Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 65151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Jules not helping as he added coldly, “With a shirt full of leftover food… because she knew I was hungry. She could feel it. Using this very golden silverware as her only tool.” Holding up his knife, Jules angled it so it might catch the light and tell its secrets. “See the scratches? You never noticed she’d been gone. She was already so badly bruised that you didn’t see the fresh contusions. Or notice how swollen her shoulder was from the climb.
“Just like you seem not to understand how sore her shoulder will be later, because you bashed yours into a prison you cannot escape. Do you not understand that all damage to your body ends in pain for her? That’s why I removed certain parts of you while she was under general anesthesia. It’s why you don’t have a shock collar or screws drilled into your bones that I can tighten when the mood strikes.”
“Jules….” A small beg, a soft whisper from a nervous woman.
“It’s upsetting, I know. But I want us all to be clear where we stand here. This bond is precarious, my sweet Omega bearing the brunt of the weight. Jacques has to understand that I can’t hurt him the way I want to, and he can’t hurt me. But more importantly, he can’t hurt himself acting like an animal. Because I can remove his arms and his legs and keep him on waking life support… but I feel that might not be good for your mental state, Brenya.”
He could not be serious!
But the Beta was. Dead serious as she gawked at him. This cold killer, this threatening force. This man whose voice could drive an unwitting victim mad.
This was not her mate. This was Jules Havel, the slayer of women and children.
Who held her fluttering fingers in his palm and stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “We won’t need to have this conversation a second time, will we?” But it was Brenya he stared at with that unblinking, horribly bright gaze. “We are a family now. We will learn to navigate this without crawling through the air ducts.”
“Brenya!” Jacques was red in the face. “Tell me you didn’t try to release this man from prison! Tell me he’s lying. Tell me you didn’t do what he speaks of!”
Jules softened both tone and expression, and he gave her the smile that was only for her. “I’m her mate. She came to help me, just as someday she may come to help you. A capable woman who could dismantle this Dome and build a new one from scratch. But your cell, she will never get into it. Not without your eye. Unless, of course, you cut out the other one and give it to her. Not that it would fit through the perforations in the glass.”
“Stop.” Gaze locked on her plate, on the rich cream sauce on a beautiful piece of white fish, she whispered, “Please stop. You’re right, Jules. I can’t get in. I see how you built it, and I can’t get in. He can’t get out.”
“So, you’re safe.” Said much more gently, the Beta squeezing her cold fingers in his. “When we come here, you will always be safe.”
A snort from behind the glass.
Taking his hand from hers, Jules pressed his knife, the knife, into her palm, gesturing for her to reach for her fork with the other. “Now eat, my dear. I can feel your hunger.”
Something drove her to look at Jacques, to confess why she had done what she had done. “You don’t understand. You can’t feel him like I do. I wanted to save our people. You shouldn’t have—”
“Mon chou, please. I’m sorry I lost my temper. I just…. I need you to be safe.”
The prison encasing the Alpha kept her safe.
The man had been neutered by his cell.
Choosing to eat kept her people safe.
So she flaked a bite of the fish and placed it on her tongue. Finding it good, and light, and soft in her mouth. She swallowed and took another bite. Then another.
“I have missed you.” The Alpha purr was loud, distorted by the glass, but there. “Seeing you now, I could die happy.”
Jules took a sip of his water, ice tinkling in the glass, and said nothing.
11
Brenya was on her sixth bite of fish when the pitch of an impatient female sounded outside the only access point to the space, her demand for entrance blunted by the sealed door.
One that was opened by Jules’s black-clad soldiers.
Because she was expected.
That’s why the fourth place-setting waited.
For Lucia.
A vision in a trailing pink gown. Black hair pin-straight, so perfect it moved like water. Lips scarlet, face flawless.
Beautiful.
Even the sound of her steps against the concrete was elegant, the woman walking into the room with the type of confidence Brenya had never possessed.