Chapter 6
Sasha’s grand plan and her ready arguments shriveled in the fear that overwhelmed her the moment she stepped into the room with Alpha Constantine Kane and his guest. She’d finally made it into the man’s presence, only to recognize that she’d made the worst mistake of her life.
"You are not Mary," he said. His voice was a low, masculine growl vibrating her bones.
A dangerous wolf at her back. While all alphas had that tone, deep and powerful at any volume, Constantine Kane's voice was a distinct, life altering experience.
It was not a voice one dared say no to. Ever.
It was not a voice one wanted to hear when he was angry.
It made her afraid.
Nervous already, her hands trembling, Sasha stumbled over her answer. "I'm not Mary. She was busy."
This was true, and she was glad of it. A lie would have been impossible with this male. His aura chilled the room, a leashed threat.
His self-assurance and power unlike any she had encountered before.
Sasha had helped Mary be busy so that she could answer the call to go to the conference room and clean up a little mess.
It was the perfect opportunity, the one she'd been waiting for while hiding in the kitchens, acting useful.
The household was busy enough that no one had the time to question an extra pair of helpful hands.
Nothing had ever made her feel as weak and as helpless as the apex predator growl of the alpha warlord at her back. He was wholly out of her experience range. His smell, his voice, his very presence made her tremble and rethink all her choices in the last three days.
The reality smacking her in the face now made her physically ill. Who was this male, and by the rod, why had she ever thought he was the one to save her?
She looked at the floor, cleaning buckets dangling from her hands. She couldn't look up. She didn't want to see what monsters surrounded her. His presence robbed her of all her confidence and bravado.
Why had she dared this?
There was another man seated nearby, close enough to her that she could see the ornate hem of Administration robes out of the corner of her eye. He grunted impatiently.
"Clean that mess and get out. I can't stand the smell of blood and brains this early in the morning. Shit, Kane, I haven't even had breakfast yet."
"It's never too early to kill liars," Kane replied with a lazy drawl.
Was he talking to her? Or about the previous owner of the blood and brains?
Sasha could feel the burn of his eyes on her as she lurched to the chair and wall where, to her horror, a liar's head had been smashed like a melon. There was no corpse, but spattered and pooled blood, pulpy slime, and bits of skin stained everything in the area.
She had grown up surrounded by casual, thoughtless violence. Merrick himself had taught her the many ways that alphas reveled in savagery.
This was something new.
She’d had no idea this was the kind of mess Mary had been called to clean up. Was this routine? Did poor Mary have to drag soap and bleach up here every day to wash blood and guts off the walls and floor?
Piss, shit, vomit, spills, fluids left over from sex, blood from bar fights—for the last two years she had been helping the drones of Drover's End deal with all of that. This was a brutality that she had never seen before. She couldn't process it.
Sasha was going to be sick. She was going to faint. She needed to run. Impulse after impulse bombarded her.
She forced herself to her knees beside the mess, the buckets clattering beside her. Soapy water spilled. She spilled more when she tried to seek out the scrub brush in the nearest bucket.
Where should she even start? She didn't want to touch it. More than just the sight of it, the lingering aroma, the last traces of terror and pain mixing with the smells of blood and body, paralyzed her.
She was prey. Prey for the sort of wolf who could do this. Prey didn’t stick around and clean up messes left from the wolf’s last meal. Prey ran.
She didn't know what to do with this.
She schemed and cheated her way here, set on pleading her case. But this was not the kind of help Sasha needed. This kind of violence was the very thing she was hoping to escape.
"The hell kind of servants you keep, Kane?" the robed man grumbled.
"Definitely not Mary," Kane said from somewhere behind her with a put upon sigh.
She heard a rustling just before a massive male hand, too near her, too close, dropped a red-spotted cloth. Nothing in the world was going to make her turn and look at him when he felt like a towering giant at her back.
Her mind sputtered. Hold still. Play dead. Become invisible. She wasn't moving, but her body locked down, her breathing too rapid.
She felt heat at the back of her eyes. Tears. Tears were ready to burst out of her already.
Fearful eyes slid toward the bundle Kane had deposited beside her. It was a shirt and towel, both saturated in blood. Constantine Kane had been a very active participant in the mess she had been called to clean up.
Sasha couldn’t stop the sounds gurgling out of her mouth, couldn’t make her body act like nothing was wrong. Everything in her life was falling apart–the life she promised her father she would lead was slipping from her fingers before it even started.
She had been so stupid to come here.
Clean up the mess, she reminded herself. She needed to do this and get out.
A third person walked into the room, large and heavy, if his footsteps were any indication.
Sasha was now surrounded by dangerous masculinity and the scent of death.
Three strange alphas. Their overwhelming aggression smell saturated the room, exposing their nature.
They were nothing like the drones who came to her for help, that she easily coaxed into following her orders.
Nothing like the betas who taunted her breeder status, but never dared touch her.
Nothing like the few alphas she had encountered.
She knew other alphas would consider Merrick young, and now she knew why.
Trapped in this room with these strangers, she could compare Merrick to the three seasoned, mature males.
Their indomitable will, their leashed power—especially the man known as Constantine Kane.
Next to Merrick, these men were predators in their prime and the other, a puppy still chewing on shoelaces.
She'd made herself so vulnerable coming here. She felt like a rabbit surrounded by wolves.
She couldn't do this.
"Take the girl to Holding One, please."
Kane sounded bored. He knew she wasn't Mary, obviously, but what was he thinking? Was this her end? Had she risked everything to come here just to be found out the minute she walked into the room?
The heat behind her eyes leaked out, spilling down her cheeks. Those evil, treacherous tears were quickly followed by wracking sobs.
Hands clamped down on her shoulders, lifting her as easily as if she were a child's toy. Her legs were weak, vision blurred by her tears. She didn’t dare lift her head and couldn’t move for the fear.
As though he’d realized asking her to walk would be a fool's errand, Sasha found herself tossed over a man’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
"You never fail to entertain a guest, Kane," the administrator’s voice dripped with condescension.
"And send the right Mary this time," Kane said.
*
Holding One turned out to be a concrete room with a big drain in the floor and chains hanging from bars too high for her to reach.
A torture chamber.
Kane's man said not a word to Sasha.
He did exactly as he had been told. He put her in the room, then closed and locked the door.
He could have tried to touch her. Rape her. Made disgusting remarks and vile threats. Instead he obeyed his orders like a well-trained soldier, and that filled her with more fear than if he had not.
What kind of male was Constantine Kane that other alphas obeyed him without question?
The kind of alpha warlord she hadn't even been able to look at.
Sasha always thought herself strong. She thought she was a fighter. Merrick always called her a defiant little bitch who didn't know her place in the world. But even when he threatened her with so much misery, she always felt she would survive somehow. She was sure of it.
But now? Constantine Kane was a murderer unlike any male Sasha had ever encountered. She didn't know how she was going to convince someone like that to help her. It seemed a reasonable plan, up until she walked into his office and was directed to clean up brain matter.
So much blood.
And it was on him as well. He'd been changing his clothes. That had been his shirt. His towel. Had he done that damage with his bare hands?
She hadn't even lifted her head, but she had felt his presence like a massive block of ice at her back.
Merrick and Maura had backed her into a corner, and in her desperation, she had made the worst possible choice. She'd acted impulsively. Now she just felt stupid.
She couldn't stop crying. She hadn't wept this much since her dad’s death. She hadn't wept at all since that night. Tears ran down her face, to her chin, uncontrollable sobs burned up from her chest, waves of emotion that refused to stop.
So stupid to come here. Should have waited for the Selection. Silas was right. She was going to die.
Her face felt hot and puffy, snot and spit covered everything. Sasha was still weeping at the unfairness of it all when the door opened and the alpha she had come to see entered the room.
He approached with a chilly, refrigerated blast of air against her skin. The male emanated a frozen, indifferent self-control. She didn't look up. Still couldn't face him.
"Alright, Not-Mary," he grumbled. She jerked as if he’d set his fingers between her shoulder blades and touched her. "You are just a child, aren't you? Why does a child trick her way onto my staff and get herself in a position to come to my office and see me?"