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I sit up and look at Freya’s face. Her eyes have rolled back and there’s blood running down both her nostrils, just like it’s running down mine. The Fates are stronger than we are, even united. But we have to keep trying.
I pour my power through Freya’s hand and she opens her mouth. “Yes,” she whispers, voice rich with ecstasy. “I can feel you…everywhere…like touching Mother Nature…herself.”
I can feel my own limbs shaking, but I still release all the energy I have. I’ll fight to the end. “Take it all.”
“Ouhhh,” she opens her mouth and light pours out of her lips. It’s beautiful. It’s terrifying.
I feel my own body start to crumble and arch over Adam until I’m prostrated over him, cheek to his chest, staring at his face, his mangy-ass beard and his beautiful pink lips. His eyelashes are long and dark brown and his hair is a tangled mess of brown and blond swirls, like a river, like a current, like vines creating a lattice over the earth.
“I love you,” I whisper, pushing myself up only enough to be able to kiss him on the lips. His mouth is frightening in its unresponsiveness. He always responds to me. Always. Even before he knew my name. Tears wet my eyelashes but I refuse to let them fall. I am one knot of hope, of desperation. I can’t break apart.
“Husband,” I whisper. “If you wake up, I’ll marry you. I’ll marry you tomorrow, please, just wake up…”
I start to pull back, but a pressure latches around my head and holds me in place. His mouth moves against mine brutally, cuttingly, with every intent to devour. With his eyes still closed, he grins and in a gravelly voice that’s rich with pain, he wheezes, “Told you…I’d get you…to call me husband…even if I had to die to do it.”
I bark out a hysterical laugh, wild with mania, and bury my face in his neck for an hour. For a second. His collar scratches my cheek as I pull back. “I hate you so, so much.” I pound on his chest with the flat of my fist and burst into tears. “And I love you. There was no again, because I never stopped. Will…” I sniffle hard, feeling entirely deranged, undone and put back together with all the same pieces forming entirely new shapes. “Will you marry me, husand?”
His eyes are wet and he’s got tears streaking through the mud that covers his face. “Fuck, yes, wife.”
36 | Echo
Garden of Echo
We get married in Paradise Hole two days later — when Adam can stand on his own and after Freya and I both recover.We get married right there in the orchard I created. Peach trees surround us. A few dozen attendees, valiant warriors fresh off the battlefield, all sit on stumps, bodies broken, looking like they’d rather be anywhere else.
Vi got speared with a vine thrown by the one called Adoqhina.
Sierra got badly burned up her right leg by the Fate called Odette.
Whiskey and Barbero both got badly scratched up by undead Alphas.
Balcazar’s doing okay for someone who got chewed up by Omora’s pack of tigers. Luckily they didn’t carry the toxic venom so, unlike Whiskey and Barbero, she healed faster and fully.
Peate’s arm was broken when he successfully protected a pack of Beta scavengers from more undead.
Freya can’t shift and still gets bad headaches, which is the only reason she’s here at all, otherwise, I’m sure she’d be far away, trying to track down the undead Alphas that scattered when the Fates fled. Her rage and determination to kill the Fates burns hotter than ever but her fear of Noon and Noon’s power has helped convince her more than anything that she can’t take them all on alone.
Adam’s relief at knowing his sister is alive is only just stronger than his guilt. I don’t blame him and I don’t know how to help except to promise him that there’s hope to free her and that I won’t stop fighting until she is.Wewon’t.
We don’t know what she’s been through all these years, or even where. We don’t know how long Maengor had her, if he ever did. We don’t know how long Maengor has been dead for, or how long Noon or another Omega’s been wearing his skin. So many questions still unanswered, but we will answer them. We will go after her, kill the other Omegas and, despite Freya’s insistence to the contrary, return the Omega with dominion over death to the land of the living.
The scent of burning bodies floats intermittently past. The sound of Yaron chopping dead bodies into itty bitty pieces also sounds in the distance. He didn’t want to attend and that’s fine. No one does but me and Adam, the Six and the scavengers that survived the battle. I’m proud of the Alphas who fought hard for them. I’m proud that they fought for themselves, too.
“Do you, Berserker Dragnovic — ”
“It’s Adam.”
“Adam,” a Beta scavenger repeats. He holds an open book in his hands, but it isn’t a Bible. It’s just a dogeared paperback that’s so badly stained it’s illegible. I’m just amazed he agreed to do this.
“Stop interrupting,” I say with a smile. My belted, oversized white tee shirt is hardly white, but Adam still looks at me like he’d like nothing more than to rip it off. I wear a crown of flowers on my head. He wears one, too.
He bites his bottom lip and shakes his head, then looks back at the Beta. “Continue.Faster.”With death on the breeze and flowers under our feet, we hold hands and grin madly at one another.
“Oh, uhh… yeah, right. Berserker Adam, do you take Omega Echo for your lawfully wedded um…Omega?”
“Yes. Definitely, a thousand times over.”
“Only a thousand?” I tease, one eyebrow lifted.
