by Addison Cain
***
Fingers fighting the clasp, the rusty thing finally gave and the cache’s lid groaned open.
Reaching for a canteen of drinkable water, the top was twisted and brought to cracked lips. Swallowing all she could, Wren gagged, spit up gritty mud, and bought that rust-flavored nirvana back to her lips.
Every muscle shook, strained and aching now that panic had subsided.
The rest of her dress she’d lost swimming for the hatch. Clothed only in dirt, fucking staggering and tired and sick, she’d dragged her tired bones away from a building that might tear free of its moorings and fall.
No Warrens rat would scamper near a sinkhole. They always got worse. Those fresh fools who came to scavenge always died.
Run to higher ground.
And if they were wise, sneak to a stash.
Because those who knew this dump had lost at least one home over the years. Starting over with nothing was a death sentence.
Wren had four ancient canteens of water. She had clothing for herself and her boys.
There was even a single pricy package of rations she’d hidden away.
But this place was not safe.
Which was entirely why she’d put the small case of treasure here.
Ancient wallpaper sagged on moldy walls, flocked with growing fungus and faded by time. There was water in the pipes. Tainted water enough to wash half the mud from her unsteady frame.
There were stairs that led down into a half sunken foyer of what had once been a grand hotel. There were bodies rotting in the muck.
This was a dumping ground for the dead.
Unclean. Infested.
And also her salvation.
Pulling coarse fabric over her damp arms, Wren found warmth for the first time in hours. Choking down the precious rations, she found a belly that no longer ached.
Stuffing her face almost brought with it a feeling of guilt, but it’s not like she could take food with her. She’d be murdered the instant someone thought there were edibles to be found in her pockets.
So long as the lids hung off to show they were empty, drained canteens she could hawk for supplies.
Goggles were a necessity.
Tools for salvage.
First on the agenda was finding a new home. Someplace where she could wait out her finger bones healing. Until then, there was no point in going back to the males.
She had to be able to say her piece.
Caspian owed her a years’ worth of water. He owed her coin.
And by their original agreement, she’d only had to serve until he was tired of her.
Since he’d cast her off, she was pretty sure that was that.
Of course, he’d probably kill her the instant she demanded payment for whoring, but Alec and Mikael needed funds to get out of this hellhole.
Mud clogged her ears, her pinky finger gently trying to dislodge what a rinse in old pipes had only pushed deeper. That ate up the hours of her day.
That and a great deal of restless sleep.
She would get through this, just as she’d gotten through the torrents of mud looking to pin her down.
Just as she’d survived abandonment and squalor.
Just as she’d survived the Waterworks and the Alphas who haunted them.
Two boys were counting on her. And she was going to see them safe.
Chapter 12
Flexing under dirty bindings, Wren stretched her healing fingers, clenched them against the brace, and hissed when an ache shot down her arm.
Bones seemed ready to be free of uncomfortable splints, the bruising had almost totally faded, but muscles were weak.
And so very stiff.
A bit of old leather between her teeth, and she continued the exercise, breathing through the irritation until her fingers grew too weary to follow commands.
Then it was the next hand’s turn.
Four days she’d stuck near a new, unfurnished hole. Sleeping alone for the first time in years, Wren had felt a strange liberty in the solitude.
How much simpler it was to score food when there was only one mouth to feed.
Though she was perpetually thirsty, she’d found more than enough water to keep her alive.
And the ease of it, the relief she had only one person to see through to the next day, left her in a state of deep guilt that she’d enjoyed the respite.
So she punished herself with hard labor. Despite her fear, Wren crept up to the outskirts of the Waterworks every dawn and dusk, eyes peeled for a boy who might have been cast out.
Not a single sign of Alec was found.
Nor had Mikael been thrown out into the mud.
But she could not trust Caspian to keep either of them much longer. Not when his end of their link jittered and shook.
Inebriated. Pussy drunk.
Disgusting.
Tormented.
Raw.
Just like he liked to think of her—a raw mouse with so much to devour.
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 verit
able 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.
Missed the scent of his mouse but could not bring himself to seek her things.
He had not been back to his rooms since the mud had sucked her down, preferring the consuming distraction of his favorites in the pen. Naked, coated in female fluids, and coming down from a hideous headache, Caspian lay, daring for the first time in days to close his eyes.
Which carried him straight to the worst kind of hell. The kind where he felt his mouse’s final desperation like a knife to the guts. Today it was only a dull throb of sad determination, of thirst and hunger. But as he suffered the torment, the bad feelings abated—as if a window had opened and sun streamed in. From the fragment of their link came joy, pride… arousal?
His dick twitched and someone, Caspian didn’t even care to look, latched on.
The slippery tongue felt like sandpaper, the rolling wave of hands over his sack like slimy filth.
Pushing the bobbing head away, eyes still shut tight, Caspian drew in a breath of relief when his cock popped free of unwelcome lips.
Longing teased at all the internal places where he ached and rotted… embarrassed longing. The very feeling that plagued the mouse when he’d knotted her just right. When he held her close no matter if she was angry. A special feeling she only resonated with for him.
When she had been left to Kieran’s devices, she never longed for him. Mostly she drew away from herself and survived her time with the most desired Alpha in the Waterworks.
Her time with Toby had always left her overwhelmed and scared it was too good to be true. Yes, she longed for the Third, but the flavor was unique and pale in comparison for the few brief sips she had with Caspian.
Feeling that flutter now, knowing it wasn’t the flagging drugs, aware that though his eyes were closed this was not a dream, Caspian jolted from where he sprawled.
An instant later he jackknifed up. Because that distant female longing had folded into sadness, and he could practically taste the salt of her tears on his tongue.
FUCK, she’s alive!
Groaning in response to rough treatment, the smooth-skinned Beta draped over his thigh wiggled in her sleep. Immediately he shoved her arms—and the touch of the other five women he’d slaked his lusts on—away. Not a single chirped in complaint when he ordered the used beauties off, not a single coy batting of their lashes or a flirty smile to tempt him back to the bed.
No, they shuffled off most likely in relief, considering how many hours he’d put them to work.
Only Rosie stood there, watching him with those big blue eyes.
Eyes that gave nothing away.
He didn’t have time for her shit. Not now when his guts churned with the lightest vibration of her. “I told you to get out.”
Pulling a pair of discarded panties from a raggedy dresser, the blonde slipped them over her hips. “Never thought I’d see you like this.”
Haggard and unable to knot? Yeah, he read right between her lines. “Any of you speak of it, and I’ll see you all skinned.”
“Hey.” Rosie held up her hands, the dispassion in her eyes matching the lack of condescending smirk he knew she was just dying to produce. “I remember what happened to Jetta.”
Jetta, one of the finer pieces of leather to make up Caspian’s prized coat.
Shrugging into his clothes, Caspian shot her a dark look. “What do you want, Rosie?”
“I want the big room.”
“No.”
She snorted a dark laugh. “Who else would you possibly give it to?”
Well the options were endless considering the stock he sheltered for his men. “Jean, Mai… that one with the curly hair.”
“Naomi,” Rosie offered, unflinching and unwavering. “Her name is Naomi.”
That’s right. Naomi who loved to eat cunt and tolerated cock.
“Please.” The fact that it was a real please, that it was coming from so jaded a female, got Caspian to cease doing up his trousers and look at her. Once she had his eye, the Omega continued. “I want out of the pen.”
Fuck no. Not with a mouth like that. His men fought over who got to spend time with Rosie. Some of them fancied themselves in love with her.
The very idea made him snort. “I don’t have time to listen to you complain about how full your belly is or the temperature of your baths. So you gotta suck some cock, so what?”
“It can be like it was before, between us…” Twiddling her fingers, playing the role of sweet miss, Rosie pulled out all the stops. Just like she had when she’d caught his eye years ago. “I know what you need, what it takes to please you. I’ll earn my place.”
Enough! Caspian tightened his belt, dismissing her entirely. “This is about the new girl Kieran brought in.”
A flash lit up the blue of her eyes. “He bleached her hair white…”
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.
