5
knight
THEY TAKE US into the room where the omega stayed, which is typical. They almost always want us to get the omega’s scent before they send us after him or her.
This one is female, something that’s easy to scent right away.
Then, the scent burrows down inside of me in a way that terrifies me.
It’s scary because I’ve never been affected like this before. It’s scary because—for the first time—I feel a sense of trepidation at the idea of killing the omega.
And usually… usually the kill is all I live for.
Dr. Acker always tells me I’m vicious. “My sweet little vicious boy, Knight,” she’ll say as she tries to pet me or whatever, but I never let her do that. She tries to put her hands on me and I get free. Sometimes I even fight her. I’ve hurt her before, trying to get her to stop touching me.
It’s not so much that I hate Dr. Acker as it is that I hate being touched.
Here, this place, whatever it is, it’s not exactly a good place, but they let me be vicious. They let me kill. So, I do whatever they want, even if it’s uncomfortable. I don’t touch my own dick and I let Dr. Acker jerk me off whenever she decides I’m allowed to come. I let that happen, but I don’t fucking care about that.
I just care about blood.
And this scent…
What is this scent?
Arrow is going crazy, running back and forth in the room, scenting everything, trying to get free, and Striker is trying not to do that, but I can see that the scent affects him, too, that he’s fighting the urge not to be overtaken by it.
So, I do my best not to react. I stay in a corner, folding my arms over my chest and glare out at the room. I don’t want to go after this omega, actually.
Give me someone else to hunt, please.
Something about this… it’s not good.
Dr. Acker spends most of her time cooing to Arrow, asking him if he can track this omega and Arrow making barking noises like a fucking dog to indicate to her that he’s willing to do whatever she asks.
I won’t do the dog stuff, either. I’m not a fucking dog.
I could kill Dr. Acker.
I’ve thought about it.
I think it would be fantastic, actually. The only thing that would make me sad is that she’d be dead afterwards and I couldn’t do it again. In my fantasy, I could bring Dr. Acker back to life just to kill her again. I’d like to do her all kinds of ways. I’d like to strangle her. Stab her. Twist her neck. Slit her throat.
I’d definitely jerk off and come all over her corpse when I was done.
I haven’t killed her. Yet. That doesn’t mean I won’t. Just that it hasn’t seemed worth it yet. There’s a nonzero chance that after I kill her, I get executed, after all.
There might come a time when it would be worth it to kill her, when it becomes something worth dying for.
It just isn’t yet.
Anyway, Dr. Acker coos at Arrow and scratches him under the chin and strokes his belly and then she takes us back to our rooms, bringing the omega’s panties along with us, tucked into one of Arrow’s pockets.
We put on jackets and shoes and things, and she gives us backpacks with water and food in them. This is typical when we track omegas, but I know that whatever we have isn’t going to be enough.
We’re going to be gone a very long time.
She makes us put on the collars, which is how they track us when we leave the facility. They have to be unlocked with a special key.
While she’s working on locking mine up, I watch Striker, who runs his forefinger under his collar, making a face.
I’m pretty sure he’s thinking about how we can get that off. Shouldn’t be too hard. We just need something sharp enough to cut it, I think.
But that would mean we were running away.
And I’ve never wanted to do that.
Out there, it’s bad. It’s bad in here, too, but it’s worse out there. Everything’s confusing and loud and too fast. Everything is too hot or too cold.
And in here, they let me kill.
I have a memory, sort of, just a feeling, I guess, a deep-down assurance, that killing is not something you’re just allowed to do willy-nilly.
Not for the first time, I wish that the three of us could communicate.
I like Striker.
He smells safe. So does Arrow, of course, but Arrow smells like a brother while Striker smells like a leader, like someone I can trust to obey.
I wouldn’t obey anyone, really, not unless I was getting something out of it, but Striker… Striker smells right.
(I have a niggling suspicion I’d obey this omega, too, which is another reason I’m terrified of her. I don’t like to be controlled.)
But anyway, if I could communicate with him, I would tell him that I don’t want to leave, that we just have to kill this fucking omega, even if it does feel bad, even if she smells like… I don’t know… whatever it is she smells like.
Home, I guess.
Fuck.
I can’t communicate with Striker, though, so I simply shoulder my backpack and troop out behind the others toward one of the exits.
Dr. Acker tells us to go and find the omega and to end her. She says that this omega is extremely dangerous and frightening and that alphas like us are heroes, the only ones who can stop frightening and bad omegas like this.
That’s obviously something she’s just making up.
I don’t need that, but I think the other two might. It’s easier for them if they’re heroes, if they’re doing something good, I suppose. I know better. I know what I am.
I’m a monster.
Once we’re out of the facility, Arrow’s off like a light. He’s running, and I realize he knows where she is. He can do that, sometimes, just hone in on the omega’s location.
So, Striker follows him.
I follow Striker.
We go along the road, which I don’t like, because there are cars coming all the time. Neither of the others like the cars either. We all collectively wince every time one whizzes by.
We follow the road for a long time.
Eventually, it’s starting to get dark.
A big white van is coming down the road. It stops next to us, and we all cower from it.
But inside, it’s Dr. Acker. “Is she really this far?” she says, getting out of the van. “All right, well, we’ll take you right back here tomorrow, then, boys. But it’s late now. Let’s get you all back to your own beds.”
We go with Dr. Acker into the van. None of us like being inside it, especially while it’s moving. It seems strange and unnatural and odd.
We are taken back to our rooms, which are silent and sterile and mostly white.
I roll over onto my stomach and do something I’ve taught myself to do. It’s a kind of masturbation, but I do it without using my hands. I barely, just barely, move my hard cock against the sheets beneath me, imperceptible movement. Mostly, when I have the orgasm, it happens because of what I picture in my mind.
This time, I relive all the times we’ve killed omegas, the way their scents were threaded full of fear at the last moment, the way their skin gave way under my strong hands, the blood, the sweat, the terror.
I don’t get in trouble for this.
They think it’s a wet dream when they find my soiled sheets. They don’t punish us for nocturnal emissions, after all. We can’t help that.
I sleep better with empty balls, however.
calix
I DEBATE WHETHER or not I should move Lotus.
The problem is that I would need to do it.
My sister won’t be able to get her into a car or to cooperate. They told me that she almost threw herself into traffic already, so she’s confined to her bedroom. That can’t continue, of course. Everything’s fucking shit.
Anyway, my sister can’t get Lotus out of the house, but Lotus will do what I say because we’re scent-matched. And I could take off work and go to her, except…
I have nowhere else to take her, for one thing, and I can’t keep her at my own house. There’s no room. And also, I will, you know, rape her. It will be rape, because she’s incapable of consent. Of course, I’m sure she’ll like it. We’ll both fucking like it, but I’ll never forgive myself for having sex with a person who has brain damage.
I’m working on a place I can take her. It will mean I have to take three days off from work, however, to drive her all the way up there.
And the other problem is that I don’t have any sick days accrued.
Which isn’t a problem because it means I won’t get paid or whatever. Obviously, Lotus’s safety is more important than that. It’s because if I take a personal day without any warning, I’ll get fired.
These three days I have to take to move her? They are already on the schedule, approved, no big deal. If I just up and don’t come in to work, however?
I’d need a doctor’s note.
Part of me can’t even believe I’m debating this kind of thing. This is my omega .
But then, that’s part of the reason I left my pack and moved into the secular world, which is what we called it growing up. I didn’t want to bow down to an omega. I didn’t want to starve and suffer all for the sake of one spoiled man or woman who was only the head of the pack because of blood lines, not because she was actually good at being a ruler. I left to escape that sort of existence. And now, here I am, destroying myself and everything I’ve built out here for some woman who I don’t even know and who isn’t even all-there in the head?
Really?
Luckily, the hounds didn’t get far yesterday. Hopefully, they don’t get that far today either.
So, I don’t take off work today or anything. I do call my sister and I tell her that she should not prioritize this omega over herself and her girlfriend.
Maggie’s actually my half-sister. We have different dads. Our mother is an omega, but so far down the line of succession she will never be a Vasilissa. Maggie got out before I did. Betas always get out easy. It’s easier for them. No pesky instincts keeping them tied down, no ruts or heats that seem impossible to get through outside of the pack structure.
“Well,” says Maggie, “what do you want me to do, then? If they come to my door, just let them in?”
“Look, it’s miles from the facility, and they’re on foot,” I say. “So, hopefully, they never get there at all. But if they do, if you see them, open the door and let her go. She’ll probably go right to them.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re alphas, and they’re my scent match and her scent match—”
“Cal,” she interrupts, “I don’t even think scent matches are real.”
“Yeah, well, I was right there with you until it fucking happened,” I mutter. “What they say, about how when you scent it, you know? It’s true. It’s like how they tell women if they’re not sure if they had an orgasm, they didn’t, because if you have an orgasm, you know? It’s like that. You know . It’s a scent match. They’re real.”
Maggie is quiet on the other end, seemingly digesting this.
“I don’t think they’ll kill her,” I say. “Killing your scent match, it’d be… it’d… you’d probably die if you did that. It’d probably make some vessel burst in your brain and—”
“Cal,” she interrupts me again, “they’re trying to kill her?”
I sigh heavily.
“Like with guns or something?” she says.
“I think with their bare hands usually,” I say.
“You need to get here,” she says. “I know I said I would help you out, but—”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “After work. I’ll get her after work.” I don’t know what I’m going to do with her, but Maggie’s right. This isn’t fair of me to do to her and her girlfriend, to ask them to keep Lotus in their home. “I’m sorry I brought you into this. I should have known better.”
“You said she doesn’t understand us, but I think she does,” says Maggie.
“What?” I say. “No, that’s not right. They’re brain damaged, Maggie, whatever side effects they have from those drugs, they are—”
“She knows her name,” says Maggie. “She knows she’s Lotus. She even… I think she was trying to say it yesterday.”
Okay, that’s weird. What if it’s not the drugs there, what if it’s something else? What if it’s in the food they give them or those injections that suppress heats and ruts? What if that’s making them unable to think or talk?
On the other hand, I’m taking those suppressants myself. “Do you think I seem stupider than usual?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Taking her out of the facility at all, that was a stupid thing to do.”
“I just can’t believe it’s even happening!” Maggie is distraught.
Wait, what is she talking about? Are we even having the same conversation? “You think it’s happening?”
“What are you talking about?” she says.
“You think I’m getting stupider? Because, the thing is, I’m taking the same suppressants that the alphas and omegas are taking in the facility—”
“No, you’re the same amount of stupid as always, Cal.”
I huff.
“Oh, get over yourself,” she says. “You’re fine. I’m talking about the whole setup, everything in that awful place. I can’t believe any of it is happening. It’s horrible and disgusting and it has to be illegal. Where’s her family, Cal? Does anyone know what happened to her?”
Interesting point. She was a client who checked in there and then had adverse reactions. I assume they tell the families about that. But then, to treat them like lab rats, like they do? No family would agree to that. No family would put up with not being able to see their children or sisters or wives or mothers and none of the omegas ever have any visitors.
“They probably told her family she died, don’t you think?” says Maggie.
“Yeah, I’m thinking so,” I say quietly. “But… in some ways, maybe she did.”
“She’s fucking alive, Cal, and she’s your goddess-damned mate. So, you come here after work and get her.”
“I will,” I promise. “I will.”
But by the time I get there, she’s been taken away by the hounds.