by Isoellen
Which meant by default the 12 United Sectors had fewer administrative alphas allied with the King’s Rule. If Darre persuaded his other brother Sebastian Maxis to agree with him about the breed registry, then Kane would only have nine sectors under his thumb. This was the strongest position Darre could hope for.
He would wait no longer.
There was a knock at his door.
"Yes?"
Tenbel’s pinched face and bald head inched around the partially open door. He was an average beta male in every conceivable way.
Shading his eyes when the unfiltered light hit them, he minced forward in awkward, wary steps. Dressed in the mockery of formal Administrator robes and a scribe's collar that he called his “priestly vestments,” the man looked a cross between a beetle and vulture.
Darre had employed the fool months ago, hoping the man would spread a little chaotic cheer. So far, all Darre earned for his credits was the high priest's avaricious collection of beta followers and drone slaves. Tenbel was settling in like a common slumlord.
"Well, hello, Lord Alpha. The sun is bright, yes? I can't remember the last time we had such a clear sky. Not a cloud in sight. How are you? You've called, and here I am. Perfect timing too. I have a special gift for you! Oh yes, Lord Alpha, I do. But first, what can I do for you? Why have you called me?"
Darre eyed the other man. He hated wasted words. They pinged his idiot monitor like nothing else. Tenbel would not be here if Darre hadn't wanted to see him. Why was it necessary to repeat what they both already knew?
"Lord Alpha, how are you? Bright in here, yes? What can I do for you today?" he repeated, filling the silence.
"How go your conversion efforts, priest?" Darre asked mildly.
The man threw his shoulders back. "Oh, Lord Alpha, sir, we have been sending updates via your man. The admi-stream, as you know, has given me access to all sectors. The lost ones keep trying to silence us, but truth will not be silenced. Small underground congregations are forming. Many young men are seeing the light and leading the way, bringing their females with them."
"How many congregations? How many young men? Are they finding their enlightenment and forgoing their king's duty? Isn't that what you told me—that your faithful would become runners?"
Darre eyed the bottle. Empty. Was everything so empty? It was good while it lasted, but gone so quick that it felt like a waste of his time.
Tenbel tried and failed to meet Darre's gaze. The bald beta had the mucked-up aspirations of being an alpha and thought his intelligence was enough to be a leader. A self-styled big-time priest, Tenbel and a couple of his cronies had created a whole belief system from scratch. But he had not an ounce of strength to inspire even a single alpha to follow them.
Because Tenbel was a follower. It was in his genes.
Darre had known better than to trust a beta to start a spiritual insurrection. Insurrections required leaders. Alpha brawn. But no alpha would come up with such bullshit, much less believe in it or follow it. Alphas were simple creatures in that regard; they did not believe what they couldn't see, needed proof of it before their eyes, and would not follow any who couldn't pin them in the dirt.
There were plenty of betas who would. And that, unfortunately, seemed to be what Tenbel had gathered in his underground congregations.
Discontented, whiny little betas who wanted to be reborn as something else.
"Unfortunately, I'm not seeing much evidence of this success,” Darre said at last.
"Alpha, sir, I must say, we have been working hard to spread the message. But as you know, there is the permanent travel ban from this sector. I would be able to do much more if I could cross sector lines."
Which was a roundabout way of blaming Darre for his troubles. There was a rumbling of disapproval in Darre's head.
Tenbel's eyes started to dart back and forth, rolling about like balls in a box, a game Darre had played as a child. Seeing the man's sudden fear, Darre realized his growl had been audible.
Though Tenbel had promised Darre young men and women who would be ready to stand against Administration law, the reports showed something very different: Tenbel was spending his time and energy on his personal goals.
Darre wanted men ready to die on a king's sword to prove that they were true believers. It didn't matter what they shouted, as long as they were willing to storm the border Rhineholth had erected around Sector 2.
Men stripped of civility devolved into raiders and barbarians, their inner thugs unleashed. Men just like Darre.
Tenbel's growing crowd of followers might be useful for something, though—a good meat shield for the true fighting men, if nothing else. After all, the beta population outnumbered the alphas almost five to one. No one would miss the worthless creatures.
As long as Tenbel's faithful used their bodies and spilled their blood to bring down the empire Rhineholth had built, Darre didn't care what they believed.
Results weren't too much to expect. He'd been helping Tenbel and his disciples for several years now, making it easier for them to communicate with friends in other sectors, easier to spread disinformation and sow rumors.
Unfortunately for the priest, enrollment in the King's school and the King's army had held steady with population growth. These were not the kind of numbers Darre wanted after all his output of coin.
Tenbel bobbed in a series of girlish curtsies, his neck cranked to the side in submission as he breathed in the scent of Darre's displeasure. He looked about ready to piss himself.
"Well, Lord Alpha, it takes time to cleanse minds of the Administration indoctrination and the poor influence of family. It takes time to make them understand that truth is worth dying for. But I assure you, the underground meetings—"
"Are little more than beta orgies," Darre interrupted. "I've given you time. Plenty of time. Are you wasting that time, Tenbel?"
Standing, he walked out from behind his desk and leaned a hip casually against the corner of it. Tenbel squeaked, unable to form a response.
"How many credits have I donated to your cause, Tenbel?"
"Lord Alpha, no need to stand on my account. No, indeed. Please, be easy. Let me assure you, my scribe keeps the books. Very good books we have, very good. He knows what comes in and what goes out. I give my time to the flock, you understand, to the broadcasts and spreading the truth of the First Alpha. Your generous contributions have been used carefully to further our cause—your cause."
Darre looked down at his nails. He'd let the black things grow after his father’s betrayal, had kept them oiled and sharpened. The surge of backwards genetics in his body had come as a surprise. The hate-tainted blood in his veins and saturation of breed hormones in his glands had changed him.
Claws were now an advantage as an alpha no one else could claim.
"What of this stable you have?" he asked.
Air escaped Tenbel as if Darre had punched him in the gut. "S-Stable?"
"I hear you have ten breed females in your care and a couple of healthy betas you have impregnated yourself. I had no idea you aspired to fatherhood. Ten females, eh? That's unheard-of wealth in a place like Sector 2, isn't it? More than most of the slumlords."
He glanced up at Tenbel before looking at the claws on his other hand. "More than any alpha in the sector."
"Lord Alpha, sir, I... The women are the bounty of the flock."
Darre's left-hand claws were perfect. Slightly hooked, they left nice, deep furrows behind in the flesh of men when used. "A bounty of pussy, eh?" He looked at the priest, waiting for his wobbly eyes to focus.
"Well, when people follow the Way of Truth, they come to understand the true place of the female, yes? In fact—in fact, Lord Alpha, Alpha Nothonal—I haven't forgotten all you have done. I haven't." The man was spitting and drooling with nervous energy.
Disgusting.
Darre wondered what he was doing that frightened the beta so much. Was he still growling? Disconnected from his own emotions as he was, broken over
a hundred years ago, Darre didn't feel like he was contributing to the beta's nervousness.
Blanched and swallowing thickly, Tenbel must have been reading him differently. It wasn't as though Darre had decided whether to kill him or just beat him to a pulp yet. What reason did the bald beta have for anxiety?
This was an auspicious day, however. One could still mark it with a little blood to celebrate.
He let Tenbel see the vicious delight the thought gave him and sent him a grin.
"Sir, I hadn't a chance to tell you, but I brought you something unique. Something special. A gift. An offering for all you've done for the cause. As I told you, many young men are bringing their women with them when they turn to the Word, yes?"
Without Darre's permission, Tenbel scurried back to the door and opened it wide, motioning to someone outside. Darre heard the scuffle of feet and noises of female distress. Two men in black masks and robes invaded his space, dragging a dark-haired female between them.
The scent of her, spring violets and freshly baked sugar biscuits, told him she was an unmated omega breeder even before the men forced her to her knees between them and turned her hand so that he could see the two black dots and her registration number.
An offering indeed.
Sector 2 didn't have the fertility vaccine those two dots on her hand represented. Females born or stuck here by travel restrictions all fell prey to the cobweb virus. Locals were infertile.
Tenbel had brought him a baby-maker.
In the other sectors, a vaccination was given at two years of age, and the first dot inked with the first four numbers of her family's registration code.
A beta female would only have had one dot marking that she'd been vaccinated, and drone females weren't affected by the cobweb virus any longer, although history claimed the dwindling fertility of humans who birthed the breed dynamics and remapped humanity into different species.
A drone from the other sectors would only have a tiny star on her hand, evidence that her family had registered for the sector drone census and she'd received the common drone baby shots.
This precious female—with two dots, a number, and smelling of flowers and baked goods—didn't belong here.
He wanted to taste her.
Or kill her.
She did not belong here—not in this sector and not in his home. He didn't allow women in his tower, especially not one like her, an omega breeder ripe as fuckin’ springtime.
This little female was not his female—not his lost Alennie, nineteen with speckled caramel, sun-loved skin and streaks of gold twined in the elaborate mass of braids she always wore.
His omega was dead and buried, and he could not bring her back.
He'd seen her ashes, watched her husband-mate scatter them on the Red River. Watched them float away along with every hope of peace he'd ever had.
She was dead. And he was not. The rage of that injustice swirled in his chest in a blustering maelstrom.
Her loss had left him caught up in an incurable state, a half-life full of anger and need—a constant, nagging burn under his skin that nothing could quench.
His cock was always hard and ready for a mate he did not have. A mate who no longer existed, but who his body and soul refused to recognize was gone.
Allenie had been his potential bond-mate, and while serving his father’s interests, the man had given her away. Just passed her off as a bribe to a rival. Betrayal.
The low-banked rage in his bloodstream began to boil.
Darre inhaled the scent of this girl.
The wrong girl, but a good, tasty smell. He wanted to lick that right up.
But she was not his. She was the wrong female to ease his hard, raw cock. She was the wrong female to relieve the rut he'd learned to control with violence.
How rude of her to smell good.
Dark curls covered her face thoroughly, and he could just see the curve of her cheek peeking through the wonderful mess. She was curled in on herself, the groaning noises leaking from her lips sending a shock of energy from the base of his skull all the way to his tailbone and ricocheting through his hard cock.
Eat her up.
The wrong girl.
There had been no females around since he’d lost the woman he'd chosen to be his mate. Not drone. Not breed. No fuckin’ women to scream about his claws, his scars, and his face. No fuckin’ women to irritate his skin with their wrong smell.
Ages ago, as an apology, his father had offered him a parade of others to choose from, as if bride-mates were as interchangeable as the shirts on his clothes rack. Others had tried to tempt him with their daughters, but he'd refused.
Darre would not be a man like the one who killed his Alennie, taking any woman he came across.
It had been years since he’d shared space with a breeder girl, since he’d smelled one or heard those sweet little sounds they made.
Tenbel was sputtering and making little coughing noises Darre guessed were meant to be appeasing. The two men holding the female, upper faces covered in the masks all Tenbel's faithful wore, didn't bother to disguise their leering. They pulled the female taut between them, yanking on her arms.
A weak noise of distress escaped her. Fuckin’ pitiful, and small.
But she wasn't weeping. He smelled no tears. Youth and innocence surrounded her in a pleasant cloud, along with violets and biscuits—his favorite kind of treat.
Lick her up from head to toe, a voice growled hungrily in the back of his head. Want. Take. Keep.
Shaking that sound out of his thoughts, Darre sniffed at the air again and stepped closer.
What was that sweetness?
What the fuck?
There was something unexpected buried under the pleasant layers of her scent. Her sweetness was a little too rich, too ripe and salty with female musk.
Had Tenbel dared to bring a female here who was entering her heat? Was he insane?
That smell infected him. Went to cock and brain and took over. A tingle spread like fire through his pelvis and his balls tightened and drew up.
No. No. No.
One moment he was merely irritated, and the next he was enraged at the irrevocable injustice of his loss, and at the assumption that he could be appeased by an offering of the wrong girl.
A berserker's roar rolled up from his chest like thunder as red filled his vision. Everything dissolved, lost to the animal inside.
The man known as Darre slipped away, and the mad monster of Sector 2 took over.
Tenbel was nearest, his round, bald head shining like an egg. Darre gave in to his temptation to crack it, the sound so very satisfying. He grabbed, set his claws, and squeezed, twisted and tore, and smiled as Tenbel’s skin gave way and blood poured over Darre’s hands.
The pressure in his head and body eased. It'd been too long since he killed something.
The other two males gaped. One of them lost his bowels, the smell of his fear mixing with the scent of Darre's fury. Accustomed to following orders, they hesitated a second too long. Because he didn't want one of them to escape while he worked over the other, he went for the legs of the closest masked man, snapping his bones like breadsticks and immobilizing him before he leapt to catch the other at the door.
The claws of his right hand sank deep into the man’s upper back muscle, pulling the coward back to his embrace so that Darre could draw his left hand across his victim’s belly. He sank his claws into the soft meat, dipped them in, and pulled out the beta’s contents. He pulled at the squishy parts and painted the door with the mess, wanting the still-breathing male to see what happened when one ran from a monster.
The stink of the belly wound reminded the beast why these creatures weren't good prey. They were easy to kill and served no practical purpose. They were too nasty to eat.
When the mess in his deathly embrace quit screaming, he abandoned it and moved on to the one still howling and begging on the floor over a twisted leg. Darre dragged him to a corner and picked him apart, tea
ring and twisting until noises stopped coming out of him and the only bones left unbroken became too small to make that nice cracking sound.
He'd been leaning in to listen to it, the pop dulled by skin and muscle, when he heard another noise.
There was still one live creature on the floor, a sad little thing all doubled over. He'd almost forgotten.
It seemed hurt. Had he hurt it? He didn't know. But it was singing softly to itself.
Lost to the berserker, his rational mind submerged, he stared down at the little thing on his floor.
It smelled good. It made nice sounds. He wanted it.
He'd have it.
Chapter Four
Monster
The monster picked up the little thing. Spirals of heavy blue-black silk tangled over its back and body. It weighed nothing, a bit of fluff. It was the perfect armful.
Setting the thing on his desk so it was easier for him to examine, he tried to get it open. How to get it to unfurl? He wanted to look at the treasure he'd found.
As he rolled it to its side, then its back, it immediately tried to turn away. It tucked tight against itself with the legs drawn up. He barked a command for it to stay from deep in his throat, something he’d learned as a commander when he'd still been whole.
Whole body rippling in response, the little thing shivered but stayed on its back, legs curled up high against its chest and chin tucked down. Instinctively it defended the softest parts of itself.
It obeyed him just long enough for him to move its tangled hair out of the way and find a face, but then it squirmed belly down, trembling and trying to hide.
Where was the source of that scent? He wanted to taste it on his tongue, to lap it up and get it inside him any way he could.
He wanted to claim it.
How to get it to relax? He stroked his hands over it, careful of his claws, and smoothed his palms over the blood from his kills that had spattered across her back. He felt down the delicate bones of the little creature's spine, neck, and ribs.
