Page 55 of Shadowlands Omega

A collective gasp echoes across the village. Fifteen lashes could be a death sentence. Cyprus will likely survive, but I don’t know about the rest of us — of them. Yaron will show no mercy.

“Fifteen,” Lord Yaron says softly. The boy who spoke steps through the crowd, which parts around him. The boy is pale with blond hair and bright eyes, red cheeks and hate seeping through his pores. He must have known the Alpha family intimately because he looks at Yaron with a gaze full of sadness and scorn.

“Fifteen it is, then.” Yaron says. The crowd gasps. Several mouths utter protest, but they are washed away by the whooshing in my brain. I feel lightheaded and can only watch, stunned and betrayed, as Yaron steps towards the boy and says, “And you shall deliver them or name your champion.”

“Olac,” the boy says immediately. “He is stronger.”

Yaron nods. “Good. Olac, come.”

It is a brutal sight — Olac turning in his chair, a needle hung on a thread like a noose dangling from a loose tag of his flesh. He’s sweating, I can see the way his rich brown skin glistens even from here. “My Lord, I cannot deliver so many lashes to each of them…”

“And you won’t.” Lord Yaron hands Olac the whip when the man rises to stand, wound still gaping open. “You will deliver their lashes to me.”

The crowd goes crazy. My knees go weak. I start to fall. Cyprus catches me. “No…” My heart. My heart…

“My Lord, no!” Olac sputters and gasps. “I cannot be compelled to raise a hand to the Shadow Lord. Do not dishonor me so…”

“You will do as I say for this is my decree. I shall champion their lashes. You open your mouth to defy me again, I will give you the punishment I think you truly deserve.” He tips the staff of his whip so subtly it could have been mistaken for a simple twitch. But I do not mistake it as such. I know that he is gesturing to the mess of a male he made out of that Rider and I know that Olac does, too. He is no fool and takes the baton when Yaron gives it to him.

Yaron turns and sheds his tunic, tossing it aside, but the boy who saidfifteenstill stands in the clearing, not in Yaron’s path, but not well enough out of his way. He looks stunned, his jaw works. He tries, “My Lord, this isn’t what I wanted at all…”

“But it is what is deserved. I will take the lashes they are owed because I failed to deliver your justice in the church, and subsequently let the family escape. And now the family that aided and abetted the Trash City scum that took Gwyn’s life will be punished, for they will have to live forever with this humiliation, knowing that the scars I bear are for their crimes. For Gwyn, for how I failed her, too.”

“S-scars, my Lord?” The young man shakes his head. “Why should you scar? Won’t you heal quickly from this?”

“Not this time. Okayo,” he barks. The male comes forward with a black syringe which he injects directly into Yaron’s vein. “So that my blood does not coagulate,” he hisses and the village is in upheaval. So many voices chiming for him to stop.

He continues past the boy and gestures with two fingers to his Riders. Two appear and flank him. He faces away from me, his back visible to me and my family and the riotous crowd. Several villagers try to storm forward to stop the atrocity we’re about to witness, but Yaron directs his Riders to hold them back.

Meanwhile, I feel something stir in my chest that I can’t put a name to. It feels like sludge, but hot. I step forward, away from Cyprus, afraid, but needing to do something. “Yaron.”

“Stand down, Omega,” he says, facing away from me. “The village had its chance to punish you yesterday, and so they did. Olac, begin. Ninety lashes for each member of the Ubutu family save Kiandah.” He spreads his feet and grips the inner shoulders of the two Crimson Riders that stand before him. They grab his forearms with both of their hands and brace.

Olac takes a long time to deliver the first lash. It’s the hardest to watch, to bear. The crowd has started to shift, to run, to return, to retreat, to swell. Many are cursing Olac. Many are cursing the boy whose name I hear shouted. Robert. But I don’t blame him. I blame Yaron. This is barbaric.

I start forward and the sludge in my chest moves, hurtling down my arms. I raise my left hand as Olac raises the whip to deliver the tenth, twentieth? Lash. I’ve already lost count, my skin burning, my eyes blurred as I watch Yaron stand there and bear it. Already, Yaron’s back is a mess of torn skin and bright abrasions. He hasn’t so much as flinched through it all. He keeps his head down like he’s staring at the ground just in front of his feet, and his hands planted on the shoulders of the soldiers before him who are both gritting their teeth.

Olac lifts the whip but when I exhale, I feel power roll out of me. My will is my command. A small tuft of blue smoke explodes from the tips of my fingers. The whip is gobbled up by a rogue flame. Olac shouts and drops the whip, and together, we all watch it catch fire at his feet. It burns far faster than it should, turning to ember by the time Yaron has looked over his shoulder to understand what caused the delay and the commotion. The ash from where the whip once was disperses in the breeze.

Yaron’s expression is incalculable as he stares at it and then looks at me. “I said stand down, Omega,” he hisses. He releases the Riders and advances on me. I stagger back. It’s so silent. The entire village is shouting, but it feels like they’ve all vanished as he crushes my biceps in his strong grip. He lowers his head and speaks angrily through his teeth. “I will heal from these wounds. Slowly, but I will heal. You delay and prolong the inevitable. Stop, or I will reverse my decision and design a punishment just for you. You will not like it.” He roughly shoves me back against my brother and calls for a new whip.

The flogging begins anew, this time to a chorus of silence. The muted sounds of the crowd are punctuated only by the occasional whimper or cry. His people bleed for him. They love him.Welove him. We always have. Even when he flays and maims and imprisons, we love him for it. Because we lead good lives in the Shadowlands. We lead good lives…

Why did my family do this to us? To all of us?

I feel a hatred toward them I don’t often experience as I watch Yaron take the brunt of our failings as villagers, as neighbors, as human fucking beings. I glance down the line of my family, first at Cyprus, nearest to me. His expression is set grimly. At my mom — sobbing. At Audet, shaking so badly she looks like she’ll fall apart. At Owenna. Her face is blank — no, hollow — her eyes sunken and dark like she’s seeing a ghost. At Zelie, hunched over, gagging at the sight and smell of flayed flesh. At my father, whose eyebrows are pulled together and whose face is darkened in rage.

His proud shoulders are pulled back as he steps forward and says, “Stop!”

Olac stops. Yaron’s muscles are moving beneath his skin in a way that I don’t like at all. He’s clearly in pain. His beast is clearly trying to escape. He’s having to endure this while also keeping his Berserker side contained. And he’s bleeding. He’s bleeding so much. The blood pours in rivulets down his back. I’m not even sure if, had Olac been trying to go easy on him, it would have mattered. The whip he’s using is Lord Yaron’s black whip. He makes them special. To hurt.

My eyes are hot and my fingers are pressed so tightly to my lips as I watch my father step forward and speak, not to Lord Yaron, but to the town. To Olac. To Robert. To everyone. “Enough!” He roars, lifting his hand and letting it fall. “For our honor, please. There are ten lashes left. Let me take them…”

Lord Yaron stiffens and straightens up. His fingers uncurl from the Riders’ shoulders he’d been holding and they both wince as he finally releases them. Yaron turns to face my father, fury on his face that my father does not back down from.

“Please, my Lord. Let me take the remaining.”

Yaron’s nostril’s flare and though his posture is lethal, his back a brutal landscape, his gaze is soft. He shakes his head just once, down at my father and says softly, firmly, “No.”

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