Page 10 of Protector (Alpha Ties)

TEN

AX2

Save her.

No. Stars above, no!

AX2’s eyes are wide as he stares down at the broken woman before him, his heart thumping fast and unevenly behind his ribs. He can’t wrap his mind around the concept, but it’s there, no matter how hard he tries to make it disappear.

If he mates her—if he claims her as his—she will survive. He knows it in the marrow of his bones.

His chip fires angrily through his brain, the command like a hammer rather than a spike, now that he sees a way to obey both sets of orders. It urges him on, zinging against his nervous system with the demand to save her. Make her pain stop.

If he does this, she will be a part of him in ways far more horrific, far more intimate, than what she has done to him before. The very last vestiges of his mind will be hers too.

No. Not this. This he can’t do. He won’t.

AX2 bends for his gun, but his fingers slip on the metal and he stumbles forward, only barely catching himself against the bed.

Shit. He tries again, but the shock of the chip turns his vision white.

He can’t kill her now that he knows that doing so isn’t saving her. He missed his chance.

“Fuck!” he snarls, the fury in his voice making the woman whimper and withdraw.

His sight fades back into focus, and he sees her cowering on the bed as far away from him as she can get. Only then does he notice the manacle around her right ankle chaining her to the bed, and the raw, bleeding skin underneath it. She fought for her freedom.

Not all females do. Most will capitulate underneath an alpha. She did not.

She will fight beneath him too.

With mechanical movements, he straightens. Her eyes go round when he reaches for his belt.

“W-What are you doing? Stop!”

His muscles lock up, his fingers twitching against the buckle as his chip sears with another constricting command. Shit. His chip is still calibrated to obey her commands, but the roar of the general’s orders throb through his brain.

Save her. Save her.

“You want to die?” he grits. He grabs the gun from the floor, unhindered now that his intentions are no longer to kill her, and tosses it on the bed. “Then take your own life. I can’t do it for you. But… I can make the pain stop.”

She stares at him, uncomprehending, her breath coming in quick gasps. Her fingers still move against her bleeding ribs, digging. “What?”

“The only way to heal a broken mate-bond is to replace it with another,” he growls. “It’s that, or you die. Your call.”

Her mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out. He can see her desperation to deny him—it’s written all over her harrowed face. She wants this as little as he does, and he hopes with everything he is that she will surrender to death. His chip might kill him if he lets her die, but death does not scare him.

Especially not when the alternative is her.

She stares at him for several shaky breaths, eyes flicking to his gun for several more. His heart drops to his gut when steely resolution settles over her pale features, lending her the illusion of her former strength.

“If… If that’s what it takes. Do it.”

Without another look at him, she turns on the bed, presenting him with her naked back. Her left hand is still pressed against her wound, her right clutching the stained bedding.

AX2 lets out a low breath, the relief when his chip no longer fires conflicting orders at him nearly enough to drown out the anger boiling his bones.

Nearly.

This damnable woman—this cruel cunt —has taken everything from him, and now, she demands this too? His fucking claim? She, who doesn’t even see him as human?

But of course. To her, he is nothing but a weapon, a tool. Something to be used. Only this time… This time, he gets to use her too.

He kneels on the bed and grabs her hair, yanking her up higher on her knees before he pushes her forward, forcing her to brace against the bed on both elbows. She’s stiff in his grasp, every muscle in her shaking body tensed to the point of snapping, and when he lifts a knee to spread her thighs apart, she whimpers.

But she doesn’t fight him.

His breath is labored as he pulls back to free his cock, anger hardening his body in place of any real desire for what lies ahead. He has fantasized about hurting her countless times, about breaking her body apart until her heart stops beating, but never like this.

The realization makes him pause as his gaze slides over her back and hips, covered in purple bruises from where she’s been used before.

It shouldn’t matter—he gets to hurt her now, like she has him so many times before. Fuck, she’s even commanded him to.

Only it’s… not the same.

It doesn’t matter. Only her pain should matter.

It is the only thing that matters.

He bares his teeth and grabs her by the scruff again, pushing her face into the dirty mattress. His free hand he places between her barely parted thighs, pressing up against her pussy to spread her. Her skin is cold.

She jolts against his touch, twitching as if she wants to close her legs, but she doesn’t. She stays put, even as her quiet sobs make her tremble.

She is dry. Dry and tight, and the stench of the other alpha soaks the sheets and her marred skin. When he brushes over something crusty, she yelps and jerks hard.

AX2 glances down. Powdery blood dusts his fingertips. The scab he has unwittingly rubbed against bleeds a little, coloring a thin strip of her pink flesh scarlet. It isn’t the only wound there—maybe half a dozen minor tears are scabbed over around her opening.

His heart gives an odd sort of thump low in his chest at the proof of what, exactly, has been done to her. It should bring him joy—to know that his tormentor found someone even more monstrous than she is.

It doesn’t.

Silently he pulls away, releasing her neck in the process.

She doesn’t move, and he can still hear her shallow sobs as he pushes off the bed and searches the room for something that might make him come out of this with even a shred of his soul intact.

Funny. Up until this very moment, he didn’t think he had any soul left to shred. He was sure she stole the last remnants of it long ago.

There’s a bottle of machine lubricant on a dusty shelf. Translucent mineral oil. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

He returns to the bed where she still lays, unmoving. Legs apart. Waiting to be saved.

His cock is soft and reluctant to rise, and the sight of her bruised body does little to entice it. Even the anger that had him hard before is gone.

AX2 closes his eyes and gives his dick a slow pump. It barely twitches.

Save her.

He’s fucking trying.

An unbidden image flickers at the back of his mind—the same picture he has used before, in the privacy of her lab late at night. Of her— not the broken little thing crumpled on the bed, but the cold, cruel woman he hates with everything he is. Her surprising warmth as she brushes a hand over his naked chest. The floral scent of her shampoo.

His cock swells, and he bites back a groan of loathing.

Curse it all to goddamn hell.

Unbidden, his free hand finds the curve of her hip. She stiffens under his palm again, to the point he doesn’t know how she avoids snapping a tendon, but he doesn’t grab her. The soft feel of her skin, of touch, is more than enough, and he keeps his eyes closed around the image of the many times she has examined him.

He pumps his cock faster, swallowing another groan as it starts to feel good, and the image of her twists into that night after his first meeting with the others. Of her warm throat against his palm, her heavy pulse. Her scent filling his lungs as he breathed her in.

“Fuck!” He bites out the curse and wrenches his eyes open to the harsh light of reality, but this time, the sight of her vulnerable and defeated does nothing to quell the need pulsing through his cock.

He keeps his hand on her hip as he grabs for the bottle of lubricant, flicks it open with his thumb, and squirts it onto her soft flesh.

She whimpers when he follows the liquid with a finger, dipping it deep to ensure the oil reaches everywhere it needs to. The squeeze of her muscles protesting the intrusion has his cock throbbing.

“Shh. I’m not gonna hurt you,” he hears himself say—a bold-faced lie. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Another lie; he wants to hurt her with every fiber of his being, just… not like this.

She makes a mewling sound—like a scared kitten pinned and pleading for mercy—and shit, he wishes it didn’t make his cock jump.

“Okay. Just breathe, girl. It’ll be over soon.”

He brings the head of his throbbing member to her slickened opening, and her sobs turn to hyperventilation, her hands fisting in the sheets.

There is no point in drawing it out.

“Ow!” Her scream rips through the room, her body jerking to expel him.

Shit!

He slips his hand from her hip around her stomach and anchors her in place as she turns wild beneath him, instincts she can do nothing to control flaring to life.

Her skin is so cold everywhere she presses against him with her bucking, her hair smells like sour sweat and sex, and the slick clench of her muscles as he fills her sends lightning through his nerves. It’s sickening—and it’s fucking ecstasy.

“You’re okay. You’re okay.” He gasps the empty promise against her ear with every thrust, her desperate screams squeezing his gut as tightly as her pussy’s clasp on his cock. Shit, he hates how fucking good she feels.

His body has no ambivalence. It’s a mercifully short while before he senses the swelling at the bottom of his shaft. Thank fuck.

She feels it too, and her fighting turns downright feral. “Not that! Not that! No, no, no, no!”

“Shh,” he groans, tightening his grip around her until she feels like a part of his own body. “Fuck! I have to do this. It’s the only way.”

She lets out a whimper, caging her protests behind gritted teeth. And then he feels her hand against his arm bracing them on the bed. She grabs on so tight her knuckles turn white.

“Do it,” she says.

He doesn’t need her permission, but her hoarse whisper sends lightning up his spine nonetheless.

“Oh, fuck!”

His knot swells fast, stretching her wide, and her whimpering turns even more desperate—more pained.

He doesn’t think; reacting on instinct alone, he reaches for her clit with his oil-slick fingers. He falls down on top of her, keeping her pinned to the mattress as he slowly works his still-swelling knot through her protesting sheath.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Her cursing is high-pitched and panicked, but he feels her flutter around his cock every time he strokes her nub until— fuck! —her pussy snaps shut around the bottom of his knot like a damn elastic band, and all he sees are stars. Everything is hot, pulsing flesh—and utter euphoria.

Save her.

Her nape is clammy from their combined sweat, and rich with her pheromones. He sucks in greedy lungfuls and groans when his balls draw up tight, until, finally…!

He has never known release like this—never known anything could give him such complete and perfect relief.

Without thought for the consequences, AX2 bites down on his tormentor’s neck, breaking her skin and reopening the fresh scar left by her first alpha.

A single word pounds in his brain, reverberating through his body and into the very helix of his DNA:

Mine.