But she didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want her Beta husband in the room.
She didn’t want to talk or listen or breathe his air.
Because she’d been given an important task, and it was not going to go well.
Confrontation was not a skill Brenya had been born with, though in Jacques’s care, Brenya had learned that deep down she had something of a temper.
That led to violence and her pain.
Punishment.
Jules had not punished her once.
But he had physically dominated her only that morning, forced her into clothing and one hard scenario after another.
Nor had he been forgiven.
And she had far more to be angry about now.
He was a bad man.
Lucia was a bad woman.
Jacques was a criminal.
Brenya was their favorite plaything.
And the lives of millions of people rested on her shoulders. Including some new citizens that had arrived in terrified mass that morning.
The frame of her husband pressed to her side, Brenya’s muscles failed to fully go lax as she leaned into him harder and only grew more angry. She couldn’t help it, not with the constant thought of the pink nubs where Jacques’s fingers had been twitching in her mind.
Or his glass eye remaining a bit too still while his living eyeball slid about as he’d looked her over.
Or all the responsibility Lucia had heaped upon her.
Central.
The virus.
The Omegas.
Jules had not changed his bloodied shirt, and it was crusty under her cheek, the skin where she’d bitten him feverishly hot.
It had to hurt, the pressure of her skull on his wound.
Her claiming marks had been agony; the one on her neck—the one Jules had given her—had grown infected all those months ago.
Had the Beta cleaned and bandaged it? Jacques had at least done that for her.
Was she supposed to do that for him?
“Claiming marks are supposed to scar. Like the rest of you, they are beautiful.”It felt like another lifetime when Jacques had spoken those words with so much excitement while Brenya had been horrified and suffering.
It was not a fond memory. Yet the wounded skin separated from her cheek by one crusted layer of cloth held center stage in her thoughts.
Not knowing, wanting to know, wishing she didn’t care…but she did.
Drifting in and out of the meter of Jules’s unhurried voice as he read Gods knew what. It could have been an instruction manual on street paving. It could have been a medical dictionary.
