The Alpha of Bleake Isle

Man, I just loved this. Utterly loved it. I'm a fan of Kathryn Moon, so I was excited to jump right in to this new series, and I was not disappointed.

This is a sweet omegaverse series - alphas, betas, omegas, knots, ruts, heats. No RH - I think this might have been the first omegaverse I've read that was not RH, honestly. So that was a fun change.

The book is overall extremely sweet and delicious, with lots of steam and low drama. No drama with the couple, really ... just a lovely unfolding of their relationship. Some drama with the douches in town, but it's really a sidebar. This book is about this couple and them finding themselves, their hearts, their lives together ... and digging up truths that were buried in history, likely due to some patriarchal bullshit.

Because it's not a great thing to be an omega dragonkin in this world. They're outnumbered by betas, and so they are treated like prized possessions. They're essentially auctioned off at a selection ceremony every 10 years. Women have no power, no right to refuse. They're broodmares, and birthing dragonkin is extremely difficult, with mothers frequently not surviving (especially if the child is male, and thus born with wings). The betas that have power in the village generally don't care about the women at all - they have a duty to bear children, and that's that. They're expected to die in the doing, and everyone accepts this as how things are.

Alright, the rest of this is going in a spoiler tag --

But it turns out they're not supposed to be that way. In the Alpha's library, Mairwen comes across accounts of mates - omegas who were bitten by their alphas in a claiming, and something in that claiming changes them. They get stronger, they live the long lifespan of their mates (apparently male dragonkin live like 3 times as long as women), and they hardly ever die in childbirth. They also go into heat more often, rather than the once-every-10-years rut, so mated pairs have more children overall. And the best part - they transform, gaining wings of their own, and the ability to shift into a full dragon. Though that part doesn't always happen - the claiming bite alone doesn't confer it. It seems that political claimings don't result in the dragon transformation. Only true claimings do - it sounds, from the context in the book, that that is when the dragon and the human sides both wish to mate the omega. Like, that claiming seems to share some of the essence, the magic unlocking the dragon within the omega dragonkin.

Mairwen finds that mating was banned a long time ago, and someone made a diligent attempt to erase it from history in what I can only assume was a feat of patriarchal bullshit. It meant women were pushed down from being equals - partners, mates, with strength of their own through the dragon magic - into being possessions. I hope we get some detail on how and why that happened. I have to assume, honestly, that it was because someone wanted to erase mated pairs battling together - how much harder would it be to overthrow an alpha if he had a mate that could also shift into dragon form and spit fire? If only true claiming - i.e., utter selfless love - creates that ability, I'd imagine most egomaniacal douchebags are incapable (because they don't love anyone as much as they love themselves), and they'd want to limit the ability of anyone else to form a pair so they can hold on to power.

I'm super excited to see how this plays out across the rest of the series. The author says the next dragon alpha featured with be Torian, a friend of the MMC in this book. I can't wait!