made me breakfast, carrying it to me in bed. We ate a midday meal of soup and bread with Dustin and Alexios, then retired to the library for games, music, stories, and sometimes tickling. Every night, he filled the bath with a slightly different, appealing assortment of herbs. He wrote the combinations down in a journal, along with notes of which baths I’d seemed to like most and which ones mixed with my own Omega perfume the best.
He gave me massages and washed my hair, singing to me while for the first time in my life, I did nothing but be pampered. And then he counted off the shores of bliss.
After he gave me my nightly bouquet of orgasms, he would escort me to the enormous nest he’d constructed for me in his room. He never once complained that Alexios had moved his own pallet inside the room, to guard me while I slept alone.
It was a perfect few days, except for the pain that clawed at my insides from time to time, and the rising desire that wrapped around me every night like a heavy blanket, lulling me.
I came dangerously close to begging Kellin to mark me. He was everything I hadn’t known a potential mate could be: quiet and careful with his words and my feelings. He paid attention to every small thing I said, and cared for me in a way I’d never experienced before. He made me feel like… an Omega.
Kellin was dangerous, a rip current I didn’t want to escape, pulling me to him. Which was why I had to poison him.
One of thebest things about my valet was that he knew once I’d made my mind up, there was no need for discussion. When I slipped out of the bathing room that night and into the bedroom, he’d already prepared all my things and left a note to meet him outside.
I packaged up a canvas bag filled with the herbal mixtures I’d prepared for Wren and wrote a letter and an apology to Stellina, though I didn’t seal it. I told her I had an errand to run back in Mirren, some debts I had to collect, but that she should travel to Drakonspear and I would try to meet her there.
It was even true. I would try, but I already knew I’d fail. Pict was a long journey from here, and it would take months to get there and back, if I survived.
I left my room without looking back. In the hall, I checked the bags Alexios had packed, filled with food for traveling and fishing hooks. We’d need those, traveling along the coast. I made sure I had all my poisons and herbs, and met him at the back door toward the beach.
“Are you well?” he whispered once we were under the trees. He was staring at the place on my abdomen I’d been rubbing fiercely. Guilt washed over me as I pulled my cloak closer. I’d been pretending my ribs were what pained me, though it was theinvisible hooks. I hadn’t been able to hide it entirely; he’d seen the blood I’d coughed that morning when I scrubbed my teeth with soda.
“Of course,” I lied. The pain had been growing in my gut, no matter what herbs I took, or how I tried to ignore it, only the evenings with Kellin stopping it. The fire god was demanding I fulfill the promise I’d made in the flames, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
Alexios let it go. “Kellin?”
“A small dose of limbane leaf in the tea after…” I blushed, even though it was Alexios, for crying out loud.
“His heroics?” he finished, not cracking a smile.
I snorted. “Yes. Lachlan?”
“He walked into the sea an hour ago and took his skin. I watched him swim past the horizon.”
I nodded once. I didn’t care if he ever came back. “Dustin?”
“Still outside the front door. I told him not to follow, but to tell anyone who asked that you had to go on a secret mission back in Mirren. Then I dosed him with a sedative.”
I let out a shaky breath. I didn’t know what to think of that. The kid had vowed himself to me, and I knew Starlakians with a vow to fulfill were like tickweed to shake loose, but I had a feeling the journey I was taking now would do the trick.
“And before you ask, the Warlord is in his camp, asleep. And he’ll stay that way for a very long while.” That raised my curiosity, but it was too dark to see his face. “Mistress, tell me the truth. Are you well enough to ride?”
I made a rude gesture, though it may have been too dark to see it. “Stellina’s gonna be so pissed,” I murmured as the ocean came into sight. She’d gone to so much trouble to make me feel at home. Kellin had done even more. In that soft part of me, the corner that had always wanted to be spoiled with soft things andpretty words, I already missed my selkie more than I thought possible.
But leaving Starlak was a good idea for another reason. I needed the distance from the weakness Kellin had revealed… and from Lachlan.
The way he’d intruded on my emotions, practically reading my mind, still made me itch to stab something. He had no right, even if I had inadvertently claimed him using some ancient selkie ritual. If I didn’t know better—if I couldn’t feel the emptiness inside—I would’ve thought the Goddess was messing with me.
I stopped short. Gods were out there, too. “You said Lachlan came ashore and told Goran the beast was gone, right?”
Alexios nodded. “Yes. Dustin’s friend heard the conversation the night after the storm passed. Lachlan followed the thing all the way to the Svellvollr.” We both knew the only way to Pict was by boat, and the sea didn’t feel nearly as safe as it once had. “I found horses. We need to stay close to the water’s edge, though, or risk the warlord’s scouts noting our passage.” I rolled my eyes. As if we couldn’t hide from a bunch of young Starlakians.
“Where did you find horses?” Stellina and Lorana had taken the only two from their stables, other than a vastly pregnant mare. No others lived anywhere close; like most of Starlak, the area north of the Forest was a swath of uninhabited land dotted sparsely with castles and small towns. We were headed to the biggest town that lay a hundred miles to the east.
“The herdsmen had taken the horses a few miles away for fresh pasture. I checked on them earlier this evening. Two of them may have wandered through an open gate.”
I smiled at the pride in his tone. “Alexios, are you telling me you stole two horses for us?”
