by Aya DeAniege
“No hard feelings,” he said. “Though in about ten more minutes, something is going to be hard if I think about it too much.”
“Ha ha,” I said sarcastically.
He pulled me off the wall, into his arms, smiling at me as he did so.
“I need to work today, I do. And I regret that. I want to stay here and cuddle and do whatever you want of me. Eager to serve whenever you are so inclined, to do whatever you want. Hang a picture, rearrange the furniture, or kneel for you again, whatever you could want. But I need to work. Understand?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Good, I just need to make certain you understand one more thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“What are my rules?” he asked in response.
“Food, exercise, and I don’t remember after that,” I said.
“Which means, what?” he asked.
“I’m going to eat breakfast?” I asked in response.
He made a little sound. Ever so gently, he took me by my shoulders and turned us so that I was standing under the water instead of him. The heat of it made me relax, soaking into the dull throb and easing it out of me.
“Eat something, Rachel will be by in about an hour to take you to the gym. You two can work out and I can get some lab work done. Best to do it now, while I have Blane’s toys to play with. It’s not cheap, getting the equipment I need, but he’s agreed to let me use it for the moment, because I’m not trying to challenge his work.”
“It might even lend to his work,” I said.
Gerrid nodded and reached past me for the shampoo. We went about the process of cleaning in silence. Each time we turned, we did so carefully, making certain not to slip on the wet tile under our feet. When we were done, Gerrid shut off the water and left the shower immediately.
I stood there for just a moment longer, enjoying the quiet of the bathroom, then I stepped out as well. Gerrid was there almost immediately, wrapping a towel around me. He hugged me, then kissed the top of my head and walked away again. As I dried, he went to the cupboard and pulled out another towel.
We dressed and walked out of the bathroom. Gerrid kissed me once more.
“I need to get to the lab.”
“You can’t even have breakfast with me?” I asked.
“Not breakfast, but lunch, we’ll eat together. I find eating slows me down. Instead, I work until I am hungry. I will see you for lunch, though. The house usually eats around one. Blane has started to have meals with everyone all together. It used to just be formal but there’s something about breaking bread as a family that bonds you.”
“Hence why families eat together?”
“Probably,” Gerrid said after a long moment. “Breakfast, I’ve been told, is still separate because we all wake at different times. Eat, there’s casserole in the fridge from last night, but also all kinds of stuff in the freezer. There were eggs in there, if you’d like actual breakfast.”
“I get it, I have to eat,” I said.
“Good, eat, and don’t make me say it four more times,” he grumbled. “I will see you at lunch.”
“What do I do until then?” I asked.
“Eat, exercise and then do whatever you’d like. There’s a large library, computers. The Alphas are at your disposal, whatever you want or need. Just take the day to consider everything, or even what you want out of life and we’ll discuss it tonight after dinner.”
“I’ll try that, sure.”
“See you at lunch.”
He gave me one last kiss, then left. I grumbled at his absence and looked around the room. I wasn’t exactly certain what to do with myself.
In the end, I decided to take his advice.
I ate breakfast and managed to locate my new phone, still in the box by the door. I turned it on and began poking all the things. I went online and looked at news sites, catching up on what had happened over the past two years.
While I had been under Owen’s heel, the world had continued on without me. Nothing had happened outside of that. Me and mine had been affected by all that had happened, but that was it.
There were movies I had missed, new music had come out.
In the end, the only people affected by Owen’s actions had been those in his area. It had been a very contained problem, and I was having difficulty wrapping my head around that fact.
Thanks to the way Alphas worked, Owen hadn’t been able to spread outward.
He had collected Alphas from other areas in his, as if he had been starting an army or something, but he hadn’t been able to move to another territory. None of the others had enough courage to try to take over another area for themselves, so they had just gathered in one spot.
That probably made Morgan’s job of finding them a great deal easier.
I looked around the room, considering all I knew, then I turned back to my phone and looked up Morgan.
What came up was what Rachel had told me, all there online.
His name in the big Alpha database thingy they had created, was linked to Blane’s territory and something called the War Brats.
I knew about those, I thought. Gerrid had definitely mentioned them the day before.
I looked into them.
The War Brats had fought in the war—which was probably obvious given their names. All the War Brats except Morgan had broken, which none of the Alphas could figure out.
Alpha children had been used as weapons for as long as there were Alphas. None of the ones in the past had broken and other children had seen the war through, fought in it even, and had been fine.
It was just that group that broke, no one else.
And Gerrid’s name was linked to them as well.
I frowned and scrolled down.
Gerrid had been the one to bring down the War Brats. When they broke, they went mad, that madness meant that they turned into vicious little creatures. Killing and torturing as they went, but Alpha law said they had to keep as many alive as possible to continue on the genetics.
Law enforcement couldn’t just shoot them—you can’t tranquilize an Alpha when they get like that—and they were afraid that using the other War Brats to bring the broken ones in would make them break as well.
So, they had sent Gerrid.
There was even a video of one of the collections. Curiosity got the better of me. I played the video and watched Gerrid in action.
Alphas were always portrayed as predators. That’s what we were told, right from the get go. Children were taught it along with their numbers and alphabet.
Alphas were predators, and they were the top of the food chain.
Everyone was told that, but in modern times Alphas were just rich men in rich clothing with all the toys and treats that came along with their money.
During the civil war, they had chosen their battles as carefully as they could, hiding them from the common people. My father had once said that the wolves didn’t want to show the sheep their fangs until it was too late to escape. I think that’s exactly what happened during the civil war.
All the technology there was, and not one video of Alpha mid-fight was on the internet at large. It was only located on the database, which I apparently had special privileges to. The database recognized the network I was logging in from and let me see the video, that was the only reason I could access it.
There had been a jerking sort of motion to the War Brat, as if his nerves weren’t working properly, or he had some sort of disease. You know, the ones that made you shake and tremble? Gerrid moved with the same fluid grace he had shown the day before as we had danced.
His muscles weren’t just for show, and he hadn’t been boasting when he had said he taken down other Alphas. Everything about how he moved sent a trickle of cold fear through me.
He grabbed the War Brat with little resistance, then put him into a choke hold and just held on. That’s all he had to do. Hold on as the one in his arms slowly stopped struggling and eventually succumbed. The body dr
opped to the ground and Gerrid looked up, toward the video.
“Oh shit, run,” the voice behind the camera hissed.
I closed down the video, not wanting to see anymore. I followed the link to Gerrid’s page and found video after video of him. I watched a few and saw that grace developing over the years. The earliest video was almost clumsy, a sixteen-year-old boy getting smacked around by Abraham. Batted about like he was a kitten.
Every time Gerrid went down, he got back up again.
Choosing another random Alpha, I looked through for videos but found none. I went to Blane’s page, to Abraham’s page, and the only videos of them were press releases and speeches. There were no videos of them fighting or in motion at all.
I couldn’t even say that I believed Blane was capable of fighting. He seemed to be so slow moving, but he had to have been able to, in order to keep the territory. It was just that he no longer needed to show that force.
I closed down my internet and sighed loudly.
Then I thought better of it and brought the internet back up, and looked up Owen. His page had been completely stripped. All it had was his description, a picture of him, and the fact that he was now property of Rachel.
That’s it.
His entire life had been erased, probably overnight.
Other Alphas, when they died, their pages remained. If a child took on their name, then that child received another page and the two linked together with a ‘did you mean…?’ link at the top of the page somewhere. Even those who had been taken down or executed, their pages remained.
But they had completely wiped Owen from history. He would only be remembered as belonging to Rachel. No one would talk about the why or the how, just know that one day Owen was born and sometime in his life, he had crossed the wrong woman.
That fact lightened my heart. I was so glad to see it, I just couldn’t put words to how happy I was. I couldn’t kill his body, but he was still dead. In all other senses of the term, Owen was dead and gone.
I would have to ask someone about his children. Alphas carried on their father’s name, but if Owen was being completely erased, who would his children be named after? Rachel? Or maybe they would show the same format as Morgan’s name, which was a mouthful to say the least.
I looked up and jumped in spot, finding Rachel standing in the doorway, watching me.
“I did knock,” she said. “But you didn’t answer, so I figured I’d best let myself in. At least you aren’t curled up under the table or something, crying your eyes out.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “Though, I think that’s starting to sound like a good idea. Grand idea even. I think this might be too much for me to handle right now.”
“That’s fine. Just put the phone away, and we’ll go to the gym to work out. We don’t need to talk about it right now, and if you want to, then just say so. Oh, the therapist is also here. Blane figured it would be best to introduce you two right away. He seems to think that you might be getting overwhelmed, which Matt says has something to do with his getting bitier? Blane bit Abraham and Abraham told him to take care of you instead of biting people who had nothing to do with it in the first place, and then they got in a fight which Matt did not want to talk about. Which I assume means Abraham won and mounted the fallen challenger.”
I have to admit, the image played through my head. For a moment it entertained me. An Alpha being owned by someone else?
Hell, yes!
But then my mind caught up to me, and I recalled who was involved, that I had Blane calling me Mother in private. That moment of triumph was washed away by a bitter annoyance. Suddenly I wanted to twist Abraham’s ear, but couldn’t.
I struggled to come up with a normal response to those words, but couldn’t find one. There simply was nothing I could say to that which would seem normal.
“Alphas are so weird,” I said finally.
“I know, right? They totally get off on that.”
“Gerrid called me his prize today.”
“Ew, like you’re just an object for him to win and then claim?” Rachel said with a grimace. “You should tie that man up. Make him recognize that you aren’t just a possession.”
“I think I’m okay with that, but last night, as foreplay, he had me talk about equality and stuff.”
“Yup, there’s the weird.”
Chapter Eight
For lunch, Rachel led me to a half-redecorated dining room. The wallpaper was in the process of being stripped, the floor was bare, down to whatever floors without wood or carpeting were made of, but there was a roll of sub-flooring standing in the corner, and a stack of boxes beside it. The table was plastic, one of those fold out types, and the chairs weren’t matching.
In short, it wasn’t what I expected to see when I walked into lunch with an Alpha.
I understood that sometimes Alphas renovated. It was the only way to update the estate, after all was said and done. What I didn’t understand was why an Alpha was hosting lunch inside that room. Blane surely had at least one other dining room. Probably more like fourteen given the size of his estate.
Lunch was served on the rich sort of plates that I expected an Alpha to have. They had little designs all along the outside and seemingly not a scratch on them, certainly no chips in the edges. The silverware may have been actual silverware, instead of flatware by a different name. They too had intricate little designs on the handles, designs which matched the plates perfectly.
The meal itself was a quinoa salad with chickpeas and spinach. It too didn’t look like what an Alpha might eat.
They liked meat, and one of them had proved that they needed the meat in order to thrive. Being a salad, it was served cold and brought in moments after we sat down.
Gerrid arrived with Matt, and Abraham arrived a few minutes after him. Blane arrived so soon after Abraham that I wondered if he had waited outside the door for Blane and then entered. I wasn’t certain why we had waited for lunch, we had been there on time and Blane had been the one late.
Blane had looked at the food and grimaced. A glance to the other plates made the grimace go away, but he still shot Matt a furtive sort of look, as if asking why Matt would do that to him in front of other people.
Matt, for his part, had engaged in a conversation with Penelope. He had been actively engaged in that conversation since entering the dining room, which meant that it was about a ten-minute-long conversation by the time Blane arrived.
“I keep fielding questions about my new Dom,” Blane said as he sat.
He had more colour, looked a little better than he had the day before when I had seen him. Blane hadn’t been at the gym, nor had he introduced me to my therapist. His absence had been explained with a shrug from Rachel. Probably, that meant he had been in the lab with Gerrid, trying to do something.
It was possible that he had been wrapped up with Matt and Abraham.
“Are you done with Abraham?” Penelope asked in an annoyed tone.
She was sitting with her back straight, nose upward ever so slightly. She didn’t look happy in the least to be at lunch with me.
Or maybe her face always looked like that.
“I am, yes,” Blane said. “But tradition has specific dictations. We must follow them.”
“Which means Morgan is going to leave the territory empty?” Rachel asked. “I realize he’s playing surrogate for Matt, but come on.”
“We checked everything out, it works fine,” Blane said. “Which means that, per usual with my family, only once is necessary. We don’t know why the traditions work, only that they do. He’ll pop in for an hour or so, then head back out. No harm at all. If it doesn’t work, we’ll try again next month, plain and simple. But it should work, there’s no reason it shouldn’t.”
“If my land gets attacked over this, I will be very upset,” Rachel said.
“No, Rachel,” Blane said slowly. “If your land gets attacked because I have finally decided to breed, that means I go hunting your land.
And I will deal with the problem. I will kill whoever chooses a breeding time to attack someone else. That’s well within my rights, isn’t it?”
Abraham, with his glass almost to his lips, hesitated and looked over at Blane. Then he turned to Gerrid.
“Gerrid? Have you heard of anyone doing that before?”
“No, but as it is Blane’s land, I can perfectly understand him doing the hunting,” Gerrid said.
His hands were firmly in his lap.
No one else had picked up their forks yet, they all seemed to be waiting on Blane, so I also waited. Abraham was the only one touching anything, and that was just his water glass. It somehow felt like Abraham was pushing his bounds at Blane’s table, like the two were in some sort of power struggle behind the scenes.
I didn’t know why.
Blane knew that Abraham was above him, and seemed happy enough with the arrangement. It was like Abraham felt weaker.
Because of what had happened the night before? Or because of something else?
“Fielding questions, you said,” I said, turning to Blane. “About your new Dom, that’s what you said. Are you trying to suggest that we might be in danger?”
“That is a possibility, but it has always been one,” Blane said. “We knew going in that this was dangerous, but our laws are clear. Rachel took out Owen, she is now a Dom. We want her to succeed, so we’re doing what we can to help her out. I cannot interfere on her behalf. As a Dom, she has to do that herself. Otherwise she has no strength in their eyes.”
“Hence the training,” I said.
“For both of you. If you aren’t trained and they can tell you apart, they will attack you, thinking you are weak. I’d like to prevent that.”
Blane picked up his fork. He ate a small bit and everyone else picked up their forks, so I did the same. I ate a little, considering the information.
“How long until they attack?” I asked finally.
Blane stiffened. “What?”
“Until the dissenters attack, how long?” I asked. “They’d deal with it swiftly and soon. What happens if someone attacks your estate tonight, looking to kill us? What then?”
