Page 8 of Filthy Beginnings

She’d been at it since right after her first meal.

Already her body was sore, her mind exhausted from maintaining her gift continually, making her feel far older than her twenty-one planetary rotations.

And worse, just a few moments ago, a strange itch had rolled across her skin, leaving her restless and out of sorts.

It didn’t matter.

If Egan Avitus ordered her to perform as the fighters disembarked from the shuttles and made their way into the fighting stadium, she did.

“More turns. Show them that ass—and brighten those gift colors. More flash.” Egan’s command piped into her crystal cage. Even from the observation deck, a story up from her display case, he saw everything. “We want these fighters willing to do whatever it takes to get the chance to bend you over and rut.”

She did as ordered.

She always did.

The consortium ruled everything inside the dome and owned most of it too. The planet on which the dome rested was nothing much. Just endless, unrelenting mountains of sand scorched by four hot suns that rose and fell in near perfect harmony and that had, before the consortium, made it impossible for life to flourish on the surface.

But her mother’s kind had survived in small underground villages for generations. Then, the consortium bought the planet from someone who had no right to sell it. Overnight, everything changed.

They slapped a huge golden dome over the old villages and built their glittering golden skyscrapers on the surface. A huge, hundred thousand seat fighting stadium in the center square was the main attraction. They created a seeming glittering paradise, every building facade lit up with vid screens that broadcast every available vice to those with universal chits to burn.

But it had been no paradise for her mother’s kind, most of whom were killed or enslaved. Her mother had been a prize once. Then, a brothel whore. Then, she’d been dead.

Scarlett had been a consortium-owned omega all her life, trained early on for her fate. Her brother had been similarly molded into a consortium warrior.

She’d watched him bleed and almost break to become what they demanded.

They’d forced her to twist herself into what they required too.

But she hadn’t shattered and she didn’t intend to end up like her mother. Her dreams remained her own, and soon she’d escape the dome and gain control of her fate.

She’d made plans to run away before, but something had always come up.

This time, she refused to let anything distract her.

“Break time.” Nars’s shout jolted her from her thoughts as the lights inside her cell dimmed and the music shut off. “Next shuttle arrives in five.”

Scarlett took her first full breath and leaned against the rough curtain with the door hidden behind it, rolling her neck from side to side. No stool for this. It ruined the optics. And sitting on the floor? Forbidden.

She wasn’t sure she could have sat, anyway. A strange restlessness pulled at her, her skin hot and prickly.

She pushed off the wall. Was she getting sick?

A slight tap from the other side of the curtain distracted her.

She recognized the source easily. No one else asked. They just barged in.

Steeling herself, she pulled back the curtain and knocked back. Then she moved to the side to make room.

There was no handle to open the door from inside.

The panel slid along its track to create an opening. Her brother Luc’s big shoulders filled the space, his expression concerned as he loosened the straps of his scent mask and let one side hang off his ear, a defiance of the usual rules only tolerated because they were related and he was a high-level trainer. “They said it was okay if I brought you a drink.” He held out a gleaming, gold cannister. “It’s an infusedralienergy drink.”

“Thank you.” She smiled wide. Took the cannister and choked it down. The liquid was too bitter for her, but the energy drink was what the consortium served their fighters, and therefore everyone else by extension.

“Good, right?” He shifted on his feet.

“Delicious.” Her chest tightened. Five planetary rotations older than her, Luc always looked out for her as best he could.

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