Metal digging into the fresh cuts Kieran’s enthusiasm left on her back, Wren watched her breath fog in the night. Felt her delicate tissues pulsate and beg for more fluid from the fat cock inside her.
Whimpered when Kieran dumped another hot load of cream deep into her belly.
This knot expanded all the larger.
A knot the Alpha could not resist grinding deeper as he ripped open her filthy gown and lapped at her nipples.
Raw, tingling, exhausted, broken-hearted, world-weary, Wren lay back on her sharp metal scraps, eyes to the sky, while her unsplinted fingers played in tawny hair.
“Neither of those kids are your blood. Why waste the effort?”
The entirety of his voice was foreign, innocent. And, this was the first honest question Wren had ever heard from the pretentious, cocky male.
Hand to his chest, Wren pressed Kieran to sit up so that she could display the muck-filled yard he’d found her in.
Gated by debris and soppy with too much wet—where the syringe Kieran had dumped at her feet had been swallowed by mud, Wren laced her working fingers in the silent, brooding, utter fool’s hand.
Even surrounded by such a place, Wren knew Kieran had no idea what his eyes fell upon. She knew he didn’t see.
But she looked to at him all the same, and pet his arm as if he were the lost child looking for a home.
Behind them, so many little bodies were lost in that mud. Some sinking, some rising. A sharp eye would see the bits of sun-bleached bone poking out here and there. They would see the little markers etched with names rain and wind had worn clean.
There had been little Faith, barely hours old when Wren had found her squalling in the mud. Tossed away like garbage at the Warrens’ gates. Even though she’d been only child herself, Wren had taken her home, named her something suiting for those large, wise eyes, and held her to her breast the entire four days it took the baby to die of starvation.
Because Wren had no milk and could find no one who might trade with a penniless mute.
She had begged at the gates that separated her sector from the higher levels.
Been kicked, ridiculed, and spit upon.
Stiff with rigor mortis, wrapped in the prettiest cloth Wren could scavenge, the poor thing was properly buried. Weighted down with debris so her little body would not float up in the mud, Wren had scooped mud over the shallow hand-dug grave.
That was only the first infant Wren had stumbled upon over her years in this hell. So many tiny babies cast off to squeal in the muck for milk she’d never be able to provide.
It was those graves she pointed at first.
Kieran looked where she directed, eyes squinted and openly restless. So she’d cradled her arms in an unmistakable position and rocked them. As if they’d held a baby. She pointed to another bubbling mound. Same motion. Again. Again. Again.
Older kids were cast off too. Gwen, Cecily, Brandon, Xerxis, Palo… on and on their names went.
Very few had lasted longer than a month.
Some she got to hold a whole year.
Only Mikael and Alec had lasted long enough to have an actual future.
The Alpha still knotted inside her looked, then glanced back when Wren signaled the height of the child who was buried. She pantomimed a terrible cough.
Beside that grave slept a boy, one who’d been older than Alec when he’d passed. Who had been strong and smart. Wren pantomimed vomiting.
Each lost little life… she told their story without a single word. Starvation, violence, disease… an accident. She made the great Kieran bear witness. She made the bastard see what the Warrens really was.
Hell.
To his benefit, when he had seen enough, he set his forehead to her breast and said nothing. He never asked how many bodies she’d had to weigh down with bricks so they wouldn’t float to the surface. He didn’t ask their names or how she’d found them.
He just listened to everything she couldn’t say.
All the while his knot pulsating between them.
All the while his lips brushing over hers as if they were lovers and not the bitterest of enemies.
Chapter 10
Dress in shambles, bodice shredded down the middle in a way Wren would never be able to mend, she broke from Kieran’s hold when at long last his knot subsided. The panting male still hovered, tensing when she shuffled away—yet this was what he’d continuously demanded from her each time he fucked her in Caspian’s den.
“Get off me. Others do it better.”
Wren had no doubt that they did. And she’d never cared about impressing him.
She just functioned because she had a goal. Save Alec. Heal Mikael.
Survive and try not to smirk at the scars she’d set into their skin in her rampage—avoid staring at their healing noses and black eyes.