Page 118
RADA
ONE YEAR LATER
Iwas mad enough to smite an Omega, but not stupid enough to pick the one who was working my very last nerve. “What did I hear Lachlan say you were again?” Roya wrinkled her perfect little nose at me and widened her porcelain-doll eyes. “The Goddess of Erections and Penises? That’s absolutely fitting.”
The other Omegas in the room burst into laughter. Queen Vali, Haven, Cilla, and her mother-in-law Queen Yvonna were sitting on one side of the massive walnut table in the dining room at Drakonspear. “The bride’s family,” they’d declared before they pulled their chairs out and started working their way through my collection of rare potato whiskeys.
They’d done substantial damage already. For once, Vali wasn’t pregnant, and it looked like she was trying to fit seven pregnancies’ worth of liquor into one “hen night” at my expense. Roya had learned to love it when we met back in Mirren years ago. Haven… Well, Mama was a cheap drunk, and she’d started tearing up after half a glass, murmuring to Cilla that I’d grown up too fast.
The other side of the table held Wren, Adiah, Stellina, and Mirrim. They’d decided that because of their Starlakian connections, they would be the “groom’s family,” to slightly even out the numbers in the courtyard the next day for the ceremony.
My first public mating ceremony, and not just to the ex-Warlord of All Starlak this time, though he was going to exchange vows with me first.
I held out my arms, taking in the new tattoos Goran had given me a few days before. Wren had designed my dress to show off the new ink, which was exquisite. The starflowers and leaves trailed up both arms now, and every time I looked at them, I got a little teary-eyed. I did now, in fact. I dabbed a napkin on my face discreetly, but it was hard to hide golden tears.
“You sure you’re not preggers?” Yvonna muttered. She was the oldest of the group, and not an Omega. More like an Alpha, in fact. She had an enormous collection of swords in her bedroom in Mirren, and an equally impressive collection of Alpha swordsmen who still served her hearty appetite for sex.
I threw one of my dullest knives at her, on principle. She caught it with a grin and tucked it into her silver bun. “A souvenir from the bride? How kind.”
Roya laughed. “Pretty bad knife-throwing skills for a goddess.”
“Be nice,” Vali chastised. “She’s not the Goddess of Daggers and Dicks.” I had to bite my lip not to laugh at the way she blushed. But when she poured another full goblet of whisky, I worried. “Vali, you’re not pregnant, but aren’t you nursing?” Her latest was a red-faced, dark-haired boy who looked like her massive mate, Axe. He’d weighed fourteen pounds when he was born. I’d refused to let any of my own mates finish inside me for a week after I’d read her letter.
Even if I was a goddess with the ability to control my own body, who knew how powerful Skadi’s seed might be, now that we were all connected and sharing our power? Or Serak’s seed. I shuddered.
“I’m not nursing,” Vali replied, though she crossed her hands over her breasts, and her cheeks darkened to a ruddy hue that made me think she was lying.
Cilla hiccupped and slurred, “Well, she’s not nursing a baby anyway. But I’m pretty sure King Rigol’s been taking her milk on the regular.”
“Cilla!” Vali gasped. “I told you that in confidant… contradict? Ummm… confidence!” Then she slid out of her chair.
We all burst into laughter at that, though the door slammed open and Axe marched across the floor, carrying a pitcher of water. He glared down at all of us, slammed the pitcher down, and scooped his mate off the floor.
He signed, “Party is over.”
When she pinched his nose and muttered, “No milk for you,” he blushed as red as she had and carried her out of the room.
Adiah gave me a look like she might fling herself out the narrow window if the others kept talking about milk and Alphas. Her own Alpha was sleeping on the mountain a few hundred yards outside the main gate. They were currently having a disagreement on how many women to add to the new council of chieftains they’d created.
Adiah thought they should be all women for the first decade, to even out the past few hundred years of imbalance. Dustin was hoping for a third of male Alphas at least, mostly because the poetry the newest female Starlakian warriors liked to compose consisted of rhymes about throwing men in stocks and chopping off cocks.
A few minutes after Vali’s exit, the rest of the mates began to show up and carried all of us to our rooms, which was not necessary in my case.
“I’m not drunk, Lex,” I complained as he picked me up, bridal-style. “I can’t even get drunk on whiskey now.”
“Hmmm,” he said, grinning as he carried me out of the room. He was every bit as strong as my Alpha mates, and I squeezed his arm muscle in appreciation. “You were dick drunk before the party even started.”
“Ooooh… that’s a good idea,” I shouted.
He flinched. “Turn it down, goddess.”
“Oh, sorry,” I whispered. “I was just thinking about the pre-party.” I’d sucked him three times and my other mates once or twice before my maid had announced the start of the hen night. He was probably right that I’d been a bit inebriated. But I was more than a little addicted to their taste.
Wren had laughed when I mentioned it. “You’re an Omega underneath the divinity, sweetheart. That means you crave your mates as much as they do you. Your nature is most likely asserting itself. Your body knows what it needs.”
“And what it needs is my mates’ cum, deep inside,” I muttered to the ceiling. I’d never noticed the weird little dragon statues on the roof. Wait. Were those statues, or dragon babies? When I blinked, they were gone.
Damnit, the Goddess had better not be sending me any more baby dreams. I wasn’t having brats for at least a century. Though Wren’s little kraken daughter was possibly the cutest thing with tentacles ever to swim in the seas.
