Page 147 of Ruled By The Alpha

Donag nods firmly. “Tomarr blood.”

“And Feann blood. My family does not have Isvaultinn Gifts, but the Vonna have been tied to this land since the Lost Time. I only wish to protect this hai and help it flourish.”

Donag’s long face twitches into a smile. “You’ll not leave us to sit at court with the King.”

It’s half a question, which I answer with a firm shake of my head. “I have no interest in court life. Until I Revealed, I was captain of my father’s house guard.” I drop my hand to the sword Morgan’s left with me. Not the blessed blade I carried for years, but my true mate’s second sword. “I have no courtly manners. No skill with floss and needle. I sing very badly, as Rivvard can attest.”

The Omega at my side snorts in agreement.

“That my Alpha has overlooked my shortcomings as an Omega is a great kindness,” I tell Donag. “But you will not need to show me a similar kindness. I have been privy to every aspect of running my father’s hai. All expected I would have my own hai someday. Teach me how you run this hai and I will strive every day to be a worthy replacement for what the King has taken from you.”

Donag’s smile widens. He reaches out and I take his hand, squeezing firmly. “I pledge to be a good and faithful steward toyou, Tuvarra. Come and see your hai. We’ll start in the cellars. No Alpha or Omega can claim to be truly of this House until they’re weaned on Tomarr cider.” He squeezes back. “We’ll start yours young.”

With a smile, I follow him, pulling Rivvard along beside me.

*

With Donag at my side, Rivvard as my happy companion, and Morgan’s gift growing in my belly, my days pass, hour by golden hour. The high tides of Lamna’s Day bring Oneswogan raiders. I spot their black sails in the haze during my early morning ride along the beach. Warning peals from the port’s Motherbells ring out even as I ride back into the hai’s courtyard and raise the alarm.

With an hour’s warning, the farmers and miners have time to draw behind our walls. The port has time to raise the wharf chains. I join the Beta bowmen on the palisade as they feather the beach, painting the pebbles with Oneswogan red. The raiders set fire to two fishermen’s cottages between the hai and the beach, but retreat under the rain of arrows. Donag quickly organizes fire chains from the sea to douse the flames, then joins me, walking among the dead the raiders have left behind.

“I’ll organize a burial crew,” he says. “Come away, Kieran. This isn’t a sight for one of the Mother’s blessed.”

Looking over the feathered bodies, I shake my head. I haven’t been to war, but I’ve spent my life studying it. I know wars are won by ruthlessness.

“Mount the bodies on pikes above the high tide mark. When they return, the first thing the Oneswogans will face is a line of their own dead.”

Donag gapes at me for a moment, but he carries out my order, and all those that follow. Painting the sand between the mid and high water mark with pitch that our bowmen set aflameduring the Oneswogans’ second raid. Running a spiked chain all the way from the port down the beach to the cliffs. The chain takes weeks to forge and secure, but when we raise it before a fourth raid, it hulls all but two of the raiders’ boats. I leave Donag at the hai when I take the hai’s Beta guard down to the beach. With their remaining boats overloaded and dangerously low in the water, the raiders have left not just their dead, but also their wounded.

Under the hollow glares from the pike-mounted corpses, to the harsh cawing of the seagulls and ravens who have come to feast, I walk among the wounded and put each of them to the sword.

That I weep at every cry of pain, every plea for mercy, does not stay my hand or weaken my sword-arm. Wars are won by ruthlessness. I am an Omega at war.

The raiders do not come again.

The verdant summer and bountiful fall give way to bitter eastern winds which paint the palisade’s walk with ice and my lips with salt. I trade sword for scythe as we harvest the small, tart apples from Tomarr’s orchards after the second frost. Donag teaches me the hai secret of pressing them not into cider but into a sweet wine. I send barrel upon barrel south with the loads of blackstone once the first snows clear.

Merchants, safe now from the Oneswogan raiders if not from the Mad God’s winter storms, bring a steady stream of letters from my mate-in-name and my mate-in-truth. Warm in our snug hai, with my swollen feet propped up before the fire and Rivvard rubbing scented oil into my growing belly, I read of battles and negotiations. With each letter, the new King seems to lose a little more ground. Morgan admitted before he left that he had little hope of the war being over quickly. As I read his letters, carefully couched, but with a thread of desperationweaving through each word, I begin to wonder if he has any hope of winning the war at all.

Despite being surrounded by the good people of Tomarrhai, Morgan’s absence is a constant, dull ache. During the days when the care and keeping of the house’s lands and mines, people and port, fills my every minute, I do not dwell on that ache. But at night, in the emptiness of my nest, with only the sea wind’s distant whistle for company, with the kicking of the babe I already know in my heart is the Alphaheir keeping me awake, the ache is worse than a lost limb.

Knowing his duty, and the King’s resentment, and that the tides of war have not flowed in their favor, I don’t burden Morgan with my loneliness. My lady-mother told me an Omega’s tears are best shed alone, and I carry this truth through busy days and bleak nights.

The days lengthen again and the scent of apple blossoms sweetens the salt air. The kicks in my belly grow ever stronger and the local midwife, a Vonna with hair as black as mine even though she must have seen as many summers as Justlinn, tells me what I’ve long known. I send the news of the Alphason south along with barrels of salted redflash when the spring drives their shoals into the shallows in such numbers we can throw fish into baskets with our hands instead of needing hooks and nets. Morgan and Justlinn both send me back their thanks for the extra rations—I gather the southern harvest was poor with so many away from their farms—but neither offer to come for the birth.

Still, I hold out hope.

It is a vain hope, as many of an Omega’s hopes are. Our son comes on a night scented by the wild roses blooming on the sea cliffs. His coming is easy, the midwife tells me, although it does not feel that way to me. But when she lays the warm weight of him on my breast, I forget the hours of pain, the strain,the sweat, the screams, even his father’s absence, and kiss his tiny head, already downy with black hair. I name him Irenn, as Morgan asked in his letters, and Bron, for my ancestors. His hazy blue, newborn eyes lighten day by day to the clear, piercing silver-gray of the Isvaultinn, and I wonder as the days ripen and the grain rises to my chest and Morgan’s letters grow fewer and longer between, what his Gift will be.

Once my Heat returns, I write to Morgan, and when he fails to respond, to Justlinn, begging leave to travel south to be tended in my Heat. If my letters are motivated by more than an Omega’s duty to provide many hale, hearty heirs for her House, surely the Mother will forgive me.

But no summons come, all the long summer. Only a steady stream of merchants, bearing scant news. One brings a letter from Justlinn saying the roads are still not safe, with Oneswogans rampaging through the south, even if they now avoid Caelgach. Finally, there’s a single letter from Morgan, clutched in the hand of one of the wounded soldiers he sends to recover at Tomarrhai, saying that the war has turned for the worse and the King would not welcome any distraction.

Irenn pulls himself up from his hands and chubby knees on every fencepost and apple tree as the summer fades to fall. From villager to visitor, I am congratulated on such a hale and hearty Alphason. And if the fact that our son has never met his father casts any shadow, it is pale and fleeting in the long, golden days of harvest.

On the day Irenn releases an apple tree and toddles two steps into my arms, a ship with blue sails docks and disgorges a stream of muddy, bloody, battle-weary soldiers. Among them, my younger brother Iasan. He and another soldier carry a palette into the hall, and when they lay it down, I find Justlinn, his white hair stained red, wheezing among bloodstained furs.

I quickly organize a bed for him in the makeshift hospital at the far end of the hall, near the fire, and send for the midwife who cared for me so steadfastly through Irenn’s birth. While I bathe the blood from my mate-in-name’s face and hold flesh together for Rivvard, who has a much better hand with needle and thread, to stitch, I press my brother for news.

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