This was not her mate. This was Jules Havel, the slayer of women and children.
Who held her fluttering fingers in his palm and stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “We won’t need to have this conversation a second time, will we?” But it was Brenya he stared at with that unblinking, horribly bright gaze. “We are a family now. We will learn to navigate this without crawling through the air ducts.”
“Brenya!” Jacques was red in the face. “Tell me you didn’t try to release this man from prison! Tell me he’s lying. Tell me you didn’t do what he speaks of!”
Jules softened both tone and expression, and he gave her the smile that was only for her. “I’m her mate. She came to help me, just as someday she may come to help you. A capable woman who could dismantle this Dome and build a new one from scratch. But your cell, she will never get into it. Not without your eye. Unless, of course, you cut out the other one and give it to her. Not that it would fit through the perforations in the glass.”
“Stop.” Gaze locked on her plate, on the rich cream sauce on a beautiful piece of white fish, she whispered, “Please stop. You’re right, Jules. I can’t get in. I see how you built it, and I can’t get in.He can’t get out.”
“So, you’re safe.” Said much more gently, the Beta squeezing her cold fingers in his. “When we come here, you will always be safe.”
A snort from behind the glass.
Taking his hand from hers, Jules pressed his knife,the knife, into her palm, gesturing for her to reach for her fork with the other. “Now eat, my dear. I can feel your hunger.”
Something drove her to look at Jacques, to confess why she had done what she had done. “You don’t understand. You can’t feel him like I do. I wanted to save our people. You shouldn’t have?—”
“Mon chou, please. I’m sorry I lost my temper. I just…. I need you to be safe.”
The prison encasing the Alpha kept her safe.
The man had beenneuteredby his cell.
Choosing to eat kept her people safe.
So she flaked a bite of the fish and placed it on her tongue. Finding it good, and light, and soft in her mouth. She swallowed and took another bite. Then another.
“I have missed you.” The Alpha purr was loud, distorted by the glass, but there. “Seeing you now, I could die happy.”
Jules took a sip of his water, ice tinkling in the glass, and said nothing.
11
Brenya was on her sixth bite of fish when the pitch of an impatient female sounded outside the only access point to the space, her demand for entrance blunted by the sealed door.
One that was opened by Jules’s black-clad soldiers.
Becauseshewas expected.
That’s why the fourth place-setting waited.
For Lucia.
A vision in a trailing pink gown. Black hair pin-straight, so perfect it moved like water. Lips scarlet, face flawless.
Beautiful.
Even the sound of her steps against the concrete was elegant, the woman walking into the room with the type of confidence Brenya had never possessed.
And never would.
Swaying in her chair, mouth full of fish, Brenya was hunched, rattled, and embarrassingly aware that she had the posture of a wild animal over its meal.
“Forgive my tardiness.” Lucia’s cheeks blushed as if she hated admitting a shortcoming, yet did it with grace. “I fellasleep waiting and was only just notified that breakfast had become lunch.” Taking the seat across from Brenya with a winning smile, as if thisfamily breakfastwere a delightful engagement, Lucia added, “And I see it is good I already ate. This is dry, and the sauce is broken. Commodorina, don’t eat that. We’ll get you another.”
It was as if the room was hers to command, Lucia waving at the frightening guards like they were her personal servants, demanding fresh food. “Tell the chef that Commodore Havel and his wife require fresh plates.”
Growling from his cell, the sound muffled by the glass, Jacques leaned forward, studying Brenya’s dish and loudly snarling to see the intruding female was correct. To Jules, he barked, “If you had not brought my mate three hours late, her food would have been perfect. We had an arrangement, Havel. Her food is dry at the edges. The sauceisbroken.”
