"What did Merrick promise you?" Sasha could only imagine. Young for an alpha, he'd somehow escaped his years of full military service. Handsome and savvy with a mischievous manner, he'd charmed everyone at Dover's End.
It only lasted until the day he got Maura's signature on the marriage contract. Then the facade dropped and the drive to fill his own pockets began.
Maura laughed. "Merrick promised me. Your time is coming. It's all arranged. I'll watch from the grave while you get your reward. You will suffer everything I have suffered. You will get yours, breeder—bastard—girl. He’ll take everything you have, fuck you to death the way your father fucked me."
Rolling Maura to her side, hot, sick breath gusted over Sasha’s face before she could turn away.
"Merrick can't do anything to me, Mother. You took him as your third husband, not me. He can't touch me. You know the law says I can choose my mate. I'll pick from the Selection. There has to be one decent alpha in Sector 10 who wants an omega breeder."
There would be more than one, Sasha knew. She'd get to choose from a final eight who would have gone through a culling process to get their place on the list. Administration law gave women like her—sector-registered, immunized, and fertile—a chance to have a say in their inevitable husband-mate.
Sasha wished she knew of a worthy male so she could avoid the inherent risks of the Selection. But truth be told, anyone was better than Merrick.
"So, when you die," she explained to Maura, "Merrick goes back to wherever he came from, and Dad's pub will be mine. Dover's End, the brewery, the inn—everything you had will be mine. Your property-my property. Dad's wealth-my wealth. My mate will restore it all to what it used to be. No more prostitution. No more skanky beta dancers. No more crushed shine residue on every table and gangsters in the back room. It's going to be a good place again, with food and the best flavored gin a beta paycheck and drone pennies can buy.
"And I'll have a bond, Mother, like you did with your first husband. I'll give him my blessing, submit everything, and we will have lots of babies and live a very long life together. Maybe as long as the king and his wife. Because I get to choose. That's the law."
Most omega breeders didn't look forward to the transition into physical adulthood—the end of childhood freedoms and the beginning of the demands from an omega body. Sasha was ready. She'd choose a good, strong alpha and grab onto her future with both hands. She'd choose someone like her father, Edin Dover.
Maura laughed at Sasha’s words like a storybook witch. It was the satisfied laugh of a very evil woman.
"No. No. No. You don't know what I have planned. I've been waiting so long. Since he raped me. Since he killed my husband. Since your sire stole everything from me and forced his rotten seed into my body. I've been waiting. Your time is coming, demon. Merrick promised me. I know what he is going to do to you. Everything. Everything!"
It was lunatic talk. Maura mixed up who had done what to her and when things happened. She’d not been raped, she’d been married. But her hate for Sasha was a living, breathing thing.
The woman had tried many times to hurt, even kill, Sasha. If Maura had planned something with Merrick, then Sasha needed to know what it was. Insanity or not, Maura’s desire to harm Sasha often came about in startling ways.
She wiped her mother's face, rubbing the cloth over the hollows and wrinkles all the way down to her chest. Reeking gunk hid in every fold and crevice. "You can't touch me anymore. My Dad protected me."
"I'm going to laugh at your suffering from the grave. No Selection for you, girl. I selected. No choice, like I had no choice. Do you think Merrick doesn't know people? Do you think I didn't plan? Stupid girl. Foolish girl. Your spineless, raping father cannot help you. You will be alone like I was alone."
Sasha let the words sink in. No Selection for her? Merrick knows people? Had they bribed an official? What had they planned?
With hands like claws, Maura grabbed at Sasha's wrist. She tried to dig her nails in, but she was too weak and feeble.
"What people does Merrick know, Mother?" Sasha asked. "What can he do? I don't know if you noticed, but he's still a young alpha. He may have a few muscles, but I don't think he's won enough battles yet to know people who have any respect for him."
"You think you know everything. You think you're so smart, with your plans. You know nothing. My sons are coming."
Her tirade began again—what her sons, who had never come to Dover's Inn, were going to do to avenge their mother and punish Sasha.
And all the while, Maura never answered any of Sasha's questions.
Chapter 2
It took two hours to clean Maura and get some medicine in her. Finally, Sasha lied and said the drug she’d put in the water was shine. Her mother drank until her belly bulged, then fell asleep thinking herself pleasantly drugged.
Two hours in that room. Sasha gathered the disgusting bedding and rags for the laundry, wishing she could just burn them. Sadly, fabric was too valuable to waste.
The linens dragged the smell with her as she carried everything, burning the stench into the inner tissue of her sensitive nose. It coated her throat in a thin slime and soaked into her clothing. She needed to wash and change as soon as possible, or her stomach would never settle.
This hall had once been for the household, until Merrick came and decided the family bedrooms could be put to better use. He moved Sasha out of her previous sleeping chamber and into a little closet at one end of the hall. Her mother's sickbed went to the opposite end. He’d dedicated the bigger rooms to his female beta workers and an immoral occupation that put more money in his pocket.
Sasha’s skin crawled as she navigated the upstairs hallway past the four rooms where the hired women tended their customers. She never knew what she might inadvertently see, or what kind of drunken male might be stumbling about.
A door that had been closed when Sasha went to visit Maura now stood open. Ditah's room. It was ten in the morning, and Sasha thought it unlikely she had a client so early. She tried to hurry past, but a sharp voice stopped her.
"Sasha! Get in here."
Merrick.
She knew better than to make him chase her. Undoubtedly the smell clinging to her and the disgusting laundry filled buckets would put a quick end to whatever it was he wanted.
Sasha stopped in the doorway, eyes on the floor. An immediate show of submission usually pleased him. She didn't have to mean it to do it.
Rhythmic grunting and thumping greeted her ears. It was another reason not to look up.
"Did you take," Merrick began, as if speaking through gritted teeth, "care of your mother?"
Ditah broke in with a quiet whine. "Please, alpha, that hurts."
Slap. Skin against skin and a weak little whimper.
Sasha kept her eyes on the floor. Ditah's room smelled like sour sweat, musky from old sex. It belied the cheery brightness filtering through her window.
Ditah was not a nice person. Petty and jealous, she had courted alpha attention to gain power. More than happy to welcome sex with Merrick at every opportunity. The woman had no care for anyone but herself.
Last year, Ditah had proudly presented Merrick with a perfect set of twin babies. As a beta woman with common genetics, she could never give him children of a stronger dynamic, born to be leaders. She could only have more children like herself, all of them followers. Merrick cared nothing for his offspring and had sent the babies away to parts unknown.