For the first time.
Which felt awkward and unnecessary. The opposite of how she’d been raised.
Sudden fascination with the wood-carved canopy overhead stole her attention next. Not because it was beautifully constructed, not because the patterns were mesmerizing, but because it waswood.
Wood. More precious than gold.
Where the universe was littered with gold, wood only existed on a single planet, having developed through eons of evolution of plant life.
Wood that was even more precious under the Dome, as nature had been abandoned so humanity could survive the Red Consumption. Fruit trees in her city existed to produce. The delicate ecosystem that kept them all alive was not reliant on nature, but on filters, manmade machines, and careful control.
Wood could not be recycled in the way gold could be melted down and made into a fork that pretentious Commodores used to stab fine fish. Once crafted and polished and perfected, wood was in its final form.
Brenya’s nest was entombed in blood-soaked wood, and it felt likehomein a way the lavish, sparkling quarters Jacques Bernard had kept her in never had.
It was safe from Jacques, even as he crept nearer and nearer.
And Jules….
A sigh passed her lips to peer down upon the Beta. Sprawled, taking up every bit of mussed nest he could stake a claim to. A gentle rise and fall of his chest, his expression unguarded.
In sleep, Jules transformed into something he was not.
Tender, peaceful.
The lie of harmlessness in the softness of his drowsing expression.
Now, she could stare all she wished. Now, she could see that face as more than a collection of individual features.
This was her mate.
The man with the swirling marks over his flesh washers.
Click. Click. Click!
That single thought, and a sense of ownership, slipped out like a runny egg to cook on her malfunctioning brain.
And sizzled.
“Brenya?”
In fascinated wonder, she drank Jules down. The line of his nose, the light sprinkling of chest hair, the muscles that rippled over his hard stomach, the perfection of his Da’rin.
There were stories and secrets, darker than the history of the blood-soaked Red Room, in that man. Old scars that looked so vicious she wondered how he had survived the wounds that made them.
The inky ocean of his darkest thoughts rippled.
Delicately, Brenya pressed her nose to his skin once more, breathing deep just to savor. Like the newfound details of the Red Room, Jules’s scent had grown more layered and far too appealing.
Musk, strength, a delicious blend that left her mouth watering.
Pulsating, his sea moved languidly around her thoughts, indulgent in her attention. Even in his dreams, his mind was vigilant of her shores.
Soft. Steady. Dangerous.
The strangest feeling came over her, one she had no name for and met with curious concern.
He’d manipulated her on every possible level. In the dark, he’d coerced her to…
