Preview Chapter — Devoured

Chapter 1

Bernard Dome

Drowning in one man’s phantom pleasure while filled with another man’s cock… that was how Brenya Perin would perish.

Blown apart, eclipsed, ground into powder and brushed away like dust.

Around her the Red Room burned under the setting sun, light slanting through its towering windows, lacquered walls catching slanted beams of gold and throwing them back tinged crimson. The dying light made everything shine as if wet, bloody. On the table, dinner grew cold. Stew abandoned in its bowl, bread uneaten beside a half-empty cup of cool water.

Condensation gathered on that glass, trailing slowly down the side, one bead after another, like the sweat on her brow.

Brenya missed all of this. Her eyes locked on the unnervingly composed man standing over her.

Like her, Jules wore a black button-down shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, exposing the intricate black marks decorating strong forearms. The same shirt he stripped from his body each night to dress her in after she’d bathed. One he pulled over her shoulders before buttoning her up slowly from hem to collar.

Fabric always warm from his skin, rich with comforting Beta scent.

He’d trained her to associate the delicious smell of him with safety. Built a life around her where his presence was always sanctuary. And then he’d done this to her.

Left her at the mercy and cruel whims of another.

Reminded Brenya of her place as an Omega claimed by two dangerous males in a twisted three-way pair-bond she could only ever run from… but never escape. Reinforced the sad reality that it was futile to try. Trapped, as she was, in the clutches of an Alpha monster who was now awake and reaching for her through their link.

Sheltered in the Red Room by a Beta villain who watched her flounder.

Owned by both.

Those limpid blue eyes stared down at her helplessness. Unnaturally bright, so vivid… yet impossible to read. His still, engulfing presence one she’d used to flee Jacques’s violent, manipulative pull more times than she could count. Jules’s mental ocean of unending darkness, his calm sea, nowhere to be found now.

And she tried. Reached for his sanctuary with her mind as he denied her.

Staring. Waiting. Palm open. Demand made.

Did the Beta feel elation to have her wriggle on his hook? Know sadness to see her suffer? Was a man like Jules capable of feeling anything other than the desire for her he claimed consumed him?

He’d placed Jacques in a medically induced coma for weeks so the Alpha could not torment her while she’d healed. Mentally. Surgically.

Repaired the damage Jacques’s cock had done to her when he’d raped her in the street. Gave her back a fully functioning vaginal canal.

Waited until her body had responded on its own to truly tempt.

And it had. Slicking. Seizing. Begging. A drenched, eager reaction to nothing but the imprisoned Alpha’s distant, furious rut and his manipulation of the pair-bond… forcing her to feel every bit of male pleasure. Her cunt ripening, salivating for a knot only an Alpha could give her.

And Jules was a Beta. A Beta who had put her in this humiliating position.

Wide-eyed, Brenya’s expression twisted into heartbroken betrayal as her body pitched toward the cusp of climax against her will. Fingers gripping the edge of the polished wooden chair beneath her, knuckles bone-white, her insides flipped and convulsed, acting out orgasm, though her body remained empty and untouched.

All while Jules stood silently over where she writhed in her chair, his fixed gaze a ruthless anchor, arm still outstretched… waiting for her to take his hand.

To invite him into her nest.

The Beta, her husband, absorbed every tic, each helpless twitch and spilled tear, witnessing the dying of a star as Brenya failed in her instinctual, pointless effort to disconnect. Only to explode again with another orgasm as every part of her she had so carefully patched together in the quiet weeks in Jules’s gentle captivity was torn apart.

Somewhere tucked away, Jacques Bernard was fucking Lucia.

And he was suffering at the feel of another’s cunt.

The Alpha hated it.

Yet relished each sensation. Desperate to bury his guilt and shame as he chased every scrap of pleasure through furious friction against the womb of another. Rage burning hot through the pair-bond. A building whisper in her thoughts tickling corners of her mind she’d thought free of him in her foolish complacency while he’d slept.

“Brenya… come to me.”

And it grew. The bond stretching awake with him, snarling to life with every minute he was parted from sedation.

An Alpha threat that no matter the distance between them, no matter who he fucked, he was inside her.

That they were still one.

Forever.

And that he was coming to collect what was his.

That he would make her come over and over until she remembered who she belonged to. Until she obeyed. Until she stopped pulling away and reached for him through the bond and took all he gave.

And then he would make her come some more. Until it was her cunt he felt, not Lucia’s. Until the bond swallowed the difference, and the pleasure belonged to them alone.

Mounting cramps, deep discomfort coiling tighter around empty pleasure, Brenya trapped in a grotesque simulation of sex while Jacques forcefully flooded her with him. And still, Jules held out his hand.

Casting long shadows across the Red Room, the setting sun’s amber light bathed her in an orange glow. Caught on the curve of her breast beneath Jules’s borrowed black shirt. Lit the side of her tan throat in gold.

The same gold as her tormented eyes.

Still coming. Her insides compressed, muscles grinding delicate tissues against one another, driven to over-tighten in their desperation for seed, as there was no knot to milk. Twisting atop that puddling slick, the seat beneath her thighs and seizing cunt slimy with it, fat drops slipped off the chair’s edge to dribble down in threads to the floor.

“Come to me, mon chou.”

That voice—Jacques’s voice—wasn’t memory. It inhabited the air, slid down her spine, coiling against her clit as if his tongue lapped her juices.

“No!” she sobbed, jolting hard. Folding forward, she gripped the chair like it might anchor her.

A moan rose, trapped behind grinding teeth, as she fought with everything not to heed his call or feel his pleasure.

And failed.

A hissing, wet suck of air. Her breath snagged, morphed into a strained, reedy wail as blinding, painful orgasm peaked. Legs trembled, cunt manically wrenching around nothing.

No reprieve. No ebb. Just endless throbbing need.

Adrenaline shivers left her teeth chattering, another wave of climax already building too quickly for her to brace. The mind knew it wasn’t real, but her body did not understand what was taking place. Cunt tightened in confusion, grasping for a knot that wasn’t there and wouldn’t come without an Alpha to fuck her.

No stretch to soothe the muscles. No fullness to trigger her relief. No cum flooding inside her where it was needed. Just empty friction and sick dread.

She seized again under Jules’s unblinking gaze. Stuck, trembling, beautiful.

Bernard Dome’s museum boasted an exhibit of colorful, rare insects pinned to velvet. Beetles and butterflies that had not been invited into her Dome’s curated ecosystem. Delicate, pretty things.

And in that moment of ecstatic pain, that’s what she became. Twitching. On display. An invisible needle lanced through her center, pinning her to the sopping chair, even as she wanted to drag her body into a dark corner to hide.

She could taste Jacques in the back of her throat… hear the grunts and moans, the frustrated snarls and the passionate cries.

Worst of all… under the horror, Brenya felt wronged by Jacques’s use of another woman.

Betrayed.

The cum he pumped into Lucia was hers… Brenya needed it with a desperation that outstripped any craving she’d ever felt—even for Beta rations in her deepest moments of withdrawal.

And Jacques knew…

The Alpha knew every slippery, unfocused spasm in her mind. Including how frightened, how humiliated, she was.

“I’ll help you, Brenya. Find me. Come now.”

It was her nightmare all over again, and now he could do these things to her… and he was not even in the room.

“I won’t!” Bloodless fingers pried away from the chair’s edge with effort. Stiff, aching, curled from how hard she’d clung to her soaked seat. On panicked instinct, Brenya shoved at the table. Her chair scraping back, wooden legs sliding through the mess of slick pooling beneath her. Dishes clattered. Her sweating glass of water toppled. She collapsed forward, elbows locking, fingers clawing at the edge of the table as if it could hold her upright. Spine coiled tight, a cramp pulled her into a sick, folded arch.

She was trying. Gods, she was trying. Every spasm, every gasp, every weak shove of her hands said no—but it wasn’t enough. Not against an insidious pair-bond wielded by a man hellbent on enmeshing himself into her very soul.

The harder she resisted, the more fiercely Jacques rebelled, his influence escalating into an unbearable onslaught until, panting, she looked up at Jules, his hand still extended, unchanged, as if he’d known it would come to this.

Her voice cracked, low and broken. “Please… make it stop.”

With a single touch, Jules Havel granted her wish.

By reaching forward and closing his hand around her throat.

Gently forcing her spasming body to uncurl, articulating each vertebra against the solid back of her chair. Applying just enough pressure to assure he had her complete, undivided attention, even if another had her cramping womb.

Those unflinching blue eyes sparked with life, strange in their intensity, as the Beta made damn sure she recognized his control, and her lack. His solid, real form. Right there. Not a phantom poking within her guts or playing tricks on her mind.

With measured slowness, he stroked a thumb along her jawline, his intentional, inviting, tempered pitch perfection, as he purred, “Eyes on me, Brenya. Feel me.”

She did.

She felt the uncomfortable squeeze of his fingers around her throat as Jules guided her with that unyielding grip to rise. To find her footing and unfold… or choke. To recognize that his strength was necessary. That without him, to deny him, to try to struggle in the mire of her inharmonious bonds alone was a losing war.

Bare feet scrabbled against the slippery lacquered floor, rivulets of slick trailing down her thighs, as Brenya’s unsteady legs bore her weight. It was no easy feat. Stiff muscles protested, pain lancing through her womb, but Jules gave her just enough support to keep her upright, at long last coiling his dark sea around a flailing mind that mentally reached for him.

Because she’d asked.

Indulging in the helpless sound of her whimpers, Jules’s chest vibrated with quiet satisfaction. “You’re safe with me.”

Her breath stuttered. Safe? No. There was nothing safe about what Jules had done, was doing, and would do to her.

Safe was existing as a Beta making the descent. Risking her life day in and day out for the Dome she loved. Safe was everything that happened before Jacques Bernard ripped her in half on his cock. Safe was the endless black ocean in Jules when it was glassy and calm. When her island floated through it untouched, drifting in his unfeeling void. Not when it crept up her shores… not when it seemed to hunt her.

Safe was dissociation. Safe was Jacques in an endless coma, so she could stumble sleepily through whatever days she had left.

Being here. Feeling him. Standing barefoot in a puddle of her own slick while Jules’s turbulent mental ocean pressed in, licking at their link. Expectant.

Was not safe.

Pupils dilating fully, her world narrowed to Jules Havel, and she offered a pain-drunk, “I don’t feel safe.”

The nothingness inside him reached out again, brushing ever so softly against her fear, seeping in as if wrapping her in a warm blanket. Enveloping his mate in something soothing yet elusive.

His chest expanded, and so did hers.

Synchronized breath, Jules exercising some kind of authority over her body that far outstripped anything Jacques had ever wielded… calming her, drawing Brenya further from the Alpha’s manic grip.

Into Beta control.

Jules… formidable, unreadable, demonstrated just what he could do—muffle the pain and pleasure the other might stab in. Drench her in him, slither into her senses… should she let him.

And Brenya could weep for the relief of it, resentful he had withheld this mercy until she’d called out for help. Grateful that he was tending to her now. Going liquid, the circle of his fingers around her throat a quiet promise everything would be okay.

If only she’d…

With one decisive, unhurried pull, Jules drew her flush. Chest to chest, her spine molded to the pressure of his forearm, and let her feel the shape of what was hers.

The thick line of his hard cock pressed against her lower belly, hot and heavy through saturated fabric. Fabric soaked and sticky because he too had been forced to come, over and over, in the chain reaction of Jacques’s physical pleasure. Because Brenya was his pair-bound mate, and what she felt, he felt.

Yet, through every spill, not a grunt. Not one hitched breath as seed had pumped from his cock.

A deliberate shift against her. Just enough to smear his scent on her rumpled shirt, dragging her into his rhythm as he dipped his head to nuzzle the soft, vulnerable skin beneath her ear.

His breath was warm, his stubble sinful as it scraped just so.

A cunning grin wove into tone and intention, Jules murmuring along the shell of her ear, “Let me make it all better.” Each syllable like a kiss. “Choose me.”

Under his control, every last cell in her body already had, a strangled vibration thrumming from the very throat he gripped in his palm as she fisted his shirt and held on for dear life.

The throat he tilted and kissed, altering his hold to expose the jagged claiming mark.

His mark.

When the edges of Jules’s teeth found their home in that tender, ruined skin. A nip. A quick, wicked flick of his tongue…

Molten glory rushed under her skin and slick splattered onto the floor, hot and humiliating, as if her bladder had emptied.

“More.” A female murmur. A softly uttered call for comfort. For something Brenya could not name.

He hummed in a way that told her there would be a cost. “More?”

To bid her follow where he would lead.

Carefully coaxing her gently toward the mental brink, daring her to take a good, long look into that endless abyss that prowled around her little island. To see what kept her safe from Jacques.

To really peer into his depths. To open fully to him.

Dip in a toe, submerge herself in their bond.

Jules crooking a mental finger, his sea seducing in undulating waves where her mind was raw and her body in pain. Made silent promises she couldn’t fathom.

Warned that there would be no more sneaking glances through her hair. No more pretending not to obsess over patterns on his skin.

And as Jules slipped up her shores, Jacques scrambled to recapture her attention, thrashing wildly in their link as he felt her drift away to a place he could not reach. “Mon chou, do not trust him!”

The relentless pull of one and the overpowering gravity of another. Yet where the Alpha roared, Jules whispered. Where Jacques demanded, Jules invited.

The cunning Beta who’d stolen an Alpha’s power, his pride, and his mate, cupped her face in his hands, met her eyes, and said again, “Choose me, Brenya.”

The hidden monster licking its lips in excited anticipation.

“Yes.” Soft as breath on bare skin.

The second her affirmation took shape, his presence surged in the bond, and she was caught. Dragged under the surface, swallowed whole. It wasn’t calm waters that rushed like inky poison into her mouth, her lungs, her ears, eyes. Filling everything with creeping, inexorable carnage. But a crawling personal hellscape full of unnamable, hideous thoughts. Writhing corpses scrambling over one another to seize the shores of her island as if she were the haven.

A little flickering candle flame, a single light in the dark.

And it was terrifying to be so coveted.

Yet the very hand of death itself caressed Brenya inside and out. The void’s infinite tar-black eyes fixated, starved for every last crumb of her attention.

Drinking her down.

Openly plotting how to get more of her, how to steal her from the Alpha fool.

Gruesome. And somehow… beautiful.

The honest heart of a very bad man.

Who scared the absolute shit out of her… because there was something there she very much didn’t want to see. Something she knew not to look upon.

Something reaching for her.