Page 43 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

43

TORMUND

D ad had me pack for a several-day hunting trip this time, and I dreaded the time spent away from my mate. Even though I needed to get myself under control and my father was one of my only sources on how a proper redcap acts and functions.

As a boy, I used to be excited to spend time with him and would count down the days to the next trip. My busy father wanted to spend time with just me! He wanted to teach me how to hunt and survive!

We would walk out of sight of Mother and the rest of the family, and he’d put a weapon in my pudgy hand to hunt with. He did the hunting and butchering for the first few years and handed me meat skewers by night that I didn’t recognize as once belonging to an animal.

My first kill was a squirrel. I walloped the poor thing over the head at age six, my first kill, and cried about it for the rest of the day. I carried its limp body in my hands, inconsolable that it wouldn’t return to its little squirrel family.

Dad had taken in my reaction with understanding at first but started to make sounds of annoyance under his breath as the day grew long. “It’s just a squirrel, son.”

“But I’m the reason he died,” I’d answered with a fresh wave of tears.

He made a scoff with his signature ach and rolled his eyes. He’d tried to feed me meat skewers from his kill that night, and it finally dawned on me where the food had come from. I decided I would rather starve than eat small, defenseless critters.

With a heavy sigh, he admitted defeat on the matter. He reached into his bag of supplies and handed me a squished hunk of bread and some cheese. The next morning, we gave the squirrel a burial with full military honors.

Dad’s impossibly gigantic hand had covered my shoulder as I stood over the tiny grave. “You’ll learn before long that you’re a redcap,” he’d told me. “Delivering bloodshed and death is what we do, son.”

“But I don’t want to,” I’d said petulantly.

As the years passed, my answer to what I was supposed to be remained largely the same. Dad didn’t push me to change as much as he could’ve, because Mother had stars in her eyes. She saw what kind of boy I was and didn’t want to sacrifice me to make another executioner. And I had a bad habit of eavesdropping on their arguments about it.

I was the first royal redcap in the family line to be placed as the next queen’s comfort, a role that had always been traded between the dark elf and the kelpie lines. Before me, the role of queen’s protector always went to the redcap, regardless of birth order. “I know my sons,” Mother argued decisively. “Marius will be the protector, and Tormund the comfort. Tradition will bow to fate.”

“Tormund will change,” Dad argued back. “Once he’s a little older, he will thrive performing everything the protector role entails. Marius is young enough to adapt.”

That’d been before he’d scarred Marius. After that terrible event, Dad didn’t quite change his mind. Instead, he fought to have two future queen’s protectors, as he and my kelpie older brother had bonded significantly over the accident. Mother said no .

“Watch my gentle boy become the sweetest male, Theo,” she’d insisted. I strove not to disappoint her.

Dad’s final words on the matter were “What my mate does, I echo. However, you’re setting him up for failure. You will see one day.”

So, while Dad didn’t stand in the way of what Mother wanted, he kept moving back the day I would learn what manner of fae I was. Maybe when I was ten and started learning the tedium of managing the palace. But I ended up loving my apprenticeship under Rennyn. I’d especially enjoyed organizing the nesting supply rooms and picking out things to make the palace omegas happy. It was all a matter of patterns and fabrics, and I recognized that every omega had different nesting needs. They, in turn, loved my enthusiasm.

I hoped, by age twelve, he started to see that Mother was right. That was when I’d found a bird struggling with a broken wing on one of our hunting trips and scooped it up off the forest floor. As I sat with Dad around our evening fire, he’d suggested I break its neck to put it out of its misery.

“It’s not a meat bird. We’d be wasting its life. I’m going to take it to the lodge to heal,” I’d said, at this point at least used to the idea that our trips always included us only eating the fresh meat we’d acquired that day around the evening fire. I still needed to roast the meat at that point. Dad ate his raw-ish. As a fully grown fire fae, he could enjoy the bloody flavors and roast it going down his throat. Ach. Gross.

“A predator will kill it the moment you release it,” he’d pointed out.

I’d looked down into the beady eye of the bird, who wore the splint I’d made for its wing, hunkering in a scoop of rocks and moss. Patting it gently, I’d said, “Well, first it needs a fighting chance.”

He’d let out another sigh, shaking his head in confusion, but suggested an empty room I could use in the winter lodge for such a task. Then reiterated that I’d be wasting my time.

I seized the opportunity. As my set of duties became increasingly outdoorsy—managing stable hands, working animals, and hunting rights were some of Rennyn’s least favorite tasks, and he gladly let me have them—I gathered up more small animals to rehabilitate in the newly named critter room, as the lodge was only a half day’s journey on horseback from the palace.

I learned what it felt like to hold a tiny soul cupped in my broad palms and give it medicine, protection, and a second chance. The bird with a broken wing healed and flew away from my hand to continue its little life. I savored the feeling in my chest as I waved goodbye to its fluttering outline. It felt like peace and life and mercy, light as a feather. And that was ten times as moving as the final gasp of an opponent or the stilling of a heartbeat.

My favorite animal friend was Balti the squirrel, who I’d raised up from being a pink, blind thing. He stayed with me for nearly two years. He’d do flips for treats but eventually left the lodge forever one spring day for the love of a lady squirrel. I’d come to terms with it as what I deserved for the murder of his ancestor.

Soon enough, I turned sixteen and started blowing smoke out of my mouth. It was the first sign of several that heralded the rage form growing. I still didn’t develop a taste for the things that would keep the being of fire and fury within me satisfied: venting, fighting, killing, and sex.

Maybe that was the age when my problems really started. I avoided the things that would’ve gotten the rage form under my control. And once something gets out of control, be it a secret or a wildfire, it’s nearly impossible to rein back in.

Not finding a balance with the monster that lived inside me wasn’t the only failure I experienced at that age. The molten rage erupted from me early when I was informed I was failing a test I hadn’t even known I was taking: Rennyn was weighing the problem of whether or not I was clever enough to take over fully as his apprentice. Like Dad, he had two jobs, but the second one was the quietest secret—Serian’s spymaster.

Dad and Rennyn had sat me down to explain this in full and some of the life paths I could take from there, and while the dark elf king complimented my straightforward nature, I’d lost my mind and erupted.

“Are you calling me simple?” I’d asked with redcap menace. The sudden heat pouring out of me was a shock—I hadn’t even known what it felt like to be a monster until that moment.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up from a strike to the back of the head, naked in a tub, with house moths hurriedly adding ice to the melting mound packed around my body. I’d transformed early, before my alpha designation manifested. The internal heat had almost killed me.

I nearly died fourteen times succumbing to my rage form before my induction into the Bloodhunter Clan. Each and every loss of control was an emergency. I had to stay content and not feel any spike of negative emotions, or the heat within me would boil over. A nearly impossible task for any teenager.

Dad presented me for the first time at the clan’s annual meeting when I was seventeen, and I received my membership tattoo early. The tattoo activated the magical heat vents along my back and made them resemble the stylized knots of the Bloodhunter Clan.

A redcap without a clan is dead . Not just a saying, but a fact. Clans were created to give us a nonviolent outlet, as in the ancient times, only delivering death could make the rage recede. And redcaps nearly went extinct due to the sheer violence of that time, even with ongoing wars to be fought.

If I ever brought enough dishonor to the clan to be banished, those vents would vanish. It was the most common kind of death sentence amongst my kind now that delivering death was no longer a profession most of us could rely on in this time of peace. There was a small, cruel hope of living, but, as I’d experienced, that life was spent on the point of a knife, desperately balancing in an attempt not to unleash the monster within.

Only after I had my vents did Rennyn revisit the spymaster discussion. He’d said with his usual air of levity, “That was a self-improvement talk, not a ‘Tormund is stupid’ talk. You’re not simple, Tor-Tor. You’re still a kid. You just can’t seem to keep a secret to save your life.”

Even that had stung, but over time, I realized he was right. I got excited and blurted out most secrets I knew. We worked on it, tiptoeing into the vast amount of work I needed to do to become the next spymaster. Rule number one…never tell anyone I’m a spy. It was so, so hard not to share that.

I had one thing going for me; other fae liked me and my personality, even my fellow clan members. My attempts at being a better spy apprentice served me well during clan meetings; I fit in with them despite being the perfect example of a weakling redcap. And while weaklings weren’t banished, they were relentlessly mocked in other clans, and I needed to keep up the appearance of being a strong prince.

Everything I liked, from poetry to li’l animal rehabilitation to the general scope of my duties, fell outside of the quartet of redcap interests: venting, fighting, killing, and sex. I didn’t talk about those things and pretended to be tougher. I hated fighting, didn’t kill unless it was for hunting, and sex, um…I had yet to see if it worked for me.

And since I now learned it didn’t work for me, I was on an emergency hunting trip with my father. He was still waiting for me to alpha up and tell him what was wrong. I would’ve rather died than look him in the eye and say, “Dad, I made love to my mate, but during the act, I lost most of my control and finished in partial rage form. Now the very sight and smell of her is triggering my rage again.” So, I stayed silent about it.

Even if he was the male who’d taught me everything I knew about being a redcap.

Even if I’d rather experience a torture session followed by an even more painful death rather than talk about this with one of my friends in the clan.

Even though just thinking about the problem had me venting while I prepared our dinner. We’d caught two wild turkeys apiece, and I’d already spitted and seasoned the dressed meat. He and I made small talk about my pack’s trip to Thelis and back while I rotated the birds to cook them evenly. This would ordinarily take several hours, but I breathed the occasional wave of heat overtop them to speed the process along.

Dad would never admit it, but he ate a lot more on our hunting trips once I took over preparing the kills. Could be the salt. Or the herbs. Or maybe even the nice char on the skin after receiving the double flame treatment.

Or…he could just be humoring me. He had given me his usual ach when I’d told him I’d gone out of my way last year to learn how to cook from the talented house moths who made up the palace kitchen staff. He didn’t ask why, only told me it was now my job to make dinner when we went into the wilderness. Which I was happy to do to elevate our time together, because raw meat really was sadness.

I also wanted to know the ins and outs of food for my mate. What was more comforting than food? That was why I loved it so much.

“Dinner’s done,” I announced. I took his turkeys off the fire and presented them to him still spitted and sizzling.

He ate them just like that, bones and all. I sat on the other side of the fire and did the same thing. Simmering with my monstrous form just below the surface was good for one thing, at least. The fangs were very helpful for tearing into this kind of dinner.

I sat on a stone, shirtless, venting so hard I created a humid furnace around me. The evening was a little chill, but signs of spring were all around us. The snow was all but gone, flowers bloomed, and insects sang outside the radius of our campsite at the top of a rocky hill. Our horses cropped the grass nearby. I watched the stars blink into being above us and wondered where Lark was, what she was doing. It’d barely been a day, and I already missed her so much my heart ached.

No, in a way, it’d been longer. I’d thrown myself back into my duties after realizing my self-control was worse than ever after we’d joined. It didn’t make sense. I shouldn’t feel fire igniting in my chest in a slow burn of heat just from taking a breath of her sweet chocolate and honey crackers scent. All my rage was good for was destruction—she deserved better than that.

“So,” Dad said, breaking into my thoughts. I stopped glaring at my half-eaten dinner to take another bite and looked at him through the ripple of heat and smoke over our campfire. “You finally had sex. I heard you had some difficulties.”

I swallowed wrong and considered letting the mouthful block my throat. Better for the stars to have me than to answer my dad’s unspoken question. He never actually asked questions. With his size, strength, and station, his every whim was answered without having to ask for anything.

“ Ach . Don’t choke, boy,” he grumbled.

I coughed painfully and glanced away, my face and body turning a uniform red. But then I thought about what he’d actually said. My eyes vibrated before flames replaced my pupils and my chest expanded with muscle and heat.

“Who told you? Fal?” I asked with growling menace. Tongues of fire escaped my mouth.

It had to be Fal. He’d suddenly decided that communication was vital to making Lark happy going forward. He wasn’t wrong, but the way he went about almost every kneejerk decision he had ended with one or all of the rest of the pack pissed off at him.

“Aye. Don’t worry. He didn’t give details,” Dad said. He fixed a commanding stare across the fire at me to supply said details.

I breathed plumes of smoke as I struggled with what to say next. Only when I was a little cooled down did I say, “You’ve always told me there are four ways to control the rage form.”

He nodded and listed them, as he always did. “Venting, to a degree. There’s also a good fight, the feeling of taking a life, and sex, preferably with your mate. In an emergency, a mate can also extinguish the rage, but it’s not worth the risk to a one and only.”

I felt the bite of ice on my skin from dread, and my anger cooled as I nodded in agreement. My li’l bird had had to call me back to my senses on the train before she’d even known what I was. Shameful, putting her into danger like that.

“I heard Lark had to do that for you,” he said, echoing my thoughts. I nodded again reluctantly. “For her, as your fated mate, it works the other way. She can extinguish the rage, or she can set it free even if you are perfectly calm.”

“I know,” I mumbled. Nothing else explained why I unleashed myself on her in her bedroom.

He breathed a heavy sigh. It was a sign I knew well. As his son, I wasn’t quite as intimidated by him to prattle off anything he wanted to know. Sometimes he had to ask questions. “Did you finish?” he asked briskly.

I bristled. “Aye.”

“Did you have perfect control of the rage?”

I hesitated, which was answer enough for him.

“So, you didn’t knot her, then.” It was a statement of fact.

“I was hurting her,” I answered more quietly.

“ Ach . Tell me why you think that.”

Well, she had reassured me that it’d been good for her, but… “She clawed at me,” I said.

Dad’s lips pressed together. I kept talking, sure to lose my nerve if I didn’t. “And she was moving around, not holding still. And, um, the noises she made. There was a lot of them, and they sounded pained.”

He closed his eyes, shoulders shaking. Stars, he was laughing .

“Dad!” I protested.

He rubbed a hand down his face. “Did she tell you to stop? Or make noises of obvious pain, like whimpering or keening?”

“Well…nay.”

“I’ve been remiss, apparently, by not telling you omegas are loud ,” he deadpanned.

He told me what I’d done wrong and how to fix it. I could’ve wilted from relief as I listened intently and asked a few questions. I wasn’t broken, and Lark was still the solution to my rage. In all this time, I hadn’t realized how the way my monstrous form grew to full size matched the mounting pressure of sex.

I also wasn’t doomed to hurt my li’l bird every time I made love to her. That thought had been completely unbearable. I just had to love her right the next time, and then I’d be freer to pleasure her like she deserved.

I celebrated my newfound knowledge by pulling out chunky mallows and a couple of fireproof sticks from my supply bag. Dad watched me toast a sweet with a breath of fire and eat it still bubbling with heat before he said, “Pass me some of those.” And I gladly toasted mallows with him while we chatted about easier topics.

We returned to the palace after a couple of days, and I was in much better spirits until I noticed Fal waiting for us by the stable yard. He stood out amongst the dirt and animals, primped and polished with his silver earrings glinting in the sun. The pack bond was calm, at least. Kauz and Marius were too far away for me to easily pick out what they were feeling.

“ Ach .” He was about to rope me into something. I just knew it.

After the stable hands took our horses, I hugged Dad goodbye. He lifted me off my feet, the only male able to turn around my usual affection. “Love you, Dad,” I said. He grunted back like he always did, but he was smiling slightly as he patted my shoulder and returned to his duties.

I went to tend to my mare, Rory, personally and took my time. Either Fal would go away, or he’d be standing right behind me the next time I looked, sneaking up on me like the cat he halfway resembled. I glanced up, and aye, there he was, leaning indolently against a wooden beam. “Welcome back, little brother. Learn anything?” he asked with a smirk.

I didn’t let him get my hackles up. I may have fire in my blood, but I wasn’t Marius. “Aye. What’d I miss in the meantime?”

He flicked his fangs with his tongue. Something was bothering him. “I’m glad you’re back, it’s good timing. So, it turns out one of Kauz’s friends was tailing a certain pack. When she couldn’t gain access to Kauz’s dreams to tell him something, she told my father instead, and he took his sweet time sharing the news with me.”

It took me a few moments to pick up what he meant. Kauz’s friend? Oh . He’d sent a spy, a fellow dreamlander he could communicate with at night, to follow the pack that thought they could buy access to Lark. I stepped away from my horse and balled my hands into fists, willing my anger not to rise just at the mention of those assholes. My own brothers wouldn’t tell me things if I made a habit of erupting every time.

I took a couple deep breaths and fished out a sugar cube to feed Rory. I stroked her neck and whispered, “I will let someone else take care of you for now, my girl.” Whatever it was that Fal said next…I wanted to be out of a flammable structure just in case.

The dark elf left the stables and waited for me to join him at a safe distance. Then he looked up at me and whispered, “Pack Ellisar is on the way here.”

“What?” I demanded. The rage kindled immediately, stretching my clothes, though they were built with extra room for such a moment. Billows of smoke escaped my clenched, sharpening teeth.

Fal barely blinked. He’d seen this happen enough that he was unimpressed when I couldn’t keep it together. “According to the friend, they’re going to arrive today. How do you feel about being part of the welcoming committee?” Though his expression didn’t change, I felt the shift in the pack bond. There was anger lurking under his practiced facade, and it was just as potent as mine.

“I would love to welcome them,” I answered, then dropped my voice to the closest thing I could make to a whisper. “Did Mother hear back from…”

He was already shaking his head. “I’ve asked when we’re going full Unseelie with the situation. My father thinks today, on the incoming pack. We can’t owe them even a hint of a grievance if they come here and die before Lark joins Pack Sorles.”

Brutal. If only we took the same approach with the fish. She was still sitting in a jail cell, then, if Queen Alora hadn’t written us back. “Wait, is the fishling still here?” I asked.

“You know, I haven’t given her two thoughts since we came home. I’ll ask. Perhaps she can leave today,” he said.

And that’s how, a couple hours later, Fal and I ended up on a train platform with a glum mermaid standing between us. She was going to leave on the train that delivered Pack Ellisar, killing two birds with one stone. All Lark would have to know was that we took care of the bigger issue and she wouldn’t have to see her whiny stepsister again.

Not that Laurel was whining now. In fact, she hadn’t said more than a quiet “thanks” when we told her she was going back to Thelis today and given her time to pack. With her slumped posture and downcast gaze, she was the very portrait of an enemy we’d defeated.

While I’d never really liked her, I didn’t see a point to laying her any lower than we already had. She was returning to Osme Fen without more than a few slivers to her name. It was likely the town had declared a new owner and moved on from where Cymora had left it, so there wasn’t a warm welcome awaiting her back home.

A small army of police and guards were posted around the station, dressed and armed discreetly so we wouldn’t scare any of our subjects. The moment a trio of barkfolk alphas disembarked, they would be surrounded and taken to the palace. We’d make it look as if they’d disappeared—or like they’d never been here in the first place. But they would no longer have any opportunity to trouble Lark.

I’d asked Fal what these barkfolk males even looked like. He’d answered flippantly, “Dead.” His mind was clearly fixed on someone else, and that someone was our mate. I’d told him I needed to knot her properly to get myself back under control, and he’d started whispering bedroom advice over Laurel’s head, careful to speak Serian so she had no idea what he was talking about.

So, I imagined Pack Ellisar as scraggly walking trees with faces crudely carved into their trunks. Very flammable. Very vulnerable. They’d probably be more humanoid than that, but they were going to be unmistakable, especially with the dreamlander spy signaling us.

“Are you ready for your date?” I asked, trying to distract Fal.

The pack bond pulsed with longing that I echoed immediately. We both missed her. “For the most part. I haven’t bought tickets yet, since a lot depends on how long she’s away from Neslune. How about you?”

I smiled broadly. “Her present should be arriving in a few days.”

“Oh, what is it? I got her a rock.”

I’d have been a little offended on her behalf if I didn’t know he was making light of an ancient dark elf tradition. I told him all about what I’d gotten her, too excited for it to be a secret for much longer. He nodded along, suitably impressed with my quick and meaningful acquisition.

Laurel turned and craned her head up to look at me. Some of my excitement faded as I glanced at her. I knew that thoughtful face she was making at this point. She was about to ask a question, most likely a dumb one.

“Is my mother dead?” she asked in her native Theli.

Oh, well, now that’s a kick in the gut. A reminder that for as viciously as we tore Cymora down, she still had someone relying on her for everything. “Nay,” I answered.

“Not yet, at least,” Fal said at the same time.

She stiffened with a disappointed sigh at my answer and gained a glimmer of something like hope in her eyes at Fal’s. How strange. As I drew breath to ask a follow-up question, Fal beat me to it. “I trust that someone gave you a final visit with her?”

“Yes.” She twisted her lips with displeasure. “I…I understand why…” Laurel swallowed and worked her jaw. I assumed she was choked up with emotion.

Fal watched her struggle to speak with all the sympathy of a spider eyeing a fly struggling in its web. “It must be difficult to lose her, but she has done unspeakable things to Lark. She is quite fortunate my people are past the ‘dance to death on hot coals’ method of execution. Her death will be more painless than she deserves.”

“It’s not…” She blew out a frustrated breath and stomped her foot like a child, tears welling in her eyes. Laurel’s face crumpled as she started to cry.

I exchanged a glance with my brother. He smirked, ready to deliver a finishing blow to send her away from here with a verbal knife stuck through her loss. But I hesitated and reached out to nudge him, shaking my head. I just needed a moment to think. There might be something we were missing here.

“Don’t you remember when Lark couldn’t finish her sentences either?” I asked him in Serian.

A line appeared between his brows, cutting through his pack mark. “She’s just being a brat. We saw it a hundred times on the train ride here,” he answered in kind.

It’d be easy just to accept his explanation, but I still had a niggling sense in my gut of something amiss. “Take a deep breath,” I encouraged her. “Finish your thought. Talk to me, not Fal.”

She sniffled and fixed watery sea green eyes on me. “It’s not just —” Her voice broke on another sob. Ah, stars. I hated when females cried. I awkwardly patted her atop her head, hoping she’d stop.

“Why couldn’t you all just—” she tried to ask, just to cut herself off again.

“Just what?” I asked quietly and shot a pointed look at my brother. This was just like Lark when she’d been under Cymora’s control. Our mate had experience navigating around what she could and could not say, though, and avoided choking herself on things she couldn’t utter like her stepsister was doing. A hint of a troubled frown graced the corner of Fal’s lips as he watched her.

Laurel couldn’t seem to form a coherent thought, leaving those statements hanging as the magirail we were watching vibrated from an incoming train. Our hidden allies shifted, some reaching for weapons. Fal straightened with a low growl, the mermaid forgotten.

She watched the train coast into the station with one last hiss of magic as it slowed smoothly to a stop. “So, this is it, huh?” she asked after another hiccupped sob and looked at me for confirmation. “Pack Ellisar is on that train.”

I squinted at her suspiciously, nearly knocking my spectacles askew.

“You haven’t exactly been subtle, even if you’ve been talking in another language,” she said in a wobbly voice. “I’m sorry about this.”

She drew a deep breath and began to belt out a wordless, haunting tune. It warped through the train station, threading into the ears of guards, police, and innocent passersby alike. Everyone stopped what they were doing to listen, even Fal and me.

Still singing, Laurel bent to retrieve her bags. Tears made new trails down her cheeks as she sang and sang, and the world bent to her whims. The eyes watching the train from Thelis looked away. Fal relaxed, and I surrendered to thoughtless nothingness as my eyes saw what was happening right in front of me without my mind comprehending a moment of it.

Three woodlands fae, alphas with whorled, gray-brown bark for clothes and mossy vines for hair, disembarked and looked at the frozen figures around them in bewilderment. Their leader pointed at Laurel, who approached them after wiping her face clean. She beckoned with both hands, and they walked away with her.

She spared us one last glance on the way by, and her song changed only briefly. A beautiful melody wrapped around me. When my senses returned and the station resumed its usual bustle, a trickle of warmth escaped the corner of my eye.

I dabbed away the tear, moved by something elusive, a melody that sounded a little like I understand why you were waiting, but it’s not just Lark who suffered. Why couldn’t you all just end this when you had a chance?

I watched the drop of liquid roll off my fingertip, seized by a hollow sense of alarm as the melody faded from my mind. Laurel was in danger? But…Laurel was going back to Thelis, where all Seelie belonged. She’d just gotten on the train.

I turned to Fal, who usually had all the answers, just to see his expression twisted into a troubled frown. “I’m wrong about…?” he asked himself.

“My princes,” interrupted a female voice. It belonged to a panicked-looking winged beta, who began to prostrate herself in apology. “They’ve disappeared. I don’t know how they did it.”

Fal shook off his daze and bared his fangs in a snarl. “Well, don’t just stand there,” he announced to our allies. “Three barkfolk alphas, all of the same pack. Find them! Neslune is no haven for enemies of the crown.”