Who must be suffering even more than she at the cruelty of being bound against his will, severed from the female he called out for on the ship, and tied to her.
Tied to Jacques.
Who was a bastard, though he might be beautiful and have all the power in her world.
Epiphanies were not a worthy word for the thoughts that crossed her mind as she sat on that toilet and ignored Jacques refilling the tub. Vendettas did not fit either. Unsure what these feelings were or why they ransacked through her scattering thoughts, she reached out for them. Gathered them close to her heart like a shield.
They were fragments, she considered, of what it must feel like to be a whole person.
The Betas of Bernard Dome had no idea how truly blessed they were.
Unmedicated humanity was hideous. The ways in which she fanaticized about harming a living being brutal.
Burying her head in her hands, another wave of come splattering the basin on a cramp, a final offensive thought broke through all the chaos. One she had to ask before she might throw up. “Are you going to make me have sex with him again?”
That. That one blunt question of her mate made him freeze. Every naked muscle flexed as if the creature might burst from his skin, the devil inside seen for what it was.
Alpha anger seasoned ugly air. Yet his back was still to her and his answer had not been given. He asked her a question instead. “Do you wish for the Beta to fuck you?”
Brenya’s initial question had in no way signified desire for the Beta, but again, the Alpha who controlled her life spoke with such a snarl it was clear the idea enraged him.
“It would be rape.” Of the Beta. But again, Jacques was not understanding the basic level at which she communicated. Brenya wondering again at what she missed here. Unsolved puzzles in a mind like hers would never stop trying to piece together.
Obsessive behavior would follow. It’s what had made her an extraordinary grunt.
The toilet began its cleansing function, washing her as it washed itself, the bowl full of filth-spattered come flushing down to the waste process levels to be made into fresh water for drinking, cooking, washing....
“Come to the bath, Brenya. I’ll wash it all away.”
And so she had, feeling anger, such a raw emotion birthed deep within. And it felt so much better than fear, or helplessness. It got her through that second bath, one where the Alpha wisely kept his cock to himself. It got her through the attention he paid to her every hurt. How after he’d dried her with the softest towels one might imagine, after he set her naked on the bathroom’s settee, how he bandaged where two men had bitten her deep enough that the wounds had yet to fully scab.
One bite was clean, one was vicious. The scales between them as if one a scholar and one a madman. One in control and one possessed. Each with their own brand of venom.
Over bruises and sore muscles went silk. White, because Jacques always dressed her in that virginal shade. Hair combed by the deft fingers of a man with longer locks of his own, he spoke to her of mundane things as if they were friends, as if she cared what he might say.
Brenya listened, picking out what might matter—the things between pointless gossip. She listened, because she was enraged, retreating so far inside herself so he could not buoy her up to the calm he preferred… that she found a single quiet corner that even Jacques could not invade.
In that silence, she was not alone.
4
Greth Dome
“Show me.”
Skin instantly pricking to the point it stung, the worst sort of unseen, unheard predator emerged from the shadows. Tired of the constant surprises, Maryanne snarled, “For fuck’s sake! Why do you have to sneak up on me like that every goddamn time?”
Isolation had done her few favors. But she breathed, which was more than she could say about the poor saps in Thólos. If they weren’t dead now, they would be soon. And those who might still linger? They probably wished they’d died quickly in the siege.
Most of them had been assholes who’d had it coming. She didn’t owe them a goddamn thing.
Didn’t think about it.
Look forward. Stay alive. Stay in place…
Always in the same three rooms.
This keeping place, this prison, the accommodations were larger than her crappy dwelling back in Antarctica. But no windows. Her vitamin D came from specialized lamps and a daily dose of healthy food. She was little more than a tended houseplant.
Unless she suffered punishment, she was ordered to exercise—the regime boring, exhausting, pointless when there was nowhere to go and no city to explore. Not unless she used the faculties left for her amusement.