Chapter 14
Kane was gone again. He had shit to do, he said. Then he asked her if he needed to lock her in holding while he did the shit.
Sasha said no. Given the revelations about her father and the drones of their household, she felt defeated. Emptied out. She didn't think she had the energy to leave the compound, or even her bed.
The little room felt lonely. She lifted the collar of the shirt Kane had dressed her in and inhaled his spicy musk. The smell eased her despair and chased away the emotional breakdown that was so close to happening.
Sasha did not want to cry about things she couldn't change. Her father was dead; there was no confronting him. There was no going back in time to see if she could change him or stop him from hurting people. No going back to prove Kane a liar.
She'd given Kane the combination for the safe.
It felt like giving up—like surrender—to write the numbers down for him.
Kane was a man who had fought and won many battles.
He had forced other alphas to concede to his terms before.
Man to man and muscle to muscle, Kane was stronger and so freaking patient.
Sasha wasn't sure how to rise after her capitulation and decided two feet on the floor and a shower would have to do.
It must have been late, as the twins were absent. No doubt they’d gone to get her meal, or take care of her laundry, or check in with Zinanno about her day.
She got out of bed, making it how she liked in an attempt to regain some sense of normalcy. By law she was a woman now, even if her body was still acclimating. Still, she brought her tattered bunny stuffy to her nose.
It smelled like home. One ear was torn in half, it had no eyes, the strings of its nose were unraveling, and all the stuffing was missing from the legs.
Her dad had gotten it for her after one of her "childhood accidents." He always defended Maura. He always said they had to take care of her.
She picked up another stuffy, the pink fleece of her belly rubbed raw from Sasha's fingers. This one he’d brought home after a trip away on business when she was eight. He'd been gone for weeks. When he returned, she remembered telling him that he needed a good wash.
She could still picture it, his face going a little pale when she’d said it. She hadn't liked his scent, and piecing it together now, she realized it was because he’d smelled like blood and sex.
He’d come back from business smelling like that so many times that she eventually stopped mentioning it.
Once when he'd been gone, Maura had shut Sasha's fingers in the door.
She was old enough to know about putting ice on wounds.
When Silas discovered the injury, her fingers were already healed crooked.
She kept dropping the dishes when she was doing her kitchen chores.
Sometimes she and the drones only had oatmeal to eat, gloppy and plain. Or there was no water in the house, and they had to walk to a well an hour away. Or there was no electricity. They were poor, and the gifts from her father felt like generous, loving extravagances.
Sasha lined them up on the floor. Each one had come after a trip away or an injury, or sometimes both. There were two bears that represented separate sets of whip marks on her bottom and thighs.
Lilla and Lanny found her standing in the shower. They must have seen her sadness in her slumped shoulders and expressionless face.
"Sasha, you need to come out. We have to get dressed. You have company coming." Lanny's expression was flat, her lips pinched.
"What's wrong? Is everything alright?" Sasha turned off the shower.
Lilla entered, holding a colorful wrap dress. "Your shopping trip."
Anger often had a burning smell to Sasha, and this morning both twins smelled like an old fire pit.
"I wasn't thinking. It was stupid. If I'd been smarter, I would have used a data pad to at least plan my route, but I didn't even do that much. I'm so dumb sometimes."
"Sasha. Is that it? That's all you have to say?" asked Lilla.
"You were dumb and should've planned better? Really?" said Lanny.
That was not the answer they were looking for. Their anger ratcheted up. "What is wrong with you? I thought they were going to kill us. Lilla and I were with Davila. We were getting the ingredients to make the soap."
"We thought it would be fun for you," Lanny added.
"Guardsmen just swooped in on us with their long guns ready and everything. They put all the servants, all the drones, in one room."
"We were locked up for a couple of hours. No one said anything. We didn't even know why or for what, Sasha."
"And then they started asking questions of all the servants in the building."
Sasha started to feel very small.
"We answered their questions, but we didn't know anything." Lilla rubbed at the tears in her reddening eyes. "I thought we were friends. Like sisters. Equals."
She had hurt them, Sasha realized. She hadn't been thinking. She'd wanted to get away from Kane and his rejection, so that was what she’d done. She’d given no thought to what would happen to her friends.
Merrick had used the drones to punish Sasha. Most often it was a whipping that he forced her to watch. Sasha had been told that Kane reserved corporal punishment for breed, but was known to just kill those who failed him.
She knew the guard who touched her was dead, but he hadn't said what had happened to Zinanno and the guards she'd managed to outwit. Feeling selfish, she realized she hadn’t asked.
Volatile man. She felt it in his touch that he would never hurt her, but that left the rest of the world vulnerable to his displeasure.
Sasha wrapped a towel around herself. Even if she had planned better, she wouldn't have been able to tell them her stupid plans. It was better they hadn't known so they couldn't be accused of helping. She had protected them.
The way they protected her.
Sasha looked at Lilla. "Did my father ever do anything to you?"
The twins always gained color in their faces when they were angry, but they both blanched at the question. Their angry scents turned sour.
"Did he and his friends do stuff... bad stuff to you and the others?" Sasha asked again. She rattled off the names of all the female drones she could think of. Remembering that Kane said shine worked on men to relax them also, she mentioned a couple of the young males too.
She could see their answers on their faces. They had protected her. They had all sheltered her, kept her in the lie of a life her father had built for her.
"You had your reasons for not telling me," Sasha said. "And I had my reasons for not telling you."
The following silence wasn't just awkward, it was painful. Sasha wasn't angry, but their deception, and her father's deception, rankled.
Her entire world was shattered. Her father, the man who told her stories, set her on his shoulders and bounded her around the yard, tickled her to submission, taught her how to make lemon gin and honey mead.
.. That man was an evil man. His sudden death had been the most terrible thing to ever happen to her.
Until now.
She would have lost herself in sorrow if her mother hadn't come home with Merrick. Merrick, a prowling, hungry alpha wanting the throat of all her beloved people. Ironic that she had survived her grief because the threat of him kept her from getting lost in her own head.
"Did Merrick do the same? Did he use you?"
Lanny made a disgusted face. "Not for sex. But you know he relished being lord of the manor and taking every bit of control from us."
Lilla nodded. "He loved being in control. Humiliating all of us was fun for him. But he never even got hard like most men do when he was tormenting us."
"And my father?"
At the mention of her father, the twins grew uncomfortable again. They didn't want to talk about it. Sasha tried to be respectful despite her morbid need to know more.
She took the dress from Lilla. "Who is the company today?"
Subdued, Lanny said, "Nurse Sara, Doctor Bruns, and the queen."
"What?" Sasha gasped.
Lilla said, "The queen will be here in a couple of hours!" Her subdued mood fell away with this grand excitement. "You need to get yourself together."
"It's time for the works." Lanny waved her hands around Sasha. "The whole pie today, my dear. This is the queen. That armpit hair must go, not just shaved. Gone!"
"And all the other little hairs," Lilla agreed with relish.
"The queen doesn't care about my little hairs." Sasha protested.
Lanny disagreed. Strenuously. She gave the pretty dress to Lilla and motioned to a basket full of stuff. "Davila raided the girl bathing room for us. She said you like sparkles. I'm okay with sparkles, just not every color at the same time."
Sasha smiled. It was the first one of the day, inspired by the look in Kane's eyes and that little curve of his mouth when he inspected the different lotions she had rubbed all over her body.
And then she gave a little gasp at the pleasant jab of pleasure that kicked her right in the apex of her thighs, leaving her dripping.
The twins couldn't help but notice. "Did you just... mini-orgasm?" Lilla asked.
Damn that male. Her reflection in the room’s big mirror showed a blush spreading from the top of her head all the way to her chest.
"What brought that on?" Lilla pressed.
Sasha shook her head. "So, what lotions are in there? Anything but vanilla."
"Aww, that’s my favorite," Lanny whined. "She picked out warm scents and lotions, mainly. There's stuff for every part of your body. Wow, look at these."
Lanny held up prettily shaped bottles and jars. "When do we get to see this girls’ bathing room? Davila said it has everything from the best breed and drone shops in every sector."
Sasha shook her head. "As far as I know, there is only one way into that bathing room, and I'd rather avoid it for now."
"Because of the harem?" Lilla smiled knowingly.