Branded Captive (Wren's Song 1)

Hanging her head in her hands, Wren took an unsteady breath. The pain in her body was nothing, her tattered pride unimportant. All that mattered were her boys. The price for Alec and Mikael was going to be so much more than merely whoring herself out to an evil man and his pack.

It was going to cost Wren her life.

This was debt she could never pay. When it came time to collect, she would be tossed in debtor’s prison to work the quarries until her final breath.

Scrubbing silent tears from her cheeks, she went back to the pen and frantically scratched out: Mikael is a good boy, very smart. Get to know him and you’ll learn how loyal he is. Hard working. He could help you fetching things you need. Clean. Maybe you could find a safe place for him? Give him work? Please.

Stricken, the doctor looked up from her messy words. “I can’t keep the boy.”

Her heart sank, but she nodded that she understood. Ten years old was awfully young to be alone and Alec was not as reliable these days as Wren might hope. Something would have to be sorted out before she was taken away. Even this home wasn’t going to last much longer before it slipped under the mud.

“You’re upsetting her.” Kieran was pissed.

The physician could tell his time was up. “A quick injection, ice for the swelling, anti-inflammatories…” Digging in his case, the doctor produced a hypo-spray. “She’ll be right in no time.”

Wren tried to hand back his precious paper and pen, but the old man waved them off. “I have dozens back in the office. Keep it.”

Dozens… of course he did. He wasn’t forced to live in the Warrens where everything rotted.

She wrote him two final words. Thank you.

He didn’t spare the paper a glance. With an injector placed against her jugular, he fired the mechanism. A popping sound, an unrelenting knot, and looming certain doom were the last things on Wren’s mind. Swimming in the sea of happy drugs, the world was suddenly a much more comfortable place, the warm fluid flowing through her veins making everything okay.

Toby, sounding far away, snapped his fingers in her face. “What the fuck did you give her?”

“Sedation is necessary for the boost to effectively work; otherwise the pain of instant healing may lead to myocardial infarction. The effect will wear off in a matter of hours and your Omega will show dramatic improvement. She’ll need rest though and”—the man glanced down at the puddle of liquid soaking into his shoe—“fluids. Give her lots of fluids.”

“Hear that, sunshine?” Playful fingers tapped her knee, Toby’s grin huge. “You’ll be good as new before you know it.”

The doctor packed up his things, and as soon as the door closed, the smirking Alpha who’d been patting her knee and keeping the blanket from slipping stood. He looked down to find that once again, Kieran was strumming her clit.

Towering over them, Toby pulled back a fist and punched the other Alpha right in the jaw. “Stop making her cum, you asshole!”

Kieran momentarily listed back from the power of the strike, sitting up with a rage-drenched roar. The knot plugging up her insides shrank in the melee, and Wren was finally set free to slip from his lap right back to the freezing puddle on the floor.

Humming in her full body contentment, certain for once that life was finally good, Wren lay there in a happy heap and watched two of the most massive men she’d ever seen scrap and snarl, destroying her furniture where they fought.

It was funny watching her life fall apart before her eyes, Wren’s hoarse giggle drawing the raging bears to tear their claws from one another and look at her.

“She’s high as a goddamn kite.” Kieran curled an unhappy mouth downward. Collapsing back on the couch with his fading erection slapping against his thigh, he scrubbed a hand over his swelling eye. “You’ll fucking pay for that later, Third.”

“We’ll see about that, motherfucker.” Reaching down to gather Wren up to his chest, Toby was as cocky as a man bleeding from his mouth might be. “I did my job today, you just screwed yours.”

The fight went out of the suddenly placid Alpha, Kieran narrowing his eyes. “Speaking of fucking her, you are not allowed to, Toby. Caspian made that clear. Take her to the nest. Clean her up. Nothing more.”

Grinning down at the listless, softly smiling woman in his arms, Toby cooed, “Ol’ Toby will take good care of you.”

He left his cohort, and lugged Wren down the hall, carrying her into a room that looked like hers—if hers was cluttered with alien furnishings and jugs of water. In the middle of it all was a pile of fluff that even from this distance smelled all wrong. A new nest. But it was not built from the treasures she’d found in excavation. The pillows didn’t smell of her sweat and the two boys she occasionally let cuddle with her.