“Oh.” Twisting the plain metal band off his finger, he handed it to her. “I should’ve shown you before.” I watched her lips move as she read the three words silently.
Only. Ever. Rada.
Goran may have had them inscribed on his hidden ring, but I had them written in my veins. My heart spoke them silently with every pulse:Only. Ever. Rada.
She held the ring to her lips and kissed it, then slid it back on his finger. The kiss they shared was brief, but far more intimate than lovemaking would have been. Still, I couldn’t look away.
He spoke after a moment, his voice rough. “I didn’t expect you to stay away from others, though. You didn’t make a vow to me about that. I may not have understood you, but I knew you were an Omega and meant for more.”
“I only swore off Alphas,” she murmured. “I kept clear of them as much as I could. I thought Betas were safe.”
I flinched. She’d said that to me more than once, when she’d snuggled up next to me on cold nights, when she’d laughed about modesty in close quarters. How glad she was that I was a Beta and safe.
She would never look at me again with trust in her eyes. I may have kept my vows to the Goddess, but I’d broken my mistress’s heart, and suddenly that seemed like a far greater crime.
“Tell me about your life,ma bohinya,” Goran said once she’d gone quiet. “Tell me how many you have saved since you left me.”
GORAN
Rada spoke for an hour or more about the women and children she’d rescued, and the Alphas and Betas she’d fought and often killed to make her mission a reality. I was stunned at how vast her goal was.
“I can’t stop until every Omega in the world is safe,” she admitted. “I can’t sleep some nights, wondering if I’m working fast enough, hard enough. Once, I arrived at a farmhouse where I’d heard three women were being kept inside. I’d put off going there, because no one even hinted they could be Omegas. The owner of the inn I was staying at just said that Farmer Michaelin liked to keep his daughters close to home. They were uncommonly pretty, or had been, the last time anyone in the town had seen them. I spent the night in the inn and slept in the next day. Went shopping for some new vials and a knife-sharpening stone. Finally, I thought about what the innkeeper said and rode out to the farm.
“As it turned out, hewaskeeping them close. In his barn, under the floorboards. Their scent was covered by the stench of manure. Three Omegas, one who looked about twenty, and two others who were no more than eighteen. Of course, I couldn’t ask their ages, or even names, since they were all freshly dead.” Shestruggled to go on. “Farmer Michaelin had terrible handwriting, but he’d left a note. He’d hanged himself for what he did to them before they died. He was an Alpha, of course, and when their perfume began, he lost his mind.” She whispered the rest. “He was still warm. I got there no more than a few hours too late.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“Can’t I? That sort of thing happened again and again. Every time I stopped to relax, every time I ignored that voice that drove me, someone died. Each time, it felt like it was one of my own sisters who I’d failed.”
She’d never let me see her weaknesses before, and I wasn’t prepared for how thoroughly she broke, leaning against me. Still, she cried silently, as if she needed to hide her grief from the Beta who sat behind us.
I pulled her close and kissed the top of her hair, knowing better than to say anything. She’d always hated empty words and sympathetic sounds, more than any warrior I’d met.
Warrior. The title I’d given her in my thoughts left me blinking. I’d heard more than one battle-hardened warrior voice these exact thoughts, about the comrades they’d been unable to save on the field. Suddenly, I realized something vital about my wife I should have known long ago.
She wasn’t only a woman. She was a warrior, and she’d been fighting a war. Not on her own, if what the Beta had said was true. The Goddess had been watching out for her, though that discovery had broken Rada even further. And the kraken had given her the pendant.
But now, she was planning to walk into the pit of the lowest hell, alone again. For some reason, an image of a ladder being lowered down into a fiery volcano flashed in my mind, then away.
“Do you see why I have to go to Pict?” she asked, her silver-gray eyes gazing up into mine.
“You can’t save them on your own, Rada. You have to know that.” The gray grew stormy as she began to withdraw. “I’ll go with you,” I continued, not giving her time to grow angrier. “I’ll go with you. I’ll march into Pict, if you promise to give me another chance to be worthy of you.”
“Worthy? Is that code for getting to play hide the knot?” When she wrinkled her nose in mock suspicion, I almost smiled.
“No knot-hiding required. I’d march into the maw of the fire god for a kiss from you, my brave, deadly wife. If you haven’t figured it out, I love you more than my own life. I’ll go with you, for nothing but the hope that you’ll let me love you from closer than a thousand miles for the rest of our lives.”
She tilted her head. “There has to be a catch. I can imagine us fighting together. Do you really think you can watch me fight and not jump in front of me? You’ve done that more than once, though I’d thought the solid kick in the balls I gave you last time might’ve cured you of the habit.”
I tapped her on the nose, knowing how much she disliked that, then dodged her snapping teeth. “I vow it on my name, on my honor, and on my country. I will follow your directions.” Her mouth opened again, and I used my finger to close it. “I’ll be your foot soldier, and you can lead me into battle.”
“You mean that, don’t you?” Her words were wondering, though her eyes held a hint of something that still frightened me.
“I do.”
She sighed, then reached behind her and pulled my shirt off so that she was naked. “Beta, go into the cabin. I don’t need a spy right now.”
Alexios didn’t answer, just obeyed instantly, without question.
