Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
DEACON
Róisin fidgets as we get closer to the ballroom, and I want to soothe her. There’s a sheen of sweat on her brow, and it almost appears as if she’s burning up. Being sick isn’t going to get her out of this performance. My father wants his little dancer to dance, and that’s what she’ll need to do.
I don’t know what he has planned outside of that, but he’s gone through a lot of work for tonight.
My father is a hard man, and he has to have everything in place.
The chip that he injected into my brothers and I when Balor turned fifteen ensures our obedience.
It seems my father has a special affinity for ruining birthdays.
Dad mentioned that today is Róisin’s birthday, and I’m unsure if I should mention it.
None of my birthdays have been worth a shit since he adopted me at four years old.
My life only got a little better when my brothers came along a few years later.
We are closer than blood, we love each other, but that chains us together too.
The chip is a “kill switch” injected deep into the muscle of where our shoulders meet our necks.
My father told us that messing with it will cause us to lose our heads, as it’ll explode inside of our bodies, effectively beheading us.
In many ways, we are just as much prisoners as Róisin is.
Forcing the thought away because it never fails to enrage me, I step back a little more to be able to watch Róisin. Her body is a work of art. I despise what my father forced us to do to her a year ago, but the chips were already embedded in our bodies, and there was nothing we could do.
Just like all I can do is admire the way her hips swing as she walks barefoot. Her dress is nothing more than panels of sheer material, but Dad said that she chose this outfit for her performance. The way he speaks about her makes me think that she has more power than she might believe.
What prisoner chooses an outfit where her breasts are outlined against the material and her nipples strain against it like perfect pebbled diamonds?
It’s tight enough that her breasts won’t bounce, and the panels of material that slide along her legs are made of different lengths.
It’s as if she’s on display but not. It’s a very confusing outfit, and I hate that my cock strains with excitement against my pants.
It fills me with questions. Is the cage a front? Is she regularly sleeping with my father? Ugh, I hate that I don’t have answers!
I’m the oldest of my brothers at twenty-eight, with Dorian twenty-five years old, and Balor is twenty-three.
We are good little soldiers, who just want to keep each other alive.
We have no morals, understanding of empathy, or compassion.
And yet, Róisin has us periodically breaking our father’s rules.
Her hair flows over her back, flirting over the divot where her ass meets the base of her spine.
The color of her curls are dark like my soul, bringing out the sharp contrast against the white dress, while the front is braided and pinned back in some way to keep her face clear of it.
Róisin tends to hide behind her hair, so it’s rare that I get to see her like this.
Her steps falter as she hears the crowd beyond the doors of the ballroom. Leaning forward until my lips touch the shell of her ear, I shiver when I feel how warm her skin is.
“Don’t get scared now, Tiny Dancer,” I tell her. “The only thing you can control is how well you perform. So go do that.”
Straightening her shoulders, she drags air into her lungs. It sounds raspy and worried. Her face clears of the anxiety she’s holding, and she drops her hands to her sides. I can see the bubble of calm that I often see when she’s on display.
It often seems that there’s nothing that can penetrate it.
Her scent of blackberries and vanilla becomes thick in the air as we continue to walk into the ballroom, and my eyes cross with arousal and possession.
In another life, this girl would be mine.
Every nerve ending in my body sings when I see her, and smelling her unique scent makes me want to run away with her.
This is why my brothers and I defy our father when no one is looking to make her a little more comfortable.
The cage she lives in is barely large enough for a medium sized dog, yet she spends long hours within it.
Dad says that it’s to protect her from the outside world, but I think it’s to remind her of what she’s lost.
I saw her perform a few times with my father, and she was ethereal. Every line of her body was long and lithe, her pirouettes seamless. Dad is obsessed with her, and before I knew it, she began to live in the cage. I have no idea what happened to her parents, or if she had any. He never said.
Dad appears next to me as we walk, and he pulls her arm through his, speaking in a low voice as he walks her to the dance floor that was laid down just for her. A full concert plays in the background as people sit at the tables surrounding the performance area with their drinks.
Róisin’s focus is completely on my father’s words, nodding to show that she understands.
My father is a bear of a man. He’s burly, with red curly hair and a barrel chest. He commands attention through violence and his fists when his words aren’t enough.
While Róisin is tall, she isn’t someone who can defend herself with her willowy curves.
It’s easier to stay alive for her if she simply agrees with whatever he wants. Coming back in my direction, he leads me to the table where my brothers are already seated.
“Let’s see if she can impress me,” he mutters, getting comfortable in his chair.
The music stops abruptly and Róisin gets into position.
“Has she had time to prepare anything?” I ask softly. There’s a rum and coke sitting in front of me, but I ignore it to keep my wits about me.
“Absolutely not,” Dad chuckles. “I haven’t had a chance to spend very much time with her since I’ve been so busy. Her failure will taste even sweeter for me when she’s gagging on my cock.”
I should keep my mouth shut, yet I take a chance.
Nonchalantly, I watch as Róisin listens to the music as it plays.
Her long eyelashes flutter over her cheeks as if it’s heaven to listen to before her arms reach slowly away from either side of her body.
Her skin glows with each movement, and I realize that the light is picking up a shimmer that’s painted all over her skin.
“What if she doesn’t fuck it up?” I ask so only he and my brothers can hear.
Balor and Dorian tense at my words, and Balor’s fingers twitch with the need to pull out his man bun to fuck with his light brown hair.
He likes to hide whenever he can but rarely gets the chance.
He’s our father’s best executioner, and has a poker face that rivals Róisin’s.
All he wants to do is exist in the background, and murder is a great way to do that.
Dorian on the other side gives a sly “what the fuck” look before allowing himself to watch Róisin’s beautiful turns.
She’s classically trained in ballet as well as jazz, and she blends it so that it becomes her own.
Dorian’s gray eyes are trained on her every movement, and he runs his hands through his blonde hair in an effort to ignore me.
I know how well developed his ability to multitask is, so I let him pretend.
It’s why he attends meetings with our father so that he can act as a living lie detector.
He’s highly skilled at paying attention to a person’s movements and figuring out patterns.
This has also led to the ability to learn how to hack into places he shouldn’t be able to, a skill that he’s kept hidden from our father.
Defiance can be done silently, kept hidden until it’s time to show your hand.
Dad watches Róisin as well with a determined interest, watching every step, turn, and jump.
“I can see what you mean. She’s doing exceptionally well for someone who had no time to plan a dance out. I once heard her say in an interview that she could see every movement in her mind,” Dad muses. “Róisin wasn’t always mute.”
That answers a question I haven’t ever expressed aloud, and I incline my head in his direction.
I’ve never heard her speak before, as her dancing seems to speak for her.
It seems to tell a story, each time she takes the stage.
Secrets abound within these walls in Maryland.
Dad plays things very close to the chest, and sometimes he punishes us for things he swears we should know, but he’s never told us.
Living with him is like having a live mine under the ground you’re standing on, never knowing when you might trigger it. This means that we’re in a constant state of readiness for something terrible to happen.
My job is to do whatever he throws at me. It doesn’t matter how distasteful or large the job is, I have to do it to keep my brothers and I alive. I spend a lot of time incinerating bodies or feeding them to the pigs. Depending on my father’s mood, I follow his every demand.
Róisin is hindered by her lack of ballet slippers, but she simply adjusts her dancing so that you can’t tell.
It affects the way she turns and she can’t go en pointe, yet she prevails.
Her long hair moves with her, and the many layers of her dress expose her when she twirls since she’s not wearing underwear.
Gasps fill the air, but it’s as if she can’t hear them as she loses herself to the music.
Her pussy is bare and beautiful, her ass subtle with the perfect bounce.
It’s difficult not to adjust myself in my pants, despite how uncomfortable I am.
I keep my hands to myself and my cock remains tortured in my slacks because otherwise Dad will know I want her.
The pretty little dancer’s blue eyes are sightless, showing that she’s not seeing the crowd surrounding her.
Her leg ascends upward as she rises from a deep plíe and her foot pushes off to spin on one leg.
My brothers and I lean forward without realizing it, and my mouth waters as her skirt flies out around her.
“White isn’t as innocent as you’d imagine,” Dad murmurs softly. “The little dancer is broken, she just doesn’t realize it yet. Every day, the light dies a little more in her pretty eyes. Fuck, look at her. There’s something in her ass.”
Now that he mentions it, I remember the odd way she moved as she walked beside me.
“Rubella was too subservient when I collected Róisin,” I mutter. “I wonder why she did that.”
Dad doesn’t say a word as we watch Róisin push herself through each move. The color is high in her cheeks in a way that has nothing to do with makeup, and the alphas growl around me. Looking around, I realize we may have a problem.
“She was acting oddly when I walked her down here,” I admit, watching as the guards keep the men watching seated. “Her skin is really warm, and I don’t think it’s because she’s sick.”
Dad looks around the room, realizing what I’m not saying. I truly believe the omega is in heat.
“If she can get through the rest of this dance, then I won’t punish her,” he muses.
My gaze remains on Róisin as she pushes past her own discomfort, only focused on the next move and how it fits with the music.
The band never stops playing, following her movements as if this was all planned out perfectly.
God, she appears as if she’s barely touching the ground as she travels along the floor as she dances.
“Will she just return to her cage?” Dorian asks, pretending to be conversational.
“No. No, I don’t think so,” Dad says. “Róisin is pumping out some intense pheromones. Can’t you smell her?”
The three of us nod, because how in the world wouldn’t you be able to smell Róisin right now?
“No, I think the good people that we’ve invited need to be properly compensated,” he says. “Just look around, sons. Tubrin is always so well controlled, and he’s about to go into a rut!”
Tubrin is his uncle, and I can see the way he’s watching Róisin with predatory eyes.
“Compensated how?” I breathe, my heart beginning to pound harder. None of my father’s ideas are ever really good.
“Balor,” Dad grunts, leaning forward to gaze around me. Wonderful, he’s ignoring me.
“Yes sir,” he says, prying his eyes away from the tiny dancer. “How can I help?”
It’s an immediate response, one that’s practically coded into our blood. Whatever our father wants, he gets. He holds our very lives and deaths in his hands.
“Once she’s done with her dance, you and your brothers are going to fuck Róisin,” Dad says. “I think it’s time that you lost your virginity.”
Balor goes pale, refusing to look anywhere but my father.
My brothers and I aren’t bound by blood in any way, but everyone sees us as such.
The nights are long and trauma has a way of breeding curiosity.
The three of us lost our virginities on Balor’s seventeenth birthday.
It was the only decent thing that came from a day that celebrated birth.
My father largely leaves Balor alone about his supposed virginity, but word has gotten around that he doesn’t ever glance at a woman.
The manor has its whores, men and women who receive shelter for spreading their legs.
My father has made Dorian and I fuck them over the years, however they were never our firsts.
“I expect you to make the girl scream,” Dad continues.
“If your brother is right, though he didn’t say as much in so many words, then she’s an omega in heat.
We’ll bring in the whores to take care of the alphas going into ruts while they watch the three of you fuck Róisin.
People will be talking about this for years! ”
The air freezes in my lungs as I gaze at the tiny dancer now grimacing in pain as she continues to dance. I have never hated being right more in my entire life.
This will be the second time that I’ve stood by and watched her be raped, but this time I’ll be forced to participate more than before.
I’m sorry, Tiny Dancer. I have people to protect, and in this life, you can’t be mine. I’ll just have to pretend instead. Please forgive us.