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That had been over an hour ago, and it had taken me that long to calm down. Midnight seemed to be rested, so I took another deep breath, swung up on my horse’s back and headed back. I knew the trail Asher and Brandon would take for home and turned Midnight in that direction. With any luck, I’d catch up to them before they camped for the night.
I rode hard but it was still a few hours later that I saw their camp a little way off the road, just a few miles over the border into Morovia. Knowing Asher as well as I did, I imagined he hadn’t felt safe until he was back in our own country. He rose on one elbow as I came into camp and looked at me before jerking his head over toward a figure on the far side of the fire.
“Your boy’s over there. But are you absolutely sure about him? If he’s an omega, I’m not picking up any of that scent on him.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. He takes a potion given to him by a witch to suppress it, but for whatever reason it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to on me. He says the witch’s name is Barbarosa Lagoon. Have you ever heard of her?”
Asher looked surprised. “Yes, I have. But I thought she died about fifty years ago.”
“Not according to what Darcy says.”
“If it’s the same one, she was a powerful witch, or so people said. Very dark magic, indeed, though I never heard anything bad she did to people who weren’t trying to hurt her. Do you believe the boy?”
“I have no reason not to. And believe me, he’s definitely an omega. I don’t know why I seem to be the only one who can tell, and then only at times, but even so, I didn’t figure it out for a couple of months. Or maybe I couldn’t believe it.”
We were speaking in low voices, but I saw Darcy stirring restlessly. Asher noticed him too and nodded at me. “You must be tired. Go stretch out and I’ll wake you when it’s time to go. I’d like to make it to the lodge by tonight.”
“All right,” I said, getting up and heading back to my horse to get my pack and get him unsaddled and settled with the other horses for the night. I was back in a few minutes and stretched out in the only place left by the fire, which was directly across from Darcy. I’d have liked to lie beside him, except for two things—he wouldn’t have liked it, and I was still way too angry and hurt to try.
I knew it was foolish to feel that way. We’d made no promises to each other, and I’d only recently discovered what he was and how attracted to him I truly was. In reality, though, I was kidding myself. I’d always been really attracted since the first moment I’d seen him, but I’d tried to ignore my feelings or make excuses for them. Until that evening at the stream, when I couldn’t make excuses any longer, and I finally acknowledged to myself that something powerful was going on between us.
This situation had turned into a huge mess. I’d be lucky if taking Darcy out of the country didn’t set off some international incident. As it was, I’d have a lot of explaining to do to Harrison when I saw him again. Darcy must be my mate, which might account for why I had such a different reaction to him. I thought Darcy had mentioned something about “noble warriors” and that it would bring on his fate, whatever that meant.
The truth was that I didn’t have any desire to have a mate—at least not now. And even if I did, a stubborn, defiant little troublemaker like Darcy Vandercliff would never have been my first choice, omega or not. My choice would have been for someone easier to get along with, someone who had no crazy ambitions, who dreamed of making a home for his Alpha and raising a family, instead of glorious feats of bravery in battle. What kind of craziness was that for an omega?
Too damn bad then that I didn’t seem to have much of a choice in this thing at all. I pulled my thick blanket over my head to keep off the heavy dew and turned determinedly on my side and away from him. Maybe all this would look better to me in the morning.
But I doubted it.
Part II
Chapter Seven
Darcy
“Wake up, Vandercliff and eat some breakfast,” someone said from over my head. “We have a long ride ahead of us today.”
I turned over and looked up at Alpha Brandon, who had touched my hip with the tip of his boot to wake me up. I glanced behind him at the campfire and saw two more big Alphas sitting there staring at me, which woke me up in a hurry, because one of them was Wyatt.
Just the sight of him started me leaking a little, which was appalling enough, and even more so when both Asher and Brandon suddenly tensed and started sniffing the air.
“What is that?” Asher asked, and Wyatt laughed. It was a sharp and bitter sound that pierced right through me.
“That would be the omega, it seems. Who needs to go take care of that and then eat some breakfast so we can get on our way.”
I glared at him so hard that if looks could kill, he’d have fallen over dead where he sat.
“Just how do you propose I do that? Alpha Brandon has my pack and won’t give it back to me.”
Wyatt glanced over at Brandon, who shrugged. “I didn’t know if he had any weapons in there or maybe some other ‘magic’ potion he’d use against us. We left in a hurry, you know.”
“Good thinking. Toss it over here to me, will you?” he asked, and Brandon bent over to pick it up from beside his bedroll to give it to Wyatt. Wyatt rifled through it thoroughly before looking back up. “It seems fine.”
I was beyond angry. Beyond resentful. How dare they feel so free to go through my personal things? It was typical of the kind of indignities omegas had to endure on a daily basis.
Wyatt threw my bag on the ground in front of him and reached into his own pack for a canteen and put it beside mine. “Take these and go do something about that leaking.”
“Just what do you propose I do? I’m fine until you come around.”
