There was nothing for it.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Quinn said in a low hiss as she turned her head in Tobias’ general direction. Refusing to meet his eyes, to see the anger she felt roiling through her chest and stomach mirrored there.
Without a word, he stalked to the nursery door and opened it wide to admit the mousy Beta from earlier. He’d already known Quinn would fail and had been prepared. The knowledge should have bolstered her own anger, but all it did was make her realize how useless she was. Quinn swallowed back yet more sobs and clung to anger as if her life depended on it.
“It’s not like we come programmed knowing this shit,” Quinn said, the vicious curl of her lips pretending to be a smile as she made an inviting gesture to the Beta to take over. Her pale gaze skipped over the woman as Adam was taken from Quinn’s grasp. Dark green eyes held a warning when Quinn met them, but she went on, uncaring. “We’re good to fuck and knock up, but we don’t innately know what comes after.”
The Beta gasped and moved as if she would shield Adam from Quinn. It was a single step, maybe two, that blocked the burbling child from Quinn’s view.
Red rimmed blackness clouded Quinn’s vision.
The overwhelming urge was there, just as she’d professed to Tobias only moments ago. With her own child growing inside of her, the need to protect Adam was just as strong as if he was her flesh and blood. An Omega who thought her child in peril was dangerous, unpredictable. Deadly.
When the haze cleared, the Beta was on the floor, brown eyes filled with tears and terror, a red bloom across her pallid cheek. Mousy brown hair lay in a wild halo around her face. Adam rested in the crook of Quinn’s arm, babbling in his own language what he thought of the proceedings.
“Until he decides to throw me out with the trash, don’t you ever try to get between me and this baby.”
“That’s enough.” Tobias was there at Quinn’s side, large hand wrapped around the back of her neck and squeezing. Delicate vertebrae shifted and groaned under the strain.
The Beta held out trembling hands for Adam after gaining her feet. Her teary gaze was kept aside, submissive and more than a little frightened. A wet, sucking blanket of guilt smothered Quinn as she handed the baby over. None of this was the woman’s fault.
Even though she knew what was coming, Quinn gave a pathetic squeak and stumbled when Tobias pushed her into motion. His grip tightened, hauling her along without waiting for her to gain her footing. Dangling from his fist, she felt like prey being hauled off to slaughter as he took her down the hall to his bedroom.
Tossed onto the bed, Quinn scrambled up against the headboard to face the furious male that stalked back and forth at the other end.
“I understand that you are upset,” Kahler said, words a low snarl as he yanked his belt free of the loops.
The snap of leather made Quinn flinch, her back shoved against the headboard as if she would crawl through the wall.
“But if you think for a moment that I will put up with this sort of behavior, you are sorely mistaken.”
He came at her. The lines of his features were razor sharp in his anger, the heat of it scorching her before he’d even reached Quinn’s side.
“Please don’t punish me, sir! I’ll behave, please, I’ll be good,” Quinn shrieked, trying not to cringe away from the impending strike. Blindly reaching for the enraged Alpha, her fingers fumbled at the zipper of his pants. She was already on her knees, hand reaching into the gaping fabric for his cock before she realized what she had done.
Quinn gaped up at Tobias as he stood motionless over her. It had been the belt dangling from his hand, innocuous and vicious at the same time. The words had tumbled free without thought, a cultivated reflex from time spent under Alton’s control. The actions were just as fixed in her mind as the appropriate response. It was then she saw the strip of leather lying harmless on the floor where he’d dropped it before coming to her. Shrinking away from the darkness swelling in the depths of his gaze, she tried to shuffle back.
She didn’t get far.
Hand wrapped around the back of her neck, thumb and fingers pinching her jaw so that her head tipped back, Kahler forced her to look at him.
“You think I’m going to beat you?” The icy intensity of his gaze seared through her, burning across her skin as he pulled Quinn back up to her knees before him. Head tilted, he regarded her for a moment that seemed to stretch out for decades. As some thought came to him, his expression smoothed and became blank.
“Who are you thinking of here in our nest,” Kahler asked with a deadly calm that did not match the lines of fury that etched their way across his features, the green of his eyes incandescent as he forced her to stretch up. “That pathetic male you ran to? The one you meant so little to, he couldn’t even try to fight for you?”
“Please, I… It just… I didn’t…” Quinn’s voice shriveled on her tongue, running back down her throat at the sheer breadth of his anger. Body trembling, the caustic bite of her fear mingled with the miasma of his anger between them.
“But you did, little bird.”
Quinn flinched at the use of the pet name.
Kahler moved her around with a care she did not trust until he had her stretched out on the bed. She stared up at him with fear wide eyes from the flat of her back as he kneeled between her legs, towering above her with all that cold fury. Fingers twitched at her sides, wanting to reach out to him, to appease and soothe away the frozen mask he wore. Daring to meet his gaze for a trembling heartbeat, she knew it would be a mistake.
She’d have given almost anything to see the controlled heat he’d always come at her with before.
Though she tried to prepare for whatever might come next, Quinn couldn’t help the breathless shriek that burst from between her lips when his weight came down on her. She caught the slow curl of his lip, the snarl he did not voice before he buried his face against her neck.
Kahler could have called to her, forced a response from her body, but it was him. She was used to his scent, his touch, the way her heart pounded out a rhythm not her own. As he pressed her into the mattress, hands almost too careful as they removed her dress, Quinn arched into his touch. The nervous tension was sluiced away in a heady wave of heat that left her fingertips tingling.
