Toby’s echo in her bones wasn’t much better. All she sensed from him was anger. The cunning kind that held a smile on its face and a knife at its back. Neither seemed ready to forgive her outburst. Neither had a moment’s peace.
Even though it had been days.
Putting Wren in a difficult position. How was she to face them if they would not hear her? How was she to negotiate for riches that had been promised?
Left with the niggling thought that the only way to keep her boys alive was to steal them back, she debated avoiding the raging males at all costs. But if she were caught…
Spitting out the leather, Wren’s teeth worked her lip as she deliberated.
Caspian was a liar of epic proportions who cared only for himself. There was a large chance he would never pay her her due.
How many times had he already gone back on his word?
But he had also marked her with myriad bites in his furious passion. Bites she would make him see when she came for her due. And if approached before his men, their First Alpha would lose face for denying his bonded Omega.
Such action made him look weak, and that was her greatest weapon against his damaged character.
But she needed a voice. She needed her hands so Toby might translate.
Yet they still fucking ached.
Frustrated, Wren studied the honeycombed splints, her nails only just starting to grow back.
Sitting there in the dark, flickers of the battle stole into her thoughts. When these hands had been broken, she’d made the men roar. And if there had been only one brawny Alpha to face? He would have died.
But three, moving in tandem? Three circling and countering her swinging rebar?
Indomitable.
The memory of smashing that cement crusted pole right into Caspian’s snarling face bubbled up. Smiling, Wren laid down on her side and almost felt pride.
Sheltered inside a gaping crack along the outer walls of a sinking building, little wind reached her. There she waited out the sun, hours left before she might forage safely.
Cement was still cold, but she had layers to warm fattened limbs.
Someday she might even have another nest.
But right now she had something far more important. She had purpose, and she had delicious snippets of rage heavy memory to entertain her through the wait.
Chuckling, her teeth snapped shut. Between them was the phantom of the bite she’d taken out of Kieran’s perfect ass. He’d howled, he’d snarled, and she had laughed as his blood filled her mouth.
How had she not seen that in all the mating since?
Because he always kept his back from her. He’d hidden it.
Which was a pity since fractured memory claimed he’d tasted divine.
Cunt clenching, Wren’s cheeks went hot. Unwarranted slick swished enough to wet her pants, horrifying memory stealing in to remind the female there was so much more to that ass biting moment. Such as the huge cock that had knotted her still, Caspian’s cock that she’d ridden like a veritable demon.
How could she do that?
Pressing her hands over her ears, she denied the guttural and filthy banging around in her head. Refused to acknowledge that they had come from her.
Drawing deeper into her jagged crevice, Wren shut her eyes and tried to slam the door on her thoughts.
But the mind refused to obey.
The images that played out in abandon were…
Lurid.
The smell of male. The taste of cum and sweat and blood.
The feel of pleasure in a broken body that could not feel pain.
The longing…
Worst of all, Wren had to acknowledge that when Caspian had set his teeth to her throat, she had egged him on. And this was after her limbs were bleeding from his snapping teeth. After he had torn into her body and harmed her for his pleasure.
She had offered the Alpha an invitation. Turned up her throat for his violence.
At that moment, the steady disassociation that had kept her going through the lonely days in hiding cracked.
How could she?
How could she submit herself to the very male who had harmed her boys?
Warm, salty water wet dirty cheeks. In the distance, two Alpha males felt the shift, their ears pricked.
***
“She’s alive.”
Chapter 13
Another muted gush. Cum twitched into whoever was riding his cock, but Caspian felt nothing. A sea of beautiful female bodies crawled over him, clever fingers, clever tongues, tight cunts and pretty breasts. Drowning him in carnal attention.
Yet the First Alpha couldn’t even tell who was in the room.
They sucked, he stared off into space. They lapped and stroked, he called for more to smoke.
Nothing would dull the throbbing ache that had somehow moved from his guts to his chest.
He couldn’t eat.
Every breath stretching his barrel chest was worse than the last. Sometimes, when the drugs hit him just right, he dreamed his lungs were filling with mud. Always he longed to hear the unwell cough that had woken him in past nights.