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His jaw clenched, and I noted twin trails of blood from his nose that he roughly wiped away. “Even if they’re gods?”

“Fuck all the gods with rusted blades,” I muttered, splashing water on my throat, the burn there smarting until I dampened it. “I didn’t mate Skadi, and I’m sure as all hells not going to mate the fire fucker.” I kept one eye on Serak as I said blithely, “Goran’s not my only mate, and he knows it. He’s not even my most powerful one.” I lifted my arm, revealing the mark Lachlan had left on me. “I bonded with another one about two weeks back, though I’ve lost track⁠—”

Before I could finish taunting him, Serak was there, wrenching my arm up. “You did what?” The sea wind whipped the sudden aroma of wet ash away from us, but I had his knife in my hand and at his throat before he could say another word.

I stared into the eyes that flared red. “Hey, Edan. I figured it was you.”

RADA

His jaw worked furiously, as if he was fighting some internal battle, which was exactly the case. “I’m not Edan,” he finally insisted. But his lips kept moving after those few words, like he was having a seizure or trying to say something else.

Not Edan? I knew better. Serak was compromised. Maybe he had been all along. I could practically hear him pleading as he stared at me. Kill me. He even glanced at the knife in my hand.

I should have used it. It would be so easy to slit his throat. But I couldn’t yet; I had shit to do, and even if I had a habit of stabbing my mates, the thought of killing one made my gut churn. There had to be a way to get him free.

“Of course not. Edan wouldn’t have helped me drug his favorite Beta,” I joked and flipped the knife in the air. I let it fall into the ocean and cried out, “Damnit, I’m so clumsy!”

“Always have been. You can’t help it,” he said instead, then reached down and fished around in the waves for it. Of course, I’d already buried it under the sand with my foot. “We need to get back,” he growled after a minute, giving up. “The others will come looking.” He waved to the hillside, where two robed guards stood far above us, lighter-colored specks against the charcoal-gray rock. For some reason, he tilted his head to one side as he stared at them, but just then, a wave battered into us both. He staggered toward the shore, pulling on my arm.

“I suppose we should pick up sleepy Sandyl on the way?”

Serak—no, Edan—grunted an affirmative and dragged me out of the water. I managed to stumble enough that he had to let go or be pulled back down into the cold waves. To my surprise, when we reached Sandyl, Edan used Serak’s foot to flip the unconscious priest over onto his face in the stream, where he immediately began to drown.

I blinked at the unconscious, dying man, trying not to react. “Won’t Edan be pissed, Serak?”

“He’ll thank me for ridding him of a useless servant.”

I hummed, but let it go.

“Tell me what you need to be healthy,” he demanded as we walked back up the path to the barracks. I stopped as often as I could to gather more herbs, and even though the basket was overfull by the end of the walk, most of what I had was cofi root, along with more sedative herbs and a handful of crowstem blades. I’d had trouble containing my mirth at finding that: I’d pulled enough to kill every man on the island ten times over. Of course, I wasn’t planning to use it on a man, or at least not just on men. And I had no idea how much it would take to knock out a god.

“Well, fresh fish is one of the best foods for Omegas. But it’s not enough,” I began, and then listed every kind of fruit and vegetable I could think of to add to the diet of the imprisoned women and children. “Of course, breadfruit and tubers would help as well. Still, I get why they’re not eating that way.”

“What do you mean?” His burned scent was more noticeable under the canopy of the jungle.

I shrugged. “It’s pretty obvious, right? Even back home, it was well known that the best way to keep from getting pregnant for regular women was to limit fresh water, food, and sunlight. Only letting the Omegas out for a couple of hours a day? Whoever came up with that was obviously trying to keep them from going into heat, and if they did, to stop them from getting pregnant.” His shoulders tightened, though he didn’t speak. Maybe he couldn’t, without revealing his true voice.

At the barracks, robed guards buzzed like maddened hornets, yelling in Pictish. Serak hurried me back to the gate, promising he’d get more food sent into the compound as soon as he could, though his voice sounded less like himself at each step. At the last second, he grasped my arm and leaned down to press a kiss to my cheek.

Or it would have been my cheek, if I hadn’t jerked my head toward him. Instead, his mouth covered mine.

Instantly, I was thrown back in time to that first kiss, all those years ago. This one felt the same, yet so different. Like a promise kept and a threat delivered, wrapped together in one deadly package. He tasted of danger and flames, and smelled of the same heady musk that had woken the first stirrings of lust in me.

I knew this wasn’t Serak, or not just him, but my core clenched as his hot tongue traced the seam of my lips. The mark along my throat burned for once with a pleasurable heat.

I squeezed my lips tight and my thighs together when the scent of mint and rain wafted up from my clothing. This isn’t Serak, you idiot. This is the evil god, not the sexy Alpha.

My body didn’t seem to care. A half-dozen places started throbbing: my throat, my lips, my nipples, Lachlan’s mark on my bicep, my core, and even the odd spots only a few in the world knew to touch.

Goran’s spot behind my ear. Kellin’s favorite patch of skin behind my knee. The arch of my foot that Lachlan and I had both discovered at the same moment, before I’d laughed my way into a sudden climax.

The place where Lusca’s pendant had hung for years, protecting me, was the only one that still hurt. It felt like a heavy weight pressed on me there, keeping me from crying out in ecstasy.

Heat rose in me nonetheless, connecting all the other places like a constellation of desire, and the air around us grew thick with my scent and Edan’s. Ash and smoke, which I should not have wanted to draw into my lungs.

He was pushing me into my cycle, against my will.

Gods. I wanted nothing from any of them. But as the heat grew, I reached for the Goddess again, knowing that all I would hear in reply was the now-familiar empty echo of the place She’d been long ago.