“Are you sure that’s the way you want to make it, girlie?”
“I said no.”
The woman was much stronger than she looked. With one hand, she grabbed Ianthe’s arm and yanked her out of the tub.
Naomi chuckled at some private joke as Ianthe lay sprawled on the floor. She plucked the towel off of the side of the tub and tossed it over her. “Now if you keep acting difficult then I won’t let you have the pretty dress that I picked out.”
Picking herself up off of the floor, Ianthe gathered the edges of the towel around her body. It wasn’t large enough to cover her completely, but the edges met enough for slight modesty. Although it seemed that she wouldn’t be allowed to keep anything of herself in the place, not her body or her mind.
“I said hurry.”
Swallowing a rude remark, Ianthe padded out of the bathing area after Naomi. She wanted to slap the other woman across the face and had to clutch the towel between clenched fists until they shook to tamp down on the urge.
She wasn’t a violent person, not normally even an angry one. But ever since being claimed by her detestable mate, it was getting harder to recognize which emotions actually belonged to her and which were another cruel effect of the bond.
For her part, Naomi didn’t seem particularly bothered by Ianthe’s acid demeanor. Or perhaps she was happy to catalog each discretion and report to Legion later, allowing him to mete out any punishment.
Naomi puttered around the room, fluffing pillows on the bed and arranging the food tray just so on the table.
Ianthe wondered if the room was monitored. She wouldn’t put it past Legion to be sitting somewhere and watching her every movement. She could imagine him wanting that insane level of control. Paranoid, she searched the ceiling for evidence that cameras had been hidden within the plaster but nothing appeared particularly suspicious.
Of course that did nothing to soothe her frazzled nerves.
Ianthe watched the other woman work on the room with mounting suspicion. Naomi had not been at all surprised to find her here, naked in the bed behind a locked door. She had clearly been working for Legion for quite some time, perhaps nothing about this was particularly noteworthy. Perhaps this wasn’t the first time Naomi had witnessed such a scene.
When a short dress was laid on the bed beside her, Ianthe snatched it up. She pulled it hard enough over her head that a cheaper fabric would have torn, heedless of the violence in her own movements.
“How many other girls has he tortured like this?”
“Torture?” Naomi chortled, seeming to find that genuinely amusing. “You’ve got all the good food and water that you could ever need, temperature controls to keep out the elements and perfect air to breathe. Anyone with half a brain in their head would take this over the slums any day. Not to mention an Alpha who’ll give you anything you want.”
Except freedom, Ianthe wanted to bite out but held her tongue. “Just tell me. How many others?”
“You’ve really got the wrong end of things, don’t you.” Naomi sounded genuinely incredulous with a matching expression. “You are his mate.”
“He claimed me against my will,” Ianthe growled, the sound too guttural for her to recognize her voice as her own. “Being his mate doesn’t mean anything. I belong to myself.”
“I hope the master never hears you say that.” Naomi made a clucking sound. “You’d best put the reasons you came to be here out of your mind and accept things for how they are.”
“You’re slum-born, aren’t you?”
“And what of it?”
“Is he paying you to turn a blind eye?” Ianthe demanded. “Is that how you pulled yourself out of the slums?”
“You don’t know me, girlie. But I know you. You weren’t born in the slums. You didn’t spend your whole life wallowing in the muck. Maybe you think that makes you better then the rest of them, but you’ll mind your tongue with me or you’ll regret it.”
Ianthe’s fingers clenched in the bedding. “When is he coming back?”
Naomi raised an eyebrow, clearly considering whether or not she was going to answer. “He didn’t say, but I’ll bet you’ll be one of the first to know when he does.”
A spark of adrenaline ran down Ianthe’s spine, a heady mixture of fear and anticipation. She was eager to see Legion again, she told herself, because she was hoping to toss him out the nearest window.
The bond pulled at her chest, attempting to lull her into complacency. Whispering that her Alpha would care for her as no one else would, all she had to do was submit.
“Did he say how long I’d be locked in this room,” Ianthe grumbled, mostly to herself.
“The door’s unlocked, if you’d quit griping for long enough to notice.”
“Wait,” Ianthe half-rose out of the bed, eagerness momentarily taking the edge off of her anger. “I’m not locked in the room, anymore?”
“Legion has ordered that you’re to have full access to the grounds,” Naomi replied with a sniff. “The pool in the atrium is heated. We have some pre-devastation flora that has been cultivated along the walking trails by the southern wall. There’s also a library. We had the collection catalogued recently and at current count it contains over 100,000 volumes…”
Ianthe did not wait for the woman to finish. She was off the bed and rocketing towards the door with a single-minded focus. In that moment, the only thing she cared about was being outside of the cursed room that stank of Alpha.
White tiles flecked with gold were cold beneath her feet. The room opened up into a massive space open to the outside air. Multiple buildings were connected by pathways made of marble. She immediately felt warmed and looked up to see an unfiltered sun hanging high above her head. The sky was so clear that the intense blue color of it seemed unnatural. The compound stretched in every direction but she could just make out the high wall in the distance the seemed to circle the entire thing.
Despite her eagerness, Ianthe froze momentarily in place. This sudden freedom had to be a trick, an illusion. The moment that she took a step, something terrible would happen.
“Would you like a tour?” Naomi asked, appearing at her side.
Ianthe didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
Naomi led her down the pathway that passed the pool, set into a formation of rocks with a waterfall flowing into it, steam curling from its surface.
Trails wound down the large hill where the bulk of the compound stood toward the walls that were so high it was impossible to see the top of them. You would need a skycar just to scale them, much less travel to another level.
This place was like something out of fantasy. But any pleasure she might take in the surroundings was overshadowed by the circumstances that had brought her here.
Just submit.
The voice whispered through her mind, making promises that couldn’t possibly be kept. Part of her wanted to turn off the critical part of her mind and accept all of this, but she just couldn’t. The moment that she did, she would no longer be herself.
Everything about this was a trick.
“How do you leave?” Ianthe couldn’t stop herself form asking. “Is it only by skycar?”
“Don’t be getting any ideas. We’re miles higher than even the Astropolis. You can’t make it out of here on your own.”
Ianthe had suspected as much but it still caused a pang of fear hearing it said out loud. Legion had her trapped — by the remoteness of his compound, by the bond, by her own stupidity.
And the sickest part of it was that she still wanted him, at least in some small way. Even when she only knew him as her patron at Eros Hous, she had missed the feeling of his hands on her body, still had a physical reaction to the thought of submitting her will to his. His face swam in her vision when she closed her eyes. He had haunted her dreams.
The claiming bond had only made it all worse.
The grounds were beautiful and so large that she could not see from one end to another. But that did not stop her from experie
ncing an overwhelming claustrophobia. Those high walls may as well be closing in.
Naomi showed her the library and then left her there. The room was as impressive as the woman had made it sound. Solid wood bookcases scaled several stories on each wall, the shelves filled with pre-devastation volumes that were likely worth a small fortune.
Books were a pure luxury in Pandora. Information could be obtained much more quickly and cheaply from the CommNet. People only kept books as an expression of wealth or to prove that they could.
The musky smell of vellum and ink made her feel slightly ill as she imagined how much these tomes would fetch in the markets. The ostentatious display of wealth did more to sadden her than to impress her.
Ianthe left the library and wandered the courtyard, trying to orient herself among the multiple branching buildings that made up the center of the compound. She wasn’t sure even how to return to the bedroom, not that she really wanted to. The smell of it would just remind her that Legion was gone and that part of her desperately wanted him to return.
That was a part she wished that she could just rip right out of her.
She wandered the compound, hoping to distract herself from the darkness of her thoughts. She tried doors as she passed and peeked into rooms. Most of them were guest rooms, she counted at least nine of those.
A marble staircase was cut into the hill on the far side of the compound. It reminded her of something out of a vid and she half expected to see an ornately-gowned princess floating down the steps.
No other person had appeared as she wandered the grounds. For all Ianthe knew, she and Naomi were the only ones here. Perhaps they were the only people left in existence.
And perhaps she would die here in the isolation and silence.
Shaking off the dark thoughts, Ianthe mounted the steep stairs, her hands held out in front of her to prevent a fall. There was no banister to hold onto and the hill sloped at a dangerously sharp angle on either side of her.
She looked behind her to the empty courtyard where wind gently blew against the trees. The sun had moved to a new position in the sky and it cast shadows on the stone path that almost looked like strange animals or monsters. From this high up she could see just barely see over the wall and it was not a sheer drop off to sky, there were mountains beyond.
The view beyond the wall was eerily beautiful. This entire place was beautiful, but she understood the lie hidden in that beauty.
Ianthe shook off a sudden chill and continued to climb the steps. They finally ended at a long enclosed hallway. It seemed somehow darker here, the effect only magnified by the setting sun behind her. Glowlights lined the walls, but the effect they created was more eerie than illuminating.
There was only one door at the far end and it was somehow different from the others although she couldn’t quite put her finger on exactly how. It looked very similar the same as the other doors she had encountered, perhaps slightly larger. It was made of pale wood, rather than the metal that was more common, but Legion clearly had a taste for the antique styles.
An ornate door handle glinted gold in the low light. She’d looked into all of the other rooms that she’d come across, this one shouldn’t be any different. And yet, she felt surrounded by quiet as if the world were holding its breath. She had the distinct impression that this was not a place that she was supposed to be.
But when she tried the handle, it refused to budge.
Locked.
“Strange,” Ianthe murmured to herself, voice striking the silence like a stone. She tried again and realized that the door wasn’t just locked, it was bolted shut. The round keyhole above the knob mocked her.
Whatever was behind the door, Legion clearly wanted to keep it hidden.
Eventually growing bored of her wandering, Ianthe food Naomi in the kitchen and lingered there with her. She found the other woman an unpleasant companion, but the silence and the isolation was beginning to get to her. Being alone used to be a luxury for her but now it was oppressive as she felt consumed by the noise of her own thoughts.
A large fish was laid out on the table, surrounded by slices of lemon and handfuls of fresh herbs. Ianthe had never seen anything so decadent in her entire life. Was Legion expected an army to arrive for dinner?
“Bored already?” Naomi asked as she chopped up some sort of root vegetable, each crash of the blade against the metal counter made Ianthe want to jump.
“No.”
Her stomach growled and Ianthe looked away in embarrassment. It had been hours since she had last eaten and Legion had insisted on feeding her so she had consumed little before he lost interest in the food and decided to feed her something else. The thought of it caused something low in her belly clench.
Naomi smirked and slid a plate of cut fruit across the counter so it stopped just within reach. “Eat.”
Ianthe gingerly picked up a piece of pineapple and set it in her mouth, the sweet tang exploding on her tongue. Her eyes drifted closed in reaction to the delicious flavor. But her enjoyment was immediately tainted by the thought that while she was here enjoying luxuries, her family was suffering. For all she knew, they thought her dead.
“What is in that room,” Ianthe asked, pushing the plate away. “The one at the top of those stone steps.”
Naomi’s expression shifted and the punishing rhythm of her knife against the cutting board momentarily ceased. “And which room would that be, again. This grounds are full of steps.”
“The only one with the door locked.”
“This compound stretches as wide as a city block. There are plenty of locked doors.”
“Well, I only found one.”
Her voice was repressive. “I don’t know anything about that.”
Ianthe raised an eyebrow, her tone slightly mocking. “And I was under the impression that Legion had you running this place. He didn’t give you keys?”
“You had best watch your tone, girlie. Letting you run around like this is a privilege, you know.” Naomi snapped. The wicked blade glinted in her hand as she waved it to punctuate her words. “You want to end up back in that room?”
“You’d lock me up with the keys you don’t have, just for asking questions?”
Naomi seemed to realize that this back and forth was only piquing Ianthe’s interest, rather than quelling it. She switched tactics. “Some things is best left where they lay. You should go clean up for dinner, the master will be home soon.”
Legion.
Mention of him was enough to tamp down on the spurt of rebellion. Somehow, she understood that disrespecting Naomi was something he would punish her for, assuming that he even needed an excuse.
“I don’t remember how to get back to my room,” Ianthe admitted, face coloring.
Naomi sighed heavily and tossed down the knife. “And you ain’t nothing but a child.”
“I have twenty solars,” Ianthe responded, lips pursed.
“Exactly as I said.”
Ianthe crossed her arms over her chest and glared. “Are you going to show where the room is or not. Don’t I need to go prepare myself for dinner with the master.”
“You’re not gonna get anywhere with fighting.” Naomi’s tone softened somewhat, although steel still lay in the woman’s gaze. “You’re outmatched in every way that matters. Master Legion is better than most. Being his isn’t a fate worse than death. The sooner you accept things for what they are, the happier you’ll be.”
Inexplicably, Ianthe felt hot tears burning on the edges of her eyes. She swiped at them with an angry hand. “You don’t understand what it’s like.”
“Don’t I?”
Something in her tone made Ianthe regard the woman more closely. Her face was heavily lined but there was evidence of refined features that had not completely succumbed to age. Naomi was taller than she was, but only slightly, the image offset by the strength in her hands and arms from hours spent laboring. It became more difficult to discern dynamic as people aged, the hormonal markers fadi
ng with the natural decrease in fertility. But Naomi could be, it wasn’t impossible.
“Are you Omega?” Ianthe asked finally, breaking the long silence.
“It doesn’t matter what I am. I’ve lived more lives than are worth describing.” Naomi seemed to grow almost pensive as the they stared at each other. “Maybe I came from the slums, just like you did, but I didn’t stay there. And I did whatever I had to do to get myself out. The only thing you need to remember is that there’s no sacrifice too great to protect yourself and the people that you love. Alpha, Beta or Omega. Anyone can be ruthless if they need to be.”
Surprise colored her tone as Ianthe thanked the woman. The moment wasn’t precisely heartwarming but she felt the deep unseated anger recede slightly, if just for a few seconds.
“And things can always get worse for you, girlie.”
Or less than a second.
Subdued, Ianthe followed Naomi out of the kitchen and back into the courtyard. She tried to remember which path they took back to the room, but the buildings appeared to be laid out in a deliberately confusing way. And again, she saw no one else. The place appeared to be completely deserted save for the two of them. She surveyed the perfectly manicured gardens and shiny tile that made up the pathways. It wasn’t possible that Naomi maintained all of this by herself.
“Where are all of the other people who work here?” Ianthe asked as they walked, voice coming hushed as she hesitated do too much to break the eerie silence. “Or is it really just you?”
“Legion ordered that any nonessential personnel be temporarily relieved of duty. He wanted to give you space to become acclimated.”
Or go crazy from the isolation, Ianthe thought. It was just as likely that Legion wanted to ensure that she had no one to rely on but him. He was using loneliness to warp her mind into a more compliant state. And it was working.
If she was being honest with herself, thoughts of when he would return had never receded completely from her mind. She dreaded the demands that he would make of her but also yearned for his presence with a compulsion that made her hate herself.
Omega's Capture (Omegas of Pandora Book 2) Page 5
