Hand at her back, Jacques led his quiet Omega down the more picturesque Central pathways toward the palace. It had grown dark in the hours he’d let her play at deconstructing the prick Ambassador’s ship, leaving the streets aglow with soft light playing over the old European architecture of surrounding buildings. The Dome had done well capturing the spirit of all that had been lost, tree lined streets, canals, a reflection of dead cities compressed into one space.

All of this was lost on Brenya.

She was quiet, shoulders drooping and eyes missing the beauty. Withdrawn, she dragged her feet and kept their steps slow.

Jacques didn’t like it. He wanted her as she had been elbow deep reassembling whatever she’d taken apart. “You enjoyed yourself working on the ship.”

For a split second he saw her face grow wistful. One blink and it was gone, her expression as detached as her words. “I did. It was nice to remember that once I had been more than…”

“Than what?”

She screwed up her brow as if unsure how to phrase her thoughts. “Something inadequate. I was an excellent engineering grunt. I am not skilled in any of my new tasks.”

He halted their steps, smirking with a mind full of indecent thoughts. “On that, we’ll have to disagree.”

His teasing did not lighten her brooding at all, if anything it only made her appear more miserable. “How much farther is it? I will comply and remain obedient, but I am growing anxious. I’d like it to be over soon.”

Jade eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

Her lips shook, honey eyes casting about as if they might find something to keep her steady. “If I asked you to purr while they do it, would you?”

“You, girl, are frustrating beyond all measure.”

She wrapped her dirty arms around her grease stained middle as if she might hold whatever she was feeling inside. “I know. I am an unsatisfactory Omega.”

This was his fault. He had been careless in his vanity and cruel in his temper. Angry with more than himself, he stated, “You believe I am taking you to be terminated.”

Her voice caught, but she was brave enough to turn pretty eyes up and meet the gaze of the male she thought was to have her killed. “I’m not the only Omega under the Dome.”

He put a finger to her chest, tapping it on her breastbone. “And which Omega would replace you?”

“The blonde female was very beautiful. She made you laugh.”

Dry, he quipped, “I was notified that she entered the early stages of estrous this morning. I could pair-bond with her immediately.”

“That…” Brenya blinked, exhaled, then offered, “is convenient. I’m sure you will be happy.”

Scoffing, he shook his head. “You have honestly considered this, haven’t you?” The corner of Jacques’ lips curled, equally pitiless and amused. “I was under the impression that only seasoned wives thought to tell an Alpha male what to do.”

The word wives shut her down. “Will you purr like I asked? I would appreciate it if you started now.”

Anticipating a different reaction from the female, Jacques sighed. On his next breath he did begin to purr. Seeing the small thing’s immediate relief, he reached out, took her face in his hands, and watched her eyelids droop. Smoothing a thumb over her trembling lip, he murmured, “Last night was unpleasant, but I did not intend this to be your reaction.”

He’d been working to inspire jealousy, not fear for her life. The whole show after dinner had been to make her desire him more—the laughing with the females, the prodding of her pride. He should have known better. Brenya Perin was not wired that way.

Instead she had made him insanely jealous—seeing the feed of her talking with the scrawny Beta pushing him past the pale. She had even dared to throw her arms around the man. She had dared to smile when he’d talked.

Perhaps he had overreacted. The earlier meeting with Shepherd had been a blow. Knowing the Dome was under an invisible siege, and that in a very real sense his hands were tied, burned his ego. Brenya’s naiveté and innocence burned him more. “What if I do not desire to terminate you?”

The magic of his purr could not change the look of terror when her eyes flew open. “I don’t want to be given to another Alpha.” Throat, flexing, color draining from her face… Brenya looked on the cusp of being ill. “I can’t imagine another person… on me.”

That appeased him somewhat. “That won’t happen.”

She took a shaky breath, nodding. A tear even dared to fall from her eye. “What is going to happen to me then?”

“You’re going to learn how to handle my temper.” He reached to stroke her hair, purring all the louder. “I’m going to work on choosing my words when I’m angry. And I am still angry… as I am sure you sense. You acted against your best interests today, and I took action to prevent it in the future, but we will discuss that later. Right now we are going to walk back to our nest. I’m going to feed you dinner, and we will relax. And then I am going to mount you. It will be rough. I can’t bring myself to be gentle, because you have been rebellious and I need to see you punished. But I promise you, when you come, your screams will be those of bliss, not pain.” He set his lips to her forehead, pulling his sweet, unyielding mate into his arms. “Tonight, you will learn the difference between rape and discipline.”

Her scent changed, fear fading into something hinging closer to excitement. “Will you sleep in the nest when you’re done with me?”

“I promise my knot will be inside you. There may be very little sleep, though. I intend to be thorough for both our sakes.”

* * *

Sweat matted her hair to her head, Brenya unable to catch her breath.

Looming over her, the Alpha glared down, an expression of perfect violence playing off the joy of his conquest. “What did you learn?”

That he could do so much more to her than she knew. Moaning as her insides throbbed, Brenya grimaced, unable to speak.

He tweaked her nipple pulling it upward until her ribcage bowed. He smiled. “What did you learn, mon chou?”

It should have hurt, a great many of the things he had done to her had… but it did not. Not anymore. When he released the puckered flesh, and took its twin to offer the same treatment, she swooned.

Soft, timbre exceedingly gentle, Jacques said, “You are more beautiful in this moment than I have ever seen you.”

Lashes parting, she found his blurred form glowed. Dreamlike waves of warmth moved over her weighted limbs. She tried to move them, having forgotten he had chained her to the bed.

That had been the first step in his lesson. She was at his mercy, always.

The roughness he had threatened her with was more in theory than in practice, though he had abused her slit when the rut made him frantic in the first knotting of the night. Afterward, he had pulled out and brought down his hand against the fleshier parts of her skin: buttocks, thighs, even between her legs until she’d climaxed.

Her body had surprised her, and he had grinned when abundant slick squished out between his fingers. His cock had not even been inside her.

Jacques had lowered himself over her, his lips whispering at her ear, “Don’t you care for me even a little? Would you come like that for any male? Did you come like that for George?”

“No…”

He thumbed her clit until her legs began to shake. “No to which question?”

The kind of noise that fought its way out of her body was a squeal that both pled for mercy and wanted more. “I never came with George! I never knew this feeling!”

“And how about this one?” His fingers slipped inside, hooking behind her pubic bone. He pressed up against that fleshy place, kneading it until she grew red from holding her breath as if to escape.

Somehow he drew a jet of slick, catching it in his hand to bring to his own swollen body part. Working her juices up and down his shaft, he cocked his head… waiting for her to recover enough to torment further. “Yet, you went to the Beta today. You touched him as you should only touch me. You smiled.”

His colder tone broke through her delirium, Brenya sucking in a breath and releasing a shaking answer, “I wanted to say goodbye. He saved my life.”

“He did not save your life.” Jacques jerked her body, made her conform to the shape of his hips as his cockhead butted against her opening. Shoving in with an animal grunt, he’d roared. “I did.”

Blasted apart, she bucked, eager for more.

“You would have been terminated had I not found you. You would have been lost to me forever! I SAVED YOU. What thanks do I get?” He spread her legs so far they began to burn, screaming at the overwrought female. “Suspicion? Coldness? You have been ungrateful.”

She wanted so badly to rake her fingernails across his rippling abdominals, to sink her teeth into him. Salivating, she squeezed down, using the only muscles she had control over to make him feel her frustration.

His eyes rolled back, the knot threatening to expand at his base, forcing him to stop all movement. “Not yet. Not until I say, bad girl.”

“WHY!” She growled, vicious, rabid, and completely beyond control.

She could try to wriggle and feed his cock deeper inside her, but the chains binding her arms above her head would only let her stretch so far. He put a stop to it, his hands pinning her hips to the bed.

“What did I tell you about growling at a male?”

Throwing her head back and forth, she refused to listen, her body cramping in its need for release. “I don’t care.”

She was panting, and he was asking her questions. It wasn’t fair.

“What did you learn?”

She learned that she didn’t want him to stop anymore, that anything was better than loneliness and the long walk toward termination.

“If you give me a satisfactory answer, Brenya, I will give you everything you need and more.”

It was easy to see past emotion when her body had demands. In that moment, it was easy to be Omega. “I learned that I did not like waking up alone. I hated it more than I hated wearing the diamonds. I hated it more than being humiliated at your dinner. I hated it more than your cruelty toward Annette.”

Excitement lit his eyes, Jacques’ voice husky as he demanded, “Why?”

“Because I knew what it meant.” Her nerves were still on edge, tremors wracking her body as if the little death was knocking at her door, and this time would take more than just a piece of her soul. It would defeat her utterly. “It meant that I was nothing but what Ancil had said. A toy. And that I had been displayed for your amusement, then discarded when no longer valuable. My opinion meant nothing to you. My skills worthless. I was reduced to a hole you could fuck and was soon to be replaced.”

“Your unflappable honesty is… extraordinary.” The Alpha’s muscles tensed, his cheek twitching as he held her immobile and said, “A simple ‘I learned there are consequences when I misbehave’ would have been sufficient.”

She had made him angry. That seemed to be her best talent these days. “You will choose another Omega.”

“You would presume again to tell me what I will do. You refuse to listen.” A low growl, a deep resounding warning preceded, “How can I make you obey?”

A slow slide of his hips and he pulled almost all the way from the heat of her body and ever so slowly inched back in. “I could fuck you. I am fucking you. I can bend your body to my will, but your mind refuses. Maybe I should have had another Alpha take what he would. That way you could compare my love to his lust. Would you submit to me then when I came to scoop you from his nest and save you? Would you love me if you’d felt what it truly was to be used? I could not bring myself to do it, though last night I came precariously close.”

Her mind wanted to melt into the mattress, to escape from him when he spoke in such a way, but her body was a traitorous slut. Rocking her hips to his new, sluggish tempo, she followed where the Alpha would lead—lost, ruined, and desperate.

“You look very sweet while you sleep. It’s easy to forget how gullible and hardheaded you are.” Setting his finger to her clit, watching her body be dominated by such pitiless tactics, he cooed, “And then you reached for where I should have lain by your side. You reached for me even after all your refusals and accusations. Somewhere in this body of yours, you know I already own you. The pair-bond is only a formality.”

He kept her teetering on the edge to the point she could hardly comprehend words. All Brenya could grasp in that moment were actions. His actions were more often deceitful than not. A whispered moan, her eyes closing, and a smile on her mouth, Brenya said, “You’re a liar, Jacques Bernard.”

Chuckling, he angled in such a way that made her fluids squish out and drip down his sack. “Smiling as you misbehave will not spare you the rod. In fact, I think you want to be punished, and that is not behavior I wish to encourage. Be a good girl now. Tell me you’re sorry.”

“For what?”

The chains rattled, the mechanism to release clicking. “This will not do, mon chou.”

Her hands were free, but before she might enjoy it, he rolled their bodies and set her in a position that woke her from the mating high’s stupor. He was prone under her body while still inside her. She was on top, braced against his chest and taking him so deep she could hardly bear it.

His hands were not guiding her movement, in fact, they lay innocently at his sides. There was no stopping what her body did, how it wriggled and pulsed until Brenya began to move up and down his shaft. She had no clue what she was doing or why. Her head fell back, her hair brushing her spine as she took what she needed so she might know release.

He’d threatened her with bliss and here it was. It was hers, on her terms, and so close the first ripples of her tunnel were already squeezing his shaft.

“Wall unit, order four.”

He’d spoken and she’d ignored, caught up in the freedom to take. Desperate cries filled the air, the most obscene of moans… so fucking loud it took her a moment to realize they were not hers.

Eyes opening, she found one wall had come alive with a view of a familiar blonde Omega screaming release, forcing Brenya’s own to clench and take her.

“MORE! Gods it’s not enough! Fuck me harder.”

There was a man between that woman’s legs, a man pounding away with abandon. He was skinny and his glasses were gone, crying out his frustration in a voice Brenya had heard day after day in her ear.

A war broke out inside her gut, the milking clenching of orgasm breaking over muscle and bone, twisted up in a mind that began to grasp what Jacques had done… what he was showing her.

This was her punishment.

Tearing her eyes from the perversion on the wall, feeling his knot tie them together, coming despite it all, she turned a betrayed gaze to Jacques.

He smiled. “Does she look satisfied to you? I’d say not. The scrawny Beta could never give you this.”

A wave of come shot from him, blasting her insides. She groaned and bent against her will. She could not stop the little death even in a moment as awful as this.

Hand on her belly, Jacques traced his name on her skin, the vulgar sound of her friend crying out a pained release filling the air. “I find that I am a jealous man after all, Brenya. Take it to heart. Any male you touch, I’ll take their hand—if you smile at them, their tongue. Your smiles, your touches, I want them all to myself. If you give me that, I will let your George live after the Omega is done with him.”

In moments of crisis, the human body could do miraculous things. She may have been tied to him by the knot, under his power in every way, but her hand drew back and formed a fist.

Shrieking, Brenya struck him with all the strength of her being.

Over, and over, and over.