Sasha thought Merrick encouraged them, having figured out a way to glean extra money out of the violence. He'd taunted a beta, taller than himself, into the first conflict, credits stacked on the table for the winner to claim at the end. Merrick moved with fluid, predatory ease and a twinkle of humor in his eye that belied his deadliness.
As an industrial sector, the mostly single male worker population had nothing to spend their hard earned credits on except drinking, drugs, women, and violence. Despite the physical distinctions between betas and alphas, Merrick baited them both.
He provided booze, women, and on occasion, violence. By fighting and winning, he built respect and control, but tore the common rooms apart while doing it. Four benches and two tables suffered the consequences of his reckless indoor fighting. There was broken glass everywhere.
Lanny cut her hand trying to clean the mess. She cried, her blood dripping all over the floor.
With no drone doctors around, they always had to do the best they could in taking care of each other. Sasha went for the waxed thread and disinfectant.
When she returned, Merrick was there, shirt off and damp from a wash, his pants hanging low on his waist and clinging to his legs. He looked head-hurt from the night’s intemperance, face a sneering mask of irritation, his eyes too bloodshot to twinkle.
He stood over Lanny and Lilla, who were now cowering on the floor, faces pale and eyes full of helpless lust.
"Get up. What are you doing? I need this place cleaned up. I don't have time for you to be sitting around doing nothing." He was shouting, his muscles tense, as if preparing for another fight.
"Get up and do your jobs," he growled, flashing his incisors.
At his growl, the girls whimpered.
"You’re coming on too strong, Merrick," Sasha told him without thinking. "Lanny has a nasty gash on her hand. Don't you see all the blood?"
Sasha pointed at the girls on the floor, Lilla holding her sister, Lanny putting pressure on her palm with a rag that was rapidly darkening with blood. The cut was deep. Sasha just hoped that nothing vital had been sliced.
"I need to take care of it," she said.
He swung on her, a new target for his foul mood. "Are you telling me what to do again, little girl? Are you stepping in where you are not wanted? Do you think you are the boss?"
The cut on Lanny's hand was his fault, born of his recklessness. If he had to fight, why do it here? Why destroy things? There were other places that held pit fights.
He could have gone to any one of them to take on challengers. Maybe get some credits, and hopefully have his face bashed in. Why did he have to bring his low ways here, right here in the middle of her home?
Angry at him, Sasha met his eyes straight on, her thoughts out there for all to see.
Incredulous, his eyebrows shot up.
Her heart stuttered. Realizing her mistake, Sasha looked at the floor, but it was too late. Everything she did irritated him, but this—outright defiance and anger—sent him straight into a rage.
He rushed her, hands at her shoulders, pushing her all the way back to the wall. "So that's what you think of me? You think I'm a fool, that I can't smell it? You may still look like a baby, but I know how old you are. I know how close you are to your first fucking heat. Your cycle is going to change everything, little girl. Everything. I. Can't. Wait."
Sasha turned away and held her breath, ignoring the punishing grip of his fingers digging into her skin. He brought his body against hers, hot skin and alpha muscle overpowering her.
Merrick bent his shape around her to speak into her ear, too close to her neck. Instinct had her skin rippling in panic. She did not want this male at her neck. She did not want him in her space.
He wasn't just head-hurt from drink the night before; his breath smelled mead sweet. He was still drunk, all his rational thinking stripped away.
Heart pounding, her anger replaced by fear, she knew he could damage her badly in this state. He wouldn’t realize his mistake until later, and by then it could be too late for her.
"I don't know why I have to wait. I know you aren't much to look at, but you are still a tight, breeder cunt born for fucking. You know that, right, Sasha?" he hissed. "You know that the only thing you will ever be good for is taking a big cock up that little pussy hole of yours?"
Her face flamed.
"Get away from her!" Silas shouted.
Sasha moaned. "It's alright, Silas. Please take the girls and go. I can—”
"Shut up!" Merrick moved a hand to her throat and squeezed. "Shut up! You don't get to tell anyone what to do! When will you learn that? What do I have to do to teach you your place? Why don't any of you people know how to act?"
He shook her, grasp tightening and cutting off her air. Meeting her eyes, he watched her panic as it built, until Sasha was clawing at his hand. Then releasing her throat to capture and squeeze her head in both hands. He forced a nod from her while she gasped for air, heart beating hard against the case of her chest. "This is what you do. This is what you say. ‘Yes, alpha Merrick. Yes, sir.' Can you do that, Sasha?"
"He said get away from her!" It was Patrick now, who lived in the shed with the donkeys and took care of the kitchen garden. He had served as a grunt in the Administration military and understood better than anyone else not to confront a drunk, angry alpha.
What was he thinking? Had they all gone mad? Merrick might hurt Sasha, but he would kill them. They were nothing to him. Just common worker drones.
Merrick let out a growl that became a roar, turning on Patrick and barreling toward him. Patrick notched an arrow into his hunting bow, but Merrick wasn't a garden rabbit and the aggression rolling off him went right to Patrick's brain.
He loosed the arrow, drawing a line of blood on the naked meat of Merrick's upper arm.
Before Merrick could pounce and rip the drone human to shreds, Sasha darted between them. "Don't, Merrick, please. Please don't. Don't hurt him. I'm sorry. This is my fault. You’re right. I do take over. I don't know my place. Punish me."
Merrick picked Sasha up and set her aside, seized Patrick’s wooden bow, and threw it across the room. Facing his challenger, Merrick balled his hand into a fist and cocked his arm back to strike Patrick, but Sasha jumped on the alpha, wrapping herself around him as a barrier.
All her senses rebelled at the contact of bare skin under her hands, but she pressed in tight, clinging anyway. "It’s my fault. He was just protecting the child he has always known. Don't hurt him. Please. Punish me. It was me."
He narrowed his green eyes, hot with fury. "Punish you? And how should I do that? What will teach you and these drones a lesson?" He scanned the room as if searching for a way to make her hurt.
"Ditah," he called at last, "bring me my whip."
Their interaction had gathered a crowd. All the drones of the household, Merricks’s women and the males who had been with them, came into the barroom, drawn by the violence. Everyone was there except for Maura, too sick to leave her room.
Sasha caught the alarmed gazes of the drones, willing them to do nothing and stay quiet, to not make it worse.
Dragging her over to a table, Merrick pushed her face down over the edge. "This is the way breed should always treat breed. Pain makes the lesson stay, doesn't it? Or is that why you think you can tell me what to do? Did Daddy spare you a real upbringing? Is that why you don't know the proper way to behave?"