Two china teacups, their golden rims catching afternoon sunlight, sat on saucers so intricately detailed that Brenya stole a longing glance in their direction. There wasn’t much time, which left her with no opportunity to admire the mathematical precision of hand-painted patterns. Right there on a silver tray sat true engineering, crafted many centuries before the Red Consumption ravaged the world. Art sculpted, painted, and lacquered by persons—not a fabrication machine. A simple brush held by a master. A precious treasure.
Right there.
So fragile it was uncanny.
Yet, more fragile was the woman rising to greet her.
High ceilings, frescos of playful cherubs painted onto the opposite wall. Gold finishings, damask curtains, polished wood, the scent of fresh flowers. It seemed the perfect place, positioned, adorned, landscaped—if you will—to showcase the slumbering baby in an elegantly carved cradle just so.
The entirety of the room had been fashioned to draw the eye to chubby cheeks and long eyelashes. To the gentle snores of a tiny human.
As if Brenya might not notice the two Beta attendants who tried and failed to become part of the architecture.
She stared at them more than she stared at the child, pausing in her rush forward to drink down every detail concerning the uninvited pair.
Just as the room was beautiful, just as the waiting table was beautiful, the servants—both female—were beautiful. Each with their matching, crisp white aprons and dedicated expressions of disinterest.
This was not what Brenya had paid dearly for. Another reminder that Jacques twisted his promises and took as he pleased.
Those two had no place in this moment.
They didn’t belong in the room of a mother and her child. Sentinels… spies.
Touching the uncomfortable lace at her throat, Brenya gave the constrictive garment a tug. Wincing when fabric cut into the concealed bite made by a rabid dog.
So much artifice.
What did it matter if the lace and silk of Brenya’s dress was soft? The fabric covering bruises and aching bite marks in pure white lied. It confined, rubbed where she ached—a constant reminder that she had been claimed roughly, used horribly.
Nervous fingers went from tugging at her too tight collar to smoothing back fallen strands of hair. She had rushed, and the bound-up mass held with a comb of glittering stones had slipped. Surprise, the most idiotic way to confine hair imaginable failed should she move at anything but a glacial pace.
Jacques had dressed her to his tastes. Meticulous, his fingers had been careful with each button down her spine. He’d drawn a brush through her hair as if the lightest tangle might leave her in tears.
Yet he had confined her in misery and inconvenience.
And then he had deemed it was time jewelry should be considered. Would Brenya be willing to pierce her ears? “Just a quick prick,” he’d said, fleeting pain that could be soothed as quickly as it came.
Her resounding “no” inspired the Alpha to cock a brow.
Which meant she had already lost.
The Commodore’s promises, interpretations, and manipulations—his way of asking by taking.
He may have been wallowing in his conquest, their pair-bond, and the joy it brought to his being, his feelings may have overshadowed all she was, but for a moment, her distrust and resentment were greater. She hated when he asked her opinion as if it might matter or alter his course.
She hated it.
Sour feeling poured right out of her into him, a choking miasma of uncontrolled anger. The homunculus of her rage grew as if a physical thing. Rising to stand over her, the look of shock upon his face had been followed by a sneer..
He reached out as if he was going to touch her… again… and Brenya fell into full retreat.
Eyes narrowing, the Alpha’s purr ceased—a vulnerable moment between surprise and defensiveness, which gave him away. Jacques Bernard, Commodore of Bernard Dome, would ultimately destroy her.
All the sooner if she could not rein in her disgust.
She took a deep breath, composed herself, and relaxed her jaw. As did the monster facing her.
“I’ll ask again, Brenya. May I pierce your ears?” He touched her immediately, as if nothing untoward had passed between them. Gently stroking her hair, Jacques offered what some might consider a timid flirtation. “I have jewels more ancient than old Paris rotting to the north. They would shine like your eyes.”
Much calmer, Brenya repeated her refusal. “No.”
Male fingers toyed with her earlobe, massaging the flesh as the Alpha considered. “Queens wear their king’s jewels, mon chou.”
“You are not a king. You are a Commodore.” And a male whose eyes she could no longer bear to meet.
“Why, today, must everything be negotiated or bought?” The forceful wave of Jacques’ frustration battered against the fragile wall between his presence and where she tried to find a place of her own. “I am your Alpha, you are my Omega. Trust in your design to follow where I lead. Your ears should be pierced so I can give you gifts.”
She had let him dress her, tend her wounds, press his kisses to her skin, paint her face, style her hair. She’d eaten from his hand, submitted to his perversions. She had followed, because she was utterly trapped in the prison of him. But this, this hill she was willing to die on.
They were her ears, and he’d already put enough things in her. “No, thank you.”
“Brenya, I swear to you that loving me will come easily and naturally if only you would surrender.” Fingers trailed down her arms until Jacques swept her hand into his. Holding them to his heart, he smiled beautifully. An inner radiance burned where the link forcefully pulled between them, searing through her dark disinterest.
As if set aflame, her sad barricade burned to ash under his influence. Expression crumpling into anguish, she shook under his touch and fell open to him in the most intimate of ways.
“There you are, mon chou.” Kissing her fingertips, Jacques smiled. “Like a frightened bird in my hand, wings fluttering as it learns to be tame and trust.”
He wasn’t wrong. Whatever part of her he touched through the link was flailing, grasping desperately for peace or apathy that was slipping out of reach. It was as if there were two of her. Or perhaps, just one of her that was being ripped right down the middle. It was either concede or lose herself totally.
So that comforting darkness was stolen away when self-preservation trumped desire. Her splitting, battered psyche gave up its sad, clawing attempts at succor before it was broken completely like an over-loved toy.
Better the body than the mind.
And this Alpha had done ghastly things to her body. He would do them again. His arms had already swept her into an embrace. He purred with renewed vigor—a loud rattle that shook off the greater part of her desperation.
And all she could offer to combat the utter enormity of what made up Jacques Bernard was a mournful, pathetic croon. “Leave one part of me the way I was before.”
The weight of his long sigh was nothing to the weight of his internal annoyance. “We will discuss the topic at another time. More importantly, dear mate, perhaps this isn’t a good day for you to meet with Annette.”
“You promised.”
“Brenya….”
Her façade cracked, the desperate bird he described fluttering against its cage as she hid her face in his shirt. “I let you do what you did, because you promised I could see Annette. What worth is your word?”
How strange it was. Insulting him verbally, he ignored. The Alpha was only focused on the incongruous link. Going so far as to wave off her statement, he went back to tucking her hair into the combs. “She won’t be the Annette you remember. I have caught up on every report. The Beta rations have been extremely effective. Let me find you a new companion.”
The wave crashed—the rage. It broke, it led to a curled lip and a deeply satisfying snarl. “You lied to me.”
Pure male, the Alpha narrowed his gaze. “A short visit then. Tea. One hour as our room is cleaned.” Conceding, Jacques pulled away, kneeling so he might place shoes on her feet. “And while you are there, I shall devise other entertainments for you. Lady Annette is not a suitable companion now—”
“—now that you are poisoning your childhood friend with Beta rations?”
An impatient flutter of Jacques’ fingers, a jump of muscle in his cheek. “You must spend time with the other mated Omegas. That includes Ancil’s pregnant mate, Lucia. As complications have arisen since her arrival, she lacks your freedoms and is lonely for company. I understand the circumstances of her appearance upset you, but you are a compassionate woman. It is not her fault Ancil recognized his mate. Nor is it her fault that she enthusiastically embraced him. Just as it’s not Annette’s fault that she made the mistake of loving her husband. The contract they signed was exceedingly clear.”
Centrist society made no sense. It served no purpose Brenya might grasp. “Was it her fault for loving you as her friend?”
“My sweet Omega, you are as vulnerable and as new as a fresh born calf. Wide eyed, on shaky legs, easy for any predator to devour were it not for the herd. I can assure you that after a year of experience as my mate, you will feel far differently than you do today.”
What a horrible thought. “If that should be the outcome, then I would deserve you.”
A passionate yet soft kiss fell on her lips. He breathed in her scent as he agreed, “Yes, dear Brenya.”
Glittering shoes, the heel low, encased feet hidden by a long skirt. Aching all over, yet every mark hidden, Brenya took a step back, wiping her skirt as if there was beloved engine grease on her hands, as she said, “May I go to Annette now?”
“You’ve underestimated me, Brenya. So many times. I am Commodore, King, because I took power from the brother I murdered. I fed an Omega to Ancil when he looked at you too long. I faced down a true despot and now hold his envoy in prison. Yet you think I cannot see your every transparent scheme. Your mind is brilliant. You were born with a genius I admire beyond words, yet you have been overcome time and again by the Alpha you belong to. So, hear me, my darling mate, when I say to you that I am not blind to your intentions.”
The sorriest part of it all… Brenya had none. Her every response since she’d been rescued had been unthinking and erratic. She was chafe in the wind. Utterly lost yet blown around.
Employing that same gentle tone, that overwhelming purr, Jacques took her chin between his forefinger and thumb. “Annette does not belong to you. You can’t keep her.”
She thought of George and how horribly he had been ripped away.
And it was as if Jacques could read her very thoughts. “If you speak his name, you know what I will do to him.”
Brenya would never speak the name of her friend and savior again. Nor would she underestimate the intelligence of the slavering Alpha who had countered her every move. “Please, I just want to see Annette.”
The sound of grinding teeth was short-lived. “There is no need to look at me that way.”
But that look, whatever it may have been, drew the terrible Alpha to escort her down glittering halls to a door guarded by no less than five Alpha soldiers. The portal parted, which led to a room boasting nothing more than sunlight and a circular table holding a large vase filled with blooms.
At Brenya’s back, the doors closed. She was alone in a scented, pretty passage, the door waiting ahead painted the appealing green of moss.
Though he was no longer standing over her, Jacques’ irritation pounded at her breast. Brenya ignored it, opened that door… to find a room the gentle color of sunlight through a soft cloud. Ivory warmth. Brightly colored, beautiful things.
The intricate rug under her feet had been woven in shades of green that lent the room a sense of life. Of the forests outside the Dome, of the wild things that grew in abandon.
Two Beta observers and an Annette whose smell left Brenya salivating for Beta rations.
Standing from her chair, Annette offered a cloth napkin. “You’re bleeding through your lace.”
Her neck, yes. Brenya could feel the ragged bite mark there oozing. And it was liberating to know she ruined the dress Jacques had spent so long trapping her in.
But there were teacups to consider. Intruding Betas to analyze. There was a sense of unbelievable longing and extravagant relief at seeing Annette unharmed.
And there was the true, hideous honesty of the situation.
So Brenya rushed forward to and embraced the Beta.
