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His insanity crackled in my mind as he agreed. Yes. Yes, I will have a form I can use. This daughter of the moon girl will create it for me.
You know that she has to accept you before she’ll be fertile. I can lull her, convince her…
His answer was unexpected. Her womb is frozen. She wouldn’t kindle now, even if I did have her.
Frozen? I didn’t understand, though I could feel a hot swirl of rage as he said the word. I would ask her, if I could get her alone. The idea of her not being of use to him had my gut twisting. He would kill her without hesitation, if he thought she couldn’t be bred.
He’d done it to hundreds of Omegas before her.
Let me take her to the others, I suggested. If he allowed me to take her across the island, we would be out of his reach, or as much as we could be. At least on the east side of Pict, the water and air were mostly clear of ash. Give her time. She is weak and needs food and fresh water to be healthy enough to…
My tongue dried to the roof of my mouth as he filled my consciousness with the ways he wanted to take her, all of them horrific, most of them scarring. The only redeeming thing about knowing his thoughts was realizing he had accepted my suggestion. He pulled away, and for the first time all day, I took a full breath, though the air was as filled with ash as ever.
My words came out on a choked rasp. “Welcome to my hell, Ratter.”
“Serak. Can’t say I’m glad to see you here,” she began, but I shook my head. Any information the listening priests gained would be used against us somehow.
“Edan says you are to go to the holding house. I am to accompany you.” I held out an arm, hoping she would come along without questions. The other priests hated and envied me in equal amounts. I needed the appearance of strength, even if I was weak from torture and weak-kneed from her presence.
Rada. The girl I’d fallen for had become a woman without equal. As fierce as she was exquisitely beautiful. Even with bloodstained, dirty clothing and no visible weapons, she had an air of wildness and royalty. What had she lived through? Where had she been?
I stored each question away for later and suppressed a shiver of delight as the males holding her let go, and she accepted my arm, wrapping her slender fingers around my lower bicep.
Zahn, the head priest, sneered as I escorted her past. He wasn’t allowed to leave this side of the island; none of the priests or Alpha servants of the Alldyns Vug were. They were all as hideous on the inside as their faces looked. They’d chosen to serve Edan in every way, even giving up their noses, since they were Alphas and might be tempted to avail themselves of the captive women. It had happened eighteen years before, when the old head priest had gone into rut and impregnated one of the Omegas without Edan’s approval.
The males on the other side of the main island were another story, and I steeled myself for what lay ahead. The walk across this side of Pict was harsh and would take at least two hours. Edan’s presence had sapped my strength, and fresh water would be impossible to find until we crossed the ridge.
“Serak—” Rada murmured when she caught my gaze. I shook my head again. She nodded.
Once we were upwind of the ash cloud, the sides of the path became overgrown, though the normal sounds of insects and birds were rare. When one called out, its sound was silenced almost immediately. More than once, Rada tripped and caught herself on the vines and shrubs on both sides of the path. I wasn’t sure whether she was weak or injured, but when I noticed a few leaves poking out the side of one of her slippers and caught the scent of torn plants when the wind moved over her tattered cloak, I fought to suppress a smile.
Eventually, we crested the low rise in the center of the island and emerged from the spindly trees, stopping to look down on the valley and coastline of the eastern side. One of the guards who stayed on the ridge greeted Zahn and handed him a large basket of food, gathered from the eastern terraced fields, where the soil was thin but still fertile.
Zahn and the other priests immediately started back toward their dwellings at the northern base of the volcano, and a new group of Beta males took their places. Rada watched it all in silence, her gaze flickering to their weapons and all around us. Her training from childhood at the knee of Rimholt’s Master Spy was evident.
Below us, halfway to the eastern sea, a long, flat-roofed dwelling cut through the trees. It was a hundred feet long and a uniform drab gray color. A small plume of smoke drifted above it into the trees from the torch that remained lit at its main entrance at all times.
I answered Rada’s unspoken question. “That’s the barracks where the other servants of Edan stay.”
“More noseless Alphas?”
“No. Beta males. A few Alphas.”
“And those?” Rada pointed to two more low-roofed structures on the beach. There was a long iron fence that surrounded both longhouses, a few small outbuildings, and a straggly garden. It was a continuous iron loop, enclosing an acre of land, a small portion of the beach, and even a few dozen feet of the sea itself.
“The larger one is for the Omegas.” I pointed to the structure on the left, which was about fifty feet long with a stone roof. It had a door at each end and a dozen narrow windows between them. The northernmost wall of the structure was only a few feet from the fence line on that side, with the jungle creeping up the metal bars. The far end of the longhouse opened into a small black sand beach that included a few tide pools. The ocean on this side of Pict was much clearer, with the prevailing winds pushing fresher water toward the land.
“And the smaller one?”
A narrower longhouse fifty feet away ran perpendicular to the first one, though it only had a few windows. Even from here, it looked exactly like it was. A prison.
“For the children.”
She went still, as if she’d been frozen in place. “Children?”
When she finally faced me, I flinched. Her rage wasn’t hot. It was as cold as a glacier, and as implacable. Her silver-gray eyes had gone an even steelier hue as she examined me. “How could you let this happen?”
My stomach churned. I knew what she was asking. How could I be the Alpha she’d known long ago and let this injustice stand? She knew I was crafty and resourceful.
