Filthy.
Used.
Scattered with leavings.
Her shoulders shook and the male shoved her away, barking, as if the tone might hide the tremor in his voice. “Drink water first. There’s food over there.”
Stacked trays, old plates, half-eaten things the population of the Warrens would be desperate to eat, moldered atop the room’s desk.
She stared at it but made no move to walk through the mess.
“What? Do you want me to hand feed you, or something?” Anger brought the wrong kind of light to his eyes. “Move!”
It wasn’t just that she didn’t trust her legs, she didn’t trust herself at all. Wren stood her ground.
Or she would have had a wet cough not stolen her forced bravado.
Before she might compose herself, he had her by the elbow. Rushing her through the carnage, he dragged her into an equally messy bathroom, and bent her over the sink.
Without being told, she angled her head under the spout, sucking down cold, trickling water between rattling pants of breath. Somewhere between the fifth swallow, the clump working its way from her lungs broke free.
Spitting it against the basin, she saw the same thing Kieran did.
Blood.
That’s what broke him.
“You’d rather die in the Warrens, choking on shit, than be here?” His question, though spoken softly, was so very angry.
And instantly, so was she.
Pushing off from the sink, letting bloody phlegm swirl down the drain in a parade of clean water, Wren wiped the back of her mouth on her arm.
Yes, his life had been hard.
But she’d lost her family.
She’d lost her innocence.
She’d lost her home.
And she was going to slowly lose her life to mud and fetid air.
No one—NO ONE—wanted to exist in the Warrens
Chest heaving, Wren turned her back on him and went back to swallowing water.
Gathering her ratted hair in his fist as if to hold it for her to drink, Kiran held her skull under his power.
He could have flung her across the room for her insolence. He could have stoppered the sink and drowned her in the basin. But he just held tight, watching while she sucked down water like an animal.
And then his fingertips traced over the healing scratches on her back.
Scratches he had put there fucking her against the wall of her home, knotting her atop a pile of refuse, and pinning her down in the night to keep her warm.
Chapter 4
Skin pricking, stomach near bursting from the amount of water hastily guzzled down, a shiver passed over Wren.
It was his touch. The way the edge of blunt nails dragged down her spine. How he released a possessive low hum under his breath.
Kieran intensified the awkward moment, his words distant, as if he spoke to himself. “Is what Toby claimed true? Even though they cast you off, you came back for your mates?”
Both Toby and Caspian might have marked her, both might have possessed some sort of intention toward her, but neither was a mate. A bite mark didn’t make a mate.
Love, trust, and mutual respect did.
Toby may have wanted her forever, but Wren suspected that any Omega female might have served his need to bond. Yes, he’d taken the time to learn her language. But he had also used what she’d taught him to manipulate all those around him. He’d beaten her boy, and he’d lied.
It had been his hand that had flung her into the mud before his guards. Where was his kindness then? Where was his mercy? How about his love? Wren almost snorted at the thought.
Delusional male; one she was so angry with, she had no idea how she’d stomach his body rutting into her.
And Caspian? The First Alpha had already told her he’d set her free upon estrous. This half-formed bond was just some experiment—an oddity for the First Alpha to experience between knotting the myriad of women in his pen. More importantly, unlike Toby, Caspian would not have bitten her had she not excited him in the frenzy of her violence. He truly didn’t want her, not when it tarnished his infamy.
Caspian merely made the best of a bad situation and his slip in judgment—he used her for his personal indulgence, fully prepared to sever ties.
No, she had not returned here for her mates.
Sighing, trying her damnedest to dismiss the shudders Kieran’s fingertips still drew from her flesh, Wren shook her head.
Still bent over the sink, resting her weight against the basin, she glanced through the mess of her hair. No longer did Kieran cut the image of anger. In fact, he seemed abnormally settled when he met her eyes, smeared in her dirt, as he was.
There was a clarity to his next question that was very unlike the frivolous and cruel Second Alpha. “You could have run away… avoided us, but you came back here. Why?”
It seemed he was expecting a grand statement, but Wren hardly knew where to begin.