Corrupted (Alpha's Claim 5)

The streets grew safer under the Followers’ watchful eyes. After all, criminals knew best how to find their own kind. Squash them like bugs. Take over the necessary rackets. And control everything under the glass.

The economy flourished.

The shy Queen was loved.

The imposing Chancellor Shepherd was adored.

Fact.

Adored, feared. Aggressive and just. A precise blend of politics and power.

All a façade to hide a secret that would bring the city to its knees.

Those under the invader’s banner—the Followers dressed in black—had murdered, replaced, discarded, crushed thousands upon thousands of the very people who sang their praises.

And that was fucking terrifying.

As scary as the glint off the gold on his finger and the fact that she was not the only woman locked away in this brightly colored new place. Not once, on any screen, had Maryanne seen Claire.

Report complete, forcing a full breath despite uncanny anxiety, the Alpha female sat a little straighter. “How’s Claire?”

Wow, she really was starved for conversation to even dare bring up that name. But the wedding ring… it had been taunting Maryanne for months.

Not just the ring…

The man looming over Maryanne’s workstation stank of Claire’s slick. Not that Maryanne would dare crack any such joke, or even look at him sideways. Not now. Not ever.

She thought Shepherd had been scary as fuck in the Undercroft. She’d feared him in Thólos. Now, seeing what he’d done in Greth, the man practically made her wet herself.

And here he was, reeking as if he’d come directly from fucking his mate and wanted the world to know it.

“None of your concern.”

Death wish. Maryanne had to have had a death wish to ask, “Has she been eating?”

And fuck, she’d caught his full attention. That glacial stare, the weight of so much concentration on a simple living being about to be snapped in half like a twig. Even the way he turned from the dozens of monitors to face her full-on.

Maryanne swallowed.

And Shepherd stared.

Time dragging on like claws on flesh.

A full minute passed. “She’s my best friend. Aren’t we doing this all for her?”

Cocking a brow, the barest twitch in his cheek, Shepherd verbally struck. “Not once, in all the time she’s been safely back in my care, has she so much as breathed your name. Not once, Maryanne.”

Chin lifting, Maryanne curled her lip. “Because she thinks I’m dead.”

“Does she?” Dismissing her as if she was nothing, gray eyes went back to the monitors. “I think we both know better.”

“Why can’t you ever be nice to me?” Fire, where it came from, Maryanne didn’t know, but it came and burned where she’d been colder than a Thólos corpse. “I follow your orders day in and day out. I obey. I pace, and jump, and wash, and organize. I give you the lives of what might be decent people if they so much as breathe the wrong phrase in passing. What the fuck do you want from me, Shepherd?”

“I want you dead.”

Snuffed out, not even a trace of smoke. Frigid, a living corpse. A tired, lonely woman who could really use a drink offered no reply.

Silence was the appropriate response.

With obedience came a sort of mercy. Honesty.

Shepherd, cutting a glance over his shoulder, said, “It frustrates that I can’t kill you. Me, because I despise you. You, because you know how close to the grave you will always be. You’ll never be a Follower, Maryanne. You’re too selfish. Too empty for even me to fill.”

“Too useful, you mean.”

“You have your uses.”

Was that… was that a concession? “I have five more years left in these rooms. I just want to know how Claire is doing.”

A flicker of light came to a very dark man. “She is painting today.”

Done with her, with her reports, her efforts, her endless toil staring at people free to do as they wished, Shepherd faded back into the shadows. Leaving Maryanne with nothing but her screens.

Dinner arrived. She ate. At the appointed hour, she lay down on her cot, warmed by a colorful blanket in a dreary room.

When the chime woke her so she might slog through another day of endless watching, something new shone like a beacon.

On the wall… a fresh painting of flowers.

For the first time since Thólos fell, Maryanne cried.

And then she threw up.

5

There was dry toast for breakfast.

Maryanne followed protocol: she tidied her sleeping quarters—first cleaning up the drying pool of stale vomit. Afterward, she made the bed with sharp lines. Once bed-making precision had been achieved, she washed her body until her skin stung from the abrasive rag and scentless soap.

Mustering enthusiasm was dreary, her body dragging as she pulled clothing over her limbs.

Entering the arena of her misery—the room of screens—fresh, uninvited tears fell.

Not a single monitor fed her. There was no life to be seen. She had no window…

Maryanne was trapped in a gray prison with nothing but four walls and the lingering stench of barf. There was nothing for her anywhere. An Alpha female who had flouted Shepherd’s dominion of Thólos. Who had prepared for a long life of solitude. Who had swept the feet out from under a giant when his mate rebelled. Had nothing.