Not anymore.
Not now that she was in his line of sight.
“Please. I am begging you to turn around.” This was not the voice of the man who’d raped her in broad daylight. This was not the voice of the beast who’d been screaming for blood only moments ago. “Brenya, for the love of all the Gods, face me. Show me what he’s done to you.”
Done to her? Jules had done plenty, but you’d never find those marks on her skin. No, he’d healed those.
“You can do this, Brenya.” Jules, her husband, her keeper, her Beta mate, the man who was teaching her how to survive the madness and the noise—who’d made her a living, walking bomb—coaxed her gently to turn. “Let your Alpha see your face.”
A face that was slightly different than it had been before. Fuller, her lower eyelid no longer dragged down by her scar.
Jules had repaired it… the same day he’d tucked the virus into her body.
And though Jacques was right there—within arm’s reach were there not glass and bars between them—and though he was drinking her down, she refused to look at him.
No, her nervous attention sought out the makings of an Alpha containment cell, studying where the bars met the wall,analyzing how amorphous metal glass fused into the structure. Seamless. No visible stress lines. Nothing that would have been a red flag to an engineering grunt as an unseen weakness.
And unlike the panel that had been used to craft Jules’s prison, this one did not have a hatch.
In fact, there were new techniques, Thólosian or Greth techniques, used here that she’d never considered for fusing the containment. That appeared superior to what she’d been taught.
That sparked a corner of her mind that had not been accessible for days… weeks. Months?
The analytical, cold-thinking mind based on action and utility.
Who recognized that it was perfect.
The prisonwasperfect.
The man inside would not be getting out… at least through the partition dividing cell from viewing space.
Yet there was access through another wall, inaccessible from this room. A solid door, the kind used for decontamination chambers. As for the walls, retrofitted concrete.
The room created for its prisoner was more luxurious than any dorm she’d shared, living happily in Beta Sector.
A bed with soft blankets, clean linens, recessed shelves for books. A toilet—an actual toilet—not just a bucket. A sink. A table with a white cloth.
An Alpha—a well-dressed man moving into her line of sight, so she’d have no choice but to acknowledge him.
Jacques Bernard, dressed in his finest breakfast jacket. Brocade and pomp and scent.
Male.
Enticing.
Waiting for her notice.
Knowing she could not resist indefinitely.
“Why is blood smeared all over her clothing?” This time, the imperious dictator reared its head, snarling at the Beta at her back. “What have you done to her?”
Brenya, eyes flaring, looked over the boogeyman of her nightmares and thought she might be sick.
The question was not what had been done toher. The question was what had been done tohim.
His palms were splayed against the glass, fitting between sound bars, fingertips working to reach through the perforations that allowed scent to travel between his prison and her.
Each hand missing one finger.
