To this, he did not hesitate to say, “There have been seven attempts on my life in the last fifty-three days. Should someone have succeeded, you would have died from Red Consumption. Now, you’ll be safe from the virus should I be assassinated. And if they kill my beloved Omega, they will get exactly what they deserve.”
Pleading, Brenya tried to talk sense into the terrifying man. “I have seen techs fall during routine maintenance. People accidentally die. We don’t want them to, but it happens. Hearts sometimes just stop.”
“But not yours, Brenya. Your heart belongs to me, and mine belongs to you.” All said as he turned her toward him and cupped her cheeks, Jules smiling as if the world was right in every way. “Now that you know, you will make good choices. You will take care of yourself. You will eat, you will drink, and you will thrive. For your people, since you may never have done it for me.”
Gods, she’d have no other choice.
And because his cruelty seemed to know no bounds, the Beta added, “And you will eat breakfast with Jacques. Every day. For your health.”
Unable to look him in the eye, she ducked her head and rubbed her lips together in an attempt to stop her mouth. Shrank into herself and began to chew her thumbnail, her breath shallow, her gaze darting from corner to corner, and her mind broke down each thing she had said into fragments, tiny bits that settled over every crevice of her thinking, like a fine layer of black dust she might have swept away if she concentrated hard enough. “You have your satellites now. Have you… disabled those bombs?”
“No. I can’t neutralize the warheads themselves, only override their guidance systems. If any Dome initiates a strike, Followers will turn their warheads’ coordinates back on the source. It is up to them to manually stop the launch or blow themselves apart.”
His stature would never be colossal, not like Jacques’s, but Jules’s authority was absolute. He moved everywhere in her thoughts, settling into every crevice, soothing her mind as if calming a spitting kitten held by the scruff. “But it’s a singlecontingency. Once we intervene with a launch, they will seek to override our control. It could take them years, but people always find ways to sabotage their best interest.” His eyes sharpened on her for an instant, the pupils contracting as if to punctuate the thought. Deliberate, judgmental. “And you need to understand that I can’t stop Domes I don’t control from building new satellites and making mine obsolete. It would take decades, but these threats are not simple. I’m not a god, Brenya.”
In some ways, though, he was. Her god. The creature who had complete control over her life, for better or worse.
“Are you planning to invade them too, to create a world order?”
He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “All I wish is to live my life here with you. I promised you Bernard Dome. I promised you peace. I meant it.”
Brenya could not put her finger on it, but in that moment, she felt he lied.
And she knew he sensed it. That he knew her every secret thought.
The harder she resisted his insistent stare, the louder the reemergentclick, click, clickat the back of her skull banged. Infernal, endless tapping warning her it would only grow more fervent, that it would mercilessly pound her skull to powder if she did not pour her submission on her mates.
Lowering his voice to a soothing whisper, Jules reached for where his clean shirt waited on the bed, pulling it over his bleeding shoulder. “Have some pity for me. I don’t enjoy doing this to you at all.”
God no! She could not handle another nightmare, her voice shrill as she demanded, “Doing what?”
What else could he possibly do?
“Taking you to Jacques.” And with that, he surged forward, catching her hard against his chest. Hoisting her up, whereOmega thighs instinctively wrapped around his waist, as he carried his screaming mate out the door.
10
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER?”
That voice….
Pressure built inside Brenya’s skull, the clicking metamorphosing into a hammering thud. A heartbeat in her brain.
“No. No. No. No.” The metronome of her resistance. Her refusal.
Around the Beta’s waist, her legs clung, squeezing. Nails sank into Jules’s skin, her desperation, her internal willingness to do anything Jules asked.Anything. If he would just take her back home.
To her nest.
“No. No.”
But Jules was walking onward, toward that distant bellowing nightmare.
“BRING HER OUT. SHOW ME SHE IS UNHARMED!” The rhythmic slam of flesh against steel punctuated Jacques’s roar. Once. Twice. A third time. “I will rip this fucking Dome apart piece-by-piece if I have to!”
Each impact reverberated through the corridor, the sound of muscle and bone colliding with tungsten bars and amorphous metal.
A beast hurling itself at cage walls.
