Page 4 of The King's Omega
“What are you doing?” she yelled, her voice a growl of disbelief. “Get your hands off me, you great quiet lump of dung! Let me go!”
This little one needed to learn some manners, and I was just the one to teach her. I lifted my hand, and began silently counting to twenty easy spanks, the same punishment I’d received dozens of times as a child over my mother’s knee. Enough to shock me into behaving, but not enough to hurt.
It worked. She fell silent and still, merely trembling, but after three swats, I realized she wasn’t simply behaving. Her scent had shifted to rotten fruit and bitter herbs, and then faded almost entirely. Fear—no,terror—had erased all the delightful smells.
I lifted her and stared into a tear-streaked, heart-shaped face that held an expression I had seen only on a battlefield.
Abject despair. Emptiness. Devastation.
The dark eyes that had been spitting fire were dull and vacant, and her teeth chattered as if the summer day had transformed to deepest winter.
Her tiny fingers were ice cold. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t how anyone reacted to discipline. “Are you unwell?” I signed, but she didn’t understand me. Or was unable to answer. She sat paralyzed.
Was she injured underneath those odd, malodorous rags she wore? I pulled at the clothes, peeling back a layer to see, but a strange, desolate moan fell from her lips.
Horrified, I halted abruptly. Did she imagine I was planning to rape her?
I rumbled a little, deep in my chest, surprising myself. I did it again, marveling I still had the ability to make such a sound.
I hadn’t spoken in years, not since taking an assassin’s blade across the neck. But the sound I made didn’t come from my throat. It rumbled up from the depths of my diaphragm, from my core.
It was my Alpha purr.
In the stories of old, Alphas purred to calm their mates. I had never mated,wouldnever mate, and had never thought to utter this sound. I hadn’t meant to now, but the vibrations had poured out of me, unbidden.
She relaxed into my arms as I continued. I had been unable to sing or even hum for years, but I could modify the notes of my purr, singing a simple bass lullaby to the girl who was now snuggling into my arms. She smiled and stretched sinuously against me. Like a kitten herself.
“That’s so beautiful,” she murmured, her voice piping and sweet. “Don’t stop.” As the terror abated, her scent stabilized, replaced by a sweet musk that yanked at my cock and forced it back to attention.
I stroked her hair gently, the dark ringlets tumbling around my fingers. Her features were so fine, her skin a shade darker than my own, but smooth as silk. A button nose perched above pink lips shaped in a tiny bow. So petite, like a child.
By the Goddess.I froze.
Was she not yet a woman? Her curves were dainty. Could she be a child? That might be why she had reeked of terror before.
Was I purring… for a little girl? My cheeks burned, and I swallowed as the girl under my arm stilled. “Don’t worry,” I signed rapidly. “I would never touch a child that way.”
My stomach lurched as if I would be sick.
Fuck. I had to get her to the castle, to Rigol, or to one of my brothers-in-arms—the group of four generals who lived in the east wing. They would be able to speak and explain.
Not that I wanted anyone to know what I had done.
Bundling the girl into my arms and removing the kitten’s claws from my back, I strode purposefully to the castle gate, and struggled to tamp down my rage.
What caused her terrified reaction to my touch?
The thought of what might have occurred to such a wee thing in a brothel urged me to take my axe to everyone who had known she was there and ignored her plight.
Someone would pay.
Vali
Iwould have bet my last coin, if I had one to wager, that I had the worst luck of anyone in Turino.
Though Madam had told me a thousand times I was fortunate to have been dumped in the alley behind her brothel when I was an infant, I couldn’t see what good had come of it, other than my friendships with some of the working girls.
They had been the only bright spot in my twenty years at the Sow. Before she married the pig herder, who had been her best customer, Lara had taught me to French braid my hair and make tasty toasted cheese. Nell had taught me basic fighting skills after she’d caught one of the street boys trying to look down my shirt. All the ladies had taught me swear words, and most had tried to shield me from the business side of a bordello, although I sure had heard a lot of sounds.
