Chapter 8
“What’s the last thing you remember?” a female voice, sounding distorted, pierced through Elm’s fog.
He groaned and shook his head, dragging himself out of what felt like a deep sleep. The lights hurt his eyes and he blinked against them, raising an arm to block it out. There was a clatter, and the metal cuff around his wrist pulled, drawing his attention to it.
Elm was on the mattress in the cell, still chained to the wall.
Like an animal.
He growled—admittedly, not helping his case—and then rested his eyes on the female alpha ten or so feet away.
“Come on,” she said. “Stay with me. You’ve been in and out of it for about an hour already.”
“An hour?” His voice was raw and scratchy and he winced when he heard it, though he supposed he should be used to sounding like he’d spent six years screaming his head off by now. Hell, maybe he had. “How long?”
She knew what he was asking, that he wanted to know how much time had passed since he’d last been conscious, but she frustratingly ignored him, repeating instead, “The last thing you remember, synthetic?”
“I’m a fucking person,” he snarled, anger bubbling over.
He was sick of this. Sick of being here, treated like their own personal lab rat.
At least they’d put pants on him. The last thing he recalled, he’d been naked and begging Levi to take him.
“You can’t treat people like this! You can’t treat me—”
“Oh?” she cut him off snidely. “And who are you, exactly? Out of all of Kian’s siblings, you aren’t even the useful one. The twins can fight, understand politics, and are in control of their omega instincts.”
“I was literally beta weeks ago!” he reminded.
“Actually, it’s been over a month now.”
Elm froze.
“Want to tell me what you remember now?”
He wanted to take that pen out of her hand and shove it through her eye, actually. Which was an entirely new feeling, and one he wasn’t sure he liked.
Because she had a point.
Out of Kian’s siblings, he was the useless one.
Elm could fight—he just hadn’t been given opportunity—but it was true his skills were a far cry from what he was sure Shiloh and Sloane were capable of.
He didn’t know, since he didn’t know them, but it made sense.
As a beta, he’d make for a terrible bargaining chip, so even though Kian had put guards on him the second he’d returned to planet as the Dominus of the Eumia, the guards never really had much to do aside from following him around.
The most danger Elm had come into in the past year had been when he’d accidentally cut himself with a sculpting tool and bled on the clay he’d been working.
Pike had pulled a bandage from his back pocket.
It’d been kind of funny.
Betas were boring. Average. They led uneventful lives free from the toxic pull of pheromones and the need to breed like demonic bunnies on steroids.
“That bastard left me empty.” Elm remembered the discomfort, and when that discomfort had turned to pain.
How the cramping had been so bad, he thought he’d crack teeth from clenching his jaw so tightly.
How he’d leaked everywhere, from his dick and his ass, and how he’d caved—embarrassingly early—and begged the alpha to mount him. “The mattress is different.”
“You ruined the old one,” Fiora confirmed. “What else?”
“That’s it.” He blew out a breath. “I remember him watching and doing nothing as I suffered through my heat, and then nothing. I must have passed out.”
“You slipped into a coma, actually.” She shrugged when his eyes went wide. “Nothing to worry about. You’re awake now.”
“I was in a coma?” He glanced around the cell. “Why the hell wasn’t I brought to a hospital?!”
“There was no need.”
“Fuck you!” Elm shot to his feet and stormed forward, the chains only giving him a foot or so of slack the moment he stepped off the mattress, leaving more than enough room for her to step out of reach.
He roared—some horrible sound he’d never made before that had her placing her hands over her ears and racing to the other side of the cage.
Fiora slammed the door shut and snatched the gasmask she’d left on the chair.
The stupid, pretentious one the Leviathan had sat in the entire time Elm had been suffering in front of him.
“Where the hell is he?!” he demanded. “Get him here!”
Fiora adjusted the mask over her face and gave a curt shake of her head. “The Dominus isn’t someone you can boss around.”
“I’m going to kill him!” He was going to try, and fail, anyway. Elm knew better than to think he actually stood a chance, but the anger was burning brightly enough to have logic and reason turning to ash. “You’re all monsters! Every last one of you!”
“We’re no worse than Kian,” she stated, laughing when he growled in offense. “Seriously? Come on. Surely you know better than most what he’s like. His capacity for cruelty is infamous. How do you think he surpassed the twins and took the throne?”
“Shut up!” The metal bit into his wrists harder, and he felt skin tear. “My brother has done more to clean the streets of Synastry and Glyph than your shitty Dominus ever could.”
She snorted. “Silly synthetic omega, putting aside the fact Kian has only ever done anything that directly benefits himself in some way, you should probably take a breath, and take another look around.”
Elm frowned, not following.
“He isn’t just my Dominus anymore,” she elaborated. “He’s yours too.”
“Bullshit!”
“Did you say you were a person earlier?” Fiora clicked her tongue and wagged a finger at him.
“No, no, no. You, my synthetic omega friend, are property. You’re fortunate in the sense that your owner has a tendency to be careful with his belongings, but,” she dragged the word out until Elm noticeably stiffened, “the flipside to that is he also has this thing about submission. As in, we all have to.”
“I’m not submitting to the psychopathic wannabe mad scientist who is holding me against my will,” Elm stated.
“Even if it means surviving another day?”
He started weighing his options.
“The Leviathan is a dominant alpha, one strong enough to subdue even your intense pheromones,” she continued.
“You might be able to make me retreat, but you’ll never overpower him.
It’s best to fall in line, cooperate with the rest of the experiment.
It’s in your best interests as well as ours.
You want to know how you work just as much as we do, do you not? ”
Sure.
But…
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” he said. “I know you plan on killing me once you’re done collecting your data.”
She tipped her head. “Did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t have to.” It was pretty obvious. “I might be the useless brother, but I’m still Kian’s brother nonetheless. That makes me a threat.”
“If you told him everything that was done, yes, I imagine so.”
“Help me.” It was a long shot, but what choice did he have but to try and play on an empathetic side she may or may not have?
“Help me escape, and I’ll promise to send you all the data you want.
I won’t tell Kian anything. Do you think I want to?
Can you imagine that conversation? Hey, big brother, just so you know, I was fucked up the ass by a machine and then went feral for your greatest enemy. Yeah, hard pass.”
“I don’t experience embarrassment,” she replied, then added before he could become too dismayed, “but I understand it as a concept. It would be rather embarrassing for Kian to learn all of that about you.”
“Which is why I won’t tell him. Trust me, I—”
“The thing is, Elm,” she stopped him, surprising him with the use of his first name, “I oddly do believe you. I think, at this moment, you have every intention of keeping your word to me. And maybe you’d really keep it forever.
Maybe you’d tell Kian it was those idiots at the docks this whole time.
But frankly, what you do won’t matter. It’s what I do that does. ”
His heart sank, even though he knew it wouldn’t work.
“How much do you know about the White Frost?” she asked, and when he refused to answer, sighed.
“I imagine Kian at least prepared you a little? Gave you a list of our high standing members so you’d know who to look out for.
You’ve met Baal and Koah, they’re scary, but arguably normal, wouldn’t you agree?
Let’s say in comparison to your brother, and our Dominus. ”
Okay…
Another thing she wasn’t wrong about.
“I haven’t had much chance to get to know them,” Elm said anyway, but that didn’t deter her.
“Out of the White Frost, I’m one of the few that has…an emotional disorder, so to speak.”
“Yeah, I have had plenty of time to get to know Levi, in case you’ve forgotten.” That guy had issues.
“That’s why he prefers surrounding himself with non-psychopaths, as you put it.
He knows how unpredictable we can be because he’s one of us.
The Leviathan does not like unpredictable.
He wants to be kept interested, sure, but that’s not the same as keeping someone around who may or may not betray him on a whim. ”
“He doesn’t trust you,” Elm surmised.
“To an extent. I’m here with you, aren’t I? If there was no trust, I wouldn’t be.”
“Right, because I’m so special to him.”
“You’re extremely valuable, I don’t know why you don’t see it.”
“Maybe it’ll just take some getting used to. Like the heats. Or the whole being trapped thing. Or these new violent urges to claw your face off.”
That seemed to intrigue her.
“You don’t usually have violent tendencies?” she asked.
“Literally never.”
“Interesting. I’ll have to jot that down.”
“Not a science project.”
“If I let you go,” she picked up their conversation, typing a note on her holopad at the same time, “Levi will take that as a betrayal, a lack of judgment on my part, and he’ll slaughter me. To ensure we both live a little longer, let’s not bring this up again, deal?”