The Alpha knew every slippery, unfocused spasm in her mind. Including how frightened, how humiliated, she was.
“I’ll help you, Brenya. Find me. Come now.”
It was her nightmare all over again, and now he could do these things to her… and he was not even in the room.
“I won’t!” Bloodless fingers pried away from the chair’s edge with effort. Stiff, aching, curled from how hard she’d clung to her soaked seat. On panicked instinct, Brenya shoved at the table. Her chair scraping back, wooden legs sliding through the mess of slick pooling beneath her. Dishes clattered. Her sweating glass of water toppled. She collapsed forward, elbows locking, fingers clawing at the edge of the table as if it could hold her upright. Spine coiled tight, a cramp pulled her into a sick, folded arch.
She was trying. Gods, she was trying. Every spasm, every gasp, every weak shove of her hands saidno—but it wasn’t enough. Not against an insidious pair-bond wielded by a man hellbent on enmeshing himself into her very soul.
The harder she resisted, the more fiercely Jacques rebelled, his influence escalating into an unbearable onslaught until, panting, she looked up at Jules, his hand still extended, unchanged, as if he’d known it would come to this.
Her voice cracked, low and broken. “Please… make it stop.”
With a single touch, Jules Havel granted her wish.
By reaching forward and closing his hand around her throat.
Gently forcing her spasming body to uncurl, articulating each vertebra against the solid back of her chair. Applying just enough pressure to assure he had her complete, undivided attention, even if another had her cramping womb.
Those unflinching blue eyes sparked with life, strange in their intensity, as the Beta made damn sure she recognized his control, and her lack. His solid, real form. Right there. Not a phantom poking within her guts or playing tricks on her mind.
With measured slowness, he stroked a thumb along her jawline, his intentional, inviting, tempered pitch perfection, as he purred, “Eyes on me, Brenya.Feel me.”
She did.
Shefeltthe uncomfortable squeeze of his fingers around her throat as Jules guided her with that unyielding grip to rise. To find her footing and unfold… or choke. To recognize that his strength was necessary. That without him, to deny him, to try to struggle in the mire of her inharmonious bonds alone was a losing war.
Bare feet scrabbled against the slippery lacquered floor, rivulets of slick trailing down her thighs, as Brenya’s unsteady legs bore her weight. It was no easy feat. Stiff muscles protested, pain lancing through her womb, but Jules gave her just enough support to keep her upright, at long last coiling his dark sea around a flailing mind that mentally reached for him.
Because she’d asked.
Indulging in the helpless sound of her whimpers, Jules’s chest vibrated with quiet satisfaction. “You’re safe with me.”
Her breath stuttered. Safe? No. There was nothing safe about what Jules had done, was doing, and would do to her.
Safe was existing as a Beta making thedescent. Risking her life day in and day out for the Dome she loved. Safe waseverything that happened before Jacques Bernard ripped her in half on his cock. Safe was the endless black ocean in Jules when it was glassy and calm. When her island floated through it untouched, drifting in his unfeeling void. Not when it crept up her shores… not when it seemed to hunt her.
Safe was dissociation. Safe was Jacques in an endless coma, so she could stumble sleepily through whatever days she had left.
Being here. Feeling him. Standing barefoot in a puddle of her own slick while Jules’s turbulent mental ocean pressed in, licking at their link. Expectant.
Wasnotsafe.
Pupils dilating fully, her world narrowed to Jules Havel, and she offered a pain-drunk, “I don’t feel safe.”
The nothingness inside him reached out again, brushing ever so softly against her fear, seeping in as if wrapping her in a warm blanket. Enveloping his mate in something soothing yet elusive.
His chest expanded, and so did hers.
Synchronized breath, Jules exercising some kind of authority over her body that far outstripped anything Jacques had ever wielded… calming her, drawing Brenya further from the Alpha’s manic grip.
Into Beta control.
Jules… formidable, unreadable, demonstrated just what hecoulddo—muffle the pain and pleasure the other might stab in. Drench her inhim, slither into her senses… should she let him.
And Brenya could weep for the relief of it, resentful he had withheld this mercy until she’d called out for help. Grateful that he was tending to her now. Going liquid, the circle of his fingers around her throat a quiet promise everything would be okay.
If only she’d…
