Yet in the foggy dim of the Warrens’ night, it was not a sneer twisting Kieran’s lips when she pulled away. It was a frown.
Shivering from the loss of his heat, a light groan accompanying the movement that rammed a jagged bit of scrap against her spine, she shifted her attention from him—from that pained expression—and took a good hard look at herself.
Caked in drying mud, more naked than clothed, warm semen slipping from her slit to instantly chill on her thighs…
And healthier than she had been in years.
Hip bones no longer jutted out. Her bared breasts had fullness and weight.
She shivered.
“You’re cold.” It was as if he gnawed his tongue, biting back unspoken slander. “You will go inside your home and you will not come out.”
Wren shuffled back even farther, lavender eyes leaving her filthy body to take in the Alpha.
The Alpha tucking away his somehow still hard dick.
Kieran fought the teeth of his zipper before scrubbing his jaw with his palm. “Knowing Toby, he’s already prepping a transport of food and water for delivery.”
Doubtful. Wren could feel her bones shaking with his madness. Toby was ripping rooms apart and screaming at the sky, nowhere near the right state of mind to organize such a thing. But that didn’t matter.
Trying and failing to cover her breasts with the remnants of her bodice, Wren nodded anyway.
“If I find out that you didn’t heed this order, if I hear a peep about you scavenging or trying to run, I’ll cut off a whole lot more than the kid’s hand.” This was the domineering Kieran she knew, the one whose words dripped malice. The one who stood over her and threatened. “Do you understand me, Jax?”
There was no argument. Only an idiot would scamper around the Warrens with her tits hanging free. Just smelling of Omega was a recipe for a violent death. She told him as much when she gestured toward her exposed chest and pussy.
When green eyes lit on cold pebbled nipples, drifting lower to where his seed leaked out, they came alive with more than just anger. “What does it feel like, that bond you got with them?”
Hmmmm.
Curious Kieran would have been slightly amusing had Wren not been shivering in the cold. Tired, and thirsty. Her body had grown spoiled by access to life’s necessities and already complained about the lack.
Hugging herself to preserve warmth, she gnawed at her lip and felt exactly how Caspian’s and Toby’s half-formed bonds worked against her.
“Well?”
No point in brushing it off, she pointed to her guts and mimed a twisting cramp. That was Caspian, who even from this distance she could feel fumbling through the pinging in his guts with women and a great deal of drink. Each climax that erupted from his cock Wren felt like a ghost of sensation building at the base of her spine to burst and leave her insides completely unfulfilled.
She knew he suffered.
She knew he could not comprehend the cause.
He didn’t sleep though the hour was late.
He felt the foreign pings of worry.
Lacking the ability to feel her out properly while gorging on his lustful appetites—it distracted him. Because he felt something was missing though he had surrounded himself with everything.
She wondered if he’d even jolted at her earlier burst of gratitude toward Kieran, or if he’d been too busying knotting his entire pen to grasp that that wondrous emotion had come from her.
Had he recognized her orgasm with his Second was not part of his physical pleasure?
Probably not.
That would require him to look past his own selfish interests and see her as more than just property. He would have to actually care to tune into the tiny two-way connection between them for more than a self-indulgent reminder of a terrible victory.
And a man like him, wasn’t capable.
Next Wren ran her palm over her shoulder, her arm, pointing to joints to signify the bones underneath. This was where she felt Toby. Bone deep, resonate, the frame that held her together utterly affected by him.
Male obsession tingled in a constant state of vibration. There was also adoration, determination, and guile.
Were she not certain he raged in the Waterworks, she wouldn’t be surprised if he were standing in the shadows watching her now—watching this with a smile.
Twisted guts and endless tingles, that ebb and flow and subtle taste of other emotions. And this was not even a full bond.
To explain to Kieran his effect on her, she caught the tip of a nail against his neck, drawing it slowly down until the Alpha broke out in gooseflesh.
Openly shivering, he closed his eyes, and let his head fall back while she extended the sensation.
Purring without thought, shoulders relaxing, it seemed he begged for more attention, but her lesson was over.
She was tired.
Voice soft as it had been that first time he’d seduced her on the floor of her home, Kieran said, “Go inside. Don’t come out.”