Page 51 of Bonds of Hate

As soon as her quivering little orgasm is done, Maya throws herself face down on the bed. She brings both of her hands up to cover her face and her shoulders shake with tears.

No, not tears, I realize as I shift closer to the grainy black and white feed on the monitor. She isn’t wailing in despair, or fear.

Those are screams of rage.

Should have known, I think with amusement.

“Not so composed now, are you, little Omega?”

The only thing that stopped me from flippingMaya over and fucking her in the mess of our late lunch is Logan’s bullshit decision to make her off-limits.

Pack’s share the spoils. It is literally the entire point of being packed up, because there have never been enough Omegas to go around.Lucky for our favorite spoiled prince, I’ve become more patient with age.

But I’m only willing to wait for so long.

I lean back in my chair and crack my neck, still watching Maya’s tiny form on the security feed. The sight of her writhing in frustration sends another pulse of desire through me. Eventually, I’m going to make good on the unspoken promise I made to her today. Once I finally get her under me, that lithe little body will come so hard that she won’t be able to see straight afterwards. She won’t harbor any more delusions that grinding on her own tiny fingers can possibly compare to taking an Alpha’s knot.

For now, there is other work to be done.

I pull up the background check I ran on Maya after her interview. The girl is obviously hiding something. I plan to figure out precisely what it is before a dirty secret pops out of the woodwork to bite us on the ass. Not to mention, I low-key love the idea of having something to hold over her head.

Blackmail might be my favorite flavor of coerced consent.

Her academic record at the Enclave is the easiest thing to find, the security on it only one step removed from that of entirely public records. The wordsOmegaandprivacymight actually be listed as antonyms in the dictionary. The government stops just short of legally requiring them to beregistered and monitored, but Omegas don’t slip the net easily.

Which is why it is so damn surprising that Maya basically dropped off the radar for an entire year. Before she applied for the palace interview, her last known location entry was just days after that ill-fated meeting with us. There are 378 days, fourteen hours and eight minutes between entries, her whereabouts completely unaccounted for in that time.

Where the fuck was she all that time?

Maya’s file lists only a single next-of-kin. A beta mother, Charlotte Tantamount-Ovation, who has been married at least three times but has no other offspring. Maya’s father, also beta, shows as deceased, though his record is thinner than I’d expect. Given how rare that fluke of genetic destiny has become, the mother must have been over the moon when Maya presented as Omega. The statistics on that pairing have got to be near one-in-a-million territory. I have a distant memory of meeting a dizzy woman with a voice pitched too high and a dress cut too low, but I couldn’t pick Maya’s mother out of a lineup if someone paid me.

Charlotte’s credit report is a bit more interesting. Multiple mortgages on a property that was later seized for non-repayment, failed business ventures and gambling debts. The Enclave stipend kept her afloat, but not for lack of trying. Her financial situation only seems to have improved in the last few years with a new marriage.

Maya has no criminal or employment records. Both those things are unsurprising. Omegas are too easily subdued for their violence to reach the point of Guardian intervention. If they ever do, bonded Omega’s crimes arethe responsibility of her Alpha to address. An unbonded one, like Maya, would probably be taken back to the Enclave for “re-education” with any restitution for damages just added to her debt. Employment is out of the question. No one would hire an Omega that will almost inevitably bond an Alpha, then be forced to abandon their position at any point.

The Enclave records provide no actual answers, but I find one interesting tidbit.

Typically, Omegas can’t leave the Enclave without paying off their debt first. Whichever pack or particularly well-off Alpha she chooses provides the funds as part of a mating contract. Omegas who refuse to accept a contract and can’t pay off their debt on their own might just be sold off against their will. It rarely comes to that, of course. Most Omegas are smart enough to make their own less than ideal choice, rather than leave their future in the hands of whoever the Enclave finally pawns them off to out of spite.

Maya only paid off her contract recently, using the credits that Poe stupidly thought would tempt her into running off again. She hasn’t been at the Enclave for the past year, which means they let her go without requiring she pay off her balance first. Checking the transaction logs from last year, I see her debt status was changed fromactivetoon hold, with no explanation of what that means.

Did she find an Alpha with enough pull to get her out of the Enclave on credit? No, that makes absolutely no sense. Central Command, the judicial arm of the government, requires the official filing of all mating contracts. If someone had her for a year, they somehow pulled it off without creating a papertrail.

And never fucked her…

My gaze drifts back to the feed, an inexplicable gravitational pull. The little lump curled into a ball under the thin blanket seems impossibly small, practically childlike, and so very vulnerable. An unfamiliar feeling swells behind my ribs, an unwelcome ache that I force away with a burst of annoyance.

Then she kicks off the covers in an unexpected fit of violence. She is left flat on her back, body exposed and eyes screwed shut with restless sleep. The fabric of her undershirt twists around her torso and stretches tight across the rapid rise and fall of her chest, hiding none of the glorious curves and dips of her luscious body.

My attention lingers on the twin angles of her jutting hips. Her stomach is a gentle concavity that tremors slightly with every rough breath she takes.

Not emaciated by any means, but still underfed.

The thought of her going without food is galling.

“How desperate did you have to be to come back here, little one?” I mutter, tearing my gaze away to pull up the palace’s ordering system on my main screen.

The harem usually provides meals communally, but Maya is stubborn and proud. Shame might keep her hiding in her room rather than face the attention that the few Omegas in the harem will inevitably attract.

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