Chapter 2
It took two hours to clean Maura and get some medicine in her. Finally, Sasha lied and said the drug she’d put in the water was shine. Her mother drank until her belly bulged, then fell asleep thinking herself pleasantly drugged.
Two hours in that room. Sasha gathered the disgusting bedding and rags for the laundry, wishing she could just burn them. Sadly, fabric was too valuable to waste.
The linens dragged the smell with her as she carried everything, burning the stench into the inner tissue of her sensitive nose. It coated her throat in a thin slime and soaked into her clothing. She needed to wash and change as soon as possible, or her stomach would never settle.
This hall had once been for the household, until Merrick came and decided the family bedrooms could be put to better use.
He moved Sasha out of her previous sleeping chamber and into a little closet at one end of the hall.
Her mother's sickbed went to the opposite end. He’d dedicated the bigger rooms to his female beta workers and an immoral occupation that put more money in his pocket.
Sasha’s skin crawled as she navigated the upstairs hallway past the four rooms where the hired women tended their customers. She never knew what she might inadvertently see, or what kind of drunken male might be stumbling about.
A door that had been closed when Sasha went to visit Maura now stood open. Ditah's room. It was ten in the morning, and Sasha thought it unlikely she had a client so early. She tried to hurry past, but a sharp voice stopped her.
"Sasha! Get in here."
Merrick.
She knew better than to make him chase her. Undoubtedly the smell clinging to her and the disgusting laundry filled buckets would put a quick end to whatever it was he wanted.
Sasha stopped in the doorway, eyes on the floor. An immediate show of submission usually pleased him. She didn't have to mean it to do it.
Rhythmic grunting and thumping greeted her ears. It was another reason not to look up.
"Did you take," Merrick began, as if speaking through gritted teeth, "care of your mother?"
Ditah broke in with a quiet whine. "Please, alpha, that hurts."
Slap. Skin against skin and a weak little whimper.
Sasha kept her eyes on the floor. Ditah's room smelled like sour sweat, musky from old sex. It belied the cheery brightness filtering through her window.
Ditah was not a nice person. Petty and jealous, she had courted alpha attention to gain power. More than happy to welcome sex with Merrick at every opportunity. The woman had no care for anyone but herself.
Last year, Ditah had proudly presented Merrick with a perfect set of twin babies.
As a beta woman with common genetics, she could never give him children of a stronger dynamic, born to be leaders.
She could only have more children like herself, all of them followers.
Merrick cared nothing for his offspring and had sent the babies away to parts unknown.
Letting him take them without shedding a tear, Ditah had acted if she'd done her duty by surviving the Cesarean section necessary to birth them alive. Now the babies were gone.
Only Sasha wondered about them.
It was still hard not to pity the foolish woman. What Merrick was doing to her did not sound pleasant.
"Come here, Sasha. Answer me."
She moved forward, the buckets and filthy laundry held in front of her like a shield. "Yes. I cleaned her up. She still smells bad. She drank water and a little broth, took the medicine. She's not dead yet."
Sasha made the mistake of looking up to see Merrick's thoughts about the last statement. She’d have to wash her eyeballs later.
Merrick had Ditah tied to the metal bedposts, her arms splayed wide.
Her knees were hooked over his shoulders, he bent her in half, pounding into her vagina.
Her normally lovely peach-colored skin was red and flushed, her breasts jiggling with his hard movements.
There was blood on her face. Her upper lip was swollen to twice its normal size.
Merrick—beautiful villain that he was, naked and leanly muscled—kept a steady pace while watching Sasha for her reaction.
He laughed at her. It wouldn’t have been an unpleasant sound, but the man who birthed it was selfish and rotten to the core.
He knew his own attraction. Sasha thought the myriad of elegant tattoos he’d gotten to cover his shoulders and arms were there to distract from the lack of scars most men his age had.
Even though he was pretty, his cowardice in avoiding military service had weakened him.
Her father would have called him “boy” and made him wash gin bottles.
Merrick had intended to use Maura and Sasha to slink into a position of respect and establish himself as a husband-mated slum lord.
Although Sasha had been born with a desire to please any alpha she met, she found her inner nature easily resisted if the alpha in question acted like a complete jerk.
Merrick didn't smell right. He didn’t act right.
Had the man been even the slightest bit kind, she might have fallen under his influence.
But he always had to assert himself, prove he was alpha, prove he was stronger.
He was a bully who used his charm like a fist one didn’t see coming until it was too late.
Sasha’s father used to say, “Character isn’t like gold. You can’t steal what you don’t have.” He would have cut Merrick down with his officer's retirement sword before the younger man could get within thirty feet of his daughter.
Timing his words with his thrusts, Merrick said, "Oh, little girl, I'm sorry, but your mama is so, so, sick. Your time is coming. Look at Ditah. Look at my dick."
His lust spiked pheromones thickened in the room like particles of floating dust, and Sasha sneezed. Her presence excited Merrick. He’d wanted her since the day Maura had brought him home.
Physically immature, Sasha looked and smelled like a fleshy little teenager. She shouldn't have been arousing to anyone. But this man looked at her and saw a glorious future of power and prestige—the realization of all his goals.
An untouched, registered omega breeder was a special kind of trophy. His lust was palpable, and it had nothing to do with her as a female.
Cruel hunger glimmered in his eyes. "Look at me. She can't take me. Even after twins, she can't take me. No knot for the betas. I'm saving it just for you."
It wasn't his alpha command that tempted her to look, but a sick fascination. Sasha closed her eyes to keep from giving in.
He inhaled deep, hoping to scent her arousal. Perhaps it was because she hadn't had her first estrous or made the transition into adulthood, but whichever it was, he had no effect on her at all, and she was grateful.
With her eyes still closed, Sasha missed his expression when he finally caught a whiff of the filthy bedding. The alpha made a disgusted noise.
"Stupid bitch. What are you doing with that shit in here? Get out!"
"Yes, alpha," she said with relief, backing out of the room before he could see she was smiling.
*
The laundry had to be carried down two flights of stairs through a dingy, mold decorated hallway to the washroom. There Sasha found her friends on duty, doing washing for the twenty people that lived and worked at Dover's End. The twin drones smiled when they saw her.
"I bring you a challenge!" Sasha declared, holding up her mess of soiled fabric.
Their faces twisted unpleasantly at the smell. With blonde hair in short, fancy braids they wove for each other and guileless pale eyes, they were a half an inch apart in height and had different face shapes, but their expressions and words were often humorously identical.
"I know. It's bad. Can you help me rinse them out? I need to close my eyes to do it and hold my breath. You two can shout helpful directions from the corner. That's all I'm asking. Don't make me look at this yuck."
The twins laughed. In their late twenties, they wore black leather collars of indentured servants.
Used as collateral in a bad business scheme, their beta father had sold his children into servitude to save himself.
It was common to split up sets among relatives and fostering households.
Sasha was glad Lanny and Lilla had escaped that harsh reality.
All the fertility treatments on the populations of the past had led to children born in sets.
Fraternal doubles and triples were common from beta and human women alike.
Sasha had never heard of omega breeders giving birth to more than one kid at a time; for all the hardships of her dynamic, that wasn't one of them.
Lanny and Lilla were the sweetest things. Their smiles and humor helped Sasha keep hers. She relaxed in their presence.
Lanny came up next to her. She'd had the good sense to find long service gloves. "I'm sorry you had to be the one to go help your mother. I get to the door, and when she starts yelling, I just find my feet turning the other direction."
Drones were susceptible to breeding pheromones in a way that made them the perfect servants. Their free will weakened dramatically in the presence of all the breeds, even immature omega breeders like Sasha, making them obedient but also vulnerable to abuse.
"It's not your fault." Sasha bumped her shoulder affectionately. "You should feel lucky. She looks…" Sasha didn't know how to describe it. "She used to make more sense. She used to want to live, at least."
Throwing all the disgusting linens in the big sink, Sasha went to wash her hands and find her own set of gloves. It had been stupid of her to forget to wear gloves in Maura's room. That layer of protection would have been nice.
"I have never known her to be happy," Lilla said, coming over. She had her own linens to wash, sheets from one of the beta girls’ rooms. It was just a step less disgusting than what Sasha was doing.
Filling a big tub with clean water from the roof reserves, Sasha began the process of trying to wash the mess with as little water as possible.
Water was one of the pub's biggest expenses, a resource she knew not to waste.
How was she going to get the stink out or get them clean again?
It looked a hopeless endeavor, and not one she really wanted to deal with.
Lanny brought over a box of cleaning flakes. "These are enzyme cleaners. They will help." She sprinkled some over the top of the laundry. "But you are going to need to put your hands in there," she said with a smirk.
"Yeah. Can't avoid that," Sasha said.
Her dad had told her tales of when this world had plumbing that worked, machines to do this job and electricity on demand to run them in every city across the planet.
Some nicer sectors still had that, she'd heard. He’d told her that the twelve sectors had once been one giant thriving, independent drone city of millions of people, a human built metropolis of modern technology, and if she kept her eyes open, she would see the remains of their creative industry.
Sasha missed her father every day. He had loved her endlessly, taught her everything, and dreamed big dreams for her. "You're going to help me change the world," he’d said.
His marriage had not been a happy one. Maura had gone through her estrous cycles, gotten pregnant, and then become so dangerous she needed restraining. Doctors advised Sasha’s father to help Maura through her heats only if she asked, but to not pursue a physical relationship with her otherwise.
An alpha male dominated by the mating instinct; he'd gone elsewhere for his pleasure after Sasha's birth. When she was little, Sasha had thought Lanny and Lilla were her sisters. Her father had doted on them, had chucked them under the chin and purred for them the way he did her.
He’d had a soft spot for pretty, biddable humans that led him to father drones of his own. He'd been honest about that. Sasha wanted brothers and sisters, but for some stupid reason, he didn't want any of them around Dover's End. He'd sent them who-knew-where.
There was a safe in the still room that contained all the recipes for the gin and mead, plus her father's records. Sasha knew the combination, and one day she hoped to have the chance to open it. Maybe he had saved the information of where he had sent her human brothers and sisters.
Swishing her hands in the cold water, Sasha saw that Lanny's enzyme was helping. Thank the shining stars above. The laundry might be saved. She smiled at it and began to turn and rub the cloth.
She thought again of Maura's threats and Merrick's assurances that Sasha's time was coming.
Could she save herself? A marriage contract would assure Merrick's total control over Sasha's life and Dover's End.
He would have control over Lanny and Lilla—over all the indentured drones whose papers her father had bought—to buy, sell, and torment as he saw fit.
There would be no reprieve from his quest for wealth and power; he'd already shown a willingness to do whatever it took to get what he wanted.
She had to get out from under his thumb.
"What has put that look on your face?" Lilla asked. "It's not helping? Do you want the lye soap?"
Sasha looked up at her bright blue eyes. "That will put holes in the sheets, don't you think?"
"Better holes than that smell." Lilla wrinkled her nose.
Sasha laughed. "No, I think it's working. Thanks."
Driven by her madness, Maura planned to destroy Sasha and Dover's End, including all who lived here. She'd make them all vulnerable to Merrick's capricious nature.
Her father had envisioned a good life here.
He used to talk endlessly about restrictive Administration laws in the other sectors, high taxes, and loss of freedoms, telling Sasha how she would help him build something better.
He'd say, "We didn't go through the Great Desolation to learn nothing about the danger of power hungry dictators naming themselves king.
" He’d say the breeds didn't need a king who wanted to control everything and take everything.
The strong should be free to lead the lives they saw fit.
He and his friends would gather in the bar and talk late into the night about building a better society, toasting their ideas with glasses of Dover's End gin.
That had been two years ago. Just two years.
Maura had hated that dream. Merrick only cared for money and prestige.
Sasha had to do something. She had to protect her friends. She had to decide her own destiny.