by L. V. Lane
When I growled again, she growled back and sank her teeth in.
“Good girl,” I said, shifting to cradle her head against me, and feeling the skin tear under her sweet assault. “Bite as hard as you need to. Mark me so that everyone knows I belong to you.”
Her wild emotions hit me, wrapping me up in her heat-fueled mania.
She was inside me. I was inside her. Body, soul, and heart.
CHAPTER TEN
IT HAD BEEN a fucked-up day from beginning to end. I felt like we’d been running in circles that had led us nowhere fast. After Sanders had spilled his grubby details, I’d left Ethan, and gone to follow up with a couple of my military contacts to see what they knew about Salvation.
Information was sketchy, and it all led back to Lyus, which, while officially part of the Empire, had been abandoned ever since the conscription. We had no presence there, and so no sources to call upon.
Going back to the apartment without Lilly left a bad taste, like I had failed her, and I didn’t like the feeling one fucking bit.
Dawn light was creeping over the city when I entered the reception room. The rosewood table in the center housed fresh flowers Lilly had placed there a few days ago.
The flowers reminded me sharply of our missing Omega.
It was dark inside, no lights, and no sounds of Ethan fucking Lilly—a sound I both loved and loathed. I was hungry, but there was a different kind of emptiness inside me, and it was freaking me the fuck out.
I found Ethan sitting on her bed, forearms braced on his knees, and looking like shit.
“You okay?” I asked…because my therapist, Abby, had drummed into me that this was the appropriate question to ask someone who was displaying signs of emotional or physical stress, and Ethan was ticking all the boxes. I put the light on so I could better see his sorry state.
“I’m fine.” Lilly’s note was in his hand. Folding it up, he tucked it in his pocket and lifted his head to scowl at me.
“Fine?” I asked, my lips twitching. Fine was now synonymous with Lilly and opportunities to force her out of her comfort zone. My humor didn’t last for long. “I thought we’d have her back by now. A whole day and we’ve achieved fuck-all.”
“Not completely useless. The information Sanders gave us has helped.”
“Yeah?”
“The company he was contracted through leads back to a parent company owned by Tsing. He was being paid a healthy bonus to facilitate the handovers to Salvation. He’s got a criminal record, which had been covered up, and was hand-picked for the job.” He swiped a hand over his face. “Wish I’d found the little prick sooner. Maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“You weren’t to know how it would play out. Is Sanders dead?”
He nodded. “I’m not prepared to wait any longer. Tsing’s guilty of distributing government-owned viral research to Salvation. It’s time to act.”
“I’m up for that.” And I really was. “You think Tsing’s got anything to do with Lilly?”
“My gut is telling me that he has,” Ethan said. “Anyone who has ties with Salvation is dangerous.”
“When are we doing this?” I’d been running on adrenaline for the last day and night, but if we were about to take Tsing down, it was game on, and I was loading the fuck up with every drug I could find. I was already a bit wired now that I stopped to think about it.
“People will need to be brought in,” Ethan said, narrowing his eyes like he could read my mind and didn’t like the prospect of managing me in my present mood. “I’ve called in a few favors. Might need to call a few more before this is over. I’m waiting for a callback. We should try and get some rest…Any more from Eloise?”
“Logan’s forced her heat.”
Ethan growled, and I knew what he was thinking—we should have done this with Lilly. I’d been so fucking close to it when she had lain here between us with my fist buried in her pussy, feeling her come undone.
“Hindsight is a bitch,” he muttered.
And wasn’t that the truth.
Dimming the lights, I stalked past him to the bed. I hated waiting, I was more of an immediate action sort of man, but if I had to wait, I might as well be comfortable. Her bed had taken on a ‘messy nest’ look over the last week. Little Omega didn’t realize what she was doing, but I knew, and I’d seen Ethan eyeing it with the same intense expression. There were so many additional pillows and soft throws that it was hard to find a space. She had no concept of edging either, everything was lumped in the middle.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Ethan snapped, head swiveling around to track me.
“Sleeping in our bed,” I said, thinking he must be in worse shape than he appeared if he was asking such a dumb-ass question.
“Like fuck, you’re sleeping in the bed. Go and find another fucking room.”
I paused my pillow plumping to scowl at him. “It’s Lilly’s bed,” I said, indicating the pillow in my hand. “This is her pillow. I only got to sleep beside her for one night because you have fucking sharing issues. I’m sleeping in it tonight.”
“You got to sleep with her on the damn ship every night. What the fuck are you complaining about?”
“I don’t care about the ship,” I said in my best reasonable tone. I could see his rage was building, and I was too tired for this shit.
He stood—to remind me he was a big bastard, the fucker!
“And you’re not sleeping in the bed,” he growled.
I gave an exaggerated sigh and rolled my eyes. The lighting was poor, but I hoped the dick saw it. “Fine then. I’ll go and sleep on the couch. It’s as comfy as the bed. I would know! And I did have the best blowjob of my life on it. So that makes it better than the bed, now that I think about it.”
“You never learn when to shut the fuck up,” he said, but his tone was absent of heat.
“I really don’t,” I said, grinning as I clutched my pillow-prize in my fist. I could smell Lilly’s scent on it, and I thought I’d sleep better for it.
He didn’t offer any further dispute to my right to sleep on the couch, so I went and lay down, and within minutes, I was asleep.
When I woke, it was daylight outside, but Ethan must have dimmed the glass so that only a hazy gray penetrated, and the room remained in a state of gloom. I could hear him fidgeting in the bed. More like thrashing.
I rubbed absently at the center of my chest. That dream was a doozy—visceral—it left a taste in my mouth, the same one I got when I woke and found her gone…the same one I’d gotten this morning when I returned, and she still wasn’t found.
Powerless…exposed to danger…like Lilly had been in the dream. The endless corridor she had been running along was imprinted on my mind. Gothic mansion meets movie set; it was too pretentious to be real.
I felt like it ought to be symbolic, but my therapist had assured me—after I regaled her with the details of some of my more blood-thirsty dreams—that dreams were bullshit.
She hadn’t used the actual word bullshit, but she’d meant bullshit.
Still, the dream had been fucking intense, and even odder than the time I dreamed about hacking my friend’s head off.
“You awake?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Grumpy bastard! I rubbed at the center of my chest again. “Me too. I had a bad dream.”
He huffed out a breath. “Build a fucking bridge. I’m not your goddamn mother!”
Asshole! “I dreamed Tsing was chasing Lilly along a pretentious, never-ending corridor with dark wood paneling. Who the fuck has wooden paneling in their home?”
Clattering and a loud bang were followed by a curse, and the lights blazing on.
Squinting against the sudden glare, I flopped an arm over my eyes.
“What did you say?” he demanded.
“I dreamed about Lilly. She was running—”
“Shut the fuck up.” He jumped out of bed and got down to the business of some mindless head gripping. He really wasn’t
coping well with Lilly’s disappearance. Good thing I was here with my level head.
I went to ask a question but didn’t get a single word out before he shot me with a “shut up” look, which really pissed me off. I considered myself a very amiable person, so it took a lot to piss me off.
Except for Tsing. Just looking at Tsing could make me see red, but that was another matter.
“I had the same dream,” he said, lowering his hands from his wild hair. He needed to get it cut, or he’d start resembling a Yeti for real.
“You did?” I frowned, catching up with his words.
He nodded. “Long dark corridor. Light coming from a series of high windows on the left. Lilly was wearing a red ballgown. She was wearing it when I found her on the Uncorrupted ship. Only it wasn’t torn and bloody. It was whole like I imagine it must have been before the attack.”
He was staring at the bed as he spoke.
“That’s exactly what I saw. The exact same details.” I sat up, starting to freak out a bit now. “What the fuck does that mean?”
He wasn’t looking quite as mindless anymore; the bastard had passed that shit to me.
“It means she’s a sneaky little brat,” he said slowly.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I AWOKE WITH a start and a terrible notion of discord.
The room was the same; white, featureless, and the perpetual dull lighting that had no visible source.
My prison, I reflected.
My dream remained fresh in my mind. That red dress flowing as I ran down the corridor of Erison’s pretentious apartment. Dark wood paneling, the flashes of sunlight from high windows, and a door I could never reach.
Ryker and Ethan had been there as silent observers of my race.
I could not escape Tsing, even in my dreams, and my Controllers had been powerless to help.
And now I was a human experiment for the Uncorrupted. Was the female Alpha part of their program? Was this an Uncorrupted ship?
I completed my breathing exercises, willing my body to remain calm. I prayed to God himself to take this curse away. No god answered my call. It was just me, caught in a situation of my own making.
So many singularities offered impressive psychological capabilities. Such skills might have been useful to me in my present predicament, might have helped me to find a way out. Then again, had I harbored such powers, I would not be in this predicament at all.
They are giving my blood to Alphas. They would fight for the Uncorrupted, and if they succeeded, I would be under their control. This bleak, hopeless future pressed down on me from all sides. I would be experimented on, and this time, the semi-civilized facade I had experienced as part of the viral research program would be absent.
“The occupants of Lyus are savage—Salvation or the other native scum,” the female Alpha had said. Even she believed what the Uncorrupted had in store for me would be worse.
The center of my chest emitted a dull ache. I wanted to rub it, but I could not afford to draw attention now that my blood was being given to Alpha candidates.
Terror lurked, and there were limits to how much breathing exercises could help to combat this.
I must think clearly, now more than ever.
The nuances of how the psychic connection formed were an unknown. But I thought it would take them many weeks before I needed to worry about that aspect. The suction tool never delivered much blood. They were distributing it to multiple Alphas, and all this would slow the process down.
Enough time for me to escape.
I had gotten myself into this. I would get myself out again.
A faint hiss was my only warning, my eyelids became heavy, and the white room faded out.
My eyes popped open.
I was back in the stark and clinical white room, and dread crawled from its slumber, triggering the faint beginnings of a flush.
I tried to move and, like last time, I could not.
Scent swirled around me; the female Alpha and the Beta.
“Yes, that’s right…the blue ones…connect them up.”
On my right stood the Beta whom the Alpha had been addressing. Cables dangled from his hands, the kind used for body readings. His fingers trembled as he began to connect them using strange metallic suckers. As the Alpha turned away, the Beta mouthed, “I’m sorry.”
My fear spiked, and my eyes darted back to the Alpha.
“Don’t take all day,” she snapped at the smaller man. With trembling hands, he clipped the last sucker in place.
His head dipped submissively as he turned to the machine.
Sudden, violent pain assaulted me, and I writhed, mouth gaping in a silent scream, body contorting to the limits of the tight bands holding me in place.
A flush popped into existence, setting off a heavy pounding at the base of my skull and a hot wave coursing through my body. The pain ate at me, and my body pulsated with molten fire such that it took long, mindless moments to recognize that they had turned the equipment off.
Through this fog, I watched the gentle Beta extract vial after vial of blood, with shaking hands.
Then they electrocuted me again.
And so, it went on and on. Pain became the new norm. Lucidity was infrequent and unwelcome because it brought the pain tenfold.
Time lost all context. There was no notion of how long I might have been here.
A drip had been connected to my arm—I did not remember when—and blinking, I turned toward the Beta. His dark face bore lines of stress as he tagged the latest batch of my blood.
So much blood.
“I don’t understand,” I said, voice slurred. Deep within I did understand, but my mind was averse to connecting the dots because of where those dots would lead.
“We need to accelerate the dosage with the competition imminent,” the Alpha said brusquely. “Your previous samples were so low that the results were slow.”
A subtle wrongness was insinuated within her statement that I could not wrap my abused mind around. Result? Slow? I had not been here so long.
“Protocol limited the amount and frequency of sampling available to Doctor Tsing. But no such protocol exists to worry us now,” she said, smiling like this should be evident to me. “Tsing has been distributing your blood via Salvation contacts. We started the Alphas on your blood before you returned to Chimera. But with such small samples, progress was slow. There are no impediments here. I have high expectations given the volume we acquired today. We’ll give you a few hours rest before we start again.” She patted my arm, and although I wanted to recoil from her heinous touch, the tight straps prevented me. “Would you like something for the pain?”
Was she insane?
Yes, I thought she was.
My blood. My precious blood that should belong to Ethan and Ryker alone was being given to other Alphas, and had been for god knew how long.
I closed my eyes. Tried to think of some way out of this, but no magical solution presented itself.
The center of my chest, that place where the burgeoning connection should exist, was raw and hurting like the rest of me.
They were alive. I could feel that they were alive. And I held onto that thought until the next round of extractions came.
I awoke on the small cot, in the same blue dress, now grubby and creased. The dull white room represented respite and was a heavenly treat. There was no flush. I doubted my body had the energy no matter the danger. This was Tsing’s doing, my tormentor for the past three years had handed me over to the Uncorrupted to become a human experiment. The Empire treated animals better than this, had done so for a millennium.
They would come for me again. Would take more blood in cycles until they met whatever quota had been set before dumping my unconscious body here.
I thought hell might be a more welcoming destination.
I didn’t dream again, not after that first time. They injected me with a chemical cocktail when they were done with the forced flushing, and I thought that might be why. T
he lack of dreams was a blessing when I might meet the other Alphas there.
A chill invaded me that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. I was cold inside, within my soul and in my heart.
Lyus filled me with dread, but I would do anything to bring this insufferable cycle to an end.
“And this too shall pass,” I said. My voice was a croaked whisper, but the words comforted me, and I repeated them again.
I tried to recall where I had heard them. A long time ago, perhaps in a book or a play, or maybe they’d been spoken to me directly.
“And this too shall pass.”
Nothing was forever. Nothing. Not even this.
It was the quintessence of human nature to hope for better. We were optimistic creatures, even if the statistics did not backup said optimism.
Perhaps worse would be coming next. But it would be different. And I thought I would soon reach the stage where I would beg for different, even if it were worse.
I needed to sleep; proper sleep, not the artificial one that the pain, drugs, and flushing had forced upon my body.
Sleep terrified me—not as much as the electrode pads or the madness they provoked—but more than this quiet interlude.
“And this too shall pass.”
I could no more cling to this quiet respite than I could escape through a magical hatch in the floor.
A magical hatch had not saved me on the Uncorrupted ship—Ethan had. Rolling onto my side, I tucked my palm surreptitiously against my chest…and breathed.
Closing my eyes, I imagined Ethan storming in, dark eyes blazing, blood splattering his clothes and dripping from his chin. He would rip my blue dress from my body and fuck me like I was his reward.
I would give that reward gladly.
I imagined him coming down over me on this tiny cot. He would growl, low and threatening, smirking when my pussy pushed out slick. And in a single thrust, he would fill me, taking away this hollow ache.
I was so fucking tired. Mentally, spiritually, and physically, I was close to exhaustion, and I knew my quiet interlude could not last.
