Skadi broke away, or at least one of his legs did, and he plucked me off the ship’s deck, lifting me to his enormous, scaled face. “You may not leave me, little enemy!” He didn’t wait for an answer, some part of him—the storm, or his tail—striking Lusca and batting him hundreds of yards away. My heart panged as I watched the enormous kraken sail over the cliffs and onto the island. Only knowing he was more or less indestructible kept me from crying out. “I stole you. You belong to me. You are my hoard, and no one may take you from me.”
His hoard?Oh, shit.I knew about dragons and their hoards.
“You said you’re not a dragon!” I yelled. “Even if you were, I can’t be your hoard, Skadi. I’m a person.”
“My person. You gave me your tooth. Now all of you is mine.Mine!”
I had no idea what he was talking about. For some reason, he rubbed his snout on my head and shoulders. It didn’t hurt, but the scales were prickly, leaving trails of frost on my skin and freezing my hair. When he pulled back his head, though, my pendant hung on one of his teeth. He pressed his snout to his scales at the front of his wing joint and blew cold air over it, freezing the pendant to his body alongside the other small lumps that I knew must hide my poisons.
“Hey, you can’t have my pendant!” I shouted.
“But I can. It is mine, like every other part of y—” His annoying claim was cut short by an enormous tentacle, bigger than any tree I’d ever seen and far longer. It came from behindthe cliffs, wrapped around him, and shook me free. I flew toward the boat, wondering if I’d break into pieces when I landed.
But Goran grabbed me somehow, though my breath was knocked out of me when I hit his chest and he fell to his knees. His face was nearly purple with anger as he shouted toward the sky, “What manner of males are you? Fighting where she might be hurt or killed. Shame on both of your lines!”
“They can’t even hear you,” I told him, but I must have been wrong, because the wind picked up and began pushing the boat out to sea. It was a cold wind, but by now all of the air around us was frigid, so I wasn’t sure which of the colossal idiots was doing it.
Dustin put up the sail, and Goran carried me over to the main mast just before the ship began to scud like a skipping stone across the top of the choppy sea. The selkies were left far behind, but I knew they’d be fine. The noise was incredible as the ship rocketed across the sea so fast, the wood creaked like it might fly apart.
Loose ropes slapped against the sides of the boat like Goran’s braids slapped my face as he crouched over me, sheltering me from as much of the wind and icy rain as he could.Ouch.Goran’s braidshurt. I grabbed one with a bone bead that kept whacking my cheek.
Except it wasn’t a bone bead. My fingers closed on a faceted gem, and I knew immediately what it was.
It could only be the diamond I’d placed there a decade before, the first gem I’d wired into an extravagant bead for him after I’d agreed to marry him. He was still wearing my beads, hidden underneath the shell and bone ones.
Did that mean…? Suddenly, it clicked. Of course he was. And what was worse, everyone else already knew.
All the times the others had referred to me as his wife, the raised eyebrows when I corrected them, flashed through my mind, as fast as the boat was riding along the waves to the east.
I grabbed the bottom of Goran’s beard and pulled him down so I could shout in his ear. To make sure he stayed there, I pinched the nerve at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, hard. “We’re still married? We’re still fuckingmarried?”
His throat flexed as he swallowed, and I pushed down the sudden urge to lick the bared skin there. “Do you really want an answer?” he shouted back, ducking his head. His face was only inches in front of mine. So close, I couldn’t even focus on his eyes. So I stared at his lips instead and breathed in that scent that had meant home so long ago.
“Yes,” I rasped. I didn’t need an answer. I already knew the truth. But I wanted an explanation. “Why didn’t you cut your braids off?”
“How could I?” His lips barely moved as he replied, “If I wanted to cut you out of my life, I would need to remove more than a braid. More than your beads. I would need to shave my head to forget the feeling of your hands pulling at my hair as you cried out my name. I would have to cut out my tongue to forget the taste of you, cut off my hands to block out the memory of your skin beneath my fingers. Gouge out my eyes that looked for you every morning for the past nine years, before I remembered you were gone. I would need to let every drop of my blood spill and cut out my foolish heart.
“You may have myliebehaldon your arm,ma bohinya, but your mark is carved into my heart. Your blood is braided with mine. You may leave me, you may forget me, you may never look upon me again and be glad of it. But I will die knowing that the only moments in my life that mattered were the ones spent in your arms. That the only goal that gives me a reason to breatheis one that may bring me back to you and cause you to look upon me with love again.”
His hand rested on the side of my face, and I leaned into it unconsciously as he kept on breaking my heart, or maybe repairing it. “I never forgot what you said about my country. How we had lost honor, by trapping our women and stealing their dignity. Ever since you left me, I’ve fought to create a Starlak where, if you ever decided to cross into its borders again, you could be safe. A country you would want to call your own, even if you never claimed me again.”
The wind that howled around us, blocked by his body on one side and the mast on the other, was almost as loud as my pounding heart. The vow his warriors had chanted echoed in my thoughts. He’d done that for me?
“I was not a good husband. I didn’t listen to you; I underestimated you.” I pressed my fingers to his cheek, and he pulled back just enough that I could see his blue eyes. They shone with intensity, and the raw pain I’d seen before, the night I left him. “I thought we were meant to do it together. To rebuild a safe country for Omegas,ma bohinya. But you were made for greater things, weren’t you? You were put in this world to make all of it safer, not just Starlak. And you were made for greater mates than me.” He pressed a kiss to my brow, then pulled away, standing.
While he’d spoken, the wind had changed. It was warmer now, though still strong, and the sail billowed above us. The boat was still moving so quickly, it seemed unreal. Goran held his hand out to me, and I stood shakily, feeling almost as nauseous as he was beginning to look. We were so far from the island, I couldn’t see it, though the dark gray storm that circled like a hurricane over the horizon, lightning crackling too fast to track, made it clear where the monsters were still battling.
I could make out what I knew were Kellin and Lachlan’s heads, bobbing in the waves behind us as they swam to catch up. I pressed my free hand to my heart, wondering what Lachlan was sensing in our bond. Could he feel how conflicted I was about Goran? How disappointed I was that Lusca and Skadi hadn’t listened to me?
Alexios stood at the rudder, his attention on the sea and the billowing sail. He seemed slightly concerned, but he was a better sailor than me.
And a far better one than Goran, who was swallowing reflexively, his eyes tight as the waves rocked up against the hull. “You still get seasick, husband?” I was trying to tease him, but the way he closed his eyes on that last word made me wonder if I’d hurt him. “Sorry,” I muttered.
“No,” he whispered, drawing my back against his chest. “I dreamed of that so many times. Of you calling me your husband. Dreamed of the scent of you…” He leaned down and buried his nose in my wet hair. I was fairly certain all I smelled of was the sea, but he stayed like that for a long moment. Finally, he spoke again, his voice muffled in my hair. “Will you tell me about your travels? All the apothecaries and your work. Alexios told me some of it. I’d love to hear… everything.”
“Only if you’ll tell me about what you did in Starlak.”
I felt his mouth curl into a smile before we sat, him cross-legged near the front of the boat, and me on his lap, both of us looking east. The wind still blew us in that direction, and for a moment, I wondered at the coincidence. The prevailing winds were normally westerly here. But these winds were probably a result of Lusca or Skadi trying to clear their battleground for their stupid fight.
