What would Diana think if she learned what happened to the omega from New Bunker? Diana claimed to have seen her picked right up off the streets herself. I grit my teeth, almost snarling at feeling anything akin toshame. So what if Dominion might go the extra length to convince these omegas that this is safe? It’s better than being caught byTitan.
Or by traffickers.
That nagging, annoying sensation that there could be a better system is back in my chest, and I want to rip it out. What other fucking choice is out there? Let all the spineless alphas take these omegas, force dark bonds on them, and allow their numbers to grow? Then what?
Then more men like me get born into this world…
I shove the comm back into my pocket, heat searing my veins.
I need to kill someone.
Thatwill make it better.
I have tunnel vision as I make my way to the cellar, where the fucker who betrayed us—betrayed the raped omega—andarrangedfor this to happen is waiting. The one with our sigil on his back that said he’d keep watch. The one who took money for it.
The Iron Circle comprises the top thirty members of our ranks, though rarely are they ever all gathered at once; that would make us an undeniable target. About half are in the room tonight, and they’re the caliber of men who keep Dominionmoving. They’re the ones that see this for the entirety of the failure that it is. The remaining two dozen are lower-ranked personnel, present to learn the consequences when someone fails.
Like any dog that starts to push the boundaries of its training, those within Dominion need to have fresh reminders of how things operate.
The traitor is already on his knees, stripped naked—he’s got a small cock, too. His face is swollen from the beating he got before I even arrived. Beast stands behind him, holding the chain like a leash. Beast’s breathing is wet and uneven through the filter. I can smell the torchwater off him.
“I didn’t even touch her!” the traitor shouts at me.
“Oh, don’t worry. We’ll take care of the one that did. But what aboutyou?” My voice is low enough that everyone has to lean in to hear. “Dominion doesn’t rot from the outside. It rots from the inside. And you fed it rot. You won’t die today, though,” I say, grabbing his skull with one hand to make him look at me. “But youwillwish you had.”
No one dares speak.
I will make sure what happens here makes its rounds, because the idea that something like this could happen to Diana within my own walls makes me hold my free hand out, motioning with my fingers as one of them brings me pliers, then helps me open this fucker’s mouth so I can grab his tongue as he screeches like a little bitch. “This is so we don’t have to hear you complain.”
I’ll nail his tongue in the long hall of the Iron Castle, where everyone comes to eat, drink, and speak with me from across our territories. Once he’s dead, I’ll then have his skull passed around the Iron Circle and their terrain.
It’s forthisthat Diana will stay in her space, where cameras can keep a very close eye on her. Where I knoweverythingthat happens to her.
It’s been a few hours since I cut out the tongue of the man who arranged that omega’s assault. I’ve returned to my room, cleaning the blood off my hands, the comm screen with Diana on the counter next to me as my hands run through the water.
She seems to have accepted I’m not coming back for the rest of the day, despite how I want to. Something in me says she needs the space, and a lot of it. She’s now rounding the corners of the attic, freezing as she comes across a set of stairs. We refurbished this space for security, but with the recent installation of cameras, it became unused.
Now, it’s Diana’s.
She hurries down the open stairs like I somehow forgot about them, which makes me grin, and scour the rooms below. I tap the screen to shift to the other cameras as she glances up at them, always checking for where they are. She pats the wooden walls and tries every door. It’s an empty space below her nest, the original setting seemingly used as a greenhouse based on what we found when we first took this ward.
Diana thenfinallyslows down, and looks out the massive windows on this lower level, hand and forehead on the glass. I wanted to ensure that while she’s tucked away, she still gets to seeothers. Even if from the glass.
No onewill enter her space for the foreseeable future, except for me.
Lifting my attention to look around my space while my mind wanders, my gaze skims over the leather collar on a wall, only to get pulled back to it.
I stare at it for a long while, my jaw clenching before I finally look away.
Boone.
Dogs make for one hell of a companion for the vagabonds in this world, and he was the only creature that I ever trusted to never betray me.
I loved that damn dog.
That slight opening of emotions in my chest closes shut when I remember how I have something just as vulnerable locked in the space above me. With time, she’ll become such a vulnerability that I won’t survive if she dies, too. She thinks I’m basically the devil wearing human skin, all because ofrumorsshe’s heard.
Once I’m cleaned up and see that Diana has finally eaten her food that was brought earlier, I assign Kitty to actively watch over her while I go about my daily rounds. I continue the rest of my night with one final patrol, getting reports from anything the men may have seen. I don’t need to sleep like others do, and I check on Diana frequently with the comm screen I carry. It’s something I already check on a regular basis, so it hardly disrupts my old patterns in the eyes of others.
