Corrupted (Alpha's Claim Book 5) by Addison Cain (bill gates book recommendations TXT) 📗

spent on one task, and it had been achieved. It felt like her sorry grip was beginning to slip, and Brenya was about to fall down the side of the Dome again.

The hiccup came first, surprised her so much her hand flew up to cover her mouth. And then another, and another, until she was heaving from the effort of holding back.

The ugliest of cries broke free, one that had been growing inside her from the day Jacques Bernard had torn her in half. Brenya didn’t even understand when she had sat up to brace her elbows on bent knees, to hold her skull in place as the mess inside came out.

“Are you familiar with the concept of shock?”

Yes, she was. It was a common response to physical trauma. Yet even when she had fallen from the Dome, it had not manifested with so much noise.

The man moved a pillow, tucking it to her side. Then another, all the while saying, “I was given a report on your behaviors, yet thought it would be best to observe them for myself before concurring with an outside perspective and a dossier I had less than ten minutes to read. It is obvious that you have not been guided on how to be an Omega. Your dynamic was manipulated instead by a boy who lacks control and experience.”

Another pillow, the very one he had been sleeping on, was added to the pile that grew around her and between them.

“You do not understand the difference between a nest and a bed, nor were proper nesting materials made available to you.” The blanket was doubled over, Jules left with none, once it was folded over the circle of pillows. “It never occurred to you to ask me for them tonight.”

Slipping back against the softness, teeth chattering and unable to breathe through her nose, Brenya sank into the strange cocoon as if it might actually keep the Beta male away from her.

It didn’t even matter that the pressure against her stitches was uncomfortable and that everything smelled musty and unused.

The mattress shifted in such a way she knew, even buried under the bedding and unable to see, that he had moved away.

The offer was as stony as every other word she had ever heard the man speak. “Considering that I am your husband, it is appropriate for me to offer a purr.”

“No.” Purrs were unsettling in their ability to make mental switches short. Enough synapses were firing in her brain.

“Sleep. We can talk more after you have had a chance to rest and collect yourself.”

He didn’t seem like the sort of man who talked, but so long as he continued not to touch her, she would agree.

Sleep did come. It seemed like it never would, but it did.

Groggy and stiff, she woke to a bladder near bursting—still contained in the pillow construction.

The sun was in the exact same place in the morning sky it had been when she shut her eyes. But the Beta had moved from the bed. Lashes crusted, Brenya rubbed the sand away, blinking to see him making use of one of the many available plush chairs, working. Flipping through whatever data filled his COMscreen.

Without looking up, he acknowledged that he knew she was both awake and in need. “The bathroom is behind the panel to your right.”

Unsure how to slip from the bed without disturbing the circle of pillows, Brenya crept over them, toe pointed to find the floor.

The Beta did not look up.

“Clothing is on the counter. When you return, there is a pitcher of water waiting by the table with flowers. It will help with your headache. You’re not hungry, but you should eat as well.”

Jacques had never talked to her this way, in suggestions that did not linger with threat should she decide to refuse them.

Panel was literal, and not in a maintenance sense. One of the red-stained, shining portions of the wall had parted open like a door. It was a door, on hidden hinges that clicked shut when she tested it. And clicked again with a firmer push.

Swinging open, it displayed a bathing area. There was no sunken tub like the one in Jacques' rooms. This one was above a tiled floor and had clawed feet like those of a gryphon. The windows were high atop the walls, small, and made from colored glass. The sun cast light like a prison over a large mirror surrounded in golden depictions of the Gods in their cherubic forms. That mirror, in turn, cast the light back to the opposite wall.

Calculating the angle of refraction was quick and comfortable. Marveling at the hidden details all over the room so distracting she almost forgot her body's needs.

First, the toilet, then a shower… both moments done without any interruption. Not that Brenya did not watch the strange door, waiting for the Beta to intrude.

But he didn’t.

And as he said, there were clothes. Loose-fitting trousers that cinched with a simple string at her belly, and a shirt. Jules' shirt from the smell of it.

Nothing chafed, though it was breezy and unfamiliar. Most of her was modestly covered aside from where the shirt parted at her throat.

She used his comb.

Brushed her teeth with the second, waiting toothbrush.

When all was done, she studied her cheek in the mirror. The yellow of iodine had faded between sleep and bathing, the skin pink and outlined on one side by a reddened scar and the other by ordinary bruises.

The patch on her neck had been removed before bathing, and Lucia had been right. With the abscess drained, there was finally a normal scab.

And every morning, it looked a little better.

He never touched her, though they shared space many hours of the day. The closest he came was his day-old shirt on her back each morning, and the bed they shared each night.

Though even that had become something that no longer looked like any bed she’d ever seen. It started with little additions he’d placed here or there. More