14

  Breath held, Brenya pried the loose plate free, sliding the square, as silently as she might, to the side. It was dim in the converted storage space, a single unreliable source of light offering a low, unsteady glow—changing color and output while doing little to break through the shadows.

  Illuminated by that scant flicker, Brenya found…

  A single cell.

  A single prisoner.

  No guard posted within the room.

  Brown tangles trailing toward the ground, she ignored that the Beta had seen her, how he stared, using her focus instead to absorb every detail an upside-down room might provide.

  The stink of Jacques's anger lingered in his absence, as did the scent of her slick—slick he’d rubbed into his skin one of the several times he had mounted her earlier that day.

  It was not a pleasant smell.

  Yet, it was nothing to the horror of the unacceptable design Jules Havel had been locked inside.

  The haphazardly constructed containment would have led to reassignment, had any engineering grunt from Palo Corps installed the travesty. The entire construct of Jules’s prison was one massive flaw in workmanship. A sheet of the amorphous metal that made up the “glass” of the Dome had been assaulted by a drill, pinned to concrete with screws. Screws! No human eye might see them, but undoubtedly each drilled hole was surrounded by a mass spider web of microscopic cracks.

  These were incredibly strong yet brittle fabrications.

  They required the perfect nest to fit into their surroundings. They were built to melt into one another.

  That is why, from outside, the Dome looked as if it were one solid half-sphere of glass. A gently curved, elegant construction of painstakingly crafted pieces… as if the Dome itself were one organism.

  To have drilled screws through a single panel to hold those plates in place? An immediate failure in the integrity of the entire structure. To expect screws to hold the weight of that microscopically cracking panel was sheer stupidity of the most insulting sort.

  What a waste and ruin of an excellent resource.

  Had the Beta behind the glass taken the time to test his cage, he would have learned that enough force near either wall would damage his containment to a point it would have eventually shattered.

  The clarity of that glass, the lack of a single fingerprint, a sure sign Ambassador Jules Havel had not attempted to fight his way out.

  He allowed what was being done to him.

  Why?

  When her eyes abandoned a studious assessment of his cell, she found him waiting. Brenya had seen that specific shade of blue before—the flashing indigo of Jules Havel’s eyes—at the center of a lightning strike. It had been one of the most catastrophic storms to smash against the Dome. Two long days, it rained upon her home, while she worked without rest, reinforcing a great deal of damage from the inside of the glass.

  It was the blue of impending destruction, Jules saying nothing so loudly in that dead-eyed stare that she knew he was preparing to do something terrible.

  A willing prisoner who starved voluntarily.

  And it was her duty to her people to convince him to do otherwise.

  Setting golden tools back between her teeth, Brenya poured out of the hole she had created in the ceiling. Unfolding until her body was in alignment for an easy landing.

  Fingers setting her free of the cramped space, she fell, alighting softly in a crouch.

  Glancing up, the single flickering source of light was revealed, and Jules Havel was forgotten.

  On the wall of his cell, every last ugly inch of Brenya’s naked form was on display in morbid obscenity—her body writhing while it was forcibly dragged down a cock that didn’t fit. Until it did.

  How tiny she was in comparison to the Alpha who bounced her on his cock. The man who raped her. Yet in the projection, Brenya threw back her head and arched her spine, as if inviting the villain deeper. The expression was a nightmare of desire: parted, quick sucks of air, telling moans, and eyes with pupils so huge the brown of her eyes was unseen.

  Gold utensils fell from Brenya’s teeth, clanging against standard concrete as they bounced about her naked toes.

  “Don’t look at it, Brenya.”

  How could she possibly look away?

  Hands with the power to climb across the side of a palace, to have found and held the cable of a moving lift, crept around her middle. As if she might hold in the shame.

  The woman in the ongoing display of sexual aggression enjoyed herself. Rocking her hips in time with the onslaught, bracing and angling so labia stretched and smeared slick down a pulsating male organ, displaying her engorged clitoris for the Alpha to address.

  How could she have done such things when she reviled Jacques so deeply? Hair wild, chest heaving, hips circling as if starved for more… she invited the attention of the very thing she loathed. How could she have behaved in such a way, when Jacques did what he did?

  Twin tears warmed Brenya’s cheeks, and her breath caught on an uneven inhale.

  “Look at me.” Behind the glass, Jules approached. “Look at me, Brenya.”

  What difference would that make?

  When she failed to obey, his voice dropped in pitch, becoming terrifying. “He can make you think it's pleasure—an unfair biological advantage.”

  That moaning, unrestrained creature… was a betrayal to Brenya’s very being as that hideous part of her came on a burgeoning knot. Shaking as if she had touched a livewire, the muscles in her abdomen rippling, the projection’s belly began to gently expand.

  Gaping at the projection, wetness chose that moment to trickle from between her bare legs. There was always something dripping out of her, because Jacques shot deep, and he shot often enough that her very womb had adapted to drink down the deluge.

  Old and new seed was in her, growing more liquid by the hour and escaping in a telling, awful trail in that very moment right down her thigh. And the Beta had seen.

  Pressing her legs together as if that might actually hold it in, Brenya turned wet honey eyes to the prisoner, waiting for the rebuke she deserved.

  Jules beckoned her closer. “Your neck is bleeding.”

  Fingertips landed on the angry bite mark, red fluid making a lazy drip to her collarbone. Jules had bit her there, watching with those unnerving eyes as she traced the shape his teeth had left in her skin.

  Licking dry lips, unsure where to begin, Brenya took a step closer… but could find no words to begin. Not when he looked so livid.

  So, he spoke for her. “This is where you beg me to spare the people of Bernard Dome.”

  Exactly. She had made her way to Ambassador Jules Havel for that reason alone.

  Breathless, she edged another step nearer, drinking him down, searching his body for signs of abuse. “From the moment my life was infected by Jacques Bernard, he has inflicted pain upon me every single day. Resisting led to no alteration in this pattern. Surrender led to no change. Tonight, he told me he hurts me on purpose so I will fight back, because I did not know I was supposed to touch him when he mounted me. I promise you a life with him will be greater than any torture you might think I deserve for what my actions did to you.”

  He didn’t move. He didn’t emote. But he conveyed an ocean of danger. “You could kill him.”

  Shaking her head, silent tears fell, and she confessed something horrible. “Should Jacques fall, Ancil will take power… and he is far more terrible. Already, he seeks to kill his first wife and newborn baby, so they can be replaced with one of the Omegas you brought here and the fetus now growing in her womb. I cannot allow that man to become Commodore just because it hurts when….”

  Brenya’s eyes floated back to the projection, one that had begun replaying, and she thought she might vomit right then and there.

  Forcing herself to look away, she met the Beta’s unsettling stare and said, “I am more sorry than I can say, Ambassador Havel. When I stole your ship, it never occurred to me that you might be on it. What was done to you is the greatest shame I will ever know. If you want to kill me, my life is yours, but first, let me help you.” Fingers working the knots she had created in the stolen shirt, the parcel of food she brought was set free. “And yes, I beg you for mercy for my people, and even further, mercy for my friends held captive so I won’t misbehave. They do not deserve to be hurt. Should Jacques find out what I have done here before I can get to them, someone very dear to me will die in a horrible way.”

  “Who?” The question was soft, glowing blue eyes holding her captive.

  “I am forbidden to speak his name.”

  Another step and the Beta was right before her, only glass between them. “A lover?”

  Her confession was a whisper. “A friend.”

  He moved with the precision of a panther, all easy grace and coiled violence, to lean against the glass and smirk.

  It was an interesting face, one she studied as she asked, “Is it true you destroyed Thólos Dome?”

  A grin caught his lips. “Yes.”

  “Did you invade Greth?”

  Again. “Yes.”

  A sad laugh, weary and broken, fell from her lips. “To think, the Commodore believes a pair-bond will force you to do everything in your power to keep me safe. And therefore, all of Bernard Dome will be protected from… you.”

  Her laughter died. Not because the stoic, staring Beta stood unmoving as he absorbed all she did. It was because none of this was funny. “Like Jacques, you are under no restraint from causing me harm. Pair-bond or no, you would do so in full understanding of your actions. You were not contained with his ploy. Instead, he has unleashed you on a population who should not be held accountable for my crimes and Jacques’s cruelty.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched up once more, a contrived expression that conveyed nothing, because the man felt nothing. “You are right. I would hurt you without restraint.”

  Melting into the glass between them, letting it bear her weight, Brenya shut her eyes to all of it. “I find it reassuring.”

  Voice soft, he ordered, “Look at me, Brenya.”

  Lashes lifting, she obeyed.

  He too pressed against the glass, as if there were nothing between them. As if his hands were already around her throat. And then he whispered as if his breath might warm her ear. “Let me out, and I will hurt you all you like.”

  A strange shiver left the tiny hairs on the back of her neck to rise.

  Everything, from the fall of his brown hair, the shape of his ear, the height of his cheekbones, the cruelty of his mouth, to a neck that was tattooed with such dark markings it was as if the evil inside him was trying to claw its way out, fit such a diabolical promise.

  Holding his terrible, intolerant gaze, Brenya pressed her palm to the faulty installment between them, stroking the glass as she sought out the secrets that would urge it to open. “Why did you torment the people of Thólos?”

  Pressing his palm to the glass where her fingers stroked the smooth surface, following as if they shared a strange dance, his voice held an enticing edge. “Let’s not pretend you don’t know precisely why I slaughtered a civilization.”

  Maybe, deep down, a part of her understood perfectly. “Bernard Dome is not like Thólos.” Nor was she empty and soulless like the man before her. “My people are blameless, peaceful, hardworking, dedicated—everything opposite of those you have been exposed to in Central.”

  “Conveniently anesthetized into the perfect slave labor.”

  The Beta was not exactly right, and he was not exactly wrong. But there was no point in debating what the man had never experienced. “I was happy.”

  “And while you were happy, someone else was suffering as you suffer now.”

  “I know! But I did not know that then.” Burning with regret, Brenya turned her attention back to the glass to find the damned entry point. “I knew family, and purpose, and friendship. And then I knew pain… and never once did I think I was the first he had done it to. I was just the first Omega. A stupid, ignorant slave unaware of who you were, the situation in Thólos, or the consequence of my choice to seek asylum there. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. This is my fault, hurt me all you will.”

  Silent, his impassive expression said nothing, but the void within him rippled just enough to warn her time was running out. Their dance was over, Brenya having found the slot that might be coaxed open so that a Beta prisoner could be given food and led to freedom. She would not even need to break the glass to get Jules out.

  An opening appeared, sliding wider and wider, like a waterfall parting when a hand cut through its stream.

  He had her before she might blink, Brenya’s wrist caught, her body dragged forward into his cell. The man may not have been an Alpha, but he was still far larger than she. And much, much stronger.

  Even after days of fasting.

  Gripping her wrist tight enough to negate her struggles, the edge of Jules’s fingernail dragged a light path from the hollow of her elbow down the inside of her arm.

  Panting from the struggle to free her arm, Brenya growled, “We don’t have time for this!”

  “Speak for yourself. I have eternity.” Jules stopped tracing the veins in her arm to toy with her fluttering fingers instead. “That is what a pair-bond is. Forever, Brenya Perin.”

  In the flickering light of a projection of Jacques fucking her, Brenya was held by a far scarier man. Yet still, she tried to urge him on. “The more time we waste, the less of a chance I will be able to get you outside. Not to mention that I will have to build a transmitter from stolen parts as we move, so your people will be aware of your location in the woods. Let go of my arm and come with me!”

  “Beg.” He took a handful of her stolen shirt, pulling her closer still. “That is what you came here to do, isn’t it?”

  His grip on her shirt was so tight she had been forced to her tiptoes. Dangling in his power she gave him what he was owed. “I beg you, Jules Havel. Let me return you to your Rebecca. Please forget about Bernard Dome.”

  “Hmm.” Those vibrant eyes went to her lips, the man purring out further demands. “And the friend? The name you are forbidden to speak, what is it?”

  The strangest feeling began coming over her—as if she was witnessing the very moment he’d chosen to swallow her whole.

  Too frightened to speak above a whisper, she confessed, “George.”

  “And every other secret, Brenya. You will give me all of them.”

  Frustration led her to snarl. “I don’t have anything worth taking. Jacques already took everything else.”

  That yawning emptiness inside him opened up, and under it was nothing but hunger. And it was not for the food she had brought him and ignored.

  Jules Havel’s starvation was for something else entirely.

  Slowly, he pushed her away, forcing her out of his cell, before sealing the glass in a mirror of the very movements she’d made to open it.

  When it was closed, and she was gaping from the other side, he gave her an absolutely malevolent smirk. “I refuse your offer, Brenya Perin.”

  “What?” Dumfounded, terrified, she banged on the glass. “No! You have to come with me. I can help you!”

  He had not even taken the pack of food!

  With one final lingering gaze, Jules dismissed her. “If I were you, I would run back to my nest and hide. You’ll need your energy for what’s coming.”

  15

  GRETH DOME

  “Segment AA-14.” Shepherd’s gray eyes traced the movement of the agitated Commodore, an Alpha who lacked the most basic semblance of control. Blond hair as long as a woman’s ran loose behind him, and he stomped through his halls, the embroidery of his jacket something from a long-dead culture. The way the man continued to fiddle with his cuffs, a tell—his confrontation with Jules Havel had given the man no satisfaction. “Draw him there. Disrupt all safety protocols to the east of Ms. Perin.”

  “But that’s not the direction she came.” Fingers flying over the controls, Maryanne dripped with nervous sweat in an effort to keep up with Shepherd’s commands. “The Omega took the opposite corridor, and I can only turn off one at a time without drawing attention to the massive amount of infiltration I am conducting in Bernard’s Palace. Even if I am only operating against a computer, these logs will be noticed!”

  “The Omega now knows where she is in relation to the structure. She won’t take the same path to return to Jacques’s den. Watch.” And he was correct. She crawled to the east corridor to access a vertical chute, climbing in a blur that would leave her hands blistered. “And you will remove all traces of our interference once we have assured she reaches her destination undetected.”

  “What she doesn’t know is that the only reason she hasn’t been caught is because I am fucking slaving away.” There wasn’t even time for Maryanne to brush loose hair off her brow. “For future reference, Shepherd, this kind of work takes at least three people. One person cannot manage five levels of security protocols with no advance notice and with no idea what they are dealing with alone!”

  Unmoved by the woman’s theatrics, Shepherd ordered, “Eyes on the Commodore. Start an electrical fire to his left.”

  Entering a series of commands, sparks ignited—bulbs bursting as the voltage was manually increased beyond safe levels. Easy enough, though suspicious if anyone in that Dome had a brain cell between them.

  As if stunned so simple a trick worked, Maryanne muttered, “Who still uses fucking lightbulbs anymore?”

  “Men who wish to display their ability to waste a resource for the sake of vanity and as a show of power.”

  Cocking a brow, Maryanne reached for a COM, cycling to a new display. “Are there lightbulbs in your new palace?”

  Shepherd didn’t so much as blink at the question, his focus on the multitude of active screens. “Yes.”

  “Let me guess. Claire thinks they are pretty.”

  “For someone who demanded two assistants because she lacks the ability to handle this duty alone, I would suggest you prove to me that you are not so easily replaceable.”