by Addison Cain
He smirked, reaching out to trill his fingers over the twin crescents his teeth had punctured into her flesh.
And she… she looked utterly confused.
Horrified.
Sick.
“We have had much sex play. You must be hungry.” Trailing his touch down her arm, he found her fingers and threaded them with his. “Come this way. I shall feed you. I will wash you. I will lay you down in our nest, take you gently, and give you strong arms to sleep in until your eyes shine and your smiles are easy.”
He gave her a gentle tug and led her from a room that reeked of their sex, her fear, and his concern, guiding her to his private dining quarters. Once there, after sitting her in his favorite chair and stepping a goodly distance away, Simin saw her visibly relax.
It wasn’t only the starscape glimmering from the view portal that had her attention, it was the fact that her new mate had walked away.
As Heidron of a prime fleet, as a seasoned warrior with many conquests under his belt, Simin was unaccustomed to feeling lacking. Women threw themselves at him, he’d laid with hundreds and took great pride in his proficiency with female pleasure.
His body was large, muscular, pleasing. He didn’t have the finest features, but endurance, patience, even in tactical skills he was wiser than even the eldest of his brothers. Favored by his mother for his humor.
Yet his kor’yr, the Omega his soul resonated for, did not wish to be near him.
She did not recognize him…
Scowling at the meat he folded around seasoned paste, he growled. From the corner of his eye, even with her all the way across the room, his mate jumped. And once again the air went sour with female fear.
This was not right.
She might not understand his words, but intention could be communicated.
Nothing was unsalvageable, especially between and Alpha and Omega so deeply connected. Careful of his tone, but lacking the charisma of a sweeter man, Simin’s deep voice carried over the room. “To be the mate of Heidron is a great honor. Every soldier in my fleet would lay down his life for yours. You have nothing to fear in my presence. I won’t correct you with a cane.”
Watching him, infinitely wary, his Morgaine blinked, rubbed her lips together and nodded as if trying to please him. But once her eyes fell on the food in his hands, she shot from her seat and rushed forward.
Hands coated in the raw juices of fine bolx meat, fingernails smeared with paste, he didn’t stop her. In fact, Simin didn’t know what to make of her frantic expression when she saw that he was preparing them food. Hunger had not draw her to him.
Terror had.
Reaching for meat, she looked at the slices he had already prepared and mimicked the simple preparation so quickly the plate was full, messy, and complete before he knew how to react. She then pushed it closer to him.
Was she offering him the food he had chosen for her?
She was, and blue eyes frantic as if she’d done wrong in sitting while he worked.
“It’s for you. Alphas serve their mates before they serve themselves.”
She pushed the plate again, eyeing the mess of her work as if she knew she could have done better. Cringing as if she expected to be punished.
Careful to choose one she had made, Simin lifted it up and nodded confused approval.
Morgaine smiled, a tight practiced movement that did not reach her eyes. A smile that fell off her lips when he held out the bite for her to eat from his hand. She didn’t so much as sniff it, probably didn’t even taste it, avoiding his fingers to take it into her mouth and swallow without chewing.
And then she mirrored what he’d done, speaking her fluid tongue as if profusely apologizing as she held up a bite of the delicacy for him.
Wrapping her wrist in his much larger hand, he plucked the treat from her fingers and returned it to the plate. Then he escorted her back to the best seat, took it for himself, and patted his knee so she might join him.
Expression blank, she stiffly obeyed, her slick-drenched pussy smearing sweet fluid over his hard thigh. He pulled her close when it grew painfully obvious she was going to try to balance herself like a perched bird instead of fitting herself to him. The arm he hung around her, the light stroking of her skin, didn’t soften her ramrod spine, nor did it earn so much as a hum of approval from the woman.
His purr increased, his body pliant.
Patience was imperative to battle strategy. Before so much as a drop of blood was shed, the enemy was to be studied, their patterns analyzed, their psyche broken down into its basic parts and used against them. Though he’d never had to woo a woman to gain her attention, his course would be no different than planning war.
All wars he waged he won.
Taming his Omega would be no different.
Simin gave her time to find a comfortable position as his purr softened her tension, a gentle stroke caressing her arm. And then he fed her, slowly. Offering only enough that she’d have to bite off manageable pieces, cooing nonsense words of encouragement—vibrating with pleased groans when her tongue caught his fingers. But each time she tried to lift a piece for him, he took it from her and put it back on the plate.
There could be reciprocation in the future once she knew him better and understood his intrinsic craving to care for her. Once she was at peace in his presence and in love with his heart.
There would be love.
And children who would please his mother and even make his dour father crack a smirk when he thought no one was looking.
When she chewed even slower and a bulge bumped from her belly from too much food, he fed himself the scant remainder on the plate. Eyes on the view, content and growing more confident in his approach, he spoke of all their lives would be and confessed that he’d been lonely for her, had made great, secret offerings to the higher power so he might find her… wondering to himself if he was only willing to admit it aloud because she could not understand and think less of his prowess for unmasculine sentimentality.
Every Alpha desired an Omega mate, but to find a kor’yr was something not one in a billion might accomplish. Simin had found his propped up in a glass cage as if the gods themselves had set her aside for him.
The arm around her supple body grew tighter, pressing them into one being.
***
He had fed her raw meat. Raw.
Morgaine still wanted to cringe just thinking of it. Did these people not know of parasites and bacteria that could rage through a colony and massacre half a settlement? One bad well had poisoned over twenty people when Morgaine had still been a child.
A single wrong sip of water. Dysentery. Burial.
Yet he had partaken in the meal when she was painfully full with smiling lips and sounds of satisfaction. The juxtaposition of this place and their barbaric customs set her head spinning. He looked like a savage, spoke like one, yet possessed the finest rooms she’d ever seen.
That plate was bone china, if not some kind of cut milky crystal. The furnishings were immaculate.
Where was the leather, the bones, the carcasses of his latest kill roasting over an open fire?
How did the male who shattered the glass of her enclosure, who had penetrated her the first time while she still slept, equate with this?
How did he know how to touch her to make her mindlessly spread and howl for more?
When was he going to mutilate her? In what ways?
Would he kill her after? Share her?
What was she going to do?
Dizzy with horrible, circular thoughts, the pounding behind Morgaine’s eyes grew. The male was still talking, his ugly language croaked so deep the one speaking sounded like a cross of a toad and a thunderstorm. And as he talked, he touched.
Light strokes to her brow, across her cheeks, running those calloused fingers between her bared breasts to jostle her ribs until she jumped. No coerced laugh broke past her lips, Morgaine determined to bear the tickling rather than face his ire.
Becaus
e her life was in his hands and she was so thrown by the last few days—by the pain that still lingered muscle deep where a cane had lashed her, and the loss of everything she knew—that she had no idea where to turn.
Her cunt, and that was the name it had been reduced to, ached. And even aching, it still wept that horrible fluid.
Part of her even wanted this awkward meal to end so he might take her back to the nest and twist her mind back into that stark white place of feeling. That place where she forgot her name, her inhibitions, where she felt free in the loss of who she was because there was nothing to mourn if she was nothing at all.
Scarred, older than any courting boy she’d received flowers from, older than even grabby Esin. His fingers still sticky with the parts of her body they had delved into and the raw meat they had shared, the crazed male Sergeant Uriel and his commandant had given her to, smiled. It was lopsided but displayed healthy teeth too straight to be natural.
Back home, dentistry was expensive. Morgaine was missing a molar near the back that had gone rotten in her teen years. Tonguing the empty space, a little self-conscious her teeth were a bit crooked, she felt even worse for such shallow concerns. It wasn’t her teeth this man wanted her for.
It was the deceptive slut of a slit between her legs.
Chapter 17
Who could imagine it would be so difficult to bathe a single, tiny female? Especially one who clearly needed the relaxation of a deep soak, warm water, fresh soap, and doting hands to tend where she was most likely sore. They had fucked a great deal, and no male of his worth—even in the deepest rut—would allow his mate to grow filthy with crusting fluids.
Considering that she was an untried virgin who had let him do as he desired, Simin was doubly sure she could use the luxury.
Yet his kor’yr had grown so agitated with the experience she’d started to grind her teeth and leak silent tears. It had come to the point he’d let her break tradition and wash him just to keep her from losing the tattered remains of her failing composure.
The feel of her hands on his body had been wonderful, but the very significant reason she did it was anything but pleasurable.
Every time he moved, she flinched as if preparing to accept a strike.
Where was the wildcat who’d grabbed up a piece of sharp debris days ago?
If I get you angry enough, you will kill me more quickly.
Those had been her words when the Beta translator had been summoned.
Maybe he had not taken her words as seriously as he should have. Relying on their bond to ease her considerable distress, spoiling her with gratuitous fucking—it had changed nothing.
She was more skittish now than when he had brought her home.
Simin even wondered what she would do if given the opportunity to leave. Would she flee, seek another protector? Would she hate him as it seemed she did now?
This was beyond fear. This was spiritually unhealthy.
A featherlight skim of fingertips traced the outline of his shoulders, his Omega seeking out the spaces where muscles met so a practiced touch might knead tension away. God how he tried to be pliant, to soften all that musculature so she might be done with her unnecessary show of… servitude.
Someone had trained her to do this—trained her so deeply she could not allow him to bathe her until she had satisfied some unknown ritual.
There was no give and take, she would not even allow him to wash her beyond a quick scrub of her chest.
Simin wanted to touch her in this way, to knead the tension from her knotted muscles, to ease her into deserved contentment. No Nierra slave he’d taken to bed had ever acted in this compulsory way his mate did. Some were skittish—many slaves were—but this was…
What had they done to so wonderful an Omega?
Irritated by his unruly imagination and the horrible things he knew his vanquished enemy capable of, he took the sponge from her fingers, barking an order for her to cease scrubbing him and sit back.
It was the exact wrong thing to say.
She withered. She who had been so determined to show him this thing she could do.
Female skin going green, watching her throat work, Simin was certain she was going to be sick. His own mouth watered with the sour precursor of vomit just seeing his mate so ill.
“Kor’yr, you did well.” Insulting tradition by washing me first. “But I am Alpha and you are Omega. I provide and you accept. In exchange, you give me great joy by cherishing our pair-bond and nest.”
The sunken tub could have housed five grown warriors of merit, offered enough space to frolic, to rinse, and to relax, even to fuck if they wanted too. But now it was a big bowl of steaming misery.
There was no joy here because she was blind, blue eyes brimming with sorrow, and skin sweating with fear.
And he was failing.
Purr stilted by shoulder deep water, Simin stood so the female might feel the true depth of the comforting sound he offered and approached where she’d sunk low. Chin skimming the water, golden hair floating about her like spun tentacles of sunshine, she gazed up.
She gazed up and looked utterly lost.
It crushed him, enraged him, and stirred up a searing burn behind his ribs he’d never known before. Cupping that chin under the water, drawing her to sit up, to present herself, he took care to wash, massage, tend and soothe every part of her in a gentle pantomime of sex. Of adoration and solace. Simin did everything he could to express how he wished her to be happy.
And she stank of misery the whole time. Worse, she tried to lie by smiling, chirping out her language the more he frowned.
When he took her back to their nest, he broke his word and did not take her body as he’d said he would. Instead he laid her head upon a pillow of green silk, covered her with the smooth slip of satin, and purred at her side until she slept.
Then he slunk away.
While she slept, he found all the shattered pieces scattered in his rampage and hid them out of sight. He cleaned like a lowly slave. He prepared food so that when she woke it would be ready and there would be no awkward, wordless fight over who would make it.
He sat before his view of space and pondered deeply.
And for the first time since he’d brought her into their home, she slept the whole night through. She slept, he knew, because he was far away.
“I will fix this.” A vow from a Heidron was unbreakable.
***
“I feed her, heal her, pet her, wash her—I have given the Omega days on end of my company.” Simin stood stolid at the threshold of an unwelcoming portal, Morgaine wide-eyed, tense, and glued to his side. Before them, an old woman, one blocking the way forward even as Simin made his plea, did not so much as smile. “Omega Superior, I have knotted her so many times she has passed out. The stink of fear has not diminished. Her desire has not once urged her to reach for me in comfort. My kor’yr does not recognize me.”
The gatekeeper looked to the girl in question as she clung to his arm, and Simin knew she found more than the smell of anxiety hanging in the air. She saw the same broken look in cerulean blue eyes that he had. The golden-haired outsider was cloaked in a look of soul-dead hopelessness, cowering behind her Alpha as if to hide from one unknown female, yet terrified of them both.
Though small in stature as Omegas were, the elder female was large in presence. “A pair-bond will crush her misgivings and shape her affection to your will. Why bring her here when you are in full rut and she smells close to her time?”
To be questioned was not something a Heidron—a favored Omari Prince—was accustomed to. Nor were conversations of such private matters openly held in the halls of his squadron’s flagship. “She does not speak our language, was a virgin in captivity before I freed her. Upon her retrieval, repeatedly the Nierra referred to her as feral. I do not know what this means. I do know that she was beaten under their care for refusing.”
“Refusing what?”
“Male attention.”
Dressed in loose robes in the same style as Simin’s unhappy mate, the Omega Superior warned, “You take a risk in bringing her here still lacking a pair-bond, Heidron. Your rule does not extend past this door. The Omegas might not give her back to you.”
“Do not speak to me as if I were some pup!” The snap in his voice did not move the gray-haired woman blocking the portal, but behind the Alpha, his mate startled and made a horrible noise. Immediately increasing the already loud vibration resonating just to soothe her, Simin growled, “Her needs come before my own. I have tried and failed to reassure her. I cannot tolerate the smell of another male in my rooms, even to help translate. An Omega so near her nest at this point would be a threat to her. And even if I had the luxury of sharing our words, I do not think she will tell me the true way of things. Look at her; she’s frightened, even of you. I seek assistance. Return her to me smiling and eager to know her kor’yr, and the tithe I will offer in exchange will buy worlds.”
“Your riches mean nothing to us.” The woman offered a sardonic half grin, stepped back and swept her arm to the side. “But, by all means, lead her inside.”
Trouble began the instant they were through the unadorned door and a gallery of opulent color, of embroidered cushions, of laughter, of trays of rich food, and nothing but beautiful females came into view.
Morgaine began to lowly keen.
Simin’s foreign Omega began to frantically rattle off in her language, to plead in a tone that set the women in the room to their feet. Holding onto the Alpha’s arm, she dug in her heels in a sorry attempt to slow his steps, and then she fell to her knees, weeping so mournfully he did not know how to calm her.
Female arms clasped around bulky male thighs, sobbing, Morgaine refused to let him go. He had to pry her off, forced to ignore her terror, and leave her under the care of those Omegas who had rushed forward to help.
Morgaine began to scream.
He could do nothing for her now, not when there was a golden tiled mark on the floor designating how far an Alpha might tread in that sacred room. To cross that line meant instant death. The Omegas would kill him, whether he was their Heidron or no.
