by Isoellen
He picked up the data pad where he’d set it earlier and typed on it for thirty seconds. Sasha, Sara, and Dr. Bruns all waited, as if he held his sword aimed to strike.
Kane was not one to disappoint. He cleared his throat, making sure Sasha met his gaze when next he spoke. "Your mother will be dead within the hour, accused, tried, and convicted for crimes against a breeder. Merrick will lose a hand, accused, tried and convicted for crimes against a breeder. He might need to lose both hands, but I want to talk to him first.
"Your property and all inheritance through your mother are now in custody until you have a marriage contract. As you are in my territory, that makes you my responsibility. So, Doctor, you do have my permission to add Sasha to your patient list. Please make the necessary appointments."
Yesterday she had thought him presumptuous to make the stupid appointment. What was he today when he’d killed her mother, crippled her enemy, and claimed guardianship over her?
"Who. Are. You?" she hissed.
The silence broken, Sara patted Sasha's knee again in motherly encouragement. She stood up, cup in hand.
"You don't know dear? He is the oldest living son of King Rhineholth and his bond-mate Annalise, the heir to the monarchy and Warlord Alpha Administrator of the 12 Sectors."
*
The rest of the appointment went by in a blur. Her brain was shutting down and her body taking over, her first heat firmly taking hold.
Sara brought more broth, which Kane made her drink like water, forgoing the spoon.
A whole handful of colorful pills was given to her, like candy, with room temperature tea to wash them down. There was more talking, but Sasha hardly listened. She heard phrases like “extremely uncomfortable” and “very painful.” But that kind of talk was almost comforting. What did these people know of pain?
As the itchy heat became fire—her bones shattering over and over again—her belly twisted as if cut by claws. The worse the pain got, the stronger she was. She knew this place. She could handle this pain.
What she couldn't handle was a man—a stranger—a damn arrogant prince who was at least a century older than her, being kind and gentle to Maura's demon spawn daughter.
At some point she ended up in his arms again, in his lap. He told her to do things like sit on the toilet, wash her hands, drink more water, and she did them without any embarrassment, because he was a prince and could just boss around whoever he liked.
How stupid and silly he must have thought her, sneaking into his compound, his palace, taking the place of a drone and making it into his meeting with an Administrator. Certainly, behind his stoic face he had been laughing at her offer of a bond and a pub when he’d sat her down in that chair behind his messy desk.
He must have thought her the most foolish girl in the world. She was a dirty, pudgy rat from the slums, an eighteen-year-old child who lived in a brothel. Oh, her boldness must have been hilarious to him.
Sasha had thought she was something special. Breeders were rare. Her mother was the only breeder she knew. Even in school, she had been the only breeder of her age. She’d thought she was bringing a valuable commodity to the bargaining table, only the table had already been laid with gold dishes and the finest food. This man could have any beautiful, wealthy, respectable female he wanted.
No wonder her father complained about Constantine. He was a politician; everybody complained about politicians. If Merrick had seen Kane as a rival, it was no different from every alpha in the 12 Sectors.
But Kane wasn’t just a rival. He was the rival. To best him in any way would be a victory like none other.
"I want to go home," she moaned.
"Shush, Beauty. I will keep you safe." Kane was so close, hovering at her ear. That voice of his—only the alpha of alphas could have a voice like that. It was alright that it made her gush and tingle. It must have made every female feel that way.
"Don't want safe. Take me home."
"I will have your belongings brought to you. Will that make you feel better?"
"Only being home will make me feel better. I want to go home."
"Alright, Beauty. I will take you home."
He took her right back to his home, to a room that smelled like him, but also like vanilla cakes with pink frosting.
*
Sasha slept. When she woke, there was a female in the room with her.
Sasha was all pain and instinct. She didn't know the woman, only that she didn't belong to Sasha, and she didn't want the wrong female anywhere near her.
She attacked like a crazy person, with viciousness learned at her mother's knee. Then she attacked the bed she had slept on, tearing it apart because it had come from a wrong woman and she would not share. She would rather be dead than share.
Kane came. His voice and his purr. He brought new bedding and her own bedding, pillows and stuffies from home. He brought her clothes. He brought two of her females, the ones who belonged to her and who she loved.
She made him take off his shirt. He wore another kind of shirt under it, tight and close to the skin. She hadn't known that, but she decided she wanted that too. Then she took off what she was wearing and put on the button down shirt. Her friends fed her, and she slept again.
She slept and woke up with the pain. They gave her handfuls of pills. She ate something and peed a lot. Her body leaked even when she wasn't on the toilet, black blood mixed with a shining, nasty fluid streaming down to her knees. Then she would sleep and wake again.
She lost track of time until her internal clock told her that she hadn't seen Kane for several hours. She didn't know where he was.
For Sasha's animal brain, this was not okay. She was not having it. She wanted his voice, his purr, his smell, and she would damn well have it because this was all his fault anyway. She started demanding. Her friends—her females—tried to shush her. Kane was away and please don't call him because he is terrifying.
Sasha knew she was being an infant. She felt like one, but she had put up with the pain and she would not put up with his absence.
She decided to leave the room and look for him. The door was locked. She pounded on it. She screamed like a wild thing at it. When the wrong alpha opened it, she attacked him with teeth and clawed hands because he was wrong. He was not hers, and how dare he come into her space?
When Kane came, he pulled her off the wrong alpha and made the male leave. He looked like he had been awake for days. She saw it in his face, the crazy, uncombed mane of his hair. Even his white shirt was wrinkled. As soon as he touched her, spoke to her, she could breathe again.
She bullied him into her space, demanding his shirts and pushing him down into her bed. He tried to leave, but she was absolutely not having it.
She changed out of his old shirt, put on the one he was wearing—the soft, inside one this time—crawled on top of him, and shoved her nose in his neck. She demanded he purr then, and he did. He may not have been very good at it before, but now he had it just right.
Her friends got her up to feed her, make her drink and take the medicine. The alpha still slept on the bed, so they kept quiet. When the door creaked open and a wrong alpha tried to come in, Sasha gave him the look she’d learned from Kane. The one that warned of death.
The door shut.
Sasha went back to her nest, snuggling on top of the alpha who was the best part of it. When he tried to wake up a little while later, she had her females bring food and water for him. She fed him, then she purred for him until he fell asleep again.
The cycle lasted eight days. Kane could sneak out of the room to attend to his work and household for about six hours at a time. When the clock creeped into seven hours, Sasha would begin to rage and demand to see him.
It wasn't just her wild screaming echoing down the hall that bothered the household. Every person who had met her or heard her since the beginning of her stay could feel her. Empathically gifted, her call affected them all until they were twitching like shine addicts for a fix, drone
to alpha, her heat amplifying her ability.
The one who heard clearest and suffered most was Kane himself.
Breeders choose, and whether he wanted a bride-mate or not, Sasha had chosen him.
Chapter 11
At the end of eight days, Sasha lay in a strange bed in a strange room, looking up at a ceiling with rococo plaster patterns curling over it from end to end.
Her body felt like Maura had tied her to the floor and commanded every member of their home walk over her while wearing metal boots. She hurt everywhere, but her mind felt clear for the first time in forever and waves of clenching agony no longer assaulted her.
Sasha knew this was a pain of recovery.
Sharing a mattress, Lanny and Lilla were still asleep, the three-minutes-younger Lilla snoring into her sister's ear.
A warm gratitude for their presence made her heart glow. She felt like they had helped her stay alive through the cycle, forcing her to eat and drink, pulling her back more than once from the edge of crazy.
And Kane, who had been there with his voice, his purr, and his body. She felt her face redden at the vague images of a beautiful, shirtless Kane in her bed.
What had she done?
A niggling embarrassment twitched around the edges of her consciousness. She sorted through thoughts and memories, trying to understand what had happened the day her heat started on the way to the doctor's office. The Warlord Alpha's presence took center stage in each recollection.
He had purred for her. He had killed for her. He was firstborn son and heir to the king.
He had called her father, the person she’d most loved, a slave owner.
Why had she come here?
With a long, self-indulgent groan, she rolled out of the bed. Her muscles ached and her legs wobbled, unbalanced. She really needed to pee.
Sasha took one noodly step from the bed and fell like a stuffy without stuffing, straight to the floor.
"Sasha!" Lilla cried, climbing over her sister, who woke with a yelp and a knee to her belly.
Sasha held up her hand to stop her friend. Her head felt too big to lift. "Nope. Don't get up. I'm fine. I can do this."
Lilla giggled.
Lanny groaned. "Then can you come help me, Sasha? Lilla punched my stomach under the bed and I can't find it."
"Sure, sure. Coming, dear Lanny. Just give me a moment."
Sasha watched Lilla go to a box on the wall and push a button, yelling into it when a light came on.
"Miss is awake!"
A moment later, a male voice replied from the box. "You do not need to yell. We can hear you clearly."
Lanny pushed the button again and yelled louder, "Okay! Miss is awake!"
Sasha could hear the exasperation in the male’s voice. "Yes. Thank you."
"You are making boyfriends already, Lilla? Is he cute enough that you have to talk to him before you help me stand in the bathroom? Can you at least bring me a bowl or a pot, or something? I need to pee."
Lilla and Lanny both laughed. It was so good to have them here.
The little room she was in had two doors. One led to a private bath and toilet that Sasha thought was big enough for several families to live in comfortably. This sector clearly had no issues with water waste. Didn't anyone know there was a shortage?
The room had a clean, wild scent, like Kane, and the countertops, sink, and toilet were extra-large in size. She almost fell in the toilet.
The girls coaxed her out of the big sleep shirt she was wearing and into the tub, holding her hands like she was a toddler at risk of falling and drowning in the deep, steaming water.
She couldn't be annoyed; Sasha couldn't swim, the thing was Kane sized, and she did feel like a toddler learning to walk.
She reached for Lanny. "Your hand?"
"Healed fine. You sew body parts better than you do clothes." Lanny smiled.
"Here." Lilla offered Sasha a funny round cake of soap. It made silky bubbles, washed clean, and didn't have a smell.
"What is this? We need to make us some of this." The cake was perfectly sized, enough for her body and hair.
"It's the alpha's. We want you to ask what it is. It even leaves your hair nice, unlike our stuff." Lanny was holding a towel as big as a blanket.
"Come on, Sasha. Food is coming. Aren't you hungry? And your alpha wants you to have a medical check-up too"
"My alpha? I don't have an alpha yet, and I don't have the energy for food and a doctor. Has Warlord Kane said when he's making us leave?" She sank down in the water with a groan, letting it lap at her chin. "I think I just want to sleep some more. Can't I sleep right here?"
The twins replied as one. "No."
"When did you guys get mean?"
They giggled.
*
She was standing in front of a full length mirror, holding Lilla’s hand to keep herself steady and trying to dry herself with the other.
Sasha had always felt like mirrors were the enemy, always showing her the image of a body that felt like it belonged to someone else. She didn't like her triangular breasts, nor their puffy areolas and too obvious nipples that had developed when she was a ten-year-old.
She also didn't like her wide thighs or round-as-a-sausage torso of baby fat. Born chubby, she’d stayed chubby in spite of a rigorous daily schedule and days of deprivation. She had her breeder biology to thank for that.
She told herself she didn't care what she looked like. Her father had told her that her value was not in her looks, but in who she was as a person. Sasha had always agreed with him.
But the person in the floor-to-ceiling looking glass wasn't the one she remembered.
For the first time, she saw what she expected to see. Her breasts had become larger, the nipples pointing up instead of down. Her torso had thinned at the waist and flared at the hips. She had lost weight. Even her butt seemed altered, sticking out behind her like an upside down heart, full and plump.
She was by no means skinny—she jiggled everywhere—but like a woman instead of a child.
She had gained her hourglass shape.
"What happened to me?" she asked in wonder.
Her dark blue eyes sat bigger in her face under arching brows and over cheeks that had lost their apple shape. Her chubby butterball of a face had become delicate and lovely, except for her mouth, which was still too plump for Sasha's liking.
The last time she looked in the mirror, covered in a rainbow of sparkles, her face had been that of a plump little girl’s. Today a beautiful young woman looked back at her. She had reached her maturation, and she looked exactly like her mother.
"That's why you need a check-up. You breeders get all the perks. I'll never have a shape like yours. You're still tiny, though." Lanny stood up on her tiptoes to look down at the top of Sasha's head.
A female voice called from the other room. Sasha recognized it as the servant Davila’s, who she'd met shortly after her arrival here.
"Hello? I brought breakfast."
The twins helped Sasha finish in the bathroom, picking out clean clothes for her. Sasha took the underthings, which were new, and the fitted comfy pants, but kept the top she had slept in. It fell past her knees and the neck slipped over her shoulder, but the fabric felt perfect against her skin. She couldn't bring herself to accept anything different.
When all three girls gave her knowing grins, she let her eyes slide to the food, pretending she was hungry.
Sasha was going to introduce everyone, but it seemed the drones had already made friends. Being of a similar age, they were comfortable like they had known each other for years.
When Davila tried to leave, Sasha made her stay. With enough food for all of them and at least three alpha soldiers, Sasha pulled all the girls into bed with her to talk and eat.
She had so many questions for Davila. She knew nothing about this house. What was expected of her now? What had been going on?
Lanny poked at Sasha's belly. "We have so much on you, you will have to do o
ur laundry for the next ten years."
Sasha winced at the poke. Her muscles hurt like she'd stretched and pulled them repeatedly.
"We knew you could be bossy," Lilla said.
"I didn't know. I've never seen anyone boss Alpha Kane. That's suicide," Davila said.
Lanny grinned and grabbed up a piece of fruit. "Sasha is always getting in trouble for trying to boss the alphas."
Sasha grimaced. "And how is Merrick? How did you two get here? How is Silas and everyone at home? What happened after I left?"
"Everyone is fine at Dover's End. Merrick was scary for a bit, but instead of hurting anyone, he made Silas and Patrick take him to where they'd last seen you. They came back that night without him. He was still looking for you. We haven't seen him since. Then the alpha’s men came."
"The alpha? Constantine Kane?"
The girls looked at each other, then at Sasha with helpless shrugs. An alpha had told them not to say anything. So, they wouldn't.
"You can ask Ruell Zinanno," Davila offered.
"Who?"
"He is the new Terasa, the new secretary. He's not really new, though. He was the house controller. Extremely organized. A perfectionist. He's not a terrible person, but he is hard to please. If you are feeling up to it after your check-up, you can meet him today."
"Where is Terasa? Kane was mad she put me in the harem. He didn't kill her, did he?"
"Kill her? No. But she needed a healer when he finished with her. The alpha always inflicts corporal punishment upon his breed. Drones just get fired, unless they’ve done something bad like lying."
Sasha remembered the mess she had gone to clean up her first day here. "How many people got in trouble that day I got into Kane's meeting?"
"What do you mean?"
Sasha thought a moment and rephrased the question. "I snuck in to see Kane eight—no, ten days ago. It feels like a lifetime. Has anyone else been punished in that time? Is the housekeeper named Mary okay?"
"Oh. Mary is fine. She did get a scary lecture from Terasa. I remember that. In fact, all us drones have a 'security essentials' meeting coming up."