Cassius had walked into Brimstone without looking back. That vision stayed with me like an itch I couldn’t scratch as I sped home.
When I got back, I was hungry. Ninety percent of the time I ordered in. But I had enough food on hand to make a sandwich. I grabbed lettuce and meat from the fridge, and bread from the counter, tossing away wrappers as I went. When I opened the trash can, I froze. There, on top, sat the crumpled invitation to my half-brother’s birthday party. The colorful balloons on the front of the card seemed to mock me.
Too many emotions to handle rushed through me. Remington was the son of a set. That same omega was my father’s current husband. When I’d been banished from that house, they had not been a couple as far as I knew. But I still blamed Kirion for the disruption. My father was also at fault, having bought him at an auction as a gift to me. I’d never felt such an offense as that. I believed Kirion was beneath me. My father’s gesture had been not only disrespectful, but selfish in his thinking. It was ridiculous that he might ever have a hand in choosing a mate for me.
I was more than happy to leave, my feelings bottled up and stored away behind those thick, cavernous walls. But when I’d heard the two had married and had a child together my fury returned, a tidal wave of resentment, grief, abandonment.Anger. My dad had replaced his mate, my father, with a worthless foreigner, and it seemed insidious. Too easy. Letting go of an old family to regain a new one.
There were nights I drank until I blacked out. I bought my way out of consequences for behaving badly while drunk. Until there came a time my privilege ran out and I was finally given a court-appointed therapist as one of my conditions to avoid jail.
Pain was normal for me. Mental pain. The scar from my broken parent bond ached. All the time.
Cassius thought I didn’t have crumbs on my plate. I had a family who abhorred me. A brother I’d never met.
If they abhor you, why did they send the invitation?
“To rub the wounds with salt,” I quickly replied.
Truly? You believe that?
It was like having a devious demon on my shoulder when Malinekan talked to me with that snarky attitude. In a way, dragons were like demons. Winged and fierce. Animals unlike any other shifter on the planet. Alien in features. An apex predator. Sometimes reckless, savage, violent. Maybe that was why it was so easy for us to create places like Brimstone. And so easy for Dad to replace his mate with a store-bought version.
We dragons did not create Brimstone. It’s a human form construct.
“Then there’s something wrong with humans. All of them.”
Deep where Malinekan lived inside me I knew he was an intelligent, civilized beast. His kind had developed telepathic communication far beyond that of even bondmates. They had their rogues, but their influence had given us a highly technologically advanced country. Places like Brimstone existed because the human-alpha side was the slower half of the team to keep up.
Cassius had been right. I didn’t know anything about set omega ranches because I hadn’t had to think about it. I’d put anything to do with the subject out of my mind.
Ignorance is bliss. But it is a fact. You did chase Kirion, scare him. You don’t need to feel remorse if you push that subject away like a brat.
“And I don’t need to think any more about Brimstone, either.”
Truth. Your choice.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I stared at the invitation in the trash. I bent as if to pick it up, then turned away.
No longer hungry, I left the kitchen, my half-made sandwich still on the counter.
I went into the room I’d made into a gym and worked out hard for the next few hours. By the time I was finished, I was ready for a nap. Cassius and I had stayed up late. I was tired. But still not hungry.
Oblivion was a good friend to me. I loved its embrace. When I could get it. Drinking or working out until my body was a white-hot ember of pain both worked. I didn’t wake until sundown.
I showered. I ordered food. Pizza and wings. Junk food to indulge my mood. I watched mindless TV. I tried not to think.
But the more I tried, the more I thought. About Cassius. About Dad and Kirion. And Remington turning four.
Malinekan had gone away. For now. No more whispered taunts. But if I were to be honest for once, I liked Malinekan’s thoughts. How he gently prodded me. How he made me stronger. When I allowed it.
I turned the TV on low and grabbed up my laptop. As if of their own volition, my fingers started typing questions and looking for sites. About set omegas. About auctions. About ranches.
Of course, there was a lot of information online. Everything one might want to know on any subject. This subject was a big one, the information endless.
The ranch and auction sites were all business, careful in their advertisements, even cheerful. But beneath all the happy words, dark shadows lurked. The ranches were breeding farms, the omegas referred to as stock or brood stock. The auctions trafficked in slaves.
The deeper I delved, the more I found about the underbelly of the set omega captivity practices. Someone had leaked a diary by one of them detailing his experiences on a ranch. It was about twenty years old but described in unfiltered language the things he went through.
There were breeding benches where omegas were strapped down during their heats. This omega, Mally, had been bred since the age of twenty with two heats a year. He produced twenty offspring by the time he was fifty and no longer of use.
