Page 63 of Shadowlands Omega

“I was high out of my mind.” I hold my arms out and let them fall. I feel incensed and flustered, but Kiandah doesn’t seem fazed at all.

In fact, since the lashings four days ago, she seems so much more confident. I thought we’d have been able to move sooner, but my body healed slower than I anticipated. In the meantime, her confidence has sweltered like the fire she wields. Though that had been one of my hopes, I’m no longer certain that a confident Kiandah is a good thing. A confident Kiandah is bolder in her desires to save and protect and seems so confident in her ability to do so, while I feel increasingly unsure about my ability to protect her in her quests. I already have failed her so many times. It’s better if she stays here. But she won’t take no for an answer.

She’s royally pissing me off.

“Are you a liar, Lord Yaron?” She advances on me and moves to push my chest. I capture her wrist before she can touch me.

My gaze narrows and the sudden surge of anger I feel rattles me. She must feel it in the pressure of my fingers on hers, or her Omega must sense it, because she tenses, bracing. “You continue with such accusations and I might throw you into the dungeons,” I tell her, “or over my knee.”

“If you release my arm and keep your word, Lord Yaron, I might just throw you over mine.” Her hand forms a fist, tendons and muscles straining beneath my palm. She takes a half step towards me, almost closing the distance between us entirely. The vision is too much. I jerk away from her roughly and show her my back. I adjust myself in my riding trousers, wanting…wishing for… I’m slapped in the face by a memory of her moans, the sounds she made when I rutted into her that very first time. I feel flush with heat.

And she must sense everything I’m feeling. When I glance back, her pupils have dilated. Her tongue wets her lips.

“Kiandah, don’t.” I storm across the chamber, past the inane pieces of furniture decorating the sitting area in the center of the space, to my closet. I retrieve a cloak. I spend a long time retrieving that cloak.

Kiandah, no sense for self-preservation, slowly follows me. “You said you invited my brother to join the hunt because he’s a Rider now…”

“His job isyou. He’ll remain in the castle if you remain in the castle, which you will. And if I hear that you have set foot outside of the grounds, his cloak will be stripped and I will…” Chain you to my bed…that’s what I’d been prepared to say, but my mind cannot help but conjure up the memory of what happened to the Lord of Dark City when he did just that to his Omega. He almost lost her. I can still recall the despair in his gaze, the longing he’d held as he stared after the female he loved most in the world and who hated his guts — who wanted to gut him herself. Granted, she eventually overcame her revulsion, but…what if I’m not so fortunate?

“Yes?” Kiandah barks, her hip jutted out, her tongue pressed to the inside of her cheek.

Fire. She carries so much of it today, so visibly, and even though my back is still tender, I cannot come to regret the decision I made just to see her defy me like this.

“What?” Her expression chills and she stops tapping her foot on the floor. She angles her shoulders away from me. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. It’s a little creepy.”

I smile more broadly.

She takes a step away from me and my beast exalts. He wants to chase. But if he catches her, it means nothing good for her at all. I am too poorly restrained these days. The lashing I took must have broken something. I don’t feel at all the same. “Yaron, say something.”

I want to fuck you. Forget the fucking undead.“You aren’t coming.”

“I am. With or without your permission.”

“Why are you so insistent? Do you know something I don’t? Are you more involved with Trash City than your little innocent act has led me to believe?”

Hurt flashes in her gaze, filling me with a momentary guilt. It’s fleeting, however. Her hurt is a powerful force and I refuse to allow her to manipulate me with it. “You know I’m not. I just…” Her teeth worry her lower lip. It’s out of proportion with her upper lip, which is a perfect, sharp bow, and too large for her face. Makes me salivate. I want nothing more than to sink my fangs into it and watch blood flower over that pretty brown edge. “I made a promise.”

“To whom?”

“Someone in the village.”

“To Robert?”

“The boy? Was he…lovers with the girl?”

“Yes. Her boyfriend. Quite in love, or as much as one can be at that young age.”

“I think that’s not giving him enough credit. Emotions are so strong at that age, maybe his love is more real and powerful than any of them.”

“Is that a challenge?” I feel myself grow hot and hateful. I hate that my skin is as pale as it is, for it can betray my emotions in bright flares of startling red color. It’s rare, but around her, I feel my heat betray me constantly.

She tenses her shoulders by her ears and juts her pretty little lower lip even further out. “Don’t try to change the subject or confuse me. I made a promise…”

“If not to Robert, then it had to have been to one of the villagers. Tell me who it was — the one who threw feces at you or the one who tried to strangle you?” She recoils, but I don’t feel guilty in the slightest. “You aren’t coming, Kiandah, and that’s final.”

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