She was no queen! Not the equal of Samina, who could bear royal bloodlines and command armies to die in her name.
She was Omega.
Exactly what Hadim had made her—nothing more. Engineered to please. Bred to endure.
Her chest grew tight and painful, breath sticking in lungs that had filled with liquid pain. Left her unable to squeeze a single plea past the lumpy anguish clogging her airway. She made herself small. Curling in around her body, her eyes fell to the broad chest of the next male to have her.
Maybe the last.
Presenting a swollen, twitching pussy not to the feral Anhur before her, but to Balkazar. A male bound in humiliating defeat, who hated her enough to wrap his hands about her throat and take a sadist’s pleasure from an attempt on her miserable life.
“Can’t help yourself, can you?” the war chief sneered, his voice strained. Scarcely above a whisper. “Look at you. All slick and swollen for a brainless feral. A monster.”
He was right—there was no denying the gushing, liquid heat. That she couldn’t look away, even as she inched backward. It was nothing more than an instinctive retreat toward the terrible. Revisiting the familiar. Evading the enigma offering things she couldn’t comprehend, she tried to return to the only treatment she’d ever really known.
“He’s going to dine on your flesh as soon as you’re knotted and ruined,” Balkazar drawled. “Fitting end for a diseased slut.”
Rumbling and low, the hunter snarled a warning and halted her retreat. Silenced the war chief with a muzzle that promised retribution.
Breath hiccupping through her chest, her gaze flicked between amber eyes that gleamed with ill health. Caught in that brilliant glare, even when a growl rattled up. Spilling over full lips.
Enthralled, Renegade was held rapt as his fist made a slow pass over his cock. From that tantalizing thick base, all the way to the flared mushroom head.
Held prisoner to his dastardly games, she could only watch, trembling.Achingfor another taste of that delicious stretch, knowing she’d already risked too much—more than Balkazar could possibly know, for the hunter had been inside her. He’d licked her bleeding palms, and pressed his seed into her flesh. Into the scrapes and bruises she’d earned in her wild flight.
Fluids properly exchanged, she’d been exposed. Left vulnerable to infection.
“Go on,” Balkazar sneered. “The prince won’t have you again, might as well take what you can get.”
She shook her head, hair whipping across her cheeks. The bridge of her nose. Frozen where she continued to cling to terrified disobedience, for she couldn’t go to him and neither could she resist the training that demanded she obey.
Voice cracking on a sob, Renegade moaned, frozen well within striking distance of long arms. “Nooo,” she whispered, the ghost of her severed tail tucked tight between her knees. “Please.” She hiccupped. “I can’t. Ican’t.”
“Insolent little whore,” Balkazar said through a laugh, strained and rough. “You dare deny your Alpha’s command? He’s summoned you. On your knees, slut. Crawl for your meal. Say,‘Yes, Alpha,’ and do as your told.”
There was a moment of silence, then. Oppressive. Heavy enough to choke as the hunter sat there glaring. His fist still where it was wrapped around that thick staff. Scowl fixed not to Renegade, hiccupping in the dirt, but to Balkazar.
And then he abandoned his prick altogether, left it to twitch against the taut planes of a rippling abdomen and extended hooked fingers. Palm up. Fingers spreading to show the white inside that deadly fist.
Beckoning.
Something soft gleamed in golden feral eyes, something she couldn’t name. A thing that hurt to look at, so she twisted back on herself. Peeking from behind lowered lashes, she curled in, where the pain was that familiar sort of ache she’d been born to carry.
Frustration saw the hunter’s claws extend. Each slow millimeter exposed depicting the pocked and damaged tips of claws that had been ruined in her name. In her defense.
Tears brimmed at the edge of her lashes, her lips parted on panicked, short breaths. Ears laid flat, eyes rimmed in white.
Blowing an irate breath from his nose, the hunter chuffed. Glare narrowing as his lips parted around a noisy, rattling exhale.
But still, she remained rooted to the earth. Unable to accept her doom no matter how much she ached for a knot. One hand darting to the molten heat beading at her core, she dared to play in the mess he had yet to taste. Conflicted.Tormentedby need.
A low hum wobbled free of the hunter’s chest. Fingers flicking at the space between them, that hum was given life. He shifted in the dirt, mane shivering, lacing a rumbling growl with a different sort of sound. And then, in a voice deep as any she’d ever heard, “Come. Let me ease your suffering.”
Shocked, Renegade’s head tipped, ears flicking forward. Lips parted on a soft breath.
“You ran the taming hunt well, girl. Now come.” He pumped his fist, once. Hard. Enough that a bead of want glistened at his tip and his sack drew up, balls spreading on an intimate flex that made her drip. “Show me you’re worthy of claiming your place at my feet.”
A hoarse laugh shattered the moment. “By the Nine, he speaks! An impossiblemiracle,” Balkazar said, incredulous. His words landing with all the weight of a barbed lash. “A cruel gift of the Nine, to endure the Trax and emerge intact, only to be corrupted by this vile whore. Well done, Renegade. Yet another caught up in your sticky trap. Tell me,” he said, “how do you do it? Wrap them about your treacherous cunt hairs with pretty words and the promise of more?” The war chief coughed, his overt disgust bringing a wave of heated shame to prickle her skin. “Go on, then. Give your talking mutant a taste. It’s sweet enough, I suppose. At least while you’re still ripe.”
