his forearm.
A wordless shriek of fear and frustration tore from her lungs as he denied her the only choice she had left—the final escape.
The blade bit into his flesh so cleanly it could have been a surgical cut. Only he wasn’t her intended target. A’rath snarled and tightened his grip. His fangs lengthened and she caught the telltale pattern of markings starting to appear along the sides of his neck. The beast was almost free.
“Please. Let me die. I don’t want this.”
“No.” He tore the knife from her hand. “You are not going to die. Not by your hand or anyone else’s.”
“Please don’t do this,” she begged, tears sliding down the sides of her cheeks. “I can’t do this... please. Just kill me.”
“What?” He looked at her, ignoring the blood pouring from his cut arm, his gaze locked onto her face. The markings faded from his neck as the color returned to his eyes.
She’d asked him to kill her.
She might have well asked for the moon and stars. No true alpha would kill their omega. They were to be protected and cherished, especially one as unique as her. She still had her wits and her mind was as sharp as the blade she carried.
His gaze dropped to his injured arm. It was a clean cut, but it was bleeding heavily. Too heavily. “What was on that blade?”
“Poison,” she threw the word at him like a challenge. “I’ve killed you. Better kill me while you still can.”
Human poisons didn’t worry him. Even if they did, he could hear the forced bravado in her words. “Do not lie to me.”
“Fine. It’s something to make wounds bleed longer and faster.”
He looked at the knife again. He hadn’t taken the time to really look at it until now. The blade itself was small and curved, little more than a viciously sharp hook. Almost as if it were meant for...
Xarth.
He’d seen them before, with female bodies left out in the wilderness.
“What is this? Why do you have it?” he demanded, anger dropping his voice to a low growl.
“It’s not meant to be a weapon,” her voice was soft and a little sad, her gaze still on the blade as if she was thinking of trying to grab it again. “It’s to give us a way to escape our suffering.”
“What suffering?”
“Of being what we are. Omegas. Breeding slaves.”
“You are more than that! You are the future of our race.”
She laughed bitterly. “We didn’t ask for that. Or the pain that comes with what we are. Even if we aren’t claimed, there’s pain. As omegas get older the curse gets worse. It weakens us. It’s agony. Some can’t cope and give themselves up. The rest walk into the wilderness.” Reaching down, she traced a short line across her inner thigh. “They don’t come back.”
Fury of a kind he’d never known before boiled up inside him. Not the heat of battle or the raw red of anger, but a terrible cold that turned his blood to ice in his veins.
“You.” He stopped and had to force himself to say the next word. “You kill yourselves rather than be claimed? How many! How long? What curse?”
He wanted to shake the answers out of her. He needed to cradle her close and make her swear to him she’d never do such a thing.
She tried to move back but he wouldn’t let her. “Talk.”
“Being an omega is a curse.”
Each of her soft words hit him hard.
“Even if we aren’t found and claimed, once or twice a year all choice and rational thought is removed. The pain and craving...”
She shuddered and closed her eyes.
“It drives some mad. The older we get, the harder it is to cope with. Like it’s eating us from the inside out. How long?” Her lips curved in a bitter, haunted smile. “Ever since you changed us.”
“That’s not right. Twice? Pain?” The ice receded, leaving a pit of acid churning in his gut. “You would take your own life rather than submit to my claim?”
She lay beneath him, no fight left. The tracks of tears that rolled down the side of her cheeks accused him. He frowned. She seemed... smaller... like this, and she had been tiny enough to begin with. The need to protect her washed over him, but a core of rage remained. And it demanded answers.
“Answer me, omega,” he snarled, the rough edge of frustration and command in his voice.
“Twice,” she confirmed. “For my mother and me, it comes twice a year, and it hurts.