Once her plate was clean, she asked to be excused and retreated back to her room.
I checked on her around twenty-three hundred, only to find she had fallen asleep again while reading. Her fever was still high, so I briefly peeked beneath her bandages to make sure none of our marks looked infected. The wounds were healing well, and the gauze was clean.
Slipping a bookmark into the book’s spine, I placed it on the nightstand. I pulled a few blankets over her body, which was positioned comically and strewn across the bed at a diagonal.While I was a back sleeper, falling asleep in the same position I woke up in, Rowan was definitely not. She preferred a variety of strange positions and moved frequently throughout the night. At one point, her legs had lain across my torso as she intersected the mattress at a 90-degree angle.
I watched her sleep for a moment, considering whether I should wake her, but left her be. She had been a good girl lately, taking Talon and Ryker’s dicks beautifully, and deserved to rest.
The sight of her, speared between them, wildly clinging to Talon as he brutally used her body while Ryker rutted her throat, was an image I wanted branded on the inside of my eyelids. She was so hungry for everything we gave her, begging for more while we took turns. I knew she would be ready for a knot soon, and that we would have to prepare her before her heat next month. She was still incredibly tight and inexperienced, and that would need to be remedied.
She was definitely due for punishment after the way she bargained for visitation with her friend. I did not appreciate her putting me on the spot and using her body like a weapon. That stunt wasn’t going unanswered. Still, I was a man of my word, and her meeting with Alex was already scheduled for this afternoon.
Normally, her growing defiance would’ve earned immediate discipline, but with the recurring nightmares and fever wearing her down, I decided to wait until she was stronger. Despite the occasional outburst, I was quietly pleased with how she was starting to settle into the unit. It was a lot to take in, considering she had been ripped from everything familiar and thrown into a world of new rules and routines. And yet, she was managing better than I’d expected.
Still, I was torn and caught between punishing her stubbornness and acknowledging her resilience. I was trained to make split-second decisions under pressure, life-or-death calls with no room for doubt. But Rowan clouded my judgment in a way I hadn’t expected. I hadn’t accounted for how complicated things would get, not just because she was an omega, but because she washer.Defiant, unpredictable, and sharp in ways that challenged me. I thought I understood the dynamic between us. I was wrong. She surprised me daily, proving she was far more complex than I’d given her credit for.
My call to Alex surprised him, and he sounded afraid on the other end of the phone. At first he refused to see Rowan, citing that he was still concerned that we might change our minds about arresting him and sentence him to a few years in the colonies. It had taken some reassurance to convince him to come back to base and meet with her.
Rowan jumped for joy when I told her to be ready to see her friend at thirteen hundred, flashing the brightest smile I had seen grace her face. I didn’t tell her about his reluctance to see her, knowing it might hurt her feelings.
Alex had arrived early, signed into base, and I met him downstairs in the lobby.
“Do not touch her. At all. Under any circumstance. Do you understand?” I warned him sternly on the way through the base, as we entered the elevator leading to the dorms. If he touched her, even innocently, I would kill him, and Rowan would probably never forgive me for it. He nodded his head vigorously.
“Say it. Say you understand out-loud. Tell me you won't touch her.”
“I understand. I won’t touch Rowan, promise!” he said fearfully as his body shook like a leaf.
He had brought a few things Rowan left in their van, including a guitar, which was cased and slung over his shoulder. He also carried a bag full of miscellaneous items, all of which the guards had thoroughly searched upon his admittance to the base. I made him dispose of her floral-scented lotion in a trashcan before getting into the elevator. Even inside the bottle, it smelled disgusting. Besides, Rowan would not be needing it anymore.
When we entered the dorm, Rowan was standing in the kitchen waiting patiently. Upon seeing Alex, she ran forward, smiled wide, and spread her arms, ready to give him a hug.
Absolutely not.
I growled loudly, and Alex backed up quickly, putting his hands up, gesturing for her to stop and move away. He didn’tfeel like dying today. Realizing his fear, Rowan blushed with embarrassment, and her joy deflated.
“Sorry, I forgot, no touching,” she muttered under her breath, before turning around and taking a seat at the dining table.
I gave them some space, walking to the living room and taking a seat on the couch where I had a clear view of them both. Rowan turned over her shoulder and shot me a scathing look that said,go away, while Alex sat down opposite her at the table. I would not do any such thing, and she knew that fully. Her little defiant tantrums were becoming less than cute. I added that look to the many reasons I would administer her punishment later on.
By this point, I had a running list.
As soon as her lingering fever broke, I would enjoy spanking her.
I had been planning her discipline for sometime now and was eager to put my plan into action. She had taken her previous spanking so well, but I needed to up the ante, as it clearly had not sunk in and her defiance only grew. She had been acting convincingly docile, and she must have really wanted to see her friend to drop the act and let us in on how good she had gotten at playing the subservient role.
Rowan cleared her throat before saying, “Hey Alex.”
“Hey Rowan,” he said, still nervously eyeing me from across the room.
I grabbed a folder and started going through some administrative paperwork, pretending to concentrate on something else, while they conversed.
“How is the band?! How was that gig at Rosie’s last weekend? It made me so bummed to miss it! Did you guys end up playing that new song we wrote?”
“Yeah… Uh, it was good, you know. We all missed you. Harper took over vocals. She’s not great, which you already know, but it wasn’t too bad. We didn’t play the new song, stuck mostly to covers that Harper could manage with her limited vocal range.”
“Oh, yikes.” She grimaced. “Harper on vocals, you guys must have been pretty desperate,” she said laughing, and Alex also chuckled, relaxing slightly.
“Yeah, well, she’s not you, that's for sure. Everyone missed you, but people didn't really ask, because you know, Billy already told everyone, so… they all know… where you are. And about um, you being an omega and all.”
