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The healer tensed. He turned and his smile dropped away. The beast stood next to the campfire, watching them both. The healer turned back to her but didn’t look her in the eye. “Sleep,” he instructed, before shuffling away.
“Thank you,” Naya called as he retreated. Dropping all kindness in her face, she turned back to the beast, who still watched her. A warm shimmer spread through her lower stomach—her deep Omega instincts reacting with pleasure that he was looking at her and had intervened in her conversation with another Alpha. Naya exhaled, clenching her teeth. This was going to be a problem.
She had to figure out how to deal with these instincts giving her incorrect signals. They were known to be compelling and powerful, even when attempts were made to block them, and in this case, her instincts were reading her Alpha incorrectly. He didn’t care about his Omega, he cared about his prisoner and using her to overtake her own empire. If she wasn’t careful, she would be pulled under, submerged in the depths of her natural submissiveness, and her home and all her people would fall.
The flavors wafting from the hot bowl drew her eyes away from him, breaking their stare.
It was too dark to see what kind of stew was in it, but it smelled delicious. Using the bread, she scooped up the stew and sighed with delight at the incredible herby, spicy flavors in her mouth. When did she last eat? She couldn’t even remember. But soon she was scraping the last of the food out of the bowl and reaching for the furry produce. Beneath the skin was a sweet, juicy, soft flesh unlike anything she’d tasted before. Both of them were gone in moments, and she hummed as she licked the juice that dripped down her fingers.
After packing away the bowl in a corner of the cart, she drank from her tmae and watching the campfires. The groups ate and drank, talked in low voices and laughed with the familiarity of people who knew each other well. They didn’t seem like an army, but things were too different here for her to make assumptions. They could be a different kind of army from the Lox.
Soon all the campfire groups settled down to sleep and everything went quiet, except for the muffled crackle of the flames. The magical domes were an ingenious idea, especially if they protected against animal attacks and controlled air temperature.
The night wore on, most of the camp fell asleep, and eventually she yawned. After using the squat pot, grateful the sides of the cart were high enough to hide her, she settled down to sleep.
As usual, the nightmares crashed in.
In the first one, Lili was running. She loved to run. An excitable, giggly little Omega, she ran almost everywhere. But running across the Wastelands was dangerous. Along its blackened, cracked, and dry ground, the large cavities existing there had become big, jagged mouths, snapping at Lili’s feet as she ran past. One of them always caught her, breaking her little foot, and then it was only a matter of time until the others joined in. This time another four mouths each ripped off a piece of her and churned her in their mouths until all that was left was thick, oozing, stinking gore.
Before Naya could even scream, Lili was behind her, standing in the middle of the Wasteland, her copper-brown hair flying wildly about her head while she tried to say something to Naya. Her small face was contorted, her mouth moving quickly, urgently, but Naya couldn’t hear her. The cracked sky of the Wastelands was too loud.
Fissures opened up around Lili, lower than normal, and shot their usual blots of white fire to the ground. They cracked and boomed, drowning out any other sound. Lili became more animated, waving her arms frantically, pointing, yelling, and trying to tell Naya something.
Desperate to get to her, Naya ran toward her, a frightening sense of doom gripping her as the white bolts crashed down. But no matter how fast or how long she ran, she got no closer to Lili. The urgency increased and Naya knew she was running out of time, but nothing she did helped her reach her sister.
Lili threw her head back and roared at the sky, a booming roar that couldn’t normally come out of a little girl. It erupted from her with unstoppable force. Naya clamped her hands over her ears but she still heard it.
A thick bolt of white cracked through the air and straight into Lili’s open mouth. More bolts latched onto her and slowly tore her limbs away, one by one. Then they obliterated her torso and face, until only Lili’s bloody mouth was left, still furiously trying to warn Naya.
Naya jolted awake, chest heaving like she was still desperately running to Lili, sweat trickling down her temples. She sat up and wiped her face with one of the blankets in the cart, forcing her breathing to slow.
She didn’t expect the nightmares to stop just because she’d been taken and tortured—she hadn’t actually thought about them at all—being reminded about how gruesome and terrifying they were was a shock. Since she hadn’t been sleeping properly, they’d had no chance to creep back, but they clearly would not let her escape their torment.
“Explain what just happened.”
Naya started, shocked to find the beast standing by her cart, barely visible in the dark. She drew herself into a ball, trying to abate the shivering. “What?”
His eyes flitted over her but he said nothing else, clearly not feeling the need to explain himself.
“It was just a dream,” she muttered.
His gaze narrowed. “I told you what would happen if you lied to me.”
Naya tried to force away the lingering unease before answering. She couldn’t allow her nightmares to impact her situation. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I’m not lying. And I thought you only meant that about my empire.”
“I mean it about everything.” The hint of gravel in his voice somehow made the words feel more serious, and that made her shiver. “Will that be a problem, or are you prone to lying?”
Naya straightened, glaring at him. “I don’t lie. But I also don’t share my private life and thoughts with strangers. Or people intending to raid my home.”
“That will change today.”
Naya bit down the response she wanted to throw at him. Glancing around the camp, everything was quiet, just the crackle of the campfires as they continued to smolder low. The slight sheen of the magic domes whispered in and out of sight, but it was too dark to see anything else. She looked back at the beast, frowning. “Why are you awake? Were you watching me?”
“Do not ignore my question.”
“I answered your question. You just didn’t like the answer.”
The beast’s eyes narrowed. “It was a lie.”
