Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 65151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
“No. I can’t neutralize the warheads themselves, only override their guidance systems. If any Dome initiates a strike, Followers will turn their warheads’ coordinates back on the source. It is up to them to manually stop the launch or blow themselves apart.”
His stature would never be colossal, not like Jacques’s, but Jules’s authority was absolute. He moved everywhere in her thoughts, settling into every crevice, soothing her mind as if calming a spitting kitten held by the scruff. “But it’s a single contingency. Once we intervene with a launch, they will seek to override our control. It could take them years, but people always find ways to sabotage their best interest.” His eyes sharpened on her for an instant, the pupils contracting as if to punctuate the thought. Deliberate, judgmental. “And you need to understand that I can’t stop Domes I don’t control from building new satellites and making mine obsolete. It would take decades, but these threats are not simple. I’m not a god, Brenya.”
In some ways, though, he was. Her god. The creature who had complete control over her life, for better or worse.
“Are you planning to invade them too, to create a world order?”
He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “All I wish is to live my life here with you. I promised you Bernard Dome. I promised you peace. I meant it.”
Brenya could not put her finger on it, but in that moment, she felt he lied.
And she knew he sensed it. That he knew her every secret thought.
The harder she resisted his insistent stare, the louder the reemergent click, click, click at the back of her skull banged. Infernal, endless tapping warning her it would only grow more fervent, that it would mercilessly pound her skull to powder if she did not pour her submission on her mates.
Lowering his voice to a soothing whisper, Jules reached for where his clean shirt waited on the bed, pulling it over his bleeding shoulder. “Have some pity for me. I don’t enjoy doing this to you at all.”
God no! She could not handle another nightmare, her voice shrill as she demanded, “Doing what?”
What else could he possibly do?
“Taking you to Jacques.” And with that, he surged forward, catching her hard against his chest. Hoisting her up, where Omega thighs instinctively wrapped around his waist, as he carried his screaming mate out the door.
10
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER?”
That voice….
Pressure built inside Brenya’s skull, the clicking metamorphosing into a hammering thud. A heartbeat in her brain.
“No. No. No. No.” The metronome of her resistance. Her refusal.
Around the Beta’s waist, her legs clung, squeezing. Nails sank into Jules’s skin, her desperation, her internal willingness to do anything Jules asked. Anything. If he would just take her back home.
To her nest.
“No. No.”
But Jules was walking onward, toward that distant bellowing nightmare.
“BRING HER OUT. SHOW ME SHE IS UNHARMED!” The rhythmic slam of flesh against steel punctuated Jacques’s roar. Once. Twice. A third time. “I will rip this fucking Dome apart piece-by-piece if I have to!”
Each impact reverberated through the corridor, the sound of muscle and bone colliding with tungsten bars and amorphous metal.
A beast hurling itself at cage walls.
“I’ll break every bone in your body, Jules Havel, with my bare hands, and piss all over your corpse! Show me my mate!”
The desperation of the Alpha’s wail did things to Brenya, moving inside her like a serpent.
Summoned her.
Filled her with the urge to obey. A dreamlike haze. Her body weighed down with sand.
Nose stuffy from the sobbing, she sucked in a desperate deep breath.
But with that sip of air… that long drink of pheromone-laced oxygen, the room went fuzzy.
She shivered.
Her Alpha was there.
Calling to her louder than the banging in her brain.
Yanked on her leash.
Hard.
“That’s right. Breathe it in, Brenya.” Jules was so careful with how he held her. Firm, unyielding, but composed. Measured. Unconcerned by any pain she caused him from clinging to him or the bleeding bite wound in his shoulder. Unreactive to the nearby presence of the other male. To the threats. To the noise. His mind, his care, it was steady. Focused only on her. His scent soft and enveloping. “That is your Alpha. I am your Beta. You are our Omega. Inhale our scents. It will help. I have you.”
Instinctually, the way she gulped air was like a fish out of water. Her muscles going slack without permission, her brain fizzling through warbled thoughts until there was no thought left.
Mental silence. A hard reset.
“There you go. Yes. Feel that? You can relax into me. You don’t have to fight.”
Fight? She didn’t have any energy left to fight. It had been fisted and fucked right out of her. It had been wrestled on the floor and dressed in her history. It had been carried down a hall while she’d bucked against the Beta like a maniac. It had been crammed into an elevator with a killer and its soldiers.