by Aspen Grey
“I understand,” I told him as I came in. He closed the door behind me.
“No,” he replied grimly. “No, I don’t think you do.”
Something in his voice scared me and I turned to look at him and saw a look on his face that made goose bumps break out all over my body.
Then, he locked the door.
“Uh, Eric…?”
Then, something happened that seized my heart and sent a chill through my body. My fangs extended as Larcon stepped into the room from the kitchen.
“Hey, sweet pea.”
Chapter Eighteen
Alexander
What a good day! I thought as I sped home from “the office,” which was just a small, very quiet coffee shop on the outskirts of town where I liked to go to get my work done. When I was at home, I was at home. I didn’t like bringing my work back there, but I’d decided to do some day trading and had managed to turn 20,000 into a whopping 157,000. I treated the whole shop, four other patrons, to mocha lattes and tipped the two girls behind the counter 2,000 each. One of them had burst into tears.
I wasn’t in the Ferrari today—I’d decided to take the custom Singer 911 Porsche in gunmetal gray, which was a fantastic color that bordered on purple. I threw it into third gear and gunned it as I hit the flat stretch heading back towards Sleepy Hills. The engine hummed with precision as I accelerated, my Hublot watch reading 1:24. In this car, I would definitely make it to the high school with time to spare before Blue got out of class. Then I’d pick him up, take him home with me and—well…have lots of fun.
I wonder how long until his heat arrives, I thought as I made it to fourth gear before I had to slow for the turn just before the tracks. I knew Officer Brady would be waiting for me, and sure enough he was, so I braked, downshifted into second and passed him going about twenty. Given the fact that the road had a speed limit of thirty, it was a bit of a dick move, but I didn’t care. What was he going to do—pull me over for going ten under on an empty road?
I waved as I went by and saw him shaking his head as I made my way into town. A minute later I was pulling into the school. Unfortunately, Blue’s father was already waiting for him, sitting in his truck, parked directly in front of the steps in the no-parking zone.
Shit.
I instantly swerved the Porsche behind a row of parked cars. My car attracted attention, and Mr. Mitchell’s attention was something I didn’t need right now.
Well, this is a wrench in the works…
If he was here, I wasn’t going to be able to pick up Blue, and I didn’t want to get into a confrontation either. Mr. Mitchell was pissed and would need some time to cool off. He obviously wasn’t giving Blue the chance to get away from him either. He was a guy too. He knew that a couple of virile young men like us would do anything we could to see each other.
“Well, fuck me,” I cursed as I slowed the Porsche to a stop and looked out through the cars at the front of the school.
My watch read 1:30. It was time. In a few seconds I’d see Blue coming out the door and getting into his father’s truck. He’d take him home and that meant we wouldn’t see each other today, unless of course I went over tonight and he managed to sneak out with me again. But that was risky. If his dad caught us, he’d be in even more shit than he already was.
“FUCK me,” I growled. I watched, expecting any moment to see my beautiful Blue coming down the stairs, but he never came. In fact, I sat there five more minutes waiting, but he never showed. Finally, Mr. Mitchell got out of his truck, looking more than irritated, and made his way up the stairs and into the school.
I waited, and about five minutes later he returned. He slapped the hood of his truck, climbed in and sped off, his tires screeching all the way out of the lot. I didn’t have to talk to him to understand what had happened; Blue had bailed.
He was on his way to my house.
Oh, Blue. What have you gotten us into?
Mr. Mitchell had a head start on me, but I was in a sports car and I knew a back way to the house. I floored it, sped out of the parking lot and gunned it. I’d be passing Officer Brady on the way, but this time I didn’t care. I was in fourth gear by the time I reached him and blasted past his cruiser going sixty-five. He would know it was me, but there was no way he was catching me.
I downshifted, drifted a corner and sped up the base of the mountain towards home, cutting through a series of uninhabited back streets that led back to the house. I got there in record time and saw that I’d beaten Blue’s dad. I pulled right up to the front steps, but as I ran towards the house, I saw that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
The front door was shattered. Glass lay on the steps which were spattered with drops of red.
Blood.
Blue’s scent hung heavy in the air, but there was another scent with it, one that caused my fangs to extend and had me on the edge of shifting.
Larcon.
I bent forward as I took the steps and sniffed the blood. Instantly my heart rate doubled. It was Blue’s.
I stepped over the broken glass and into the house, ready to tear the world apart to find my mate.
“ERIC!” I bellowed with a voice loud enough to make the walls rattle. I expected someone to come running, but no one from the pack appeared. It was as though the entire house was empty.
What had happened here!?
Larcon’s scent was still strong, as was Blue’s, but I couldn’t pick up anyone else’s. But as I turned into the kitchen, I smelled Eric.
“Eric!” I blurted out as I raced into the room. “What the Hell happened—?”
But when I saw him sitting there, relaxed on a stool at the counter, a stony look on his face, I didn’t even need an answer from him. I knew.
“You…you betrayed me!”
He was doing his best to project an appearance of strength, to maintain a sense of superiority over me as the “pack leader,” but he was failing. It took Eric a moment to respond, and when he did, his voice was shaking.
“I…I did what was best for the pack.”
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“I sent them away,” he replied. “Grocery shopping.”
I stepped forward, my fists clenched at my sides. “What—did—you—do—Eric!?”
Eric jumped to his feet. “I did what I had to do, okay? I kept the pace! You and your dick put us all in danger!”
My fist shot out and connected with his nose. It was a powerful blow and took him off his feet. He slammed down with a thud that took the wind out of him. I didn’t give him a second to react or shift. I planted my knee into his solar plexus, causing him to curl up like a perm.
“YOU LET LARCON IN HERE, DIDN’T YOU!?” I roared. He tried to turn away from me, but I slapped him hard against the cheek and forced his eyes to mine. “You stupid son of a bitch, do you know what you’ve done?”
He coughed, gasped for air and managed to hiss out a whisper. “I kept the peace.”
I snarled and leapt to my feet, raced into the downstairs bathroom and almost tore the vanity off the wall as I opened it. I snatched a bottle of pheromone blocker and sprayed it all over myself. If I was going into the Kurren compound on my own, I couldn’t be detected. Even if the rest of the pack was here, taking them with me would be a huge risk. This had to be an in-and-out stealth mission; rescue Blue and get back without starting a war. It was probably impossible, but I had to try.
Leaving Eric, our “pack leader” squirming on the floor in pain, I raced back out the door, leapt over the glass and blood, jumped back into the Porsche, threw it in gear and sped away.
Hang on, Blue! I thought, visions of Larcon’s horrible harem invading my mind. Just hang on!
Chapter Nineteen
Blue
“There, there, sweat pea,” Larcon cooed from the corner of the damp room as Chris, one of the Kurren betas, wrapped gauze tightly around my ankle. I’d cut it when I had shifted and tried to escape the house by leaping through the glass of the front
door. I’d made it to the steps before Eric and Larcon caught up to me.
Eric, the traitor!
“I’m sorry, Blue.” That’s what he’d said to me when Larcon had put his hands on me. “This is the only way.”
I’d thought for a brief moment that I’d be able to escape. But at the end of the day, I was an omega and Eric and Larcon were both alphas. There was just no way. They’d grabbed me and held me down while Larcon got a heavy chain around my neck. It was still there and it was just tight enough that if I’d shifted into my wolf form and expanded, it would have strangled me—or broken my neck.
Tears poured from my eyes as Chris finished my bandage and stood up. He was a creepy-looking guy, with something so fundamentally bland about him that I felt like I was looking at a painting that had been painted without any color known to man.
He had brown eyes and brown hair and a strange face that sometimes seemed handsome and other times seemed incredibly ugly depending on his expression or the angle. He had a quirky, twitchy movement about him that was causing me to be even more on edge. It was as though he was about to shift, or break out into manic crazy episodes at any moment.
“There we go, sweat pea,” Larcon said as he got up from his stool and came over to me. I tried to get away, but my chain was fixed securely to a radiator in the corner, giving me about a foot of space within which to move. He knelt down like he was a doctor or a relative and actually cared about me and lifted my chin, forcing my face to his. But I wouldn’t look at him. I kept my eyes fixed on the wall. “Don’t worry. The hard part’s over now. And you wouldn’t even have that little boo-boo if you hadn’t done that daredevil leap through the door like that. The Webbers aren’t going to appreciate having to replace all that glass.”
Fuck you!
That’s what I wanted to say, but I kept quiet. My mouth was hanging open as I was trying to avoid having to smell through my nose, as Larcon’s stench was overpowering. What had once been masculine and semi-attractive was now rank and terrifying. Larcon must have noticed, as he lifted my chin further and forced my mouth shut.
“Get used to it,” he told me. “You’re going to be smelling it a lot from now on.”
I tried to hold my breath, but Larcon kept his hand firm beneath my chin, and eventually I had to give in. I sucked air through my nose, that smell of campfire smoke burned my chest as it entered my lungs. I snorted and Larcon released me, laughing to himself as I hacked and coughed.
He’d taken me in his truck back to the Kurren compound which lay on the other side of the mountain. Their home was so redneck it hurt, an old two-story farmhouse with a wide porch covered with old beer cans and ashtrays. There had been a couple of alphas standing outside but Larcon pulled around back and led me into the old barn where I was now captive. I was only in the front room, however. There was much more to it, and I could smell several other omegas in the building somewhere.
Larcon’s harem.
That’s where I was headed, just as Alexander had said. Larcon had seen me outside of the school and never forgotten about me. He’d tried once to get me here, then enlisted Eric’s aid to finally succeed.
Alexander will come for you, I told myself. I didn’t doubt that he would, but what about the rest of the pack? Eric certainly wasn’t going to help him, and had the others been in on it? I doubted Clarice would be capable of something so horrible, but what about Jasper and Tyrese? I mean, I barely knew them. And even if they weren’t co-conspirators, maybe they’d agree with what Eric had done and decide to leave me where I was. Alexander, as tough as he was, couldn’t take on the whole Kurren pack himself—could he?
“Now, I know you’re scared,” Larcon said to me, a cruel smile on his face as Chris watched from the corner of the room. “But you shouldn’t be. In fact, you should be excited. You’ve been selected—hand-picked to be part of my omega harem. Do you know how much of an honor that is?”
He pulled my face to his again, but I swept my eyes to the other wall. I’d rather watch disaster videos on YouTube than look at his terrible face.
“You know—you might even enjoy yourself,” he continued. “You’ll be cared for, provided for, fed, clothed and bathed and of course, have your brains fucked out!”
My body began to quiver as the rapist spoke. He was psychotic.
“If you resist, you won’t have fun,” he said calmly. “But if you tell yourself that you’ll enjoy yourself, then I guarantee you will. I’ve got some moves on me!”
He leaned forward and I almost threw up as he planted a wet kiss on the side of my cheek, leaving a thick glob of saliva that stank of his scent. He got to his feet and looked down at me.
“Now, I always claim the first omega for myself,” he explained. “But after that, you’ll be on the menu for the rest of the pack, so you’ll have a nice variety of fun.”
He stepped behind me and used a key to unlock my chain from the radiator. Instantly I began to squirm, fighting with all I had to free myself from his grasp. But it was futile. I might as well have been trying to tear the radiator from the ground. He was simply too strong.
“Relax, sweat pea,” he told me. “Or I’ll have to hit you so hard in the nose you won’t be able to think straight.”
I struggled a bit more before settling down. Even if I broke free, the door to the barn was made of metal with thicker hinges than I’d ever seen in my life. I doubted even Alexander would be able to break it down.
He led me towards a door in the back of the room, which Chris unlocked with a key that hung from a chain on his belt. He pulled it open.
I smelled them before I saw them; the rest of Larcon’s harem. Three omegas lay on the floor, each chained to a thick pipe on opposite corners of the room. One of them raised his sad, tired eyes to me as I entered. There was no hope, no strength, not an ounce of belief that one day he would escape. He’d accepted his fate.
“Meet the harem!” Larcon chuckled as he led me over to another thick metal pipe sticking out of the old planked floor. It obviously went straight through into the ground. Once I was hooked up to it, there would be no escaping.
“NO!” I screamed, throwing myself into a panicked struggle. But Larcon’s strength was too much for me. Not knowing what else to do, I shifted.
Instantly, pain ripped through my neck as the collar choked me. It was so tight I felt like my neck was about to snap. I had no choice. I had to shift back, and as I did, I heard Larcon laughing at me.
“Oh, sweat pea,” he muttered as he secured my chain to the pipe with a set of two locks. “Just take it easy. It won’t be that bad. Take some time to get to know the others! They’ll tell you!”
And with those final words, Larcon turned his back on me and he and Chris headed back out the door and closed it behind them. I heard the latch and deadbolt lock and felt my heart sink as the reality of my situation sank in: I was trapped.
Chapter Twenty
Blue
“NO!” I screamed as I braced both of my feet on the wall and kicked as hard as possible, praying that the chain would snap or the pole would somehow uproot from the ground. My throat was burning from how much I’d been howling, but try as I might, I was just as imprisoned as I was when Larcon first brought me into the barn.
“Face it,” a voice said from behind me. “You’re not going anywhere.”
I let myself collapse to the floor, the chain slapping me on the chest and thigh as I landed and looked back at whoever had spoken behind me. It was the omega on the far end of the room, his blond hair disheveled and his hazel eyes defeated. As much as I was terrified and afraid for myself, seeing him like that broke my heart. How long had he been here? How had he gotten here? He didn’t look much more than a couple of years older than me.
“It’s better to just accept it,” another of the omegas said softly. His hair was jet black but his eyes were blue. He had weeks of stubble on his face but boyish good looks and all I could think about was how kind he looked. If he wasn’t here, he’d be a
smiling barista or a college student working hard to succeed. Instead, he was trapped here. “If you fight too hard, you’ll end up hurting yourself. The chains don’t break.”
“How…how long have you been here?” I asked them.
“Who knows?” one of them shrugged. They’d given up. It was heartbreaking.
“What are your names?” I asked.
The boy who’d been speaking to me responded. “I’m Francis. That’s Stewart over there with the curly hair, and that’s Charlie.”
They each forced a smile and held up a hand in a tiny wave. I could see that they were happy for some new company. Their lives must have been Hell and seeing a new face, a friendly one, was probably a light in the darkness of their lives. I wanted more than anything to do something—help them in some way—but I couldn’t even help myself! What was I supposed to do? Then, to make matters even worse, a door I hadn’t noticed at the back of the barn opened.
A figure appeared, silhouetted by an ugly orange light. It wasn’t Larcon. His figure was massive, obese and rippled with huge lines of fat. His scent wafted in and stank like old fish. In one hand he held a cigar, and as he took a drag, the embers faintly lit his horrible face.
“Fresh meat, eh?” He chuckled, then hacked a smoker’s cough and spat on the ground. I felt all the other omegas’ eyes on me. “Thought I smelled something sweet.”
He stepped into the barn and closed the door behind him. Once my eyes adjusted, I was able to see him.
He looked like a mob boss from the Sopranos if he’d sat in his house for five years eating nothing but potato chips and fast food with a gluttonous appetite that knew no bounds. He was shirtless, and his skin was spotted with red rashes and patches of thin hair. Below the waist, he wore nothing but a sheer pair of yoga pants that were stretched across his physique to the point that there were runs in the fabric like old stockings. His package, which was ironically not in proportion to the rest of his body, was perfectly visible as he scratched it with a dirty hand.
