by Addison Cain
Chilling, grotesque, and something Joan seemed all the happier for when she mentioned so bleak a topic in passing during the tour.
Yet, Brooke was there, wandering through the vegetation—slowly fighting her way out of shock. Surrounded by sisters who understood, who would be there for her. Who didn’t mind when she wet herself or when she tore at her hair or clothes.
Who knew what to say, and the exact tone to say it in.
Because Eugenia was the outsider on Level 9.
The women watching made that clear. This was their home, and they would trample her into dust if she tried to take it from them.
And that was no light threat. One of those mothers alone was far more intimidating than any of the men Eugenia had encountered on the ship. All of them with families to protect, all of them willing to take up a weapon to keep what they had worked hard to build.
And the men had no idea.
Though as Eugenia was introduced to them one by one, she wondered if Aaron suspected. If that was the real reason he had not put her here after he pulled her from the lake.
Because she would not have needed him to bicker with. Not when there were sharp minds aplenty on Level 9. Because she might have found comfort in the arms of other women and submitted so she too could have a baby at her breast and community to enjoy.
Not that the captain had not been trying in earnest to see that potential outcome take place.
How one woman was supposed to take care of that oversized penis for the rest of her life, Eugenia didn’t know.
Next thing she knew, she’d be doing morning yoga with the rest of the women. Barf.
“Did you hear what I said about drainage?”
Not really. “Yes, yes. Plant matter builds up and has to be routinely removed or the whole drainage system backs up.”
Nodding approval, Joan continued her tour. And Eugenia followed.
Three hours later, they were called to join a woman loudly groaning through the pains of labor. One who had already delivered three babies—hyper fertile, as it were.
And happy.
Gretchen was happy to see a squalling infant placed on her breast, to hold her fourth child as it made its first cries.
Even though no father was there, and even though not one of her children resembled the next.
Looking down at the amniotic fluid, the vernix, the blood on her ungloved hands, having been the first to catch a newborn human, Eugenia felt her eyes burn.
And then she looked to Joan. Joan, who had walked her through each step in the surprisingly quick final moments of labor. And she meant every word. “Thank you.”
The older woman smiled, saying, “You’re not done yet. Gretchen still needs to deliver the placenta.”
Which was a fascinating organ to inspect in real life. Until it was taken away to be steamed and dehydrated. To be eaten by the mother with her daily meals. Full of hormones that would help her body recover from the strain.
Which was sound science, Eugenia supposed.
Chapter Twenty
“Are you hungry? Dinner is waiting.”
Hungry? Always. Exhilarated? Absolutely.
No guard or watchful eye had escorted her from Level 9 to the captain’s rooms. Not anymore.
Sitting was… a challenge, now that a tiny foot had taken residence against her right ribs. Getting up, belly larger by the day, was almost impossible. Not that it stopped her from plopping down on the couch with a tired sigh.
Head lolling against the cushion, Eugenia shut her eyes. “I’m just going to take a nap real quick.”
Lips came to her forehead. “You’ve never looked more beautiful.”
“Shut up, Aaron.” She felt like a whale. A striped whale who clearly had not received the no-stretch-mark gene.
He put a plate on her belly. One that balanced just fine. “Eat. You’ll feel better.”
Roast pumpkin with onions and fish. Everything she craved since waking that morning and telling him how badly she needed it. Gloriously delicious as she scarfed it down like an animal. And then she did feel better. Like a new woman even. One even willing to talk to the handsome man taking off her shoe.
“I set a broken leg today. Compound fracture. A real mess.” Smiling, she met his eyes. “You should have seen it.”
Laughing, he removed her other shoe. “I’ll let the men know you’re looking forward to their suffering.”
“Ugh, I need to pee again.” Said with such desolation for her imminent loss of comfort on the couch.
“Up you go.” Plate set aside, he heaved his extremely pregnant wife to standing.
And stole a kiss before she might escape. One that rode her moods and altered their course until she was relaxed against him with a small smile on her mouth.
Lashes parting, she found his gaze as warm as it always was, and then her smile became a frown. “You know, they hate that I’m forced to leave Level 9 and come here every night. Those women, they don’t know what you’re really like. They only know what you did to them.”
Too many of the women on Level 9 had been fucked too hard by an indifferent, evil man. Some of them had once thought themselves in love, until they realized what he’d put them through on Level 15. Others had never seen him save the first time they stepped onto the boat. How he’d coldly outlined what their lives would be before throwing them into isolation for a month to adjust.
Not that all those new women made it to Level 9 anymore. Those who truly refused went… somewhere else, hidden from Eugenia to be bred.
Babies were delivered upstairs in need of a breast, fresh from the womb and squalling.
Eugenia had almost killed him the first time, slicing Captain so badly with his dinner knife Dr. Herbert had been called to stitch him when she refused.
On his knees, weeping when she swore she’d never look at him again, he pleaded that the mother promised to kill the baby. Swearing that she had murdered the one before—that the little boy wasn’t safe with her. That all the complicated cases were well fed and as clean as the women would allow themselves to be. That he didn’t have a choice.
Eugenia still didn’t speak to him for a week.
Staying with Brooke, who was far more pregnant and far more coherent when Eugenia came sobbing to her door.
Who told her to pull her head out of her ass.
Because she had seen the captain and his favorite captive. Because, out of all the women on Level 9, Brooke knew how much they loved one another and never told a soul. “The world out there is fire and pain. Some bring the pain back here where it’s safe. The captain can’t let it spread.”
Eugenia, in the most fucked-up way, had the dream all of them had yearned for.
Yet her voice still had to be heard. “He has women on the boat he forces to reproduce… and then he takes away their children.”
Scar tissue distorting her smile, Brooke offered a lopsided and honest grin. “And good for those women for refusing. And good for him for saving a life.”
“It’s rape.” The ugliest of words.
“It is.” A thing Brooke knew well, a word that set her eyelid twitching. “But I know it’s not like… what happened to me.”
“Brooke.” Eugenia took her friend’s hand, tears on her cheek. “It’s exactly like what happened to you.”
Brushing back her friend’s curls, Brooke whispered, “Yet you love him anyway.”
And Eugenia cried all the harder.
Because she did. She loved him so much that sometimes it hurt to breathe.
While self-sequestered on Level 9, she held that new baby, feeling her own quicken inside. Watched the women fawn over him, how they gladly shared the duty of breastfeeding him. Absorbed that the child was one of theirs and would be loved.
Slept all day, all night, for a week. Woke up to find a new tube of cherry Chapstick had been curled into her fingers while she dreamed.
And went home after the sun went down to find a wretched man badly in need of a shower and a shave.
“They’ve named him Noah.” Setting down her candle, she added, “I never want to know who fathered him, because if he comes to my clinic, I’ll kill him.”
Eyes wet, the captain agreed. “Fair enough.”
“I mean it. Hide it from me until the day I die.”
Aaron nodded.
“How are the stitches healing?” There had to be at least twenty across his chest the way she’d sliced him.
It was as if he hadn’t heard her, as if he might not be able to draw another breath unless he said, “I love you.”
“I know you do.” Which broke her heart a little bit more. He loved her so deeply Eugenia sometimes drowned in it.
Nodding at the unspoken ugliness between them, he asked, “Are you hungry?”
“Always.”
They ate by candlelight.
Months passed, their baby grew.
Another motherless newborn was passed to Level 9.
Eugenia felt doubt. She felt fear.
They didn’t speak of it. And, no matter how hard she searched, she could not find where those unwilling women were kept on the boat.
Aaron lavished her with attention, with affection, with bouts of sex that scratched an endless itch pregnancy had inspired.
He tolerated her moods, her sulks. Celebrated her joys.
The pair of them honored a silent agreement that some part of her would always hate him, and the greater part of him would swallow that hate and turn it into love.
Not that he deserved her. She definitely didn’t deserve him. Yet there they were, their baby on the horizon. Her bladder full, his smile gentle.
“Honey’,” he said, cupping her cheek. “It doesn’t matter what the women think. When we’re in here, what’s out there isn’t privy to our secrets.”
With a sigh, she looked down at the belly between them. At a baby who was running out of space and due to be born.
“Which is why I deserve you.” She deserved the burden of the other women’s concern and question of her judgment. Because she would never tell them she’d stolen the one thing not one of them would have.
“You had a long day and you’re tired.” Easing her toward the restroom, he ordered, “Use the toilet. I’ll have a surprise waiting.”
Grumbling, she obeyed. “The only thing surprising about your dick these days is that a man your age can still keep it up.”
Ignoring her sass, she was left in silence to pee. And came back to the room to find him holding up her coat.
Which, in all fairness, was surprising. “I’m not feeling up to a stroll about the deck.” Not when she’d hear the party on Level 15.
His smile grew, hazel gaze twinkling. “How about a moonlit boat ride on the lake?”
Expression excited, she blurted, “I want to walk on the shore.”
Wild dogs howled in the night.
With nothing but adoration shining from his eyes, he refused, “No.”
Thank you for reading Swallow it Down! It’s not often I write a book in three weeks, but I had to share this story with you. Hopefully, it brought you some joy, a few laughs, and a warm heart. Ready for more? Dystopian, dark, delicious, read BRANDED now!
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BORN TO BE BOUND
She had made it this far... wide eyes peered through the narrow slit between wool cap and layer upon layer of dingy muffler wrapped around the lower half of her face. No one seemed to be paying much attention as she passed, ignoring the creature in the stinking, oversized coat when it hesitated at the bottom of broad stairs and looked up at Thólos Citadel. Clutching tighter to the bottle of pills in her pocket, madly gripping her lifeline, she took the first step.
For two days, she had taken one of those priceless pills every four hours like clockwork. Walking into what had once been a restricted area, she should have been saturated in the medication, her metabolism and hormones deceived into complacency. A week's worth of food had been traded so she could make the climb up those steps without being torn to pieces.
She was still mortally afraid.
The roar of the monsters inside—the cheers and heckling as her people were stripped of their dignity, then stripped of the
ir lives—turned her stomach, though the acid feeling may have been a side-effect of the drugs. Already sweating, grateful others had covered her in so many layers to hide what she was, Claire took the smallest of breaths, tried not to gag from the stink of rotting corpse that had seasoned her clothes, and walked into madness.
Crossing the entrance was almost too easy. There was no hand gripping her shoulder to cease her movement, no barking Follower demanding she state her business. In fact, the black hole seemed only too willing to suck her in. Over the threshold, the air was ripe with the scent of men; a pungent mixture of aggressive Alpha and some of the more violent Betas who had come to snarl and yip at whoever was that day's entertainment.
Birth titles littered the ground, parchment showing tread marks where uncaring boots had trampled what had once signified a life. A tally of names that had been stricken from the books. The scraps of paper were tossed away to mix with discarded flyers, wanted signs, and garbage.
The deeper she went, the more packed each chamber grew, filled by a horde borne of citizens and the castoff Undercroft scum set free the day terror breached Thólos. They were thugs who had taken up the banner of the Dome's conqueror, men with the power to do as they pleased. Men encouraged to do whatever they pleased. Evil men.
She had to be quick, knowing that if the jostling mob discovered what she was under the stinking filth wrapped around her, she'd die horribly, and all the others would be left to starve. One foot after another, back pressed against the wall, eyes darting to and fro, Claire skirted the crowd and prayed to remain unnoticed.
The male Claire sought had a reputation for standing where any could reach him. Where all could see who held power, so challengers could be killed—if rumors held true—with his bare hands.
One could not have missed him if they tried.