by Isoellen
Where should she even start? She didn't want to touch it. More than just the sight of it, the lingering aroma, the last traces of terror and pain mixing with the smells of blood and body, paralyzed her.
She was prey. Prey for the sort of wolf who could do this. Prey didn’t stick around and clean up messes left from the wolf’s last meal. Prey ran.
She didn't know what to do with this.
She schemed and cheated her way here, set on pleading her case. But this was not the kind of help Sasha needed. This kind of violence was the very thing she was hoping to escape.
"The hell kind of servants you keep, Kane?" the robed man grumbled.
"Definitely not Mary," Kane said from somewhere behind her with a put upon sigh.
She heard a rustling just before a massive male hand, too near her, too close, dropped a red-spotted cloth. Nothing in the world was going to make her turn and look at him when he felt like a towering giant at her back.
Her mind sputtered. Hold still. Play dead. Become invisible. She wasn't moving, but her body locked down, her breathing too rapid.
She felt heat at the back of her eyes. Tears. Tears were ready to burst out of her already.
Fearful eyes slid toward the bundle Kane had deposited beside her. It was a shirt and towel, both saturated in blood. Constantine Kane had been a very active participant in the mess she had been called to clean up.
Sasha couldn’t stop the sounds gurgling out of her mouth, couldn’t make her body act like nothing was wrong. Everything in her life was falling apart–the life she promised her father she would lead was slipping from her fingers before it even started.
She had been so stupid to come here.
Clean up the mess, she reminded herself. She needed to do this and get out.
A third person walked into the room, large and heavy, if his footsteps were any indication. Sasha was now surrounded by dangerous masculinity and the scent of death. Three strange alphas. Their overwhelming aggression smell saturated the room, exposing their nature. They were nothing like the drones who came to her for help, that she easily coaxed into following her orders. Nothing like the betas who taunted her breeder status, but never dared touch her. Nothing like the few alphas she had encountered.
She knew other alphas would consider Merrick young, and now she knew why. Trapped in this room with these strangers, she could compare Merrick to the three seasoned, mature males. Their indomitable will, their leashed power—especially the man known as Constantine Kane. Next to Merrick, these men were predators in their prime and the other, a puppy still chewing on shoelaces.
She'd made herself so vulnerable coming here. She felt like a rabbit surrounded by wolves.
She couldn't do this.
"Take the girl to Holding One, please."
Kane sounded bored. He knew she wasn't Mary, obviously, but what was he thinking? Was this her end? Had she risked everything to come here just to be found out the minute she walked into the room?
The heat behind her eyes leaked out, spilling down her cheeks. Those evil, treacherous tears were quickly followed by wracking sobs.
Hands clamped down on her shoulders, lifting her as easily as if she were a child's toy. Her legs were weak, vision blurred by her tears. She didn’t dare lift her head and couldn’t move for the fear.
As though he’d realized asking her to walk would be a fool's errand, Sasha found herself tossed over a man’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
"You never fail to entertain a guest, Kane," the administrator’s voice dripped with condescension.
"And send the right Mary this time," Kane said.
*
Holding One turned out to be a concrete room with a big drain in the floor and chains hanging from bars too high for her to reach.
A torture chamber.
Kane's man said not a word to Sasha. He did exactly as he had been told. He put her in the room, then closed and locked the door.
He could have tried to touch her. Rape her. Made disgusting remarks and vile threats. Instead he obeyed his orders like a well-trained soldier, and that filled her with more fear than if he had not.
What kind of male was Constantine Kane that other alphas obeyed him without question?
The kind of alpha warlord she hadn't even been able to look at.
Sasha always thought herself strong. She thought she was a fighter. Merrick always called her a defiant little bitch who didn't know her place in the world. But even when he threatened her with so much misery, she always felt she would survive somehow. She was sure of it.
But now? Constantine Kane was a murderer unlike any male Sasha had ever encountered. She didn't know how she was going to convince someone like that to help her. It seemed a reasonable plan, up until she walked into his office and was directed to clean up brain matter.
So much blood.
And it was on him as well. He'd been changing his clothes. That had been his shirt. His towel. Had he done that damage with his bare hands?
She hadn't even lifted her head, but she had felt his presence like a massive block of ice at her back.
Merrick and Maura had backed her into a corner, and in her desperation, she had made the worst possible choice. She'd acted impulsively. Now she just felt stupid.
She couldn't stop crying. She hadn't wept this much since her dad’s death. She hadn't wept at all since that night. Tears ran down her face, to her chin, uncontrollable sobs burned up from her chest, waves of emotion that refused to stop.
So stupid to come here. Should have waited for the Selection. Silas was right. She was going to die.
Her face felt hot and puffy, snot and spit covered everything. Sasha was still weeping at the unfairness of it all when the door opened and the alpha she had come to see entered the room.
He approached with a chilly, refrigerated blast of air against her skin. The male emanated a frozen, indifferent self-control. She didn't look up. Still couldn't face him.
"Alright, Not-Mary," he grumbled. She jerked as if he’d set his fingers between her shoulder blades and touched her. "You are just a child, aren't you? Why does a child trick her way onto my staff and get herself in a position to come to my office and see me?"
She wasn't sure he expected an answer to the question. He said it in a thoughtful way, as if she were a puzzle and he couldn't begin to guess where to position the first piece.
"Come, then." He nudged her hip with his giant foot.
Sasha gulped for air, choking on her own words before she could get them out. She knew she sounded ridiculous, but she couldn't stop the wracking sobs.
Certain now that she would never survive this, she let despair take her over. She might as well give in, be a weak, pathetic thing. At least she would die knowing neither her mother nor Merrick could claim the thrill of being the ones to kill her.
The alpha warlord made an impatient sound. Sasha flinched as if he’d struck her.
When he growled, she felt it sizzle through her entire body, and she couldn't stop the wretched moaning that came from her mouth. Was he going to squeeze her head like a grape? Just pop, and then brain matter everywhere?
When his arms came around her, lifting her against the sculpted wall of his chest, she shrieked in surprised. In contrast to his frigid presence, his body was hot where it touched hers.
"Stop that." He gave her a light swat on her bottom and then settled her like a baby in his arms. It didn't hurt, but she was surprised and squealed again.
Firm and hard, he barked, "No," and gave her another swat.
Sasha whimpered between cries. "Sorry, sorry. I don't… Sorry."
He took her out of the holding room, out of the torture chamber, upstairs, and down a hall to a place saturated with his ginger and musk smell. She found herself still in his arms, but now also in his lap, seated in a wide, comfortable armchair next to a high table with stacks of books, a data console, papers, data sticks, and a plate piled with food.
There was a heap of thinly sliced beef
atop a bed of some sort of green vegetables next to the largest soup bowl she’d ever seen. The steaming container could have been a mixing bowl from the kitchen, it was so outrageously big.
Constantine arranged her as if he had done this a hundred times before. Settled her in his lap while he ate his lunch and read through a spreadsheet on his data console.
He took a bite of meat using his fingers, then held up a bite to her mouth. He took a bite of the long, green stalky things, then held a bite to her mouth again. A spoonful of soup to his mouth, and then one to hers.
Sasha automatically ate. It was odd; she was in a daze, taking what he fed her between gasping sobs. She wasn't hungry, but sitting like this with him reminded Sasha of her father. She didn't have the presence of mind to reject the intimacy.
His massive body around her. His heat and his spicy scent permeating her senses. She ate, and the huffing choke of leftover sobs faded.
He fed her from his fingers. She drank from his cup. She breathed in his smell until she was calm. Until the emotional flood just stopped, and she felt some of herself coming back.
She didn't know how he sensed the moment it happened—he just did. He took a drink from his cup, offered her another, then picked her up and sat her in the chair on the other side of the messy, full table.
"Who are you, girl?"
She looked at him, the biggest male she'd ever seen. She couldn't decide if he was good looking right now. His features strong and sharp, his black hair slightly curly and long, his presence was too overwhelming for her to make a rational assessment. He was alpha. Everything in her knew it and wanted to run.
She couldn't hold his dark gaze, not after her embarrassingly weak behavior and the disaster that was her first impression.
"I’m Sasha Dover, daughter of Edin Dover and his bride-mate, Maura," she answered. Her throat was scratchy and raw.
His face was still. Unreadable. He must never lose at card games. "How did you pass my security?"
She was afraid to tell him how easy it had been. "Drone girls are invisible."
He looked at her and waited. Sasha glanced down at her twitching fingers, at her thin, gray dress, over his shoulder—anywhere but at him.
He waited.
Eventually she told him everything. Merrick complaining about him, remembering her father talking about him—deciding to meet him, sneaking away—stealing an ident-card from a distracted beta guard and a dirty uniform from the laundry so she would smell like one of his household drones before becoming a part of his drone herd at a shift change to easily slip into his compound.
Drones liked her. She found out who cleaned for him. She befriended Mary and took her place.
She begged him not to punish the drones. They really didn't know. They couldn’t scent her. They’d thought she was one of them.
Constantine’s mouth tightened, lips thinning with displeasure at the story.
"What do you want from me, Sasha, daughter of Edin?"
Her stomach dropped, sliding over her lap like a slick, wiggly thing. It slid cold all the way down her legs to her feet, leaving her mouth dry and the food she’d eaten wanting to come up and out. She took a couple of deep breaths. Peeked at him. The still, expressionless cold face.
Brain matter on the wall. There was that.
And the hour or so she had spent in his lap, eating his lunch and coming back to herself.
He asked no other questions, his face a mask of patient, chilly boredom. He didn't shift uncomfortably or impatiently. He was a predator waiting for his prey to give itself away. Wolf meet rabbit.
"I had a proposition for you," she whispered quietly at her hands. He didn't move, but she did. Her hands twisted. She picked at her fingernails. Pulled at the too short drone dress that had made her smell like one of his. "Maura is dying. She may be dead now. Dover's End, the bar, is mine. The recipes that matter are mine. The combination to the safe is mine. My mother's third husband-mate, Merrick, thinks he can force me into a marriage agreement. I won't do it. I get to choose. The law says that breeders choose."
Constantine smiled, a wolfish pull of lips away from his canines. "So, you come here to me? Do you want me to help you find a husband? What of your Selection?"
He saw her wince. The facial expression answering some of his questions. "You thought to ask me? You could have made an appointment for that, you know. But, that aside, why would you think I'm a better choice? You said that Merrick and your father complained about me. Were you thinking the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' and all of that?"
"My father..."
"Your father would never have sent you here. This is the last place on this planet he would want you. Even if I were the last man alive, the only man capable of helping you, your father would have told you to choose death."
His words came out in a chilly, biting whip. Sasha felt as if he had beat her across the face with each one. She lifted her hand helplessly to her cheek. Had he actually struck her so quickly she couldn't feel the sting yet?
He wasn't hiding his feelings now. His face was angry, brows slashed down. He must remember her father.
Her voice small, Sasha agreed with him. "He hated you. I don't know why."
She couldn't stop her eyes from flickering to his for an answer, but his cool expression didn't change to guilt or shame. It was just cold. Just dangerous.
"But he respected you. He respected your steel spine. I don't know who else... There's no time, you understand. Merrick said you were honorable. I need honorable."
"You are a child. Even a drone can tell you are still a child. There is plenty of time."
He made it sound like being a child was a derogatory thing. He might have said “dog-shit,” or “slave,” or “whore” in the same tone of voice.
"There isn't time. I'm older than I look. And Merrick won't wait. He won't chance it. Dover's End is—it is everything to him. Hurting me, breaking me? That’s the icing on the cake. He won't wait, and he already has a sector Administrator who will lie about my being ready and willing."
"I don't want a bride-mate," he told her coolly, eyeing her up and down.
His answer shocked her. Incomprehensible. Every alpha wanted a breeder bride, their nature craved it. A long lived man like him, of course he wanted a woman able to give him his legacy and add to his years. Didn’t he? If not her, he must at least want more power and property, another biological imperative for alphas.
"But you at least want Dover's End, don’t you?" She asked. He had to want it. Merrick complained about him more than her father ever had. "It could be in name only, our pairing. A business arrangement."
"A business arrangement? You are a registered breeder."
She still had a little girl’s body, soft and chubby in the breasts and waist. The way Constantine called her a registered breeder, though, was like some heavy, sensual secret, sex and desire in the dark. She heard it in his voice, but her mostly sexless being couldn't translate it. She had to assume he was saying a business arrangement couldn't work between an alpha and a breeder, but she couldn't understand why not.
One eyebrow rose, and he was looking pointedly at her hand. There should have been two prominent round black dots and a long number there, proof that she had been lawfully vaccinated and documented. An examination at two years old would have shown she had all the healthy potential organs to reproduce. The all-important vaccination, represented by a perfect black dot, would have ensured her organs stayed whole and healthy, safe from the pervasive disease commonly known as cobweb womb.
Hundreds of years had passed since the disease took root in human women, sterilizing them before they reached puberty. Scientists had played with genetics, birthed the breeds, and invented a vaccination, but still the disease thrived. To keep her reproductive organs healthy, every female of the 12 Sectors had to have the vaccination before or at the age of two.
The other black dot marked her body's unique ability to do more than simply birth children. Sasha carried the genetic
compatibility to produce more alpha and omega breeders as her mother had before her. She would breed true. Omegas were precious. They weren’t just baby makers; they imparted the breeder’s blessing. Omegas also had a known ability to heal. A full mating bond would ensure the alpha she chose a long life. The king and his breeder wife had thus far lived over two hundred years.
The unique serial number normally found under the prominent dots connected her to all her medical and family history. The information was obtainable to anyone with the means to look it up. The marks proved her a female of unique value, not just another beta or drone.
A powerful male like Constantine Kane should want her for that mark alone. But he didn't. He didn't want a bride-mate, a bond mate, or any kind of mate.
The marks were usually on the hand. It counted as identification. And protection. Harm to a breeder could be punished by castration, hand removal or death.
But her mother hated her even as a small child and planned for Sasha’s humiliation.
Constantine Kane. He was waiting on her, his insistence a silent force of will pushing at her.
She turned red, the heat of her shame pouring from the top of her head and down her chest as she stood. In the sheath of the drone uniform with its tight neck and fitted sleeves, she couldn't show him her mark without taking the whole thing off.
She shimmied out of the light gray fabric, forced to show him her chubby, soft, underdeveloped body—her white, slug colored skin, and the tight, puffy nipples at the end of her flabby breasts. The mark was right next to her left nipple, so that she had to show her whole boob to every Tom, Dick and Administrator Bully.
The alpha Warlord’s game face had returned. It made Sasha feel small. He examined her marks carefully, then typed the number into his data pad.
"You missed your last appointment," he said, his tone thoughtful.
"I don't have to go again until after my heat," she told him, holding the smock in front of herself.
He grunted. "Who said that? You were supposed to go to this one and then another after. This is the appointment to prepare you for the heat. They would offer you sedatives, a mild nerve dampener, pain medicine, and a nutritional tea. You are eighteen? The appointment was eight months ago."