“Don’t you fucking dare touch me,” she growled. “Don’t you dare!”
I have learned how to be patient. My mind is open. But my heart has been pierced.
First, Rae glanced above her. She quickly saw the metal piping attached to the rounded glass. Tracing the metal, she analyzed the circular assembly. She was in an artificial glass womb held in place by a giant, metallic structure. Near to her, a golden throne, empty and horrible, waited for its rightful ruler. She assumed her sister Ruby would walk in at any second.
This was a disgusting display created for the people to preoccupy their minds. A religious experience, that much was clear. But how far were they willing to take their acts of repugnance? And did Severin understand the full scope of his actions? How much was there that had yet to be uncovered? Rae would find out. She would expose them for who they were.
Severin turned a rusted knob attached to a thick pipe in the center of the room. The alphas nearby widened their eyes and lowered their jaws as if sharing in their collective pleasures. Coming from within the room, a rumble shook the floor.
“I’m an honest man, precious,” he said.
“Don’t… don’t call me that,” she whimpered.
My mind flashes back to when I still had them… my alphas… my babies…
Severin smiled and shook, mocking her twisted body—her agony would be edited in a way that would be suitable for public consumption. Of all the things her twin allowed for as the new prime minister, this seemed the most profane.
Despite the women’s connection by blood, they were on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Her twin, Ruby, was an activist and soldier, but her body would not allow her to bear children. She was not a true omega, but she could pretend. In that way, Ruby was like most of the women in the region, but she had gained power by using her sister as a compass. She used her to find the exact areas to infiltrate, the correct people to kill. It didn’t sit right with Rae, but Rae did not fault her as much as she should have. After all, this beta scum was the one who’d taught her how to behave.
Rae was a mother. As for Ruby, without a working uterus she offered the New Republic very little, spare her skills in the battlefield. Her commanding twin had no sympathy for those who skirted the reins of power to start a family. In these times of war and devastation, it made no sense to burden oneself with more responsibility, especially when the world was begging for real leadership.
That was why Ruby allowed Severin to torment her sister. She didn’t know what else to do with the poor and uneducated lowlife. Not to mention, Severin was the controller of ideas and images. It was his duty to weave an intricate and bloody story, and what better way to force emotions onto the public than by broadcasting her suffering to the world.
Rae liked to think of herself as someone always on the brink of self-liberation. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Rae was no longer a test subject under Cassian’s hand, she was a captive whore, pathetic and retaken. However, she would not allow any of these men to rape and defile her.
Again, the men laughed at her pain, but Rae knew that merriment through troubled times only meant stupidity. They might have shared a brief sense of comfort, but the years after a war were always the hardest, and the sons of bitches hadn’t seen true devastation. If she knew humanity’s strength, it was that with each downfall, they always knew how to put on a better show.
Digging her heels back against the circular glass, she felt the sphere fill with water from below, nearly freezing to the touch. Her jaw extended open to suck in air, but her lungs seemed to shrink away from the cold. Every ounce of oxygen she took in caught against her throat.
“N-N-No! Turn it off, turn it off, turn it—”
She slipped and twisted farther into the cables, which she now noticed gripped better when wet. They coiled around her body, mechanically spreading like ivy.
Rising above her, Severin grabbed the soft and pudgy areas of her cheeks where her makeup had been smeared to death. Clawing down, his hands shook and eyes burned with pious fire.
“There, there,” he cooed. “You will do what is good for the New Republic, yes?”
“Please, I can’t take any more, I—”
Whistling, the man turned the valve to the other side. The edge of the water hung just above her navel. “Why do you insist on fighting me, dear?”
Eyes pried open with fright, she scoured the room’s inhabitants. Each man threaded through a pile of cash; some threw coins near the tub. Sultans, kings, generals—they’d traveled across the world to see the new spectacle, and they would pay a pretty penny to be the ones to spin the valve next.
“I just want to see my babies,” Rae said through chattering teeth.
Severin stopped the water from rushing any higher. As the amber liquid hung against her body, she attempted to breathe, slow and methodical. If she focused hard enough, there was a chance of powering through the cold.
“What is it with you omegas and procreation? It is such an odd obsession driven by wild urges. Urges that must be contained,” Severin scoffed before focusing on her pale skin. “I need the world to know that under the beautiful and vast New Republic, there is so much more to live for.”
Comfort and entertainment—a set of customs and beliefs that belonged to everyone. Those were a few areas that Cassian failed to implement. He couldn’t understand the needs of his people. He never set boundaries, and he couldn’t fathom implementing any real type of government. For him, nihilism was the only system of philosophy worth falling back on. The rest was false promises. A hope bathed in falsehoods.
But Ruby knew better, and she was all the more powerful because of it.
Rae’s face turned light purple. Glancing down, she saw the complex set of scars that graced her stomach. She remembered every day of her pregnancy, how she cut into her skin to mark the days that passed when she was going through her nesting period. She’d survived when she thought she would fail, and now they were… she didn’t even know where they were. She’d failed them, and the gut wrenching pain tore at her every waking second, leaving her feeling erased.
“A mother goes through hell to bear her children. Yet, she is kind. A mother is—”
“Weaker than the father. Is that what you wish to prove? That, to reach completion, man must fill you to the brim with viscous seed, flesh, and knotting cock. How pathetic…”
“I will be complete when my alphas fuck me over your dead body,” she muttered.
Severin stood with a triumphant smile. Turning, he threw his arms into the air. She was only proving his point, but she didn’t care. “And, so, you see the true wish of the omega. The feminine energy can only be destruction and chaos.”
“I said no such thing!” she cried.
The ruthless man couldn’t be stopped now. He was too close to his main point. In fact, this was precisely why he was the minister of propaganda. Lacking meaning in the modern world, young alphas and betas alike would open their ears to any answers they could get regarding the fall of the modern world. Severin would give them a definition to the vast chaos all men feared was born out of a woman’s womb. Sorrow, it seemed, was her fault. The more one gave birth, the worse the world was made.
And now, standing before his audience, he appeared as more proud of his hypothesis than ever. The only thing he had left to do was let the story unfold.
“The closer we move toward hate, the more we end up hurting each other,” Rae said. “Love is the only answer.”
Severin turned the valve once more. This time, he took a step back to enjoy the show. “Enough talking. People came for the entertainment.”
The water rose and froze her skin, the cutting pain like thinly shaved daggers. In this moment of hurt, Rae relied purely on instinct. Her limbs bent back, and her fingers shrank into a paralyzed fury. Her jaw latched forward, biting the warmer air for dear life, hanging on to the last inches of freedom.
The more she moved, the more she sank. The rising liquid would not
take orders. It didn’t give a fuck about Rae’s purest wishes. She was going to drown.
She prepared for the obvious death the men yearned to see and experience. There were only inches separating her lips from the fluid, but Severin turned the valve with haste when only a thin opening remained. He kept the level stationary to see just how long her body would hang onto the soft threads of life.
Rae whimpered, “Will you… kill… me?”
The question was pressing, but it did not need to be answered. For as soon as she allowed the pathetic query from her mouth, she understood that she meant absolutely nothing.
“Death is but a door,” he said, suddenly hanging his head in solemnity.
The water rose over her lips, nostrils, and eyes. She frantically swam forward, to crash her forehead into the glass, but it was too strong. No matter how many attempts she made, it would not break. Her mouth opened, dispelling her last bubbles of oxygen. With haste, her eyes searched for any source of comfort or point of safety.
The cameras stared blankly at her in the same way the men did. Cold and lifeless, the footage was taken in and sent to a center where they would cut and edit the perfect video. When she realized no one would come to her aid, her lungs felt as if they were about to collapse. The pressure inside her built until the sweet relief of drowning filled her air pathways.
She was losing oxygen fast. They were actually letting her drown, merely staring and laughing at her plight. Was this what death was supposed to be like? She didn’t even try to answer that question, for as she floated within that cold, blue water, she felt like a fetus. Strangely, the pain shifted into pure bliss.
As the red-and-black splotches danced in her vision, she wondered if she was closer to death than they were aware. Amidst their laughter, Rae decided to let herself go. She wasn’t scared anymore, only accepting. She opened her mouth and let out a series of thick carbon dioxide bubbles until there was nothing to do but take it all in again.
Severin hammered the butt of his fist into a metal controller attached to the wall. Red lights flashed all around them, illuminating the men’s faces, one by one. Metal claws came down from the rafters in the ceiling, clamping against the top of the spherical glass tub. They opened the latched, grabbed her body and pulled her above the waterline.
Her nerve endings were shot—she couldn’t feel a thing. But she kept her eyes open and stared into the eyes of her captor. Alpha men yearned for a weak omega, but she was as strong as the rumors portrayed her of being. The men below stood and clapped as she coughed violently.
“And now, her rebirth!” Severin announced, slyly leaning back against the wall of the rusted auditorium.
The water drained, and she sucked in the closest breath of air she could find. She kept her eyes open only to see Severin’s black spheres peering idly into her soul. In a way, they had similar tenacity. But who would hold out the longest?
The alphas appeared amazed by how quick her body and mind adapted to each new situation. Her memory fell apart like shards of glass, but she had been reawakened. Pain only rekindled that brazen energy that was her spirit. Now, she’d never forgot the most important aspects of her life.
Her children, Vash, Lucas, and Killian… Her whole family was everything to her. She would never forget their importance.
“Love will remain untainted,” she assured herself.
Severin squinted. “No, darling. There is so much you have yet to learn.”
“Like what?”
Although no one could probably hear through the dense liquid, she meant it. It was the only truth she seemed to harp on about: love. It may have been silly, but she remembered how wonderful things felt when she reached a perceived level of safety. Life was supposed to bloom into something beautiful. Her world was supposed to settle her, the alphas, and her children. So many good memories were thought to be on the horizon for them.
Finally, a set of lights appeared above the small audience. The dim red dots from the cameras pierced her pupils.
The womb-like sphere celebrated her like a display at an aquarium. As the water drained, Rae spread her arms and clawed at the sides. She could not escape, but she did not necessarily care to anymore. She was a naked, fearful beast, and everyone on this godforsaken planet could relate to that. They had all been taken advantage of, even Severin. The only difference was that hatred always found a way to self-destruct. Perhaps, he knew that better than her.
“I’m… I’m alive,” she gasped, and tears curled down her rounded cheeks. “Why am I alive?”
This had nothing to do with democracy or the New Republic. She was kept alive for the nation’s entertainment.
The most troubling aspect of her passing was not the pain or the feeling of betrayal. God designed life for agony. No, the thing she feared most was how wonderful it felt. The abrupt coldness of the water left her senses. An eager wave of warmth edged across her limbs. Her heart was beating erratically, reminding her to keep fighting. And just as she felt herself against the glass, Severin pressed another button to have her removed from the structure altogether.
“The plug has been pulled, but the curtain will never close. The show ends with a new beginning. Long live the New Republic.”
Severin shouted the final words and stepped back, as dramatically as a showman might during a magic show. Her naked, wet, glimmering body arched back as she sucked in as much air as it could take. Violent coughs expunged the mess of liquid from her lungs, and her vision gave her hallucinations of complex geometric shapes.
The audience shared no more of their hideous laughter. Instead, they fell to their knees and bowed their heads like the fools of worship they were. Their hands rose into the air, shaking and writhing like shimmering salmon swimming upstream. Soon, they broke into ear-tickling prayers she could not be forced to understand.
“She is much more than a useless omega,” Severin said, eyes wide in reverence of her.
Special… Just how special was she?
They kept her alive. For whatever reason, it was clear she had somehow been made a god to everyone except Severin. It made her sick.
Rae couldn’t help but gaze into the tiresome eyes of the aged man. Even though he was just like the crooked lot of men she grew up around, he fell to his knees and pretended to be faithful. Somehow, she felt bad for him.
“Isn’t she… precious?”
Rae lifted her head humbly and collapsed against the clear glass of the mechanical womb. Severin operated the claws to drop her body into his arms. Lifting her close to him, he gazed calmly. She expected more torture and pain, but he acted tenderly, as if he were a father figure and not her oppressor. She knew better than to believe the act.
“It is all over now,” he whispered. “You may breathe freely.”
But Rae was dizzy and confused. “Why would anyone make a structure like this purely to torture someone?”
He leaned his neck forward, but he did not breathe in deeply, nor was there any indication of him huffing in her scent as most alphas enjoyed doing. “There, there. You will learn, soon enough. The point is not to torture.”
She didn’t have the strength to ask more about something that seemed so pointlessly violent. Though she had been considerably weakened, she had one last request. “Take me to my children. Please.”
Before Severin could answer her, a door opened behind the crowd. Her twin, Ruby, stepped from the darkness, and Rae understood what this was all for.
This was the start of the new world, the start of a new chapter for everyone, including her. The citizens of the New Republic were waiting for her “rebirth,” whatever the hell that meant. For all official purposes, this was Rae’s coronation day.
Her twin marched forward like the triumphant soldier she was. Bowing her head, she forced a fist into the air, resembling an ancient statue of exuberant tenacity. Her black leather gloves cut through the spotlight around Rae’s dripping, aching body.
“The queen is dead. Long live the queen,” she said.<
br />
Chapter One
Father. Are you listening?
This world is a hunting ground. It is a place where good men come to get trampled. Where men are forced to walk blindly in chains. We are made in the image of the world. Alphas. Omegas. Even betas. Although it seems impossible, we are from it and of it, not below or above. But all across the land, movement occurs. Little and big things alike scurry across the planet’s shoulders, throwing everything out of the initial harmonic phase. This is what causes us to wake, to suffer, to bleed, and procreate. For we are made in the image…
This is why we hunt and kill, and devour all forms of flesh. To bury our progress, throw the guilt of the past under a rug of earthy excess. We must hunt to survive, but we never seem to get closer to cleaning up shop. The house, as it stands, is in eternal disarray.
Yet, something else torments me. The mystery of it all. I cannot abide by it. We live to unlock boxes and unearth great stories in order to understand how to solve this great crisis of life.
Perhaps I have grown too inward, living in darkness. And I have to admit that when these thoughts come, I think of taking her again, of ravaging her and spilling my hot seed inside her body. I grow angry, tired, and irascible. My cock rises against the cold air and I am forced to blow my load against the weightlessness of the night. Throughout the duration of my imprisonment, my heart has been broken into a thousand pieces., I have felt the red color slowly chip away, revealing the black stone I knew was always there.
My children were stolen. My mate taken and claimed by the new lords of the land.
I was taken once when I was a careless babe and pure, but I have since given up on searching for you, Father. I have myself to rely on now, as well as the memories of she who graced my life.
I am locked away, but the memories of those I love set my soul free. And in their image, I will wander until I’m whole again.
Killian stood upright in his darkened cell. He had focused his sight on the mirror’s reflection for hours. The ragged and ravaged alpha he saw looking back at him felt distant and fragmented, as if it wasn’t him at all.
Born Claimed: A Dark Omegaverse Romance (Broken Angel Book 2) Page 2
