I ducked my head to hide my smile, and filled my omega in on all of the news.
"Is it too late, then?"
I paused before reaching the cottage window, the quavering, feminine voice startling me out of my thoughts. Brigid had sent me to bathe out by the river while she organized all the goods I'd brought into their proper places, saying she would join me. I'd floated aimlessly until my curiosity—and my desire to be back in Brigid's company—had made me too impatient to wait.
She'd received a patient, apparently. I knew I shouldn't snoop, but I also didn't want to interrupt them. Preparing to turn back to the water, I caught Brigid's answer.
"It would've been better if you'd come to mebeforethe rut, you know," Brigid said, the words softened by a gentle tone.
"I could hardly arrive at the alpha's keep asking for the preventative! And it's not as if anyone expectedyouto be claimed, you must admit."
I bristled on behalf of my omega, my mind racing to catch up to the conversation. Brigid's sigh carried out of the cottage windows to my ears.
"Fair enough."
"P-please, say you can help. I won't survive another son. I'll drink the tea everyday?—"
"The tea only helps before," Brigid said, and the other woman sobbed before my omega interrupted her once more. "But there are other herbs. Their effectiveness is less reliable, but it's what I can offer."
I crept back slowly, careful not to be seen or heard, mulling over their conversation. Preventing a pregnancy, especially during a rut, was illegal for dragonkin women. If Brigid had ever offered such services to women before, and that information got back to the betas of the territory, it would be expected that I would punish her at the very least, if not imprison her. Of course, one of the women she helped would have to admit to such an act and receive the same judgment.
Fang's fire, I hoped it would never come to that. If it did, I would burn every last remaining splinter of a bridge left between myself and the betas by refusing to act against Brigid. My head spun, racing to consider new options, ways I might adjust the law before Brigid could be exposed. As long as anyone knew what she'd done, both she and I were in danger of retaliation, if not simple blackmail.
The sound of carriage wheels churning over gravel was muted under my thoughts where I waited by the gate, watching the sunset, but the soft slip of footsteps on the ground roused me. I turned toward Brigid as she approached, her face stony and guarded. I stretched my hand out in her direction and the shield fell away, her eyes widening and welling slightly.
"I didn't mean to overhear," I said.
"Torion, I swear to you, I did not break my promise?—"
I caught her hand and tugged her to me, stopping the worried words with a soft kiss, wrapping my free arm around her trembling frame until she sighed and sagged against me.
"I know that," I mumbled against her lips, claiming another, firmer kiss before adding, "I wouldn't care if you had." Brigid winced and jerked at that, and I hurried to recover. "Well, I would, but only because all your talk of our parcel of children has me excited to have them running wild about us. But I wouldn't begrudge you the choice, and it wouldn't change my resolve to keep you at my side as my omega."
Brigid was burrowing into my chest before I'd fumbled my way through the speech, her ragged breaths puffing against my skin at my open collar. One of her hands slid up my chest to find my jaw, rubbing there, before she leaned back, arching in our embrace. "Torion. You are intolerably good," she said, voice weak and eyes wet.
I frowned, unsure if her words were meant to be praise. I caught one of her tears with my thumb and wiped it away. "As long as I am good toyou." The words fell out of my lips without thought, precisely the sort of sentiment a council of advisors would warn me against. My duty was to the Hills, not to my omega.
But I hadn't taken a true council yet, and if I did, the first person I would call to my side would be Brigid.
She let out a choked cry and rose up on her toes, shaking hands clasping my head, fingers tangling in my hair, drawing me down to fuse our mouths together in hunger and succor.
The cottage was barelybig enough to accommodate us together, so when a small family arrived to consult Brigid on their daughter's cough, I kept myself out of the way outside, brushing down and watering the horse that had pulled them in on a cart. I could hear them speak, Brigid's gentle and precise questions, the way she sweetly teased the nervous little girl until they were giggling together. I watched her through her windows, quick and competent as she grabbed jars from shelves, filled a small cloth bag with herbs, and instructed the family on the preparation of baths and teas.
"If I write out my instructions and the herbs I've given you, will that help?" Brigid asked.
"Aye, miss," the mother said, studying Brigid's scribbles over her shoulder with quick nods. "We can find those easy enough."
I ducked out of view again, rounding the back of the cottage and listening as my omega made her farewells to the family. I slipped back inside as their cart rolled out of view of the cottage and watched Brigid carefully arrange the jars she'd pulled back onto shelves and in cupboards.
"Why are only some of them labeled?" I asked, finding my usual spot out of her way in the rocking chair by the fireplace.
"Most I recognize by sight or smell, but some can be easily confused with one another, so I make sure to paint the name on the jar," she said.
"And do you gather every herb yourself?"
She shook her head. "There are merchants who travel the Hills. Mine brings herbs from farther south or north that I don't find here, and I trade him for those which only grow by water beds or in these particular woods."
I hummed as she continued her work, tidying everything away. I considered my own careless habit of leaving things out wherever I finished with them, knowing some maid or other servant would come along and put things to right again in my wake.
