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“You!” the baron cried out, hauling me around to face him. He was grimacing wildly at me, his expression feral and wild. “What are you doing sneaking around here when I told you never to prowl around my house again at night? You disobedient wretch!”
He shouted this at me, as he reared his hand back and slapped me so hard I thought he’d take my head off my shoulders. My ears rang with the blow, and it stunned me for a moment. I fell to the floor and tried to scramble to my feet, but he reached for me instead and hauled me up to face him again. “You want so badly to know what’s inside my door? Then look your fill. And when you’re done, you can join them.”
The floor was covered with black, clotted blood. In the dull shine of it something horrible was reflected. He seized my head and forced me to look at the wall facing me, and with an effort I lifted my eyes. There, on an iron hook, hung the body of poor Lady Camilla, with a gray, dead face and her feet dangling a few inches above the horrible pool on the floor. There was a terrible wound in her chest and stomach that gaped wide. He had gutted her body and was letting the blood drain into a grisly grate on the floor.
I could scarcely breathe as I gaped at the nightmarish scene, and he twisted my head around to stare down into my face. His eyes weren’t human anymore, but solid black from one corner to the other, soulless and demonic. He threw me down into the pool of blood and loomed over me with menace written in every line of his body.
“Now prepare to join her!” he shouted in a gleeful tone, and I knew he was looking forward to my screams and pleas for mercy. But this monster had no mercy, no pity in his heart, so I saved my breath. He’d pulled out a huge knife and held it over me, leaning down close and enjoying the fear he no doubt saw in my eyes.
In a final act of defiance, I swept up some of the gore and threw it directly in his face. He screamed as it struck him, and he swiped it angrily off his face. For someone who enjoyed letting blood, he certainly seemed to not want any gore on his skin.
Before he could swing the knife down into my heart, Wyatt and Asher came bursting through the door behind him. Asher wrapped his arm around the baron’s neck and squeezed, his face grim and determined and terrible to see. At the same time, Wyatt chopped down on his arm to make him drop the knife he held at my throat, and then flipped it around to use the pommel to drive a hard blow into the baron’s temple. His knees buckled like a pole-axed steer and Wyatt, still in the grip of an awful rage, hit him twice again as he went down, caving in the side of his head. Wyatt might have continued, but Asher seized his arm and called his name sharply, bringing him back to his senses. Only then did my Alpha stop beating him and straightened back up, looking for me.
When he saw me back on my feet, swaying unsteadily beside him, he folded me into his arms and picked me up, carrying me out of that awful room and down the stairs.
Epilogue
Our escape from the baron’s castle after that was almost anticlimactic. Asher left the poor Vicountess in that horrible room, because it was a crime scene. But he hauled the baron down the stairs and swung wide the front door. When the few soldiers still milling around in the courtyard came running toward him in the cool night air, he dragged out the baron’s dead body and threw it at their feet, inviting them to go upstairs and see what the monstrous man had done to his wife and the ones who’d come with her to this place. Then he turned toward Mr. Nolan, who had come running half-dressed and gasping into the main hall and told him to go fetch the king’s guard from the town down the mountain.
Wyatt joined him at the door and announced to them all that once the investigation found that not one of them had reported the missing Vicountess or indeed, the prisoners the baron was holding in the dungeon room in the cellar, they might all be hanged before morning anyway, there was a quick and general exodus of soldiers and servants out the front gates.
Wyatt began to worry that Nolan might never make it to town on his way out, so he sent me upstairs to sit with Brandon and then got on his horse to ride for a physician from town. Asher requisitioned a gun from the soldiers before they all took off and stood guard in the main hall, so that none of the servants could disturb the scene in the attic, should they be so inclined. Wyatt returned in a couple of hours with the doctor and told Asher and me both that he had sent messages to the Crillian king, to King Harrison, and to the poor Vicountess’s family.
“What do we do now?” I asked him, and he turned to look down at me.
“Now we wait,” he said, pulling me over into the crook of his arm. “If I know Harrison, he’ll ride all night to get here if he has to. Someone will be coming from the Crillian king very shortly, I think, and if this doesn’t start a war between Crillia and Sudfarma, then I’d say nothing ever will.”
My Alpha wasn’t wrong. King Harrison was spitting mad and horrified when he arrived and found the bodies of all the viscountess’s entourage—the ladies and servants who had come with her when she came to Lameda—with their throats cut and all of them piled up in the back of that horrible attic room to rot. Harrison wanted to burn down the castle, and it was only with difficulty that Asher and Wyatt convinced him that he probably shouldn’t, as it wasn’t strictly his property. Or at all, really.
He had many long, angry conferences with the Crillian ambassadors though, and they vowed to pay reparations to the viscountess’s family, though I doubted her family would be satisfied with money. I couldn’t imagine I would ever be, and Wyatt agreed with me.
After King Harrison arrived, and Brandon was on the mend again, Wyatt took me down to the little town of Redmill and got us a room. He said I had no business in that awful castle of the late baron, and he was still appalled that I had come there in the first place. I reminded him that if I hadn’t come, he’d still be languishing in that cellar starving to death with the rats, but he tried to shut me up with kisses and told me it was time I learned to be less talkative and more obedient to my Alpha.
“Oh? Like poor Lady Camilla was? It didn’t seem to help her.”
He shuddered and pulled me close. “I’m sorry, Darcy. I hope you know I didn’t mean it that way. I was only teasing.”
“Hmm. I do know you were horrified at what Dargan did. But you need to know that I’m never going to be an obedient little omega. Except maybe in bed when I feel like it. If that’s not what you want…”
“I wantyou, Darcy. Only you.”
“If you really want me in your life, then things will have to change between us—I’m not your trainee anymore, Wyatt. I’m not a child, either. I have a mind of my own. If you can’t accept that, then as much as I love you, I’m afraid we don’t have a future.”
He grabbed my hand. “No, don’t say that. Please. I know you’re right, and I promise I’ll try to change. I think you may have to help me, because since I met you, I’ve come to realize I don’t really know anything at all about omegas. Everything I thought I knew was wrong.”
I took his hand in mine and gazed up at him. “Maybe we can start by you telling me how you feel about me. You never really have, you know.”
His face got red, but he met my eyes. “I love you, Darcy. And I have for the longest time. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to say the words, and I know it’s long past time I remedied that situation. Iknow that. I’ve been too stubborn to admit the truth of who you are to me. But I promised myself when I was languishing in that cell that if I ever got the chance, I’d not only tell you, but make sure you believed it.Doyou believe me, Darcy? I want you to marry me in an actual ceremony so our friends and family can see us. I want you to have my babies, and most of all, I want you to be happy.”
With each word, he had drawn closer, so I backed away a little, laughing and holding out my hands. “Not so fast. We may need to negotiate some of this. For example, what exactly did you mean by ‘babies’ plural? How many are we talking about exactly? And just how do you plan on making me believe you really mean all this?”
He smiled as he pulled me into his arms. “I’ll try to show you.”
He began to nibble on my ear, and I had to admit, I was totally on board. I had been afraid I’d never have this again, and I couldn’t get enough of him now. I didn’t care if we were in an old inn near a murderous baron’s castle or even if we’d been in the middle of the king’s court, I needed desperately to make love to him.Thiswas the destiny Barbarosa had been talking about, and I hoped Wyatt was feeling it too, but even if he wasn’t, it was strong and undeniable enough that I’d didn’t doubt it.
I was stripped in no time, but I didn’t mind, because so was he. He pulled me closer, gripping me by my ass to bring my body close to his. I had dreamed of this so many times. My legs went up around his waist and there I was, spread out wantonly underneath Wyatt at last, my head thrown back to give him access to my throat, my legs open wide, offering up everything else I had to him.
Wyatt touched me reverently and ran his hand gently over my ass, as if re-familiarizing himself with me. As he ran his hand over the length of my shaft and reached down to weigh my balls in his hand, kneading and massaging them, I tried to scream my pleasure, but he put his hand over my mouth to quiet me, because I was so far gone, and the walls were thin. He put me down on the bed and my slick was making me nice and slippery, so he slid his hand up inside me, still crooning to me and getting me stretched and ready. Wyatt leaned over me, kissing me and robbing me of breath. He swept his tongue inside my mouth, and he murmured to me about how sweet I tasted and how he had lived without it for so long and had thought he’d never taste it again. Then with one long thrust, he buried himself inside me—including his big, beautiful knot.
