by Addison Cain
“Be a good girl, and I’ll wield the whip myself,” Toby crooned, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. “I promise it won’t be more than a tickle and a little blood for show.”
Kieran, still scowling, had his own warning for the Omega. “Toby would also be the one sawing off the dumb kid’s hand if you fuck up.”
A nod, almost imperceptible, came from the female.
Chest rumbling with the offering of his purr, Caspian smiled. “My pretty little mouse is a good girl. She won’t need another reminder.”
“No,” Toby agreed, another kiss pressed to a snowy head. “She won’t.”
***
Two days reprieve was offered. Two days for flesh to heal.
Yet splinted finger bones were weeks from fully mending. She could not talk, not that anyone really wanted to hear her thoughts.
No, they wanted her to smile and sleep, to accept their caresses and food.
The myriad of bites that peppered her flesh were no longer pink, but slivery scars. They blended in with her skin yet simultaneously stood out like a beacon—shining against powder white.
Glaringly obvious.
A blazing maze that said, owned.
Caspian had taken to staring at them, eyes fixed, anytime he was in the room.
That is, when he wasn’t touching them, licking them, gnawing over select spots as if to keep his favorites pink enough to stand out.
Her breasts. Her inner thigh.
The only place he treated with true reverence was her ankle.
Toby would fuss over her healing wounds, pouring bitter medicine down her throat. Spoon feeding her. Purring, Caspian had taken to rubbing her feet. All this while Kieran lectured on how she must behave before the men.
While he threatened her Alec. While he pointedly failed to offer more than a passing comment on Mikael’s health.
Overindulged as she was, feet dwarfed in callused, careful hands, lips pecked by a smiling shaven-headed psychopath who kept her drugged and buried in pillows, Wren sometimes forgot there was more to notice than lovely sensation and deep, masculine purrs.
Until her fuzzy gaze met disapproving green.
Kieran was an anchor.
One who held himself aloof and stared a great deal.
The behavior of his packmates had the Second Alpha on edge.
Wren could not find it in her to care. Under drugged pain and the itch of mending bone, she felt adrift in her skin. Things weren’t right no matter how long the doctor was forced to sit at her bedside.
And forced was the word for it. His life had been threatened in subtle and not so subtle ways those first two days. If she winced, the Beta received a backhand. Should she moan in her sleep, Wren woke to the sound of the doctor being kicked.
“I told you no pain…” Caspian hissed, voice snake-like and deadly.
Worse for wear and smelling unwashed, the older male climbed to his feet and let out a desperate breath. “More drugs will do her more harm than good.”
“I don’t want her in pain!”
The old man, through exhaustion and days of terror, snapped. “Then you shouldn’t have beaten her!”
And that was the last Wren saw of her dedicated caretaker. When she’d woken and found only grinning Toby at her side, she’d vocally cried.
Because she knew what had happened.
The Beta was dead.
And that squishy, invasive comfort streaming through her bones coming from the male shushing and purring at her side...
Mate. Caspian had said.
Flippantly. As if it was nothing of note.
Someone finally wanted her, and he was crazy through and through.
Signing poorly, he talked as he practiced structuring her language. “Sunshine. You’re looking much better today.”
Unable to converse with her fingers still splinted, Wren only blinked.
“Are you hungry?” That sign he had down pat.
No.
“Thirsty?”
No.
Face thoughtful, an uncharacteristic scowl came to Toby’s brow. “I’ve waited a long time for you. For my mate.”
It took everything an exhausted Wren had not to show an ounce of disappointment.
“I know this is new. An adjustment period is to be expected.” A wink brought out fine lines on the side of Toby’s eyes. Laying on the charm, he said, “A month from now you’ll be so in love with me you’ll never remember that it started… with difficulty.”
She felt her brow arch before she realized she’d done it.
Chuckling, purr amplified as he leaned over, Toby grinned. “Trust me, sunshine.”
Wren trusted a burning building more than the madman with his dangerous fetishes.
“I’ll learn how to love you however you like best. You have my word on that, Jax. I’ll buy you pretty baubles, give you pretty dresses, and feed you all the water a girl could want.”
On and on went the diatribe, Wren’s eyes growing heavy. When well-muscled arms snuck around her and a shamefully misbuilt nest buckled under the Third Alpha’s weight, she slept.
That is until Caspian barged in, dragging Rosie behind him. “Get out. Your time with her is over.”
Chapter 3
Red lips painted to perfection, dressed in blue to bring out her eyes.
Rosie.
Perfect and pretty and not at all scarred.
Rosie, who didn’t bear the mark for defective upon her face.
Weight in the nest shifting at her back, Toby rolled his shoulders, stretching from his nap. All of it for show, Wren could sense that bone deep.
With a wink and a quick stolen kiss on parted lips, the dismissed Third Alpha said, “Be my sweet sunshine for Caspian.” In a snap, his gaze turned toward the couple at the door, all semblance of gentleness replaced with a murderous sneer. Voice loud enough to assure every word was heard, he announced, “And if Rosie touches you, I’ll kill her. It won’t be quick.”
Graceful, hazarding on careless, Toby climbed from the nest, heading out the door with no further word. Not even a glance at his scowling leader.
Nor did he so much as twitch at the snarled, “Later,” that came from his First.
The first thing someone learned upon being thrust into the Warrens was that bad things would always get worse. If you starved so hard your belly protruded, the next thing you knew, your first meal would give you dysentery. Many died this way.
Those who grew so thirsty they drank from the puddles knew the microbes would rot their teeth. What could be worse?
It would also rot them from the inside out.
Decaying that way took time… and led to an ugly death.
A female might be captured and forcibly mated. Perhaps three of them took her, used her, and toyed with her future for sport. Out of estrous they might mark her. They might threaten her family. They might break her and pretend at putting her back together.
They might contaminate unwelcome bonds that rattled bones and made her innards ache.
They might insult her by bringing in a more adequate female. By fucking her in front of them.
Reminding the Warrens rat that, claiming marks or no, she was nothing… and that it could always get worse.
Perhaps this knowledge was why Wren didn’t blink, expected nothing but ugliness from these males.
No matter Caspian’s promises, they would not keep Alec safe. But that didn’t mean she refused to play their game and put him in direct harm either.
Heal, earn their trust, flee.
Take her boys, sell her body along the monorail tracks to get them all out of Dale City. Steal if she had to. Run so far Caspian could never find them.
But these things took time. So for now, Wren sat up, the soft blanket Toby had used to cover her nakedness falling away to show bite-marked breasts. Each little matching crescent had almost healed thanks to the doctor's advanced tech, his diligence, and his forced captivity it this room.
And he had been murdered for
it. Wren didn’t doubt that for a minute.
He had been murdered because she’d slipped. A single errant whimper, that is what his life had been worth.
She wouldn’t slip again.
These men wanted to play house? Fine, she’d be their pretty mouse, their sunshine, their whore.
She’d eat their food, drink their water, take their medicine and grow strong. Eyes glowing with intention, Wren met the muddy gaze of a very bad man.
One look, and Caspian make a hungry sound, one so desperate she almost thought she’d heard him whine.
And maybe he did. Rosie certainly turned his way, an incredulous look on her perfect face.
“You’ve eaten today?”
Two bowls of the black goo, yes.
“Drank plenty of water?”
So much that Wren felt bloated and was annoyed by the near constant urge to pee.
“Are you in pain?”
So much fucking pain she hardly knew how to force the simple head shake of no.
Her nailbeds, though coated in scabs, stung. Her broken fingers itched and ached. Her skin had been sealed on the surface, thanks to the kind Beta doctor, but deeper wounds, all the bruising, were days away from anything but leaving her a pulped mass of aches.
Worse than all the physical ailments was the unseen one. The bone-deep internal twitch that was Toby’s crudely forged link. The buzzing pinching of her internal organs marked Caspian’s cruelty and connection.
The pair of them had infested her living corpse.
And they would be the death of her. But not until she got her boys as fucking far away as possible. She’d even kill them if that’s what it came down to.
But not in a rage. They were too strong for even that mindless death-machine Omegas became to protect their brood. They were the perfect pack, despite their grievances and constant snarling back and forth.
Hand to his throat, Caspian kneaded the skin as if unaware of what he was doing. “You don’t seem well.”
Splinted fingers did a poor job of trying to smooth bed-wild hair into something fetching.
“I’ve waited two days, and I need to fuck.” This all blurted out while the obvious erection in Caspian’s pants leaked.
Then fuck Rosie, Wren thought. Glad he was far enough away that his poor excuse of a purr couldn’t truly touch her.
Utter filth, the Alpha’s eyes glowed with something perverse. “But I want to look at you while I’m doing it.”
Relief faintly coursed through tired veins.
As if he too felt his offer was her balm, Caspian drew his hands from a throat grown red from rubbing to knock against his heart. Or perhaps she misread him, for his grimace made it seem as if the last batch of food stuffed down his maw must pain him.
Dragging a silent, yet strangely composed Rosie behind him, the First Alpha approached. “Scoot to the edge of the bed, pretty mouse. Spread your legs so I can see your juicy cunt.”
The only part of her that didn’t ache.
Fine.
Hair a tangled mess, unwashed and a physical wreck, Wren slunk to the edge, laid back even as Caspian pulled out his cock, and locked her eyes on the water-stained ceiling.
A sound of distress came from the beautiful blonde in the pretty blue dress. It was not the sound of a woman getting fucked, it was the sound of a person shoved to their knees then choked on a fleshy length of meat.
And it was enough to draw lavender eyes from the uneven ceiling to the eyes of her living, breathing tormentor.
He looked as if he suffered the most terrible kind of pain.
Staring down between her legs. To the dry slit. To pink inner labia that fanned out from chalk-white skin. To the cunt he’d previously penetrated, filled with filthy cum, and tasted.
And for some unknown reason, knowing he was skull fucking another woman, and staring at a thing he would not let himself have, Wren almost felt sorry for him. Which made little sense, considering the man had no real regard for her welfare beyond that of a favored toy. Knowing that the marks he’d left on her would prove this whole thing pointless.
She felt sorry as he did things to Rosie’s throat that would have made Wren vomit.
She felt sorry that no matter how often or hard he fucked his favorite Omega, he’d never know joy.
She felt sorry that she hated his guts and wished to see him destroyed.
And she felt sorry that she grew wet to the sounds of another woman gagging on his cock.
One tiny pearl of slick, that was all it took to shatter Caspian’s composure.
One second he had been little more than a perverted voyeur. The next he buckled over and set his mouth to the very part of her he’d demolished two days prior.
Lapping at her like a madman. Trying to drink up the sad offering a disinterested body might offer. He growled, whined like a dog, then rested his head on her sunken belly as he gushed his seed down the throat of another.
None of it had been for Wren’s pleasure. No, he’d swallowed her up in greed.
But as the male panted, bent over, rubbing his scruffy face on her belly, she took pity and stroked his head with splinted hands.
“You need to eat more, pretty mouse…”
Softly spoken words that made no sense.
Lavender eyes drew down just in time to see small, female hands grasp Caspian’s knot and massage it in a way that would milk him almost like a cunt. She saw the wheat colored hair peeking up from the edge of the bed she’d been forced to “nest” in. She saw the travesty this would be if she’d loved this male.
But she didn’t.
And she didn’t care.
That did not stop her gasp when Caspian stopped licking her for his pleasure and doubled down his effort for hers. Light airy flicks over her clit, swirling, pointed laps of a tongue over labia and slit.
It should have been humiliating how quickly she came. Her empty cunt flooded with slick so quickly the room spun. It drenched his face and set the Alpha into a fit of long groans.
“Thank you.”
What the actual fuck?
Kicking back, scooting away from the mouth on her parts, Wren needed to be anywhere but this room. As far as possible from an existence where a shrinking penis was slipping from the loudly sucking lips of a foreign woman.
She needed to be home, in her beloved nest, surrounded by her boys and salvage.
“Shhhhhhhhh, darling mouse.” Soft kisses came over deep scattered wounds that ached the most. “Be still, I don’t want to hurt you. I’ll fuck this sweet pussy as soon as you might handle me. I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll forget your name.”
Coughing up the excess cum that had overcome her throat, Rosie wiped at her running mascara.
Her face red, her eyes on the cracked cement floor she stood, straightening her dress and smoothing her hair as if this horrible treatment meant nothing to her.
It wasn’t just Wren who’d been degraded.
And that, that is what broke a bitter Omega’s heart.
Chapter 4
“Mmmhh.” Drugged by deep sleep, a breathy hmmm escaped Wren’s parted lips.
A rocking sensation drew her further from muddled dreams—a gentle bump, bump, bump that jostled just enough a sleepy Wren’s lashes parted. She nearly gasped.
Kieran.
At her side, braced, the naked beauty of the only Alpha male who’d yet to intrude into her nest.
Not quite near enough to touch, not even looking at her in the dark. His sculpted body—defined muscles rippling—caught up in pleasure.
But it was why muffled grunts were kept locked behind his teeth that left her frozen still.
Fists clenched in the covers, sweat gathered on Kieran’s brow.
He was being fucked… by a softly whispering Toby. “Look how pretty she is, our sweet Omega. Smell her eager cunt. Fill her up with a feast for me.”
One word grunted impatiently passed Kieran’s parted lips. “Harder.”
To hear him breathless, to see him
mounted by a lower ranked Alpha… for pleasure… Wren didn’t know what to make of it.
What had been rolling hips, Toby hardly visible in the dark, became rough, dedicated thrusts that jostled both bodies closer to where she laid. Shrouded in shadow’s Wren spied from slightly parted lids, and saw little of Toby’s naked form beyond where his hands stroked Kieran’s back, or where his pelvis shoved a lube shined cock straight into the Alpha’s body. But she sensed through their link that he was fully aware of her regard.
And was pleased by it.
She could even feel his pleasure, his building release in the base of her spine.
She could hear him silently calling to her, tempting her to be braver and show them her attention.
That was his game.
And where she refused to engage, the bed began to shake with more force, knocking back against the wall so roughly that there was no way she could pretend to be asleep.
Caspian’s massive form was pressed to her back. Unsure if he slept or if he too had his eyes on the scene, Wren had her answer a moment later.
He gave an approving grunt right before something thick and wriggling borrowed between her thighs.
Fingers.
They slipped and danced as her clit peeked from its hood and her labia bloomed with unexpected slick.
There was no hiding her response. For the first time in the presence of these men, Wren was aroused by something other than an Alpha growl, desire perfuming the air with the scent of honest slick.
Hooking his fingers behind her pelvic bone, Caspian rubbed hard at that secret spot. Teasing the nerves, milking her slick glands until a wet squelch of noise squished with his hands’ every movement.
She should have been scandalized at the taboo scene taking place beside her, not readily spilling slick.
She should have shut her eyes so hard she’d never have to see Kieran’s pupils expand when he got the first breath of her arousal.
She should not have moaned when Caspian began to thrust his slippery fingers in and out of her hungry hole in tempo with Toby’s cock disappearing into Kieran’s ass.
And she definitely should not have looked to see the engorged prick hanging down from Kieran’s hips, dragging a trail of precum over the sheets.
