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Distracted as I am by the magic in display in front of me, I don’t react to defend myself when Omora steps forward, moving quickly and soundlessly, like a wraith. I sway. I wonder if Yaron feels it. The energy that pulses between them, through them —outof them — that affects everything it touches like sap, saccharine and seductive. It makes me want to close my eyes and lean in, give up and let them take me.I wonder if this is what Noon once felt.
Right before they killed her.
The once calm water in the river below sloshes and splashes, spray comin’ up and over the railin’ high enough to touch my cheeks. The world pulses around me once, twice, a third time. And then her voicetouchesme.
I can see Omora’s lips movin’, but her voice sounds in my mind a split second later. The delay is disorienting and destabilizing. I try to move away from it, but I can’t lift my fuckin’ shoes from the bridge, which feels like it’s crumblin’ beneath my feet, ‘bout to send me into another river, only this time, Echo won’t be there to keep me from drownin’.
“Omegas, whatever it is you believe yourselves capable of, stop this before I draw blood.” I can hear Yaron beside me roarin’, but his voice is dimmer than it should be and even though he’s standin’ right at my shoulder, it’s like I’m seein’ him through a filter. Purple and yellow spots slide lazily between us, makin’ him look like he’s ten thousand miles away.
“You cannot draw blood from us,” Sy says so sibilantly, soundin’ hardly more than a serpent herself.
Yaron raises his axe and it feels like I’m watchin’ this shit happen in a dream inside a dream, everythin’ caught in slow motion. He brings his blade toward Omora, who I didn’t even realize is touchin’ my arm, violatin’ about a thousand rules atop the thousand rules she’s already broken, but she doesn’t flinch and his blade doesn’t fall.
Instead, the axe is ripped from his grip by the lightest breeze. It thunks down onto the bridge beside him like the discarded toy of a child.
A boom that isn’t a sound but a feeling fills the air and I close my eyes and I’m lost in a forest of Echo’s lovely red hair.
“You will succeed in finding the army you hunt for,”comes Omora’s frightening whisper,“but in your success, you will also find failure. You will fail her. We have seen it in the dreams of an Omega who came to us. Your life stolen at the hands of those you seek, your Omega gutted beside you.
“The undead army will not be stopped by one Berserker or two or ten. And you will die trying. But if you hand her over now, we can save her. We won’t kill her as we did the others. We have need of her. She can help us. Her gifts are strong — the strongest we’ve felt in decades, perhaps centuries. We will make her a Fate, teach her to control her greatness, teach her to wield it, teach her the art of immortality. We have spoken already with Berserker Maengor. He wants her for his harem. He wants her for a Fate.”
Her grip on my arm tightens and my blood runs backwards through my veins, chilling me to the bone, unwindin’ time until sunsets rise before me and sunrises set. My nostrils flare and I feel breath come hot out of my mouth, panicked, insecure,weak. I feel the muddy swamp risin’ around my boots. Hear myself shoutin,“Noon!”See her shoutin’ back at me,“Adam.”
Noon uses a name only used by one other person on this planet. And now, here in the present, the Fates want me to give her up.
“Let us give her life and power and glory that you cannot. With you, she will only ever be a liability, crippled by your fears of inadequacy, your many weaknesses… But she dreams greater dreams. We do not need to see inside her mind to know this. Neither do you — she has told you, hasn’t she? She wants to go back to Paradise Hole. She wants to run and be free. She who controls the earth cannot be bound by man or beast. Let us take her and protect her. Let us shape her into the Fated Omega that, with you, she will never be.”
“No,” I say, though the voice isn’t mine — or it’s mine, but from when I was a Beta, when I was a boy.
I shiver and recoil, frightened in a way I haven’t experienced since before I learned to control my pain and my fear and my response to torture. But I wasn’t trained for this. This is a torture not of the body, but of the soul.
Of the heart.
A soft sigh. The air around me ripples.“Then she will fall at your side, her blood on your hands. We have seen it, Berserker, and we will not be able to stop it.”
“Berserker Dragnovic.” A booming voice pulls me from the delusion.
I blink and the world refocuses. The Fates are nowhere near me, not even Omora, who stands over fifteen feet away. I jerk, blink, glance around and find that Berserker Yaron isn’t at my side, axe fallen. He’s behind me, axe still raised. The bunching of his eyebrows is the only indication at all that he’s aware that anything is amiss.
“What…” he starts to say, meeting my gaze, but my attention is pulled forward by the sound of crunching vines and flowers.
“Dragnovic,” the intruder says again and my entire body immolates as I register Berserker Maengor standin’ on the flower-studded grass just before the bridge, his Four Fuckin’ Fates on his left. In his right hand, he carries a chain, and at the end of that chain stands my Omega. I can’t breathe. He smiles at me and in his smile I know that Omoro may be a fuckin’ ass hole, but she’s not a liar.
Echo’s gonna die in Paradise Hole fallen beside me gutted if I don’t do somethin’.
I gotta defy fate.
And Echo’s not gonna fuckin’ like how I do it.
25 | Adam
Dragnovic Manor
“I’m not going to apologize!I didn’t do anything wrong. And what you did to Balcazar is fucked up! She didn’t do anything wrong, either!” Echo writhes in my grip, thrashing back and forth, trying to claw and tear at me with her blunt nails, but she doesn’t call on her gifts now and I don’t know why.Or maybe, I do know. Maybe, it’s because she trusts —
No. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is her safety.
My heart pounds out of time with the pulse throbbing across my forehead. I see red. All I see is red.
