Page 34

CHAPTER 34

M atthew

I leaned back in the ergonomic chair I’d occupied for the last hour, my eyes fixed on the high-resolution display before me. The footage from the extraction team’s bodycams played out in vivid detail, every moment of the operation captured in crystal clarity. For the past ten minutes I had been rewinding and replaying a certain segment over and over, trying to quiet everything in my mind but its coldest, most analytical region, letting the dispassionate observer who lived there dissect each frame for clues.

The moment that kept drawing my attention was Mary’s desperate plea to include Camille in the extraction. Her voice, hoarse and urgent, rang in my ears again and again.

“You have to take her too. Camille. She knows… she knows more than I do. We’re in this together.”

I zoomed in on Mary’s face as she spoke those words. Her green eyes had opened wide with a mix of fear and determination, her pale skin flushed from the ordeal she’d just endured. But there was something else there, something that nagged at the edges of my perception. A glint of… calculation, perhaps?

I ran the footage through Selecta’s most advanced facial recognition and micro-expression analysis software. The results intrigued me, to say the least, even if the computer labeled them as inconclusive . While Mary’s distress appeared genuine, there were subtle indicators that suggested she might not have been entirely truthful—perhaps about Camille’s level of knowledge.

Frowning, I pulled up the dossiers on both girls. Mary’s background at a Selecta college had already piqued my interest. Her psychological profile suggested a high level of intelligence and adaptability. Camille’s file, on the other hand, was frustratingly sparse. A French university student, with no notable connections or exceptional traits on record.

Yet Mary had insisted that Camille knew ‘more.’ About what? About the meeting that only Mary had attended? Surely not.

Was it possible that Camille was more than she appeared? Or that Mary was? Or was Mary, a frightened young woman, captured and forced into sexual servitude, simply trying to protect her friend, ensuring she wouldn’t be left behind in Beaumont’s clutches?

I sighed, rubbing my temples. The complexities of human motivation never ceased to amaze me, even after all my years with the Guard. Above all when it came to things humans did out of lust—whether submissive or dominant, or somewhere in between. Just when I thought I had a subject figured out, they’d throw me a curveball.

Rising from my chair, I began to make my way through the labyrinthine corridors of the Mithraeum. I let the onus of my responsibility press down on me as I descended deeper into the earth, passing ancient mosaics and state-of-the-art security checkpoints with equal reverence. Jean Gisard had evaluated the intelligence Mary, at least, possessed as worth risking his cover for. I needed to know why.

I reached the holding cells, three levels down from the control room. Cut into the bedrock like the entirety of the Mithraeum, they featured a bit of comfort in the form of a plush mattress, a rug, and good recessed lighting, though the necessity of a toilet-sink combination in the corner removed any idea of luxury.

For subjects like Mary and Camille, the cells set the proper tone: the people who have taken custody of you want you to feel both taken care of and confined. From here, your level of cooperation will determine which of those two elements of your time with the Guard will prevail.

I paused outside Mary’s cell, taking a moment to collect my thoughts. On my handheld, I pulled up the surveillance feed from her cell. I saw her sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, her red hair a vibrant splash of color against the beige of the smooth-hewn rock walls. She looked small and vulnerable, but I saw a set to her jaw that spoke of inner strength.

I tapped a button on the little screen that sounded a soft chime in the cell, and watched Mary’s eyes go wide as she looked around, as if trying to figure out where the sound had come from. I put my handheld back in my jacket pocket and pressed a panel on the door. It swung inward in response to my palm print.

“Mary,” I said as she looked at me, her eyes slightly wild despite a clear effort to control herself that I immediately added to my mental version of her file. “You may call me Leo Marmareus.”

* * *

Mary

My lips parted as if part of my brain meant to say, “Hi,” or something equally inane. But I caught myself, pressing my lips together as I studied the man before me. He was tall and athletic, with olive skin and intense dark eyes that seemed to pierce right through me. His tailored dark suit hinted at a muscular frame beneath, and he carried himself with an air of quiet authority that made my heart race as I thought of my true master’s similar demeanor.

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice cracking a little as I began to weave my deception. “What organization is this? Where’s Camille?”

Marmareus regarded me for a long moment before answering. “We’re an organization dedicated to preserving order and protecting society from threats most people never even know exist. As for your friend, she’s safe. She’s being held in another cell, similar to this one.”

I glanced around the small room, taking in the smooth stone walls, the narrow bed I sat upon, and the toilet-sink combination in the corner. It was Spartan, but not uncomfortable—a far cry from the opulent luxury of Beaumont’s chateau, yet somehow less menacing.

“Why haven’t you given me any clothes?” I asked, suddenly acutely aware of my nakedness. I resisted the urge to cover myself, knowing it would be futile. “Are you… are you just as bad as… as him… as… Monsieur?”

Leo ’s expression softened slightly, though his eyes remained sharp and assessing. “I’d like to think we’re a lot better than Beaumont,” he said. “But it’s our practice not to give clothes to girls like you, at least not initially. It’s part of our culture and our process.”

At those words, my heart raced with fear and a familiar, currently very unwelcome, stir of arousal. I found myself oddly drawn to this agent of the enemy, even in these terrifying circumstances. Something about his manner, the quiet confidence he exuded, definitely and startlingly reminded me of Sven.

“What do you mean, ‘girls like me’?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “And what process?”

The man who had called himself Leo Marmareus — as if the words constituted a title rather than a name—advanced further into the room, his movements fluid and controlled. He stood before me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his gaze. “Girls who have been trained in submission,” he said softly. “Girls who respond to authority, to dominance. Girls who hold valuable information in their pretty little heads.”

I swallowed hard, feeling heat rise to my cheeks, even though this was going to plan so far in the intelligence department at least. “I do,” I told him as coolly as I could, even as my body betrayed me with a shiver of helpless arousal. “I have information I’m guessing you really need.”

To my dismay, Leo Marmareus smiled. Worse, the next thing he said caught me completely off guard. I had expected Leo , or Marmareus, or whatever-the-fuck his name was, to ask me about what I knew immediately, and to demand the crucial information I’d overheard. Instead, he went in a completely different direction.

“Tell me about the night you were kidnapped, Mary,” he said, his dark eyes narrowing slightly. “I want to hear every detail.”

My heart raced as I scrambled to recall the cover story we’d been given. For a moment, panic threatened to overwhelm me.

“Why?” I demanded. “I mean… I mean I… I don’t want to think about that… and…”

Leo Marmareus cut me off.

“I don’t want you to have the wrong impression, Mary,” he said, his voice calm but edged with iron. “My organization will do nothing we judge to be harmful to your well-being. But we will decide what harms you and what helps you—and, of course, what helps us.”

I swallowed hard, feeling my eyes widen as I looked into his too-handsome face.

“You’ve had a taste of discipline, I know—and I know that not just from the cane marks across your pretty backside, not to mention the state of your vagina and anus when we examined them while you were asleep.”

I couldn’t keep it back, and my instincts told me I shouldn’t; I let out a little whimper as I felt my traitorous pussy clench at his words. The idea that they had conducted a thorough, intimate examination while I had lain unconscious—that they had found the evidence of the brutal, terribly pleasurable fucking I had had from Beaumont and Georgy and clinically noted it for future use… it stirred the part of me I absolutely did not want stirred at this delicate moment.

“Y-you…” I stammered. “How… how could…”

“We examined you for your own well-being, Mary. But we also did it because we wanted to, and because we could. That’s beside the point, though. I know that you’ve experienced the kind of discipline girls like you need. I promise you that if you lie to me, you’ll have a great deal more of it, and more painfully, than you’ve received so far.”

My jaw had gone slack. I closed my mouth and swallowed hard, my thoughts whirling in my head, desperately looking for a branch—a twig—of the version of the world tree I apparently had somewhere inside me… something that I could hold onto, to tie me back to the man, the Herra I loved, and the mission he had given me.

“So,” Leo Marmareus continued, his tone softening a bit, “I’m going to decide what we talk about, and at the moment I’d like to talk about your kidnapping by the traffickers who sold you to Beaumont.”

I blinked, and I took a deep breath. Abruptly, I felt a strange calm settle over me, as if I had found the connection I sought, and Yggdrasil itself was steadying my nerves. I took another breath and began to speak.

“It… it was at a party,” I said, letting my voice tremble slightly. “Off campus, in this old warehouse. Camille and I, we… we’d never met before that night.”

I paused, lowering my eyes as if overcome with shame. When I looked back up at Leo Marmareus, I saw that he had taken a handheld out of his jacket pocket. His brows knit slightly as he looked down at it, and then back up at me. When our eyes made contact, he spoke, his voice neutral, telling me nothing at all about how my story had come across so far.

“Go on.”

“We were both so drunk,” I continued, the lies flowing more easily now. “I don’t even remember how much we’d had. But we got to talking, and…” I trailed off, biting my lip.

“Go on,” Marmareus prompted, his voice softer now, but insistent.

I swallowed hard, forcing myself to meet his gaze. “We told each other we were virgins,” I whispered, letting my cheeks flush with embarrassment. “And we… we dared each other to get laid. God, it sounds so stupid now.”

As I spoke, I found that I could access the pretended feelings with surprising ease. The shame, the regret—it all felt so real. To my dismay, though, I also felt myself getting even more aroused as I recounted the fictional events.

“What happened next?” Marmareus asked, his eyes never leaving my face.

“We found these boys,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “We didn’t even know their names. They took us to this corner of the warehouse where… where lots of people were having sex.”

I paused, taking a shuddering breath.

“They… they… you know…”

I felt my cheeks redden as if I were recounting something that had actually happened to me—to the modest but horny virgin I’d been only the previous week. I lowered my voice to an embarrassed whisper.

“They, you know, fucked us on these old mattresses. It was all happening so fast, I could barely process it.”

The man’s expression remained neutral, but I saw his fingers twitch slightly at his side. “How did it feel?” he asked, his voice low and intense.

I closed my eyes, pretending to recall the invented memory. “It felt… shameful,” I said, opening my eyes to look at him. “When the alcohol started to wear off, I realized what we’d done. I felt so dirty, so used.”

As I spoke, I could feel my arousal growing, much to my horror. My nipples hardened, and I felt the warmth building between my legs. I prayed the Guard agent wouldn’t notice, but part of me knew he probably already had.

“What happened then?” he pressed, taking a step closer.