by Addison Cain
She was more than one terrible collection of days.
More than the brand on her face or the bite shaped scars on her skin.
She was a mother.
And unlike the little ones dead and buried in the mud outside her home, Alec and Mikael still lived. Would thrive.
She had to help assure it. Do whatever it took to make it all better.
Alec needed her now. He needed her collected and capable. He’d need her smiles and purrs.
He needed her medicine.
Yes! Pushing from the ground, Wren ignored the crouching male at her side and ran to the murdered doctor’s box. Rifling through the medications Toby had meticulously organized by day and hour, she knocked it all aside in search of the precious injection: a healing boost.
When her hands closed on the prefilled syringe, feeling rushed back. Holding it to her heart, excitement on her face, she’d turned to Caspian and shown him.
“No.”
How could it be so simple to deny her child relief?
Yes.
“No.”
Holding it out to him, she crossed the room and went to her knees, prepared to beg… lick his boots if that’s what it took.
Radiating agitation, the brute fisted his hands into balls, and glared. He met her eyes and snarled, “I told you no.”
Wren tried to unfurl his fingers, to put the syringe in his hand. But he was too strong. So she set her cheek to his thigh and held to his leg as her shoulders shook.
“Mouse, you are angering me.”
There had to be some way to purchase mercy for her boy!
Clawing at his zipper, she pulled out a flaccid cock, feeding it into her mouth just like Rosie did. Tears streaking her face, she tried every trick she’d seen, and though he swelled, Caspian never got fully hard.
The shove that knocked her back onto the floor sent the syringe flying from her grip. Scrambling after it, Wren let out a cry when Kieran snapped it up in his hand. It was him she fell upon next, kneeling at his feet and holding onto his leg so that he could not kick her away.
No matter her debasement, the Second Alpha wouldn’t even look at her.
Aloof, staring forward, he ignored the silent begging and louder sobs. He even ignored her screams when Toby forcibly peeled her away. Kieran just walked out of the room, dismissing her completely.
Striking out at the Third, she shoved him off and stood before the pair of offenders as if she stood a chance at seeing them ripped apart. Panting, smoothing her hair and trying to catch her breath before she fell into a dangerous mental state, she shook, coughing up old phlegm that rattled its way out of her chest.
And could not pull herself together even enough to breathe properly.
Enraged, Caspian threw her box of medicines, roaring, “What more do you want from me? Never have I spared a hand!”
Pills spilled over the aging rugs, bottles broke.
Next he lifted her breathing treatment machine over his head, smashing it against the distant wall. Metal split at the seams, internal bits destroyed.
“You take all this crap and still you cough! I have to hear you wheeze while you sleep. I feed you a fortune in engineered foods. And you want to give what I provide to a traitor? He knew you’d sold your body to me and came begging for a place anyway!”
She didn’t care about the medicines or the machines. All she’d lived for had been those boys.
Wren growled… she hadn’t meant to, but the insulting noise had slipped out all the same.
Both Alphas froze.
Nearest her, Toby reeked of something far deeper than anger. That was nothing to the wave of fury emanating from the First Alpha across the room.
“GET OUT!”
Stepping between her and the rampaging First, Toby held her behind his back. “I’ll take her upstairs.”
Nostrils flaring, Caspian’s livid glare turned upon his Third. “Toss her back into the Warrens. Let her remember what life was like before I dragged her out of the mud.”
***
There was no fight left in her when Toby dragged her from the waterworks. None.
He wasn’t purring or sweet, but nor was he as rough as his anger signaled an infuriated Alpha should be. There were no words between them, only the singed buzz of an insubstantial link.
One that fluttered with… concern.
Nothing like the burn that twisted her guts from the male above. Even with Caspian far away and locked in his den—she could feel his tumultuous wrath. Feel how it was blended with desperate lust as he thought to slake such feelings on the body of another.
She could sense his confusion when the simple act of fucking was not enough to assuage the tempest.
And because both males and been arrogant enough to force a half-formed link on her, they sensed her total disgust. Her hatred. Her disappointment in their failings as men.
“You need to cool off for a few days.” Toby snarled between clenched teeth, openly angry with her. “Stay out of his reach before you push him to ruin what we have.”
His grip on her arm tightened, the Alpha marching her along like a child who needed to be put in the corner.
But he didn’t bruise. He didn’t yank.
Considering his anger, Toby was downright gentle.
He was even worried.
That did not change how he shoved her out of their building to land straight in the mud.
Knees scraped, the familiar squish of unsteady ground under her hands, Wren took in her first deep breath of outside air since she’d been taken.
It reeked of shit.
Cold air brushing naked arms, wet skirts icing in the cold, she picked herself up… and felt utterly alone.
The long walk home did nothing to ease her distress. Not when neighbors took one look at her and turned their backs.
Everyone knew who she now belonged to.
And reviled her for it.
Planks rocking under her bare feet, heart worn, she dragged her sorry bones all the way to her busted door.
No longer did she have a home. Mud had been tracked all over the floor, items cast aside and broken when looters deemed they held no value.
It was as if she’d never existed. Her life in this sorry den erased.
The scent of her boys did not even linger in the air, the smell of rot and mildew pervading each breath.
No wonder they had all been sick…
She was a terrible mother.
One of her boys lay in the hospital fighting his weak lungs for life. The other had been beaten bloody and left to hang before a gang of thugs.
And this room, this place that had been her home was so beneath what they deserved that her skin itched just standing in its walls.
So she left.
Walking around the sinking skyscraper she’d carved out a room in, she climbed over a fence made of scrap. Her skirt caught, tore, and left a lace trail that ran through soggy mud. She didn’t care. Not when she was so busy hating herself for ruining her boy’s chance at a better life.
Curling up in a place she had spent many of her worst hours, Wren shut her eyes and shrunk in her skin.
“He’s just a kid. A stupid one, but still.” It was the last person she expected to hear. Tawny hair falling in his eyes, Kieran stood over her. In his hand was an empty syringe.
Palm opening, it fell into the mud.
Turning to walk away, he snarled over his shoulder, “Tell anyone I gave it to him and I’ll kill you.”
Chapter 9
Wait!
He hadn't seen her hands sign the entreaty, ignored her pathetic throat sounds as she fought the mud to stand.
Rushing to catch Kieran before he slipped away, Wren threw her arms around his middle and held him with all her might.
He froze, stiff as stone under her arms, but he didn’t push her away. He didn’t slap her face or snarl.
The Second Alpha only stood there, as if unsure what to do.
Face pressed to his broad back, Wren breath
ed in the familiar scent of potent male—flooded with a burst of true gratitude and unadulterated appreciation.
Had she words, so much would have tripped from her lips. Had her fingers not been splinted, and had he the knowledge to understand her sign language, she would have told him that she would never forget his kindness to her boy.
“What are you doing?” This strained voice Wren did not even recognize.
Without allowing the awkwardly motionless male out of her grasp, Wren crept from his back to his front—so he might see her face, view her wide, glistening eyes.
All the filth she’d brought with her from the ground smeared his clothing, making it look as if he almost belonged in this dump. As if they were a matched set. And she should have apologized for ruining his clean things, but there was no way she would let him walk away without letting him know how much this meant to her.
Kieran didn’t seem to notice her filth, not when he stared down at her with a complicated blend of emotions playing over his face.
Confusion dominated. Under it sat annoyance. Intrigue. Disbelief. Anger.
She needed him to understand. Ear to his heart, she hugged him not only in gratitude, but because holding someone in that moment lifted such a burden.
He had given her air when she was drowning.
He had saved her from the worst kind of self-doubt.
And he had comforted her boy, even if Alec never understood what had been injected into his veins.
Wren knew Kieran desired to leave. That he hated her. She’d even take his coming beating without so much as a cry of protest so long as she could silently display how she felt.
Just for this one moment where she knew her boy had been given a secret, precious gift. Where the man who had delivered it let her take comfort in him, even though he disliked her.
She took her moment with full enthusiasm, with a smile and the purr reserved for actual happiness.
When his grip came to her horribly tangled and mud spattered hair, she didn’t resist. Scalp tingling from the pressure, from the strength of his grip, she was made to lift her head.
The face looking down at her was a stranger’s.
He moved so quickly she’d barely had time to draw breath. One moment she’d been hugging the villain who’d taken pity on her child, the next she was slammed against the sagging wall of her building.
By him.
Because he was kissing her as if he’d die without another taste.
Kieran, who never kissed when he fucked her.
Startled, her purr stumbled into a whimper. He swallowed it, the entirety of his body pressed against her slight frame in the dark.
The noises coming from him were desperate, the force of his body rubbing against hers imprinting the wall into her skin.
And then a second later he was off of her, panting, green eyes burning as if she had done him harm.
Chest heaving, knowing she looked utterly befuddled, Wren kept herself painted against the wall.
The male pacing before her, the one manically running his hands through tousled tawny hair, was a stranger.
You hate me.
But he glared at her with such longing.
You use me like a disposable doll.
Stopping long enough that his boots sunk a good two inches into the mud, he cut her a glance, looked about ready to rip her head from her shivering shoulders… as if he heard her silent tirade.
And then flew at her again.
Tongue and teeth and lips that gave no quarter, he didn’t care that she barked out an alarmed cry.
He blocked out the sky with his mass, held her pinned so the mud could not suck her down further, and rocked his hips against her belly with manic jerks.
Wet warmth that had not come from mist or mud marked her stomach, the male spilling so much precum the outside air would waft the aroma for all those near to sniff.
A dangerous Alpha was fucking, laying claim. Do not disturb.
Caught up in his impatience, Kieran began to bunch up her tattered dress.
It was as if he didn’t even realize there was more than his urges before him. One second he was growling for her slick, the next he had freed his cock and rammed it so deep inside her, Wren’s teeth snapped together.
Tongue invaded her mouth, he whined and bucked and pulled at her hair.
This was not the calculating seducer who only gave her pleasure with pain, the one who degraded her and did all he could to make sure she hated him.
This was a man possessed.
A man who was arrestingly rough and infinitely gentle.
Her back would be gouged with bits of cement wall, her pussy was screaming that he was too big, that she was stretched too full.
That his looming knot would see her in tears.
Yet her bowed body reveled in it, despite the fact that he pumped into her in the most horrible of locations.
A graveyard.
The mud that held her shame.
It was as if it didn’t matter. As if she was absolved.
As if this was what it should always feel like with a male.
Before Wren might even register what twisted her toes, an orgasm of epic proportions left her screaming into the mouth of a man she didn’t know at all.
His following knot was set deep, bursting out and interlocking them together in a way that left them both vulnerable.
All it would take was one thug slamming him on the back of the head with a rock. One freezing neighbor to drive a blade between their ribs to steal their clothes.
Sagging until mud squished Wren’s back, the pair of them took to the ground.
He wouldn’t meet her eyes, his own cast to the side as if he was in pain.
As if he felt guilt.
The warmth of his following burst, the twist of her vaginal cavity squishing his meat tight distracted just enough she didn’t realize how deep she’d sunk into the mud.
It covered her ears, creeping up her cheeks and about to fill her mouth.
The Second Alpha, his head thrown back, sucked in a hearty breath. Tossing his gaze her way, his breath caught and he yanked her out of the mire.
Dragging her out of the mud, he climbed up the scrap heap she’d piled for her fence and kept them both clear of the very mud that was slowly devouring Dale City.
Metal digging into the fresh cuts Kieran’s enthusiasm left on her back, Wren watched her breath fog in the night. Felt her delicate tissues pulsate and beg for more fluid from the fat cock inside her.
Whimpered when Kieran dumped another hot load of cream deep into her belly.
This knot expanded all the larger.
A knot the Alpha could not resist grinding deeper as he ripped open her filthy gown and lapped at her nipples.
Raw, tingling, exhausted, broken-hearted, world-weary, Wren lay back on her sharp metal scraps, eyes to the sky, while her unsplinted fingers played in tawny hair.
“Neither of those kids are your blood. Why waste the effort?”
The entirety of his voice was foreign, innocent. And, this was the first honest question Wren had ever heard from the pretentious, cocky male.
Hand to his chest, Wren pressed Kieran to sit up so that she could display the muck-filled yard he’d found her in.
Gated by debris and soppy with too much wet—where the syringe Kieran had dumped at her feet had been swallowed by mud, Wren laced her working fingers in the silent, brooding, utter fool’s hand.
Even surrounded by such a place, Wren knew Kieran had no idea what his eyes fell upon. She knew he didn’t see.
But she looked to at him all the same, and pet his arm as if he were the lost child looking for a home.
Behind them, so many little bodies were lost in that mud. Some sinking, some rising. A sharp eye would see the bits of sun-bleached bone poking out here and there. They would see the little markers etched with names rain and wind had worn clean.
There had been little Faith, barely hours old when Wren had found her squalling in the
mud. Tossed away like garbage at the Warrens’ gates. Even though she’d been only child herself, Wren had taken her home, named her something suiting for those large, wise eyes, and held her to her breast the entire four days it took the baby to die of starvation.
Because Wren had no milk and could find no one who might trade with a penniless mute.
She had begged at the gates that separated her sector from the higher levels.
Been kicked, ridiculed, and spit upon.
Stiff with rigor mortis, wrapped in the prettiest cloth Wren could scavenge, the poor thing was properly buried. Weighted down with debris so her little body would not float up in the mud, Wren had scooped mud over the shallow hand-dug grave.
That was only the first infant Wren had stumbled upon over her years in this hell. So many tiny babies cast off to squeal in the muck for milk she’d never be able to provide.
It was those graves she pointed at first.
Kieran looked where she directed, eyes squinted and openly restless. So she’d cradled her arms in an unmistakable position and rocked them. As if they’d held a baby. She pointed to another bubbling mound. Same motion. Again. Again. Again.
Older kids were cast off too. Gwen, Cecily, Brandon, Xerxis, Palo… on and on their names went.
Very few had lasted longer than a month.
Some she got to hold a whole year.
Only Mikael and Alec had lasted long enough to have an actual future.
The Alpha still knotted inside her looked, then glanced back when Wren signaled the height of the child who was buried. She pantomimed a terrible cough.
Beside that grave slept a boy, one who’d been older than Alec when he’d passed. Who had been strong and smart. Wren pantomimed vomiting.
Each lost little life… she told their story without a single word. Starvation, violence, disease… an accident. She made the great Kieran bear witness. She made the bastard see what the Warrens really was.
Hell.
To his benefit, when he had seen enough, he set his forehead to her breast and said nothing. He never asked how many bodies she’d had to weigh down with bricks so they wouldn’t float to the surface. He didn’t ask their names or how she’d found them.
He just listened to everything she couldn’t say.
All the while his knot pulsating between them.