Page 1 of Sins of His Wrath (Myth of Omega: Wrath #2)

CHAPTER ONE

D arkness smothered Naya in waves.

In the moments when it receded, a burning pain seared through her, blinding and numbing almost every sense. She couldn’t tell where she was or who she was with, only that every part of her ached. Fragmented, distant voices bled through, but she couldn’t make sense of them. Each time the pain faded, she was relieved to drown back into the darkness.

But after a time of this repeated cycle, the voices didn’t fade.

“Naya.” It was Mama’s voice, urgent and fearful. But that couldn’t be right… Mama was never afraid.

Naya tried to respond, but she couldn’t feel anything, not her body nor her mouth. Confusion jumbled her thoughts.

“Naya,” Mama said. “You have to heal yourself.”

Naya’s mind lurched in different directions, unable to make sense of what Mama was talking about.

“Heal, Naya. You’re the only one who can do it.”

Naya tried to reply, to explain that she didn’t understand, but she didn’t have a mouth to speak with. She didn’t have a body to direct, yet she felt so much pain. How could that be?

Mama’s voice faded again for a moment, and then a sudden blast of cool surged through her, soothing the pain that crowded her. Naya sighed in relief, her mind clearing.

“Naya,” Mama said again, her voice firm. “You have to heal yourself. The wasteland’s magic has seized your body. Only you can stop it.”

Naya sent out her will, searching for the magic Mama was talking about, and… it was everywhere. Thick and strong, abundant and powerful, it clung to every inch of her being so securely, she couldn’t separate herself from it. And it burned. It was eating away at her, causing a pain she couldn’t bear. Pulling her mind into focus, Naya carefully reached for it.

Just like the magic in her forest, it was slow to respond, slowly becoming aware of her imposing will, but unlike her forest magic, it resisted. Wild and unpredictable, it fought her, lurching in directions she didn’t expect, or burrowing deeper into her as she tried to control it. She wrestled with it in a timeless void of darkness, and eventually with great reluctance, it finally submitted to her will.

Naya held the magic as still as she could so she could examine it. Even though she was feeling it through her magical awareness, it was so potent and destructive it had a blinding quality to it, like looking directly at the sun—and felt as powerful. It was intent on destroying every bit of energy it came across and was tearing her apart. If she tried to pry it away, she wasn’t sure she’d survive.

Summoning a healing energy, she focused on healing the parts of her it was destroying, rebuilding not only her physical tissue, but the energy associated with mental and emotional clarity.

As her healing magic began to repair, she kept a firm grip on the wild magic. It tried latching itself onto the healing magic to absorb that energy too, but she forced it into submission until she’d healed herself.

When she began prying it away from her being, agonizing pain raged through her, like she was tearing her own body apart. She grit her teeth, forcing her screams to stay in her throat as she focused on extracting the magic out of her. The magic writhed and jerked, intent on staying locked onto her in any way it could. Naya clamped her mind into total focus and worked carefully, pulling every strand away.

Finally, the potent, vibrant energy released itself and her senses returned—she could wriggle her toes, move her legs, and taste blood in her mouth. Sweat trickled down her face, and air rushed through her lungs as though she’d run the length of the palace fifty times.

Opening her eyes, shock caught her breath in her throat. A tiny sliver of white fire crackled and revolved in the air before her, thin tendrils snapping out like a tiny, angry contained storm.

“You did it.” Mama sounded both relief and astonished. She stroked Naya’s hair and leaned in and placed her forehead against the side of her face. “Thank the skies you’re alive.”

Keeping a careful hold on the white fire, Naya glanced around the room. She was strapped to one of the beds in a healing room in the palace, but it had been positioned upright. Mama stood on her right and on each side stood her father’s Talent-crafters, the female Alpha twins. Strangely, their eyes were closed, as though they were concentrating hard on something.

Exhaling a long breath and looking over her shoulder, Mama threw out, “What now?”

Naya peered behind her to see an older woman wearing a hooded cloak, wisps of gray hair curled around the edge of her hood.

“She needs to send it to the wastelands.” The woman’s voice was croaky with a strong timbre, like an old bark—dry but fiercely brittle. “That is the only place it can go where it won’t hurt anyone.”

Mama shook her head. “That’s too far. How is she supposed to send it across such a distance? It’s basically on the other side of the empire.”

“She is strong enough,” the woman said. She stepped closer, staring at Naya while everyone else kept their eyes on the wild white magic hanging in the air. “In fact, she’s the only one who can do it.”

Something about her was familiar, but Naya couldn’t place it. She hadn’t seen her around the palace or even out in the empire, yet she had definitely seen her before.

“All right.” Mama seemed to steel herself beside her. “Naya, see if you can move it. You need to get it to the wastelands.”

Turning her attention back to the white fire, Naya sent her will out to their surroundings. If she could push the magic out of the room, then beyond the castle, that would be a start to getting it to where it belonged. While she could always sense and control magic at a greater distance than everyone else, she’d never pushed herself to reach across such a vast distance. It seemed impossible, but she had to try.

Feeling the air beyond the wall, she began to move the white fire away from her. It sparked, writhing even wilder, pushing against her hold, fighting to come back to her. Its tendrils crackled across the room in a series of bright flashes and it lurched toward Mama.

Fear clutched Naya’s chest. She opened her mouth to tell the old women that it was too strong, and Mama might get hurt, but there was blood dripped over her bottom lip and down to her chin. So she closed it and shook her head firmly instead. She couldn’t do it.

The woman’s dark brown eyes stayed locked on hers as she moved closer to stand next to Mama. “You need to stop thinking about your magic like everyone else. You are connected to everything in this empire. Everything .” Her eyes burned into Naya’s with an emotion she couldn’t place. “Your power and reach is much larger than you think.”

Naya grit her teeth and forced her voice out as blood poured over her bottom lip. “It’s too strong.”

“It is not too strong for you,” the woman said firmly. “You need to change your perspective. Controlling this magic has nothing to do with strength, not for you. Use your awareness—if you are aware, you can touch. Broaden your senses, take everything in. Make everything else small and then look at the magic again.”

Naya’s brows furrowed. If you are aware, you can touch? She didn’t understand half of what the old woman was saying.

Mama squeezed Naya’s hand. “You can do it, Naya,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Just clear your mind and try. Start from the beginning, like when you were first learning.”

Naya nodded, swallowing the blood slowly filling her mouth. Since she’d learned magic from before the age of five, it was so instinctive that she never thought about how she did it anymore. But Mama was telling her to go back to basics.

Taking a long moment, Naya examined the tiny sliver of magic; it was jittery and unsteady, powerful but erratic. Keeping the magic in place, she sent her awareness out, spreading in all directions, ballooning to include everything in her vicinity and beyond.

Awareness had been the first thing Mama had taught her. It was impossible to control magic without first honing one’s ability to sense it. Using her awareness was like seeing everything around her through her mind’s eye, but it wasn’t a visual sense, it was a way of feeling what existed around her. Magic existed in and around everything and had a vibration to it, like the way she could feel wind or rain or sunshine, but magic also had different moods, qualities, sounds, and textures. Depending on where it was and what it was embedded or attached to, and only Omegas could sense it like this, through their awareness.

Like most Omegas, Naya had always focused on and used the magic that immediately surrounded her, but the wastelands weren’t near.

She inhaled sharply as her awareness stretched even farther, taking her mind beyond the castle and out into Ashens. She could feel the city—its pulse and mood—in the same way she’d always felt it from her favorite spot in the forest. Pushing higher, she went beyond the city and out into rural Ashens, over the mountains, past the villages, and across the border into Fengar.

To the west, the White Ocean was a cool, slow vibration.

“Keep going,” the old woman murmured. “Narrow your view to the landmass, don’t go over the ocean.”

Naya drew her awareness back from the White Ocean and the countries surrounding Ashens, and instead pushed it farther to the east, across the Fengish Sea and into the southeast of the empire, across Cillford and Saderthorne, until finally, she reached the border of the wastelands.

Naya stilled her awareness, steadying herself. This was incredible. She could sense everything, and the world was alive and thrillingly vibrant, with multiple contrasting vibrations existing across the empire.

Naya took a moment to acclimate to the overwhelming sensation. It was a strange feeling, being simultaneously aware of the entire empire at once. She could sense the busyness of the castle, even Papa pacing down the corridor outside her room, agitated and tense, while her forest was as slow and calm as always. The Fengish Sea was lively and swaying, while the whole country of Cillford hummed in a steady pulse.

Naya kept her breath smooth and calm in order to apply her will. While her awareness allowed her to sense magic, her will gave her the ability to affect it. But first, magic had to submit to her will before she could control it. Simple magic was instantaneously easy for her to control, but dense, more complex magic took time. Having practiced with varied magical energies during her childhood training, sometimes alongside other Omegas, Naya had always known she had a powerful will, but she’d never done anything like this before.

Finally, she pushed her awareness out to the wastelands. The magic there roamed wild and free, swirling through the barren region with tremendous force. In her nightmares it was an inescapable rocky trap she could never be rid of—a torturous malevolent enemy that insisted on harming her innocent little sister and yet now… now its energy felt no different from the wildness of the ocean or mountains. No angrier than a whipping wind or the fiery heat of an enthusiastic sun. Strangely, there was something fascinating about it—powerful, deadly and majestic, not unlike her forest.

The erratic crackling nature of the magic in the wasteland matched the sliver she’d ripped from her own body, but the magnitude of the Wastelands made it feel small; in fact, it felt tiny and insignificant. Without hesitation, Naya grabbed ahold of the sliver and pushed it toward the wastelands.

The white energy blasted away from her, through the wall and swept into the sky, twisting and twirling in the air.

Mama and the twin Talent-Crafters gasped, but their voices felt far away. Naya focused on pushing the wild magic to the wastelands, keeping it high above the empire, where it could cause no harm to citizens.

As soon as it approached the Saderthorn/wastelands border, it lurched away from her, drawn by an innate impulse to join the rest of the magic, but she held onto it, waiting until it was within the region before she released it. Watching the sliver get swallowed up, she relaxed, relief overcoming her.

The vibrations of the empire became more pronounced, drawing her attention in different directions.

“All right, Naya, pull yourself back.” Mama’s voice seemed far away. “Take it slowly.”

Naya pulled her awareness back into herself, slowly retreating from the varied sensations of the empire. As it retreated, the lessening vibrations tingled just outside of her awareness, like an echo that she couldn’t hear, but she kept going until her awareness was once again limited to the room.

She exhaled heavily, her body going limp from the effort, but then the echo surged, seeming to come from all directions.

“Take time to calm your mind,” the unfamiliar voice said. “You need to detach yourself from the sensation. It might take some time, but breathe deep and slow.”

Naya sucked in a breath and exhaled again.

“Too quick,” the voice said. “Slow and steady… deep and slow. Forget everything else. Look inward.”

Naya tried to follow, but it took a long while before she could steady her breath. Breathing deeply and slowly, the strange silent echoes softened until they were no stronger than the thud of her heartbeat.

Finally, she opened her eyes and was shocked to see that the wall in front of her had changed. It looked old and crumbly, as though it could collapse at any moment. In a flash, she remembered the building, the brand-new building in Akoro’s land that had looked so old and been about to collapse. And then she remembered everything.

Akoro.

Horror gripped her, and she abruptly shifted forward, but a sharp, excruciating pain exploded on her face. Crying out, she pressing her hand to the side of her face, but that made it worse. Blood spurted through her fingers and she pulled her hand away. It was slick with blood.

“Naya,” Mama said sharply, grabbing her shoulder and pushing her back down. “You have to stay still. The twins are stanching the bleeding and relieving the pain, but we haven’t found a way to heal it. You have to stay completely still.”

Naya looked at the twins. Their eyes were open now and they watched her. As she shifted back into place, she could feel their magic directed at her face.

“We need to get out of this room,” she mumbled. “That wall could collapse at any minute.”

Mama whipped her head back and shouted, “Get Drocco.”

Naya couldn’t turn to look, but she heard someone leave the room.

“What happened, Naya?” Mama asked firmly. “Where have you been? Who is coming?”

Her mind jumped to Akoro, to everything that happened; how she’d been taken, the torture, the threat to the empire, the realization Akoro was her mate, her heat, the way she’d escaped… Akoro was most definitely coming after her. “How long has it been?”

“Just over an hour,” Mama said. “You appeared in your father’s office through a powerful portal. The whole wing of the palace looks like this now.” She gestured to the crumbling wall in front of them. “You warned him that someone was coming and then you fell unconscious. That’s when we realized that the white fire had attached itself to you and was slowly ripping you apart. We don’t know how it happened, or how you got such an extensive face injury. You need to explain to us so we can try to heal you.”

“Nothing can heal that.” The old woman’s voice came from behind Mama, but this time she was farther back in the corner of the room and Naya couldn’t see her. “It is a complicated spell I haven’t seen before.”

Naya nodded, but then froze as pain surged and a gush of blood spurted onto her upper arm. “It’s true. It’s a magical wound.” She had to speak slowly, and even then tinges of pain clawed up her face. “He used a magical knife and carved my face, but the way they use magic is different… It’s part of their culture and based on proximity. I fully don’t understand it.”

“Who did it?” Mama asked.

Before Naya could answer, the door burst open and Papa’s heavy footsteps crossed the room.

The Talent-Crafter twin on Naya’s left side moved down to make way for him at her bedside, his face contorted in rage and his body tense. It struck Naya again how much older he seemed. More gray had spouted along the hair at his temples and his beard had grown bigger than she’d ever seen before. He must have been more worried than she’d imagined.

“Tell me everything.” His deep voice was tight and controlled, and there was a fire in his eyes that suddenly reassured her. “Who is coming? Where is he from and how the fuck did he take you?”

“He took me from my forest,” Naya muttered, the shame and annoyance still stinging her at the memory. “His land is very far from us—not part of the Known Lands. It’s a completely different place. Dry. Lots of desert land. The days there are nights here.”

“The Northern Lands,” Mama breathed.

Naya glanced up at her, confused. She’d never heard of such lands. “What? Do you know it?”

“We need to talk to Kardos,” Mama said to Papa.

“We need to gather all the rulers of the Known Lands,” Papa corrected. “We all have a vested interest in this, but not before we prepare for their arrival.”

“So you know about them?” Naya asked in disbelief, rotating her eyes between Mama and Papa. “You knew they would try to conquer our empire, and you didn’t tell me?”

Her words snapped both of their attention back to her. “What did you say?” Mama whispered.

Impossibly, Papa’s whole body hardened even more. “Is that what they are intending to do?” he asked quietly. “Conquer our empire?”

Naya nodded and then froze again at the pain from the slightest of movements.

Papa growled. “What the fuck makes them think they can do that?”

A raspy, croaking laugh came from the corner of the room.

“What the fuck is she doing in here?” Papa thundered, turning toward the old woman.

“I had to bring her,” Mama said, though she sounded unamused. “I needed someone who understands the magic of the wastelands to help Naya.”

“And yet her face is still carved up and heavily bleeding,” Papa said tightly. “How exactly did she help?”

“I helped her direct her power in ways she should have been learning since she was a child,” the woman retorted. Her scratchy voice was filled with the same amount of malice as Papa’s.

She moved closer, keeping a wide berth between herself and Mama as she moved into Naya’s view. Based on the snarl on both of their faces, Papa hated this woman, and the feeling was mutual.

“I never would have had to help her at all if you’d been more accepting of what she is and allowed her to develop her power to the full extent of her abilities,” the woman added.

“She is the most powerful Omega in the Known Lands,” Papa shot back. “She needs no direction from kidnappers and breeders, especially after everything you did?—”

“Everything I did?” The woman’s face contorted in disgust. “I fed her magic when she needed it most! I kept her, and every other Omega in my care, strong and independent. I made them realize the true strength they had, with no need for Alphas like you. I and the other Mothers kept them alive and protected for decades.”

Suddenly, things fell into place. This woman was one of the notorious Mothers—the elderly women who were behind the disappearance of Omegas all those years ago. From what Naya remembered from history, they had hidden in the wastelands, the one place in the land that no one would go, which was obviously why this Mother knew so much about the magic there. They’d learned how to live in such a dangerous place, even if they couldn’t control the magic.

The woman pointed at Naya. “All you have done is make her weak. She could have been doing much more for your empire and the Known Lands, instead of being a token representative of Omegas like your wife. There is still so much she doesn’t know?—”

“Anything she needs to know will not be learned from you.”

“That is a mistake,” the woman spat. “Your hatred of us has left your child—the whole Eastern Lands—at a disadvantage for all these years, and now comes a new Land that embraces it, and uses it in a much more sophisticated way,” she said, gesturing to Naya’s face. “How are you going to fight that?” Her eyes were bright, glaring at Papa. “Since when was the sword ever a suitable challenge against magic?” She snorted, her face contorting, turning ugly. “When they come with their magic to take everything you have taken from others, you will learn the true?—”

“Mother Freya,” Mama snapped, “that’s enough.” She turned toward the door again and said to the guard, “Take the Mother back to her room.”

Papa glared at the Mother as she left, but as soon as the door closed, the palpable tension swept out of the room with her. When he turned back to Naya, his hard eyes roamed her blood-smeared face but softened when they reached her eyes.

“I missed you, Papa,” she said softly, relief chasing the receding tension she’d felt since she’d returned.

“I missed you, too, my fierce warrior,” he said, leaning forward to press his forehead against hers. “Now, tell me who I need to kill.”