Of all of the implements he could have chosen, he knew her more than well enough to know that this was the one she hated the most, and the sound of it as it whistled ominously through the air actually did cut through her apathy to the point that she couldn't control how her body jerked and started.

And dread of what was coming to her in the next few seconds had her more focused and more engaged than she'd felt in a few days. Since the last group of soldiers had come into the room.

He'd kept them away for the past week, as if he thought that was what she was upset about. And he was right—although he didn't know it—but it wasn't their presence in the room.

It was something much subtler and depressing than that, but she had to admit that she was surprised by the lengths he was willing to go to try to determine what had caused the drastic change in her personality.

His tone started out relatively pleasant as he stood next to her, holding the cane in both hands in front of him. "Cat, the doctor has just told me that you're perfectly fine. I've asked you to tell me what's wrong multiple times, and I've been loath to beat it out of you, frankly, which very well may have been the wrong tack to take with you. I would definitely prefer it if you would trust me enough to tell me how you're feeling on your own, but then, I can also understand how you naturally wouldn't be much disposed to do that without some encouragement."

And it changed drastically with his next sentence. "But what I can compel you to do is obey me, and we both know that I can, don't we, little one?"

She knew she had to answer him, or it would go much worse for her. And "much worse" with his hand and "much worse" with the cane were two very different things.

"Yes, Sir," she answered clearly. Cat was proud that her words hadn't faltered in the least. They'd wanted to, but she hadn't let them.

"So I'm not going to coddle you any longer. I should have done this in the beginning, because I know that being strict with you really is the best thing for you. A little time to tell me on your own is one thing, but I've allowed this defiant attitude of yours to go on for much too long."

She balked internally at that description—she'd hardly been defiant. In fact, she'd been the exact opposite of defiant.

But she was smart enough to keep that opinion to herself, because it was of no consequence to her. His was the only opinion that mattered.

"Now. I'm going to give you ten strokes with the cane to start off with—"

Her yelp of fear at his pronunciation was quite understandably loud.

"—to remind you that you don't want to earn any more. And then I'm going to ask you again what's wrong, and if you don't tell me, I'm going to give you twelve more. Even if you repent in the middle of the second set, you're going to get every stroke of it before I repeat the question. And I will continue to repeat those actions and that question until you give me an answer—a truthful answer." He let his hand rest with surprising gentleness on her lower back. "Do you understand how this is going to work, quita?"

Her, "Yes, Sir," was said with much less confidence than just a few seconds ago.

He didn't count them, and he didn't ask her to—for which she was eternally grateful, because she was quite sure she couldn't have. Each stroke hurt so badly that she'd've muddled the count and earned herself more for sure.

The first one was atrocious—with its stunningly bright pain upon impact, then the throbbing stinging burn that set in once he'd lifted it away from the bright red track on her skin.

She was given no time to recover before the next was delivered, very near and parallel to the first, making her twist and pull at the restraints as she whooshed out every bit of her breath, crying out more on the intake of air into her lungs, however unnatural that was.

The third and fourth formed a nice little ladder across her butt, the rungs landing quite expertly close together, until the fifth was placed diagonally across them, the upper part of the stroke pointing towards her right hip, the lower towards her left.

That had her practically board stiff and suspended from her restraints as she tried to come to grips with it, but then there was the sixth to deal with much too quickly afterwards, and she simply continued the screams that had started with numbers three and four.

Zerk was incredibly strong, and he was very careful of that strength as he did this, using enough to get and keep her attention, but not enough to cause any kind of permanent damage, which he very easily could have done.

The next four were given while Cat simply lay there, body tensed against each blow, mouth wide open throughout, although she couldn't even seem to scream anymore, even when they fell. She hadn't lost her voice, just her ability to produce a scream.

The last was the worst, coming from the other angle and covering all of the others at once.

If she earned another set, there would be no way—unless he moved to the backs of her thighs—for him to avoid hitting others of the raised, red ridges. And she doubted he'd even try.

Again, his hand was placed on her lower back. It felt like a surprisingly intimate gesture, as if he was trying to coax her into doing as he wanted her to.

And Zerk did want her to tell him. That was the entire goal of this exercise. There was also an undeniable need in him to allow the hand that was touching her now to move down to try to soothe her ravaged bottom.

But it remained where it was.

"Cat? Do you want to tell me what's bothering you, or should I begin the next twelve? Yes or no—I don't want you to say anything other than that."

"P-please, Sir, I-I—"

He drew a resigned breath and began again immediately.

After the twenty-second stroke, his hand was on her lower back again, rubbing slightly, and providing a stark contrast to how her rear end felt at the moment.

"Cat? Do you want to tell me what's bothering you?"

He'd barely gotten the question out before she whimpered, "Yes, please, Sir."

It was unlike him to do so, but he dropped the cane immediately, not bothering to neatly put it away as he normally would, removed her restraints, and gathered her to him on the bed, holding her tightly, face to face, on their sides, so that her little bum wasn't being pressed up against anything.

Brushing his hand through her still much too short hair, he asked in a deliberately soft, cajoling voice as he began to purr to her, "What is it, kitten?"

Her head was down, and, for once, he didn't force her to look up at him.

Her voice was halting as she was still understandably sobbing from the punishment, but he was patient. "It—it w-was when the m-men were here th-the last t-time."

"I had thought that might be it. Did one of them say or do something to you?" He couldn't see how he would have missed it, though. He watched everyone like a hawk, including her. They all knew what he expected of them in regards to her, and he hadn't had to reprimand any one in any way—for once.

Her head came up slowly, until her swollen, teary eyes met his. "It wasn't them," she whispered, looking down again. "It was you."

Zerk was stunned. "Me?" His mind raced through his conversation with her prior to his men arriving, then his conversations with them while they were there. He couldn't come up with anything he thought would cause such a radical change in her demeanor. It was in him to want to point that out, as if to negate what she was saying, but he took a breath and reined himself in. If he'd learned anything from his dear little Moia, it was that how he saw things was not necessarily how she saw things.

The little imp had delighted in telling him that, no matter what he thought, he was not always right!

So, a full minute later, his question was much more patient and understanding than it might have been because of the omega he'd lost. "Please tell me what I said so that I can make it right."

Her chuckle, issued while she was looking anywhere but at him, was entirely humorless. "It was nothing out of the ordinary; I'm not surprised you didn't notice." She lifted her eyes to his again, lips trembling, body trembling, as if she'd taken a sudden chill. He held her tighter, trying to pass on some of his warmth. "You…" her head dropped down again "…you called one of them Captain."

The big man took a large breath, understanding what she meant immediately. She'd learned in that moment—off-handedly, baldly—that she'd been replaced in a job he knew she'd loved.

Zerk's arms closed around her gently. He couldn't imagine how he would feel if that had happened to him. "I'm sorry. I should have told you when I did it."

Her head shot up. "When did you do it?" She reached up and put her hand over his mouth in one of the few times she'd ever touched him of her own volition. "No, don't tell me. I would be willing to bet it was no longer than one or two days after you took me."

He didn't quite blush, but he did look a bit abashed. "Something likes that," he admitted, cupping her cheek in his hand and forcing her to look up at him. "As soon as your body began to change, you were out of the game, Cat. You're bright—there's no way you didn't know that. And I was the Alpha who caused you to come into your first heat. It was only right that I claim you, that I bond you to me and make it my responsibility to keep you safe from other Alphas. I could hardly allow them to tear you apart in my office, and you know they weren't far from doing that."

She was still crying, and he wasn't sure if it was because she'd been caned or because she was sad about how radically her life had changed—but he was very certain that she thought it hadn't changed for the better.

He wasn't sure why, but he found himself quite desperate to cheer her up, as much as he could, and in an instant, he did something unusual—he broke a rule. He was too much of a believer in them to break one often, so when he did, he had to have a pretty good reason.

And she was definitely one.

So, he disentangled himself from her, then came back to the bed with what she immediately recognized as some of the information he'd been going over with his men, even though she was just beginning to learn to read, thanks to him. But, as lots of people didn't read, there were quite a few symbols that she recognized easily, too.

Her eyes went round when she saw what he was going to do. "Are you sure you want to trust me with your military secrets?"

He gathered her against him again, this time holding her to his side as he showed her what they'd been talking about that very day her feelings had been hurt.

Zerk grinned down at her. "Who are you going to tell? Tito? Our eventual child?"

That didn't go over very well with her, but he found it extremely amusing.

To her great surprise, he showed her everything, telling her about things his men didn't even know—like the fact that he'd sent out dispatches to some of the much smaller communities—using the term very loosely—as well as to pretty much every wild cohort that was out there, even those they hadn't heard from in decades. They were going to need all the help they could get.

He was kind of interested to see who would turn up, if anyone.

"You don't sound very optimistic."

"You picked up on that, hmmm?" Zerk put all of that stuff aside, glad to have shared the burden he'd been carrying. It didn't solve anything, but it helped to say it all out loud to someone, anyway. "I don't want you to worry, though. I've already made arrangements to have you sent away as soon as any of our crow's nests report any movement of large forces towards us."

"Sent away!" She almost lost her mind enough to sit up on her bum but caught herself in time, returning to lying on her side. "But I don't want to be sent away! I want to stay and fight with you!"

He was both horrified and touched that she still wanted to fight for—with—him. "No, Cat." He pulled her into a tight hug. "With any luck, you'll be breeding by then, and I will not have you in harm's way." To be honest, just the thought of her in danger—whether or not she was carrying his child—made his chest hurt in ways he didn't want to consider too closely. He gently brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek, which had dried as he'd entertained her with the story of how he was going to try to win the inevitable war against Garron and his Skorge. She'd proven to be a good sounding board, pointing out holes in his defenses and making suggestions about others, based on her own intimate knowledge of the city.

Zerk took a chance and said, "I'm sorry that you lost your place in the world, Cat. I know it was important to you."

"I've had to fight all my life—fight for my life, fight for my food, fight to keep myself safe, and I'm good at it."

"I know—you rose through the ranks very quickly—especially for a little girl."

She frowned up at him without thinking, regretting the impulse immediately, and he just laughed.

"I really never thought of doing anything else." Cat shrugged. "I had pretty much resigned myself to dying in battle, hopefully with honor."

Hearing her say that so matter of factly sent a shudder through his big body, and he clamped her to him so tightly that she thought he was going to break her ribs. She hadn't been with him very long, but she knew that he would never mean to do that, not that he couldn't do it accidentally.

"Uh, Sir, could you maybe not hug me so hard?" she asked hesitantly.

Zerk hadn't had any idea that he was doing that to her at all, and he immediately eased off. "Did I hurt you?" he asked, and she had to chuckle at how appalled he sounded at the thought.

"Have you seen my behind?" she asked, daring to be cheeky with him for the first time.

"Well, it got you to tell me what was bothering you when nothing else did."

Cat gave him an impish look. "Oh, dear! I think I've just set an extremely dangerous precedent!"

For a long moment, he merely stared down at her, thinking how much he enjoyed this never before seen side of her personality.

He stared at her so long that she thought she had made him angry. "I'm sorry—I was just teasing," she whispered, trying to make herself smaller.

"No, no, no! I know you were—you didn't do anything wrong!"

On a whim, he leaned down and kissed her, very gently, and very respectfully, even.

And when he leaned back, he was still in possession of his lips and his tongue!

"I liked that," he breathed.

"So did I," she confessed shyly.

He did it again, deepening the kiss a bit, and when he drew back, they were both breathless.

"Even better!" she smiled, a bit tentatively.

Cat thought he was going to kiss her again, and he did, but on her forehead, instead.

Then he asked solemnly the question that was on his mind, considering how her much more delightful personality had been restored, and she didn't seem as if she hated him quite as much as she used to. "So, do you think that you might ever be able to be…not sad and angry about being my omega, little kitten?"

She put her hands on him—on her Alpha's—bulging biceps and looked up at him. "I-I think that I would be willing to try, Sir."

He gave her a genuine, enormous smile at that, then ruined it by saying, "Lots of people call me 'Sir', but I like hearing it best from your lips." Which he then proceeded to kiss.

"I wish I could say the same thing about what you tend to call me, none of which is very complimentary."

Zerk looked affronted at that. "What do you mean? I call you lovely things!"

"You are constantly calling me things that remind me of how small I am—kitten, tiny this, little that—"

He kissed her again, deeply and passionately. When he came up for air, he defended himself. "But you are little—especially to me! And I had to take you down a peg or two—you'd been an officer in my Army! I wanted to help encourage your submissive, omega side, so maybe you wouldn't feel you had to resist me so strongly and constantly."

She sniffed. "Yeah, well, you can get rid of those now and just call me by my name," she asserted.

But he was unconvinced and was shaking his head back and forth quite decisively. "I don't think so. I like using those endearments with you, quita."

Cat frowned up at him as his hands parted her legs, careful not to hurt her as he fit them around him so that she could feel his hard length parting her always honey soaked lips.

Her sigh was so open and genuine that his own breath caught in his throat.

And as he slid himself past that first, slight resistance that her body didn't really want to show him, he leaned down to kiss the small scar on her shoulder. "The feeling of you—so tight and wet around me—is going to be the death of me one day, little girl."

She pouted prettily but couldn't keep up the ruse any longer as she felt herself expanding around his imposing presence and had to surrender to her own desires—and his.

When he knew he had to hurt her, he held her hand and looked into her eyes as he did so as quickly as he could, saying, "I'm so sorry that this part of our coming together causes you pain, kitten."

And as he brought her to the throes of the first of many ecstatic heights, he whispered to her, "Come for me, little one. Come for your Alpha."