She yelped, bucking in place.
“Easy, Omega,” he murmured, not unkind. “It’ll be over soon.”
The scent of astringent stung her nostrils, feeding the flames of panic when it landed on her tail. Burning her ass when she felt him saturate her fur with foaming cream. “Please,please!”
A blade landed on her lower back, where her tail met her cheeks. And then, with short, grating strokes, the captain began to shave her. Nicking the skin with every rusty scrape along flesh that was thin enough to see the shape of the bone beneath. Leaving her tail naked and bleeding at the base, he ignored the rest of her glorious black and gray fur.
“What’s this?” Samina asked, approaching. Her head tilted to the side, curiosity etched across her beautiful face. “Why bother shaving her?”
“Dulls the blade,” the captain replied, gruff. “Unless you want her crippled, it must be a clean strike.”
Sobbing now, she met Hadim’s gaze and saw her doom. The delight as he glutted himself, drinking in every helpless instant of her anguish until she could smell that the rut was upon him once more. Unprompted by the scent of breeding females, this was bloodlust. What an Anhur really was, beneath it all.
“Oh, no,” Hadim said, gesturing for the other male to continue preparing her. “I want her to feel every moment of this, for the rest of her life.”
Cold steel clamped around the base of her tail, making her bleed anew where it pinched the skin. Tight enough to cut off the blood supply and compress nerves.
“Alpha,please!I didn’t know what the tea was! That it was making me barren! You must believe me,” she cried, voice cracking as she babbled, snot running freely over her lip. And yet, Hadim seemed to consider it, his eyes narrowed as if in thought. “Every time my courses ran, my heart broke,” she said, almost giddy that he’d let her continue, that she might actually have a chance of convincing him not to do this. “I want nothing more than to please you, my Alpha. Anything,anythingyou want, I will give you if I can. I-I had no idea the matron was capable of doing something so… so…vile. I would kill her myself, if the mistress hadn’t done such an—” her voice failed her when her breath ran short, and she gasped in a quick lungful without pause—“an efficient job of it.”
Hadim hummed, inspecting her lips. Her eyes, and the quivering shell of her ears. Almost… caressing her with a contemplative gaze. And then he nodded, capturing her lip with his thumb.
A hysterical laugh burbled up. “Oh, thank you, Alpha. Thank you.” She returned his smile, trying to radiate a false love. Relief making her shiver, fresh tears spilling over her lashes. “I promise—”
“No.”
She blinked. “A-Alpha?”
That smile grew pointed… sharp. “No,” he said again, enunciating as he stood, adjusting an impressive bulge distorting the front of his pants. “I don’t believe you, and I won’t have a breeder I can’t trust. No matter her prized lineage.”
“What—” she stopped, choking on confusion until she saw the look on Samina’s face. Felt the burn of pure hatred where it seared her skin. And then she understood how deadly a thing hope could be when it was given only to be ripped away.
“Go ahead, Captain Grier,” Hadim said, kissing his wife’s cheek. Caressing the swell of their next litter of Anhur babes.
“No!” she shrieked, jerking and thrashing until her every muscle ached. Bruises promising to bloom where she was bound.
The blade whistled as it fell.
Chapter 5
A dull throb spiked through her nerves. The shock of loss the only thing that kept her from feeling the trauma. The truth.
That she’d been docked.
Her glorious fifth limb of black, fluffy fur was gone, though she could still feel it flexing and twisting at her back. Could still tuck it between her cheeks and hide from the cold inspection of the Anhur gathered at her back, if only she could concentrate hard enough.
“Was it a success?” Samina asked, hushed. Her tone holding a note of reverent respect, in spite of the terrible thing she’d just ordered done.
Hadim chuckled as he said, “Can you feel this, Omega?” then proceeded to prod the fresh wound.
The girl howled, bucking against the wooden stocks as lightning blasted up her ass.
“A fine job, Captain Grier,” Hadim said, digging his finger in, scraping at the severed nerve of her stump.
Sobbing, she began to shiver. Sweat soaking her hair faster than the wind could dry it. She felt the blood drain from her face with each fluttery beat of her heart, the shock setting in and making her ill, even as it dulled the majority of the pain. Pain she knew would come roaring back the instant her adrenal glands gave up the fight.
But that wasnothingin comparison to the shock of losing something so precious.
Even so… Hadim didn’t stop until she was heaving in her bonds. Thrashing when his fingernail caught the jagged edge of exposed vertebrae, she puked up stringy yellow bile in the absence of substantial food, utterly unable to beg for relief or simply draw breath.
