Page 19 of The Blind Hordesman

Helen plays with her hair. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You have to, Helen. The Warlords will drown us in pheromones and distribute us like whores. They’ll breed us. King Father would hate that. He’s designed the packs for us already. We have to get out of here and find him.”

Loud stomping sounds.

“Shhhhhh,” one of my sisters says. “They’re coming down. Hurry, get busy.”

“With what?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

They disperse just as the cellar door opens and light pours inside. Males stride down the steps and stop when they see them. “Ladies.” One of them purrs.

Helen giggles. Janice nudges her arm. “We were just helping Rickie Lee with supplies.”

“No need,” he says as the other males pick up sacks of Betaren and carry them upstairs. “We’ll do the heavy lifting.”

Janice and Helen look between each other, then Janice’s gaze finds me. She narrows her eyes but doesn’t say anything. I come out of my hidey-hole and walk straight upstairs, where I lean against the kitchen counter, head down, trying to process what I’d heard. Janice would leave me here with all of them. She hadn’t even thought of me, dumped me like garbage when things got bad. It hurts. And the Collectors are coming for me. I don’t know what to make of that. Again, I gaze outside, wishing I could whisk myself away, but I know if I tried, if not Seer himself, his hound who follows me everywhere would find me.

“Omega,” a male says.

I pull back my shoulders and turn to find Noslov there, his gaze eating me up. “You will bake nonstop until all the Betaren is made into cookies.”

My eyes widen. “It’s gonna take forever.”

“However long it takes. My males will help. Tell them where you need them and what they need to do. Be gentle. They’re not used to taking orders from an Omega.”

“Your queen is an Omega.”

“You’re not the queen.”

Males enter the kitchen from the cellar each carrying two sacks of Betaren powder, one on each of their shoulders. Impressive, really. I could barely lift one of them. They line up against the wall and look at me, expecting something. Sweat breaks out on my brow. There’s all this maleness before me, and the kitchen shrinks to the size of the cage I slept in last night.

Noslov points at the table and says, “Over here.”

Nobody moves.

He snarls.

They stare at me.

I swallow and nod at them. They dump the bags on the table. My sisters come out and pass by me without a word, as if I were dead.

Noslov barks at them, and they stop. Janice puts a hand on her hip. “Yes, Alpha?”

“You will help her too.”

“We have livestock she’s forgotten to tend to.”

“I didn’t forget. I was…otherwise busy.”

Janice smirks. “Busy is what I’d call—”

I lift a hand. “Shut up, Janice. I don’t need or want your help.”

She widens her eyes.

“Eat me.” I shoo her away with a flick of my wrist. Grandma said an Omega is a queen of her castle. I may not be the queen, but thisismy fucking castle.

---