Page 32 of Bonds of Hate

“He hasn’t actually come out and said it, but it’s obvious,” Poe muses with a frown. He looks about as unhappy as a kid being told that not only is Santa Claus not real, but the guy who plays him at the mall is a pedophile with keys to your house. “Prince Logan is going to choose you.”

A thrill of adrenaline runs through me, but I keep my face carefully blank. “I’m honored.”

He eyes me, from the placid expression I have plastered on my face to the hands neatly clasped at my waist. “You wouldn’t be half bad at court, I’ll give you that. I’ve never met an Omega better at wearing the mask.”

“But…” I prompt.

“I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you.”

I can’t help but laugh at that, further souring his expression. “So you do trust me, then?”

“What?”

“I get you’re just using a cliche turn of phrase, but in this context it makes absolutely no sense.” With one arm, I gesturewide at all the six-foot-five and two-hundred pounds of granite hard male in front of me. “Look at you. You could probably throw me pretty damn far if you put your back into it.”

If Poe gets the joke, his expression gives absolutely no indication of it. “That mouth. You wonder why I have to protect Logan from himself. You’re a distraction and…” he pauses and takes a breath, as if about to deliver the worst accusation he can think of in the moment. “And a fucking liar.”

Offended, I glare at him. “I might be a lot of things, but I am not a liar.”

“I ran a background check. You left the Enclave over a year ago, days after that first visit to the palace.” His voice is tight with barely restrained anger. “You may not be mated, but I refuse to believe that whatever Alpha had you didn’t touch you, not even once.”

“I don’t care what you believe?—”

A hand grips my throat, cutting off my words. Ignoring my struggles, the other snakes past the drawstring waist of my work pants.

Poe shoves three fingers inside me with all the force of a battering ram.

I’m no stranger to violence, but the shock of it is enough to blank out my mind. Rape is not an esoteric concept. As an Omega, the implied threat of it hangs over every move we make.

When he encounters and destroys the barrier he clearly didn’t expect to find, a change briefly comes over him. He takes a single intake of breath as an expression of wonder falls over his face. No more than a single second passesbefore the expression disappears into the more familiar mask that gives nothing away.

He hovers over me, an arm wrapped around my waist to keep me still. “You’re a virgin.”

The scrape of his blunt nails and the sheer size of his fingers hurts enough that I stop struggling. Tears burn behind my eyes — of grief and impotent rage. The physical barrier that represents virginity might be entirely meaningless, but that doesn’t make it his to take.

“I was.”

“If you haven’t taken a cock, then you still are.” Fingers playing inside me as if he can’t help himself, he searches my face. “Where have you been for the last year?”

Fluid soaks into the rough fabric of my pants, an involuntary reaction to the friction of his fingers. “Fuck you, Poe.”

“Tell me.”

That voice — his Alpha voice — unlocks all the clenching muscles of my body. I don’t answer him, even though the primordial part of me, the biological imperative that makes me Omega, wants to give him whatever he wants.

For a moment, I drift somewhere languid. My body floats in a tranquil sea. The Omega part of me wants to stay here, free from the weight of decisions or emotion. All I want is whatever my Alpha wants for me.

At least for as long as it takes for the echo of his voice to stop ringing in my ears.

Then I’m back to glaring daggers, wishing I still had a knife in my hand.

His use of that voice is even more of a violation than thefingers he has thrust inside of me. Most Alphas know better than to use it in polite company because it’s the verbal equivalent of slapping someone across the face with your dick.

If they kept at it long enough, they could force a susceptible enough Omega into a sort of haze, a fugue state little different from hypnosis. A strong enough Alpha can make the right Omega do practically anything he wants her to do.

Resisting it is part of the training Omegas receive at the Enclave, which still surprises me a bit.

Poe also seems to realize the depth of his overstepping. When I shove him away, he takes a willing step back.

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