In one instant, Cassian drained Rae’s energy with a vast smile. Plucking her from the ground, he brought her into his arms. “Rest, child,” he whispered, warm against her ear.
Violated and alone, she wrapped her arms around his neck. She did what she was told until she couldn’t take it anymore. A rush of panic hit her in the chest, and she hungrily dug her fangs into his porous flesh.
He stumbled forward like a buffoon, dropping her to clasp his hand over the wound. A pin prick of blood formed around a weak puncture.
Running for her life, headed for the Coalition authorities, Rae stumbled against the dried grass. Tears splattered her face, forming into a mist in the air around her. She could feel him coming after her, hunting like the predator he longed to be. His masculine scent, musky and foul, followed her every turn.
Cassian’s voice shook with each pounding step forward. “I can hear your heartbeat.”
He laid his hand across her shoulders. Ankles giving out, she collapsed on the field. He looked at her as if she were his prey and sank his teeth out wildly with one thing on his mind.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“The world is what I want it to be. I broke the world. Now, I create the rules,” he spoke. “You’re going to spend a lot of time with me, darling. Not days. Not years. Decades. Do you understand that, sweetie-pie?”
He shook her head until she understood. In his world, women were to be beaten until molded into obedient slaves. Sellwhores and mothers of destitution. Every omega taken was to be made powerless. For a brief moment, her mind painted a picture of what her life was going to turn into.
Laughing, Cassian dug his fingers into the grass and dirt, smearing mud into her thick roots of hair. He lifted her by her dress, ripping the thin fabric enough to expose a cheek of flesh. “Let us find Daddy.”
As they made their way up to the grass-laden entryway, Rae felt a brief lapse in time. Suddenly, everything shifted, and she became catatonic. Like a broken television set, her vision flickered chaotically.
Her eyes fluttered open to a brightly lit white room. As it came into focus, she blinked but strangely couldn’t move an inch.
“Subject EC23 has resumed consciousness.”
A man with a blue specialist mask stood above her, breathing deep into his stuffed nostrils. Every breath he sucked in seemed to give him jolts of unknown pleasure.
Another voice broke the silence. A familiar voice. “She’s conscious?”
The doctor swiveled his head to face the brute alpha. While glancing above at the screen, he wiped his forehead. Why did he look so damn worried?
“It’s nothing we can’t fix, sir. What I worry about is her memory functionality. We can’t keep her under for very much longer.”
Hammering his fist against the wall, Cassian roared.
Rae’s eyes rolled to take in her surroundings, and a muffled cry escaped her parched lips.
“You promised me this would work,” he said.
“The brain adapts to trauma like a body to a parasite, by slowly spreading around the affected areas of the mind until the rest of the functions follow. When her mind has been fully changed, she will beg you to knot her.”
“She still has some time to go before she is… ripe,” Cassian said. Lowering his voice, he whispered, “I have been dreaming about taking that satisfying first bite.”
Rae struggled to keep her eyes open. She noticed the tubes that threaded through her arms, now a blackened mass of bruising and tragic scars. She had the idea to claw them out, one by one, but she was overcome with such incredible pain she could only grunt with suffering.
“W-where am I?” she finally managed to choke.
Cassian eyed her without an ounce of compassion. Cursing under his horrid and wafting breath, he turned the set of headlights off and forced the anesthesia mask around her nose and mouth. His grip was tight as she screamed out in terror.
“Shh...” he whispered. “This is only a dream. You will wake soon, my sweet little slut of mine.”
As the wave of chemicals flowed through her lungs, she felt the urge to fall back into the world she knew. It was the one place she could return to, time and time again. But it always ended with the sense of something devious, followed by the rush of panic.
She almost made it outside of the village. She could have called for help. The sight was almost too much for her to see.
She succumbed to the hot touch of his evil hand…