"Ready to tear your own skin off yet?" he asked.
I let out a rough breath. "How'd you know?"
He shrugged. "It's how it feels. It will settle eventually. After the rut, if not sooner."
I accepted the glass from Seamus, and Ronson raised his own, black eyes glinting with dark humor. "To your rise, Alpha. And all the trouble it brings with it."
I didn't care about the trouble. I drank deep with them.
Chapter Three
BRIGID
Iwatched the dragons in the air from a safe distance away, hidden under a large pine, my breath caught in my throat and my hand pressing hard over my heart as a pair of massive forms wrestled in the air, a bright flash of blood bursting and glittering in the sunlight. My fate was tangled up in those two dragons, and it didn't seem fair that they were there in the air, together, without a thought of me—because I was sure Malcolm's mind wasn't sparing a worry over his wayward omega in this moment—and I must simply stand on the ground, watching and waiting.
At least I didn't have long to wait. A glimmer of bitter rust went crashing to the ground, and the other dragon, the Feargus son, dark as pine needles in winter, rose into the air with a roar and a burst of fire.
It was wrong to be sorry that Malcolm had failed. He'd make a terrible alpha, and in spite of his threats, I was likely no safer if he rose than if he tried to take my cottage from me. It was just the only hope I had of keeping my home. Now that hope was gone.
I caught a ragged breath, crossing my shawl around my front and tying it behind my waist, then started marching forward.The alpha's keep was still a good hour's hike away, and I would need to speak to him before morning if I had any hope for myself, my future, myfreedom.
I hoped Maggie was right. I hoped Lachlan Feargus's son would make a good alpha. But even that might not mean he would help me.
I startledin the large chair at the sound of footsteps approaching, a masculine grunt and a soft laugh following. My eyes blinked at the large fire in front of me, my head shaking. Had I fallen asleep in the alpha's keep, or had I just been sitting here so long, in the quiet and the dark and the heat of the fire, that I'd sunk into some kind of trance?
There was a man all but falling through the cracked doors of the keep, tipping forward and then stumbling upright. I wrinkled my nose at the scent of whisky, gassy and sharp. I'd never liked the smell of it, nor the nights when Malcolm came to bed stinking of the stuff.
The man chuckled, a low, warm sound, and then righted himself, straightening so perfectly, walking forward in such a direct line, you might never have known he was drunk, except for the smell and the lazy hood of his eyes. Dark eyes, dark curling hair, and broad, brown shoulders. Lachlan Feargus's son, and now…
"Alpha." The title came out of me roughly, surprised and foggy from the long day of traveling here and then sitting still by the fire.
For a moment, Torion Feargus seemed to not have heard me at all, busy heaving the heavy doors of the keep shut behind him on his own, his bare shoulders flexing in such a show of strengththat I lowered my eyes in reflex before deciding I'd rather watch. Then he stiffened and turned, eyes searching the room in uneven sweeps twice before finally finding me. He stepped, swayed again, and then corrected.
He was huge and handsome and entirely unsober. I found myself tongue tied at the sight of him and also at the reckoning of what I'd done, what I'd come here to do. But Iwashere already. And the new Alpha of Grave Hills was staring at me, waiting for me to speak…or perhaps trying to decide if he should know who I was. I could run out the doors now, and he might forget about the strange woman who'd been standing in his keep the night of his rise as alpha. I would lose my cottage. Or I would lose what was left of my heart and my freedom back in Malcolm's house.
I stepped forward and, as if in unison, the alpha and I both took a breath, his lids a little heavier for a moment in an almost desirous look. Then he frowned and blinked, his head tipping as he studied me from top to bottom.
I resisted the urge to squirm. "My name is Brigid Grant."
His frown deepened, lines carving over his smooth forehead, and all at once he looked less like a young wayward son of the Hills and more like what he was—the alpha. A power and heat radiated from him, one I could almost taste on the back of my tongue, a shivery warmth running down my back.
"Malcolm Barr's omega," he said, the words dark and sharp, his eyes narrowing at me.
My own jaw hardened, fists balling at my side as I lifted my chin. "I was. I have been. For several years, I've been living in a property my mother left to me—a cottage just to the southwest of here. The property backs up to the river."
He was moving suddenly, every step seeming to move the stone floor beneath us, shrinking the room as he grew closer, swallowing up the light of the fire into his dark wings, all of itglinting back in his stare. I never lost my ground, not even when Malcolm came to the cottage, but I fell back a step reflexively, and he paused. "Did he send you?" the alpha snarled.
"He? Malcolm?! Fang's fire, no," I spat out, dizzy with the accusation.
The alpha was quiet for a moment but continued before I could gather myself to speak. "Then you want me to intercede on your behalf? Demand Barr takes you back into his home?" he asked.
"No—" I snapped, and my hand covered my belly at the nausea that suddenly gathered there. It was a reasonable question. It wasn't uncommon for betas to evict a chosen omega from the home when they felt the woman no longer had any chance of bearing them a son. I swallowed down a bitter flavor at the idea that I was so past my prime. Certainly I would be no prize at a choosing ceremony, but plenty of women my age had delivered sons and daughters.
I cleared my throat and glanced down to the floor, hands rising and crossing to hold my elbows, trying to still the shaking in my hands. "That is to say, yes, I want you to intercede, but I don't want back in Malcolm's home. Quite the opposite. My mother's cottage was included in the contract my father drafted. Malcolm demands my return for the—" I didn't want to speak of the rut, but I didn't have to. The alpha nodded for me to continue, his stare still too keen to meet, too clear, considering he'd entered the keep swerving drunkenly about. If this was him drunk, he'd be a terror of intensity sober. I shook myself and continued, "He says if I don't, he'll evict me from the cottage and take a new omega."
A soft growl snarled through the air, and I was surprised by the small burst of heat in my belly at the sound. The alpha cleared his throat, and the sound vanished.
"Do you have the contract?" he asked in a milder tone.
