Good. If she’s really done what I suspect she’s done, she’s earned herself one hell of a punishment. And this on top of the one she already earned for leaving the healer’s tent in the first place.
I’m so far off-script and off the mission directive, it’s not even funny.
But I want her, not just in the moment, not even because I’m supposed to be her controller. This goes deeper than my role and even my clone. This goes all the way to the very essence of me, the zeta, the outlier that has always sat apart from the rest of the dynamic world.
One who thought he would never experience connection—mind, body, and spirit—and who certainly never envisioned something so primitive as claiming a mate.
Does that make me selfish to want it with her? I’m not a true alpha, and I never will be.
The part of me I didn’t know existed, that’s been chained up all my life, prowls beneath the surface.
Too bad she caught my attention, andhis. Now there is no going back, no stopping this. I’m going to break rules and the laws of nature, and I don’t even give a fuck. Can’t let her loosenow. Who knows what mischief she could get up to using her fledgling tricks on unsuspecting alphas. God help the Empire if she ever has the opportunity to develop them fully.
Esme, sweet healer with a deviant side, is about to find herself mated and bound to life with the only dynamic who has a hope of beating her at her own game.
Then I’m gone, hustling the alpha whose mind she just broke, into a cell.
Chapter Fourteen
Esme
Ifucked up. I can’t even credit the level of fuck-up that just occurred. What was I thinking? What madness went through my mind? Trying to play an alpha that looked all unassuming and weak.
There was no weakness.
Who knows what they did to the alpha I was asked to manipulate in the viral program. Maybe they used drugs, or sleep deprivation… I’m sure they have a dozen methods for making their mind malleable to manipulation.
And now I’ve opened the door and invited the worst of the worst to notice me.
I saw the way he looked at me. That alpha isn’t like the others. He’s huge, for a start. Ridiculously huge. He had to duck to get through the doorway, and that doorway must be seven feet tall.
He just manhandled another alpha like he was a toy. Then, after, he looked me square in the eyes, and he knew. He fucking knew I had tried to manipulate that alpha.
I try to reason with myself that I am imagining this. But deep down, I know I’m not.
He’s on to me.
I’m so fucked.
I’m about tobefucked.
He wants me. He’s going to break me.
“That’s Jord,” Ashanti whispers beside me. Her hand slipping into mine jolts me out of my stupor. “The last time he was with an omega… It was bad. Real bad. She was in a regeneration tank for a week while her body healed.”
I blink furiously. My fingers tighten over hers.
“They put him through rehabilitation, but that only goes so far,” she adds. “And it’s still very experimental. Everything they do is.”
My mind is sinking into a state of chaos. If I’d just stayed in my corner and kept quiet, maybe no one would have even come for me. There are several other omegas here, and they appear to have been left alone, at least for now.
“Obey him,” she says. “Whatever he asks. No matter how terrible. Don’t fight him. Please. Just get through this.”
“You. Omega! Over here!”
I look up and start seeing the remaining guard staring directly at me.
He stabs a finger in my direction for emphasis. “Yes, you. Over here now.”
