by Addison Cain
After a thorough exam, he offered a fresh jumpsuit.
He then instructed Unit 17C to vacate the decontamination chambers and rejoin her people. Pride made her smile under the stitches in her cheek. Pulling her suit zipper up under her chin, eager to go home, she smoothed her tangled bob of lank hair, careful of her damaged arm, and walked, surrounded by bio-suit clad scientists, out to greet waiting friends.
Clearing the final room, she found no joyous party—not even George, the tech Brenya had worked with for five years.
It was not until she returned to her bunk at Palo Corps barracks that word she’d been grounded until further notice arrived. The women she had known since birth, the ones she had been raised with, educated with—the ones she’d played with and thought of as sisters—all one-hundred who shared the room kept their distance.
Brenya had never willingly looked at the horizon. She had not studied the shapes of leaves or how the wind moved the trees. It didn’t matter. Unit 17C was counted as one of the tainted.
That first night, she cried in her bunk, wishing she had never seen the white flowers or smelled jasmine on the wind.
Every morning when the call was made to rise, she would watch her fellow Betas climb from their cots and dress in the uniform of their zone. She too wore the grey jumpsuit, she too broke bread in the mess hall with her sisters, but unlike them, she no longer had an assigned purpose.
Oversight, it seemed, believed Brenya had nothing to offer to the collective.
After a week living as a borderline pariah, after endless skewed looks and terse answers to attempted conversation, she found she could no longer choke down meals. She stopped eating. Her head ached; her stomach was always in knots. To prove herself useful, Brenya had taken to unordered janitorial work. With her good arm, she scrubbed the toilets, the floors, the walls, every surface inside her barracks. When she ran out of things to clean, she walked East Sector looking for debris on the ground.
It was two days of garbage collection before she found herself outside the gates separating the various engineering corps from the techs and central Oversight.
George would help her… it’s not like she didn’t recognize that he had been the one to save her life. He would help her earn an assignment and end this torment. But Brenya was denied entry. The Alpha guard sneered behind his helmet once she’d been scanned, her rank and designation displayed.
To her shame, she felt her lip shake. “Please.”
He looked to her sling, to the gash atop her cheekbone that would scar and remind everyone why her face was marred: an engineering grunt’s visor had broken, unit 17C had breathed contaminated air.
She was infected, even if she was not.
When she continued to stand there, waiting as if he might change his mind, the Alpha guard raised a hand to her damaged shoulder. It was not a gesture of comfort or reassurance. Instead, he used his grip to shove her away.
Before those free to come and go, before all who kept their distance, Brenya fell. Crying in earnest, she put her hand to her throbbing shoulder and cowered.
No one made a move to help, though she could see a reflection of pity in the expressions of those nearest. When she could not bear the shame another moment, she tucked her feet under her body. Brenya made herself stand no matter how dizzy she’d become. Stumbling step by step, the woman wandered like a kicked dog in the direction of her barracks.
Halfway through the journey, she was distracted by the sound of running water. Over hot and fevered, sweat beaded at her temples. Upon seeing the fountain sparkling at the center of East Sector’s square, there was a change in course.
Laziness was frowned upon, but Brenya sat there at the water’s edge, taking in the beauty of a precious piece of art installed in the Dome before the gates were sealed. This relic had once sat outside the Place de la Concorde. Who designed it, she could not say. Art history was not emphasized amongst those chosen for an engineering education. Just as she could not tell how old it was or why it was culturally important to her people.
What she could say was that dipping her hand into that cool water, wiping her feverish face felt more beautiful than any fountain might ever be. Just as she put her lips to that sparkling blue resting in her palm, a roar cut through the air. Backing away from her perch, her eyes darted around the superstructure for a sign of what ogre might have made so terrible a noise.
She heard the roar again, closer.
There was this violent sense of inevitability, the icy feeling of impending doom. She could not tell you what came over her, why that noise threw her into such a panic, but she could say that never in her life had she run so fast.
Blood was pounding behind her eyes, her legs wobbling as if under the influence of some unknown drug. She’d almost made it to her barracks—where all she wanted was to climb under the blankets and hide.
Almost…
Chapter 2
Arms came fast and rough around Brenya. No matter how she tried to dig her heels into the sidewalk, the flailing woman couldn’t plant a foot on the ground. She was being dragged, the strength of a massive body hard at her back. She wanted so badly to be free, to call for help past the hand pressed over her mouth, but frantic struggles amounted to nothing.
Hauled off the main causeway down a dead-end ventilation duct, Brenya could hardly breathe, too weak from the innate feebleness brought on by days of fasting. Before she could squirm away, her body was turned, pinioned between an unforgiving wall and the alarming presence of a colossal Alpha.
If unconditional dominance could be focused into a single creature, if it could be compressed, forced under one’s skin into the shape of a man, then Brenya was looking upon it. He had power in just one glance, the kind that exists without reason or fairness.
Over the endless whoosh of the duct’s massive fan, she lost her scream.
Their eyes met and the sound was never born from her throat. His were the intensity of hellacious rage, the shade of envy, and deadly focused. He leaned closer as she trembled, his large hand enclosing about the female’s throat.
Nostrils flaring, he sucked in an extended breath.
Green eyes rolled back in his head.
Panting, slapping his body so he might release his mass from smashing her further into the building did nothing more than earn a snarl from the male. He wanted his hostage still and silent.
Skin crawling, feeling as if she were on fire, Brenya dared to claw at the great hand encircling her throat. As if to acquiesce to the frantic plea, his grip abated, fingers trailing to the collar of her grey jumpsuit.
He was going to kill her—she could smell the aggression on the Alpha and began to cry. All she could think of was how she’d brought such an outcome on herself. She should never have tried to get through the gate. She should not have drunk from the fountain.
She was to be arrested and punished.
Frantic to explain, to earn release, Brenya whimpered, “Please. I’m sorry.”
As if she had never spoken, the male pinched the tab of her zipper. The grinding release as it descended down her neck confounded the woman. A tan clavicle grew exposed, the rise and fall of her chest all the more obvious. When her sling stopped his progress, before the fabric might part further, the Alpha’s knee batted her thighs apart. He’d hoisted her up so his nose might burrow against that freshly bared skin.
At the feel of his tongue rasping over flesh, Brenya’s panic hit a fever pitch. She screamed, more frantic writhing drawing a deeply disturbing growl from her attacker. His reverberating threat continued, even as his mouth descended to devour the female’s shrieks. It was as if he might swallow her up, his lips sliding, a serpentine tongue dipping in to stir up every syllable, to distort her pleas.
It was the lack of air, of bearing the weight of so much man pressed against her. Her insides began to burn. She could feel them systematically squeezing, cramping, coming apart until she was no longer crying for freedom, but whimpering from pain.
The smell of that stranger was heady, thick and salty… and nothing like jasmine.
Her stomach rolled, she gagged.
Why an Oversight Alpha was there, why he’d pinned her against that wall and felt free to touch her, she could not say. It was rare for elites of such rank to enter Beta sectors, though it was not the first time Brenya had laid eyes on the ones who governed. But never had she seen this one; never had she been close enough to one to feel that under their strange Centrist’s clothing, they were every bit as strong as their mass broadcasted.
Never had she shared breath with one.
Sweating profusely, she grew slippery in his grip. Or at least that’s why she thought her squirming had finally pulled the shackles of his hands away. She was wrong.
Her good arm was not enough to bat the male’s touch off when he reared and grabbed the front of her uniform. He didn’t even bother with the caught zipper. He wrenched cloth until the covering split down the front and breasts bounced free. And then he was touching them, palming the meaty flesh half hidden by a sling.
Gasping, unable to shove him back, she tried to beg him to stop, but his mouth ate up all noise.
Everywhere his fingers touched, skin burned. He was a brand, Brenya on fire.
There were laws against this sort of thing. There were laws that were supposed to protect females from terrifying Alphas—laws that forbade a male from reaching lower into her torn jumpsuit to poke at the place between her legs.
Blunt fingers ran the length of her slit, a squeal caught in the mouth of the male who would not stop tasting her tongue.
More fabric tore; he growled, and she was going to be sick. Brenya did not see how or even see when he’d reached between their bodies to free his member; she was not sure how he hitched her legs wider, or how he lined up. What she did know was that she buzzed as if being chopped up by that whirring fan when the Alpha drove home.
Once inside, he began to hush her… as if his captive’s panic had finally registered. “Shhhhhhh.”
“…please.”
A groan so filthy she shuddered, came from the beast. He lessened his grip on her knees, gravity pulling Brenya farther down a shaft she was sure would split her in two.
That engorged torture device could not be made to go deeper, the male frustrated that she was too small.
Hips jerking, he began to rut, bouncing her body back against the wall, his every thrust marked with an animal grunt.
Brenya gave up. She gave up and cried, eyes roving to find that at the end of the dank alley a few spectators stood by and did nothing while she was publicly mounted.
These things did not happen in Bernard Dome.
Teeth grazed her throat. She heard him whisper, “Mon petit chou.” —my little sweetheart.
Fluid gummed up sore thighs, made him slip and stretch a part of her that ached and smelled of blood.
The graze of his tongue traced from the hollow of her throat to the tip of her chin, the male pulling back to meet dulled eyes. He brought those swollen lips to the shell of the poor girl’s ear. Even as he grumbled, there was no pause in the upward pistoning of his hips. “Mon chou, you must relax and accept me or my knot will hurt you.”
“Please…”
She could feel the horror of what he referred to, a bulbous thing growing outside her opening. He’d failed to fully penetrate, no matter how he’d thrust. If he thought to shove that inside her, she knew she would die.
One arm hitched under her bottom, the other circling her neck, he bent her back, he opened her up. The sound that came from him as he pressed his cock forward, nothing in the world had ever unnerved her so deeply. Legs shaking, the lower half of her body lost in convulsions, those last inches burrowed their way into her organs. The growing knot was at her lower lips, she could feel its heat and pulse. When he forced it forward, the thing popped past the threshold and he fully invaded her body—only for his cock to expand to a point the pressure on her bladder grew, and she was certain she would urinate.
Something else came out of the female, strange smelling fluid squirted between their bodies, dripped down her rear, onto his legs, and all over the cobblestone ground.
The stranger ground his hips, still rutting as much as their joined bodies would allow. His sack tightened and the man cried out.
Mouth open in a silent scream, she felt it, that first wave of fire. He dumped an ocean of seed inside her, the Alpha coming over and over until Brenya was certain she would burst.
Eyes closed, she felt the nature of his touch alter. Above where his cock destroyed her, his thumb began to play. “That’s it, sweet girl.”
She knew what it was he touched—the nerve bundle that made mating pleasurable for Beta females. Parting her lashes to look down from where her head hung, she found hers swollen and distended from the abuse.
He was playing with her, sliding his slippery touch in insistent circles. All it led to was cramps and a wave of scorching fire. Brenya felt them consume her, burn through her veins until her insides began to rhythmically squeeze and he began to groan. On and on it went, her body bowed and legs mindlessly kicking.
She had zero control. She had no way of stopping it. It hurt—the worst pain she’d ever known—but it also felt as if the gods had filled her with sunlight, and it was that light that was going to incinerate her very being. Orgasm they called la petite mort, the little death, and in that moment, Brenya finally understood why.
Sound, the whimpers of a wounded animal, woke her. Every exhale held a whine, every inhale the shallow sounds of fear. Three breaths deep and Brenya realized that pathetic music was coming from her.
Soft linen lay under her cheek, body completely cocooned where she’d curled into a tight ball. Her good hand was pressed between bruised thighs, every muscle on fire, but it was nothing to the burn between her legs.
When she thought she might faint from the heat, a cool cloth passed over her forehead, her cheek, sweet ice trailing down her neck.
Somewhere behind her a man spoke, his voice tired. “Blood tests are conclusive. The Omega has not entered proper Estrous. Due to an inundation of Beta chemical conditioning, her body has turned on itself with misfired signals, fever, and an inflamed nervous system.”
“How is it that no one knew what she was?”
That low rumbled timbre she recognized. Knowing it was he who lingered so close, who touched her, sent Brenya into a panic. She tried to squirm away but could hardly move before a much stronger body was pressing her back. “Hush now, my girl. You’re safe.”
Safe? Was he insane?
“No…” pleas were jumbled, Brenya blubbering as if under an ocean of boiling tar. “Don’t.”
“Rest.” That cool cloth was pressed gently to her marred cheek. “I won’t leave you.”
A nearby feminine voice suggested, “Maybe you should leave…”
An Alpha’s answering growl silenced the unknown female. “You are here to witness, not to speak, Annette.”
The female offered a timid, “She’s afraid of you, Jacques.”
“She’s sick.” A hand settled on Brenya’s skull, fingers threading through tangled hair. “She’s confused. That’s all. She doesn’t understand what was done or why.”
The other presence in the room, the one her blurred vision could only just see outlined behind the monster pinning her down began to read off whatever report was before him. “Brenya Perin was listed as flawed—marked seven years ago as an inferior genetic Beta representation. That is the reason she has never been optioned for the breeding bank. She was never exposed to us, only noted for agreeing to partake in pleasurable coitus a handful of times since she came of age.”
The Alpha’s voice grew chilling. “Who fucked her?”
“Two Betas are listed here. More than twenty petitioned requests. It seems she only met the expected quota for mental health and nothing more.”
Her captor was less concerned with whether or not it was considered mentally hygienic to share pleasu
re, but instead infuriated over the fact another male had been sanctioned to touch her on more than one occasion. “Who did she allow to rut her repeatedly?”
“A Beta from Tech Sector, George Gerard. Before she was grounded, they shared a working relationship. His dossier states the male is serving three months in lockup for interfering with safety protocols after the decision was made to abandon your Omega outside the Dome. From what I see, you have him to thank for her survival—they were going to cut her loose.” The sound of paper flipping preceded, “He may even be ultimately responsible for forcing her body off chemical restraint. The Omega’s weeks in seclusion, her access to untreated rations, aggravated her endocrine system. Otherwise, Brenya may never have shown Omega characteristics. Her whole life might have been wasted laboring as a Beta.”
Wasted? She was one of the best engineering grunts under the glass. She had conducted dangerous maintenance on their Dome that had enriched millions of lives. How dare he!
“She’s in pain. Give her more morphine.” Cool fingers traveled from the shell of her ear down the length of a soft neck. At the curve before her shoulder, they lightly danced atop the still mottled skin. Though the male’s presence made her cringe, something in that soft rapping eased her growing irritation. “What can be done for her fever?”
She heard a sigh that hinged on exasperation, felt the prick of a needle in her arm. Even in her muddled state, she could sense his annoyance was not for the Alpha, it was directed toward her. Brenya was the root of his problem. “Nothing. She has not responded to conventional treatment. As her illness is tied to this retarded estrous, her fever may not go down for days, maybe a week… maybe longer. Omega physiology is not designed to withstand a lifetime of Beta pharmacology. Polluted as she is, her system is stuck and at war with itself. I cannot even assure you she will survive. This woman should never have been put in Palo Sector to be exposed to their food and water supply.”
