by Isoellen
She wasn't sure how long she had been here. In this dark, dream-like state, it was difficult to tell time. When would the nightmare end? Was there a way for her to stop it? She just wanted to wake up.
Blinking from sleep to wakefulness, she watched as the door opened. She expected the poor, abused drone with more crackers and water, since the last of hers was sloshing uncomfortably in her belly.
But he wasn’t there. Instead masked beta males entered. Shorter than an alpha and slimmer, with fair, sometimes hairless skin, betas were the most common breed group. They were followers, not leaders. Who were these two following?
"A little shine and a little lady's maid makes 'em all sloppy and docile," the stranger on her right said. "Bet we could plug and stuff her now and she wouldn't even scream."
"We'll be the ones screaming if we ruin the priest's gift for the Mad Monster. She smells like dessert, but I'm not gonna get caught dipping,” the man on the left said.
They took her down a hall. Was this her first time out of that cold, concrete box of a room? Naya wanted to make a chronological order of events, but her thoughts kept wobbling back and forth, trying to find a place to land.
She wanted a green dress to match her eyes. It seemed important to tell her mother that. She tried to focus on one of the males dragging her along, to tell him, but the smear of his grin made her ask instead, "Are you going to rape me?"
He didn’t answer.
After they dragged her into a bathing chamber, the betas left her with several female drones. One was old with short-cropped gray hair and a wrinkled face. One was young—still an adolescent—with a shaved head. The other two were in Naya's age range.
They didn't lift their eyes to meet hers and she couldn't muster the wherewithal to ask them what was happening, to cry or inquire about her situation, to do anything but weave unsteadily on her feet while someone screamed distantly in the back of her mind.
Without a word between them, the drones stripped Naya of her familiar night sheath and washed her using cold water and bristle brushes from big metal buckets.
The beta who called himself Tenbel entered the room and pulled up a chair, watching as the drones tended to her. His scrutiny made Naya sick. Other than a doctor, no male had ever seen her naked. He licked thin lips, tracking every one of her movements with his eyes.
When the drones tipped her head back to wash her hair, he pulled his robes up over his hairy legs, exposing the pale, long, and skinny penis dangling there. The filthy scent of his arousal polluted the bathing chamber.
A scrub brush clattered onto the wet, cracked floor. The drones became clumsy in their fear. They couldn't smell him the way Naya could, his musk like raw meat full of sweat and greed. But they were women, affected by breed males whether they wanted to be or not. The threat of an aroused man, a man they feared, added another level of tension to the air.
She closed her eyes tight. Move. Scream. Cry, she urged herself. But nothing happened. While things were less cloudy than before, she was still a prisoner behind her own eyes.
The poor drones washed her, slathered her with creams meant to remove unwanted hair, scraped her with the wooden scraping strigil, creamed her again, and then washed her once more to remove any lingering artificial scents.
Halfway through the process, a drone forced Naya's legs wide, and the old woman kneeled in front of them with a cream that Naya knew would remove all her pubic hair.
Tenbel leapt from his chair.
Fisting the drone girl's ponytail, he dragged her away and pushed her face-down into his seat, bending her so that he could flip up her dress and shove his hardening member into her stiff body.
Small muffled noises escaped her as her face flushed, her mouth open in an “O” of pain and disgust.
The beta used her. Working himself to a frenzy, his hips jerked, his expression ugly and determined while he raped the poor girl. Grunts and snorts preceded some sharp pumping of his hips. Then he was throwing the girl away from him, ordering her back to work as if she’d offended him.
Naya smelled blood. Fear and humiliation were a sour taste on her tongue. Her stomach rolled with bitter, helpless heat. She had done nothing to help. She hadn’t said a word. Her fingers twitched, but she couldn’t lift them from her sides.
She wondered why she wasn't screaming, clawing, and fighting. The horror of it floated around her, misty and untouchable.
She would not live like this—could not live like these drones. She wondered if she grabbed the strigil, would its blunt edge be enough to pierce her throat? Did she have it in her to do that to herself?
The drones patted her down with cloths and put a clean dress on her while Tenbel watched from the corner. It was a gaudy red and purple affair made for a beta woman with a bodice far too small. The fabric was abrasive against her newly scraped, sensitive skin.
She was without undergarments and still damp when the drones slipped a pair of heels on her feet. Tipping to the side when they accidently upset her precarious balance, Naya scooped up the discarded scraper from the wet floor. No one noticed.
The black-robed freaks took up her care again, leading her outside. When they threw her to into a waiting cart, the tool clattered from her weak fingers. Handled like a sack of vegetables and propped up in a seat, she glared at her only weapon on the floor.
One of them, who might have been handsome in the way some young beta males were if his face hadn't been half-covered and his mouth twisted in a sneer, poked at her breasts with it, scraping the edge across her nipple. Even through the fabric of the dress, she felt it. She arched away with a cry, drawing Tenbel's attention.
He smacked the beta hard on the side of his head. "She's not for the likes of you, fool, and if you get your scent on her, he will know. Do you really want to draw his attention?"
Watching, Naya saw the male shrink in fear. What he? Who was this frightening man they spoke of?
The cart jerked into motion, traveling down a street Naya didn't recognize. Tall, dark, and crooked shapes lined the road. She had trouble making them out. Buildings?
An unusually warm sun shone down on her head, drying her loose black waves into a snarled mane of curls. Grateful, she hid behind the familiar curtain.
She peeked through the strands, but recognized only vague shapes and colors. She couldn't focus. The moving cart made her dizzy, her vision blurring once again.
Decay hung in the air, surrounding collections of indistinct figures. She picked out the raw, earthy scent of unwashed alpha, a reminder of her younger brothers. There was shouting, curses. Some of those foul-smelling alphas had caught her scent—something Tenbel had been so keen to preserve and hadn't bothered to disguise in the open cart.
Tenbel, she learned, wasn't a total idiot.
From the head of the open cart, he pressed the button on a mechanical device in his lap. Noise shrieked from the thing. The lust-driven males all fell to their knees, the cart passing by them as they writhed on the ground, toppled where they stood.
Naya covered her ears; the noise made her eyes throb and her teeth hurt. It was much worse for the alphas, but it only slowed them down.
But she’d moved—her body had moved under her command. Whatever was in her system seemed to be wearing off.
She hoped Tenbel planned to get where they were going soon, or Naya wouldn't have to kill herself—this pack of alphas would tear her apart themselves.
The cart stopped in the shade of a big building. Naya wanted to take it in, but they yanked her out. On the stairway she stumbled, and someone threw her over their shoulder instead of dragging her.
Gasping, she tried to squirm away from the wedge right under her ribs. To the beta she must have weighed no more than a sack of flour, which was exactly how he treated her. He bounced and jostled her without any regard for her comfort.
Naya wished she could trip him and took pleasure in the idea of him falling down the stairs and busting his head on the flagstones below.
She
wanted to fight, but could not move her arms or fingers to push against the man holding her. Still, the drugs they’d given her—shine and lady's maid, according to the betas who’d come to her cell—were wearing off.
In her family, Naya was the quiet, agreeable, peaceful daughter. She sat in her chair and knitted scarves and sweaters. Mother argued about everything. Her older sister had won awards for her debate technique. Her alpha brothers constantly picked fights.
But today she contemplated death and wished harm on others.
The jarring motion stopped. They’d gone up ten flights of stairs, she thought, or maybe more. Her head had pounded out a painful echo on each step.
She smelled more alphas here, the spicy pepper of their testosterone making her nose twitch. A chill tumbled down her spine and gripped her ribs in a merciless vise.
Her skin felt raw and all the movement gave her that sick, light-headed feeling. And now, suddenly, a prickling heat added to her physical misery. Naya wanted her nest more than anything.
Setting her on her feet, the betas tugged and pulled her along into another room—a new place to torture her. Because the smell of powerful alpha saturated everything.
Her primal brain kicked into awareness, instilling in Naya fear and… something else. She’d never been more aware of the presence of a man, an alpha. And it affected her, sinking past her drugged state and induced docility to catch her full attention.
It was almost too much. The new scent was a wild mix of cedar and nutmeg, the alpha exuding it aged and powerful. Recognition of the male’s dominating strength buzzed through her and woke her.
It was... A good smell. A dangerous smell.
Naya needed to get away from it. Now.
The betas holding her arms were pulling them so hard she thought they might split her in half. They pushed her to her knees. It wasn't hard; Naya would have fallen if they hadn't been holding her up so tightly. She was becoming a liquid rush of something new.
"Crispin, where are you?" she whimpered.
Crispin, who smelled like sunshine—a male of worth, a recent military retiree, ready to settle, mate, and make babies. He had told Naya that he wouldn't restrict her. He'd said that after the marriage, if she still wanted to work with her mother and sisters at the family shop, that was fine with him. Or she could choose home life and run his household and have his children. He would be happy if she was happy.
Sweet Crispin. Where was he?
She needed him, desperately needed his smell to block out the pull of a stronger alpha. It was biology; she had learned it in school. Instincts would make her attracted to any strong alphas she encountered until she mated. It was how she would know her best choice for a mate.
Crispin may not have always had the best smell to her, but he promised her the most freedom, the most modern ideas of marriage of all the males she'd met. She'd been filling her nose with him for weeks so his unique scent would become marked on her psyche.
She needed him now. Needed to breathe him in and block out this other alpha.
The wrong alpha who smelled right.
This man—he filled her up. Sharpened her focus. Knowing this alpha was essential. The omega part of her nature ignited with curiosity and hunger.
A tremble started somewhere deep inside of her, a pure, raging power current down the lines of her every nerve ending. The static charge of it spread to her breasts, her belly, and the place between her thighs.
The thunderous rumble of a prime alpha growl tumbled into an ear-splitting roar of challenge over her head. The sound made her bones quiver and the small of her back hum with an unnatural sensation. She moaned, her insides seizing.
Released unexpectedly, she fell forward, curling tight, a small ball of female on the floor. She should have been afraid.
But she wasn't.
Be afraid, she begged herself. Please be afraid. This wasn't what she wanted. Who she wanted.
But that sound, that noise he was making, dismantled her insides, reshaping her being and remaking her cells.
Claiming her.
She covered her ears, plugged them with her fingers to drown it out, yet even still the feel of it, velvet over steel, assaulted her. It battered at everything she knew, tore away rules and social guidelines and opened the doors of instinct.
The cloudy daze faded. Her muscles locked, her omega breeder body frozen, waiting.
He was strong. She didn't need to see him. His smell and the sound of him told her everything she needed to know.
Above her, a storm exploded. Hot and wild, blood rained down. An alpha was fighting for the rights to a female. She didn't want that. But her heart beat hard with an ancient memory.
A strong alpha killed all challengers.
Where was Crispin? Where was her father? Her brothers?
But she knew they weren't stronger. They couldn't save her.
They would all die if they were here.
Chapter Three
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 an
d 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.
