Page 46 of His Pet

He turned to his first in command, his right-hand man from the past months, someone he'd grown to trust almost as much as Bella. Ned looked back at him, his expression blank.

"You work for him, don't you?" Alex asked, his voice hard as he tried to contain his fury at the betrayal. "You work for the Wolf?"

"I pass messages," Ned replied, completely unrepentant as Bella gasped. "That's it. Nothing detrimental to you. He just wanted to know what was going on up here. With good reason." The other man glanced over Alex's shoulder, his eyes taking in the destruction of the Moon's hive-like housing system, the fires that were still burning and choking the air in the dome. "It's time for us to leave. There's nothing here to salvage."

"Alex—" Bella tugged on his sleeve, turning him partially toward her. "He might be right."

He groaned. "Not you, too. We swore we were going to see this out, remember?"

"And we have," she said, taking his face in her hands, cradling it. Comforting him, because she knew how much this would hurt him, to feel that he had failed in his mission. "They didn't want to change. You can't force people to accept that they have to change their way of life if they don't want to. We should take this, save those who want to change and are willing to work for it."

"Earth's already overpopulated." He shook his head, knowing that at least part of his resistance was because he didn't want to be in any way beholden to the Wolf. "We need this colony."

"No," Jordan said, at the same time that Trish started shaking her head. Her smile brightening even further as he spoke. "We need colonies. Ones that can actually be self-sufficient. Cora and Trace have been working on a spacecraft that would actually be able to travel to other habitable planets. It will be ready within the next couple months." His cold blue eyes met Alex's. "The colony will need a leader."

Shock went through Alex as he stared at Jordan.

"Cora and Trace?" Bella squeaked, obviously just as shocked. "And it will have enough fuel? Food? How long have they been working on this?"

"Years. All of Earth has." Jordan snorted. "Did you think we on Earth were all truly content to do nothing but provide the Moon with our resources? To be treated as cogs in a machine, with nothing better to do than support people who barely looked at us as being human? We've been making ready our escape as well."

"What about Cora? And the Wolf?" Alex asked sharply, finding his voice. "They don't want to leave Earth?"

"No, why would they?" Jordan asked, raising his eyebrow. "They have their own empires already carved out. Life on the colonies is going to be hard. Probably low-tech. Besides, Trace and Cora need to stay on Earth to keep working on more projects. That woman's an engineering genius you know."

"A sadistic, self-centered sociopath, but a genius," Ned added. His light-green eyes looked imploringly at Alex. "Please, Sir. Save what you can. Start over. Let the Moon live out its own fate."

"Alex... I think they're right." Bella hugged her arms around him.

Trish was nodding. Jordan and Ned just stood there, waiting.

Closing his eyes, Alex took a deep breath. He could practically feel his parents, Bella's parents, his men and women that had tried so hard... many of them former victims of the Wolf whose memories had been restored. It hadn't taken long for the scientists on their side to realize that Alex and Bella had been pumped full of chemicals to counteract the memory drug that the Moon had administered. They'd told him that the doses had probably been administered over a course of weeks. Once they'd started examining former victims, they'd found traces of the same chemicals, prototypes to what Alex and Bella had received.

He didn't condone the Wolf's methods. He didn't understand how the man could be so callous, so sexually depraved even while he was trying to show the Moon captives what was actually going on, but he knew that there was only one real option for them. If they stayed, they'd eventually be killed by those who insisted that he was the real trouble. Who blamed him for all the unrest that had swept through the Dome.

That or they'd be killed when the Dome itself was destroyed. It was already well on its way.

"Alright. Fine."

* * *

Their time on Earth was almost anticlimactic. Alex had already known Lisa had stayed with the Wolf when Ken returned home. When he tried to convince her to come on the spaceship with him, she'd actually laughed at him. Told him he was a good man. Too good. Turned out she'd only gone out with him because her parents had told her to, they'd wanted her to use him to get to Ken. Which was exactly what she'd done before it had all fallen apart.

He still could barely comprehend that her parents would be so desperate for even more influence on the Moon's government than they'd already had. They hadn't accompanied Alex and the others down to Earth and Lisa didn't seem particularly put out about it.

Trish, too, had chosen to stay on Earth, with Jordan. She told Bella that she still was embarrassed by Jordan's exhibitionism, but she'd learned to enjoy it too. And she loved the way he took care of her. Bella thought Trish needed a good therapist, but who was she to talk?

Maybe a part of her understood a bit better when, the night before they were scheduled to leave, she walked into the apartment that she and Alex shared, and the Wolf was standing there. Staring out the window.

He turned, that piercing green gaze seeming to stab right through her. "Pet."

It sounded like an endearment and made her instantly, horrifyingly aroused.

"Bella," she corrected, in a faint but insistent voice. "What are you doing here?"

He studied her for a moment, his eyes slightly hooded. She clenched her hands into fists.

"Saying goodbye."

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