Page 75 of Unlikely Omega

And the second instinct roots my feet to the spot, demanding I stay and help the Commander, insisting I shouldn’t kill the berserker who may still be hovering right outside.

But the latter is probably Ariadne’s influence, I think with annoyance as I kneel by the Commander on the freezing ground. She keeps wanting to help people and she obviously wants these two men carnally, and fuck if my cock isn’t stiff as a pole, and I’m not even sure…

Not even sure it’s only her perfume causing that.

I’m blind, not without a sense of smell, and both these men smell good. I shouldn’t like their scents—men’s scents have always put me off—and it’s sort of insane that I can smell them so perfectly with so much more going on. Old sweat. Filth. The smells of the rocks and nature. Her scent so powerfully wrapped around me.

Yet I smell them. And together with her perfume, it makes me want things I never thought any man might want.

Perverse.

Sinful.

Unnatural.

I place the sword down behind me, hopefully far enough that the Commander can’t reach it, and check his belt for knives and other weapons.

He slaps my hands away, but his fingers are slippery with blood and his movements clumsy enough that I wonder if he hit his head on the ground. “Fuck off.”

“I’m trying to help you,” I grind out. “Stop slapping me.”

“Help me.” He gives a bark of laughter. “You?”

“You bandaged me in your tent,” I say. “It’s my turn.”

“Because she told you to.”

I shrug. “She’s crazy. We should be running away from you. You were taking us to be executed, remember?”

“Finn…” She kneels down beside me. “How bad is it?”

“No idea. I’ll check the moment he stops slapping my hands away.”

“Dammit,” the Commander breathes and squints down at himself. “I think he got me good.”

“Don’t be a baby,” I mutter, starting to unbuckle the straps of the breastplate. “Ariadne, get the other side, will you?”

She does so without any protest, and together we pull the steel breastplate off him. We place it beside us and I lift the padded undershirt to get a better look at the wound.

In a manner of speaking, of course.

“Are you alone?” I ask first because, well, priorities. I’d rather not die with my hands inside his wound. “Where are your men? For all I know, they’re waiting right outside to grab us.”

“Why would they be waiting outside in the rain?” He grunts. “You have a complicated mind, priest. And yeah, that’s another word for weird.”

“Point is, I don’t trust you.”

“Says the man the Temple is after.”

“Just how religious are you, Commander?”

“Commander…” Ariadne starts, jostling me as he reaches for him. “Let Finnen help you.”

“I said you can call me Taj. And yeah, okay, go ahead.”

“Why, thank you,” I bite out. “Such an honor.”

He grunts as I trace the length of the cut with my fingers—I assumed it would be a cut, which means the Drakoryas had a blade, which is something I wish I’d known when I had been about to go after him. Being blind sometimes really sucks.

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