Page 10 of Her Broken Alpha
Darre
His office windows filled the space with light and heat. It wasn't even noon. The sunshine made the room so eye-blinkingly bright that Nothonal Darre could hardly see.
He could have curtains if he wanted. But he didn't want them. Bright sun was rare; he'd take it when and how he could, inviting the glow to burn him, to cook his guts, plagued with the constant slow-burn of his acidic rage. He liked to roast in the fire of it with only a bottle of his favorite mead to ease his thirst.
If he didn't have company coming soon to bother him, he'd have stripped down and soaked it in.
This world was so fuckin' gray, so endlessly the same. He knew to take advantage of a nice day when it happened.
A nice day. An auspicious day.
Decades ago when he’d served in the alpha king's army, there'd been sunshine a-plenty on the plains of the Un.
Uninhabitable, untamed, unwanted—the wild fucking Un, where water and food were always in short supply, the land poisoned, and breed banded together in packs. The Un had nothing to recommend it but sunshine and hidden garbage heaps of the past. He'd lived out there for years, camped with his band of men, beating feral alphas into disciplined soldiers who could take orders.
He'd liked that. The sun. The beating. Darre was born to kick ass.
There had only been two people he couldn't beat back then: his older brother, who was just two hairs faster, moving smooth and easy in a way Darre had to train for hours to match; and his asshole father, whose right hook knew just where to hit Darre to knock him out cold.
These days, no one dared stand against him, and he'd not seen his so-called family on anything but a screen for years.
Darre had a love-hate relationship with the sunshine and the memories it stirred up. The way heat and light felt on his skin and burned his retinas reminded him he was alive, still had a purpose to fulfill.
Turning from the windows, he went back to his desk. He liked the heavy, massive thing. The drawers were mostly empty, containing files of shit he couldn't afford to forget and a notebook for scribbling other shit down.
A man in charge needed a desk and office where he could do his business, where he could sit and look down his nose at those beneath him. The desk had a dent in one side, and the chair, while comfortable, had rips in the leather that exposed its insides. Both were older than he was, and that was very fuckin’ old.
But he was in charge, and he kept an office with a big desk as a mocking concession to the expectations of a sector Administrator.
Drinking the last of his mead, he set the bottle down, resisting the impulse to throw it against the wall and watch the glass shatter in a satisfying crash of noise.
He checked the news updates on his data pad for the third time. Maybe he hadn't read it right. Maybe he’d just imagined it. Lately his reality existed in pieces; days came and went, and he didn’t remember them.
"All on a bright sunny day," he murmured. The nonsensical children's rhyme slipped from his lips as he looked at the words moving across the screen and the flickering photos of his father and brother.
"Constantine Kane to challenge Rhineholth—King expected to concede. Long live King Constantine Kane, Alpha of Alphas. Who will be the next High Alpha of the 12 Sectors?"
Rhineholth was stepping down.
Today was a day of sunshine and memories, a few more puzzle pieces of his revenge slipping and sliding into place. Revenge long denied. His time was coming.
His need for it was eating away at his soul. It took bits of his brain every day.
But Rhineholth was stepping down. His oldest, most perfect, can-do-no-wrong son was taking his place. Like pieces in a game, the board was being reset, making way for the defeat and destruction of them all.
The change created transition, and that was a good time to sow chaos. Apply force at just the right time, and all the progress those pompous assholes were trying to make would stop.
It was a fantastic time to begin enacting the final stages of his revenge and crush his father's dream.
Darre had spent enough time in the Un to know the true nature of alphas. They just needed a little reminder, a little temptation, the sense that a rival was denying them something they deserved. The scent of blood in the air.
He'd gathered a sector full of men who’d been denied all kinds of things by the illustrious Alpha Administration on a daily basis. Within his own Sector were broken men like himself—betrayed, disenchanted men who had no female. They were a veritable mob of hostility and hate, ready to take by force what others held in complacency.
Dear old Father was retiring. The thought mixed with the refrain of the stupid childhood song. "The king is retiring, retiring, retiring, all on a hot sunny day."
And Darre’s self-righteous prick of a brother would take his place. Since no one had come close to beating the honorable Constantine Kane in combat in the last twenty years, the man had no clear successor to take his place as Sector Administrator. There was an empty place on the game board.
Kane had helped Darre by weakening the other pawns in the game. He'd removed their brother Ebbon from Sector 10 and charged him with Administration law violations, all laws Darre made sure were broken daily in his own territory. Busy doing good, Kane personally led the cleanup of the mess of slave plantations and drug manufacturers in that sector instead of appointing someone else to it.
