And keeps her in his rooms. A little doll made up just to look like the mouse.
Caspian had only seen the new girl once, and had almost been sick on the spot. Roaring, he’d thrown both her, and the male balls deep in her cunt, out of his pen.
Kieran was lucky his toy had gone unnoticed by Toby, or that girl would have met a bloody end.
“You fucked me almost every day the mute was here and I never complained, but this? She’s been here a week and he’s letting her nest, trying to breed her! Kieran promised me an out. If I can’t have a baby, then at least give me the damn room!”
“Rosie.” He wanted to make this crystal fucking clear. “You weren’t brought here to nest. You were brought here to fuck.”
Tossing her hair, she sneered. “And the big room goes to the favored whore. Who fucks better than me?”
One raw little girl did. A sweet, quiet beauty of an Omega mouse. “The answer is no.”
Rosie had always had a mouth, but she had never been openly spiteful. That’s the only thing that kept him from killing her when she hissed, “You fucked me the night you threw her out. You were fucking me when the ground shook, watching her on those monitors. I’m glad I got to see the look on your face when your precious mouse died.”
At that, he offered the nastiest smile that might stretch apart his haggard face. “She ain’t dead.”
Real, the first real flicker of honest emotion betrayed the beautiful blonde. She looked repentant, maybe even worried… for the girl. “But all that mud… why hasn’t she come back? If she made it out, why hasn’t she come back?”
Good fucking question, but not one he was going to entertain with Rosie.
“You don’t deserve her.”
That didn’t make any difference to Caspian. The sleek mouse was his. And she was alive.
The door banged open, a panting Toby rushing in to shout, “Boss—”
He knew, he felt her too. “Call the men. We’ll scour the Warrens and flush out the mouse. Whoever brings her back undamaged”—mud-brown eyes turned to the eavesdropping Omega who’d dared insult him, Caspian sneering—“can have Rosie for keeps.”
The woman’s face went white. “No!”
Before she might beg or cry, before she might cling to his leg and prattle on about her worth as an Omega, Caspian marched out the door.
Turning his back on the pen, he went to his rooms, his eyes lingering on the pristine nest his Omega had built.
Had enjoyed.
Had even, briefly, shared with him.
And then he went to scrub days’ of sour sweat and desperate unfulfilling couplings from his skin.
Chapter 14
Holding out her last dented canteen for trade, Wren grunted at the peddler. Covered from head to toe, goggles protecting her eyes, she gestured freshly unbound fingers at the expired supplement bars.
She then held up four to signify what she desired. Four credit chips and a taste of food.
Wind whistling through the buildings, she couldn’t hear the man’s reply. But if he was of the mind he’d be trading her for less, she’d take the damn canteen somewhere else.
Not that she’d seen other peddlers about…
Everyone was on edge in the Warrens, but that was nothing new. Her old building tilted no matter the supports tethering it to the more sturdy structures. Like the rats Caspian liked to call them, everyone scampered about, prepared to duck the fall. And it was a fair reason to fear. When decrepit buildings finally went down, the tidal wave of destruction that followed killed off more than a few.
Though even destruction of that magnitude was not nearly as deadly as poisoned water, starvation, and everyday violence that plagued this part of the city.
When she shook her head at the offer of three chips instead of four, it seemed the huffing trader was willing to make the barter. Credits and a single bar of food were placed in her hand, and he smiled, decaying teeth on display. Canteen offered, not so much as a word spoken between them, Wren took what might buy her three days of sustenance and began to turn.
The wind died down just enough for her to hear him say, “…I’ll share the bounty, scavenger.”
Whatever he was talking about, she didn’t care. Itching her marked cheek under a faded bandana that kept her mouth free of flies, Wren left the old peddler to his table.
She had a schedule to keep. First her twilight scan for Alec and Mikael.
Slip past their favorite haunts just in case they’d been released and found their home long gone. Then, once it was dark, to the Waterworks to see if they’d been thrown out and left in the mud.
She’d conduct the same search at dawn, and had for days.
No sign of either boy had been found. Considering that Caspian wore a coat made out of people, that he’d had a child whipped, she knew anything he did with either of them would be theatrical.