Corrupted (Alpha's Claim Book 5) by Addison Cain (read more books txt) 📕

nothing to be done for it but sip tea and drink in the moment before it was gone forever. “I don’t know what it means to be the most powerful woman in Bernard Dome.”

Because surely she was powerless.

Annette set down her empty cup. “It means, sweet Brenya, that you can have as much honey as you want.”

“Annette… I’m sorry.”

Blue eyes as pretty as the sky outside the Dome did not glitter with amusement, playfulness, or energy for life. They did not glitter at all. “I understand now why you begged for Beta rations. Honey only goes so far.”

Throat bobbing from a nervous swallow, Brenya set down her too sweet tea, silently agreeing that the honey would never be enough. “Annette, everything you’re saying to me, he will hear. I’m sure he’s even watching.”

“The Commodore? Of course he is watching. He sent the honey.”

It was hard to even speak his name. “Ancil, Annette. Your husband.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Ancil is not watching. There is nothing in this room of worth to him.” A feminine wave gestured toward the two silent Beta attendants, in their matching dresses and pinafores. “Not that they won’t report to him later. But if he has any questions, they will center on your behavior today, not mine.”

Failing to glance at the attendants, Brenya drank in the blue eyes of her friend. Eyes that seemed much wiser than she had ever shown herself to be. “And what will they say?”

“That, though you acknowledged estrous, you have failed to mention your new pair-bond. That you appeared emotionally unstable. That you ate and drank all that you were given. That you squirmed in your seat and picked at your cuticles. This will please him. He will not want you to outshine his new Omega. Lucia’s performance in a social situation would have been flawless.”

It wasn’t flippant. It wasn’t rude. It wasn’t bitter. Annette was simply matter of fact.

Brenya had missed the honesty of Beta conversation, so much so that the soft smile on her mouth was genuine. “Then they can tell him that I didn’t mention the pair-bond, because I didn’t come here to talk about Jacques. Jacques talks about himself enough.”

Reaching for the teapot to refill their cups, Annette offered a simple “I know why the Commodore fell in love with you.”

“I don’t understand what ‘in love’ is supposed to mean, but whatever it is you felt for Ancil, that is not what the Commodore feels for me.” Eyes going out of focus, Brenya stared into the middle distance, poorly trying to explain the horror in her chest, the gnawing, unwelcome savagery, the endless intrusion. “It’s a hunger that will never be satisfied. And it will keep eating me until I am dead. It has no consideration for my life. I don’t really exist to it. I’m just the trough where it feeds. And it hurts, Annette, far more than falling from the Dome did.”

“And to think, I desired to be an Omega more than anything else in the world.” There it was, another brief flash of grief that no amount of Beta rations would ever fully quell. “Maybe Ancil would have loved me back if I was.”

“I’ll love you instead.” Just as she loved the Dome and the good people laboring within it. “I’ll love you, even if he never lets me see you again.”

“The Commodore won’t.” There was no emotion in Annette as she confirmed what Brenya felt echo as true through the pair-bond. “You made a grave mistake when you walked through the door. You forgot that you were here to hold my baby.”

A wash of cold dread chilled Brenya to the bone. She stumbled for an explanation, because he was watching, and he was calculating, and she had poorly tried to manipulate and failed. She made herself look at the child in the cradle. One conveniently positioned right beside her. Rosy, chubby cheeks, the tiny nose, and puckered lips. “Your son… is asleep.”

“Yes, sedated so he wouldn’t cry in your arms.” Looking down at her child, Annette reached out a hand to gently rock his cradle. “The tiny thing cries constantly, since he’s been denied my breast. I can’t risk it, you see.”

Because of the Beta rations.

Staring down at her son, Annette smiled. “I told you, wives find our purpose in our children. I have never seen anything more perfect than my son.”

Brenya couldn’t follow where this conversation had gone. “Jacques told me that your parents held important positions and—”

Still rocking the cradle, Annette confirmed what Jacques had said. “They have very important positions, positions that could petition parliament and be heard. Which is precisely why I have forbidden them from entering this room. Neither my mother nor father may touch my son. Because I know what they will say.” The cradle continued to sway, Annette’s focus completely on her sleeping child.

Something was very wrong here, Brenya wishing she understood the nuisance of conversation. “What will they say, Annette?”

“To forget. To allow my son to slip away. They would make promises that my marriage contract might be dissolved and a new husband provided. Yet Ancil would never bear an unwanted complication to restrict his Omega’s offspring’s legacy. If I leave this room, my son will die.”

This is what Annette had been trying to convey from the beginning, but Brenya was too stunted to understand. And now that she’d had to say it straight, there would be so many consequences for everyone who had sipped honey-laced tea. “So you are working within the confines of our station and situation, which is why you ate the Beta rations and told me not to interfere.”

“His name is Matthieu, and I refuse to forget him.”

8 Greth Dome

There was nothing that had ever existed or that might ever exist like the feel of his Omega’s cunt choking his cock for seed. Vocal—because it was safe to fully let go in this home he had prepared for them—Shepherd let out guttural groan, praising her, in harmony with her