Skadi nodded to my abdomen, and I groaned. I’d been trying my best not to think about the “seed of evil” inside me. Maybe it was in my bowels, not my womb. Maybe I could give myself a very strong laxative…
“The madness caused the plagues?”
“They didn’t begin the sickness,” I replied after a moment. “That was started when the Omegas who were sky bonds with the wyverns were left alone to suffer through their heats alone.”
“Heats? I dislike that word.”
I found myself smiling. “You would. Fertility cycles, then. The week or two every year when Omegas are fertile. The scent of them can drive men of any kind to desperation.”
“You have had these cycles, then? The selkie said you were both Omegas.”
“I’m not sure about Lachlan. I mean, I suppose he could have a heat… afertilitycycle. But it doesn’t exactly work that way for humans. I’ll ask him.” I snorted. “What if he’s like a seahorse male and can carry babies to term? Damnit, now I want to go find him and ask.”
“And you? You appear to be a mature human female. Have you had a cycle?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve done everything I could not to succumb, including half-killing myself with heat suppressants, starving myself, and avoiding Alphas for years. I don’t have time to lie in a nest and get railed by a bunch of males for weeks at a time. I’ve got shit to do.” I grabbed a piece of tuna that was stuck to the wood plank Lachlan had cooked the fish on, and chewed angrily.
“You would not enjoy this cycle? You despise the thought of being… railed, by males who would give you pleasure forweeks?” the ice god half-purred. I glared at him, making certain not to stare below his chest. I could tell something was moving in the shadows of his lap, and I did not want to encourage it.
Or me.
“I don’t relish the idea of having a dozen babies in the next ten years and giving up everything I’ve worked for, just to become a brood mare for the Goddess.” I slammed my mouth shut, not wanting to share all my feelings with a stranger.
Skadi waited for a moment before he spoke again. “He plans for you to breed for him, Omega,” he murmured, almost sadly. “He will not care about your consent, or your dreams.”
“I know. That’s why I have to…” I broke off before I said my plan out loud. I wasn’t sure Skadi could be trusted.
But I knew that the small fire in the room with us definitely couldn’t be.
I grabbed a small cup of meltwater and drank, then went on with the story. “The first Omegas who succumbed to the sickness weren’t terribly contagious. Only a few dozen women were struck down at a time. All who died were Omegas, though, and it drove their males to try and protect them. The Omega Plagues began not far from where we first met, the Eastern Reaches of Starlak.
“They didn’t know what Omegas needed to survive. That being alone in a heat would kill them. War had broken out as the plagues began to carry their mates away. So the Eastern Chieftains took all the living Omegas they could find, seven hundred of them, in a castle with everything they believed they would need to be safe
I closed my eyes as I spoke, seeing it from above, as if I were sitting in the sky as it all happened. Too far to stop it. Too weak to return to the world I’d left and…
No. Not me.Her.This was the nightmare I’d had so often during the years when I’d lived with Her inside me, the onethat haunted Her, and had me waking in tears more than once. She’d watched Her daughters die and listened helplessly to their prayers.
I pinched my leg, opened my eyes, and spoke softly. “They said it was for their protection, but it was to secure them as breeders for Starlak.” I exhaled, trying to remember how Alexios had taught me to control my emotions. “It was the worst torture imaginable. One by one, the Omegas died. Some took their own lives. Some begged their sisters to kill them, to end the agony. They say the wind carries their screams to this day, pleading to be let loose.”
“They heard them dying and did nothing?”
“No, by then the Alpha guards were all dead.”
Lachlan’s voice filtered in from outside, and I realized he’d returned and was listening. He sang in a clear, pure tenor.
“They threw a net around their mates, the stone pool was too shallow,
the stagnant stench washed o’er the dry, Her human line went fallow.
Abandoned and bereft, the young Omegas wept in pain,
their dying cries came to the seas washed down by sorrow’s rain.”
I waited for him to come through the tunnel, but he stayed out, so I finished the story. “Marauders came from Pict while the Chieftains were away fighting. They killed the guards, entered and stole the treasure from the vault, but stories say they left the Omegas. That they locked them inside to die slowly.”
We were all quiet, until Skadi asked, “Pict?”
“An island to the East of the continent, formed by a volcano.”
