As she bore it, Brenya wept—for her newfound personal depravity, for her inexperience and stupidity, for her part in the demise of a stranger. For thinking of him in a way she had no right to.

  Taken with her, thrilled with the pleasure her clenching ass sucked from his cock, Jacques groaned, “I knew you’d love my cock up your ass. When you’re very good, I’ll fuck you with the pliarator in your cunt, and ride your ass until you scream. I’ll make you feel so good….”

  No. She could not do this again. Not when it made her think of him. Not when it was base and improper. Brenya would bow to anything sexual Jacques might wish, if only he would never put her through this again.

  “Please, no.”

  The Alpha gave her no answer.

  For ages, he held her pinned, long past when each of her exhales ended on a whine from her need to release. Each time she dared look over her shoulder, Jacques was still in his bliss, eyes squeezed shut, his head thrown back, mouth gaping every few moments, flooding her with another invasive rush of ejaculate. Caught up, utterly enraptured with his cock in her ass.

  Once or twice, their eyes met, and she could see… he recognized her discomfort and made her suffer all the same. Daring her to complain, he even slid his hand from her hip, took the pulsating knot outside her body, and squeezed it with a strength that should have caused him pain.

  And came, and came, and came.

  While Brenya bore it, feeling a pressure too uncomfortable to name.

  Fifteen minutes. To the second. That was all she could take before her body usurped her flagging control. Screaming, she struck out at him, kicking back to fight her way out from under him.

  Gripping his knot as he was, still focused on spraying inside her, it wasn’t difficult to unseat him.

  She broke free, what leaked from her open ring rushing right down her legs as she ran to the toilet. Releasing so much more than just his cum.

  Brenya purged real anger at how the world could fill her up—mouth, cunt, anus, heart—perverted her very being, and leave her nothing.

  She released grief that her choices had caused so much harm.

  Warm cream, frothy from the exuberance in which it had both entered and exited her. The scent of semen so strong in the air it almost completely obstructed the scent of blood.

  Jacques had hurt her—delicate tissues torn.

  Purging rage, disappointment, frustration, guilt, Brenya did her best to push every last drop of him out of her, knowing exactly what he meant now. Jacques’s mark had been shot so deep inside it would be leaking out of her for hours, maybe days, considering estrous altered the digestive tract.

  This had never been about anal penetration or sexual gratification. Had it been, Jacques would not have made her endure such copious seed in so unnatural a place.

  He was marking what he considered his territory. Marking deep—even though it caused his beloved Omega harm.

  And that was telling.

  Jacques was threatened by Jules.

  An outsider he had tricked into fucking her in the first place.

  A foreign dignitary who had a Rebecca.

  Who must be suffering even more than she at the cruelty of being bound against his will, severed from the female he called out for on the ship, and tied to her forever.

  Tied to Jacques.

  Who was a bastard, though he might be beautiful and have all the power in her world.

  The Betas of Bernard Dome had no idea how truly blessed they were.

  Unmedicated humanity was hideous. The ways in which she fantasized about harming a living being brutal.

  At that moment, she wanted Jacques Bernard dead for what he’d done.

  Burying her head in her hands, another wave of frothy seed splattering the basin on a cramp, a final offensive thought broke through all the chaos. One she had to ask before she might throw up. Because it seemed very plausible.

  Hiccupping, she dared look between her fingers. “Are you going to make him have sex with me again?”

  That. That one blunt question of her mate made him freeze.

  Every naked muscle flexed as if the creature might burst from his skin, the devil inside seen for what it was.

  Alpha anger seasoned ugly air. Yet his back was still to her, and his answer had not been given. He asked her a question instead. “Do you wish for the Beta to fuck you?”

  Brenya’s initial question had in no way signified a desire for the Beta, but again, the Alpha who controlled her life spoke with such a snarl it was clear the idea enraged him.

  “It would be rape.” Of the Beta. Whom she did not hold responsible for his behavior, not when she knew he had done everything he could to resist her.

  The toilet began its cleansing function, washing her as it washed itself, the bowl full of filth-spattered cum flushing down to the waste-processing levels to be made into fresh water for drinking, cooking, scrubbing....

  “Come to the bath, Brenya. I’ll make it all better.”

  Such degradation could not be removed, ever. It was now etched into her bones.

  3

  “You are angry with me.” Exuding reason, chest vibrating a sleepy, warm blanket of a purr, Jacques held another bite of fine cheese to Brenya’s mouth, patient for her to accept food from his hand. “And you feel unwell.”

  Eyes distant, her thoughts somewhere else entirely, she parted her lips and took the offering onto her tongue.

  Since the bond had been sealed, not a morsel had passed chapped lips, not a drop that he had not placed there himself. Handfeeding his new mate delicious things—sips of cool water and a few coerced swallows of rare vintage wine—Jacques tended a new mate who appeared more unfocused and startled than a freshly born calf.

  And just as shaky on her legs.

  As if an expert already, he poured more comforting elation into the empty cup of what made her Omega. Drowning out the lingering, trifling disgust and total terror his every breath inspired, Jacques dwarfed her. Manipulating the link, he caressed slumped shoulders with careful strokes of big, warm hands, offered relaxation… and failed to produce the desired result.

  His Brenya was implacable on a soul-deep level. Somehow, his Omega had found a space he could not touch with the captivation of their bond or his more practiced pleasantries.

  What he had done to her, despite its necessity, had deeply upset his mon chou.

  Upset her enough she’d grown practically robotic.

  Jacques changed tactics in an effort to draw her out. In place of luxury, he offered sympathy. “I was cruel to you, wasn’t I?”

  An instant, internal flicker of silent agreement was followed by a sniff.

  Despite his aggressive manipulation and constant, relentless pull on their link, honeyed eyes welled. A single tear fell on her next blink. And by the Gods, it cut him to the core. That tear gutted him so much more than her small agreement.

  Because he could not feel her properly and he wanted her back. He wanted her attentive and full of him.

  A small voice replied, “You were cruel.”

  In contrast to his height and strength, she was so fragile—feminine and delicate—and in need of his protection. She was so valuable, worth his whole kingdom, no matter her scarred face or his abject obsession. No Omega anywhere could compare.

  “You have my heart, mon chou. It might not seem that way when I correct you or when I make demands, but you own it all the same.” Scooping up her limp hand, he pressed it to his bare chest. “Does our bond not tell you so?”

  A refusal to answer was answer enough.

  He could make this better. “How badly does it hurt?”

  Wriggling in her seat, Brenya shifted anxiously at the mention of her discomfort—and the why of it. A silent, pained throb from her side of the link was the only response she offered.

  It had been done. Necessarily so. And she had agreed to it—the price she’d named certain to cost him a great deal of conflict with Ancil. Lifting the crystal goblet designed specifically for this vintage of viognier, placing it at the trembling lips of the only thing on the Gods’ rotted earth he adored, Jacques urged her to swallow another sip.

  She’d been bathed, the water stained a deep shade of puce from the nature of the filth he’d been required to wash away. She’d been bandaged. She’d been held close when she’d sobbed.

  She’d been warned.

  And though he had spoken his threats with a rational compunction, it didn’t change the fact that if the name George crossed her lips again, he’d see the Beta thrown into the most despicable Centrist brothel. To be used until there was nothing left. And Jacques would watch that recording, every last hour. Over and over until he was wizened and old.

  Against his chest, her fingers fluttered, Jacques realizing his thoughts had made him tighten his grip on her bruised wrist. Softening his hand, he nudged her chin. Offering a cajoling, well-meant smile, he pressed a kiss to her scar. “Tell me what will make you smile.”

  When his mate shrank back from his nearness, sinking inside herself at the brush of his lips, he didn’t correct her. Not after what she’d suffered in the bath.

  “Come now, tell me how to cheer you.”

  A minute headshake.

  She believed there was nothing to remedy her spirit, and that just was not so.

  He could give her the world. Fine things, the best foods, eternal comfort, endless sexual pleasure. They were merely at odds, as his newly bonded mate had yet to grasp submission to his will offered everything she might desire.

  But what she wanted, the only things her brain focused on, were the very Godsdamn things he’d forbidden. Beta rations? Freedom? Ancil’s head on a platter? George? Suspicion she might be thinking of him, that this was the reason she’d suddenly grown so sullen—that she’d dare waste further thoughts on the Beta—sent his purr to a snarl. Before he might catch himself, he upset his mate all the further.

  A mate who was now sobbing into her hands. Cowering back—from him!

  Fuck.

  When it came to this female, his control had always been less than exemplary. He’d punish himself for that later. He would do better.

  Voice commanding, he employed his last resort. “Unit C17, I order you to tell me what you need.”

  The jolt in her body, he knew to expect. But the way her gaze turned up to meet his? It shocked him. Jacques, utterly unprepared for the way eyes the exact shade of honey in the sun, grew hard and unblinking. Steadfast, the fluttering thing in his arms sat taller, grew angry. Drinking him in with the cold glare of a rival, she spoke with harsh tones and great feeling. “I want to hold the baby.”

  What luck!

  Tucking the front panels of her fluffy robe tighter about his mate, Jacques smirked. “Is that all it is?”

  Of course! His Omega was upset that she had not fallen pregnant after her first true estrous. How had this not occurred to him? These tears were not due to his attentions during her bath or the deal they’d struck when he bartered his kingdom to wash another male’s seed from inside her rectum.

  Yes, he’d known she had not understood this request. Yes, he’d manipulated her. And yes, another round of anal penetration had given her pain when there was no estrous to dull it. But his strokes had been cautious, methodical, and slow. And because he loved her more than breath itself, he’d kept his knot outside her sphincter when his excessive ejaculations rinsed a pathetic rival out of her body.

  He’d been exceedingly careful, and she had braced through it like a champion.

  Because he’d offered her anything she wanted in exchange. And she had chosen Annette.

  And now she wanted to hold the Beta’s baby. Jacques pulled her closer and wasn’t sure if he could love her more. Precious, brilliant, virginal, and innocent. His mate. “Shall I have Annette bring him here now?”

  “Now?”

  Finally, he’d startled her out of her malaise. Watched her tuck the edges of her robe tighter around her bandaged throat and adjust her sore bottom on the soft seat. “Yes, mon chou. Now.”

  Golden eyes darted to the windows, to the night view of his city. They calculated—that mind of hers ticking until the feelings that had left her in misery were swept away with logic, with measurements, and with what an Omega should rightfully feel. Appreciation.

  He thought to please her further. “Upon your next estrous, I’ll give you a baby of your own. Fill you up with my seed and breed you to your heart’s content.” He carded his finger through her too-short hair. “I suddenly find the idea very appealing.”

  The proposition was ignored, his mate choosing to answer the initial question. Embarrassed, as she tried again to use the robe to cover excessive marks. “Babies sleep at night, do they not? I’d prefer to see him tomorrow.”

  All smiles, he replied, “First thing. I’ll escort you to the nursery.”

  “Annette will be there?”

  Unhooking her fingers from her grip on the robe, Jacques gathered her hands in his. “Tending the nursery is her duty. Yes, she will be there.”

  Like an impenetrable iron wall falling between them, that blossom of hope he’d sensed in his Omega slammed shut. She went utterly cold, eyes fading into unfocused distance. Alpha annoyance reared up to take her enthusiasm’s place. “This isn’t a fight you want to pick with me, mate. I would have set aside my wife for you in an instant. Don’t begrudge any Alpha for loving the other half of his soul.”

  Irritation burst forth. He’d take any emotion over vacancy, and she fed it to him in spades. “You don’t have a wife.”

  “But I do.”

  Was that jealousy? By the Gods, Jacques latched onto that hint of perfection in his love and held on for dear life as he pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

  “She’s old enough to be my grandmother. We were married when I was fifteen, and the hag never bore children. Bloodlines, and negotiations, and the prevention of civil war… I wasn’t Prince Regent then, only valuable enough to offer in peace to a rival for my father’s power. Once I took that title, she was banished.” Sagging breasts and breathy night sighs, Jacques was still repulsed by fair-haired women. “I’ll have her removed from the records. You’ll be my first wife. Our offspring will rule.” Laughing at the inevitability of what would follow, he said, “After they kill one another off for the honor of keeping a hundred-million people alive.”

  The Omega’s face went ashen, her feelings curdling to hear the truth of Bernard Dome’s politics. Another thing he’d slowly ease his timid love into.

  “It was a joke, mon chou.” He kissed her nose, pulling her fully onto his lap. “I’ll make sure the birthing contracts are so solid there can be no usurpers. Our children will know their place and be all the safer for it. Had my father been more cautious, my brother might still be alive.”

  4

  GRETH DOME

  Diligently watching her monitors flicker in the low light, the skin on Maryanne’s nape prickled to the point of stinging pain.

  As if someone had walked over her grave.

  But before she could reassure herself that she was just tired, the worst sort of unseen, unheard predator emerged from the shadows. “Show me.”

  “For fuck’s sake!” she snarled, heart just about screeching to a halt in her chest. “Why do you have to sneak up on me like that every Godsdamn time?”

  Isolation had done her few favors. But she breathed, which was more than she could say about the poor saps in Thólos. If they weren’t dead now, they would be soon. And those who might still linger? They probably wished they’d died quickly in the siege.

  Most of them had been assholes who’d had it coming. She didn’t owe them a thing.

  Didn’t think about it.

  Look forward. Stay alive. Stay put.

  Always in the same three rooms.

  This keeping place, this prison, the accommodations were larger than her crappy dwelling back in Antarctica. But no windows. Her vitamin D came from specialized lamps and a daily dose of healthy food. She was little more than a tended houseplant.

  Unless she suffered punishment, she was ordered to exercise—the regime boring, exhausting, pointless when there was nowhere to go and no city to explore. Not unless she used the faculties left for her amusement.

  And by amusement… her only amusement… Shepherd really meant occupation.

  Occupation, on a multitude of levels.

  She, an Alpha female of considerable talents, was in prison just as the entire Dome of Greth was unknowingly imprisoned by a tyrant. Yet not once had she tried to escape.

  Because she knew exactly what would happen to her. Shepherd had explained it in gory and glorious detail. In a voice so chillingly calm that every hair on Maryanne’s body stood on end… and remained so for several days afterward.

  And those downy hairs still rose each time the Chancellor of Greth Dome appeared from the shadows like the monster he was.

  The prick liked to sneak up on her. Make his demands. Criticize mistakes. And Gods help her if there was so much as a piece of discarded laundry on the floor.

  She couldn’t even live in her own rooms! What was the point of crisp corners on bedding when it was her bedding and she didn’t care?

  Who scrubbed their bathroom from top to bottom every single day?

  No one. No one anywhere did that. And she’d know. She had visual and auditory access to every bathroom in the whole fucking city.

  An entire room of her prison was nothing but monitors, feeds, supercomputers, wires, access to anything she might want to look at or hear. But not taste or touch or feel.

  Ever.

  Lunch had been tomato soup with crackers. Breakfast, a bowl of unsweetened oats. Dinner would most likely be some kind of meat—unsalted, unseasoned, unappealing.

  While out in the city, there were exotic fruits, local dishes that made her mouth water just to imagine the spices. There was laughter, and drinking, and sex, and fun.