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“How could I not? You can’t imagine how much hope it gave me that you were so obviously jealous, and of a woman who was married and fifteen years older than we were.” He sighed. “Even after I left, I hoped I might see you again. Even through the years of torture here. My dreams of you were all that kept me alive.”

“Tell me about your dreams.” I drank another swallow and relaxed into his arms. “What did we do?”

“Let’s see. When you returned to Rimholt, and Vilkurn gave you his title of Master Spy, we mated and married.”

“Was it a big celebration?”

“Enormous. Your crew all came, the street rats of Turino. The royal family and your own family, and the Omegas you’d been saving. We had to delay the wedding for almost a year, since so many of them wanted to come and celebrate with you.” His lips pressed my sweaty temple. “You wore a red gown with your cloak over it. The guests were all given favors of herbal concoctions at the end, which was fair, since the street rats had picked all their pockets clean.

“We moved into a large building not far from the river, where there was plenty of room for your apothecary and a yard for training orphans and Omegas in self-defense.”

“Did we have children in this dream?”

“Only the ones you collected. The ones like you, who needed a mother who would burn down the world or cross oceans to keep them safe. The little ones called you Mama. The older ones called you Boss. They named their own children after you, once they grew up. By the time you and I were silver-haired, there were dozens of Radas running around the continent.”

I stroked his hand lightly. “My dreams weren’t nearly as sweet. They were mostly about throwing you down and having my wicked way with you. Though at first, the details were lacking. But we traveled together, stealing from the evil and giving to the good. Only keeping the nicest gems for ourselves, of course.”

“In another life,” he whispered. “If I ever have the chance to know you again, I’ll do better.”

“Serak, you did well enough this time. I wish he hadn’t been able to break into your mind.”

“You know, that’s probably the only reason I’m still alive. I understood Omegas in a way he couldn’t. He thought they could be made to breed. He didn’t know that the Alphas on Pict who were successful were the ones who’d treated the Omegas with kindness. Who’d somehow made the Goddess relent, and open Her daughters.” He hummed quietly. “He’s fascinated by the love I’ve held for you all these years. He keeps trying to pick it out of my mind, steal it, and use it as a lure. He doesn’t understand it’s in my heart.” Hands moved over my hair, and I shuddered at the surge of pure need that rocked my entire body.

As the blindfold slipped away, I blinked into the sudden brightness. Serak’s face was lowered, and I couldn’t see his eyes. He was naked, kneeling in a position that was almost submissive. There was an odd shimmering on his skin, and I wondered if my vision had been damaged.

I forced my gaze from him and looked around the room. He’d been telling the truth. This dwelling I lay in reminded me slightly of Skadi’s ice house, only this one was made of smooth, glassy volcanic stone.

“Obsidian,” I murmured. There were no windows, only a tunnel to what I assumed would be a door, but the light and heat that poured through that narrow opening was enough to light the interior.

The oval-shaped room was filled with blankets and cushions, with a collection of fruits, jugs of what I assumed was water, and bowls of what appeared to be stew. I wasn’t hungry at all, though. Not for food.

I turned my attention back to Serak and took in his skin again. The shimmering had subsided a bit, and the odd flecks of light coalesced into what looked like small streams of fire running under his skin, all over his exposed flesh. I reached out a hand to touch one of them before I remembered exactly why that would be a very bad idea and curled my fingers into a fist. The bright rivers all over him were sensual in a way I’d never imagined could exist.

It was all a trap, of course.

“You said he stole my secrets. That he’d seen what he was doing wrong. How?”

Slowly, he lifted his eyes to my face. The dark eyes I’d loved had changed entirely, and they were now bright pools of fire, almost painful to look at. “Before you came here, he thought he could keep himself separate from this process. That he could breed you using me, and take the child as a vessel. But when he claimed you, he left a part of his essence inside you. He’s been watching you, learning from you. Stoking the ember he planted inside.” One hand dropped to my abdomen, covering the place where Skadi had stuck his tail in me.

The last hint of cold vanished in a tiny pulse, and the next cramp was much more severe than the others.

“You have all the bedding you need for a nest, Omega,” he said, his voice double-timbred, one note almost too low to hear, like the rumble of magma underground, the other the same one that had spoken words of love to me decades before.

The idea of building a nest had never appealed to me. But somehow, I found my hands drifting toward the softest-looking cushion to my left, knowing it needed to be just a few inches closer to be in the right spot.

The rough blanket below me had to go. There was a softer one, a wheat-colored woven sheet, against the far wall.

Fuck. I pressed a fist to my abdomen, ignoring the slick wet patch that was growing directly beneath me. This was every nightmare I’d ever had come true, with a few more added in for good measure. “Serak, if that’s you in there, stop it. I don’t want this.”

“You will.” I held very still as he moved his hand to stroke a strand of hair back from my face. “When I realized what he’d decided to do, that he planned to use my body to impregnate you, use my love to open the door of your womb, I tried to make it impossible. I threw myself into the maw, the mouth of the Alldyns Vug. It should have immolated me.” The streams of fire on the arm I could see glowed slightly brighter. “He didn’t expect me to do that. But I didn’t expect him to do this either.” He pressed a kiss to my hair.

“What did he do, Serak?”

“He caught me in his talons as I melted in his fire, and put me back together with his power.” He held up a hand and turned it back and forth, staring at it with an odd half-smile. “I remember the pain, and then the sensation of being swallowed. Teeth made of obsidian? I thought it would hurt to have fire instead of blood. But it doesn’t.”

Finally, I moved, taking his hand in mine and examining it more closely. The outside of his skin had changed, too, the texture almost that of… scales. “Are you a dragon?”

He chuckled. “Maybe? I’m half god. And Edan is half human now.”