Wren's Song: Volume One Read online

  Only the slender ankle under Caspian’s stroking thumb. That was the only place that had somehow been spared in their battle.

  A corkscrew of needle sharp sensation rocked Caspian back on his heels, mud brown eyes darting back toward the woman whose gaze was not shut to him. But that was not what held his attention. Bubbling antibiotic foam had been sprayed over the gouges in her neck, dripping a fizzy pink mess down her filthy chest.

  Watching it, knowing the reason she bore such wounds, left his overused prick so hard it sawed at the zipper of his pants.

  Kieran, arms crossed over a scratched chest, let out the most disappointed of breaths. “You marked her, yes. Get it out of your system before she hits estrous. Fuck her, fill her, knot her, whatever. Then wash your hands of this madness before we lose face.”

  Toby, veins in his neck throbbing, seethed. “You got hard and marked her with cum, just like the rest of us.”

  “But I never bit her!” Scrubbing a hand over his jaw, Kieran looked away from his First as if ashamed. “Cunts of all flavors are just down the hall. Females who desire nothing more than to please. You cannot trust one womb! She tried to kill you and you marked her for it!”

  A hundred women, maybe more, waited in the pen to suck his cock with gusto on demand.

  To debase themselves and do filthy things just for a moment of his attention.

  And this mouse was practically a virgin. Unskilled. In no way eager.

  Hated him.

  And this little slip of girl is the one he’d bonded to in a passion.

  Estrous or not, that foreign pining in his chest—the infectious pain—she was the cause!

  The Beta doctor cleared his throat, swallowed, and began to set the bones in her other swollen, gnarled hand.

  The Omega didn’t so much as blink. By all appearances her lavender-rimmed pupils told the story of a bitch in heat. But it was all a lie.

  Warm, salty tears marked her blood-speckled cheeks. A deep sense of loss resonated through her spirit straight into Caspian’s heart.

  His pretty mouse—the utterly still, wrecked girl—grew so far lost in her thoughts, it was as if she didn’t notice how the doctor manipulated her joints, the pricks of his needles, or the steady stream of Toby’s obnoxiously loud purr.

  For all appearances, she felt no physical pain.

  But it was a lie. Those violet eyes were clouded by hurt. She even inadvertently shrank when Caspian leaned over her to draw in a long analytical sniff.

  He’d threatened the doctor so now she would not so much as whimper.

  Fussing like a smitten schoolgirl, Toby grabbed a discarded pillow and fluffed it, adding it the makeshift nest he’d been building around her for the last hour. All of his efforts smeared with blood and reeking of Omega fear.

  Knee to the mattress, he smooshed that pillow into place so she was cocooned in Caspian’s bedding, his voice suddenly soft. “There you go, my sunshine.”

  A bonded male smitten with his mate.

  One who practically vibrated with possession.

  One who overstepped himself when he grabbed a creamy thigh, gently prying the Omega’s legs open. There, for the whole room to see was a cock-battered cunt that still seeped Caspian’s seed.

  Between pretty, swollen labia oozed a pearlescent trail of male conquering.

  Of domination.

  As if he had the right, Toby reached forward and scooped up a palm-full of leaking cum. A moment later that same hand was smeared against the gaping wounds on the pretty mouse’s neck—rubbed in while Caspian roared.

  The Third was flung across the room, Caspian pressing his female down into his mattress. Like a maniac he licked that cum from her wound. Cleaning his mate while offering a comforting purr.

  Tongue fully outstretched, he caught himself.

  Under him she was utterly still, oddly pliant.

  Notched between her bruised thighs, cradled in the shape of her body, Caspian said the words before he could stop himself. “We could come to a compromise, you and I.”

  Though she seemed asleep, the Omega rattled.

  “Show me you’re willing to play by my rules, and I’ll keep my fierce little mouse.”

  It wasn’t a compromise he sought, no matter the words. He wanted something she was utterly unwilling to offer.

  The Omega didn’t want him. She didn’t want Toby. And Caspian suspected she loathed Kieran. But that thing caging the organs in his ribs hungered for more than her surrender.

  “Be a good girl for me until your next estrous. Play house and please. Give me all an Omega owes her Alpha, and I will set your boys free.”

  For all that she moved, she might as well have been asleep. She judged his word as valueless.

  Listing his demands, Caspian began with, “I will fuck other women.”

  Not so much as a flinch.

  Irritated that she believed she could ignore him, Caspian licked at her lips. “Sometimes I’ll want those women to fuck you while I watch.”

  Chapter 2

  “No.” Wiping blood from his lips, Toby returned to the ailing mouse’s side. Voice even, almost conversational despite the reek of rage that wafted from his skin, he said, “Our Omega would not enjoy being used by your sluts. Fuck whoever you want, Caspian, but my mate will know only our attention. If you still want Henrietta delivered wearing a big bow, I suggest you honor this stipulation.”

  Ignoring Toby, Caspian put his nose to the mark that had shredded the Omega’s neck, ignoring how she stiffened at the word mate. “You will nest in this room.”

  The Third refused to be unheard. “Caspian, your girls are not to touch her. I’ll put down every last bitch in the pen before I allow it!”

  Caspian further doled out his commands. “I expect you to smile and purr. Obedience will be rewarded. Defiance will be punished.” Hand slipping up her bite-riddled leg, the First Alpha smiled. “You’ll see to my cock, to Kieran’s, and to Toby’s. You will learn to take all three of us at once, dripping pack seed from every last orifice. That is how you shall be paraded before my men.”

  There it was, a wince. The mouse still had some pride.

  “It’s up to you, pretty mouse, whether this arrangement lasts a handful of months or a year. The sooner you’re healthy enough for estrous, the sooner your boys will be free. Therefore, you will eat what is given. Drink all we offer. You will exercise and dutifully follow the doctor’s orders.”

  A spark began to grow behind the Omega’s distance stare. Under weighty distrust, a tiny sliver of hope—just enough to assure her good behavior. Because he knew she no longer had any faith in his empty promises.

  People like her survived on belief. And his little mouse was nothing if not a survivor.

  One morsel of faith.

  A mustard seed.

  Careful of her wounds, Caspian climbed off her body, standing over the strange, pale thing. “Alec is to be punished for disloyalty to the Syndicate, pretty mouse. Nothing can be done to change that, but you have ten days to convince me that instead of cutting off his hand, he should only be whipped.”

  “Be a good girl, and I’ll wield the whip myself,” Toby crooned, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. “I promise it won’t be more than a tickle and a little blood for show.”

  Kieran, still scowling, had his own warning for the Omega. “Toby would also be the one sawing off the dumb kid’s hand if you fuck up.”

  A nod, almost imperceptible, came from the female.

  Chest rumbling with the offering of his purr, Caspian smiled. “My pretty little mouse is a good girl. She won’t need another reminder.”

  “No,” Toby agreed, another kiss pressed to a snowy head. “She won’t.”

  ***

  Two days reprieve was offered. Two days for flesh to heal.

  Yet splinted finger bones were weeks from fully mending. She could not talk, not that anyone really wanted to hear her thoughts.

  No, they wanted her to smile and sleep, to accept th
eir caresses and food.

  The myriad of bites that peppered her flesh were no longer pink, but slivery scars. They blended in with her skin yet simultaneously stood out like a beacon—shining against powder white.

  Glaringly obvious.

  A blazing maze that said, owned.

  Caspian had taken to staring at them, eyes fixed, anytime he was in the room.

  That is, when he wasn’t touching them, licking them, gnawing over select spots as if to keep his favorites pink enough to stand out.

  Her breasts. Her inner thigh.

  The only place he treated with true reverence was her ankle.

  Toby would fuss over her healing wounds, pouring bitter medicine down her throat. Spoon feeding her. Purring, Caspian had taken to rubbing her feet. All this while Kieran lectured on how she must behave before the men.

  While he threatened her Alec. While he pointedly failed to offer more than a passing comment on Mikael’s health.

  Overindulged as she was, feet dwarfed in callused, careful hands, lips pecked by a smiling shaven-headed psychopath who kept her drugged and buried in pillows, Wren sometimes forgot there was more to notice than lovely sensation and deep, masculine purrs.

  Until her fuzzy gaze met disapproving green.

  Kieran was an anchor.

  One who held himself aloof and stared a great deal.

  The behavior of his packmates had the Second Alpha on edge.

  Wren could not find it in her to care. Under drugged pain and the itch of mending bone, she felt adrift in her skin. Things weren’t right no matter how long the doctor was forced to sit at her bedside.

  And forced was the word for it. His life had been threatened in subtle and not so subtle ways those first two days. If she winced, the Beta received a backhand. Should she moan in her sleep, Wren woke to the sound of the doctor being kicked.

  “I told you no pain…” Caspian hissed, voice snake-like and deadly.

  Worse for wear and smelling unwashed, the older male climbed to his feet and let out a desperate breath. “More drugs will do her more harm than good.”

  “I don’t want her in pain!”

  The old man, through exhaustion and days of terror, snapped. “Then you shouldn’t have beaten her!”

  And that was the last Wren saw of her dedicated caretaker. When she’d woken and found only grinning Toby at her side, she’d vocally cried.

  Because she knew what had happened.

  The Beta was dead.

  And that squishy, invasive comfort streaming through her bones coming from the male shushing and purring at her side...

  Mate. Caspian had said.

  Flippantly. As if it was nothing of note.

  Someone finally wanted her, and he was crazy through and through.

  Signing poorly, he talked as he practiced structuring her language. “Sunshine. You’re looking much better today.”

  Unable to converse with her fingers still splinted, Wren only blinked.

  “Are you hungry?” That sign he had down pat.

  No.

  “Thirsty?”

  No.

  Face thoughtful, an uncharacteristic scowl came to Toby’s brow. “I’ve waited a long time for you. For my mate.”

  It took everything an exhausted Wren had not to show an ounce of disappointment.

  “I know this is new. An adjustment period is to be expected.” A wink brought out fine lines on the side of Toby’s eyes. Laying on the charm, he said, “A month from now you’ll be so in love with me you’ll never remember that it started… with difficulty.”

  She felt her brow arch before she realized she’d done it.

  Chuckling, purr amplified as he leaned over, Toby grinned. “Trust me, sunshine.”

  Wren trusted a burning building more than the madman with his dangerous fetishes.

  “I’ll learn how to love you however you like best. You have my word on that, Jax. I’ll buy you pretty baubles, give you pretty dresses, and feed you all the water a girl could want.”

  On and on went the diatribe, Wren’s eyes growing heavy. When well-muscled arms snuck around her and a shamefully misbuilt nest buckled under the Third Alpha’s weight, she slept.

  That is until Caspian barged in, dragging Rosie behind him. “Get out. Your time with her is over.”

  Chapter 3

  Red lips painted to perfection, dressed in blue to bring out her eyes.

  Rosie.

  Perfect and pretty and not at all scarred.

  Rosie, who didn’t bear the mark for defective upon her face.

  Weight in the nest shifting at her back, Toby rolled his shoulders, stretching from his nap. All of it for show, Wren could sense that bone deep.

  With a wink and a quick stolen kiss on parted lips, the dismissed Third Alpha said, “Be my sweet sunshine for Caspian.” In a snap, his gaze turned toward the couple at the door, all semblance of gentleness replaced with a murderous sneer. Voice loud enough to assure every word was heard, he announced, “And if Rosie touches you, I’ll kill her. It won’t be quick.”

  Graceful, hazarding on careless, Toby climbed from the nest, heading out the door with no further word. Not even a glance at his scowling leader.

  Nor did he so much as twitch at the snarled, “Later,” that came from his First.

  The first thing someone learned upon being thrust into the Warrens was that bad things would always get worse. If you starved so hard your belly protruded, the next thing you knew, your first meal would give you dysentery. Many died this way.

  Those who grew so thirsty they drank from the puddles knew the microbes would rot their teeth. What could be worse?

  It would also rot them from the inside out.

  Decaying that way took time… and led to an ugly death.

  A female might be captured and forcibly mated. Perhaps three of them took her, used her, and toyed with her future for sport. Out of estrous they might mark her. They might threaten her family. They might break her and pretend at putting her back together.

  They might contaminate unwelcome bonds that rattled bones and made her innards ache.

  They might insult her by bringing in a more adequate female. By fucking her in front of them.

  Reminding the Warrens rat that, claiming marks or no, she was nothing… and that it could always get worse.

  Perhaps this knowledge was why Wren didn’t blink, expected nothing but ugliness from these males.

  No matter Caspian’s promises, they would not keep Alec safe. But that didn’t mean she refused to play their game and put him in direct harm either.

  Heal, earn their trust, flee.

  Take her boys, sell her body along the monorail tracks to get them all out of Dale City. Steal if she had to. Run so far Caspian could never find them.

  But these things took time. So for now, Wren sat up, the soft blanket Toby had used to cover her nakedness falling away to show bite-marked breasts. Each little matching crescent had almost healed thanks to the doctor's advanced tech, his diligence, and his forced captivity it this room.

  And he had been murdered for it. Wren didn’t doubt that for a minute.

  He had been murdered because she’d slipped. A single errant whimper, that is what his life had been worth.

  She wouldn’t slip again.

  These men wanted to play house? Fine, she’d be their pretty mouse, their sunshine, their whore.

  She’d eat their food, drink their water, take their medicine and grow strong. Eyes glowing with intention, Wren met the muddy gaze of a very bad man.

  One look, and Caspian make a hungry sound, one so desperate she almost thought she’d heard him whine.

  And maybe he did. Rosie certainly turned his way, an incredulous look on her perfect face.

  “You’ve eaten today?”

  Two bowls of the black goo, yes.

  “Drank plenty of water?”

  So much that Wren felt bloated and was annoyed by the near constant urge to pee.

  “Are you in pain?�
��

  So much fucking pain she hardly knew how to force the simple head shake of no.

  Her nailbeds, though coated in scabs, stung. Her broken fingers itched and ached. Her skin had been sealed on the surface, thanks to the kind Beta doctor, but deeper wounds, all the bruising, were days away from anything but leaving her a pulped mass of aches.

  Worse than all the physical ailments was the unseen one. The bone-deep internal twitch that was Toby’s crudely forged link. The buzzing pinching of her internal organs marked Caspian’s cruelty and connection.

  The pair of them had infested her living corpse.

  And they would be the death of her. But not until she got her boys as fucking far away as possible. She’d even kill them if that’s what it came down to.

  But not in a rage. They were too strong for even that mindless death-machine Omegas became to protect their brood. They were the perfect pack, despite their grievances and constant snarling back and forth.

  Hand to his throat, Caspian kneaded the skin as if unaware of what he was doing. “You don’t seem well.”

  Splinted fingers did a poor job of trying to smooth bed-wild hair into something fetching.

  “I’ve waited two days, and I need to fuck.” This all blurted out while the obvious erection in Caspian’s pants leaked.

  Then fuck Rosie, Wren thought. Glad he was far enough away that his poor excuse of a purr couldn’t truly touch her.

  Utter filth, the Alpha’s eyes glowed with something perverse. “But I want to look at you while I’m doing it.”

  Relief faintly coursed through tired veins.

  As if he too felt his offer was her balm, Caspian drew his hands from a throat grown red from rubbing to knock against his heart. Or perhaps she misread him, for his grimace made it seem as if the last batch of food stuffed down his maw must pain him.

  Dragging a silent, yet strangely composed Rosie behind him, the First Alpha approached. “Scoot to the edge of the bed, pretty mouse. Spread your legs so I can see your juicy cunt.”

  The only part of her that didn’t ache.

  Fine.

  Hair a tangled mess, unwashed and a physical wreck, Wren slunk to the edge, laid back even as Caspian pulled out his cock, and locked her eyes on the water-stained ceiling.