Born to Be Bound (2 page)

But Claire was unprepared to see the amount of bodies already littering the ground. The sight of so many broken men made her freeze, and that was all he needed. In an instant, an arm as thick as a tree trunk came around her middle and she was carted off, hanging doubled over, by the swaggering pace of a man staking claim... of the victor of the battle. The room still echoed with snarls and shouting, but more so, the pained moans of the few on the ground who were lucky enough to be alive.

Combat boots and familiar armor, all looking as if they'd been cobbled together from scraps, encased thick thighs. Shepherd. Praising Nona for the horrible stinking scarf she'd prepared, Claire fought herself—fought her instinct to smell him—and did her best to repeat the mantra that had got her through this nightmare before.
"Only instincts."

She had to speak to him, had to fight her baser urges.

Do you think he will fight his?

The thought made her sag, an action he no doubt took as submission and not its counterpart, despair. Claire lost track of the distance or direction he had taken her; only noticed the dimness and the strange feeling of being underground. Over and over in her head she prepared what must be said, promising herself she would say it. Even if he was rutting, she would say it.

Even if he would kill her, she would say it.

A door was pulled on thick metal hinges, whined the way she imagined the doors would in the old-world submarines she'd read about in books, and they entered a room.

Every inhalation, even through the reeking muffler, was saturated in him—in the heady musk of the prime Alpha. Pressing her hand to her mouth and nose, she felt her body writhe against her will, and focused again on the small shallow breaths of control.

Lowered to the floor, her body convulsed in another cramp, drawing out the female's pained groan. She wanted—no,
needed
—to press her hands between her legs. But the smell of rotting flesh was turning her stomach, just as much as the delicious smell of the Alpha's den was driving her mad.

With words made bleary with craving, sentences broken up by little grunts, she fought past the overwhelming desire to spread her legs and grind. "We are starving. The Omegas need food. I have been sent to ask you to arrange a safe place where we can procure our portion before we all die."

She watched him bolt the door with a rod so thick it dwarfed her ankle, trapping her, cornering the Omega for mating. Unsure if Shepherd had heard, she used her feet to scoot away from the male until her back hit the wall and tried again. "Food… we can't go out... hunted, forced. They're killing us." Her blown pupils looked up at the intimidating male and pleaded for him to understand. "You are
the
Alpha in Thólos, you hold control... we have no one else to ask."

"So you foolishly walked into a room full of feral males to ask for food?" He was mocking her, his eyes mean even as he grinned.

The horror of the day, the sexual frustration of her heat, made Claire belligerently raise her head and meet his eyes. "If we don't get food, I'm dead anyway."

Seeing the female grimace through another cramping wave, Shepherd growled, an instinctual reaction to a breeding Omega. The noise shot right between her legs, full of the promise of everything she needed. His second, louder grumbled noise sang inside her, and a wave of warm slick drenched the floor below her swollen sex, saturating the air to entice him.

She could not take it. "Please don't make that noise."

"You are fighting your cycle," he grunted low and abrasive, beginning to pace, watching her all the while.

Shaking her head back and forth, Claire began to murmur, "I've lived a life of celibacy."

Celibacy? That was unheard of... a rumored story. Omegas could not fight the urge to mate. That was why the Alphas fought for them and forced a pair-bond to keep them for themselves. The smell alone drove any Alpha into a rut.

He growled again and the muscles of her sex clenched so hard she whined and curled up on the floor.

It was hard enough to make it through estrous locked in a room alone until the cycle broke, but his damn noise and the smell invading past the rotting stickiness of her clothing was breaking her insides apart.

The degrading way he spoke made her open her eyes to see the beast standing still, his massive erection apparent despite layers of clothing. "How long does your heat typically last, Omega?"

Shivering, suddenly loving the sound of that lyrical rasp, she clenched her fists at her sides instead of beckoning him nearer. "Four days, sometimes a week."

"And you have been through them all in seclusion instead of submitting to an Alpha to break them?"

"Yes."

He was making her angry, furious even, with his stupid questions. Every part of her was screaming out that he should be stroking her and easing the need.
That it was his job
! With her hand still pressed over her nose and mouth, her muffled, broken explanation came as a jumbled, angry rant, Claire hissing, "I choose."

He just laughed; a cruel, coarse sound.

Omegas had become exceptionally rare since the plagues and the following Reformation Wars a century prior. That made them a valuable commodity which Alphas in power took as if it was their due. And in a city brimming with aggressive Alphas like Thólos, she'd been trapped in a life of feigning existence as a Beta just to live unmolested; spent a small fortune on heat-suppressants, and locked herself away with the other few celibates she knew when estrous came. Hidden in plain sight before Shepherd's army sprung out of the Undercroft and the government was slaughtered, their corpses left strung up from the Citadel like trophies.

Claire had been forced into hiding the very next day, when the unrest inspired the lower echelons of population to challenge for dominance. Where there had been order, suddenly all Thólos knew was anarchy. Those awful men just took any Omega they could find; killing mates and children in order to keep the women—to breed them or fuck until they died.

"What is your name?"

She opened her eyes, elated he was listening. "Claire."

"How many of you are there, little one?"

Trying to focus on a spot on the wall instead of the large male and where his beautiful engorged dick was challenging the zipper of his trousers, she turned her head to where her body craved to nest, staring with hunger at the collection of colorful blankets, pillows—a bed where everything must be saturated by his scent.

An extended growl warned, "You are losing your impressive focus, little one. How many?"

Her voice broke. "Less than a hundred... We lose more every day."

"You have not eaten. You're hungry." It was not a question, but spoken with such a low vibration that his hunger for
her
was apparent.

"Yesss." It was almost a whine. She was so near to pleading, and it wasn't going to be for food.

The prolonged answering growl of the beast compelled a gush of slick to wet her so badly, she was sitting in a slippery puddle. Doubling over, frustrated and needy, she sobbed, "Please don't make that noise," and immediately the growl changed pitch. Shepherd began to purr for her.

There was something so infinitely soothing in that low rumble that she sighed audibly and did not bolt at his slow, measured approach. She watched him with such attention, her huge, dilated pupils a clear mark that she was so very close to falling completely into estrous.

Even when Shepherd crouched down low, he towered over her, all bulging muscle and musky sweat. She tried to say the words, "
Only instincts..."
but jumbled them so badly their meaning was lost.

Starting with the scarf, he unwound the items that tainted her beautiful pheromones, purring and stroking every time she whimpered or shifted nervously. When he pulled her forward to take away the reeking cloak, her eyes drew level with his confined erection. Claire's uncovered nose sniffed automatically at the place where his trousers bulged. In that moment all she wanted, all that she had ever wanted, was to be fucked, knotted, and bred by that male.

Only instincts...

Shepherd pressed his face to her neck and sucked in a long breath, groaning as his cock jumped and began to leak more to please her. He had gone into the rut, there was no changing that fact, and with it came a powerful need to see the female filled with seed; to soothe what was driving her to rub against her hand in such a frenzy.

The words were almost lost in her breath, "You need to lock me in a room for a few days..."

A feral grin spread. "You are locked in a room, little one, with the Alpha who killed ten men and two of his sworn Followers to bring you here." He stroked her hair, petting her because something inside told him his hands could calm her. "It's too late now. Your defiant celibacy is over. Either you submit willingly to me where I will rut you through your heat, or you may leave out that door where my men will, no doubt, mount you in the halls once they smell you."

A knock came. Shepherd rose up tall before her, staring down with open demand that she submit and obey. Dominance established, he went to the door and pulled back the lock. Claire saw the same soldier, the smaller Beta with the far too vibrant blue eyes, and found him sniffing the air in her direction, growing openly excited at the intoxicating blend of pheromones her slick and sweat were pumping into the air.

Shepherd was right. He had taken her from what would have been a mass rape, saved her from damage and most likely death. He'd listened, though he had not answered her, and men were already salivating in the hall. The understanding of the situation passed openly across her face. Claire nodded, estrous clouding her judgment.

Something was muttered between the men, ending in, "...only Betas on guard."

A tray was handed over, laden with food, another armful piled with bedding and pillows, and she went white. They had already known Shepherd would have her, and had prepared accordingly. The little chat had no purpose but to make her think she had a choice. He saw her expression and the rumble of his purring returned.

She had to eat... he had to feed her before it began. The tray was set on the floor where she crouched, his order loud enough to grab her attention away from where his pants bulged. "Eat."

As she picked at the unseen food, he began to undress. All armor, every under-layer, was carefully removed and organized, the man having no shame about the state of his Da'rin marked body or the jutting cock proudly on display. But more than the visual, it was the smell—the scent of a rutting Alpha, aroused and swollen for her—that made reason completely flee her mind. Everything hummed in that incessant purr, reminding her that he was what her body needed, and she was salivating for it... even if she was scared.

Shepherd began to pace, naked, rolling his shoulders as he prowled, all the while watching her and sniffing the air over and over. "Eat more... drink the water."

Voice downright nasty, threatening, Claire hissed as if he should have known Omegas could not eat during estrous, "I don't want food!"

No, she wanted the thing that was supposed to happen. He was supposed to be fucking her. Why was he waiting? She came to her feet and he was there, the dominant male growling so loud her eyes rolled back in her skull.

A rending of fabric preceded cool air over fevered skin.

He was all around her, tugging away unnecessary things like clothing. The smell of him, the raw sweat, sent her cunt to seeping. Sucking in great panting breaths of the fertile Omega, Shepherd sought out to stroke uncovered flesh, a bit surprised all her body hair had been permanently removed—recognizing the precaution the Omega had taken to help mask her scent.

She was so far gone, her little tongue already licking at his skin, completely high on the taste and smell, that when his finger swiped drops of his leaking pre-come to run over her lips, she moaned loudly and sucked it deep into her mouth.

Claire was so small compared to his mass, easy to move where he wanted. Her back hit the bed, Shepherd standing between her slender spread legs, staring down with wide, hungry eyes at the river of slick that came forth. Little pink lips were spread, the swollen glans of his cock lined up where she seemed far too small to accept an organ so large. With one hand on her chest, petting the twisting thing, Shepherd pressed forward, breaching her slippery womb, and gave a full body shudder at the sound of her desperate cry.

The woman had not lied... she was so tight it made his cock pulsate more fluid to aid her. He only got halfway before she began to whine and squirm. Alphas were big and Shepherd was huge, his girth massive, and there was only so much space inside her body.

"Open for me, little one," Shepherd growled, using his thumbs to stretch her lower lips further apart, thrusting forward, gaining hard earned inch by inch while the female watched a cock as thick as her forearm slowly disappear between her legs.

When the expanding thrust bottomed out, when all her tightness enveloped that hard length... utter bliss. She needed it, was moaning and arching, grinding her sex against his pubic bone. The stretch was divine; the vibration from his purrs, the
smell
. When he began to pull out, she showed her teeth and snarled at a man many times her size. Shepherd seemed amused, and then snapped his hips, burying that massive cock to the hilt, knowing she would squeal.

Claire learned quickly that he liked her little spurts of temper, but it was Shepherd who dominated the exchange. He rutted with the vigor she needed, hard and fast, building up that furious pulse in her core. When she began to roll her hips, eyes closed and lost in the insatiable need to mate, he took her by the scruff of the neck and barked at her to open, to look at the male fucking her, to recognize his prowess.

Those harshly snarled words sent her over the edge. Perfect fulfillment exploded. Claire felt every single muscle in her pussy jump to life, saw his eyes grow vicious and feral, felt his knot expand as he ground in, hooking behind her pelvic bone, locking them as deep as he could go. Jerking under the intensity of the orgasm, she felt that first hot gush of semen, heard him roar like a beast while she screamed. Shepherd came again, more of that copious fluid, her body's need finally met, and with his third liquid surge she blacked out.