Page 197 of Ruled By The Alpha

Instead I was there to care for the girl. I was the one who’d decided her hands needed to be removed and regrown. I was the one who’d stuffed the cloth soaked in milk of the poppy into the girl’s mouth. I was the one who made the other omegas watch so that they would learn where to amputate so their hands would grow back clean.

“Do not cut above the wrist. See, here.” I twisted the wrist up and down. “You must cut where it bends. Watch.”

“Will it hurt?” Forna asked.

“Yes, of course it hurts,” Kora said. She had her fist in her mouth. I had removed her foot last year after a travelling merchant had made her dance on hot coals for too long. He had been fined, and now lived as a slave in the mines, the same place the blacksmith and his wife would be, if they were permitted to live.

“Do it.” The poor girl was fighting against the poppy and incense. I would make sure we gave her a strong name once she was whole again.

There are a lot of veins and tendons in a hand, and cutting through it can take a long time and strength. I moved as fast as possible, allowing her blood to spill into the metal basin underneath. Her blood would be important. Mixed with poppy and healing drugs, her body would regrow faster. And with some of my own blood mixed in, her mind would begin to heal as well.

When I’d told the master I was the most priceless, this was what I’d meant. An omega’s body healed, but their minds did not. Many omegas died in warehouses and brothels, their bodies whole and beautiful, but their minds warped from the tortures they had endured. It had taken the madam to notice my mind stayed whole, and we began to learn the power of my blood.

“Well?” the madam asked as I was halfway through the girl’s left wrist. “They are to be executed, but the governor wants a dance as payment. Kota?”

Kota was Kora’s twin, and the second male omega we had. “All right, but no touching.”

“Never,” the madam assured him. It wasn’t that the governor was unpleasant; he was even handsome, as some older men can be. Rather, Kota liked to tease him. It was a strange seduction they played. It was too intimate a question to ask, but I wondered how badly they wished they could claim each other. I had heard the governor had asked for a dance for a years’ worth of taxes. Kota had obliged and gone to bed with a soft smile on his face, a fine necklace of braided silk around his throat.

The second wrist was cut. Both hands lay red and mangled in a second metal bowl. The madam placed a hand over them, and there was a crackle before they turned straight to ash. It wasn’t magic, but a powder, though not many knew that. The sacrifice made—for the madam insisted on one each time I gave my blood—I took the gold dagger that a regular client had presented to me and cut deep into my palm, squeezing out blood into the bowl. It was darker than normal blood and would not mix, instead sitting on top like oil on water.

“Good. Let’s get her comfortable. Tenora, you stay with her tonight. We can rotate.”

“Yes, madam,” all of us omegas chimed.

Alone with the healing girl, I ran a hand over her face, relaxing at the feel of her breath on my palm. She was alive. Despite being twenty-seven, despite seeing omegas come back from worse than this, I always feared that this time, it would be different. That one day, omegas would no longer heal. That the pain would be more than she could stand, and her brain would break her will to return. Because we all knew there was nothing good to bring her back to reality.

“I wish… I wish to feel good,” I whispered into the dark.

I had never heard of an omega who was given pleasure. But the next day, the madam would say Kota was recovering from his time with the governor, because you only hired an omega from a whorehouse if you wanted them to scream in pain. In truth, however, she needed him to stop smiling like a beta mooning over their sweetheart.

Chapter 3

“Tell me what you mean, and perhaps give me a clue about where we are.” The voice that filled me with fear was accompanied by a kiss on my shoulder.

“I don’t know where we are,” another voice, a man’s, said. “But the Veil is thinning. Perhaps she brought us here.”

“Perhaps,” my master said. “Though I do not think she will like that we are in bed. My little whore was very angry when I last saw her. Wake up, omega.”

I blinked awake and saw a blurry outline of a man’s chest, the scent of a man curling in my nostrils. Feigning sleep, I rolled away and gave him my back. My heart thundered behind my sternum. This could not be real.

But what struck me most was that my master was wrong. I was not in a bed; I was amongst my sleeping silks in my room, lying upon the thick sleeping pad on the floor. But the healing omega was gone. In her place was the bulk of another man.

“What is happening?“ I asked. “Am I going mad?”

“I know that voice!” I recognized the governor was speaking now, a halo of wild gray curls about his head. He shifted so that he was on his side facing me. “Tenora. It is you! Fuck. What called her here?” He looked around. “Is Kota here?”

“Who cares for your omega?” My master fingered a curl of my hair, and my traitorous body began to relax. The last person to play with my hair like this had been the madam when I was healing from my very first client. “As for why, you know the Veil is becoming thin. She came to me in the palace some months ago. Reality and dream are one. If you want to find your young man, go. Leave me with my whore. I know you are awake.”

“I am not your whore,” I growled. “Why are you in my room? Patrons aren’t allowed here, even if this is a dream.”

“Is that where we are? Kota would never tell me what they looked like.” The governor became interested in the clothing hanging on the walls and the lacquered boxes on my low dressing table.

“Be quiet, Quintus. You still haven’t explained how things went so wrong.”

“I’ve only been back two years!” the old man complained as if he was the younger.

“What is going on?” I snapped.

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