“What is a wedding night?”
“It’s when the transfer of your ownership moves from your parents to your husband. It’s the moment past the contracts and negotiations and physical pleasure, where you bear the true weight of an Alpha for the first time. Tradition demands that the following morning, there is a breakfast only married women might attend. Usually, it’s a pleasant affair of comfort, congratulations, advice, and sweet stories.”
“And when it’s unusual?”
Another practiced smile, this time accompanied by a small plate of square foodstuffs. “When it’s unusual, extra honey is added to the tea. Occasionally, a ranking male relative might petition parliament for marital negotiations on behalf of their kin. This is a miniscule proceeding, filed once, and usually forgotten. In Central, it is bad manners to formally interfere with another’s wife so long as the marriage contracts are upheld.”
Brenya had been taught her whole life that Bernard Dome was a society of equality and freedom, where all who lived under the glass worked in harmony for the greater good. Tens of millions of citizens believed that lie, they even enjoyed their ignorance. It seemed, despite their current circumstances, Annette’s life had been far uglier… and would get uglier still.
Her friend felt almost nothing. Brenya felt entirely too much.
And there was nothing to be done for it but sip tea and drink in the moment before it was gone forever. “I don’t know what it means to be the most powerful woman in Bernard Dome.”
Because surely she was powerless.
Annette set down her empty cup. “It means, sweet Brenya, that you can have as much honey as you want.”
“Annette… I’m sorry.”
Blue eyes as pretty as the sky outside the Dome did not glitter with amusement, playfulness, or energy for life. They did not glitter at all. “I understand now why you begged for Beta rations. Honey only goes so far.”
Throat bobbing from a nervous swallow, Brenya set down her too sweet tea, silently agreeing that the honey would never be enough. “Annette, everything you’re saying to me, he will hear. I’m sure he’s even watching.”
“The Commodore? Of course he is watching. He sent the honey.”
It was hard to even speak his name. “Ancil, Annette. Your husband.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Ancil is not watching. There is nothing in this room of worth to him.” A feminine wave gestured toward the two silent Beta attendants, in their matching dresses and pinafores. “Not that they won’t report to him later. But if he has any questions, they will center on your behavior today, not mine.”
Failing to glance at the attendants, Brenya drank in the blue eyes of her friend. Eyes that seemed much wiser than she had ever shown herself to be. “And what will they say?”
“That, though you acknowledged estrous, you have failed to mention your new pair-bond. That you appeared emotionally unstable. That you ate and drank all that you were given. That you squirmed in your seat and picked at your cuticles. This will please him. He will not want you to outshine his new Omega. Lucia’s performance in a social situation would have been flawless.”
It wasn’t flippant. It wasn’t rude. It wasn’t bitter. Annette was simply matter of fact.
Brenya had missed the honesty of Beta conversation, so much so that the soft smile on her mouth was genuine. “Then they can tell him that I didn’t mention the pair-bond, because I didn’t come here to talk about Jacques. Jacques talks about himself enough.”
Reaching for the teapot to refill their cups, Annette offered a simple “I know why the Commodore fell in love with you.”
“I don’t understand what ‘in love’ is supposed to mean, but whatever it is you felt for Ancil, that is not what the Commodore feels for me.” Eyes going out of focus, Brenya stared into the middle distance, poorly trying to explain the horror in her chest, the gnawing, unwelcome savagery, the endless intrusion. “It’s a hunger that will never be satisfied. And it will keep eating me until I am dead. It has no consideration for my life. I don’t really exist to it. I’m just the trough where it feeds. And it hurts, Annette, far more than falling from the Dome did.”
“And to think, I desired to be an Omega more than anything else in the world.” There it was, another brief flash of grief that no amount of Beta rations would ever fully quell. “Maybe Ancil would have loved me back if I was.”
“I’ll love you instead.” Just as she loved the Dome and the good people laboring within it. “I’ll love you, even if he never lets me see you again.”
“The Commodore won’t.” There was no emotion in Annette as she confirmed what Brenya felt echo as true through the pair-bond. “You made a grave mistake when you walked through the door. You forgot that you were here to hold my baby.”