Page 16 of Shadowlands Omega

Stacking a few of the smaller sticks in a pyramid shape above the flame, and inserting the smallest among them directly into the fire, I leave the small pile to burn and finish battening down the windows. Once finished and satisfied, I add a few of the larger logs to the hearth. The fire is not too smoky and seems to be brightening quickly. Quicker than it should. I turn and glance over my shoulder, wondering if it isn’t the Omega’s doing. She’s awfully quiet.

The hunter’s hole is a single-room cabin, a narrow bed against the earthen wall with dry wood chopped and stacked beneath it. Against the wooden wall across from it is the small kitchen, complete with a basin, but no running water, a gas stove, single pot, wooden spoon and nothing else. The fireplace sits against the other earthen wall, its chimney tunneling through the hillside. It’s a testament to how well it was constructed that the winds and rains don’t pour in from the mountain, allowing golden flames to flicker more peacefully now in the stone hearth. Before it lies the cowering killer, the Omega, wrapped in blankets that smell of a foreign male. I frown, not liking the direction of my thoughts, and frown harder when the Omega shivers again. Muscles tighten across my chest. My lungs strain.

In a voice I hardly recognize, I say, “I will go fetch water. Don’t move.” Don’t move? I feel like a fool, but my tongue is surprisingly thick in my mouth. I can’t find the right words to correct myself.

Out in the rains again, they come down so hard, I know that the killer and I won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Fine. I’ve dealt with worse. The kitchen is stocked with a supply lasting at least seven days and she is so slight as to hardly be visible. I round the cabin and find the troughs in the back. Three are set up side by side and all of them are near full with water already. There is an additional metal cistern also set up to collect rainwater. I remove the lid and allow rainwater to collect. After this storm, there will be plenty for us and the next hunter and the next and then some.

I grab two wooden pails of water, filling them to their brims before returning inside. “Omega…” I start, but I don’t know what order I would have given her next. I drop my pails, shut and latch the door behind me, task promptly forgotten as I inhale and then inhale again more deeply. I was not surprised before, but I am surprised now.

“You are not in pain.” That’s not what I meant. That’s not even close to what I meant to say.

She shakes her head, though, as if she knows what I’m truly asking. Because this trembling does not come from pain, though she can surely feel pain, too, after all that she’s been through. No, this trembling comes from something far more dreadful.

“You will remain like this,” I command her.

She nods, her lips pressing together into a thin line, or at least, as thin a line as is possible.She has such full, pretty lips. Fuck.

“Youcannotbe entering your heat now,” I say, willing it to be so.

To this, she does not respond except to writhe on the floor, her forehead pressed against it, her knees shoved under her body as she tries to curl into a ball of nothingness, but she can’t do that. Because I’d sense the explosion of her from any forgotten corner of Gatamora. The heat rushing out of her ispowerful.

“Depriving you is no less punishment than you deserve,” I say, merely for the cruelty of it, even as my Berserker’s legs take hold of mine and the claws on my feet bore four holes in the wood. He presses a whimper between my bared teeth. “No,” I snap, the warning meant for him, but the killer glances up, looking at me for the first time.

And just like her killing spirit, her glare is lethal, too.

Fuck.

Her pupils are blown, her left eyelid still slightly swollen. So are her lips and left cheek. The light from the hearth seems to wick off of her skin, like it’s afraid of her. As am I. It’s like she’s made of gold, a fire’s light within her that puts this puny flame to shame. It’s stunning. She’s stunning. She looks so fucking young that I’m reminded, if she ascended so recently, she’s likely barely of age and off fucking limits.

I recoil, backpedaling, but nothing that should be a consideration is doing anything but making my beast salivate. Her swollen cheek. Her swollen lips that tremble. Her head, perfectly shaped and free of hair, that makes it impossible to look anywhere but at her face. Her beauty is understated and calls to me like a fucking siren song. She looks absolutely ravaged, devastatingly so. My beast wants nothing more than to add to that devastation and thenbondher, so that she’ll be reborn.

Sinking my fangs into the side of that delicate, breakable throat…No.

My cock is swelling and my nakedness hits me acutely then. I reach down and have two choices — to grab my dick or try to cover it. One would be admitting defeat to her heat, because if I so much as brush my fingers over the swelling shaft, my knot already thickening at its base, I will have no choice but to mount her. The other would be to stand before her like a little boy covering his manhood and would fill me with embarrassment and shame.

“Omega, cover up. I will not bond you.” Bond her. I meant to sayrut.

She has one of the blankets draped over her shoulders, but when she passes her dark brown eyes — which, in this light, are the color of melted tar and just as sticky — over my face and thenlowerto my body, she shivers. Her blanket slips further. Her shoulder comes into view, shining like the goddamn sun, and I come unhinged.

A wave of heat flushes my body. Venom drips into my mouth. I shake my head once, definitively, but my resolve feels like sand, gritty and incapable of standing up against such exposed, lethal flame. I bark, “Omega, I will not be tempted by you. I would not bond an underage female for all the secrets of Gatamora. I will toss you out into the rain first. Do. Not. Test. Me.”

Her lips press together so tightly it looks like it hurts. She makes the smallest, most tantalizing mewling sound before her elbows buckle and her body bows over itself. She clutches her stomach as she tries to lift her blanket and my Berserker does not like this, helovesit. The arousal I feel watching her ache, knowing that I am the only Alpha for miles that can soothe her hurt, take away her pain and replace it with limitless pleasure, has my erection pulsing to its own heartbeat. It stands stiff, out from my body like a goddamn third leg. It’s heavy. Its weight unbearable. I try to will it down, but anytime my thoughts move to it, my legs push me forward another half step.

“Calm yourself, Omega. Breathe deeply. Know that I will not touch you. You are underage and there isnothingon this island or in this world that would tempt me to touch an underage female.”

She balks and her lips curve up in a smile just wide enough I catch the flash of her teeth, pearly white. I cannot believe it. She’s smiling at me. I…did not think I would receive the honor and now that I’ve had it and it has faded, I wonder if I hallucinated it because it was striking, her smile. Not because it was sweet and shy as I suspected it would be from all I know of this Omega’s weak, flowery countenance, but because it cut like a knife.

“Yaron,” she says, so informally and out of turn, but she shows no remorse. Her hands are curved protectively around her head. She’s constantly in motion, unable to stop. “I am thirty-four years old. I haven’t been underage…” A knot of pain must strike her severely enough to rob her of whatever words she’d been poised to say next. She gasps and collapses forward onto her hands and it takes me a moment to realize what’s so odd about this position.She’s presenting…she’s presenting for me.

“You…aren’t…” I say, voice threadbare, a frightened whisper.

“I am. I am thirty-four years old.”

And I remember that it is not impossible. The Fallen Earth Omega I so recently met also ascended older than the others usually do. Looking at her face, any doubt I had that she is not the Fallen Fire Omega, the Fire Fate’s counter, is erased. That is, if what she is saying is true…

“What year were you born?”

“Under the evening light of our four hundredth blood moon.” My beast howls and my other foot drives forward though I mean to keep it rooted. It, too, has claws. So do both of my hands. My fangs are fully protracted and my face is half snout as my beast and I war for control.

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