The room was overly crowded, which clearly agitated his Omega. Hovering near, so his shape might blot out the members of parliament who had escorted them to the Red Room, so Brenya might stop glaring at Ancil, Jacques pressed a kiss to her hair.
“Mon chou, I want you to remember what we shared tonight.” Feverish lips at her ear, Jacques Bernard whispered so no other traitorous present member of parliament might hear. “I can feel you shaking. Please, my love, don’t be afraid. Hush now.”
His mate didn’t answer, worrying her lip as her doe eyes jumped from one part of his dead brother’s apartments to another.
Jacques hated this room. Everything was in shades of red. Ironically fitting, considering the amount of blood that had spilled from the windbag when Jacques had torn him apart for the title of Commodore.
With his last brother dead, Jacques had chosen new apartments, breaking with tradition by rejecting the room of all those who had come before him. His right as Commodore. A new, glorious era for Bernard Dome.
Under his rule, all had thrived.
Fitting that a foreign rebel who had the audacity to assume a title meant power would want to sleep in the quarters of a bygone era.
It meant nothing!
Bernard Dome knew who owned them. They knew who to thank for what they had, the luxuries they had indulged in, the pussy, the anus, the throat.
All orders came from Jacques Bernard—even the order for this illusory transfer in power.
And he had been good to his people. Generous to Parliament.
He knew how every last member liked to fuck, who they wanted in their beds, traded their daughters to their sons in advantageous matches that conserved power. He’d inundated them with the prettiest Beta servants and made sure disease was unable to spread at any of the elite brothels.
Even their wives had been serviced with treats, parties, gifts. Many of them, he had fucked personally when they had batted their eyelashes his way.
They would remember that when this new Beta tried to tempt them with platitudes they didn’t want.
All Central wanted was Omegas.
Omegas Jacques had already begun acquiring and having trained. Pure Bernard stock that would be conditioned for those he had handpicked to receive.
Clean slates like Brenya, these females could be taught to please in ways the uppity foreign Omegas turned their nose up at.
When Ancil had groused that Lucia refused anal sex, Jacques had laughed. And then he had shown his life-long friend and rival a projection of how he had taken Brenya’s ass in the bath only hours after sealing the pair-bond.
That was how an Alpha commanded his mate.
Damn the red room, damn the Beta Ambassador, damn Chancellor Shepherd. Damn them all!
His mon chou would be back in his bed and out of that hideous room. She would be ensconced and safe as he nurtured her into her purpose.
Back in his arms, back with her lips stretched around his dick. Cock hard with the need to scent her—hating that she had bathed, his leavings washed away—he dripped against his trousers. The air filled with his spice, with an enticement only an Alpha could provide to an Omega.
What did this Beta charlatan think he could possibly do with an Omega pussy? It was hysterically ridiculous. The man could not even knot. How was she to know pleasure?
Petting his darling Brenya, trying his best to soothe, Jacques murmured, “Just… relax and think of me. It will be over quickly. And then he is to assure you are properly tended by your Alpha, the marriage contract was exceedingly clear. This is only a minor, and short-lived, inconvenience.”
Struggling to contain his indignation, preparing to leave his mate in the hands of a Beta, Jacques straightened so she might see all of him.
How he strained at his pants for her. How he was still her Alpha. How she was still his darling.
Aching with the need to drive into her, he stroked his shaft through the fabric. From base to tip, flooding out globs of cream that already had her pupils dilating.
“You were ordered to leave her untainted, Jacques. I’d rather not suffer through watching another of my brothers die tonight.”
Curling his lip at the low-level snot who dared call him anything other than Commodore, Jacques snarled, “You and I will have words over this insolence later.”
The man’s name was added to the growing tally of parliament members Jacques would personally murder that night. He’d kill their families too, their children… wipe their lineage from the face of the planet!
How dare these Alphas turn on him before he might explain that the satellites could all be shut down. Bernard Dome could retreat into itself for a safe eternity. Greth would be blind. Jules Havel would be restricted and tortured until there was an accounting of every potential location for whatever device had been used to release Red Consumption.
Already, sweeps were going out through the entire Dome for anything that looked out of place or stank of foreign sweat.
Fear had led weak men to make foolish choices.
With Ancil by his side, their position and control would be reinstated in a week.
The meek woman sitting on the edge of a blood-red bed would be home, and safe, and he would help her forget every last moment spent spread under the Beta fiend.
“I love you, mon chou.”
The essence of her receded, only to come back crashing. Over and over, so caught in her own riptide, Jacques could not fully grasp the direction of her feelings.
Only that she was… grieving.
And that she had not heard a word he had said.
Understandable, considering the mutt thought he might actually pry him from his mate. A man who could have been drenched in trained pussy day and night for the rest of his life. Who would have lived in greater luxury than the Red Rooms.
“Do you want me to,” pressing sweet kisses to her hair, he purred, “help you get excited?”
Robotic. His innocent Omega always sounded robotic when she was truly upset. “I want you to tell me the designation and name of the Beta female who died.”
“I will… have this information by the time you are returned to me.” It would be easy enough to scan the schedules of Betas chosen for brothel labor. In fact, Jacques was fairly sure he had ridden her on more than one occasion.
But all the females seemed to run together when one had tasted them all.
Tugging at the collar of her dress, his darling Brenya stared forward and asked, “Do you know the identities of the men?”
Of course he did. He knew every last detail of every Alpha under the Dome not subjected to pharmaceutical control. “Yes. I knew them personally. Three of the four held seats in Parliament.”
Ancil, pacing at his back, snarled. “An order has arrived for us to return to our quarters… like peasants. The ship is in the air, my traitorous cunt of a wife has taken the child. And your Omega’s lover is managing the controls with no issue.”
Brenya’s shoulders fell from her ears, honey eyes finally focused. Right on Ancil. “No matter what life Annette and your son find in Greth, they will still have one. Someday, he will be old enough to return and take everything that is yours.”
“SILENCE YOUR FUCKING BITCH!”
Facing his friend with an expression that sent the rest of the males scuttling away, Jacques lifted a hand to warn Ancil that such outbursts would not be tolerated.
But the Omega egged on the dangerous man. “And by the time he comes back, you will have withered. You will be too old to so much as meet the eye of the son you never met yet intended to murder. I don’t imagine your firstborn will have much mercy for you either.”
It was so fast, Jacques could not anticipate the blow. His lifelong friend struck his fragile mate hard enough that she fell back against the blood-red coverlet.
The scent of Omega blood in the air, and Jacques became a mindless beast intent on the sound of breaking bone. Having trained for years with this male, he knew where to strike for maximum damage. As did his adversary. They rolled in a vicious tangle of strikes and snarls.
Though Ancil was assuredly dangerous, he was not in the bloodlust that fueled a male protecting his mate. Jacques broke his wrists, an elbow, a shoulder. No quarter for a man he had known since the cradle.
Purging the ichor of so terrible a night, Jacques continued to rend. To not only crush an enemy but to show all who observed why he had earned the title Commodore.
Strips were torn from the face of his friend, disfiguring beauty while Ancil whined for mercy.
The supplication was too late. Jacques would not even hear him beg, preferring the gagged sounds of a man who had lost the ability to control that passage of air into his body.
Together, they had lost the influence of their positions. They had lost treasured possessions.
Together, they could have reclaimed the Dome.
Now, Jacques would do it alone.
With Ancil’s neck compressed between his bicep and forearm, Jacques toyed with his prey, licking at his friend’s bloody ear in a reminder that when they were younger, they had played this way—the winner of the match fucking what he had subdued, as per the rules of the game.
Those days, Jacques had enjoyed the spoils.
Both of the males had always enjoyed it.
An atrocious shade of crimson, the flesh of his cheek hanging loose, Ancil began to lose consciousness.
But that was not the way an ingrate would be led to death.
Releasing Ancil to parquet floors—lacquered, as legend would say, with the blood of those who opposed the first Commodore of Bernard Dome—the defeated Alpha began to stir.
“How many times did I warn you to keep your hands and eyes to yourself regarding my mate?”
A tooth missing, mouth bleeding, Ancil struggled to say, “Peace, brother.”
“Did I not give you everything you desired?” Turning to face down the scattered men in the room, Jacques shouted, “Did I not give you all your every last whim?”
Stifled murmurs and stiff nods were offered by a few. Others, wisely keeping their eyes averted.
“Witness what I do to traitors!”
His foot came crashing down on Ancil’s neck with such force it cracked far more than bone. The stained floor, as old as the Dome itself, split beneath his heel. Ancil’s running blood swallowed deep enough between the floorboards that the red of the room no longer struck Jacques as garish.
It was exactly as it should be. A place for enemies to die.
So he silently vowed, meeting the eyes of his reeling mate, that it would be in this room that Jacques fed the blood of Jules Havel to the Dome.
Three floors down, an Omega screamed.
Quite a fuss had been made over her face once Ancil lay in a heap of protruding bones and blood.
“I don’t think her cheek is broken, but… a physician should be called to mend where her skin split along her scar.”
A raging Alpha roared, “Stand away from my mate!”
Woozy, Brenya held her finger to her face, unsure if the slippery red had come from her or from Ancil as he’d screamed for mercy.
The crowd was growing tighter, jostling bodies pulling her to and fro to see the damage. There was too much touching. Too much noise. Too much everything. “Don’t touch me!”
Like magic, all backed off save one.
The same older gentleman who had spoken to her at the state dinner, the one who had stood beside Ambassador Jules, bowed. “Madam, you need a physician, and the Commodore will need to be notified that you were wounded.”
Silent despite the age of the creaking floors, Jules stalked straight to where Brenya braced against the bed. Looking only at her, he addressed the Alpha who thought to stand in the way. “You had an hour in which to explain that you’d sold your mate to me for skin on your back, and instead, I find Brenya Perin bleeding and the Security Advisor dead.”
Bloody hand to his chest, Jacques faced down another man, heaving with the breath of an Alpha ready to kill.
“Control yourself, Jacques.” The new Commodore, Jules Havel, was still looking only at her, yet addressing a very serious threat as if Jacques were nothing but a gnat. “So much as look at me in a way I dislike and see what I do.”
It was hard to look away from such an intense stare, from a face that showed nothing, from a man who was as empty as she was full, but she did. Honey eyes darted to see Jacques offer a stiff bow.
Taking her chin, Jules studied the damage while addressing all onlookers. “Take the carcass and leave. Jacques Bernard will not get what we agreed to until I claim what I desire.”
Chilled by the coldness of such a statement, Brenya took her face from Jules’ touch, turning away from both males.
The room cleared.
Jacques had left her.
Blood smeared from the spot where Ancil had died at her feet all the way to the door. No one had even thought to wipe it away.
The Beta certainly didn’t; he just continued to stare until a knock came to the door. The unexpected sound left her jumping, squeaking out a noise that summed up exactly how she felt.
Small.
Apparently, one of the Alphas had indeed summoned a physician. One Brenya remembered from when she had first been dragged to Central, torn and in the midst of withdrawals.
The Beta noted her instant increase in anxiety, taking those too bright eyes from her face at last.
Addressing the physician bowing at the door, Jules offered an unaffected, “You are not needed. Leave your supplies and retreat.”
The doors closed, two cases left on the bloodstained floor.
“The archives are well-kept in Bernard,” the man said, moving toward the door to retrieve the physician’s things. “This Red Room was designed to host the reigning Commodore. There are no access panels. The windows are practically unbreakable. Every piece of the design was constructed in such a way that the most paranoid of leaders might sleep with less concern they would be murdered for their title—yet the room was stained with blood. To remind them of the price of power. As you have noticed, there is no balcony and only one door. The guards outside that door have already received the updated registries. All of Alpha Sector is on alert, and Central is under their control.”
She didn’t care about the room or the fact that he claimed to have cornered her far better than Jacques might.
The man set the cases on the bed, rifling through their contents before snapping on gloves.
Wincing when he touched her face, Brenya closed her eyes and reminded herself to breathe.
“Had Jacques taken the time to pay attention to what was going on in your head, you would have been locked in this room ages ago.”
The prick of a needle entered the swelling flesh of her check, a shock of stinging injection that left her trapping a groan in her throat.
Sweet numbness followed. Until he pricked a new spot, and then another.
When the pain subsided enough that Brenya might unclench her jaw, she answered, “I have always enjoyed the color red.”
A hint of a smirk came to the man threading a curved needle with wire. “As have I.”
The Bernard flag was red. Commendations came on red ribbons. That is where her mind went when the first stab of the needle pierced her flesh. Though painless, the tug and pull of suturing skin was unpleasant.
Yet, Jules Havel proceeded quickly, as if he had sewn skin to skin many times in the past. Knotting his second stitch, he asked, “What did Jacques whisper in your ear?”
“That I was to lay back… and think of him.”
“What else?”
“That this would be a short-lived inconvenience.”
With a dry laugh, the man began another suture. The hooked needle delved back into her skin, she continued to bleed.
Trying to remain still so he might continue, Brenya asked, “Will it be?”
“That depends on your definition of inconvenience.” The final knot was tied. “You are my wife as of me stamping my claim as Commodore upon the contracts—”
“First wife,” she corrected. If he was like Ancil, he could claim a Beta as well.
Finished assessing his work, those terrible eyes bore into hers. “I will not be taking another wife.”
She had no response.
“I own you in the sense of Bernard law. But I possess you in the sense of your spirit, and I am disinterested in setting you free. Which means I cannot kill Jacques Bernard.”
Five people had died of Red Consumption in her precious home. Ancil had been slaughtered before her. Brenya could only sum up such a cold question to shock. “What happens if Jacques Bernard dies?”
His answer was direct and equally uninformative. “You will discover that for yourself the next time you see Lucia.”
Outside the red room, the sun had begun to warm the sky, Brenya taking in what was an even more remarkable view while iodine was blotted on her cheek.
“Are there other injuries that I have not seen?”
Sighing, Brenya felt exhaustion roll over her so suddenly she lurched. “Nothing Lucia didn’t already see to.”
“It seems the nature of our pair-bond is more physical than those I have observed in the past. What you are feeling is the sensation of Jacques being sedated. I can’t have him running wild, murdering my people in a tantrum over losing his favorite toy.”
It was an apropos comparison. “He told me you would give me back after you were done.”
That subtle smirk was back. “Did he?”
She needed this to be over so she might find a few hours of sleep;, otherwise, she was going to crack. “I would like to be excused from taking you down my throat until my cheek has healed. Kindly tell me, would you prefer that I brace on all fours. Or lay on my back. I was told earlier that I am expected to touch the male inside me, and I will strive to do so if that is what you wish.”
Stripping off sterile gloves, Jules Havel commanded, “Take off your dress, Brenya Havel.”
The name caught her even as her hands moved to reach buttons she would not be able to unfasten without help. Once she processed that in less than a year she had gone from being 17C, to mon chou, to Brenya Perin, to Brenya Havel she found nothing but that damn necklace in the way.
Lowering her hands to her bloodstained lap, she confessed, “I cannot take this dress off by myself.”
It should have registered sooner that he already stood between her legs. That he had been cradled there the entire time he had sewn the wound on her face—but the intimacy of the position only just sank in.
That was how tired she’d become.
Far too tired to resist when he reached around her neck to unclasp the necklace, Jules tossed it to the side as if it were nothing but rocks on a string. When he began on the buttons down her spine, she felt the fabric frill release her aching neck, and Brenya pulled in a full breath that was sweet with the scent of a hungry man.
Deft fingers undid one closure at a time until the gown parted and could be pulled from her shoulders. It was not her breasts he looked to when her dress pooled at her waist. It was the subtle swelling of her shoulders, the scratches from an Alpha who preferred to tear clothing from her skin, the fingerprints and bruises.
Each was inspected with naked fingers, her shoulder moved to test mobility, and scowled at when it was clear the tendon was inflamed.
“I have yet to see the footage of how you reached my cell, but once I have, I believe we are going to have a discussion about technique. This was an avoidable injury.”
Insult brushed aside common sense. Brenya bit back, “I guarantee my climbing technique is far superior to yours, Jules Havel. I was climbing before I could walk.”
“Hmm.” He took a step back, surveying her torso in another sweep. “Stand and remove your skirt.”
Silk and lace whispered to the ground, Brenya eager to be done with this.
“Turn.”
She did, facing away while he brushed her hair from her back. His touch traced down her vertebrae, stopping on occasion for a thumb to dig in until she grunted. Yet each pass caused something tight to release.
Fingertips moved to her buttocks, gently pulling apart her flesh. She knew what he saw, why he asked, “How long ago did he do this?”
“Hours ago.”
“Did you bleed?”
“No. He made sure I saw that I had not.”
“I see.” Physically turning her to face him, Jules met her eyes as he asked, “Any vaginal complaint?”
None that would impede whatever Jules Havel intended to do to her. “I was stretched with the pliarator earlier today. There should be nothing to prevent you from…”
“From what, Brenya Havel?”
The word was small. He made her feel small. “Penetration.”
“Then climb into bed.”
