Everything felt fuzzy, disconnected—as if she’d floated beyond reality and watched from a distance.
Toby’s hand on her shoulder, the very hand he’d used to wield the whip that had mutilated her boy, didn’t so much as make her flinch. She’d hardly felt it at all.
Whatever he muttered to her, was lost.
But she was not lost.
She was more than one terrible collection of days.
More than the brand on her face or the bite shaped scars on her skin.
She was a mother.
And unlike the little ones dead and buried in the mud outside her home, Alec and Mikael still lived. Would thrive.
She had to help assure it. Do whatever it took to make it all better.
Alec needed her now. He needed her collected and capable. He’d need her smiles and purrs.
He needed her medicine.
Yes! Pushing from the ground, Wren ignored the crouching male at her side and ran to the murdered doctor’s box. Rifling through the medications Toby had meticulously organized by day and hour, she knocked it all aside in search of the precious injection: a healing boost.
When her hands closed on the prefilled syringe, feeling rushed back. Holding it to her heart, excitement on her face, she’d turned to Caspian and shown him.
“No.”
How could it be so simple to deny her child relief?
Yes.
“No.”
Holding it out to him, she crossed the room and went to her knees, prepared to beg… lick his boots if that’s what it took.
Radiating agitation, the brute fisted his hands into balls, and glared. He met her eyes and snarled, “I told you no.”
Wren tried to unfurl his fingers, to put the syringe in his hand. But he was too strong. So she set her cheek to his thigh and held to his leg as her shoulders shook.
“Mouse, you are angering me.”
There had to be some way to purchase mercy for her boy!
Clawing at his zipper, she pulled out a flaccid cock, feeding it into her mouth just like Rosie did. Tears streaking her face, she tried every trick she’d seen, and though he swelled, Caspian never got fully hard.
The shove that knocked her back onto the floor sent the syringe flying from her grip. Scrambling after it, Wren let out a cry when Kieran snapped it up in his hand. It was him she fell upon next, kneeling at his feet and holding onto his leg so that he could not kick her away.
No matter her debasement, the Second Alpha wouldn’t even look at her.
Aloof, staring forward, he ignored the silent begging and louder sobs. He even ignored her screams when Toby forcibly peeled her away. Kieran just walked out of the room, dismissing her completely.
Striking out at the Third, she shoved him off and stood before the pair of offenders as if she stood a chance at seeing them ripped apart. Panting, smoothing her hair and trying to catch her breath before she fell into a dangerous mental state, she shook, coughing up old phlegm that rattled its way out of her chest.
And could not pull herself together even enough to breathe properly.
Enraged, Caspian threw her box of medicines, roaring, “What more do you want from me? Never have I spared a hand!”
Pills spilled over the aging rugs, bottles broke.
Next he lifted her breathing treatment machine over his head, smashing it against the distant wall. Metal split at the seams, internal bits destroyed.
“You take all this crap and still you cough! I have to hear you wheeze while you sleep. I feed you a fortune in engineered foods. And you want to give what I provide to a traitor? He knew you’d sold your body to me and came begging for a place anyway!”
She didn’t care about the medicines or the machines. All she’d lived for had been those boys.
Wren growled… she hadn’t meant to, but the insulting noise had slipped out all the same.
Both Alphas froze.
Nearest her, Toby reeked of something far deeper than anger. That was nothing to the wave of fury emanating from the First Alpha across the room.
“GET OUT!”
Stepping between her and the rampaging First, Toby held her behind his back. “I’ll take her upstairs.”
Nostrils flaring, Caspian’s livid glare turned upon his Third. “Toss her back into the Warrens. Let her remember what life was like before I dragged her out of the mud.”
***
There was no fight left in her when Toby dragged her from the waterworks. None.
He wasn’t purring or sweet, but nor was he as rough as his anger signaled an infuriated Alpha should be. There were no words between them, only the singed buzz of an insubstantial link.
One that fluttered with… concern.
Nothing like the burn that twisted her guts from the male above. Even with Caspian far away and locked in his den—she could feel his tumultuous wrath. Feel how it was blended with desperate lust as he thought to slake such feelings on the body of another.