by Isoellen
"I am going to set you in the other chair if you don't listen."
Her groan was worried and anxious. "No, don't, Kane. I like it here." Forgotten was her earlier plea to sit somewhere else. She was such a hypocrite.
"Then listen."
"Okay."
"Do you know why I would kill my own brothers?"
"No, I don't know why." She turned her head into his neck and inhaled.
"My brothers want to bring back the slave class in full. They believe, for crimes committed over eight hundred years ago, that all humans should be subservient slaves without rights or property. My brothers are Administrators to three sectors: 10, 2, and 12. Some people call these areas the slums."
"Kane." She leaned away a little, his words interrupting her bliss. "That can't be right. My Dad would never—"
"These men are my brothers. My rivals and enemies, Sasha. Your father, the man who you say loved you, whose will and legacy you are so intent to honor, put them as his first picks as a husband-mate for you.
"He did not pick them by accident. It was a promise. A girl like you—clever, industrious, strong, and so gifted—is a prize to any alpha. You are more valuable than any treasure. He was going to give you to the men who treat other men as less than animals."
Sasha was trembling. Kane's hands moved, soothing over her body. What he was saying was horrific.
"Every single man on this list? All ten of them believes that drones should have no rights, no intrinsic value, nothing more than what their breed masters allow them. These are the men your father cultivated as friends. Are you listening?"
How could she not? He was speaking right in her ear. His sensual lips that had yet to kiss her mouth were right there. She could turn her head, capture his mouth, lick inside and take a taste. But she stayed still while he poured out his ugly truths.
"Your father was younger than me. I did not meet him until his thirty-year military assignment. He served under me. It is forbidden for alphas to take a bride-mate while they are in the service. The Administration encourages abstinence in the younger men because after the first encounter, the mating instinct is activated.
"An alpha at full maturation wants two things to ease the itch under his skin: sex and violence. One or the other will do. The army gives them violence so they can learn self-control for the other, but it's not enough."
She had learned this in school. One had to understand drones and breeds to coexist with them.
Kane continued, "Sex and violence are hardwired into the alpha's genes, super soldiers wired to repopulate the planet. We train them as best we can. We have to, because the only female who will ever fully satisfy them is one like you, Beauty.
"But since males are males and your kind are rare, there are plenty of betas, and even willing alpha females, or even the sterile breeders, to ease the itch. I noticed then that your father, he preferred drones."
"He preferred drones? You mean he lay with them? I know that. You don't need to tell me. Lots of men sleep with drones. I have half-brothers and sisters."
He tipped her chin up, his thumb a barely-there touch coasting over her lips. "Sasha, you don't know. You don't understand. Where are these brothers and sisters of yours?"
"He had to send them away because of Maura. She would have killed them." He'd told her that once. Sasha thought it was just an excuse. He didn't want them around, and she didn't know why.
"Where did he send them?"
"I don't know. He said he fostered them with good families, friends of his." Sasha fingered the list of names. "I was hoping to find a record of them in the safe so I could find them."
"Sasha, I saw that safe. It's quite a piece of work. Unusual for Sector 10, don't you think? Would you give me the combination if I promise to bring you the contents? I'll bring everything to you."
With one hand he gripped her ankle, then slid his palm over her foot. She was tiny in his hand, and he was so gentle. Pleasure pulsed through her when she remembered how he had pushed her foot against the root of himself, used her to touch himself through his pants.
"I would like to go with you. How are the workers? How is everyone now that Merrick and Maura are gone?"
"For those workers who you say were indentured, I offered them a severance package, debt free. They could go to their homes, if they had them, with something to help them get back on their feet."
She felt him smile. She'd been watching his hands, drooling over them, and missed it, but the stretch of his lips across his face changed the tension in the muscles of his neck and chest so much that she felt it come and go.
"However, Beauty, your people are very loyal to you. Only those who had come with Merrick chose to leave. As you know, Lanny and Lilla insisted they come to you. Even those drones who were badly abused refused to leave your service."
"I tried to protect them."
"They tried to protect you. You might ask them about your father and how he used them. Him and his friends." He let that sink in. "Sasha, are you listening?"
"Kane, you don't know what you are talking about. My father was a charmer, and he was lonely. He may have manipulated some human emotions, but he didn't use anyone."
She would have gotten up in outrage, but his lips were pressed right against her temple, warm and sweet, and his hands played over her feet and legs as if he couldn't stop touching her.
"I know you went to school," Kane said, his warm voice low and close. "Did they not teach this in basic anatomy? In all of my sectors, it is illegal for alphas to have sex with drones because it is impossible. An alpha will rip a drone apart every time."
Sasha shook her head. That couldn't be right. She had half-brothers and sisters who were drones. There was all kinds of mixing happening. Everyone did it.
He shook her gently. A lift of his knees. "Every fucking time, Sasha. Even a smaller, weaker alpha like your father, like Merrick. Humans cannot take breed.
"I know you have seen babies. You have siblings. An alpha doesn't need to knot to make a child. He can force an unknotted cock into a human vessel, but it is painful and damaging. He can give his seed, giving no pleasure.
"It helps to give a human shine. It loosens them up. It relaxes the pelvic floor and causes euphoria. Helps males too by loosening the bowels, the anus. But human men and women can't come when they are high on shine; it deadens the nerves.
"Prolonged use, coupled with multiple rounds of sex, can do permanent nerve damage. A human female who has been raped using shine will never vaginally deliver a baby. It must be a C-section. Basically, for a human to get pregnant from an alpha, the human has to be drugged and raped, or else the human loves blood and doesn't mind a bleeding pussy. It's like sex between a bull and a poodle—a win only for the bull. He gets off on a human pussy that's nice and tight like a breeder pussy."
Kane's hands were still moving, sexy and reassuring. Sasha's stomach was rolling, though. "So, because it is basically rape to sleep with a human, it's illegal," he continued. "But it's only illegal if the human is an actual person. This is why your father aligned with men like my brothers. This is why you lived in that shitty fucking sector.
"My brother, Ebbon Blaze, runs that sector. They are so poor because there are sanctions against them. No one trades with the slave sectors; no respectable alpha will build there. My father gave my brothers their Administration rights, and he can't take them away without use of force. He will not fight a war against his own sons, so there are trade sanctions and other embargos meant to cripple them."
At some point, without realizing it, Sasha had started crying. Kane was taking everything from her. Just like he had during those first days of meeting him, he was taking what she thought she knew about the world and herself and destroying it.
"Sasha, there's more. Oh, Beauty, there's more. I know you loved him. But I need you to let the fantasy of him go."
His arms tightened. Sasha twisted so that she could bury herself in him, her face seeking his armpit, one arm thrown up his c
hest to his neck, stroking the strong column. She was a fool. This male kept destroying things around her, killing people, chopping off body parts as casual as you please, and she kept going to him for comfort.
Sasha wrapped herself around him. She spread her legs and felt that hard male cock of his, untamable beneath her, but he did nothing with it. Instead he rubbed her back, combing his fingers through her hair.
And he purred for her.
Chapter 14
Kane was gone again. He had shit to do, he said. Then he asked her if he needed to lock her in holding while he did the shit.
Sasha said no. Given the revelations about her father and the drones of their household, she felt defeated. Emptied out. She didn't think she had the energy to leave the compound, or even her bed.
The little room felt lonely. She lifted the collar of the shirt Kane had dressed her in and inhaled his spicy musk. The smell eased her despair and chased away the emotional breakdown that was so close to happening.
Sasha did not want to cry about things she couldn't change. Her father was dead; there was no confronting him. There was no going back in time to see if she could change him or stop him from hurting people. No going back to prove Kane a liar.
She'd given Kane the combination for the safe. It felt like giving up—like surrender—to write the numbers down for him. Kane was a man who had fought and won many battles. He had forced other alphas to concede to his terms before. Man to man and muscle to muscle, Kane was stronger and so freaking patient. Sasha wasn't sure how to rise after her capitulation and decided two feet on the floor and a shower would have to do.
It must have been late, as the twins were absent. No doubt they’d gone to get her meal, or take care of her laundry, or check in with Zinanno about her day.
She got out of bed, making it how she liked in an attempt to regain some sense of normalcy. By law she was a woman now, even if her body was still acclimating. Still, she brought her tattered bunny stuffy to her nose.
It smelled like home. One ear was torn in half, it had no eyes, the strings of its nose were unraveling, and all the stuffing was missing from the legs.
Her dad had gotten it for her after one of her "childhood accidents." He always defended Maura. He always said they had to take care of her.
She picked up another stuffy, the pink fleece of her belly rubbed raw from Sasha's fingers. This one he’d brought home after a trip away on business when she was eight. He'd been gone for weeks. When he returned, she remembered telling him that he needed a good wash.
She could still picture it, his face going a little pale when she’d said it. She hadn't liked his scent, and piecing it together now, she realized it was because he’d smelled like blood and sex.
He’d come back from business smelling like that so many times that she eventually stopped mentioning it. Once when he'd been gone, Maura had shut Sasha's fingers in the door. She was old enough to know about putting ice on wounds. When Silas discovered the injury, her fingers were already healed crooked. She kept dropping the dishes when she was doing her kitchen chores.
Sometimes she and the drones only had oatmeal to eat, gloppy and plain. Or there was no water in the house, and they had to walk to a well an hour away. Or there was no electricity. They were poor, and the gifts from her father felt like generous, loving extravagances.
Sasha lined them up on the floor. Each one had come after a trip away or an injury, or sometimes both. There were two bears that represented separate sets of whip marks on her bottom and thighs.
Lilla and Lanny found her standing in the shower. They must have seen her sadness in her slumped shoulders and expressionless face.
"Sasha, you need to come out. We have to get dressed. You have company coming." Lanny's expression was flat, her lips pinched.
"What's wrong? Is everything alright?" Sasha turned off the shower.
Lilla entered, holding a colorful wrap dress. "Your shopping trip."
Anger often had a burning smell to Sasha, and this morning both twins smelled like an old fire pit.
"I wasn't thinking. It was stupid. If I'd been smarter, I would have used a data pad to at least plan my route, but I didn't even do that much. I'm so dumb sometimes."
"Sasha. Is that it? That's all you have to say?" asked Lilla.
"You were dumb and should've planned better? Really?" said Lanny.
That was not the answer they were looking for. Their anger ratcheted up. "What is wrong with you? I thought they were going to kill us. Lilla and I were with Davila. We were getting the ingredients to make the soap."
"We thought it would be fun for you," Lanny added.
"Guardsmen just swooped in on us with their long guns ready and everything. They put all the servants, all the drones, in one room."
"We were locked up for a couple of hours. No one said anything. We didn't even know why or for what, Sasha."
"And then they started asking questions of all the servants in the building."
Sasha started to feel very small.
"We answered their questions, but we didn't know anything." Lilla rubbed at the tears in her reddening eyes. "I thought we were friends. Like sisters. Equals."
She had hurt them, Sasha realized. She hadn't been thinking. She'd wanted to get away from Kane and his rejection, so that was what she’d done. She’d given no thought to what would happen to her friends.
Merrick had used the drones to punish Sasha. Most often it was a whipping that he forced her to watch. Sasha had been told that Kane reserved corporal punishment for breed, but was known to just kill those who failed him.
She knew the guard who touched her was dead, but he hadn't said what had happened to Zinanno and the guards she'd managed to outwit. Feeling selfish, she realized she hadn’t asked.
Volatile man. She felt it in his touch that he would never hurt her, but that left the rest of the world vulnerable to his displeasure.
Sasha wrapped a towel around herself. Even if she had planned better, she wouldn't have been able to tell them her stupid plans. It was better they hadn't known so they couldn't be accused of helping. She had protected them.
The way they protected her.
Sasha looked at Lilla. "Did my father ever do anything to you?"
The twins always gained color in their faces when they were angry, but they both blanched at the question. Their angry scents turned sour.
"Did he and his friends do stuff... bad stuff to you and the others?" Sasha asked again. She rattled off the names of all the female drones she could think of. Remembering that Kane said shine worked on men to relax them also, she mentioned a couple of the young males too.
She could see their answers on their faces. They had protected her. They had all sheltered her, kept her in the lie of a life her father had built for her.
"You had your reasons for not telling me," Sasha said. "And I had my reasons for not telling you."
The following silence wasn't just awkward, it was painful. Sasha wasn't angry, but their deception, and her father's deception, rankled.
Her entire world was shattered. Her father, the man who told her stories, set her on his shoulders and bounded her around the yard, tickled her to submission, taught her how to make lemon gin and honey mead... That man was an evil man. His sudden death had been the most terrible thing to ever happen to her.
Until now.
She would have lost herself in sorrow if her mother hadn't come home with Merrick. Merrick, a prowling, hungry alpha wanting the throat of all her beloved people. Ironic that she had survived her grief because the threat of him kept her from getting lost in her own head.
"Did Merrick do the same? Did he use you?"
Lanny made a disgusted face. "Not for sex. But you know he relished being lord of the manor and taking every bit of control from us."
Lilla nodded. "He loved being in control. Humiliating all of us was fun for him. But he never even got hard like most men do when he was tormenting us."
"And my father?"
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At the mention of her father, the twins grew uncomfortable again. They didn't want to talk about it. Sasha tried to be respectful despite her morbid need to know more.
She took the dress from Lilla. "Who is the company today?"
Subdued, Lanny said, "Nurse Sara, Doctor Bruns, and the queen."
"What?" Sasha gasped.
Lilla said, "The queen will be here in a couple of hours!" Her subdued mood fell away with this grand excitement. "You need to get yourself together."
"It's time for the works." Lanny waved her hands around Sasha. "The whole pie today, my dear. This is the queen. That armpit hair must go, not just shaved. Gone!"
"And all the other little hairs," Lilla agreed with relish.
"The queen doesn't care about my little hairs." Sasha protested.
Lanny disagreed. Strenuously. She gave the pretty dress to Lilla and motioned to a basket full of stuff. "Davila raided the girl bathing room for us. She said you like sparkles. I'm okay with sparkles, just not every color at the same time."
Sasha smiled. It was the first one of the day, inspired by the look in Kane's eyes and that little curve of his mouth when he inspected the different lotions she had rubbed all over her body.
And then she gave a little gasp at the pleasant jab of pleasure that kicked her right in the apex of her thighs, leaving her dripping.
The twins couldn't help but notice. "Did you just... mini-orgasm?" Lilla asked.
Damn that male. Her reflection in the room’s big mirror showed a blush spreading from the top of her head all the way to her chest.
"What brought that on?" Lilla pressed.
Sasha shook her head. "So, what lotions are in there? Anything but vanilla."
"Aww, that’s my favorite," Lanny whined. "She picked out warm scents and lotions, mainly. There's stuff for every part of your body. Wow, look at these."
Lanny held up prettily shaped bottles and jars. "When do we get to see this girls’ bathing room? Davila said it has everything from the best breed and drone shops in every sector."