Chapter 10 #2
Jacques Bernard, dressed in his finest breakfast jacket. Brocade and pomp and scent.
Male.
Enticing.
Waiting for her notice.
Knowing she could not resist indefinitely.
“Why is blood smeared all over her clothing?” This time, the imperious dictator reared its head, snarling at the Beta at her back. “What have you done to her?”
Brenya, eyes flaring, looked over the boogeyman of her nightmares and thought she might be sick.
The question was not what had been done to her. The question was what had been done to him.
His palms were splayed against the glass, fitting between sound bars, fingertips working to reach through the perforations that allowed scent to travel between his prison and her.
Each hand missing one finger.
Yet not the same finger on each side—the mutilation by design.
Pointer finger on the right. Ring finger on the left.
Why?
The stumps were pink on the ends, healing. And he was thinner, his fancy clothing hanging from his frame.
Beautiful face untouched. Why?
Why take the fingers and not the face?
Jacques had not been able to properly braid his flowing blonde hair short two digits, the plait messy, her fingers twitching to reach out and fix it as she had been trained.
Even so, ecstatic blue eyes glowed as he looked her over, as he pressed his whole self to the barrier and put his nose to the holes to suck in another breath of her, lip curling at the scent of fear, of dried slick, and of vast quantities of Beta cum.
“He raped you!” A snarl, matching the way the Alpha swung his head up toward the Beta standing at Brenya’s back.
“No.” One small word. That same word… again. Her new litany. “No. He didn’t.”
The play of rage, of disgust, over Jacques’s face. The hunger. It made her take a step back.
“You cut off his fingers…”
A warm pet down her spine from her husband, Brenya arching away from Jacques and into Jules’s touch as the Beta softly said, “He didn’t feel a thing, I assure you.”
But… “Why?”
A steadying grip came to her elbow, directing her toward the table she’d ignored. One set up flush against Jacques’s cell. “Breakfast. You need to eat. That’s why we are here, remember?”
No. That was not why they were there. They were there so she could smell her Alpha and be near him… so she could notice that one of his eyes was wrong, that it didn’t quite match.
Because it was glass.
Jules had taken Jacques’s left eye and replaced it with a false one.
And tears were falling down her cheeks to see it, the beauty of the man distorted just enough to confuse.
Jacques followed where Jules led her, pressing to the bars and glass so his Omega could see him.
“Brenya, let me touch you. Tell him you need me now. We have an agreement, he and I. All you have to do is ask for me. Just ask.” Said with a growing, desperate smile, the Alpha trying so hard to fit his fingers through the too-small holes to reach out for her. To make contact.
An impossible feat.
Jules ushered her to the table—one set with crystal goblets, with golden silverware, with china. A smaller table set up in Jacques’s cell, butted up together. A setup that gave the appearance of one long family table. The glass and the bars bisecting the white tablecloths.
A mirror.
Though Jacques had no crystal, no golden cutlery. He had no food. He had no cup.
No utensils.
Strange.
The lack of symmetry was very disturbing.
And it made her feet catch as Brenya was shuffled into a comfortable chair, one leg tripping over the other.
But Jules was careful, guiding the staggered female anyway, Jacques scrambling, lightly limping to the vacant chair in his cell, so they could be seated together as if this were some state dinner.
He didn’t even growl, snarl, or take his eyes off of her for a moment when Jules took the seat across from him.
If it were not for the glass, Jacques would be able to hold her hand, to feed her. They were that close.
And the Alpha stared at Brenya like she was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. Stared. “I ordered this particular breakfast for you. Dishes I know you enjoy. Please, please eat the food, mon chou. I need to see you eat it.”
But one chair was empty. The seat across from her.
The tables were set for four.
That was Lucia’s seat.
It had to be. The Omega noticeably absent.
But Brenya couldn’t find it in herself to have an opinion on the missing female. How could she when the symmetry of the glass iris crammed in Jacques’s head was wrong? The eye was wrong. It was not blue enough. It did not move as it should.
Her mind dissecting every detail in a way that made the Alpha self-conscious.
Yet he smiled at her with such tenderness. “Brenya, you need some water. I know you like me to hold the cup to your lips, but I can’t reach you. Lift up your glass and take a sip. Go on. You’ll feel better with a drink.”
She obeyed mechanically, suddenly very aware of just how thirsty she really was. Large gulps as she fought the ice, satisfied, the Omega draining the glass as she stared at the Alpha over the rim of her goblet.
“I would reach forward and take your hand if I could. I would warm your fingers. But I can’t. Feel me anyway. I’m with you. I’m right here. You don’t need to be scared anymore.”
What? What was he talking about? Her thoughts couldn’t move from a single concept. Mind throbbing, she muttered, “He cut out your eye.”
Softly, Jacques offered, “It doesn’t hurt.”
“He’s taken your depth perception…” At long last, a quick blink. Only one. Her attention darting to his right hand. “And your trigger finger.” Cutting a glance to the left hand. “And your…?”
Why take that finger? What purpose did it serve? And what was hidden under those loose-hanging, opulent clothes?
He’d limped.
“Brenya.” It was Jules now, Jules leaning toward her, warming her ear with his breath. “How many spoons are on the table?”
An automatic, easy answer that did not require her to look away from the Alpha. “Three. You did not give him a spoon. And technically, his table is separate.”
Jules again. “How many tiles in the ceiling?”
Another thing she knew. She just knew. No need to look, the answer was just built into her brain. “Twenty-seven and one vent. The standard layout for a room of this size in this building.”
“Is the cell sound?”
“Today.” Because everything in the Dome required constant maintenance. And given time, maybe even centuries, the amorphous metal, the glass, would run and wobble. Though those bars were going nowhere.
Lifting the cover away from Brenya’s meal, Jules made conversation with his prisoner.
“When I was your guest, my sweet wife here broke into my cell and tried to set me free. Didn’t you, Brenya?
Poured herself into the room through an air vent like that one.
But your cell, she cannot get into it. Not that way.
There are no vents on your side of the room. ”
Anger washed over that almost-perfect face of an Alpha, darkening the one living eye as Jacques lowered his chin to his chest and glared at his mate as if she’d committed a great crime. “You did what?”
And that’s all it took to snap her out of the fixation, to make her cheeks heat with shame… as if she’d been caught doing something naughty. As if she was to be written up for a reprimand.
Jules not helping as he added coldly, “With a shirt full of leftover food… because she knew I was hungry. She could feel it. Using this very golden silverware as her only tool.” Holding up his knife, Jules angled it so it might catch the light and tell its secrets.
“See the scratches? You never noticed she’d been gone.
She was already so badly bruised that you didn’t see the fresh contusions.
Or notice how swollen her shoulder was from the climb.
“Just like you seem not to understand how sore her shoulder will be later, because you bashed yours into a prison you cannot escape. Do you not understand that all damage to your body ends in pain for her? That’s why I removed certain parts of you while she was under general anesthesia.
It’s why you don’t have a shock collar or screws drilled into your bones that I can tighten when the mood strikes. ”
“Jules….” A small beg, a soft whisper from a nervous woman.
“It’s upsetting, I know. But I want us all to be clear where we stand here.
This bond is precarious, my sweet Omega bearing the brunt of the weight.
Jacques has to understand that I can’t hurt him the way I want to, and he can’t hurt me.
But more importantly, he can’t hurt himself acting like an animal.
Because I can remove his arms and his legs and keep him on waking life support…
but I feel that might not be good for your mental state, Brenya. ”
He could not be serious!
But the Beta was. Dead serious as she gawked at him. This cold killer, this threatening force. This man whose voice could drive an unwitting victim mad.
This was not her mate. This was Jules Havel, the slayer of women and children.
Who held her fluttering fingers in his palm and stroked the back of her hand with his thumb.
“We won’t need to have this conversation a second time, will we?
” But it was Brenya he stared at with that unblinking, horribly bright gaze.
“We are a family now. We will learn to navigate this without crawling through the air ducts.”
“Brenya!” Jacques was red in the face. “Tell me you didn’t try to release this man from prison! Tell me he’s lying. Tell me you didn’t do what he speaks of!”
Jules softened both tone and expression, and he gave her the smile that was only for her.
“I’m her mate. She came to help me, just as someday she may come to help you.
A capable woman who could dismantle this Dome and build a new one from scratch.
But your cell, she will never get into it.
Not without your eye. Unless, of course, you cut out the other one and give it to her.
Not that it would fit through the perforations in the glass. ”
“Stop.” Gaze locked on her plate, on the rich cream sauce on a beautiful piece of white fish, she whispered, “Please stop. You’re right, Jules. I can’t get in. I see how you built it, and I can’t get in. He can’t get out.”
“So, you’re safe.” Said much more gently, the Beta squeezing her cold fingers in his. “When we come here, you will always be safe.”
A snort from behind the glass.
Taking his hand from hers, Jules pressed his knife, the knife, into her palm, gesturing for her to reach for her fork with the other. “Now eat, my dear. I can feel your hunger.”
Something drove her to look at Jacques, to confess why she had done what she had done. “You don’t understand. You can’t feel him like I do. I wanted to save our people. You shouldn’t have—”
“Mon chou, please. I’m sorry I lost my temper. I just…. I need you to be safe.”
The prison encasing the Alpha kept her safe.
The man had been neutered by his cell.
Choosing to eat kept her people safe.
So she flaked a bite of the fish and placed it on her tongue. Finding it good, and light, and soft in her mouth. She swallowed and took another bite. Then another.
“I have missed you.” The Alpha purr was loud, distorted by the glass, but there. “Seeing you now, I could die happy.”
Jules took a sip of his water, ice tinkling in the glass, and said nothing.