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“Visions?” He didn’t like how she lay in his arms, every muscle tensed and poised as if she were about to flee. Shifting, he put his hand on her back and rubbed it again. “What do you mean visions?”

She shivered. “Visions of the future. It’s always something bad, and tonight I saw soldiers attacking Greta and some of your men in the woods. None of them will survive.”

Lodan remained silent. Could this be a trap? Could she somehow have plans with her brother?

Kassandra was no oracle sitting in one of the special temples of the Acropolis, she was a Sardi princess. An Omega. But if this was a trap, what was the purpose? She was telling him to keep his men and Greta from the woods in order to keep them safe.

He couldn’t believe she knew the future. “You have these visions often?”

“It’s sporadic. I went years without any when I was in the temple. Then you started warring across Anatolia, and I had dreams about that every couple of weeks. Not true visions, but impressions in dreams.”

“You claim you saw me? If that’s true, why didn’t you hide when my men came to get you?”

She shook her head. “I never see anything about my own future. All my visions of you were vague images of battling.” She paused. “I never really saw your face, only the gold armor.”

“Are those the only times you’ve seen me?”

She didn’t answer.

“Tell me.”

She grew even more tense in his arms. “When I touched the scar on your hip, I saw how you got it. It’s the only time I’ve ever had a vision of the past.”

It wasn’t a lie; he’d long ago learned how to detect when she lied, so she believed what she said, and she had come down with that odd fit while touching him. It couldn’t be visions. She had some kind of brain condition.

She sighed. “No one believes me, so I wouldn’t expect you to, either.”

“Even the great oracles speak in riddles. No one can truly know the future.”

Pulling back, she stared up at him with blue eyes that seemed overly large in her face. “You didn’t walk off your boat like the cook said earlier. You crawled. It was storming badly, and you lay in the sand all night until the older man came to rescue you.”

He shrugged. “The tale has been told many different ways.” Although her description was the accurate one.

She reached up as if to touch his face, then drew her hand back. “You had longer hair, and the man who came to help you had one green eye and one blue.”

He froze. Chiron did have one blue eye and one green, and that wasn’t well known. She nestled back into his chest, and without realizing what he was doing, he let out a low purr that had nothing to do with seduction. She nuzzled him, and her body melted into his.

He kept purring until her breathing calmed, and he was certain she lay asleep. He should put her back in her own bed on the floor, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. When she was scared, she’d reached for him, and he hadn’t minded it.

She liked all his touches, not just the ones for pleasure.

While reading the poem earlier, she’d almost won, steeling herself against the pleasure he knew he was bringing her. It wasn’t until at the end, when he stroked her hair, that she finally broke for the third time. All from a caress, and not in one of the pleasurable places.

When she softened and finally let her guard down, he felt how starved she was for affection. Real affection, not Omega pleasure. He should only be focusing on feeding her lust, but he found he liked when she melted at a simple caress.

He was still awake as dawn broke, and faint light crept in through the tent flap, casting a faint pinkish glow into the room. Kassandra jerked awake, gasped, then scrambled away from him. He shut his eyes to pretend he was asleep. What would she do?

He opened one lid a fraction.

She tucked her knees under her and glanced at him, her cheeks pink.

Yes, Princess, you slept clutching me most of the night.

Instead of returning to her pile of blankets on the floor, she stared at his nude chest. He preferred sleeping completely naked but had kept his pants on since she arrived. At first, he considered walking naked so she’d get used to him, but despite her going toe-to-toe with him, he sensed her inexperience and decided to move slowly. It was why he hadn’t pressed anything with her after the poem. She wasn’t ready yet.

Slowly, her hand stretched out.

He bit back a purr. She wanted to touch him.

Her fingertips, so light he could barely feel them, whispered across his lower stomach. She let out a small, purring kind of sound.

His cock reacted immediately, and his pants became uncomfortably tight. She noticed, and her gaze flew up to his face. As if scalded, she snatched her hand away. Now, her cheeks flamed red.

He opened his eyes. “You like gawping at me.”

“No. I find you deficient in appearance.” Her blush deepened. Lie.

“Keep touching, Omega. I’ll return the favor and study you.” He stretched and placed his arms above his pillow.

She moved away. “I’ve been studied enough, thank you. And received the report about my flaws often enough that I don’t need one from you.”

“Your flaw is that you’re a Sardi.” He frowned. “What other flaws? Like that your hair is ridiculously long? Greta told me how much she had to work to take care of it. Why indulge in such nonsense? Cut it short.”

An odd expression flashed across her face, and despite thinking she was easy to read, he didn’t know what it meant.

Her eyes flashed. “My hair was a mess because your guards dragged me for two days with my hands bound. Normally it’s not such a problem.”

“What have you been told are your flaws, then?”

“Well, I was sent to the temple to learn silence. I barely spoke the last four years.” Her lower lip stuck out a fraction. She did that when she was annoyed. Another one of her tells. “At the temple, they always said, ‘solitude and silence are the best suppliance. Idle chatter leads to thoughts that don’t matter.’” She chanted both sayings in a singsong way.

He almost laughed and bit it back. This Omega make him laugh? No. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Eyebrows raised, she nodded. “I agree.”

“So, you have four years of bottled-up words.” Lodan stood, and her pupils dilated slightly. She liked what she saw. “Great. Lucky me.”

The Omega sniffed. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Lodan began dressing for the day, strapping on his armor. “Conversation isn’t what I want from you, anyway.” He paused and gestured to the bed. “Do you want to present yourself and see what I mean?” It was only a barb to get under her skin, but he instantly thought about her naked on the bed. On all fours and arching her hips for him. His cock, now tormented with over a week of unreleased desire, hardened further.

“I think I’ll pass.” Her nose wrinkled. “I really don’t see the appeal of Alphas.”

Her pupils were still dilated as she watched him dress, giving lie to her words again. A lightness expanded in his chest, and he felt a strange urge to chuckle again. This conversation with the Omega was the most amusement he’d had in ages. “Give up your false protests. You slept in bed with me of your own choice. No games. No contest.”

“You were warm last night. That’s all. Like my own personal oven. That was a nice change. I haven’t been warm while I slept in a long time.” Her lips tightened as if she were upset she’d spoken her words aloud.

Suilani’s temple was high in the mountains, where the icy wind blew directly from the north all year. “They didn’t give you blankets at this temple?”

“‘The more uncomfortable the flesh, the better praying success,’” she said in the same singsong voice.

“Whoever came up with these rhymes needs to meet my sword.”

He saw her lips twitch before she picked up the skins on the floor and folded them on the bed.

“I’ll send in Greta or a Beta to get you what you need this morning and then?—”

“Greta!” Kassandra jolted with alarm. “Don’t let her go into the forest today, Lodan.” She hurried over and grabbed his arm, eyes wide and frightened.

She’d used his name for the first time, even if he hadn’t given her permission. He liked it on her lips.

“Greta goes into the forest with a team for her protection all the time.” The princess was really caught up in this nightmare she’d had. “She’ll be fine.”

The Omega’s face fell and shuttered. It flashed a sort of disappointed acceptance, like a submission. He knew submission, but she wasn’t submitting to him. This was different. It was a weary acceptance.

He hated it.

Shaking her off, he exited the tent. Fog made everything fuzzy and murky, softening the outlines of the warriors breaking down camp. Approaching the tent next door, his brow furrowed. She couldn’t have visions, right?

“Xander,” he called out as he entered the neighboring tent. His commander was scowling over a map on a small table, his bed and clothing already rolled and ready to be packed.

“Damn roads are a mess. We have two wagons with broken axles?—”

“Did Greta go off this morning?”

He paused and looked up. “You know how she is. She informed me she thinks her favorite mushrooms grow here, and she needs to go collect them. I told her to be back in an hour or we’re leaving without her.”

“Where? Who went with her?”

Xander waved his hand haphazardly. “To the west, I think. She has Thoas and his guards protecting her.”

Thoas was one of his top commanders. He’d keep Greta safe.

The Omega’s face from when she’d woken in the middle of the night flashed back to him. “You ever met a soothsayer? A real one?”

Xander looked at him with such puzzlement, Lodan almost laughed for the second time that morning.

“An oracle? No. Only those people who open up frogs and birds and talk about how the innards tell us the will of the gods and goddesses.” He shrugged. “It never amounts to much.”

His experiences were the same, but still, something felt different about Kassandra. “I’m going to go check on Greta. Keep the Omega under close watch until I return. We’ll leave in an hour.”

A chest sat at the foot of his commander’s table. Crafted of dark rowan wood with dark metal rivets pounded along its front, it was so heavy it took two men to carry it. It was where Lodan kept his sword since he wasn’t going to leave it within the Omega’s reach. “Put the Sardi in a covered wagon today. The temperature is dropping, and the wind is picking up.”

Xander’s lips twisted into a sneer. “Make her walk. I cleared a space for the other two in one of them already, and I don’t want Sardi taint near the good Omegas. It might upset them.”

Lodan shot him a cool gaze and lifted his sword from the chest. The golden metal glinted as he put it in its leather scabbard and strapped it to his back.

Xander grumbled and rolled up the worn map. “All right. I’ll figure it out.”

“I’ll return with Greta soon.” Lodan stepped into the fog and strode toward the west.