But the woman isn’t listening to me. She’s turned chalk white, and she’s clutching her stomach in pain. Then her eyes roll back in her head, and she slumps unconscious onto the pallet.
I stare at her in shock, and then with a sudden sense of foreboding, I grasp the dirty blanket covering her and pull itback. There’s blood soaking the pallet, and her skirts. Her thighs are drenched.
My mind races. A woman who doesn’t know she’s an Omega, let alone what a false heat is. A cruel Alpha who’s impatient and won’t listen to her protests, but he knots her anyway.
Anger mounts in my chest.
I’ll kill him.
I take off my cloak and wrap it around the woman, and I’m about to lift her into my arms when darkness fills the doorway. A stranger, as tall as I am and dressed in black with pale, stringy hair. An angry rutting scent rolls off his body.
He takes one look at me about to lift his mate into my arms, and he draws his sword with a snarl of rage.
24
Zenevieve
Ihave never known Lenhale without Stesha’s presence. Even when we weren’t speaking, it never felt as empty as it does now. He has left in pursuit of wild dragons, and he has not been heard from since. He forbade any riders to come after him. If I wasn’t so ill, if I still had Minta, I would have pursued him myself. Five hundred years ago, Maledin’s wild dragons were vicious and volatile, and I’m afraid that Stesha has been ripped apart.
I turn away from the window that overlooks the dragongrounds, and I limp back to bed. My mind is healing, even if my memories are not returning. I’m able to keep track of whole days together, even whole weeks. It’s my body that is sick now as I purge some kind of poison that Emmeric gave me. Lady Isavelle’s crone gave me herbs to mix into a potion, and now I spend my days sweating and having feverish dreams.
But as weak as I am yet again, I don’t regret taking the potion, as I feel as though it has dislodged something maliciousinside me. My body belongs to me once more. I lost something important long before Maledin fell and the dragons were locked away, but now I’m reclaiming it.
Every day I go to the window and watch the flare, hoping for Stesha’s return. Praying that he’s all right, and that he and Nilak haven’t been torn apart by wild dragons.
Then finally, he does return.
I’m with Lady Isavelle when we see him striding through the castle with a small, red-haired bundle in his arms, the woman perfuming so strongly and the scent of blackberries so rich in the air it’s as though every pot in the castle is boiling blackberry jam.
Stesha doesn’t see me as he passes. He’s found his longed-for Omega, and he’ll never see me again. Never notice me. Never want me. I sink down onto the floor beside my bed and sob. So he was right. His Omega does exist. Like Zabriel, he had to wait five hundred years to meet her, but even with centuries between them, he sensed her, and he waited for her. I was a mistake he made on that mountain, a mistake he instantly regretted.
Lady Isavelle goes to find out who this woman is and where Stesha found her, but I cannot. I nearly turn myself inside out from sobbing before she returns to me, and she tells me something that at first I’m too hysterical to listen to.
“Zenevieve, that woman is not Stesha’s mate. She’s another man’s Omega.”
I sit up, wiping my tearstained face. “She’s not his Omega?”
Lady Isavelle explains that the woman, Ravenna is her name, is fated to a former witchfinder who has been abusing her, and so Stesha took her away from him and brought her back to Lenhale.
I don’t feel much better hearing this news. Stesha has always wanted an Omega, and all he has to do is kill the woman’s mate, and he can claim her. If this Ravenna has been so sorely abused, she’ll probably feel so grateful to Stesha for saving her that she’llopen her heart to him, and they’ll be so happy together. Even though the gods didn’t make them for each other, she can still take his knot and make his ruts blissful, while I cannot.
I don’t see the newcomer to Lenhale for many days, not until I’m recovered from the potion and Ravenna has healed from her mate’s cruelty. I feel sorry for what has happened to her, but my pity is at war with my envy. I can’t get the memory of Stesha holding her so tenderly out of my mind. It’s for this reason that I duck back into the shadows when I see her walking through the castle one afternoon instead of stepping forward and greeting her. I linger in the shadows, wanting to get a good look at her.
From my alcove, I watch Ravenna pause and admire a tapestry. Her mate must want her back, and Stesha wants her too. It’s easy to see why. With her tumbling red hair, freckles, and wide hazel eyes, she’s wild and beautiful.
It’s beneath a dragonrider to feel envious of anyone, but I’m a dragonrider no longer. I feel so plain without Minta’s vibrant black and emerald green coloring. I’m pathetic, lost, and ashamed of myself, and I fear that I will always be helpless without a dragon. Tears well up in my eyes. I don’t know who I am anymore, and I don’t understand my purpose. So much has been stolen from me, and I don’t know how to claw any of it back.
As I head back to my room, I catch Stesha’s scent in the air, and it makes my insides burn hot, and longing floods my stomach, worse than it ever has before. How is his scent reaching me? Did he walk past and I just didn’t notice him? I clench my hands on my skirt and moan in frustration. I wish I had some of his clothing to take with me to my bed like I often did in the past.
Well, why not take some, as I also used to do in the past? Before I know what I’m doing, I hasten down the corridor toward Stesha’s rooms. I press my ear against the door and hear silence. Slowly, I push the door open and go inside.
It’s only a little bit like trespassing, I reason. I used to live here, after all. The details have changed, and the walls have darkened with the passing years, but these three rooms feel as familiar as when Stesha and I lived together, which makes my heart feel tight with longing in my chest.
I take a moment and breathe in deeply, and his smoky, wintry scent makes my mouth water and my head swim. Gods, I could bitehim. Blunt little bites of frustration and need, meant to goad an Alpha into savagery that will put me in my place. My place being right under his heavy, demanding body.
In his bedroom, I find two of his shirts discarded on a chair, both of them rich with his scent. I press them to my face and moan with relief and desire so powerful it makes my pulse pound between my legs. I had better leave before too much of my scent fills the air. I bundle the shirts under my cloak, and hurry back down the corridor.
Lady Isavelle passes me and gives me a curious look, and I know my guilt is written all over my face.
