Chapter 4
Greth Dome
“You’re not listening to me!” Maryanne had not slept in three days.
Sharp, voice frayed at the edges, her outburst cut through the dank air of her quarters, the sterile perfection Shepherd demanded lost under strewn papers and hours of manic work.
The mess ignored, slender fingers flew across her console, the staccato rhythm of violent keystrokes punctuating her frustration as she shifted between control panels. “Just look at this!”
Caught in the illumination of her monitors, Shepherd stood stolid, arms crossed, expression frozen in that maddening, unreadable mask that she hated and feared in equal parts. Not that Maryanne dared look away from her work to observe him. She just knew.
She knew that smug fucking face so well it was imprinted on the back of her eyelids.
Yet the prick had not spoken a word since she’d dared summon him in a panic… not commented on her frantic report.
It’s not like Maryanne intended to have everything go to shit in the middle of the night. Or that she could have possibly known Shepherd had been mid-knot inside Claire. Normal people should be sleeping at this hour!
How was that her fault?
She’d die a thousand deaths before acknowledging the oversized bulge in Shepherd’s trousers…
the cause clear as day. Maryanne could see from the corner of her eyes that Shepherd was still half hard behind his slacks.
Black fabric not fully concealing the wet patch semen was leaving as fabric clung to the shape of his knot-swollen dick.
Which meant the brute had been balls-deep in her childhood best friend, mid-climax, and her call had pulled him away at an inopportune time. The ballooned flesh had yet to fully deflate properly, unspent cum backing up into his balls.
An unsatisfied Omega was a cranky Omega, and Claire was probably in quite a mood right now.
An unsatisfied Alpha… was dangerous.
Yet he was not snarling, nor growling, nor threatening to pop her head off her shoulders and kick it around like a ball.
It was worse than all that.
He was staring.
Shepherd had not asked any of his pointed questions or made any of his unnerving philosophical speeches. He’d just stood there as she’d shown him that Jules was unreachable and the Beta’s world was about to end.
Without intervention, Commodore Havel would be dead in a matter of hours.
“Look.” Nail bitten to the quick, Maryanne jabbed her finger at the screens.
“Here, and here, and here.” Three separate feeds lit up in succession, each showing different angles of Central’s elites’ finest backroom dealings.
“This has all taken place in the last hour. And these aren’t isolated incidents, Shepherd.
Many of Central’s more scary warring factions are finding common ground and building alliances. ”
The feeds displayed live, closed-door meetings in well-appointed chambers—Alphas in Bernard Dome’s ridiculous formal attire, crystal goblets of wine in hand, faces animated as they discussed imminent insurrection in hushed tones.
Another feed displayed the heated exchange between representatives of two formerly hostile families, now deep in negotiations on how to free Jacques from prison and place him back in power as soon as possible.
On a third, an Alpha female, one of Jules’s most vocal supporters for change, staggered away from her vanity, crimson blooming across her back where her husband’s knife had burrowed deep.
The male yanked it free and drove it in again.
And again. Blood everywhere… shouting that she was a traitor to the usurper clown.
It was then Maryanne dared fully look at him, finding Shepherd’s eyes were still not on the screen but on her. Gazing in a way that let her know he had not glanced at the intel… not once.
Swallowing audibly, Maryanne forced her features into something Follower-like in an attempt to give him what she thought he was looking for.
Fighting the instinctive bitchy twist of her mouth…
because one wrong expression and she would be a corpse.
“As my reports have shown, three weeks ago, the more powerful families of Central were either at each other’s throat, cowing to Commodore Havel in a bid for power, or panicking over the loss of influence with the new regime. ”
She dared add in a gesture, a little bit of flare and Maryanne-style showmanship. “Perfect, right? Their disorder kept the Dome stable while… what, the forty followers you handed to your best friend tried to reorganize centuries of society with a sledgehammer approach?”
It was more than exhaustion that drove Maryanne to dare such a tone with Shepherd; it was outright disagreement.
A bone-deep conviction that they had made the wrong play.
Because if Jules died, she died. “You overthrew Thólos with thousands of men trained in the Undercroft. Had decades to prepare. Bernard Dome is different. Forty followers, a few vials of Red Consumption, and no time to plan is literally going to see your friend murdered.”
Shoving lank, stringy, unwashed hair off her face, flickering monitors highlighted the dark circles under Maryanne’s eyes.
“I tried to tell you. I tried to tell him! I risked my life to openly disagree with something stupid weeks ago. But nooo—no one listens to Maryanne. What the fuck does she know? Well, buddy, I know sex, and I know the kind of scumbags you’re dealing with.
I used to scam them all the time back in Thólos. ”
There it was, the deep well of her resentment for this man, for this unfair situation, this prison where she had the god-like ability to watch everyone else live their lives while she was trapped behind an unlocked door.
“Jules took it too far when he stripped Central of their Beta sex workers and replaced favored servants with men and women who were about to be terminated for aging out of the system. He insulted them. And you know what that did to a bunch of mean, horny Alpha males? I’d like to say they are not taking it out on their wives…
but I can’t. Because I have had to watch that so I can make reports on who is violating whom.
Why, you ask? Because families are now arguing over marital rape and contractual physical obligations.
But one thing they all agree on is that this would not be an issue if the Beta slaves were returned…
or if Jules would give them Greth’s Omegas.
Which Jules is not supplying. They want complacent pretty slaves, Shepherd. Or, they want Omegas they can exploit.”
Remaining perfectly, infuriatingly still, Shepherd asked, “Your point?”
Shrill words flowed, something that sounded an awful lot like actual emotional investment in this never-ending assignment, Maryanne throwing her hands up to the sky.
“Never mess with the pleasures of those you would manipulate! I know you know that. I mean, shit, I watched how you played with Thólos. Central losing their favorite sex toys drove these pigs to work together over pussy. Now they want him dead badly enough to convince themselves they can outsmart Jules before he can unleash the virus. And some of them are shrewd enough to realize they need to cut off the satellite feed so you—and by you, I mean me—won’t be able to interfere from Greth Dome.
And they can, Shepherd. Do you hear what I am saying to you?
They will, in a matter of hours.” Pressing her fingers together to make a point, she snarled, “They are this close!”
Hand flying over the console once again, Maryanne pulled up another feed, showing blueprints being passed between members of what appeared to be Bernard’s emergency response team.
“They’re coordinating. This group is already planning containment protocols and reprogramming which doors will drop, sectioning the Dome into tiny fragments they would control once the satellites are offline.
They could, theoretically, circumvent the virus should Jules release it.
Honestly, it’s crude but clever. Bernard Dome is preparing in a way we never had time to. Jules’s advantage is at an end.”
Reaching for a bottle of water, Maryanne paused long enough to gulp like a wild animal, her throat working convulsively, a ragged suck of breath following.
Leaning back in her chair, exhausted to her bones, she added, “And you’re just standing there glaring at me.
And where is Jules during all this? Unreachable.
He’s gone no contact while Jacques Bernard is strapped down to his hospital bed and being ridden by Lucia like she’s in heat. ”
Slamming the bottle down, Maryanne jostled the plates of untouched food atop her console, gesturing to yet another screen. The feed rotated until a flicker of new footage washed over the room. Jacques Bernard, naked and sweat-slicked, thrusting up into an equally nude Lucia.
But it wasn’t a tryst.
The Alpha was pinned under a lattice of restraints. Bound at his chest, torso, thighs, shins, wrists, ankles… a gag sealing his mouth. Unable to consent as the clearly skilled Omega undulated her hips, milking his knot while he came with a muffled roar.
Maryanne grimaced. “Care to explain that one to me? Because… gross.”
“What exactly do you want, Maryanne?” That was it. That was all Shepherd offered. The menace, the monster, the master who held her leash totally unaffected.
And that just annoyed her to no end.
He’d destroyed Thólos for less.
Preached to the masses in the Undercroft that the corrupt world needed to be burned to ash and rebuilt. But now, seeing this? Knowing every sordid detail in the mountain of reports she’d prepared? Nothing.