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Gaping, she cradled a tweaked wrist, left with a wet flannel shirt that clung to her breasts.
“Up with you.” Caspian caught her as she tried to scramble back, setting the frazzled thing to her feet. With a grip of iron around her arm, his eyes raked over what little he’d uncovered. Then he drew her flailing body flush to run his nose up her neck. “How much do you sell for? You think I would have heard of a pretty, albino whore working the Warrens.”
Slapping at him, she pressed back with what little strength her arms had left.
“Too proud for me?” The man chuckled; it was not a noise of mirth. It was one of vile thoughts and vicious anger. “My face might be a bit banged up, but you’ll scream for my knot like a good little Omega slut. Play nice, and I might let you keep your boys.”
Wren squealed when he licked his lips, poking the tattooed flesh of her cheek. Defective.
Caspian’s brow dipped dangerously low. “Diseases?”
Head shaking, Wren patted his chest in a bid to be set free.
“What’re you doing to her?” Alec—wiped clean, and dressed fresh—with Mikael leaning on him for support, shouted, “She ain’t no whore!”
He eyeballed the boys but made no move to put Wren down. “She got a mate?”
Looking skyward as if it was a stupid question, Alec said, “Who do you think dumped her here?”
“Roll your eyes again at me, boy, and I’ll pop them right out of their sockets.” When the teen showed the wisdom of fear, Caspian demanded more, “Explain.”
“The Alpha gave her a poke and didn’t like her. He had her marked so she couldn’t be sold to anyone else.”
Red up to her roots, Wren looked away, thoroughly humiliated that Alec knew such things.
The bulging arms at her back softened, Wren sliding down a stone-hard chest until her feet hit the puddle of mud on the floor.
The interrogation wasn’t done. Pinching her chin, Caspian watched her eyes very closely. “You’re raw?”
She didn’t understand and it was clear in her expression.
“A virgin?”
Lavender eyes darted to where Alec stood, Wren wishing with all her heart the boys were not in the room.
“He stays until I say so.” The pressure on her chin increased. “Answer me.”
She shook her head no. She was not a virgin.
“Just the one time?”
An embarrassed nod.
“Then you’re raw.” A mean grin broke across Caspian’s face. “And you might actually have something worth bartering for here if what’s hiding under these clothes is as pretty as that hair.”
Wren drew in a deep, shaky breath, blowing it out slowly in a bid to compose herself. All of this had gone so far out of hand, she didn’t have a clue how to unravel it.
“I like pretty things that like me. I like pretty things that obey.” He ran a finger over her jaw, her pink lips, inspecting the merchandise as he enticed with an Alpha growl. “Be a good girl, now, and parlay. Do you want those boys or not?”
Signing carefully so Alec might answer, Wren shared her greatest shame. “The Alpha… I…” How the fuck does one describe what happened that night? “I didn’t know how to take his seed. It hurt him. He hurt me. I’m defective…”
Hearing Alec repeat what she’d shared, Wren began to sniff. Tears tracked through the dirt on her cheek, wiped quickly away.
She flat out started bawling when Alec interjected with, “Is that really what happened?”
Caspian took in her face, roaring, “Silence, boy!”
Silence came, Wren terrified of making so much as a sniff.
And then the air trembled with a bone-deep resonance that wrapped around her like a warm blanket.
An Alpha purr.
“In exchange for the boys, you’ll serve. Please me, and when I grow bored of you, you’ll come home with full pockets and enough fresh water to last a year.” He tapped a finger to her breastbone, leaning down so they might be eye-level. “This is the only offer I am going to make.”
There was no question of if she’d say yes. Wren knew exactly what would happen to Alec and Mikael if she refused.
Eyes wet and heart hammering against her ribs, Wren accepted his offer.
It earned a victorious grin from the smug Alpha, and an even louder purr left to jar the air.
He booped her nose. “I will be back tomorrow. You will be here, clean, dressed in something appealing, or I’ll hunt down the rabid children haunting the Warrens and rip a limb off each one I find.”
Chapter 5
Everything had been scrubbed until her fingers were raw: floors, the door, clothing, her body, even her hair. Wren washed the day away, lost in the work so she might forget why her feet were stained brown and her home had been sent into upheaval. And between bouts of cleaning, she tended the sick boy curled up on her couch, a makeshift nest built up around him.
