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Her foot never landed. Wrist caught in a flash of male grip, Kieran held her still, pinned her with the anger in his tone. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Each gaze a little more naked, more exposed, their eyes met again.
She let herself really see him, not just his position as Second Alpha. Deeper than his physical perfection, under the chiseled lines of his face and the cocky arrogance he used as a shield, he was bare.
No longer brilliant, the male’s green eyes had dulled since last she’d seen him. Bloodshot and sunken, he looked even more tired than she felt. Sallow, unsmiling. Miserable.
A creature—if the astringent smoke and the lingering scent of rotting food in the air were any indication—determined to self-destruct.
What haunted his gaze was a look she’d seen enough times to know. That look he thought he hid behind disdain and narrowed eyes.
Heartbreak.
It was the look all children abandoned to the Warrens had etched into their features before it sunk in that they would never get out. Most died still wearing it.
Alec had been unable to smile for years.
Mikael still harbored a ghost of early pain.
Those they trusted most abandoned them—whether through death, through deceit, or through neglect.
A fraction of Kieran’s past was known to Wren, and that small sip had been more than enough for this man to be intimately acquainted with those sticky, unrelenting feelings. But for an Alpha of his stature to indulge them…
He was in agony.
For the rest of her days, Wren would hate the woman who had birthed and abused this male. The female who had essentially created the monster unleashed on the city.
Hate was infectious, yet there was nothing to do for it. She’d already spent years hating those responsible for throwing her kids into the mud.
And though she was not a violent woman, she’d slaughter every last one of them if they tried to harm her kids again.
Including this man who had slipped her boy a healing boost. She’d kill Kieran with her bare hands if he set so much as a violent finger on Alec… who was so much like him it turned her stomach.
There was nothing to do for it.
Not while both of them were trapped and haunted by what they were, how they had failed, mistakes they had made, and what life had fashioned them to be.
She was a mother, and he was an abandoned child who’d grown up loveless.
She was Omega. Kieran was Alpha.
It could be that plain and simple.
Tall as he was, staring down his nose at her in an obvious stance of superiority, Wren chose not to reach upward and stroke his hair the way that quieted his thoughts.
She might have squeezed his shoulder, touched over his heart.
Instead, her fingers brushed the buttons of his shirt, fumbling to undo them while still holding a burning gaze. An intake of air, held, was the male’s only response before her hands slunk between fabric and flesh. Skimming fingertips over the rippling muscle of his flank, she hooked her arm around his torso, and pulled herself closer.
The hug was selfish on her part.
Wren needed his support, his superior strength, and a moment to prepare herself.
She was so filthy next to his freshly scrubbed skin, and though she knew it was no fault of her own, she felt ashamed.
He should have been the one ashamed, bringing her here to use her in the ruined nest of another woman. He should have been ashamed for dressing up his doll in her handmade frock.
He should have been on his knees begging her to forgive him.
But they both knew it would be her on her knees. Sucking him off. Being mounted from behind. Forced to kneel.
She held him tighter.
Kieran didn’t purr, not while he exuded the acrid stink of impending violence, so she did. And the light rumble offered her some small measure of comfort.
Like his warmth.
His presence.
The fact he had yet to tear her away.
Had she the ability to speak, she would have whispered secrets to him—shared those little private moments that made this hellish life bearable. She would have comforted the broken child who worked the limbs of a man’s body. She would have rebuked this recent behavior, and broken the fogged pipe stinking of spent drugs she could clearly see lying on the bed.
Having made the Warrens her home, Wren didn’t miss the black dust he’d packed it with, the burn marks on furniture and blankets where he’d set it down after sucking poisoned air deep into his body.
The worst kind of drug to dull the greatest type of pain.
And high, he’d bitten that girl.
A thing she knew the male regretted, and that the doll would most likely suffer for.
Cheek to his chest, Wren held him all the harder and took in the chaos of the room.
If a space might reflect the owner’s mental state, the big room was Kieran from head to foot.
