Chapter 7

The next time she woke, it was dark. However, Kieran was not there; he was all the while murmuring inside her. The new bond burrowed steadily and stuck to her ribcage like a greasy string. Lyla had, as it were, heard depictions of the pair-bond and read about it in the Chronicles. The link was experienced differently by each omega. Some compared it to a wellspring, which provided an endless supply of cool water, while others compared it to a knife wound that tore and twisted their internal organs. Hers was writhing and getting deeper, like a worm. Enslavement and a chain. She detested it already. She was unable to ignore it because it was intrusive and unwelcome. At that point, it murmured in a disconcerting, unnatural twang. Like a terrible note on a violin. Lyla cursed as she stumbled into unfamiliar furniture, and she felt her way around the walls in search of a switch. She was able to feel the bathroom door with her fingers. She headed inside and flicked on the light. She stared back at her reflection. She looked broken, naked, and so covered in Kieran's sperm that it was caked in her hair. He had given it to her, rubbed it into her skin, and sprayed that viscous liquid all over her while they were in a blissful, hazy frenzy. She was certain that her hair would have become matted if he hadn't spent so much time combing it. Lyla approached the stranger in the mirror in disbelief. She had become so thin in the months since the last time she saw her body in the mirror. Her hip bones protruded, and her ribs protruded. She had become slender. However, she was not drawn to the poor condition. The swelling, red scabs, and inflamed bite mark on her shoulder were to blame. She would always bear the mark of his claim because Kieran had bitten her so deeply. Lyla felt ashamed of her ignorance as she traced a finger over the two crescent wounds. She was not entirely aware of how the bond was formed. A long period of hiding her temperament had made it perilous to pose an excessive number of questions. She only knew that marking was involved and that an alpha would start the act. It could have just been instinct. Only her instincts... The still-throbbing string her body was trying to reject added to her sinking despair. After taking a deep breath, Lyla looked around the rest of the basic bathroom. Either the man kept his home meticulously clean, or he hired a subordinate to do so. There was not a single trace of toothpaste on the mirror-like white sink. Finding common items like a toothbrush and mouthwash when opening the medicine cabinet was almost bizarre. Because he had spent enough time in the Undercroft to acquire so many, it might have been the Da'rin markings. She was taught that they were all barbarians who had not been washed and were not human. Faltering between utilizing his toothbrush to get the fluffy inclination out of her mouth and sickened because it was his toothbrush, she at long last only gone after the damn thing. Her mouth no longer tasted like... things she didn't want to think about after a few minutes. Lyla turned to the shower and turned it on, placing it on the shelf exactly where she had found it. Venturing under a singing splash, she welcomed the consume, needing all that Kieran off of her. She let water pour over her body like lava with her eyes closed and her hair in the stream. Her shoulder puncture wounds began to ooze, and the moistened scabs became softer. Only a basic soap bar was present. Her skin became raw as every trace of that man and his scent was removed from every inch. Dreaming of simpler times when she had access to things like shampoo, she soaped her hair. She exited the steam and looked at the man's towel before deciding not to use anything of his that could reapply his scent to her body. Skin knocked from the cool, she air-dried, wrung out her hair over the sink, making an honest effort to finger-brush the dark wreck into request. Neurotic about discipline, she cleaned down all hints of her time there, passing on it as near how she'd found it as she could. Lyla found a table lamp and turned it on as the bathroom light entered Kieran's den cell. She had not been thinking about trivial things like where to put furniture or how to decorate it when she was estrous. She had only seen the male waiting to mount her, and the location she wanted to nest. After every one of the long periods of cautious detachment, all the tormented intensity cycles spent locked away to forestall something like this, it seemed like she'd lost a piece of herself, realizing she had been mated... what's more, not by an alpha she'd picked. Presently, she was some way or less. A disappointment. She seemed to be more—that there was more now—by the humming of that tiny cord in her chest. It murmured that Kieran had just done what should have been finished. She became enraged at the constant vibration. Frantic, she got a handle on any likely help. The pair-bond was still new; it was delicate. Could she possibly break it? How frequently had every other omega with a strong bond wished the same thing? The speed with which the tiny cord in her chest hummed, tempting her to accept her position and submit to such a powerful alpha, was almost laughable. The inclination made her need to upchuck. It was disrupting. She was scared by Kieran's transformation from a coercive beginning to an unquestioned authoritarian. He had forced them into a couple and made a decision that would affect her for the rest of her life. Except in extreme cases when mates died, alphas and omegas only bonded once. Betas were the ones who managed without the bond. Lyla had always admired betas. They were able to conceive despite their lack of estrus. Betas have a choice. They did not have a natural mechanism that forced a permanent pairing; rather, they mated at will, some with the same partner for the rest of their lives. To make the sting that a lot more prominent, dissimilar to omegas, beta females were treated with similar regard as beta guys. In the hierarchy of the three human dynamics, betas also ranked second. They could live their lives however they pleased. Omegas, which were so uncommon and sought after, had been reduced to the status of a prized pet, a status symbol that powerful alphas could claim. They were more modest, no less canny, yet as their numbers were diminishing, it was a simple minority until the end of the states to drive into some old-fashioned ideal. The alphas governed the last strongholds of human progress, were preeminent in each Bio-Vault, each managed quadrant, each strong business, and there were many more of them than there were omegas. Lyla wondered about the man as she looked over the dim room, ignoring the nest she'd built between sessions of being fucked. For what she saw, Spartan wasn't exactly the right word; perhaps utilitarian was more appropriate. There were only the essentials: a bed, a desk, a small table, and a few other useful items; none chosen for anything other than practicality; all mismatching. The bookcase came next. She looked at the titles, many of which were in different languages, as she barefooted over the concrete floor and found his collection of literature... Surprising. These were the books of an intellectual, and it was evident that many of them had been read multiple times. She recognized a few of the authors, including Nietzsche and Machiavelli, even though the Archives had banned books written by those men. Even though Lyla was aware that her government had collapsed, she was hesitant to touch the books because of the severe punishment for possessing them. On the other hand, however, Kieran planned to rebuff her now?