Things meaningless when one was made to document it all.

  Analyze, report. Analyze, report. Analyze, report.

  Before she might give the necessary report, a large hand reached forward, the male pointing to one of the many displays of the city. To a market. Adjusting the feed to suit his whim.

  Brightness caught the gold of his wedding band.

  Light dimmed from his eyes.

  What he saw in that image. How his expression said nothing. The thoughts that might be going through his head. Maryanne knew better than to guess.

  She’d seen that lack of look on his face when she’d been imprisoned in the Undercroft. Foreboding, godly, calculating.

  And not for her to question.

  He had saved her from the worst prison imaginable. She had saved him from Thólos.

  And what did she get for it? This perpetual purgatory and fucking tomato soup.

  Stuck with an endless surveillance job. Locked away from the sights and smells of an exciting new place.

  At least this prison was safe.

  No one ever touched her. Not even Shepherd had brushed against her once in all the hours he came and went.

  Slave labor, she’d called it when Jules first dragged her into this… whatever this room was. The bastard Beta had coarsely laughed at her fit and named it salvation.

  A sentence with an end date.

  Another reason—the reason she pretended to keep her twitching hand off the door—she had not tried to escape.

  A girl needed some self-esteem.

  Or, as Shepherd would preach: a purpose.

  To spy.

  On every home, every citizen, every transaction, every breath.

  Living through the strangers on the screens until many didn’t feel like strangers at all. Their names—her favorites at least—she knew. Their preferences in food, their friends, their favorite sexual position.

  Maryanne had access to practically everything. Using her tricks to see, to find, to uncover more and more every day before she went crazy from the solitude. Every last angle of every last room, alley, bedchamber, and communication network. Always watching, now fluent in the local language.

  Under grow lamps. Fed bland food. Exercised like a pet.

  Lonely.

  Machines were poor company. Shepherd was worse.

  Jules, she hated just enough that verbally sparring with him on the rare occasion he entered her prison gave her something.

  Release.

  God knew she wasn’t having the sexual kind. Unless it was with her hand and maybe acting the voyeur observing a particularly interesting liaison.

  A sweet Beta lover Maryanne had briefly been faithful to called her eyes enigmatic once. He had loved her eyes, not just because they were beautiful, but because they were devious. Playful.

  Beyond her pouty lips, they were perhaps her best feature.

  How long had it been since she’d seen mascara or fluttered her lashes at some potential paramour?

  How long had it been since she’d touched herself?

  Being caught masturbating on the job wasn’t really the kind of conversation she wanted to have should Shepherd pop out of a dark corner. Which he did if she deviated even slightly from schedule.

  So… work, work, work.

  What the computers missed as they devoured visual and audio data, it was her sole duty to cherry-pick and deliver with a pretty bow and a “sir.”

  To date, Maryanne’s reports had resulted in the deaths of four hundred thirty-seven strangers.

  Yet Followers didn’t just pluck potential insurgents off the street as they would have in Thólos. No bodies were strung from buildings nor left to rot on the streets. In Greth Dome, all was done with finesse. Accidents staged. After all, people slipped off the poorly maintained causeways all the time. Especially before the Queen had returned to save them from themselves.

  At Her Royal Majesty Svana’s ruling, infrastructure was under repair… but the city was in such poor shape that sometimes buildings collapsed. Maybe while rebel factions happened to be gathered inside. But who cared about settling dust, when new schools were opened and children were spoiled with knowledge? Hospitals expanded and the sick recovered? The hydroponic gardens upgraded and food became more readily available?

  No one.

  The streets grew safer under the Queen’s Followers’ watchful eyes. After all, criminals knew best how to find their own kind. Squash them like bugs. Take over the necessary rackets. And control everything under the glass.

  The economy flourished.

  The shy Queen was beloved.

  The imposing Chancellor Shepherd was adored.

  Fact.

  Adored, feared. Aggressive and just. A precise blend of politics and power.

  All a façade to hide a secret that would bring the city to its knees.

  Those under the invader’s banner—the Followers dressed in black—had murdered, replaced, discarded, and crushed thousands upon thousands of the very people who sang their praises.

  And that was fucking terrifying.

  As scary as the glint off the gold on his finger and the fact that she was not the only woman locked away in this brightly colored new place. Not once, on any screen, had Maryanne seen Claire.

  Report complete, forcing a full breath despite uncanny anxiety, the Alpha female sat a little straighter. “How’s Claire?”

  Wow, she really was starved for conversation to even dare bring up that name. But the wedding ring… it had been taunting Maryanne for months.

  Not just the ring.

  The man looming over Maryanne’s workstation stank of Claire’s slick. Not that Maryanne would dare crack any such joke or even look at him sideways. Not now. Not ever.

  She thought Shepherd had been scary as fuck in the Undercroft. She’d feared him in Thólos. Now, seeing what he’d done in Greth, the man practically made her wet herself.

  And here he was, reeking as if he’d come directly from fucking his mate and wanted the world to know it.

  “None of your concern.”

  Death wish. Maryanne had to have had a death wish to ask, “Has she been eating?”

  And fuck, she’d caught his full attention. That glacial stare, the weight of so much concentration on a simple living being about to be snapped in half like a twig. Even the way he turned from the dozens of monitors to face her full-on exuded control.

  Maryanne swallowed.

  And Shepherd stared.

  Time dragging on like claws on flesh.

  A full minute passed. “She’s my best friend. Aren’t we doing this all for her?”

  Cocking a brow, the barest twitch in his cheek, Shepherd verbally struck a vicious blow. “Not once, in all the time she’s been safely back in my care, has she so much as breathed your name. Not once, Maryanne.”

  Chin lifting, Maryanne curled her lip. “Because she thinks I’m dead.”

  “Does she?” Dismissing her as if she was nothing, gray eyes went back to the monitors. “I think we both know better.”

  “Why can’t you ever be nice to me?” Fire—where it came from, Maryanne didn’t know, but it came and burned where she’d been colder than a Thólos corpse. “I follow your orders day in and day out. I obey. I pace, and jump, and wash, and organize. I give you the lives of what might be decent people if they so much as breathe the wrong phrase in passing. What the fuck do you want from me, Shepherd?”

  “I want you dead.”

  Snuffed out, not even a trace of smoke. Frigid, a living corpse. A tired, lonely woman—who could’ve really used a drink—offered no reply.

  Silence was the appropriate response.

  With obedience came a sort of mercy. Honesty.

  Shepherd, cutting a glance over his shoulder, said, “It frustrates that I can’t kill you. Me, because I despise you. You, because you know how close to the grave you will always be. You’ll never be a Follower, Maryanne. You’re too selfish. Too empty for even me to fill.”

  “Too useful, you mean.”

  “You have your uses.”

  Was that…? Was that a concession? “I have five more years left in these rooms. I just want to know how Claire is doing.”

  A flicker of light came to a very dark man. “She is painting today.”

  Done with her, with her reports, her efforts, her endless toil staring at people free to do as they wished, Shepherd faded back into the shadows. Leaving Maryanne with nothing but her screens.

  Dinner arrived. She ate. At the appointed hour, she lay down on her cot, warmed by a colorful blanket in a dreary room.

  When the chime woke her so she might slog through another day of endless watching, something new shone like a beacon.

  On the wall… a fresh painting of flowers.

  For the first time since Thólos fell, Maryanne cried.

  She sobbed like the beaten, neglected child she’d been in her youth, and as she did so, all she could remember was the smell of Claire’s childhood home. Her friend’s mother had made amazing food and kindly invited Maryanne over for dinner every night of the week. At the table, Claire’s dad had cracked great jokes, occasionally puffing on a forbidden tobacco product, as they all played cards.

  The adults had let a bruised, angry, and attention-starved kid hang around in their idealistic, fucked-up home, because the adults understood what waited for her.

  When Claire’s mom offed herself, her dad had still let Maryanne sneak in the window at night. He still told terrible jokes while smoking a cigar.

  And it wasn’t fair! Claire had everything Maryanne ever wanted, despite her fucked-up family situation.

  Her friend had never gone home to a belt and a beating the Thólosen government gave no shits about.

  Claire had only the fear she too might be an Omega like her mom.

  A part of Maryanne had even been happy to see her friend’s worst nightmare come to life—so they might have more in common.

  Yet Claire had won with her soaps and her tricks. She’d built a life worth having, and Maryanne was still… Maryanne.

  Abandoning the friend who had everything, who had been loved, Maryanne left the flailing Omega to learn how horrible the world was on her own. Her best friend.

  Gasping for breath between sobs, the Alpha female at long last admitted the truth to herself.

  She was a terrible person.

  And then she threw up.

  5

  Dry toast was served for breakfast.

  Depressed and unwell, Maryanne followed protocol: she tidied her sleeping quarters—first cleaning up the drying pool of stale vomit. Afterward, she made the bed with sharp lines and crisp corners. Once bed-making precision had been achieved, she washed her body until her skin stung from the abrasive rag and scentless soap.

  Mustering enthusiasm was dreary, her body dragging as she pulled clothing over her limbs.

  Entering the arena of her misery—the room of screens—fresh, uninvited tears fell.

  Not a single monitor fed her. There was no life to be seen. She had no window…

  Maryanne was trapped in a gray prison with nothing but four walls and the lingering stench of cold barf. There was nothing for her anywhere. An Alpha female who had flouted Shepherd’s dominion of Thólos. Who had prepared for a long life of selfish solitude. Who had swept the feet out from under a giant when his mate rebelled. Had nothing.

  Nothing but dry toast and loneliness.

  And a painting of flowers she could neither bring herself to look at nor avoid.

  Lunch was bland tomato soup.

  Dinner consisted of… she didn’t know. Maryanne had not even looked before she lifted her plate from the slot and sent it crashing against the opposite wall. “GODS DAMN YOU!”

  Two days passed before food was sent again.

  Water, she drank from the tap, its coolness cupped in her palms as she slurped.

  On the third day, the darkness lifted. Ten screens came to life.

  Only ten.

  Each one drab. The display no longer featured the fantastical people of Greth with their bright colors and zest for life. Strange-looking multitudes dressed in gray jumpsuits—characterless, colorless drones going about their day in a creepy harmony of boring absoluteness.

  Two more days, she watched in solitude, forgetting to sleep, to wash, eating her food without tasting as she stared into a mundane, endless caricature of life.

  It was sad to see. It was confusing.

  The monitors were no longer a game; they were work. There were no trysts or secrets to devour. There was conformity and peace.

  As if he sensed the moment Maryanne was at her lowest, the darkness parted, and a massive walking nightmare appeared. “Your feed is now keyed to Bernard Dome, located in the former country of France.”

  France? There had been some information about the place when she’d been the terrible student of her childhood… a history of something? Maryanne could not recall, yet she knew the name and had tuned her ears to the song of a language she did not understand.

  Strange as it was, behind the accord and utter boringness of the display, beautiful things made up their architecture and squares. Fountains, cobblestone streets, white, glittering buildings. And she had watched without sleeping. Because the people did not represent the art of the structure. Same haircut, same pasted blandness of expression. Same uniform.

  Where were the pickpockets? Where was the lust?

  A clock rang, and everyone stood in unison, marched to eat, marched to shit, marched to work, marched to eat.

  Did they march to fuck?

  Where was that monitor?

  Why did it feel ugly to lift her gaze to acknowledge Shepherd, knowing he found nothing about her appealing? That it didn’t matter that her eyes were enigmatic, or that Claire had once loved her. Just as it didn’t matter that his whole person was basically disfigured by Da’rin and he reeked of her scent.

  Both of them were basically hideous, outward appearances aside.

  Acknowledging that for the first time, more than a year into her sentence as Shepherd’s indentured prisoner, Maryanne had finally grown a semblance of a spine relating to this man. There was only so much she had left to lose… and it was starting to look more worthless by the minute. “I saved your life in Thólos. I dragged your huge, lumbering body to your men.”

  As if he might actually be offering comfort, the walking terror put a single hand on her shoulder, reciting a speech as if he had memorized the day they landed on this new ground. “To save yourself and only yourself, Maryanne. Yet, I live. Subsequently, Claire lives. So, you serve your sentence in luxury. You possess a soft bed outfitted with blankets. From your taps flows clean running water. Unlike your few months in the Undercroft, you have a toilet, a bathing cubical, and a purpose. Daily, you are fed a perfectly balanced diet, delivered to you three times a day when you are not unwell.”

  If they were going to talk truths, then she had a word or two to add. “I hate it in here.”

  “Good.” Shepherd didn’t care, would never care about her impulses or her urges. In fact, there was an odd respect for how well they understood one another in that sense. The conqueror, the king, held all the power. She held all the resentment. Should she not survive the years of her sentence, Maryanne would die alone, forgotten, with nothing but screens and her hand to see her through.

  The idea she might forever rot in those rooms flittered through here and there over the ages under Shepherd’s thumb. But she had always brushed it off, because there was an end date. There were passions to pursue.

  Glorious irresponsibility waited on the other side of that door. She would eat and drink and fuck her way through Greth until the glory of this new place was saturated into her cells.

  She would steal things, because she liked to. She would let people down, because it made her remember she was strong.

  And some other poor fool locked in a room with screens would watch her every move until an accident cut Maryanne down in her prime.

  Her useless, pointless, vapid self—wiped away as if she had never crossed the ocean on a transport and abandoned her home to desiccate in the arctic snows.

  What was she really going to do there? Live in her house while everyone died? Run out of food after a few years of hermit-hood? Was she going to wait for a savior to clean up the mess and emerge chubby-cheeked and ready to wreak havoc?

  She would have died, just like everyone else died. Just a little later.

  Completely alone, without so much as a watercolor painting on her wall.

  “I won’t help you invade another Dome, Shepherd.” Wow, had she really just said that?

  The weight of his hand still on her shoulder, the man failed to acknowledge her statement. “Impress me, and you will have total control over Bernard Dome surveillance. Fully learn their language. Translation will only be offered by computer for three months. If you fail to attain fluency, these screens shut down forever. You will die in here, well fed, with clean water, withering and pathetic. Exactly how you would have died in Thólos.”

  Her host hit too close to home with that zinger, the first-rate bitch deep inside her rearing her beautiful head. “My sentence only carries five more years.”

  She might survive that in solitary confinement. It’s not like this Dome was going to be ravaged, cracked, and infested with the virus. She could have made it five years in Thólos too. There, though, she’d had books and COMscreens, sex toys and distractions.

  Shepherd nodded once. “True. Yet… I never claimed that you would leave this room alive. In fact, I have ordered every last Follower to assure that you do not.”

  Maryanne was not sure when she had looked away from that gray, terrible gaze, only to stare at more gray terrible monotony on the screen. Bernard Dome was hellishly boring. “I suppose this is where I mention your mate.”

  “Maryanne, you are a terrible person. You deserved the Undercroft. Yet I set you free all the same.”

  She was terrible, through and through. Yet she was also wise enough to know that somewhere, someone loved her. “Claire would never forgive you.”

  The magnetism of the man led her to meet his gaze again, right as the scariest Alpha male in creation stated coldly, “Claire would never know.”