Broken Captive (Wren's Song 3)

Yet still he pushed. He’d ask her to bend backwards like a bridge and bear the entire weight of her inverted body on hands and feet so he could fuck her until her legs cramped and she fell. She’d obey, the upside-down world rocking as her hair brushed the floor.

When inevitable failure to hold such a position brought her tumbling to the ground, again he’d compare her to all the beauty that waited in the pen. Yet it wasn’t them who’d pull his head to her breast, and comb through those tawny locks with her fingers while he sputtered and raged… and allowed it.

The dark marks under his eyes, the obvious exhaustion. He became putty—that slept and drooled and clung so hard it made her bones ache until the cycle could repeat.

Then there was Toby who thought he was her succor. Toby who saw that she was gently bathed, that her hair was combed, medicines injected and swallowed, fingers observed. Toby who talked to her with his hands as he practiced sign language. Toby who would devour the pussy Kieran inevitably left stuffed with his cum for hours on end.

Until her nerves couldn’t take another second.

Until she truly wanted to scream.

It was his attention that sent her closest to falling off the edge. Toby’s dedication that endangered Alec.

Because she wanted to slap him away and scream that she didn’t need his tenderness or pretty words.

Were Kieran wiser, he’d forfeit his time and give Toby every possible hour to drive her insane.

“You look much better today. Rosy cheeked and soft as silk.” He’d signed it perfectly.

A small, practiced smile was offered. Wren playing house, playing mate, to appease the one whose bond rattled in her bones with unmatched hunger.

“Once your cough is under control, and your lungs have recovered, I’ll take you up top to a restaurant and a show. Just us two for a night on the town.”

Like normal women who didn’t sleep in filth and sell their bodies? Air left her lungs, a slight disbelieving snort ruining Wren’s facade.

Tone edging toward warning, Toby said. “All other males will envy me.”

Resolute energy flowed from his end of the bond, the buzz working to chase away her incredulity.

The life he’d paint for her… how many years had she dreamed of such things? It was as if he plucked the thoughts out of her head and offered them to her on a silver platter.

But all that sparkled in his display was poisoned. And she knew that.

Knew better.

Because there were no decent Alphas.

And she would never get to go up top. Never sit at a fancy restaurant’s table. Never smile while draped in diamonds.

But Toby in his unintentional cruelty was also relentless.

Once when she was still aching from Kieran’s attention, when she was tired and frightened and lonely for her boys, Toby’s ministrations and his measured promises of the perfect life cracked her armor.

Wren had cried.

Toby had seen it.

But instead of raging at her for breaking character, he set the brush aside and pulled her to his chest.

Purring, he let her splinter, felt her desolation through the tenuous link, and did nothing more than hold her.

More importantly, when she was finished and shaking, scared for what she’d done, he promised not to tell.

Caspian and Kieran didn’t need to know.

But the First Alpha had felt her wretchedness through the link, and came in a high temper to see what had happened. By then, Toby had dried her eyes, kissed her lips swollen and pink, and left her exactly the way Caspian liked to see her best.

Clean. Virginal.

Shy.

Nervous.

The distraction slowed Caspian’s angry breath.

With a stroke down her smoothed hair, Toby said, “It was a coughing fit. Nothing more.”

“She’s supposed to be getting better!” The First Alpha paced the length of his room, openly angry at the intangible thing that kept her chest ratting despite breathing treatments, special food, and a smorgasbord of pharmaceuticals.

Truthfully, Wren was.

Though her chest still ached, she could draw in a deeper breath than she had been able to in years. In the last ten days, her body had begun to fill out, breasts ripening and rear getting plump. She’d always been extremely pale, but now her skin was no longer sallow and sunken.

There was still ample mending to be done, but her health was much improved, considering…

For the first time in years, she was actually sick of a eating the same thing day in and day out. A luxury of feeling only the well-fed might ever know.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it.” Toby pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “Be a good girl, sunshine. Caspian’s had a hard day.”

Caspian… who brought his other whores to the den she nested in. Who would barge in and throw back her covers, so he might reach for and stroke her ankle while he looked her over every single morning.