Despite her acerbic jabs, Lucia had taken great pains in assuring Brenya was scrubbed clean, patted dry with soft towels, her hair wrung out and dried with a moisture transfer unit. It was then combed into order.
Chastising Brenya for failing to take care of her mottled skin, the Omega went so far as to dig through Jacques’ cabinets in search of bandages and unguent.
Chin pinched in between the woman’s pointed, lacquered nails, Brenya allowed Lucia to turn her head and expose the wound that refused to heal.
One glance, and the foreigner said, “This is infected.”
Brenya didn’t care and said as much.
A light smack came to her cheek, Lucia turning up her nose. “You should care. You will be judged on this mark for the rest of your life. It will be captured in paintings and projections. Talked about by an entire civilization throughout their history, and there is already the unfortunate issue of your face.”
“How I look doesn’t matter. Omegas are meant to be people.” And really, what was the point of beauty? It didn’t do anything. Just as disfigurement had done nothing. Jacques knotted her either way.
With a mean laugh, Lucia chided her. “Whoever told you that lie has never lived as an Omega. I have five older sisters, all Omegas. To be one of us is to be always at war. With each other, with ourselves, all the while working hard to impress the Alphas. Do not think I say this to be cruel. Both my nose and eyes were improved so I might outshine rivals.” All of this was said as those sharp nails began to poke at the open, oozing wound. “There is an abscess that needs to be drained.”
No warning was offered to brace for the pain; Lucia just pinched the flesh of Brenya’s throat until an audible pop proceeded a stinking flow of puss. Despite the short-lived agony, instant relief followed, whatever needed purging drained, damaged skin sinking in on itself.
“Green.” Shaking her head as if blood and gore was nothing but another inconvenience, Lucia swabbed up and sanitized the mess. Next came unguent, followed by a large gauze patch, taped down so quickly it was obvious Lucia had training in such things. “It was poor taste for the Commodore to bite you twice when the first one was well-placed and in proportion to your neck and shoulder—exactly where gowns could be cut to highlight the claiming mark. For such a glamourous city, the men are a bit savage, aren’t they? That is what happens when there are no proper women available to tame their urges and keep them in line.”
Keep them in line? With what, a cattle prod?
Despite the tangle of her insides, the hurt of her outsides, and the sure feeling that all of this was a waste of time, Brenya found it in her to offer a single dry chuckle.
“You will see.”
Doubtful. After all, she was going to be judged for trying to free Jules Havel. And she already judged herself deeply for failing Annette again.
The loud, endlessly talking Lucia kept up a constant vocal stream of her every thought while simultaneously bandaging and dressing a woman who had no interest in responding.
But the work had been done, and done quickly—another heavy, uncomfortable dress hung from a shoulder that was swelling under the fabric. Kissing a throat that was oozing infection into a bandage.
A loud squawk from Lucia and Alpha guards swarmed the room. Brenya was surrounded by no less than eight prime Alphas, encased as they quickly ushered the pair of women down the halls. At her side, Lucia had no trouble with managing her skirts in the hurried gait; she didn’t struggle as Brenya did to keep all the fabric from twisting around her feet. She looked regal, bright-eyed.
While Brenya was panting with exhaustion at the pace. While she could hardly breathe for the stiffness of the fabric at her neck and the added weight of a diamond collar that dripped like starlight over her shoulders and chest.
She needed to catch her breath, already snapped at for wiping sweat from her forehead and mussing the twisted configuration of her hair.
“You don’t have time to be lazy, Commodorina. Curl up and complain later.”
The statement was so far off base that it was almost impossible for Brenya not to tear at the style of her hair and set her stinging roots free, or yank off the diamonds dripping from her neck.
She’d had enough!
If Jacques wanted to punish her for doing what was best for the Dome, then he could come do so right there in the hall. What was coming for her didn’t require such fuss or pretension.
Let those who feed off her people see her as she was.
Brenya dug in her heels, the entire party surrounding her stopping so abruptly Lucia almost ran into the guard running point.
A new side of the aggressive Omega appeared. Lucia went from exacerbated to nervous. “What are you doing? I told you there is no time.”
Sucking in a deep breath to answer, Brenya froze.
Was that ozone?
Smoke?
The very quintessential signs of an electrical fire. And why were there so many guards and workers shuffling around the hall to her right?
There had been a fire, not a meter away from where she stood, Brenya having been so self-possessed that she had not noticed the char marks.
That was unacceptable. Her basic duty was to notice the minutia so unseen issues could be attended to before they became dangerous problems.
Lucia took her arm, urging her forward. “There is no time for you to stop and look at the scenery.”
Brushing away the woman’s touch, Brenya grabbed a handful of skirt, hefting it high so she could actually move in the ugly dress, and went straight to the char marks on the far wall.
Whispering to herself, she said, “This shouldn’t be here.”
She had not even come this way. Furthermore, sorting through the memories of the night, Brenya could recall no action that would have triggered a voltage surge. She had purposefully avoided all electrical conduits so as not to trigger any alarms.
Behind her, Lucia demanded of the silent guards, “Why is she staring at the wall like that?”
Having been intimate with several of the palace’s maintenance shafts, Brenya was certain that the well-maintained circuitry did not experience random surges of this nature. Even the shafts themselves were spotless—worthy of Palo Corps’s mark of excellence.
An impatient hand came to Brenya’s arm, Lucia barking, “What part of ‘men of such status do not wait’ did you not understand, Commodorina?”
Still studying the pattern of the char marks on the wallpaper about the light fixture before her, Brenya said, “Commodorina is not a word in our language. I understand that you are attempting to give me a designation, but I do not have one anymore.”
“You need a title. What else would I call you? Brenya? That is too familiar for the mate of a king. Next, you’d expect me to allow servants to call me Lucia.”
Distracted, calculating the why of what was before her, Brenya muttered to the distraction, “He’s not a king.”
Speaking of the not king…
“Brenya!” The name was shouted with a bite, sailing down the halls as if Jacques had cracked a whip toward the entire party for insolence.
Raging as he rushed, physically puffed up and eyes threatening murder, the Commodore roared, “You were ordered to escort my mate immediately to me, under the highest level of security. And I find you loitering in the halls!”
Standing at attention, the guard standing point said, “Sir, our orders expressly state that we may not touch or speak to Brenya Perin unless her life is in imminent peril.”
“It is!” Viciously, Jacques Bernard shoved the armed Alpha aside. As the guard careened off the wall, the Commodore made a rough grab at Brenya’s arm.
She had witnessed Jacques in various terrifying states, but she had never seen him like this.
The physical effect was inescapable. Eyes wide, she backed away.
Or tried to. He had her so tightly there was nothing to do but swallow her racing heart and try to keep up as he outpaced the party.
When her feet caught on her skirts, he dragged her, practically ripping her arm from the socket.
Behind them, the guards and a suddenly silent Lucia trailed.
Once the racing party reached a door flanked by further security, Jacques pulled Brenya around so he might take account of the panting, startled woman in his grip.
It was only then it seemed to occur to him that he was hurting her and that she could hardly breathe.
His grip on her arm altered from cruel to gently kneading. As if he might chase away what smarted. As if he wanted to offer her comfort.
Drinking down her wide-eyed expression, he quickly smoothed her hair back into place with an expertise that outweighed that of Lucia.
Accent heavy, the Omega interjected, “Great Commodore, she refused cosmetics.”
Snarling at the interruption, the Commodore turned his attention from Brenya to the supplicating Omega. He measured the woman with her eyes demurely turned to the floor, her head at a subtle bow. “You have done well enough, I suppose, Lucia.” Addressing the guard at Lucia’s side, Jacques barked an order. “Escort this woman to the security chief’s residence. Lock her in.”
If there was any disappointment having her short-lived freedom stripped away, Lucia did not betray it. She curtseyed, and she obeyed.
In a much softer tone, Jacques blended a purr into his words. “Brenya, I need you to catch your breath for me. When you walk into this room, you will walk in as a queen. Remember that you represent every life under this Dome. That you have made an oath to them. I caution you to choose your words well, and think of how much you love…” It seemed as if he was going to say “me,” but the Alpha hesitated and offered, “your people,” instead.
The violence, the rushing, the lack of sleep, Brenya’s failure to free Jules Havel or see Annette and her baby safe, the disappointment and the regret… the entire night was impacting her ability to think straight.
Worse was the anxiety tolling through the pair-bond. His anxiety. It pinged about her throat, weaving itself into her confusion… because he didn’t seem angry with her.
The way he was petting and fretting, how he obsessively touched her face.
He seemed afraid for her.
And he was still fidgeting with her clothing and organizing her hair just so, tucking loose strands behind her unpierced ears—forcing her necklace to lay flat where prongs had snagged the lace across her chest.
Cupping her cheeks, Jacques urged her to meet his gaze. “You look like a queen. Beautiful. Everything any man might desire in a mate.”
Blinking, unsure what to say, because none of this made sense, she felt him place a soft kiss on her mouth. It lingered, followed by another on her forehead, before he tucked her into his elbow and ordered the doors to be opened.
The small, plain room was crowded, yet heavy silence waited.
All this fuss for nothing but a cramped COM room?
Ancil was there, scowling. The set of his ticking jaw a clear threat. Other faces were familiar to her, Brenya having seen the men at the state dinner. The tense crowd each wore an embroidered coat; each had whatever hair they grew on their heads caught in a tight braid. All of them stared at her. Expectation, judgment, dislike, intrigue.
Brenya had nothing for them. No explanation. No apology.
They deserved nothing from her.
So her attention went elsewhere as Jacques led her to the center of the tight space. She observed communications panels far more advanced than any she’d ever seen. The layout of the instruments was complex, the interconnected workings of the machines outside her forte.
These weren’t like the glorious interworking of a clock. They were not engineering marvels. They were outside of her scope and training. Nothing like the controls of the ship she had stolen, there was no intuitive understanding of what those knobs and consoles might do.
It seemed a strange room for judgment and pomp.
A man cleared his throat. At her side, Jacques tensed in response.
Odd.
Yet it stole her attention away from the communications panel.
“Good evening, Brenya.”
That voice did not belong in that place with those people.
It certainly didn’t need to affect courtesy, as if the Beta who’d spoken possessed any measure of kindness.
Blood running cold at the sight of Ambassador Jules Havel politely nodding her way, Brenya refused to play whatever game this was. Voice cutting, she let him know exactly how she felt. “It is not a good evening.”
It had been one of the worst evenings.
How he had gone from starved, unwashed prisoner who’d had nothing but a bucket to relieve himself in, to a polished and finely dressed free man who appeared to command the room did not compute.
Looking upon him, knowing that he did not forgive, that his bitterness cost Annette and her child a chance for life, she saw nothing but a living amalgamation of her disappointment with the world. And Brenya let him know it when honey eyes met shocking blue.
With a dip of his head, it seemed the Ambassador agreed. “I know you are tired, and I concede that you are correct. It has not been a good evening for some.”
“That is enough, Ambassador,” Jacques growled in warning. “Brenya Perin has been brought as was requested.”
Smirking, Jules stared right at her. The unwavering void of him yawning open, as if he mentally flicked a finger for her to approach.
She did not.
Rooted, she stared right back at him, seeing all the way right into the emptiness of such a man.
It was from that place he spoke, honest in his evil. “Specific events of the evening, and fruitless attempts at negotiation by the leadership of Bernard Dome, have done nothing to spare you this moment.”
“I never asked you to spare me.” She had asked him to save Annette and her baby. “I begged you to spare my people. I offered—”
“Be quiet.” It was as if his order had come from inside her and not from the male’s lips. She jerked back from the force of it, pulling at the collar of her dress as if he’d stolen her breath.
Turning his horrible, burning gaze away, Ambassador Jules Havel spoke to the screens. “Chancellor Shepherd of Greth Dome, husband to Queen Svana, may I introduce my mate.”
How had Brenya not noticed what waited on the screens? Their display of a massive male practically blotting out the sun behind him. That there shouldn’t even be sun, because it was the middle of the night. That the insignia on the wall was in a language Brenya could not read, and that the man himself had similar black marks edging from his collar and up his neck as one Jules Havel.
She knew who this was. Titles meant nothing. Four words were enough to name him. “You destroyed Thólos Dome.”
Though his projection towered over the party due to the height of the screens, Brenya was certain he would tower over them in person as well. And he seemed pleased with her statement, though it didn’t show in his reaction. It was in the way he held her gaze—that he allowed her the time to look upon him and absorb all that could be measured from a projection. That she might memorize the color of the walls behind him. The simple lines of a functional desk so unlike the filigreed furnishings of Central. There was a lack of embellishment or ornamentation in the man’s clothes.
He wore a gold band on his finger.
The men packed and loudly breathing in the room looked ridiculous in comparison: powdered and painted and dripping with shiny things.
Fingers still hooked in her collar so she might take a full breath, Brenya understood at last why she had been brought here. “I stole your ship, abducted your Ambassador, and attempted to fly to Thólos. Once there, I intended to make repairs on the Dome.”
The man on the monitor, his voice impressively deep, lacking all melody yet interesting on the ear, spoke. “Why?”
Such a simple question with such complicated answers. Swallowing, sad, Brenya said, “Because I had yet to understand that there is nowhere to run.”
As if the response were satisfactory, the Chancellor across the world scowled at the Alpha standing at her side. “Step away from her, Jacques Bernard. I will confer with the mate of Jules Havel without your interference.”
