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After an inordinate amount of time, long after the nest was truly finished and she was just fiddling to stall, Kieran took her hand, and shook his head as if to say no more.
Pulling her in, he arranged her comfortably on her back, her legs cradling his hips. And then, like a total stranger, he spent hours making careful love to her.
All of it was about her pleasure, every touch seeking out the places on her body that made the Omega sing.
Not an ounce of pain came even in the moments his long thrusts became more passionate. He didn’t twist her into a pretzel or mock her lack of skill. Instead he praised her with soft compliments and gratuitous attention.
Wound up beyond the euphoria of a mating high, Wren lost all sense of time. Waves of pleasure washed away regret, purified fear, and purged anger. When at long last he knotted her, she was an active participant, kissing her lover, pulling him nearer, enraptured and enwrapped in the form of a doting Alpha.
She didn’t even notice when he set his teeth to the other side of her neck, floating far away and lost in a sense of joy. The pain didn’t even register when Kieran punched his teeth deep.
It wasn’t until she woke later, still in their nest, still in his arms, to the sounds of a holo projected before them that she even smelled the blood.
Kieran, watching a comedy, had one arm thrown behind his head, laughing as if all was right and normal.
Chapter 8
Fingering the tight collar of her dress, hooking fabric away from her throat as if that might make it easier to breathe, Wren plodded after the fast-moving Alpha dragging her through the halls. Kieran had her by the wrist, walking with an air of menace so unlike him, snarling at any who passed, that she could hardly keep up.
Twice she had tripped over her feet and the long skirt tangling about her ankles. Twice she had barely managed not to face-plant into the concrete.
Both times Kieran righted her, cast a glare about, and immediately continued the relentless pace.
The journey from the big room to Caspian’s den was not so far, but by the time they reached the catwalk soaring over churning waters below, Wren was winded.
Before them waited the crossing.
She hated this part, walking over the rusted metal bridge, the drop down visible and stomach-churning.
But before she could steel herself to brave the crossing, an arm swept under her. Snagged to the Alpha’s chest, breath knocked from her body, three large, male strides later and they were before the guarded portal.
And then she was back on her feet, her constrictive dress straightened by the same male who’d chosen it.
He’d spent at least ten minutes buttoning up the tiny row of seed pearls that held it closed from her navel to her throat. This was after the ridiculous amount of time he’d taken cleaning and treating the pointless bite mark on her throat.
Pointless since there was no bond between them. There couldn’t be. Kieran was bonded to another.
Yet, utterly self-indulgent, he purred grandly as he brushed back her hair to admire it. He licked at the scabbed wounds, smiled, and in the privacy of the big room, was wholly playful when he nipped.
Wren, already covered in claiming marks from Caspian and Toby, tried to consider it just another scar, but this mark out of all of them disturbed her.
Because it had meaning beyond its pointlessness.
And that meaning was wrong.
Imagining other females seeing it and laughing, knowing that no bond of any sort might give it credibility, she felt like a fraud.
Yet she still came on Kieran’s cock when he took her… again.
She still returned his passion and his caress.
And his kiss.
Culpable for her part in the charade, she’d counted down the minutes until Toby might come and take his turn. For once, she craved the Third’s presence, as if he might fix all of this, crack one of his rude jokes, and set her at ease despite his unhinged mental state.
But Toby never came.
She did. She came over and over between long naps and meals of Alpha nutrient cum.
There had been no real food, only Kieran to sustain her—the Alpha draining his own vigor to bolster hers.
Then… Caspian commanded her presence. She’d heard the summons, taken aback by the irritation snarled from Kieran’s wrist communicator.
“Deliver her, Kieran. NOW!”
That was it. Four words followed by the Second throwing an empty water glass across the room to shatter.
To say Wren was startled was an understatement.
In that moment, gone was any ease between them. In that moment, gone was the Kieran he had pretended to be.
As if he finally realized the sham. As if he felt the lack of connection register, and instead of regret, it was anger clouding green eyes.
