Prologue #3
"Why?" he asks. The question is more of a rhetorical one than something he expects an answer to, a man beseeching the heavens. "We're not in control right now, Eden. We could hurt you. Why would you offer me this right fucking now?"
She just hums lightly, a small smile playing on her lips. Because I'm yours, alpha, she thinks, or maybe she says it. She doesn't know. She melts into his touch as complete trust for him fills her, making her feel so light she might float away.
His fingers are gone, and then he is replacing it with the impossibly broad head of his cock, his breathing rough as if struggling to maintain control.
Despite them having toyed at her hole with their fingers for what felt like days now, his entrance is not an easy one, especially not with Tenor's knot narrowing the passage.
But when he enters her, it is with surprising tenderness.
It is the gentlest any of them have been able to be with her for days.
She is grateful they waited until now to take her like this, certain they may have done her permanent bodily damage if they had tried to fuck her ass in the first frantic day of their rut when they had fully lost themselves to their fervour.
He thrusts shallowly, stretching her out slowly. The sensation of his cock elicits sucking gasps from her before she swears lightly at the intensity of it.
She hears a feral tone in Julius' voice as he leans over her back so his mouth is at her ear, his whole body pressed against hers, caging her in against Tenor's front.
"My cock inside her ass is making my sweet little mate say a bad word?
Well, forsooth, Eden. I guess we should have done this sooner. "
She cannot respond to him, no words can possibly escape her as his cock opens her up like a brand new flower in the light of a new day.
When he bottoms out and she feels his knot at her entrance, she releases a breath she hadn't known she was holding.
The feeling of being filled in such a complete way was entirely new to her and all encompassing.
She had thought she had experienced fullness with them before with their cocks and fingers, but she had no idea.
No idea what it meant to be full. She does not know where the pain ends and the pleasure begins, but it all combines together in a terrifying, stifling fog that settles over and through her.
Julius begins to thrust gently, clearly controlling himself despite his rough words, with one hand gripped tightly onto her hip while the other holds her at the nape of her neck, securing her in place so he can take what he wants.
The burning sensation of having his cock inside of her ass seems to ignite every inch of her body, every thrust lighting her up like a spark until she is on fire with need, totally consumed by a desire which she is not even sure is her own.
Then Luke's cock appears in front of her as he slides it into her mouth, and after that, all she knows, all she can feel, is her mates.
She did not know she could still orgasm after the countless ones she had already experienced in the past few days of their rut.
She can't even recall when the last one was.
The muscles in her pelvis feel likely to shred apart, but the last thing she knows before she blacks out is the overwhelming presence of her mates, in her, around her, through her.
She wakes abruptly, unsure how much time has passed.
All around her there are jarring noises that do not fit.
Something is not right. There is snarling, growling, the sound of chains clinking and fists against flesh, and then something harder against flesh.
She is empty, and open, bruised and ruined, and she has never felt so vulnerable in her life.
Luke is there crouching over her where she lays on the filthy floor, coated and crusted in god knows what substances.
The guards are there too, dressed in full SWAT gear with plastic shields, wielding batons and cattle prods.
She sees one jab a baton into Tenor's stomach and then stun him with a sickening zapping sound.
He doesn't drop to the floor until they stun him another time, another, then another.
He is an alpha still pulsing with rutting hormones defending his prone mate. None of them will go down easy.
It takes fourteen guards packed into that horrible room to subdue all three of her mates. Fourteen guards' scents tainting the air that had previously smelled like them, in a place that should have been only for them.
Eden shoves herself into the corner of the room, huddling into a crouch to protect herself, desperately trying to shield her nudity with the tattered remains of her dress that is somehow still hanging on her body.
Her arms wrap around her knees and she tucks her chin down, making herself as small as possible, watching the violence against her mates with tears flowing down her face.
She doesn't let herself take her eyes off them for a minute, even when one of the foul guards wrenches her up by an arm.
She doesn't let herself show any pain, even when she can hardly walk.
She doesn't want to give them the satisfaction.
She doesn't want to upset her mates further or spur them back into action in their rut-intensified need to defend and protect her.
It feels like there are shards of glass packed into every orifice she has, but she will not show weakness. Her face goes carefully blank. She should be laying in a nest safe with her mates to tend to her. But a place like this does not allow such comfort.
Until the moment she is shoved from that room, her eyes do not leave them, imprinting the sight of them into her memory.
The guards leer and grope and goad her as they escort her out the visitor's entrance until she is blinking in the harsh light of day. After days in that dark windowless room, it is blinding.
She has not been given a shower or a towel, no way to clean herself off or change. She is expected to get home as she is, crusted in semen, slick, blood, and grime from the floor of that room with tattered rags for a dress.
Her car key was checked in with her phone at the front desk of the visitor's lobby. The beta attendant pales and averts his eyes when he sees the state of her, quickly handing over her personal items without a word.
She stumbles into her car and finally allows herself to cry from the pain, overwhelmed with the desolation of being alone again.
She tries to shove a balled-up cardigan from the passenger seat beneath her in some makeshift semblance of a doughnut pillow, trying to keep the pressure off her sore and bruised centre.
Her knees feel like they are going to crack open, like the skin might shred at the slightest movement.
It feels like they've been rubbed raw to the bone, the joints protesting every movement.
She tries to take a drink of stale water from the bottle she had left in her centre console, but it feels like swallowing knives.
She drives herself back to her apartment in a daze.
Nothing feels real. The colours are too bright, the shapes of the buildings and cars and road stretching and contorting so everything looks like she's viewing it in a funhouse mirror.
There is a strange shimmering on the edge of her vision, threatening to pull her into unconsciousness.
She thinks she may pass out from the pain or from her need for her mates or her exhaustion and dehydration.
She's not sure which would win over, but she knows she's not going to be conscious for long. The only thing that keeps her upright is their scents that are embedded in her skin and in the fabric of her now ruined dress.
She doesn't know how she gets home safely. She parks her old beater of a car into a space in the tiny gravel pit they pass off as a parking lot in the rundown old building she used to call home, before she knew what a home was supposed to be.
She pulls herself up the stairs to her unit in a daze, her footsteps echoing in the stairway strangely loudly.
The staccato sound is painful to her ears.
She reaches her unit after what feels like an impossible feat, her pain having gone strangely numb, her limbs beginning to feel like they're weighed down by cinderblocks.
She closes and locks the door behind her, sliding the deadbolt into place and wedging a chair beneath the door handle in case anyone tries to break in. She's boarded up her windows as much as she can so it's as safe as she can make it. But nothing will ever truly feel safe again without them.
She collapses into her nest in an exhausted heap and falls asleep crying, alone, used.
She calls in sick to work for a week as the raw flesh between her legs slowly heals.
The first time she touches herself cautiously in the bathroom while trying to clean herself, she nearly vomits at the feeling.
An image of tenderized organ meats flashes through her mind and she shudders.
Her vagina is still gaping open softly, and the rest of the flesh around her vulva and anus feels puffy and swollen beyond recognition.
She cannot swallow much more than honeyed tea for days. Mostly she just lays in her nest, needing their presence, but they are not there.
She's alone. All alone. The lead ball blooms in her stomach, growing until it feels as if it will strangle her heart.
She's alone, just like she's always been.