My potential mate roared, “SEND IN HELENA!”
Another door in the chilly room opened, a woman in a vivid robe rushing forward. “How can I serve you, my Alpha?”
“Bend over the desk and wait for me!”
Wren watched the woman quickly strip, viewing another naked female body for the first time in her life. With no preamble, the pretty brunette bent at the waist, the globes of her ass presented, her cheek to the wood.
Beta female parts were on display.
Cruel fingers reached for Wren’s stretched labia, the Alpha yanking at the sensitive flesh as he grunted and threw her forward with his weight. His ballooning testicles doubled in size, the man groaning with the worst sort of agony.
His pain was nothing to hers. The knot that was meant to tie them together in life was deformed by his tricks until it could be pulled free of her body. Wren was dumped on the floor, hand pressed between her trembling legs as she wailed.
From the corner of her eye, she watched the Alpha scythe his cock into the waiting female, wrecking her with the madness of his need to release. Unlike Wren, the Beta gave him immediate relief, the Alpha’s cry earsplitting.
Bowed over, curled in on herself, Wren shut her eyes to it all.
When her father was called forward, even then she refused to rise to meet his gaze. Naked and shamed on the floor of a stranger’s house, she sniffed, wishing she couldn’t hear the terrible things that were said about her.
“Was she not trained?”
“My wife took great pains to explain what would be expected, sir. You have my humblest apologies that she failed, but if you are not going to take her as your new mate, you still owe for the tearing of her hymen. She will be harder to sell unintact.”
Of course her father would try to weasel credits from this man…
The Alpha gave an incredulous laugh. “Your mute albino freak might be pretty to look at, but she is the worst fuck imaginable. If you think I’d expose that cunt to another Alpha in this city, you’re wrong.”
“You owe me one-thousand credits for her virginity!” Her father never once came to her defense, never offered her comfort, he only tried to squeeze what he could from a far richer man. “The contract was clear. No matter the outcome of the first mating, a fee will be paid!”
The sound of ice hitting the side of crystal, the pour of liquor. Far calmer, the Alpha took a long sip. “The contract,” a smile in his voice, the Alpha purred, “is null and void if the merchandise is defective. You get nothing, Carson. She will be tagged and dumped in the Warrens and you will leave here grateful to be breathing.”
No! Ignoring sore muscles and the screaming pain between her legs, Wren scampered to her father and wrapped her arm around his leg. Signing frantically, she begged him for mercy.
He looked down at his pale, violet-eyed child, deadpan as he said, “I should have had you euthanized at birth.”
Chapter 2
The bones in her back cracked splendidly when Wren straightened from a low crouch. The city might be enjoying the heat of summer, but the Warrens were always ice-cold—the kind of chill that locked up muscle and joints. And with that chill came disease-riddled damp.
Medicine was damn expensive.
Even now there was a rattle in her lungs. But it wasn’t the killing kind. A good day or two in a dry room and she’d cough up the phlegm and be right as rain.
Would it be nice to peel out of mud soaked boots and let her toes de-prune? Yes, but that would have to wait. She had sloshed down to the pump-yard for a reason more important than clean air and dry socks.
Coughing into her fist, she worked out as much of the lung rot as she could. Once she dropped down into the pipes, she couldn’t risk so much as a wheeze. Not until she found the one called Caspian.
It was a hard enough life in the Warrens without men like Caspian intruding to make it all the worse. His syndicate offered honest work. His lackeys tempted those new to this hellhole, those who had yet to learn better, with food and a dry bed, roping them into slavery.
Wren spit on the name.
She’d spit on the man if it wouldn’t mean her neck. And where would that leave her boys?
Dead.
Villains, powermongers, and innocent fools were cast into the muck every day. To people like Wren, it was nothing… changed nothing. Honestly, at this point, it was hard enough keeping little bellies full without having to give a damn about the men who came and went.
City scourges and cracking walls. Sinking buildings and floating bodies.
Nothing and no one was going to change the Warrens.
But that was beside the point.