Oath of the Alpha - Eva Dresden Page 0,80

of health, she needed to eat and rest more. As much as he loathed the very idea of accepting a gift from these people to care for Aida, it would take too much time to send his men out to provide the same.

Which begged the question as to why Ath’asho had not done so while Er’it remained with Aida. They needed the meat for certain, between being robbed blind by that filthy blackguard and Aida’s wild outburst running off the pack animals with half their remaining goods. His company may be small now, but they had hard miles to travel still before a search for a long-lost temple and a rite that needed performed. It would be taxing beyond measure on all of them.

Somehow, at the end of it, he would have to lay his beautiful mate upon an altar, her body recumbent on the cruel stone dais. It was what he’d sworn to do—acquire the unstoppable power the Hat’or had promised him in visions since his youth.

Er’it found the idea did not please him as it might once have. It twisted in his gut, cold and vile.

“What could I have possibly done to displease you now?” Voice thick with the tears welling in her midnight gaze, Aida became somehow smaller, curling into a tight ball as if she expected a blow at any moment as he watched on.

Her fear enraged him. He would not strike her, had not done so in what felt like an age and would not begin again, not now when they were so close to seeing all of this come to fruition. When his blade plunged deep into her flesh, carving out her still beating heart as she screamed his name, then she would beg him with those star-strewn eyes to not end her life. Er’it knew it as well as he knew his own name that she would.

“I told you to rest,” Er’it snapped, storming from the tent with all his fury precarious in its containment. It slammed around the confines of his chest, threatening to splinter bone as he advanced on his general with his lip curled in a snarl.

How dare Aida look at him so? He had been nothing but caring, tender even, these long days. Thinking his mate would understand him, no matter the circumstances, seemed a trivial fancy now. Mate, pah! Whatever this word meant, it changed nothing. For all her softness in recent days, for her yearning and laughter, Aida cared nothing more for him than she did the day he had dragged her from that dungeon.

“Your Majesty?” Ath’asho drew out the words, the lilting timber adding a question as he averted his gaze from the enraged Alpha before him.

“Get the fucking stag from them. Call for Maruk to tend her.”

“Majesty, where are you going?”

“To hunt,” Er’it bit out into the bracing wind as he stepped clear of the enchanted circle Aida’s magic had cast.

Chapter 15

Aida

Tugging the thick fur tighter around her neck, Aida tried not to broadcast her misery as the cart crunched through the heavy layer of ice covering the rutted path. Uncertain how things could have gone so wrong in so little time, she watched Er’it’s stiff back and knew she had failed by the pitying stares she caught from the others.

It wasn’t just the soldiers and mages anymore but the entire Scaora village as well. They trundled alongside the armored contingent, laughing and smiling as if all their woes were answered despite their losses. It confused Aida since they’d all stopped speaking to her. All those stares and smiles filled with sympathy yet not a soul came to utter a word.

The friendliness they’d shown her that first day vanished into thin air, leaving her more adrift than ever. Er’it’s sudden temper helped nothing. He had not spoken to her much since they’d left the strange circle of magic a fortnight past, and while Er’it didn’t outright forbid Tor’en to continue her lessons, he often stole her away or found some reason to keep her at his side. No longer encouraging her to mingle with the others, he only allowed Maruk to come near her. Even then, Er’it stood at a watchful distance, his topaz gaze narrowed as he gauged the healer’s every move. He bristled and growled if anyone else dared get too close.

Yet everything else remained the same, as if he could not abandon her entirely. He did not force himself on her, fed her by his own hand, and built strange constructs out