Page 60

I ran on silent feet back to the Omega longhouse, opening the door silently. The Omegas inside sent confused looks my way as I counted. They were all there. Mirrim rose and whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“Someone entered the fence with a drug.”

The Omega named Adiah was sitting beside the unconscious Omega Rielle, and stood with her shard in hand. “Sweet but metallic? That’s what they dose us with when they take one of us to be fed to the maw. It keeps us quiet on the way there.” Her eyes narrowed. “Where’s Rada?”

“Safe with the kraken,” I replied instantly. “No one could take her from him in the water.”

She wasn’t convinced. “We’re supposed to leave in less than three hours. Could she have come back?”

I shook my head, though the same thought had occurred to me. But Rada was too quick to be caught by some guard with a rag dosed with liquid sleep.

And I’d murdered all the Betas on this side of the island with crowstem in their meals earlier. The Alpha Frol, who I’d sent to watch the pass, was the only one left alive.

“The children?” Mirrim grasped my hand. “We have to check.”

“I’ll go,” I said, already on my way to the door, but the woman followed me.

It didn’t make sense for him to take the children. But who knew what Edan had planned for the new moon the next night, besides mating Rada? It was entirely possible he would sacrifice the children in some sort of sick celebration.

I’d never wanted to be as powerful as a god before, but if I had the kind of strength it required, I knew I would give up my own life to kill that evil bastard.

The children’s longhouse was locked and inside was as quiet as ever. Their longhouse didn’t have hanging sheets like the Omega’s had rigged up, but the children were huddled together in the corners of the room, their blankets wrapped around their shoulders… and sticks or shards of rock in their hands. None of the children were missing.

The oldest, the boy named Tally, met us at the door with his cheap, chipped sword in hand. “Is it time?”

I’d only begun to shake my head when the sound of a distant, wordless Alpha roar split the night. I had a feeling it was Frol. That meant the pass had been breached.

“It is now,” I said. “Get everyone up and down to the beach.” I slipped back outside the door, the night suddenly clear around us. There was a line of torches descending the mountain, bobbing through the jungle at speed, like sparks falling from a wildfire. The wind from the sea blew any sounds they might have made away from us.

“The Alphas are coming,” I whispered to Mirrim. “Get the Omegas to the beach.”

“The Alphas? Do you mean the Beta guards?”

“No. They’re all dead.” I held my hands to my mouth and mimicked the cry of a bird that only lived on the island where I’d met Rada. I waited as the children filed past like small, wide-eyed ghosts, but she didn’t answer.

I relaxed slightly when someone else did. A hooting owl I’d heard more than one night in Starlak gave two quick calls. Moments later, Goran was there by my side, a sword in his hand.

We met at the back of the Omega’s longhouse, though the women shrank back from him. “Where is she?” he demanded quietly.

“She was with Lusca,” I replied. Before he could relax, I told him what I’d heard and seen.

He placed a hand on the mating mark nestled in the juncture of his shoulder and neck for a moment. “She’s sleeping.”

My heart sank like a stone as the power in me flared in reaction. “No. She’s unconscious. He’s taken her.”

I expected Goran to run after her, but he let out a stream of soft curses and turned toward the children’s longhouse, where a few of them were struggling to walk across the rocks to the water.

“She gave me an order,” he remarked, almost calmly, “to get the Omegas and children to safety.”

“You’re not going to rescue her?” My voice was too loud, and the shuffling feet nearby stopped. “She’s being forced into a heat cycle. It’s nearly the new moon. He has her, Goran!”

His answer was a snarl. “I trust my wife. I believe in her mission, and I share it. She’ll stay alive. She’s given her whole life to save Omegas and children. I will not fail her now by sacrificing them for her. Will you?”

I was not certain what my answer would be if I knew Edan had her in his clutches. I craned my head over my shoulder, looking for Lusca, or for her. For some sign that she was safe.

But there was only a raft breaking the slightly shimmering surface of the waves, and a seal’s head bobbing just by the gap in the fence. Another surfaced, and a voice called out, “Where is she?”

There was no time to answer. The tallest girl rushed past, a toddler on her hip. “I’ll swim out halfway to the fence. Two at a time, remember? I’ll swim back to you. You float on your backs and let me drag you to the seals. Then we’ll all go together on the⁠—”