Page 51 of Shadowlands Omega

Like he’s thinking the same thing, his face turns to me, seated on the bench across from him, and his thick, black eyebrow lifts. Just the one, though. “Are you worrying about me, Kiandah?”

It feels like any answer I give here would be wrong, so I give him a truer one and shrug. “I suppose.”

“Alas, was that all it took? Obeying your commands to sleep at your feet? Have I won your heart so easily?”

“No. I would worry like this about anyone.”

His face changes and I feel a soft warmth pulse between us, then retreat. “I suppose you would, wouldn’t you?” He goes back to staring out of the window and, sensing I’m not going to get a better answer than that and knowing better than to press the issue, I turn to stare out of the window, too.

Paradise Hole is looking bleaker than usual today, even though the sun is shining. Maybe it’s because the sun is shining that it looks so much darker here on the ground. It’s like Paradise Hole is sucking the light from the sky, trapping it in a canopy above our heads, refusing to let the darkness below out, to be released among such color. The sky is overcast on the horizon, but above our heads, it’s blue.

“It’s beautiful today,” I offer lamely.

Yaron nods, but he stares out of the window for a while before answering. I don’t need to have rutted him to know that he is painfully intentional in everything he does. I knew that already. So, I don’t know why I’m still surprised when he doesn’t reply with something trite and instead says, “I can count on both hands the number of sunny days I’ve witnessed since I was a boy. Most of them, I experienced in Echo’s garden — the Fallen Earth Omega. It seemed that sunlight followed her.” He tilts his head and settles back in his seat, staring at me. “Perhaps, it follows you, too.”

“I feel like there’s something you want to tell me about her.” I feel jealousy twist in my gut like a knife and I don’t know why. I know she’s with the Dark City Berserker, but…Yaron speaks of her so highly. And now he’s gone silent.

He doesn’t answer for quite some time. I sit with my shoulders slightly hunched inward under his scrutiny. I don’t like the invasive way he stares. I do, because I don’t want his full concentration on anybody else, but I also am not strong enough to stand up under it. I feel rather threadbare seated here in nothing but his oversized clothing, unsure of where we’re going with a terrible sense that I don’t want to know and never want to arrive.

And then he leans forward in a surge. Wind rushes over me. It tastes like him. Like an expensive cologne, leatherbound books dusted with age, and ash. I never knew ash had a smell, but he smells of it. Like a fire after all the flames have burned away. “I cannot make sense of you. You present as this meek, terrified little girl, but by your heart, you are betrayed.”

“M-my heart?”

“Yes. You have the heart of a warrior, standing alone on the plane of battle against an army of the undead. You carry the conviction that you can and will vanquish them all because you have the lives of those you love to protect.” He keeps coming, sliding off of the bench onto his knees in the short carpeted space between us. He palms the side of my face, his hand large enough to cover it completely. I flinch as his fingers curl around my head — I shaved the sides into a fade this morning. I don’t have access to any hair products, so it was the only thing I could think of to make it look presentable. His thumb rubs the short hair near my temple, making my toes curl.

“You present as a peasant.” His brows furrow. The muscles at the edge of his jaw give a little pulse. “But when your love is on the line, you transform into a queen.”

“Love?” I balk, nearly choking.

“Yes. The love you have for your family.” His mouth curls up slyly, darkly. “The love you have for me.”

“For you?” I sputter. “I…”

“You are already half in love with me. I know you half as well as I should, but I know you well enough to know this.”

“You…I’m not…”

“Don’t lie.” His fingers curl around my ear. They’re rough and callused so badly, it feels like his touch could cut. “Don’t lie to me. Not in this. I won’t force you to admit it, but you should prepare yourself, because one day I will. Soon.”

I want to rip away from him and slap him and deny his accusations, but he has me feeling very small. Veryseen. I don’t know how often it’s happened…that I’ve felt that. Growing up in a big family has its benefits…but one of the drawbacks is that we sometimes can all meld together. Siblings jostling for power, animalistic pack dynamics, and parents trying to maintain some kind of order. It makes it hard to have that intimacy.

This intimacy.

To be noticed.

To be explored.

I look down at my lap, trying to retreat, but he slides that thick, callused thumb down my cheek, over the corner of my lip, under my jaw, which he tips up. His look is pure condescension and pure fire. It frightens and angers me.

“You can’t know that that’s how I feel,” I assert with force. My skin burns every place he strokes.

“I do.”

“How?”

“I may only know you a little, but I know you wouldn’t have taken me as you did in the hunter’s hole if you did not want to. Your commands are a gift, a treasure that I plan to hoard. And if you so much as think of giving them to another or, gods forbid, they try to take from you again, I will not react well, Kiandah. I will not react well at all.”

He drags his hand down my neck, over my chest, between my breasts until he reaches my hips. He grips them from both sides and scoots forward so that his chest is between my legs, my knees spread around him and locked there. I can’t move my lower half. I can’t feel my upper half. All of my concentration has surged downward.

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