Free Breeder by Cara Bristol Page A

should I address you?”
    “Call me Dak.”
    Dak? Speak his given name? Could she choke it past her lips?
    His nostrils flared as he stared at his ring. His earnest contemplation evoked a strange embarrassment, but she knew better than to protest or cover herself. Whatever she might call him, he was still Alpha.
    “If pregnancy does not occur, we will need to mate again. It should not hurt as much the next time, though it won’t be pleasant.” He raised his eyes to her face.
    The slump of his shoulders invited her reassurance. “It was not… un pleasant…this time,” she said.
    Such heat flashed in his eyes, she would not have been surprised if he’d unlocked his ring and forced his manhood inside her that very moment. Not force . She would welcome him. To her shame, she prayed the mating would fail to take so she could experience another breeding. To discover if something more existed beyond the wetness, the tension.
    “Well, then. Good.” He stood and raked his hands through his hair in a vulnerable gesture. As if he realized it, his features hardened. His speech was clipped when he said, “You will sleep here from now on.” He left the room.

Chapter Six
    Corren shoved into Enyi’s passage, eliciting a grunt from his beta. Pain—pleasure—it mattered not. He was alpha, and Enyi’s duty required him to serve him. But for a single point on the assessment exam, Parseon would have recognized Corren’s rightful status, and he would have walked tall among his peers.
    Instead he bowed and scraped to the Commander, an Alpha not worthy of the title, servicing his needs, domestic and sexual. Not that the latter proved onerous. Corren curled his lip with the irony. If Parseon only knew Alpha was nearly as sexless as a breeder…
    But his fierce drives had led Corren to keep Enyi after the anointment. He feared at first Dak would discover his infidelity, so he’d brought Enyi to the abode once and introduced him as his brother so he’d have a “legitimate” reason to visit. He needn’t have worried. Dak was gone so much he could have installed Enyi in the domicile and Dak wouldn’t have known. Dak was nothing if not conscientious about his command.
    At least he had been until she had arrived. Dak spent more time at home now. With her.
    Had Corren foreseen the outcome, he would never have advocated purchasing a breeder. But he’d wanted a servant to relieve him of the domestic chores. Be careful what you wish for, he thought with rancor.
    He knew Dak had assumed he’d want to use her to relieve his sexual tension. Most betas openly and many alphas surreptitiously found breeders with whom to curb their appetites. Though lust mingled with the blood in his veins, the thought of taking a female left him cold. Nay, disgusted him. He was alpha. He would not debase himself to consort with a creature as lowly as a female. He’d sooner lie with one of the conveyance animals.
    But to maintain appearances with Dak, he’d requested a female with a tight anal passage. He knew Dak sensed his concupiscence, and Corren did not want him to begin to question how he might be relieving it. Infidelity was punishable by flogging with a talia.
    He surveyed Enyi, positioned on hands and knees, his buttocks crisscrossed with welted purple streaks seeping blood. A beta through and through. How could the assessment council not have discerned the difference between him and a man like Enyi, who was smaller, receptive, submissive, and weak. But loyal. And for that, Enyi had inspired a modicum of affection. Of course, once Corren had been anointed to Dak, his time with Enyi had been relegated to stolen moments. His beta understood. Never complained. Not that Enyi’s disproval would have changed anything. After Corren had finessed being assigned to the Commander, the outcome had been set. Though every fiber of his being rebelled at serving Dak, Corren focused on his goal: to be designated as alpha. Whatever ignominies he had to endure in