Wren's Song: Volume One Read online

  He took a cup and poured water over her unwashed hair. “I promise you everything is going to be okay.”

  No. It wouldn’t be.

  Suds were added, all those dingy locks washed clean until they sparkled like fresh snow.

  Wren had never seen snow. Only mud and dirty air and disappointment.

  “Dip your head back. Good.” Male hands worked under the water, her hair floating behind her like the net she’d been caught in. “I knew you’d do me proud tonight. When tempted, Kieran has never been able to resist you. Do you know why?”

  Kieran is a horrible male.

  “Because for as far back as he can remember, his mother pimped him out so she could get a fix.”

  A drop, a sinking hold of sensation, sucked the air from lifeless lungs.

  Toby winked, still toying with her hair under the water. “Mommy issues galore. And then there you are, offering your life for two kids who aren’t even yours.”

  Oh, they were hers. In every possible fucking way but DNA, those boys were hers. And that right there was the reminder she needed to pull herself out of the tornado of ugliness these males had trapped her in tonight.

  A full breath stretched her ribs.

  “So you understand?” Helping her sit up, Toby reached for a bottle of scentless cream that would keep her hair soft and shining. “No one has ever loved him. I certainly don’t. Caspian hates him. But you can. You will.”

  No.

  “Yes, you will. You’ll love him for all the times he was forced to take a cock so his mom might get high. You’ll love the little boy who never had a soul to kiss his scraped knees. You’ll love him because you know exactly why he is the way he is.” Again he pushed her back into the water to rinse silken hair clean. “Granted, you might die the death of one-thousand cuts along the way… but I’ll be here to lick your wounds clean.”

  I’m going to take my boys far away from you. From all of you.

  “And Caspian, he’s completely under your spell. Won’t it be fun to watch him falter and break?”

  You’re a sick man.

  “That’s enough of a soak for my sweet little sunshine. Come on out now.” Water sloshed, spilling from the tub to rush over cracked tiles, Wren pulled from enough water to hydrate a family for a week. “Let’s dry your splints and make sure the swelling’s in check. Then straight back to bed with you.”

  Chapter 6

  Wren was restless. A good sign that healing progressed, that pneumonia retreated, and that Alec’s ten days were almost up.

  Funny how ten days could pass in a blur.

  When they weren’t fucking her, one of them was sleeping beside her—as if they managed their criminal syndicate in shifts.—leaving her trapped in the most disgusting nest imaginable.

  It was filthy, the bedding having not been changed since the day she’d signed her soul away to Caspian. And it seemed the males didn’t mind the bloodstains, or dried salves, or the days’ worth of sexual fluids that had soaked so deep that entire blankets were stiff and crunched when moved.

  In fact, it seemed they were competing to see who could defile her nesting place the most.

  It was hard to judge the winner.

  Kieran certainly sprayed more cum than the others—pointedly directing his eruptions to all corners like a dog marking his territory. After he’d pounded her down into the bedding, that first knot was always wasted, left to splatter her breasts so he could use the whole of his body to rub his scent all over her flesh when he fucked her immediately after the last salty droplet splashed her skin. He used her roughly, forcibly ensuring her pleasure under extreme circumstances and chastising if she failed to cum.

  The Second rarely slept, using his time with their broken captive to play every sick sort of sexual game he might imagine. This he did, Wren was certain, in an attempt to make her balk. He wanted her to fail.

  He wanted her gone.

  Yet clung to her in the rare moments his exhausted eyes did close.

  When he’d wake, untangle his limbs, hand running through his dark hair as he stood over her, he’d scowl. And then she’d be punished with words—all the ways the other whores sucked cock better. That she was sickly and weak… an embarrassment.

  His tirade never took place before the other males. No, it was Kieran’s secret spite and blatant insecurity that stabbed at her in exactly the right place. Because all he claimed was true.

  Wren could hardly take a cock down her throat without gagging and begging for air. She didn’t know advanced sexual technique, or exotic positions. And yes, she was ill, and scarred, and had lived her entire life aware her defects made her an embarrassment.

  So the barbs didn’t sting her already numbed psyche, and that frustrated Kieran all the more.

  The Second Alpha was not going to inspire the meltdown they both knew he hoped would get her sent from Caspian’s den.

  Yet still he pushed. He’d ask her to bend backwards like a bridge and bear the entire weight of her inverted body on hands and feet so he could fuck her until her legs cramped and she fell. She’d obey, the upside-down world rocking as her hair brushed the floor.

  When inevitable failure to hold such a position brought her tumbling to the ground, again he’d compare her to all the beauty that waited in the pen. Yet it wasn’t them who’d pull his head to her breast, and comb through those tawny locks with her fingers while he sputtered and raged… and allowed it.

  The dark marks under his eyes, the obvious exhaustion. He became putty—that slept and drooled and clung so hard it made her bones ache until the cycle could repeat.

  Then there was Toby who thought he was her succor. Toby who saw that she was gently bathed, that her hair was combed, medicines injected and swallowed, fingers observed. Toby who talked to her with his hands as he practiced sign language. Toby who would devour the pussy Kieran inevitably left stuffed with his cum for hours on end.

  Until her nerves couldn’t take another second.

  Until she truly wanted to scream.

  It was his attention that sent her closest to falling off the edge. Toby’s dedication that endangered Alec.

  Because she wanted to slap him away and scream that she didn’t need his tenderness or pretty words.

  Were Kieran wiser, he’d forfeit his time and give Toby every possible hour to drive her insane.

  “You look much better today. Rosy cheeked and soft as silk.” He’d signed it perfectly.

  A small, practiced smile was offered. Wren playing house, playing mate, to appease the one whose bond rattled in her bones with unmatched hunger.

  “Once your cough is under control, and your lungs have recovered, I’ll take you up top to a restaurant and a show. Just us two for a night on the town.”

  Like normal women who didn’t sleep in filth and sell their bodies? Air left her lungs, a slight disbelieving snort ruining Wren’s facade.

  Tone edging toward warning, Toby said. “All other males will envy me.”

  Resolute energy flowed from his end of the bond, the buzz working to chase away her incredulity.

  The life he’d paint for her… how many years had she dreamed of such things? It was as if he plucked the thoughts out of her head and offered them to her on a silver platter.

  But all that sparkled in his display was poisoned. And she knew that.

  Knew better.

  Because there were no decent Alphas.

  And she would never get to go up top. Never sit at a fancy restaurant’s table. Never smile while draped in diamonds.

  But Toby in his unintentional cruelty was also relentless.

  Once when she was still aching from Kieran’s attention, when she was tired and frightened and lonely for her boys, Toby’s ministrations and his measured promises of the perfect life cracked her armor.

  Wren had cried.

  Toby had seen it.

  But instead of raging at her for breaking character, he set the brush aside and pulled her to his chest.

  Purring
, he let her splinter, felt her desolation through the tenuous link, and did nothing more than hold her.

  More importantly, when she was finished and shaking, scared for what she’d done, he promised not to tell.

  Caspian and Kieran didn’t need to know.

  But the First Alpha had felt her wretchedness through the link, and came in a high temper to see what had happened. By then, Toby had dried her eyes, kissed her lips swollen and pink, and left her exactly the way Caspian liked to see her best.

  Clean. Virginal.

  Shy.

  Nervous.

  The distraction slowed Caspian’s angry breath.

  With a stroke down her smoothed hair, Toby said, “It was a coughing fit. Nothing more.”

  “She’s supposed to be getting better!” The First Alpha paced the length of his room, openly angry at the intangible thing that kept her chest ratting despite breathing treatments, special food, and a smorgasbord of pharmaceuticals.

  Truthfully, Wren was.

  Though her chest still ached, she could draw in a deeper breath than she had been able to in years. In the last ten days, her body had begun to fill out, breasts ripening and rear getting plump. She’d always been extremely pale, but now her skin was no longer sallow and sunken.

  There was still ample mending to be done, but her health was much improved, considering…

  For the first time in years, she was actually sick of a eating the same thing day in and day out. A luxury of feeling only the well-fed might ever know.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it.” Toby pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “Be a good girl, sunshine. Caspian’s had a hard day.”

  Caspian… who brought his other whores to the den she nested in. Who would barge in and throw back her covers, so he might reach for and stroke her ankle while he looked her over every single morning.

  Whatever he saw determined which woman he’d summon to service him.

  Usually it was Rosie, days on her knees having left their mark in rug burn and scrapes. But Wren had also seen a lovely black-haired doll. A red-head with smiling lips and a vacant expression. And others who’d faded into the background.

  Some arrived obviously high, eyes half-lidded and swaying on their feet. Some came reeking of perfume, their clothing already mussed from another male’s use.

  Not a single one of them looked at Wren, as if ordered to ignore the mangled Omega and her mockery of a nest.

  But Rosie, she always snuck a glance when Caspian wasn’t looking.

  Usually after the First Alpha had sent her sprawling with a shove, and stood over his healing prize, splashing the jets of warm cum Rosie’s hard work had inspired over Wren’s bared tits and cunt.

  Zipping up, he’d leave Wren coated in seed, ignoring where Rosie gathered herself from the floor, and went about his business.

  Until his cock would grow hard again, and Rosie, again, would be ordered to her knees to drain him. Sometimes he bent the blonde over in half, ass up at the edge of the bed so Caspian’s mouth could sample the delights of his caught prize while he fucked a pussy he could pound with all the violent enthusiasm Wren knew he wanted to pour upon her.

  She wondered why he even bothered to play a game that clearly made him miserable.

  When all three of the males gathered nightly to share her as one, the trio were savage, snapping teeth and guttural grunts. It was only in these private moments Caspian seemed cautious.

  After hours of this charade, after he’d fumbled through papers and worked via the data relay on his arm, the flavor-of-the-day would be ordered away with a blunt, “Get out,” and only when they were alone, would Caspian creep into Wren’s nest.

  The cock that had been in another woman’s mouth or pussy would then be buried between her thighs, the brutal First Alpha struggling to take her as gently as a barbarian might. When he knotted, felt her traitorous cunt’s pulsating and eager response, a low whine always intermingled within his moans.

  Only once he’d done this, forgetting Rosie was still in the room.

  The blonde Omega had watched the entire exchange, her face blank of all emotion. When Caspian’s knot had subsided, when he’d kissed the back of Wren’s neck, licked at the scars he’d left on her throat, and praised her with the filthiest words he might find, he left the nest to take a piss.

  His eyes had caught on Rosie.

  The look he’d given her was… callous.

  As if she were as insignificant as an empty dish, he continued forward and left the women alone together for the brief time it would take to drain his bladder.

  “Monsters, all of them.” Hard words from a hard woman, Rosie slicing through Wren with a razor sharp gaze. “Wipe that look off your face. Never let an Alpha see.”

  The look in question was shame. Wren was inundated with it.

  For coming so hard the world had gone fuzzy. For mewing and urging the male who’d just used another woman to show her his physical affections. For wanting the woman who had pleasured him with her mouth for hours to see that it was really her cunt he craved. For debasing herself. For enjoying it. For being a petty bitch who was so fucking riddled with secret jealousy she wanted to tear every woman who’d known Caspian’s attention limb from limb. Who knew that such thoughts were evil and tried to stuff them down so far she felt nothing, saw nothing, but the way he looked at her as he used them.

  Who was slowly going insane with worry for her boys.

  And whose fingers were still trapped in splints. Who was silent and anxious, yet still got wet when the First Alpha gave her that look.

  Pouring a glass of water, Rosie brought it over and held it to Wren’s mouth. “We’ll never be friends. Don’t look to me for help.”

  The door opened, Toby walking it to find Rosie at his mate’s bedside.

  Before he might reach over and snap her neck, Rosie said, “Your Omega can’t properly nest under these conditions. This bedding is filthy. The mattress reeks of other women. Take better care of your things or put her in the pen where she can take care of herself.”

  And like a truly uppity bitch, she tossed her blonde hair, and walk right past the seething male.

  Within the hour, the mattress, pillows, blankets, all of it, had been carted away and replaced with new. Toby, with Caspian lingering near his work, stood by and watched Wren build a real nest. Both of them leaning on their portion of the link—aware that despite her blank expression, she was elated to be free of the horrible smell.

  The new nest was the finest she’d ever built.

  Chapter 7

  These sensations, inside and out, were entirely new. Even the pitch of her purr was on a scale Wren couldn’t recall having producing before. Lush and indulgent, it hummed from her chest while she let herself do something as silly as burrow.

  As if she were happy—safe, and separated from the nightmare of her life.

  Cocooned in snowy white cotton, weighted down with blankets stuffed with fluff, she allowed herself a moment of bliss.

  In a nest.

  A perfect nest made from wonderful things.

  Yet the precious moment ended when a warm hand reached under impeccably arranged covers to seize her ankle.

  Purr stuttering to a complete stop, Wren braced, found her heart beat far too fast, and forced out a different purr. The expected purr.

  “It’s rude not to invite me in, mouse.” The male teased. “And what happens to bad girls?”

  They get fucked. Hard. Without the growl or sweet lies.

  They get shown that they like it.

  Reminded they were made to be a whore.

  Yet, it was the little moments, Wren reminded herself. The little moments hidden within the bad one had to treasure. And even though it had been short-lived, she had enjoyed her fresh nest while it had really been hers.

  Would dream of it. Hold it in her mind just as it was now.

  Before they spoiled it.

  Pulling her leg from Caspian’s grip, Wren maneuvered like a fish
in water. The bedding above her peaked as she flipped. Where his hand waited, her face appeared.

  A little mouse peeking out of her hole.

  Because she could not bring herself to reach for him, Wren looked to his fingers. Veined and rough, she set her teeth to a knuckle and bit down hard enough to sting. Leading a chuckling monster in as if carrying a kitten in her teeth, Wren brought Caspian into a sacred Omega space.

  It seemed the male would pretend respect. He didn’t immediately make a grab for her breasts or shove his thick fingers in her cunt. Instead he settled exactly where he should.

  He rested, pulling her weight into the nook at his side.

  Looking down at the intruder, blankets tented by her head, she blinked.

  The man just lay there; arm behind his head, eyes closed.

  A moment later, it seemed he snored.

  Slinking from his chest, Wren went back to her secret preening, her rolling about, and her sighs—finding that the scent of an Alpha had only enhanced the comfort found in soft sheets.

  Even if the Alpha was Caspian.

  Her natural purr returned, there was even a soft smile playing at her lips with so much clean slipping against her skin.

  Until he pounced with a growl… and she squealed.

  And laughed.

  An honest-to-God laugh that rode the high of her surprise.

  Dedicated male lips went to the mark on her neck, stubble scraping delicate skin as he lavished her with unexpected, tender attention. When he nipped, and played, pressing her down into a mattress that did not reek of decades of sex. When he smiled back where no one could possibly see, a twist knotted in the bond. Right in her guts.

  A belly flip.

  One that fell abruptly away when the First Alpha lost his grin. “It’s time for Alec’s punishment.”

  Reality smashed her pretend world to bits.

  She was going to be sick.

  Moving her mouth as if words might come out, she so wanted to ask if her boy could be spared.

  Had she not played house well? Did she not allow them all to screw with their new toy in whatever way they saw fit?

  “A whipping.” Touching his nose to hers, Caspian purred. “He can keep his hand. This time.”