Wiping his lips on a snowy-white napkin, Jacques set starched fabric to the matching tablecloth. Fingers lingering over the formality, the Alpha male pensive, he said, “Brenya, I know it must appear to you that these complications are insurmountable, but I assure you, they are not.”
Brenya spun a forkful of Pâtes d’Alsace on her spoon, just as she had seen Jacques demonstrate when the pasta course arrived. The action was… soothing. The twist of the wrist, the mechanical requirement to use two utensils. Like tools fine tuning a sprog.
Yet somewhat exacerbating.
Before reassignment to Central, Brenya had never participated in a meal that required more than one utensil.
The little tools in her hand, solid gold and weightier than the sporks supplied to the masses, offered a semblance of what she missed. At least, she had slowly come to grasp that she could simulate the fine detail work of her true vocation in pointless everyday exercises.
Work within the confines of your station and situation.
The fork, for example: gold was soft, malleable at low temperatures, a poor choice for any tool, but an excellent choice for improvising in a pinch. That was fascinating, in a sense. Each tine might be reworked to create something beyond a food stabbing device. The curve-shaped length of the utensil was similar to that of a lever. She could pry open generally anything that didn’t require much force.
With that fork and a strategy, she could dissect Jacques’ bedroom in a day. Considering that he always left the dinner course out on the patio setting where he preferred they share their evening meal, she had access to two forks. Two knives. Two spoons.
Gold conducted electricity extremely well. This sample in her hand wasted on something used for food. Had she the ability to draw out the metal, enough wire could be created to build… well… lots of things.
Outside of her specific assignment, improvising was frowned upon in Beta Sector, yet she had a knack for imagining what might be. Not that she had ever told any of her sisters or friends. Brenya saved such things for work. Like the time during an emergency descent when she had saved an entire loose panel from crashing down the Dome. Had it fully broken free, the weighty thing would have done catastrophic damage. Yet while others braced against the glass by her side, Brenya used her suction grip bars as if they had been intended to fortify two panels and not bear her weight.
Which was strictly forbidden when making the climb.
Protocol, focus, process, acceptance.
There had been no fanfare when the panel was saved. The highest praise she received for thinking on her feet had been the utter lack of mention of her breach of procedure. There had been no write up.
George had even smiled at her when they were alone to talk over the daily status report.
How strange it was not having him in her ear, the pair of them working as one to assure the comfort and safety of all.
But Brenya had breathed outside air, become Omega, harmed him by association, and had no one to share such thoughts with anymore.
It would have been better if that panel had fallen and left growing cracks all the way down the Dome. At least then, the city would know that the air outside smelled sweet, that the virus had moved on. That they could go outside and see butterflies. That paranoia was unnecessary, and a new life could begin.
The abandoned cities could be reclaimed by those with the drive to find what the world offered.
Clearing his throat, Jacques tried again to solicit her attention. “It has been four days, mon chou, since your tea with Annette. You have had nothing to say on the topic.”
Responding automatically, Brenya continued to swirl a fresh bite for a stomach that starved no matter how much it ate. “The tea was a blend of ginger, turmeric, and rosehip. Honey was added. Something of a Centrist tradition to acknowledge that Alpha mates are cruel.”
The male settled both of his hands upon the small table they shared, leaning forward, before he asked, “You believe I am cruel?”
“I have no perspective to make such a judgment. Ancil is the only other male in Central I have seen outside of the state dinner in which Annette was poisoned with Beta rations. I would need more than two variables to make a reasonable assessment.” Honey eyes looked up from her work trying to gather slippery bits of carbohydrates covered in sauce to abstractly consider the Alpha watching her. “Then there is the outlying concern. If you lived in Beta sector, you would have been put to death the day you raped me in the alley.”
“Brenya.” It was not her first warning of the day.
The noodles were waiting on her spoon, right there. Eating when she was so hungry seemed more relevant than conversation. After all, the Alpha had a history of forgetting she was a living thing that required water, air, and sustenance. “Have I done something wrong?”
“Mon chou….” Lifting his glass, ice tinkling against the crystal, Jacques sipped, staring at her over the rim.
If he was going to leave things unspoken, she was going to eat. The tiny nest of pasta went into her mouth, chewed in fascination of the strange texture. After a swallow, she immediately began to prepare another bite.
“You seem unusually hungry.”
It might have been the first relevant comment the Alpha had made that evening. Relevant enough that she looked up from her dwindling plate and shifted a modicum of her attention from thoughts of gold forks to the symmetry of his face.
When they were alone, Jacques wore his hair loose, blond waves cascading over broad shoulders. Brenya was very familiar with the procedure of unweaving the braid and setting it loose, that being one of the duties he outlined would be hers as his mate. He’d purr and groan as she worked through those locks, her fingers systematically working through the procedure to the exact count of sixty seconds. When it was done, she would fellate him before he might decide to seek other indulgences. Just as Annette had taught her.
Sprawled in his chair, she would begin counting, following his requests, ignoring how often he made her gag or how much her jaw might ache. And where her fingers had been in his hair, his were now tangled in hers, the Alpha moving her to whatever rhythm he favored.
It was a race to excite him enough he might come down her throat and save her from another mounting. His changing moods made it difficult to keep up with the uncontrolled thing he became when aroused. Desperation led her to suck harder, move faster, drool everywhere so he might finish and leave her alone.
At least for an hour while he smirked in his chair and watched her stare out the window. That was if he didn’t drag her to his lap for a long kiss and hold her there until he was done doing whatever it was he thought to accomplish by keeping her tucked under his chin.
Two of the last four days, she had either overperformed in this act or underperformed, both times ending up stuffed full of cock and knotted by a rutting male who bruised where he gripped. Her back to his damp chest, he would place his hot palm where his seed left her belly distended and purr. The longer the knot, the more his fingers might slip down to toy with the sensitive flesh between her legs, compelling another orgasm he timed with his next gush.
The slosh of what he left inside her body, what was plugged by his bulbous, pulsating knot. Brenya both knew relief when his member shrank enough to set the torrent free, and disgust from the way his fluids would flood over her thighs.
It was so much.
A pool of Alpha sperm. And for some reason, it seemed as if each time she braced for his pleasure, he produced more.
He’d want her to lay in that cooling sticky mess, touching and rumbling, saying things she ignored. He’d hold her there despite all her aches and the sting between her legs, despite the scratches and the weeping bites that seemed to bleed every time he put his hands on her with a sexual intent.
One day. All she wanted was one day without some part of his body inside some part of hers.
Heaven help her if she winced at any of his handling, because that meant a session with the pliarator.
As if any machine might stretch her enough that his member would ever fit without pain.
“You will struggle to deliver children, petite as you are,” Jacques had murmured, manipulating the pliarator as she writhed. “It is a pity we will have to scar your beautiful skin to get them out.”
The idea of baring a child in the Centrist fashion—one that would be exposed to this man—led to a reaction that ignored logic and ended in disaster. Instead of struggling against the pliarator, she lifted a leg and kicked him right in the chest. The machine slipped from her channel, the man was displaced long enough for her to escape that gross puddle and run out of the bed.
Right into the bathroom.
Where she locked the door as if that might actually keep him out.
He ripped it off the hinges, wood splintering as if it took little effort.
Naked, slimy, cornered, thin arms around her middle, and trying to hide behind her hair, Brenya shrank.
“You won’t even be awake for the procedure, Brenya. There is no reason to react in such a way. Your penchant for violence and threats is….” He took her arm, dragging her from the room. It was hard to keep up with his stride, her legs still shaking from the pliarator effect on her nerves.
He never finished his statement, spinning her about until the mattress hit her belly and her legs dangled to the floor.
She heard the clicks and knew what it meant. He was resetting the machine, altering the program, before that horrible thing might find a new home.
Crying through it all, she bore the burning anal stretch, hiccupping when the Alpha allowed the machine to simulate a knot that must have stretched her until her burning ring was bloodless and white.
The hands stroking her back and the unwelcome platitudes did nothing to ease even a moment of it. Brenya couldn’t even reach out to that dangerous void of the other person who was somehow there and somehow not.
When the cycle was finished and her throat was raw from sobbing, he removed the things, showing her that it bore no trace of blood. Chastising her for her lack of trust and overreaction.
That was to be her punishment when she needed correction, and also a boon. She would soon be able to take him up her ass in the way men sometimes preferred. And soon, it would give her only pleasure. Just as obedience would.
If she would only behave, he would say, she would learn that all he did was for her pleasure.
And she had wiped her nose, slinking off the bed. Staring at the floor, she nodded.
That was why there was a soft pillow atop her chair at their shared dinner.
He tried to chat with her as if another punishment had never happened. Already, he assured her she was utterly forgiven.
After she had calmed and accepted the endless throbbing soreness of being a female Omega, Brenya was able to slip back into the emotionless space of a Beta who had a Rebecca.
The Alpha across from her increased the volume of his purr as if pleased at her perusal, and stated for the second time, “I said, you seem unusually hungry.”
“Yes. I am very hungry.”
The demeanor of the man before her went from preening to assessing. “Yet you have eaten enough for a grown Alpha.”
That was true, and her belly did ache for it. But what did that matter? She hurt everywhere.
“Are you in pain?”
It’s not like he couldn’t see the bruises, the bite marks. It’s not like he had not been the person to place the pillow she was sitting upon because her labia and anus were stinging and swollen. So she didn’t answer. The question had to be a rhetorical one.
Heavy male fingers trilled over the tabletop, Jacques’ voice terse. “Specifically in regards to your digestion. Are you in pain?”
Fork stabbed noodles and carried them to the waiting spoon so she might spin another bite.
Bringing his fist under his chin, the Alpha narrowed his eyes and leaned his weight forward. “You are ordered to tell me when you are uncomfortable.”
That was simple enough. “I am uncomfortable.”
Sighing, he threw his weight back into his chair, hand to the air as if beseeching the Gods for help. “Brenya, please try.”
More pasta was chewed, swallowed, to land in a distended belly that ached with emptiness. “I don’t understand what answer you want me to give you. You know I am in pain.”
“If you wish to discuss what happened earlier, then there is no answer required. The harder I fuck you, the closer you grow to accepting your place as my mate. When I am gentle, you are restless, lying under me with your eyes closed and your body limp. When I am rough, you engage.”
“You want me to fight back because I no longer say no when you mount me?” There were so many flaws in that statement, so much ugliness to it, that her stomach roiled and all the noodles were about to come up.
“You don’t touch me, mon chou.”
That was untrue. “I stimulate your erection with my hands in the exact way you taught me to. I use my mouth and tongue to fulfill the commands given as you move my head. I swallow.”
“What if I were to organize an event where you could watch an Alpha and Omega mate properly? Is that what you need to see to understand that you are more to me than the pretty pussy I knot? Your place is in the moment, seeking pleasure from your mate instead of tolerating.”
“At lunch, your coat had exactly twenty-four buttons. Now, you wear a coat with seven. Why are you wearing a different coat?” Why did Centrist do anything the way they did?
The male sighed. “Because it is dinner, Brenya. And that’s how things are done.”
And of course, that made no sense to her. “And if I touch you when you mount me, you’ll make it hurt less? Because that is how things are done?”
The man looked as if her words cut him, as if she were the one causing him pain. “You are tormenting me with your indifference.”
