Sasha's Audio Epilogue

A unique reading just for you. 

Sasha, bride-mate of Constantine Kane, shares some of her thoughts about family, children, and her life.  

I held my daughter up to my shoulder to burp her.  Like her sisters, she was a little bit of fluff and butter in my arms, plump with her baby roundness. I couldn’t stop myself from inhaling her soap and milk scent. She’d had a bath and still smelled fresh with it.

She burped and made a small gurgle near my ear. All the noise she’d make for hours - this little one’s easy ways troubled me sometimes.

Her oldest sister began screaming during her third month of life and didn’t stop until she started walking. My second-born had a happier disposition if she was being cuddled - set her down and she dissolved into sobs of agony.

Was it birth order, or something else? I’d noticed right away that Lornnin cried less, slept more, and watched everything with curious, thoughtful eyes. 

Her oldest sister, Jaynai, who at seven declared herself alpha queen of the nursery, liked to play with Lornnin the best because she never fussed about anything. Jaynai would sling the baby on her back, imitating me, playing with her instead of her stuffies.  She didn’t understand why the four-month-old shouldn’t be handled like a toy every time I turned my back, insisting all the time that Lornnin liked it.

Lornnin very well might like it. It was hard for me to tell. She was so watchful. Gifting me with her rosebud smile only when I sang to her, she was cautious with every interaction. Sometimes, she would gurgle and coo, especially when she was hungry, but this baby, she’s so much like her father. 

From my arms she looks at me with a round, rosy-cheeked face, Kane’s dark hair, and his dark eyes. When she isn’t watching everyone, I swear, instead of crying, she just glares, royally displeased. 

I can always tell when her diaper is dirty, a single wrinkle between her eyes.

We sit in the family nursery, my favorite place in our home. It is its own complete room, with a kitchen that I had asked for, and an enclosed patio and garden just outside.  Kane started remodeling the third month of my first pregnancy when he realized that I wasn’t going to want to walk half-a-day through his giant house to get to the second floor secure rooms where the nursery had been before.

Our bond changed his world and his living space.

He said the original idea was to keep the young ones as far away from him as possible.

Now our nest was just one room over. If Kane was in the bed with me, he only permitted the baby in the sleeper, but if he wasn’t, it was filled with three daughters and myself. More than once during their nap time he’d just came in and plucked me out and took me to what I now referred to as the second sleep room.

He calls it something else since we never sleep there.

After our bonding, I knew more of what was going on beneath this man’s icy-controlled surface. I’d really had no idea before. He was capable of a whole range of emotions, even a mental pout when things didn’t work out his way because of the babies or a pregnancy.  That cute, hidden pout when he didn’t get what he wanted because one of his daughters was in the way, got me every time. 

Accustomed to getting his way, and to a long-gone harem who had once served his every need, fatherhood had been both a wonder and a curse to him.  He told me that he had resisted the lure of the contract women. He hadn’t wanted to get attached and didn’t want them to become attached to him. They had been nothing more than a release. And he used them only when he needed that release.

I think he said it to make me feel better, but it only made me feel bad for the jewels. At least they had those contracts. They’d not been thrown out after Kane’s indifference and sent to the slums. 

Now that he had a bonded wife, he should be able to indulge in pleasure whenever he wanted. 

He wanted to indulge often.

Poor man. What a predicament to be in. The children in his life were one thing he couldn’t control. His purr did help, certainly. The girls adored him.  And he was a good father.  Taking a child or two off my hands when I needed to sleep, spending time with them.

He told me his father did that with him. He hadn’t realized until later. Although he has several siblings who could have benefited with their father’s time, Rhineholth had singled him out and given him all his attention. It was almost as if he couldn’t spare any time for the others. Kane was sure thiswas why his younger brothers all had issues with anger and rebellion.

Kane hadn’t realized any of this until he had children of his own. The revelation resulted in guilt, as if he contributed somehow to his brothers making such poor decisions later in life. And the guilt weighed heavy behind his exterior. I wouldn’t have known about it if not for our bond.

I never expected to be comforting and reassuring a man like Kane, but it was one of the many beautiful gifts of our bond. He made me… powerful.

But I didn’t want the role of Queen.

I wanted my children. My household. My friends. But, I had it anyway, because my mate cared so much for my thoughts, feelings and opinion. I was privilege to all his vulnerabilities. There were  still plenty of his irritating, dominant tendencies. 

He had a need to control everything, and I usually didn’t mind. Usually.

I watched my children playing. Jaynai commanded her army across the floor.  Omega or not, she loved to be in charge, her father’s daughter. I asked him if she could actually present as an alpha female. My husband laughed and said that was impossible.

Broad-minded, the man was not. I watched my little girl, sure she was going to surprise everyone but me.

Having the children increased my need to go back to my sector and connect with my past, find those lost brothers and sisters. I wanted to help look for my half-siblings, the drone and beta children fathered by my father. Stubborn, sure his way was always right, Kane refused. Such a dictator. He didn’t even want me to leave the house. 

He gave me the family I always wanted, brought all my friends from Sector 10 and let me incorporate them into his life and home.  He taste-tested all my gin recipes and let me set up a small business for Silas and everyone who was interested, so that they could sell and profit from it.

And he gave me pleasure. Endless Pleasure.

He’d say, “The world is dangerous for you now more than ever, my enemies would do anything to get their hands on you.”

I asked him about enemies, and he refused to tell me. Stubborn man kept a lot of things from me. He had an overriding need to protect me from any kind of worry or pain – unless it was the pain he gave me with pleasure. He loved doing that.

I loved that, too.

I love feeling the constant flood of desire and heat between us. This connection is filling up all my empty spaces. I hadn’t realized how lonely and insecure I’d felt, how I’d just forced myself to keep moving, until our bond settled, and the larger-than-life presence of my mate filled it. It was hard to be angry at him for his high-handed ways when I could feel everything he felt, when nothing between us was hidden. 

Since he shared so much with me, I now understood the drone discrimination problem.  That my father had a hand in creating a two-pronged uprising meant to unseat the Administration with drone farm sympathizers. The strong would have it all while the weak would be their playthings.

Explaining that the alpha instinct to dominate could become twisted, Kane told me it happened more often than the Administration liked to admit. There were even such men in positions of power on the Council. 

This was the purpose of the army enrollment; force the weaker alphas with selfish, arrogant ideas to submit to stronger, tested alphas with a sense of self control and honor. But if a strong alpha had a corrupt mind, he could hide it, gather men to him, and work against those he disagreed with to take them down.  It was an endless cycle of aggression and fighting to stay on top.

Alphas were born with a need to dominate, and they could no more escape it than I could escape my estrus or my need to nurture. 

Kane wanted to protect me from everyone and everything, even if he knew I could take the pain of my father’s legacy, of the world outside this house. He didn’t think I should have to. But some discoveries, I wanted to make on my own. 

The argument was on-going. I’d gotten more than one swat trying to make my case, swats that turned into spankings that turned into other kinds of play. 

With three children in seven years, an unheard of accomplishment I’d been told, Kane was always in some state of protective intensity. Dr. Bane and his nurse had told me that I could expect not to have another cycle until Jaynai was three or four years old. But, two months after I stopped nursing her, much to Kane’s delight and surprise, I started a three-day heat cycle that brought us our second little girl, Stasiah. The same thing happened with Lornnin. 

It made me want to find my siblings even more. Maybe I was the only omega breeder, but we had a similar biology and the same alpha father. I knew there were children, that babies had been delivered by caesarian. My father always had women around him.  He had a teasing and flirtatious manner with all of them. Somehow, I had never made the connection with them and the pain he caused them.

I’ve asked a lot of questions now. 

My husband could make life difficult for me, keeping me home, setting guards on me who know to watch for my face and not my scent, who kept eyes on me at all times. But Kane could not keep me from asking questions. 

The answers were painful. Everything about Edin Dover had been a disguise. 

The nursery set-up allowed me sit in the corner in a comfortable chair and watch the girls play. We had a never-ending stream of visitors. My children had cousins - slightly older, from Kane’s sweet sister, Erin and her mate, Cason Edge. She had two rambunctious sons and a daughter, about two years older than my Jaynai–who had decided to be best friends. 

Of course, Kane’s Mother came often. And we had hours of talks while playing with the children. Not a woman to stay in the nursery, her research into the omegas of the 12 Sectors was enlightening and frightening.  Helping Dr. Bane and his wife to record it all, they had discovered some shocking numbers. They were still making discoveries and keeping the research secret, but it was very worrisome. The consensus was that the breed population could not be sustained at the current birth rate. Alphas always outnumbered omegas. That disparity was widening with fewer and fewer term pregnancies and baby girls.

Omegas were society's mothers. They were the future. They were the ones who brought peace and contentment to the alpha’s heart. Bonding an omega was the best antidote to alpha aggression. But an age-old myth that omegas made alphas weak, causing men to want to control and browbeat omegas to nothingness was preventing many couples from bonding.

Kane was proud of our marriage. Proud of the blessing. He thought it would save the 12 Sectors from self-destruction. His mother was sure that it was necessary for the continuation of the alpha and omega here. 

Because, while breed numbers dwindled, drone and beta numbers did not. 

I could see her point in all of it. I’d been so sheltered and cut off most of my life, this new life as a bride-mate opened everything. Not that I wouldn’t have been satisfied just raising the girls and loving my mate. 

But I wouldn’t shirk the hard truths. My father, what was happening in the 12 Sectors, drone rights, omega birth-rates. Unrest hidden under the clean and tidy veneer of this world. I wanted to support Kane and I wanted to take responsibility for my family. 

The alpha in question wasn’t going to stop me, either.