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 by 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.