Page 96 of The King's Omega
“I love you,” I signed.
“As I love you,” he replied. A chorus of sighs went up around us.
“Vali, I haven’t proven my love to you yet, but I love you more than my own life,” Rigol added, his voice so unsure, his eyes anxious. “I know you won’t believe me now. Give me time… a few decades to prove it to you?”
“Your queen? Your mate?” I whispered. “Are you sure?” He shot a glance at Axe, then pulled down his own collar, showing a matching set of teeth marks at the base of his neck.
Had I done that? Oh, Goddess, from the gleam in his eyes, I most definitely had. I couldn’t remember biting him, but a lot from my heat was a blur.
Casually, I let my own hand drift up to my shoulder and fingered a set of scars that hadn’t been there before I built my nest for Rigol. “Great Goddess,” I whispered.
Rigol winked. “I guess that means yes.”
I peeked around the mass of people and saw Tarn and Lorn standing together. Tarn snapped his teeth at me and rubbed a hand over his own chest. Lorn licked his lips and adjusted himself. In the shadowed corner by the gate, Vilkurn lifted a hand and blew me a kiss.
A cheer went up from the crowd. “Long live the King’s Omega! Long live Queen Vali!”
I blinked back tears as I felt Axe’s and Rigol’s arms go around me, pressing me into a hug.
I guess my luck had turned. So I turned, too, and let my lips press against each of the men I loved.
Epilogue
“Papa Vilkurn, tell it again!”
My youngest daughter, the one with Lorn’s eyes and Tarn’s quick fingers, had pulled the book out of my hands the minute I stopped reading. It was the story of my mate—well, mine, Rigol’s, Axe’s, Tarn’s, and Lorn’s as well, though only her mating marks from Axe and Rigol rested where people could see. Axe and Rigol were her accepted mates—she was Rigol’s queen and Axe’s consort. The country wasn’t quite ready for a queen with five mates, she had decreed.
I didn’t mind; I liked secrets, though after so many years, most at least suspected Vali had five mating bites on her little frame. They just didn’t know where the other bites lay.
I smiled slyly, remembering placing mine in a spot I could appreciate privately and at leisure when we were alone. Or mostly alone.
Vali had kept her title as Queen of Verdan and added an extra crown to her collection ten years before. The story of her ascent was required reading in both countries and considered a romantic tale for the ages.
The yarn never properly portrayed Rigol as quite the villain he was, though, so I added the kitten stealing parts when I read our children the tale. Historical accuracy was paramount for the education of young princes and princesses.
“Please, Papa?” She had the book in her hands and my favorite dagger in her pocket if I didn’t mistake the bulge. I tapped her wrist, and she returned it sheepishly.
“I’ve already read it twice today, Nuala. And it’s close to bedtime. Aren’t you sleepy?”
“None of us are,” our eldest son, the one with Axe’s height and Vali’s dark curls, smiled and kept whittling the reed whistles he made for all his siblings and friends. “The party outside is too exciting. And noisy.”
I signed to him. “You’ll be old enough to attend next year, Dashiell.”
He shook his shaggy head. “Papa Axe said I could go this year, but I didn’t want the others to feel sad.”If there had been any doubt about whose heart that boy had inherited, it was obvious from those words that he was Vali’s through and through.
Nuala rolled her eyes. “I get why they feast for Mama; she saved all our aunties from Milian. And you helped, too.”
I suppressed a smile at the patronizing way she referred to my part in rescuing Milian’s harem. The women who had come to Turino a few months after the battle were honorary aunts to all our children. I found myself wondering about the ones who hadn’t stayed, as she went on.
“But I don’t know why they make such a fuss over Papa Rigol. I mean, he did practically nothing. Except for the stabbing part at the end.” She thrust an imaginary dagger into Dash’s stomach, and he fell out of his chair, performing a very credible death scene.
“Well, it is the tenth anniversary of the Saving of Rimholt, and yer Papa Rigol did play some small part in the country as a whole,” Sorcha added from the doorway. Her hair had gone bright silver over the years, and she’d lost another tooth, but her laugh was still every bit as boisterous. “Who wants a kitten?” She had a basket full of mewling creatures on one hip and a hiccupping baby on the other.
The infant, Rydan, was a copy of Rigol from head to toe with russet hair and green eyes. The toddler girl trailing behind them holding Mischief was also obviously the king’s, with long reddish hair and a strange ethereal glow.
“Hello Valora,” I said. She nodded quietly, her composure oddly mature for a child. She had been that way since she was born, though, and I wondered from time to time if she would be a seer of some kind. Time would tell.
Rigol was terrified Valora was an Omega. Terrified there would be another plague and she would die, terrified a visiting Alpha warlord would abduct her, terrified she would discover boys—or girls—before she was thirty-five.
