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RADA

At some point in the past two decades, I’d developed a habit of stabbing men who got a little handsy with me. The ones I liked got off with a small puncture. The ones who actually hurt me, I was careful to stab more thoroughly, usually to death.

But the man who reached over and grabbed my throat and started moaning about me being his “bride” was actually a god: Edan, a being made of fire and lava and a whole lot of evil. I wanted to hate him on sight, and I did, but he was inhabiting the body of the first Alpha I’d ever fallen in love with, before I was even grown. Serak Zellum had been my first kiss, and first fantasy. I’d dreamed of him for over a decade.

Serak was hot in a sexy way. Edan was hot in a literal, painful one.

The god holding me in place was my greatest fear come to life, and I didn’t deal well with being afraid. It made me extra stabby.

When I reacted to his grip—by slipping the already loosened ropes off one wrist, grabbing the closest knife from one of the priests who hemmed me in on both sides, and sticking it through their god’s throat—it only made Edan grab me harder. His hand blistered my skin, and a burning smell filled my already-seared nostrils.

“You dare?”

I muffled a scream. This guy had no idea just what I would dare, or at least I hoped he didn’t. If he suspected what I was here for, he’d kill me now. I needed to stay alive for a little while, which meant being patient. Showing my throat, even as he burned it.

Acting meek. Obedient. Weak.

Ah, well. Everyone has to die sometime.

“Let me go, you overheated arserag!” I yelled and wrenched away from his grip, swiping another priest’s ceremonial dagger and stabbing Edan again, this time through the hand.

I cursed some more when two of the priests grabbed my arms and dragged me to my knees on the sharp-edged rocks that littered the ground. The air filled with the sweet, minty scent of my blood, but none of the Alphas around us reacted. Of course, they’d all had their noses carved off their faces, so maybe it wouldn’t matter if they did scent me.

The only male with a nose inhaled through it noisily as he clenched his fist, his robe falling open so I could see a section of his tightly muscled stomach.

Damnit. An evil fire god should not have abs I wanted to trace with my fingers. But they weren’t really his, were they? They belonged to the Alpha who’d stolen a piece of my heart long ago. Serak would never have hurt me, not even if I stabbed him, twice. Which I had.

When the robe slipped a bit farther off his shoulders, my gaze caught on something else: long, healed wounds where something had speared him close to his collarbone, like he’d been suspended from hooks. I swallowed bile at the extensive scarring that told a story. Suddenly, the abs weren’t worth thinking about.

Vengeance was.

Edan had been torturing Serak. Didn’t he know nobody tortured my potential mates except me?

“Third time’s the charm,” I muttered and tried to lunge for a third priest’s knife, almost dislocating my arm.

Rage burned hotter than the volcano that loomed in front of me as the asshole god used my first love’s mouth to laugh at me. “You cannot kill me, my bloodthirsty little bride.” He set one hand on the handle of the blade in his throat, and his body changed, glowing from within. A red gleam seeped out through tiny rivers of fire under his skin, maybe his veins. The air around us grew so hot, I had to narrow my eyes. The knife was made of obsidian, so it didn’t melt like metal, but the wrapped handle burst into flames and burned away, while the obsidian… disappeared into his body somehow.

Once he’d dissolved the knife into himself, he lifted a hand. “See? You cannot hurt me. But I could make you suffer, little bride, in ways your fragile mind cannot conceive. Do not raise your hand to me again.”

“I’m not your bride,” I gritted out through clenched teeth.

He leaned over me, his hair falling over one side of his face as he tilted his head in apparent confusion. Flames danced in the backs of his pupils. “I have given you my claiming mark.”

The place where he’d burned me along my jawline pulsed, and I swallowed hard. He’d claimed me? He’d like to think so. I ignored the smell of my burned face, my bleeding knees, and the priests’ punishing hold, and sneered up at him. “You can’t claim an unwilling Omega. You can only kill her.”

The fire in his eyes flared. “You refuse me?”

I wanted to tell him what I thought of him. That I’d rather die than let him claim me, breed me. But I knew that somewhere on this island was a group of imprisoned Omegas, and I needed to find them and make sure they were ready for the rescue that was coming. “You must not know much about Omegas.”

“I know everything about them. I was awake when the first of your kind were made. I watched them spread throughout the world. Watched them die as well. Tasted their deaths in my fire. Though you are not like the others.” He licked his lips, like he wanted to try a new delicacy.

I was dying to ask him a few questions I’d never had answered, but this definitely wasn’t the time. He might be lying, of course. “Well, if you know that much, you know how we’re made. Why you can’t force a mating.”

Invisible flames licked down from where he’d marked me to my neck, then to my ribcage, setting small fires underneath my skin. But these fires didn’t hurt. Instead, they elicited a familiar heat, one I’d only ever felt with my selkie mates, my ex-husband, and Serak when he wasn’t possessed. Oh, and the ice god, Skadi.

Thinking of him doused all the unwanted flames, like a bucket of snow had been dropped on my stomach. I curled my lip. “Omegas choose, Edan. You think I’d mate someone who hurt me? Someone who touched without asking first? My other mates gave me gifts. Performed feats of strength and rituals. Made up poems and songs and seduced me.”

“You have no other mates,” he hissed.