6. Harsh Reality
Chapter six
Harsh Reality
T he only bed that was unmade had to be mine. There was a stack of things on it, including sheets, a thin, scratchy blanket, and two changes of clothes, as well as a basic white nightgown. A toothbrush and toothpaste sat on top of a brown towel and washcloth, along with a small bar of scent-blocking soap. A sheet of paper with my schedule and a list of rules lay on the bed.
I walked around the room and realized that no one in here had anything but what I'd been given. Each woman hung her spare change of clothes on the end of the bed and the remaining things were folded and set on the tiny ledge that each bed had at the head.
After making my bed and arranging everything the way everyone else had, I sat crosslegged and read through the rules. They were strict. No outside food or contact. Lights out at 9 pm. No talking back to the teachers or staff. The list went on. The other side showed that I would be in class from 8 am until 3 pm, with a break for lunch at 12:30. There was a mandatory yoga and stretching class in the afternoon before dinner, then quiet time after that.
A bell rang somewhere and I wondered if I was supposed to go to the cafeteria, wherever that was.
Leaving the room, I peered over the railing and saw hundreds of omegas filing silently through the courtyard. They were going through a double door that I assumed was the cafeteria, since food smells wafted up to me. It was too intimidating to join them, though, so I went back to my bed and waited.
I was falling asleep from boredom when omegas started to come in through the door. They were silent as they went to their beds and sat down, all of them looking tired and drawn. The woman in the bunk below me looked up at me with hollow eyes and nodded a greeting before sitting on her bed, too.
No one said anything and I was starting to feel like I was in some kind of thriller movie. Shifting on the bed, I heard it squeak and finally the others looked over, noticing me for the first time.
"New girl," one of them said. "What's your name?"
"Melody."
She stood up, her simple uniform looking amazing on her, even if it was black and shapeless. "I'm Jen, your bunkie is Ruby." She went around, introducing everyone, and then sat back down. "Did you just get in?"
"I was in the dorm for a night," I told her.
"The first week is the hardest," Jen said. "Just keep your head down, don't talk unless you have to, and you'll make it through."
"It's that bad?"
"Worse," she said.
Some of the women were reading books, others just sat there staring into space. It was unnerving and I was glad when the bell for yoga rang.
"Put on your uniform. They'll burn your stuff," Jen told me.
I quickly changed into my uniform and ran after her on bare feet. "We don't get shoes?"
"Nowhere to go," she whispered and put a finger to her lips.
We all filed out of the room and down the stairs, joined by streams of women on each floor. At the ground level, we entered a room across from the cafeteria. It was a gym, but instead of hardwood floors, the floor was made of rubber. Everyone settled into place, roughly arms-length from each other and a screen lit up at the front of the room.
For the next hour, we followed the onscreen instructions to bend and twist, and stretch our bodies. Beta instructors walked through the group, watching for anyone who didn't keep up.
The woman beside me was out of shape and sank to the floor when we were doing squats. Immediately, a beta man was there, tapping her with a thin stick. There was a zapping noise and she jerked and squeaked.
They were tasing us if we couldn't keep up with the instructions. I redoubled my efforts, not caring that sweat poured down my body as I focused on getting the moves right. Around the room, I heard the zap several more times. Most of the women managed not to cry out, but a few screeched from the sudden pain. Fortunately, I made it through the class without being tased.
We returned to our rooms for another hour before marching back down to eat. We each received some sort of protein shake and a salad with grilled chicken that looked like it had been left out too long. The meat was chewy and the lettuce wilted. There was no dressing to spice it up with either, but I choked it down when I saw the betas prowling with their electric wands.
Then it was back to our room to grab towels and soap, along with the nightgown. I stuck close to Jen as she led me to the communal bathroom on our side of the rectangle. There were dozens of showerheads, but there were even more people to use them. I stood in the line and waited as everyone washed quickly and quietly, dried off, got dressed, and hurried back to their rooms.
Finally, it was my turn and I stripped down, dropping my uniform into the bin like everyone else before standing under the lukewarm water and scrubbing myself as quickly as possible. There was no shampoo or conditioner, just the bar of soap, so I used it to wash my hair as fast as possible before getting out and drying myself. I pulled the nightgown over my head and followed Jen back to our room.
It was inspection next and we all stood by our beds while the beta inspector walked through our room, checking that beds were made and our things were put away. I was insanely glad I'd copied everyone else earlier in the day.
When the beta left, the door was closed and everyone seemed to relax a little. I climbed onto my bed and finger-combed my hair before braiding it and tying it with the hair tie I'd brought with me. Everyone else had their hair loose, so I assumed once the elastic was gone, I'd be stuck with loose hair, too.
"How long have you all been here?" I asked quietly.
The women answered me, their voices soft. "Five months." "A year." "Six months." None of them had been here less than five months. I wondered if I'd be the same as them after a few months. Dead-eyed and silent.
I didn't have to wait long to find out.
Morning came fast and with it, a ringing bell that gave me an instant headache. I hurried to make my bed and get dressed. We filed downstairs for a disgusting protein shake and a small bowl of oatmeal with no sugar or milk, then back up the stairs to brush our teeth and get ready for classes.
After the yoga class from the previous afternoon, I wasn't sure what to expect from the classes we were required to attend. My first class was Cleanliness and Hygiene, where we learned the best ways to remove hair from our bodies, even though omegas tended to have minimal body hair anyway.
Next was Pleasing Your Alpha 101, then Housekeeping for Omegas, a cooking class, and another class on Omega Etiquette. Each one was worse than the last.
As I sat at my desk in Pleasing Your Alpha, the teacher stalked back and forth in front of his desk. "You're all here because you failed to please your alphas," he spat out. "I expect complete obedience during this class. You will not speak out of turn." He was looking at me as he talked since everyone else had been in the class for a while.
Each teacher reinforced the same thing. We'd failed as omegas. We weren't up to standard and we were here to be punished and re-educated. Over and over, they told us the same thing and pushed us to behave better, act better, and look better.
Over the next week, I learned to keep my head down and jump to do whatever any of the staff told me to. It only took one zap from their electric wands to make sure I did exactly what they wanted.
None of the classes were fun, not even the cooking ones. I'd always thought I was a good cook, but now everything I did was ridiculed and criticized. I fought back tears as my steak yet again failed to pass the exacting standards of my teacher, who threw the plate in my face.
"Do better or you'll be spending your life on your back in the heat dens!" she screamed.
Shaking, I gathered the broken pieces of the plate and dumped them in the trash, wishing I could follow them.
The worst classes were sex education. Every omega in the room had had sex, but now we were learning the "right" way to do it. We were forced to kneel on frozen peas for hours at a time to build our stamina and made to fellate dildos that were larger than any alpha knot I'd seen, while instructors berated us for not moving properly.
We learned to purr and how to move more sensually, and how to take pain in case our new pack was into that. The betas seemed to delight in tightening nipple clamps on us and whipping us with an assortment of whips and floggers. They weren't allowed to mark us permanently, but there was a lot of pain to be inflicted without leaving scars.
The endless days bled into sleepless nights. The awful food and constant running up and down stairs soon had my uniform hanging off my frame. I'd been malnourished when I'd arrived, but now I was just lean and a little bony. It made staying in certain positions more difficult, but in the end, it didn't matter. The zapping wands were always just a slight shift in weight away.
I was exhausted and falling deeper into depression every day. Within the month, I'd stopped talking to the other women in my room. We all just went through the motions mindlessly.
The worst part was that there was no silver lining. No happy ending. I wasn't going to find Prince Charming and his pack after all the training. I was going to the heat dens where I would spend my life pleasing the alphas who came in. There was no hope to carry me through and I felt myself sink further and further into my mind.
Rarely, I thought about the pack that had left me here. Sometimes, I was just too tired to keep the bond closed off and faint feelings would seep through. They were happy without me. Those trickled-down feelings of joy that Jack, Callum, Lee, and Dan were feeling were the only things I felt now, apart from pain.