Yet he kept reading as if it were music.
And her ears loved it. Which she hated.
Because he wasterriblefor doing nothing. For being with her when he should have been leading the city. He was the new Commodore, wasn’t he?
Soothed, furious, disgusted, deeply sad, wary, frightened, dealing with thoughts best left undisturbed… all in a mind that was finally functioning optimally.
The horrible breakfast with Jacques had ended the hallucinations, though Brenya did not fully understand why.
No longer was her tormentor hovering in her periphery. She didn’t hear Jacques whispering in her ear. He wasn’t there… yet he was. The pair-bond was solid. Humming.
Jules read to her, but Jacques sang.
And Brenya wanted them both to shut up, her voice sharp when she finally blurted out, “I didn’t bite you with the intention of… giving you something Lucia says you wanted. There wasn’t any special meaning behind it, Jules. I was just panicked. And you were… awful. And you scare me! And your wound is getting infected.”
There. She’d said it.
“I know.” Those strange eyes did not glance up from the page, but the corners of his mouth did hint at a smile. “Still, it’s done.”
No, it wasn’t! Nothing had been done as it should have been done. Why didn’t anyone see that? How could a woman like Lucia possibly think Brenya could handle these men? “When I stole your ship, when I got sick… you could have taken me to Greth. Butyoudisabled the ship! You wanted Jacques to come for me! You risked my life for?—”
That shifted Jules’s gaze just a touch to the right, blue eyes dragging over the page a hair closer to her, his voice offered at the perfect pitch. Crafted. “You’d locked the door to the cockpit. I couldn’t get in.”
Yes. “No. You could have explained things about Thólos. You used me, knowing Jacques would hurt me… and you.He hurt you too. And now he’s in a cage and you cut off his fingers and took away his eye!”
The book was closed, set aside, Jules meeting her furious glare, the backs of his fingers running down her scarred cheek as if he adored this. As if her emotions were fine wine. “I wasn’t wrong.”
It wasn’t exactly revulsion that made her shake him off, and that disturbed her. The Beta’s touch felt good. Welcome.
Wrong considering all she’d heard that afternoon.
Pushing away from the couch, standing in her wrinkled, soiled jumpsuit, Brenya pursed her lips, glared like she was working up the courage to do something that would only end badly. Only to become a total coward and stutter out a pathetic, “I’m leaving. I’m… I’m going to go work on my clock. I don’t want to be here when they start.”
They being Lucia and Jacques. Fucking.
At seven o’clock they were scheduled to fuck.
Half an hour from that moment, Brenya’s skin crawling from the thought of it.
Brenya did not like that woman.
The foreign Omega was a self-serving, manipulative, glittering, bravado-laced beast of ambition who had cornered her with her nausea and lies. The prattling bitch with a chip on her shoulder and the meanest glares Brenya had ever received… had needed fresh air.
Saved her from Jacques’s stares.
Shown her too much.
And they had not even left the palace.
There had been no walk in Beta Sector.
Their entire confrontation had taken place in Annette’s old apartments before Jules’s guards, the room stuffed with Grethentine Omegas: pregnant, miserable, happy, strange. Loud. All gathered in what was now Lucia’s quarters.
An ambush.
Every female had been noisy in their boisterous greetings to the great, grinning Lucia, physical in their handling and embraces. The chatter in Spanish had been animated, the women looking to Brenya, seemingly complaining to Lucia, back to Brenya.
And full of unspoken complaints. Many of them looked like they wanted to slap her even harder than Lucia had.
