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There it was, a wince. The mouse still had some pride.
“It’s up to you, pretty mouse, whether this arrangement lasts a handful of months or a year. The sooner you’re healthy enough for estrous, the sooner your boys will be free. Therefore, you will eat what is given. Drink all we offer. You will exercise and dutifully follow the doctor’s orders.”
A spark began to grow behind the Omega’s distance stare. Under weighty distrust, a tiny sliver of hope—just enough to assure her good behavior. Because he knew she no longer had any faith in his empty promises.
People like her survived on belief. And his little mouse was nothing if not a survivor.
One morsel of faith.
A mustard seed.
Careful of her wounds, Caspian climbed off her body, standing over the strange, pale thing. “Alec is to be punished for disloyalty to the Syndicate, pretty mouse. Nothing can be done to change that, but you have ten days to convince me that instead of cutting off his hand, he should only be whipped.”
“Be a good girl, and I’ll wield the whip myself,” Toby crooned, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. “I promise it won’t be more than a tickle and a little blood for show.”
Kieran, still scowling, had his own warning for the Omega. “Toby would also be the one sawing off the dumb kid’s hand if you fuck up.”
A nod, almost imperceptible, came from the female.
Chest rumbling with the offering of his purr, Caspian smiled. “My pretty little mouse is a good girl. She won’t need another reminder.”
“No,” Toby agreed, another kiss pressed to a snowy head. “She won’t.”
***
Two days reprieve was offered. Two days for flesh to heal.
Yet splinted finger bones were weeks from fully mending. She could not talk, not that anyone really wanted to hear her thoughts.
No, they wanted her to smile and sleep, to accept their caresses and food.
The myriad of bites that peppered her flesh were no longer pink, but slivery scars. They blended in with her skin yet simultaneously stood out like a beacon—shining against powder white.
Glaringly obvious.
A blazing maze that said, owned.
Caspian had taken to staring at them, eyes fixed, anytime he was in the room.
That is, when he wasn’t touching them, licking them, gnawing over select spots as if to keep his favorites pink enough to stand out.
Her breasts. Her inner thigh.
The only place he treated with true reverence was her ankle.
Toby would fuss over her healing wounds, pouring bitter medicine down her throat. Spoon feeding her. Purring, Caspian had taken to rubbing her feet. All this while Kieran lectured on how she must behave before the men.
While he threatened her Alec. While he pointedly failed to offer more than a passing comment on Mikael’s health.
Overindulged as she was, feet dwarfed in callused, careful hands, lips pecked by a smiling shaven-headed psychopath who kept her drugged and buried in pillows, Wren sometimes forgot there was more to notice than lovely sensation and deep, masculine purrs.
Until her fuzzy gaze met disapproving green.
Kieran was an anchor.
One who held himself aloof and stared a great deal.
The behavior of his packmates had the Second Alpha on edge.
Wren could not find it in her to care. Under drugged pain and the itch of mending bone, she felt adrift in her skin. Things weren’t right no matter how long the doctor was forced to sit at her bedside.
And forced was the word for it. His life had been threatened in subtle and not so subtle ways those first two days. If she winced, the Beta received a backhand. Should she moan in her sleep, Wren woke to the sound of the doctor being kicked.
“I told you no pain…” Caspian hissed, voice snake-like and deadly.
Worse for wear and smelling unwashed, the older male climbed to his feet and let out a desperate breath. “More drugs will do her more harm than good.”
“I don’t want her in pain!”
The old man, through exhaustion and days of terror, snapped. “Then you shouldn’t have beaten her!”
And that was the last Wren saw of her dedicated caretaker. When she’d woken and found only grinning Toby at her side, she’d vocally cried.
Because she knew what had happened.
The Beta was dead.
And that squishy, invasive comfort streaming through her bones coming from the male shushing and purring at her side…
Mate. Caspian had said.
Flippantly. As if it was nothing of note.
Someone finally wanted her, and he was crazy through and through.
Signing poorly, he talked as he practiced structuring her language. “Sunshine. You’re looking much better today.”
Unable to converse with her fingers still splinted, Wren only blinked.
“Are you hungry?” That sign he had down pat.
No.
“Thirsty?”
No.
Face thoughtful, an uncharacteristic scowl came to Toby’s brow. “I’ve waited a long time for you. For my mate.”
It took everything an exhausted Wren had not to show an ounce of disappointment.
“I know this is new. An adjustment period is to be expected.” A wink brought out fine lines on the side of Toby’s eyes. Laying on the charm, he said, “A month from now you’ll be so in love with me you’ll never remember that it started… with difficulty.”
