by Zoey Ellis
Drocco roared, his eyes becoming darker than she’d ever seen them. He grabbed her hair and yanked her into him, pulling her head back. His anger rolled through him so strong, the energy of it almost choked her, but she didn’t care.
“I should have known that you would try to deceive me the first chance you got,” Drocco snarled. “I told you to take us to the Palace, and you have disobeyed me. You will be punished for this."
"Yes, because I’m a true slave to you, aren’t I?" Cailyn asked, her voice hardening. "You want me to obey and follow demands? To roll over and open my legs when you feel like it. Is that the kind of connection you want with the mother of your children, one no better than the interactions you have with your servants? No better than what Malloron has with his slaves? How will you explain that kind of precious connection to your son or daughter?"
Drocco bristled and she knew she had hit a nerve. Drocco had always talked about how much he prized the Alpha/Omega connection—he could not preach that shit to his children if he had no regard for their Omega mother.
“And how else could you possibly punish me anyway?” she said through gritted teeth. “You have imprisoned me, tortured me, forced your child on me, and manipulated me the whole way.” Her voice rose to a yell. “What else is there? What more could you possibly do?!”
Drocco worked his jaw, his ink black eyes flashing. “You should hope that you don’t find out. I don’t care where we are. I will drag you back to Ashens.”
“Fine,” Cailyn snarled back. “I will die before we reach the nearest town, and that will suit me fine. Death is the only relief I have to look forward to. That is the only thing you failed to do that I truly wanted anyway.”
Drocco stilled. “What did you say?”
“I said I can’t wait to die from starvation and the exhaustion of traveling across Ricsford by foot,” she snapped at him.
“Not that,” Drocco bellowed. “You wanted me to kill you? Back in our bedroom?”
“Our bedroom?” she repeated, incredulously. “It’s not our bedroom, it was my prison.”
“You wanted me to kill you?” Drocco repeated, shaking her a little.
“Yes,” she hissed. “I wanted to die. I still want to die.”
“You’re with child and yet you still speak of welcoming death?” Drocco asked, his nose wrinkling in disgust. “Pregnancy is a source of joy for an Omega. What kind of an Omega are you?”
“An Omega that has nothing else to live for,” she whispered, tears blurring her gaze. “An Omega that has had everything stripped from her. An Omega that only has sexual slavery left to look forward to.” Her sobs threatened to erupt from her before she could say any more but she held them in. “I don’t care anymore, Drocco. I don’t care if we’re really true mates. I don’t care about this child. I don’t care about my life.” Cailyn’s resolution resounded through every word as her tears dropped on her cheeks. The caustic gloom billowed to encompass every part of her as she realized the only freedom she had left, and she had to antagonize him into it again like she had done before. “This is my home. I want to be here. You’re welcome to leave for the Palace if you wish, but I will not be coming. If you want to kill me before you go, do it now.”
Drocco held her still. “You expect me to leave you and my child here?”
Something snapped in Cailyn, a raw frenzy whirling in her at his persistent stupidity. “No!” she screamed, attacking him. “I expect you to kill me. Just kill me! Do it now!”
She tried to fight him but he gripped her too tightly. She pulled her head away from his grip on her hair, relishing the pain that spread over her scalp, but he adjusted his arm and the pain lessened. She sobbed and shrieked and fought him, trying to spur him into the violence she knew he was capable of, but no pain came. She screamed and wailed and yelled, struggling against him with everything she had until, eventually, she completely lost all sense of place and time.
As her awareness pressed back in, she found herself lying on the couch in her living room, her wrists and ankles bound together with sheets. She had no strength to look around for the Alpha but she couldn’t feel his presence near her. Hopefully, he had gone—headed to the Palace—leaving her to find the ultimate relief she sought.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DROCCO
Drocco traveled a repeating circumference of the lodge Cailyn called home, getting wider and wider until he reached approximately a one mile radius. Although he kept alert for signs and sounds of other people, his mind was reeling from Cailyn’s outburst.
They were true mates. Of course, that made so much sense—he had almost known it instinctively. The amazing thing was, Cailyn knew it. She stated it as though she knew it to be true. And yet she wouldn’t accept it.
He trudged rhythmically along, his thoughts racing as fast as his heart. Cailyn’s suffering and anguish about her circumstance had shocked him to his core. He thought she had come to terms with the pregnancy, and her status as his breeder, but something shifted at some point that he hadn’t seen or noticed—something he hadn’t been able to prepare for. She was worse than when she woke from her Haze, and that put both her and the baby at risk.
The uncomfortable feeling that rose within him at her screams and pleads for death had been the worse he had ever experienced. It felt worse than when she cried, worse than the look in her eyes when he told her what her life would be with him, and worse than the feeling of watching her drift over his bedroom balcony. He thought that the baby would soften her thoughts about staying in captivity with him and perhaps even soften her toward him, but it had the opposite effect.
The land around the lodge was filled with dead trees, decaying animals, half-grown dying plants, and dusty earth. There was no sign of recent life in any part of the surrounding area or as far as his eyes could see. He came upon a large hill, south of the lodge, according to the trajectory of the sun. Its surface was dry and cracked but firm, and he climbed it hoping to get a view of where exactly in Ricsford he might be. He had never been this far East before, not even with the Lox. If he was going to try to navigate back to the Palace, the vantage point might assist him in deciding which direction to go.
As he climbed, he tried to analyze Cailyn’s behavior, both back when they were at the Palace and in Malloron’s castle, while struggling with his rising desperation. She was slipping away from him, retreating into a suicidal state of mind that he had no idea how to stop. It shocked him that she had wanted death by his hands, but he could only assume it was during his torture of her. He had been careful not to torture her this time, and to ensure he supported her processing the shock of her new circumstances. And still, that hadn’t been enough. As his breeder, she would have been looked after and treated well. He even broke his own rule and sought to comfort her when her fear for him arose. He hadn’t been able to help it—the sour odor of her fear had been too unpleasant.
He reached the top of the hill and froze at the sight before him.
The dry, cracked ground worsened and blackened as it spread away from the base of the other side of the hill, extending as far as his eyes could see. Large cavities dug deep into the land, some large enough that they would easily fit Cailyn’s lodge while others appeared to be as big as his Palace. However, the main shock of the view before him was the presence of the cracked sky. The gentle blue overhead of the lodge and forest morphed into an iron gray with swirling clouds that flickered between ash and charcoal. They hung over the land before him cushioning fissures that opened up randomly to expose a strange black sky that expelled blasts of white fire to the ground. This alone told him where he was. The Wastelands.
He turned slowly in a circle and saw that the edge of the Wastelands ended just before the hill, and there began the dead forest he had been patrolling. Cailyn’s bungalow sat not too far away but the dead forest extended far beyond his gaze, in all directions but the one that led to the Wastelands. Further out in the distance, the forest became denser and thicker and, with no actual l
eaves or foliage, Drocco could only assume that it became too dense for anyone to pass through easily. They truly were cut off from everything. How could Cailyn be comfortable here? It was dangerous.
He turned back to the Wastelands, his mind once again returning to his Omega. He had to address her emotional state immediately, and not only for the baby’s sake. He began to pace along the hilltop as he tried to recall what he had read about true mates. He had no head keeper to refer to this time, but even if he did, he shouldn’t need him. He should know how to tend to his true mate. The woman that had been designed to be compatible with him in every single way. And yet, annoyingly, the more he tried to remember what he had read, the more it slipped away from him—it hadn’t been something he had focused on, because it hadn’t mattered. He wanted her whether or not that element applied to them. The one thing he did remember was a conversation with Grandfather who had believed that a true mate pairing was rare and should be protected at all costs, even if others who threatened it had to die. And yet Drocco was the one fucking destroying his own. He would have been ashamed to tell his grandfather that his true mate wanted to die to be spared from having his child—from being with him.
A jumble of chaotic emotions ripped through him, forcing him to address his failure. Frustrated, he roared into the air, fists clenched as a crack of white fire struck the ground below the hill. He had to do something. He stood on the hill breathing heavily, watching the fissures open up and shoot white bolts to the dry earth. He didn’t know how long he stood there examining his every interaction with Cailyn, trying to figure out how to fix her, but nothing he came up with resulted in a solution he could accept. He couldn’t let her go, that wasn’t an option. He couldn’t let her die. He couldn’t allow her mental state to affect the child. Those were the most important things. He thought he had already come to terms with the fact that she would no longer be his mate, just his breeder. He thought he could withdraw from her and limit their interaction to one that would not affect him so deeply. It had not worked. Now, hearing her own admission that they were true mates created a desperate longing to have her as such. He had to make her his.
He turned to face the bungalow and lowered to the rough, dead earth, sitting with the soles of his boots on the ground, hands clasped, forearms resting on his knees. After all of the effort he had gone through to get her back, he couldn’t let it be for nothing. He closed his eyes thinking back to everything he had learned in the Keep, everything his grandfather had said, everything he had experienced with Cailyn. Out of all of this, out of everything that had happened, he had been blessed enough to find his true mate—and she was what he wanted. Clearly she violently rejected him, but he suddenly realized he didn’t know why. Yes, she hated that he had kept her captive and tortured her, but her dislike of him, and the whole idea of Alphas being with their Omegas, stemmed before that, based on the conversations they’d had when she was still pretending to be the historian. If they were true mates, that should not be the case. He could only put that behavior down to her conditioning. She had been taught to hate him even before she met him. He was the epitome of the abusive Alphas she had been warned about, and it didn’t help that he had been forced to punish her. He needed to redress the balance, but how?
He opened his eyes after a long while, the meditative contemplation shifting to a conclusion of sorts. If he truly believed in the Alpha/Omega connection, it would bring them together no matter what. He held such a strong belief and conviction in it for so long, now was the time to see if it was true. If it was, their connection as true mates should repair them and correct Cailyn’s opinion of him, although he had no idea how to encourage it along. Additionally, he didn’t trust her. The woman was a liar by trade.
He took out the black location gem Torin had given him and held it in the palm of his hand. With the unsteady environment of the Wasteland so near, it simply flickered erratically, but still glowed slightly stronger when he held it out in Cailyn’s direction.
He began to make his way back down the hill again, noting that the sun had moved considerably in the sky. He had left her too long, he needed to get back.
As he traveled, he made a few firm decisions. Firstly, it would benefit Cailyn to spend time in a place she felt comfortable, even if it was dangerous. So it looked like they were staying here. Since her charm chain had a tracker, there was little risk of her escaping him. Secondly, he couldn’t use their physical attraction to persuade her—she didn’t trust her own body in that regard and would claim he was using it against her once again. Lastly, he had to find a way to get her to be truthful. It was the only way any of it would work.
Drocco clenched his jaw with determination as he trudged back through the dead forest. He had to succeed with this new direction. He had already failed his child by allowing its mother to sink to such a low mental state. If he lost Cailyn to this suicidal mind-set, he would have failed—failed the Lox, failed his Empire, failed his grandfather, and failed his true mate.
***
When he returned, Cailyn was fast asleep where he had left her. He carefully untied her and placed her on the bedding he unloaded from one of the many chests in the living room. He longed to join her in her sleep, run his fingers through her hair, kiss her and cuddle her into him—all that he had forced himself to resist doing in Malloron’s castle—but he held back. None of that would help his cause now.
While she slept, he examined the lodge. It was a solidly built property, quite large in size. Made from hard wearing black brick, the inside walls were reinforced with dark wood. A large fireplace was the main feature in the living area, the largest room in the building, with a kitchen and washroom situated at one end. Outside the door from the kitchen, was a small patch of treated earth. Cailyn seemed to have attempted growing a few vegetables and fruit. Drocco examined the ground but couldn’t see how that patch of earth could thrive while everything around it in the forest lay dead or dying. He came to the conclusion that she must use magic to maintain it. However, she hadn’t been that adept at keeping the plot in good condition because not all of the grown food was suitable for eating or had spoiled.
Next to the patch was a well that hadn’t yet been connected to the kitchen pump to provide water. The windows needed work, as did the doors, part of the fireplace, and the inner east wall. Extra materials such as treated wood beams and glass panes piled up in one corner of the living area with tools to repair and secure the property, suggesting Cailyn planned at some point to do it or get it done. But the seclusion of the property made it otherwise quite secure.
There was no bedroom. However, when Drocco searched the large chests in the living area, the one with bedding materials also had numerous blankets and large scraps of materials, pillows, clothes, and cloths. She had collected an array of clothing, and some had been cut up and half sewn together.
One of the chests was piled up with long-lasting foodstuffs, such as dried beans, grains, nuts, bottles of various drinks, and dried herbs, while another was filled to the brim with fresh food, such as bread, cheese, milk, meat, fruit, and vegetables. Drocco stared at the food, wondering how she managed to keep it fresh. Again, it had to be through the use of magic. Another chest held medicine, healing soaps, and creams as well as books, scrolls of ancient stories, and reports on various countries in the Eastern Lands, some recent, some outdated.
After he had investigated the entire property, he sat in one of the wooden chairs in the living area watching Cailyn. This place certainly seemed to be her home, but that raised even more questions. Were all Omegas living like this somewhere out in the Lands? Did they truly prefer this lonesome existence to being with an Alpha? It was inconceivable.
Cailyn finally stirred as the skies began to darken. She rolled over on the bedding and lifted her head to look around the room. When she saw Drocco she shot upright, gripping onto the blankets and curling it around her.
“I thought you had gone,” she said, her voice hoarse and low as her head dropped, her
bouncing curls hiding most of her face.
“No.”
She pressed her lips together for a long moment. “I won’t take us to the Palace, Drocco.”
Drocco leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he took her in. “You will, Cailyn.”
“I won’t,” she said, almost snarling.
“How long do you expect to survive here?” Drocco asked. “You’re not equipped for more than a few months. I’m assuming you bring supplies you need each time you arrive, but if that’s not happening, you will eventually run out.”
Cailyn looked around the space, her eyes lingering on the chests he had opened before returning to the bedding. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Why? Because you intend to die?”
She didn’t answer, though her grip tightened on the blankets.
“You want to starve to death? You want to suffer from illness or injury and die as slowly and as painfully as possible by yourself, in this secluded hell?” Drocco asked, unable to keep the annoyance from his voice. “Have you ever starved, Cailyn? Do you know what that is like?”
She remained quiet, her eyes on her hands.
“Do you know what it’s like to watch an injury become so infected that you know the body will never recover? I notice you have no substantial healing medicines here. What if you became ill?”
“I’ve been in unbearable pain before,” she said pointedly, lifting her eyes to his. “I’m sure I can handle some more on the way to my death.”
Drocco held in his annoyance. “You don’t care about the child at all?”
“It is your child,” she shot at him, her eyes flashing. “Isn’t that what you told me? I have no ownership of it.”
Drocco scowled. Maybe he should not have said that to her. “We will stay here for three months,” he said, firmly. “My army will take that long to return from the Western Lands. You may feel differently with time.”
