Till Dawn Do Us Part (New Reign Book 1) Read online

  Till Dawn Do Us Part

  May Sage

  Contents

  1. Drafts

  2. Alphas

  3. First Contract

  4. Sterlings

  5. Arrangements

  6. Dinner

  7. News

  8. Nice save

  9. Lowtown

  10. Truth

  11. Hospital

  12. Surprise

  13. His

  14. Shift

  15. Work

  16. Change

  17. The point of no return

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Aria

  Kaur

  Kaur

  Aria

  May Sage © 2017

  Cover Art by Merilliza Chan

  Typography by Rebecca Frank

  Edited by Lisa Bing

  Drafts

  There was no particular reason why she should have thought that her Drafts wouldn't go according to plan.

  Ruth had no motive or inclination to marry and as the only daughter of two successful artists, she was one of the few who still basked in the luxury of choice: in the third row, Jim – one of her mother's apprentices – sat, empowered by the weight of Fredrica Warner's purse. He could afford five thousand and anyone would be a fool to bid half as much on a girl twice as pretty.

  Certain of her fate, she walked up and down the familiar stage with as much confidence as one could muster when wearing knickers and a bra.

  The women weren't allowed to cover up: the buyer had a right to see what they were bidding for.

  Be that as it may, Ruth was attired quite modestly compared to some: the white high waisted low rise and brassiere ensemble revealed less flesh than her swimming costume. Her long, wavy mane had been twisted and knotted at the nap of her neck, effectively negating her best feature. She wore no cosmetics. Between her general lack of sophistication, curves, allure, appeal and mummy's purse, she was quite safe.

  The girl who'd been presented just before her, a sign reading 478 in her hand, had been less lucky.

  She'd been twenty-five – another first timer – and pretty, curvy, with bright blue eyes and considerable breasts. Those were attributes no woman envied on the Winter Solstice.

  She was won at an astronomical nine thousand six hundred and fifty marks, by a man close to twice her age.

  The first Draft had started just a couple of years short of two centuries ago, at the beginning of the era.

  Ruth could comprehend how the barbaric tradition had started. To an extent, she even approved.

  The Last War had left the world in a state of complete chaos and devastation; certain measures had been essential to the survival of the species. The Drafts were one of them.

  At the time, over two thirds of women were born barren, so the rest had inherited a duty, and were beholden to perform it. Those who got married were good; those who had three children were good, but if neither condition was met by age twenty-five, they had to enter the Drafts each year, until they fulfilled the requirements. Three children, or a husband. Women weren’t free until they had one of the two.

  It sucked, but she got it. She really did.

  What she saw as an absolute joke was that those facts were just that: historical figures, well in the past. They were hardly in danger of extinction and over sixty percent of females were fertile according to the latest census. The Drafts had become little more than a cheap entertainment, a way to keep the male population content and the female, subdued.

  “Ruby Ruth Sterling.”

  Her formal name recalled her attention to the present scene.

  It was a shame the refurbishments of the City Stadium had induced the Haute to edict the Royal Opera as the most suitable substitute.

  They'd been right: built to accommodate hundreds of technicians and artists below and thousands of spectators above, it easily fit the six hundred and twenty three women and the two thousand men eligible in the Inner Walls of the City.

  A perfect location, but Ruth wished they'd chosen the Halls or even the Palace. She'd always loved seeing her father play here, but his performance would be forever marred by the recollection of her first Drafts.

  “Ruby is twenty-five, a musician and a runner.”

  Poor Hugo, the presenter who managed to make the most insipid of them sound like princesses, scowled at the short and bleak information showing on his screen. She hadn't given him much to go on, no mention of anything akin to skills or accomplishment.

  If her lack of appeal didn't deter some suitors, hopefully that would.

  The winners were requested to spend a minimum of five hours in their surrogate’s company before being able to demand the first out of the twelve intercourses they were owed and who would willingly subject themselves to five hours in front of a plain boring girl in high knickers?

  Yet as the announcer called the first bid a buzzer rang out, followed by another one. Ruth raised her head, frowning as she tried to identify her suitors.

  There was Jim, of course, but also a man at the back of the tribunes who, thankfully, was little more than a boy.

  He couldn't be much older than she, and when he saw her glance his way, he winked playfully. He wasn't at all unattractive: in fact, quite the contrary. In the soft lightning, there was no point guessing as to the color of his eyes or hair, but his facial features were quite striking.

  Ruth couldn't help a smile.

  As soon as her lips curled up, the battle started.

  Damn. She had been told she had a nice smile.

  A third contender entered the competition, a man dressed in a formal suit. While he wasn't young, her skin didn't crawl at the idea of somehow being desirable to him. There was that, she supposed.

  “That's Doctor Fitzpatrick at two thousand! Anyone for two one?”

  She bit down her lip, guiltily looking down, thinking of her parents who were most likely watching at home.

  She hadn't counted on owing quite so much to them. She could make it in a few months but what if it happened again next year, and the one after that?

  “Three thousand, five hundred for Mr. Lawrence. Anyone raising at...”

  By that time, Ruth, generally lively, was completely blanched. Hugo was raising by two hundred and fifty at each bid now, which meant that they were close to their limit – very close. Six bids, and they were out.

  Alphas

  Unsurprisingly, Damian's proposal came to mind.

  It hadn't been romantic, not even really sincere, but he had offered to marry her.

  She hadn't expected it: men hadn't exactly been knocking at her door. At University, in the street, they did everything they could to avoid interacting with her.

  “I mean, it's better than doing it with three strangers, right?” he'd said.

  Damn her pride, she cursed herself, biting her lip. Had he asked with a little bit of enthusiasm, she wouldn't be in this predicament. She'd be married and living next door to her parents, with an up and coming pianist.

  No, she had been right to refuse. The kind of love her parents shared was worth it, worth anything she'd have to bear while waiting for it. And what if she never got it? She would give birth to three children, after paying for artificial inseminations. Women were allowed to; it was extortionately expensive, but Ruth was in a position to do it and for once, she would spend some money on herself. There was no doubt that she would feel guilty about it, thinking about the thousand ways her funds would have been better spent, but Ruth couldn’t live with herself if she let a creep touch her. She just couldn’t. Most women were raised to understand that it was the norm, their fate, but she hadn’t. Her parents had spoiled her by making her
believe that she had a choice.

  She forced herself to breathe out. She had a choice. This year, she would bear a child and give it to the custody of his father, as the law demanded. She’d do it three times, if she had to. As Ruth had never met anyone she could imagine to spend her life with, she didn’t doubt she would have to. Then, after the Drafts were behind her, she would have a meaningful life, concentrating on her work, rather than playing house with someone she didn’t care for. She’d been right to refuse Damian.

  Just then, as her mind shed the despair, resolving on determination, the boxes above lit up.

  Ruth had, with a morbid sense of dread, watched the Drafts on TV every year since she'd studied them at school, at age twelve, and while the cameras frequently returned to the seats constructed high above the City Stadium, they'd always been in the dark.

  She'd noticed them once and asked mum.

  “Every eligible man and woman has to attend the Drafts of their cities. That includes the Alphas.”

  Needless to say, they’d never seen any female Alphas on stage, and the males seated above them had never participated in any Draft.

  There could be a number of reasons why they'd reveal their presence now. At the top of her head, Ruth guessed that one of them might need the toilet and couldn't see his way. There was a chance someone might be late. Maybe one had tripped and landed on the light switch?

  Likely, a little voice at the back of her mind said with all the sarcasm in the world.

  Alphas didn't trip.

  She told the voice to shut it and did her best to ignore the incident.

  No one else was, though: the auction had stopped as the contenders and the presenter gaped at the shadows now visible in the nine dimly lit boxes.

  “Hm. Right.”

  Hugo was staring at the control screen he held in his hand.

  “I have a... a bid from... I beg your pardon, I'm unsure of the procedure when...”

  His words fled as the entire stage shook under their feet.

  I'm going to be sick.

  The nausea had nothing to do with the fact that the floor was moving, slowly ascending, and everything to do with the certainty of finding herself utterly and quite literally screwed.

  When they were leveled with the seats, a voice greeted them.

  It was cold. It was detached. It was inhuman. Inhumanly low, suave and beautiful. Somehow, it delineated everything Alphas were.

  “Good evening Mr. Welsh and 4-7-9,” it said, before adding, “I'm afraid I haven't caught the lady's name.”

  As her otherwise verbose presenter seemed to have lost the ability of speech, she replied, without betraying half of her apprehension.

  “Ruby Ruth Sterling.”

  A pause ensued, followed by a curt, “Charmed.”

  Considering the lighting and the distance, she couldn't distinguish much, but one shadow, in the principal box, straight in the middle, rose and an instant later, a creature – she couldn't call this a man – jumped from their balcony onto the stage.

  No professional athlete would have managed that long jump, not without a hell of a runway, yet the thing crossed it effortlessly, reminding them all of what he was.

  Some said they'd come after the war – a result of mutations due to radiation – others talked of experiments performed on soldiers. Close to two centuries later, it didn't matter. The facts were, there were Regular humans and the Alphas who ruled them.

  They weren't the worst rulers, thankfully, as no human could hope to ever defy them and live to tell the tale. There were fools who still tried, without amounting to any success. When the Dissenters attacked, it was the Regulars who died.

  Ruth had seen more Alphas than most. They generally loved indulgence in all shapes and forms: that included her mother's paintings, her father's performances. There was no call for the audible gasp that escaped her lips, but escape it did, and many seconds passed until she thought to close her mouth.

  Right.

  Well, the only question left was what the hell did he want from her? And the answer wasn't sex, a child, or anything of that sort. The tall lean predator whose clothes were doing a lousy job at hiding his muscular frame, did not need the Drafts. Wherever he went, he'd find women who would want to have his babies – or at least try to.

  It was the mouth. And the eyes. The dark, deep green eyes, the... the whole freaking package.

  So: What. Did. He. Want. From. Her.

  He strolled towards her – there was no other word for it – and stopped a foot away. His hand cupped her jaw as he scrutinized her, from the tip of her toes, to her eyes, passing by every dip in her flesh.

  His thumb brushed across her lips and she felt it right down to her inner muscles.

  “You did an awful job at hiding” he whispered in her ear. “A shame...”

  What, that he'd found her? He didn't make a blink of sense.

  When he released her face and walked away, she should have been relieved. Instead, she felt a strange, alien sense of deprivation, missing the touch.

  “I think you'll find” he told Hugo “that when one of us shows an interest, the lady gets a choice.”

  Funny how she thought she had made it, up until a few minutes ago. Her choice had been to remain herself, Ruth Sterling, for a few years, until she'd found that grand yet illusive picture she'd witnessed everyday at home. Until she'd found love. But they were fifteen hundred marks from the limit her mother had set. She was, by law, forbidden to use her own funds to influence the Drafts.

  “I offer ten thousand for a First Contract.”

  First Contract

  There was only word for it: disgusting.

  Year seven of the new era, when the fertility had been at its lowest, the rules of the Drafts had been a return to the Dark Age, completely obliterating centuries of battle for equal rights of her sex. The woman didn't have to give herself once a month until the next draft or a pregnancy: they were bought and used as the owner saw fit until their heir was born. Any form of abuse was prohibited and severely punished in any other version of the Draftees' Contract.

  Correctly interpreting her utter abhorrence, the creature smiled – a cruel, frightening thing she wouldn't wish to see ever again – and clarified:

  “And that does mean ten thousand a month.”

  So as well as a slave, she'd get to be an actual whore. They all were, to an extent – that was what the Drafts were reducing them to; but the ridiculous amount of money he offered nailed the point home. The other women were paid for nine months of service; the funds went to taking care of themselves, and live comfortably during their pregnancies. Anyway, that was what they said on the history books, and sometimes, she managed to convince herself of the truth of it. But ten thousand a month in exchange for a contract making her his? There was no other term for it. She’d be a whore.

  Whore to the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

  It should have been a clear, easy answer but there was one issue. Ruth had burnt her hair watching the fascinating dance of a flame too close as a child, she could spend hours looking at paintings and never tired of brushing her mother’s long blue-black locks.

  The problem was her Achilles' heel: beauty.

  If she did the right thing, she would be a hero, at home and in the view of anyone who knew her. She would be the girl who'd taught the Alphas they weren't entitled to everything they were so good as to set their eyes on.

  There was no mistaking what they would say if she accepted.

  But if she said no, she might have to repetitively give the use of her body to a man of forty who might very well be intelligent, kind, but a man, nonetheless, to whom she wasn't attracted.

  She knew without the shadow of a doubt that the stranger below them was her best option, even as she nodded her acceptance to her new master.

  He had to suffer through the rest of the Drafts, painstakingly attempting to stay awake through it all.

  The Haute was expected to show their face to make
the people believe like they were just like them, constrained by the same laws. Their system worked on hope – hope that a prince charming Alpha would do just what Xander has just done.

  What a joke. They didn’t even watch the show, normally. The previous year, he’d played chess; this year, they’d been doing rounds of poker.

  Until he’d seen her.

  No one said anything about his temporary insanity until the Drafts were done, but as soon as they were alone, walking down to the registry office to sign his paper, Lucian whisper-yelled what he’d visibly been dying to say.

  “You've completely lost your mind,” his companion scowled him, somewhat unnecessarily.

  It was obvious that what had occurred had had very little to do with his mind.

  “When I said we needed to kiss some Regs' asses, I didn't mean it literally.”

  He had known Lucian would think of the elections. There was little else occupying his mind since Seamus' death: winning his place as the next Regent of the European Kingdom.

  Xander didn't see the appeal: it was a tiring occupation no one seemed to outlive. He preferred the peace and quietness of the kingdom he reigned over: his lab.

  As the head of the Research Department, Xander – and not whoever would be elected in two months – ruled the Alphas. He was the one single being able to prolong their lives and everyone who mattered knew it.

  Peace and quiet...

  There hadn't been much of either when he'd looked up from the game of cards he, Lucian, Rodrick and Klein had been engaged in and seen the girl.

  “I mean, she's hot...”

  “Shut it, Lucian.”

  The tone was curt and threatening, to his own surprise. Lucian and he had shared a fair number of conquests, Xander's current lover being the latest of the lot.

  Shit. He hadn't thought of Juliana.

  Xander, unlike Lucian, was monogamous, which meant that she had to go. She wouldn't like it. The woman didn't care enough to actually be hurt by his dismissal but she wouldn't take kindly to finding herself replaced by a Regular.