Born to be Bound (Alpha's Claim 1)

Corday had made his way into the mist to see for himself, disguised as a looter to pick through the warren, blending in with the rest of the vultures already poaching the meager goods left behind.

Claire's smell lingered in the air, heady with anxiety, powerful from the sweat she must have worked up when she ran to her friends. Corday followed it, ignoring the deserted personal items scattered around the rooms, the garbage. The trail ended at a closet, where—once the door was pushed open—he found trapped air that reeked of sex. Shepherd had fucked her the moment he'd found her; that was clear not only from the smell, but the sight of the discarded sweater and pants Claire had been wearing. His clothes—the ones Corday had specially prepared for her earlier that day.

Crouching down, he lifted the fabric and brought it to his nose, pulling in a breath of the Omega, bowing his head, feeling like a failure.

It could not end this way.

He may have failed Claire, but her information about the pills had brought to light other Omegas in need, and the Enforcers—led by Brigadier Dane—were already preparing to strike. Corday would help them like he'd promised. After all, what was the point of resistance if one didn't actually fight back?

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Corday had a difficult time finding respect for a woman like Brigadier Dane. Dane's arrogance and short-sighted need to constantly remind him about his father's crimes and subsequent incarceration had set them at odds from the first moment he'd met his commanding officer. But something had changed in Dane during the months since the city fell. It was clear that the Alpha female harbored the massive weight of survivor's guilt. Dane tried much harder, spoke much less, and seemed as grimly determined as Corday to right at least one wrong if she could.

The weather was nasty; even at midday it was almost dark, the swollen sky over-dome just as unwelcoming as the guards outside the chem pusher's den. When Corday arrived to join Dane's tactical assault, he could smell drugs cooking, the bitter, chemical tinge tainting the air. More so, he could hear the drugged, needy calls of the women, begging for release from wherever the saggy faced dealer had them locked away.

There were about twelve men on the premises; half were armed with Enforcer-grade artillery they should not have had access to. Guns slung over their shoulders, faces devoid of emotion, the thugs were habituated to the vileness surrounding them. From Dane's intel, the Enforcers now knew which sleaze ran the show; an older, stocky Alpha named Otto. The Brigadier's orders were to keep him alive for questioning.

They needed to know who had supplied those men with those guns. Were they affiliated with Shepherd's Followers? Were there other cartels with artillery that could be confiscated?

Customers were already shuffling in with offerings to trade, twitching with the need to knot a heated Omega. It seemed something as simple as a fresh piece of fruit or a bag of rice could get an Alpha or Beta laid. There were stockpiles of food, crates stacked in a guarded corner that could be put to better use once impounded.

Taking down these men might potentially fund the beginnings of a true rebellion.

Led by Brigadier Dane, with Corday at her back, the team of twelve armored Enforcers breached the concrete compound in tactical formation. All targets were eliminated without question, the infiltration choreographed to a precision even Shepherd would have admired.

While Dane took down the men bent over tables cooking drugs, Corday's team turned a corner and passed into the back of the building. Nearing where the Omegas were corralled, the Enforcers, like all humans, found themselves susceptible to the lust-inducing pheromones mixed with the stink of human filth. The animal inside Corday sniffed, instantaneously enticed, while the human who controlled such urges found all he saw repulsive. The view was sickening; six women chained to the wall, collars around their necks like dogs. Two were so emaciated from the continuous estrous, Corday was not sure how they were still breathing.

Each captive was equidistant—just a bit too far from the others to touch. A few were still being rutted by Alphas; oblivious to the soldiers bearing down upon them. There was no mercy with the city a war zone. A single shot to the head and the offenders died, too caught up in the knot to disengage. In the end, only three of the savages—including the necessary Otto—had been taken alive and bound in the middle of the room. The Enforcers began unchaining Omegas, preparing to move them as soon as possible before one of the officers instinctively fell into a rut from the pheromones.

There were things Corday had seen in his short years as an Enforcer, crimes so vulgar he just could not believe anyone was capable of committing them. It turned out that the horrors in that Omega kennel were only the beginning. Behind a chained meat locker lay the spent bodies of numerous skeletal creatures, haphazardly piled up, frozen from the cold that kept them from rotting; the emaciated corpses of eleven murdered Omegas, bruised, beaten, gazing out of lifeless eyes at the nothing they had become.