Okay…

I have now read a ton of comments about incredible sucky Mondays.  I think we could all use a bit of slice of a life much worse than ours to pick us up.

Here is some alpha menz.

Warning: You know this is some sick shit so go in at your own risk expecting trouble.

Previous chapters are under alpha menz tag.

#

“Mommy!”  Emily clutched onto Karina’s neck and hung on with surprisingly fierce strength.

Karina scooped her off the bed and held her close, afraid to hug the tiny body too hard.  “I’m here, baby.  I love you.”  Emily never said mommy.  It was always mom.

“You won’t leave?”

A hard knot formed in Karina’s throat.  Leaving was Emily’s euphemism for dying.  Her daughter thought she had died.

“I will try very hard not to,” she promised.

Emily hung on, and Karina gently carried her into the kitchen.  “I made your favorite apples.”

Slowly Emily’s hold on her neck eased.  A few seconds later she allowed herself to be put into a chair at the table.

Daniel marched into the kitchen.  “Food.”

Henry nodded.  “Yes.”

Daniel pulled out the chair, sat, and reached for the pancakes.

“Let’s wait for Lucas,” Henry said.

“Fuck Lucas.”

Karina looked at him.  Henry sighed.  Daniel looked back at them, glanced at Emily, and shrugged.  “They don’t like it that I swear.  Do you mind if I swear?”

Emily shook her head.

“See, she doesn’t mind.”

Lucas loomed in the doorway.  One moment it was empty and the next he was just there, hazel eyes watching her every move with a hungry light.  Karina took her chair, trying to ignore it, but his gaze clasped her like an invisible chain.  Yes, I belong to you.  You don’t have to ram it down my throat.

Emily’s eyes had grown big.  She shied a little when Lucas stepped to the table, aware of his movements.  Karina read fear in her daughter’s face and reached over to hold her hand.  He’d given Emily no reason to fear him, yet she was clearly scared, almost as if she sensed on some primal level that he was a threat.

Lucas sat next to Karina, opposite of Daniel, and reached for the pancakes.  She watched him load his plate: four pancakes, four links of sausage, six strips of bacon…  The plate would hold no more.  He growled a bit, frustrated, piled the apples atop the pancakes, and drenched the whole thing in maple syrup.

He sliced pancakes with his fork, pierced a slice of the apple, and maneuvered the whole thing into his mouth.  She sat on the edge of her seat, listening to the elevated tempo of her own heartbeat, watching him chew, and waited for him to throw the plate across the table.  She wanted them to like the food; no, she desperately needed the three of them to like the food.  Her survival depended on it.

Lucas swallowed.  “Good,” he said and reached for more.

She slumped a little in her chair, unable to hide her relief.

“Good?  It’s fucking divine,” Daniel said.  “It’s the first decent meal we’ve had in weeks.”

Lucas leveled a heavy stare at him but said nothing.

“Mom,” Emily said.

“What baby?”

“I left my backpack at Ms. Romolko’s house.”

The three men ate, watching her.

“That will be okay, baby,” Karina said.  “You have to change schools anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because we live here now and you’ll go to a special school.”  The words came painfully.

“Do I have to ride the bus?”

Karina swallowed a hot painful lump that had formed in her throat.  Giving words to it was hard, as if she was driving nails into her own coffin.  “No.”

“Why do we have to stay here?”

“This is where I work now.”

“Your mother is a slave,” Daniel said.  “Lucas owns her.”

If only she could have reached across the table, she would have hit him with a closed fist so it would hurt.  Karina forced neutrality into her face, pulling it on like a mask.   Show nothing.  Betray no weakness.

“Is a slave better than payroll supervisor?” Emily asked.

“They’re not that different,” Karina lied.  So many times before she had thought she worked like a slave, pulling in long hours, picking up project after project, perpetually behind, trying to get to the bottom of her to do stack.  All of it seemed so pointless now.  Her memories belonged to someone else, a happier, flightier, younger person.  She had a new life now and new priorities, chief of which was the welfare of her daughter.  She had to keep Emily safe.

Emily poked her pancake with a fork.  “What about the house?  All our stuff is there…  my hello kitty blanket…”

“We’ll get new things.”  She cast a quick glance around the table but none of the three men said anything to break down her fragile promises.

“Will I get my own room?”

Karina looked to Lucas.  Please.  Don’t separate me from my daughter.

He wiped his mouth with a napkin, his movements unhurried.  “You have to stay at the main house.  You can come to visit your mother on weekends.  We’ll set up a room.”

“I want to stay with mom.”  Emily’s voice was tiny.

“You can’t,” Lucas said.

Emily bit her lip.

“You’ll have a good place at the main house.  A room you’ll share with a nice girl.  Toys.  Clothes.  Everything you need.  If anybody tries to be mean to you, tell them you belong to Lucas.  Everyone is afraid of me.  Nobody will harm you.”

“I’m scared,” Emily said.  “I want to stay with mom.  I’m scared that she’ll go away like daddy.”

Lucas glanced at Karina.

“Heart attack,” she said softly.

“I want to stay.  I’ll be good.  I’ll do all my chores.”

“Please.”  Karina hated the tremble in her voice.

“I’ll think about it,” Lucas said.

Emily held his gaze, but Karina could tell that her daughter found no reassurance in Lucas’s voice.  She simply froze like a baby rabbit looking into the eyes of a wolf.

#

Later, dishes washed and put away, Karina took Emily out on the porch, out of the house, away from Lucas and the others.  The day was cold with impending autumn, but sun shone bright.  No clouds troubled the sky.  Before them the forest stretched, rolling out and down, into the valley.   Huge pine trees enclosed the small grassy square of the yard like stern sentries, hugging a narrow path that melted into the wilderness.

Karina sat on the wooden steps of the porch.  Emily snuggled by her for a little while and then wandered off into the yard, to investigate pine cones layering the ground.   Karina wanted to hold on to her, to cuddle her, to smell her hair.  Her hands trembled and she hid them between her knees.

“I’m going over there.”  Emily pointed to an old pine on the edge of the yard.   “I have to get the cones.  We can have pine cone cake.”

Karina forced a smile.  “Okay.”

Emily meandered over to the pine, humming a quiet melody under her breath.

Something is wrong with her. The realization sat inside her in a cold heavy clump.  Something is wrong with my girl.   Henry said she wouldn’t remember anything damaging, but she’s terrified of Lucas.  Somehow she knows…

A woman appeared on the path.  Middle-aged and plump, she wore a pair of khaki’s a formal business blouse, white with carefully layered pleats.   Her hair sat atop her head in a small bun.  At first Karina thought she headed to the house, but the woman veered toward Emily instead, with a determined look on her face.

Karina jumped to her feet.  “Stop!”

The woman took Emily by the hand and said something, bending low to her.

Something snapped in Emily’s eyes.  Her mouth gaped open.  She sucked in a deep breath, rolled her eyes, and screamed, making the windows ring.  “No, not going, mommy, no, no, no, no, no!”   The woman struggled to hold on to her.

Karina ran.  She flew off the porch across the grass.  “Emily!”

Emily thrashed, kicking and pulling.   “Mom, help me, help, mom!”

Almost there.

The woman jerked Emily to her feet.

Karina lunged for her and but her hands passed through empty air.  Emily and the woman were gone.  Only a pile of pinecones remained.

Karina screamed.

Behind her the door banged and then Lucas was there, blocking half of the world.

“She took her!  She took Emily! They just disappeared.  She took her from me and I didn’t get to…”  Karina ran out of air and choked.  An icy thought slashed through her mind: what if she were going crazy, what if there was no Emily, what if they had conjured her the way Henry had stolen her memories?  Nothing was impossible here.  Her heart hammered.  She drew air in but her lungs wouldn’t let it out.  She was drowning in open air.

Lucas pulled out a cell phone, punched in a number, and spoke into it, biting off words.

A phantom outline of a skeleton materialized in the grass.  It shimmered and gradually gained solidity.  Organs filled it, muscle and ligament coagulated from thin air, and finally skin sheathed it all with awful slowness.  The nude woman paused in the grass, her round belly overhanging her bald crotch.  Hair sprouted, clothes appeared, hiding the wrinkles and pale flesh, and the middle-aged woman who had taken Emily stood before them.  Her chest rose in labored breathing.  Sweat broke at her hairline and slid down her face.

Karina charged her, but Lucas’s steel arm clasped her shoulder, pulling her to him and down.

“Did I give you permission to take the child, Vanessa?”

The woman’s knees trembled.  “I was told that…”

“Did I give you permission?”  A coarse ugly sound laced Lucas’s voice, a hidden snarl wanting to claw its way out.

“No, sir.”  The woman’s lips trembled.  “I thought it best for the welfare of the child to get it over quickly.”

Lucas said nothing.  He just looked at her the way  a wolf would look at a mouse, like she was nothing, like she was less than nothing, just a thing, a bag of meat he could devour if he so chose.

The woman cringed like a kicked dog.

“If I find out you’ve taken your frustration with me out on the child, you will regret it.  Am I clear?”   Lucas’s voice was eerily flat now, infinitely more frightening than his roar.  Karina wanted to turn and run.  She didn’t care where.  She just wanted to run away, far away from him.

The woman’s face twisted.  “Yes, sir.”

“When she awakens, you’ll call me immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You may go.”

The woman hesitated.  “I have no strength to teleport.”

“Then you’ll have to walk, Vanessa.  You can manage two miles.”

The woman bit her lip and started down the path.  Lucas brought the cell phone to his mouth.  “Did you hear my instructions?”

He listened for a moment, snapped the phone closed and fixed Karina with a flat stare.  “Emily is asleep now.  It’s a side effect of teleportation.  She’ll sleep for at least twenty hours, maybe longer.  She’s safe and unharmed. No more hysterics.”

Karina forced herself to unclench her fists, took a deep breath, and walked in front of him to the house door, where Henry waited with a concerned look on his long face.

Wait for me, baby.  I’ll get you back.