Chapter Thirteen #2
She sits cross legged and puts the tray on the floor in front of her, studying it.
She forces herself to move, to pick up the food with her hands–there are no utensils here–and begin to feed herself.
She eats some of the eggs and the fruit cup and dumps the coffee in the toilet before refilling it with water from the sink a few times, gulping it down quickly.
After she finishes the food, she sits back down and stares at the door.
She pictures it opening in her mind, pictures Luke and Tenor and Julius standing there, arms open, ready to hold her and purr for her. To fill her with their cocks and their knots.
No, she can't think of that. She doesn't want the scent of her arousal to fill the air. There is no one here to stop them if someone decides they want to come to her cell and...
No, she can't think of that either. But a sudden terrifying thought occurs to her.
What if she has another heat spike? With the adrenaline running in her body, it's only a matter of time.
Or.... her heat. The real thing. She knows she's been on borrowed time, trying hard not to think about the inevitable.
What if she goes into full blown estrous in this cell?
She needs a distraction, anything. She's seen her mates working out in their cell and she tries to recreate their workouts. She shoves the tray into the corner, giving her room to work.
She can only do fourteen push ups until her arms collapse. She turns onto her back and starts doing crunches until her abs are shaking. On her feet then, she makes it to twenty-five squats until her legs feel like they're going to give out.
She lays onto her back, her breath heaving, and she stares up at the ceiling, her mind blank.
The walls are closing in.
She jumps back to her feet, forcing herself to walk again. Four paces across, turn, then four paces back. Four paces across, turn, then four paces back. Again and again and again.
There's a scream sitting in her throat, but she doesn't let it out.
Lunch arrives. She passes them her breakfast tray and then they hand the lunch tray to her.
It's some sort of meatloaf and a side of slimy powdered mashed potatoes.
She eats the potatoes and takes one bite of the meatloaf before spitting it out.
She drinks a few more cups of water and then puts the tray in the corner.
Fourteen push ups, twenty crunches, twenty-five squats. Then walking, four paces across, turn, four paces back.
When she lays down, she forces herself to do math equations in her head to keep her from thinking.
What is fifty-five divided by three?
Count backwards from one thousand by sevens.
What is twelve times thirty-six?
Fourteen push ups, twenty crunches, twenty-five squats. Then walking, four paces across, turn, four paces back.
Dinner is a dry hamburger patty, more margarine, and canned green beans. None of it is warm. She eats the beans and forces down a few cups of water.
She lays down in her bed and the scream climbs to the top of her throat. She has to swallow several times to keep it down. Or is that bile?
She takes a deep breath, and then she catches scent of Luke, his safe, earthy smell that makes her feel like she's being cradled by mother nature herself. She's sitting up so fast her head swims, whipping her head back and forth, searching the room for him.
It takes her a moment to realize that the scent is coming off her, from the spot where he had scent marked her earlier.
It feels like a warm blanket finally settles over her. She curls into a ball on the mattress in the far corner with her back against one of the walls and her legs pressed up against the other.
She takes in deep breaths, the scents filling her sensitive nose. The rubber of the mattress. The disinfectant that had been used on it. Sharp and acrid. And lightly beneath all of it, a whiff of Luke's warm alpha scent. Safety. Mate. Hers.
She reaches her hand in her pants, swiping between her legs. There's not much of them there. They are always so careful about wiping her down after, trying to remove all the evidence of their coupling so they don't set off a riot with the scent.
She brings her hand to her nose and takes a deep breath. There they are. Julius and Tenor and Luke, all woven together by her own scent. Ripe pomegranate seeds amidst a field of deadly lilies, soft wood surrounding them, with warm earth steadying them.
She dozes, one arm wrapped around her legs in as tight a ball as she can force her body into, the other folded beneath her nose. She wakes frequently, not knowing how much time has passed. She feels like she's in a fever dream, like time ceases to be real.
Was she awake again? Had she ever been asleep? Was it thirty minutes or eight hours?
She loses track of how many times she wakes, her body feeling restless and unsettled. But there is no nest here, and so there won't be any rest.
A hysterical giggle escapes her. No nest, no rest. That's funny. It rhymes. Nest rest nest rest nest rest. She repeats the words to herself until they no longer make sense.
Acid fills her stomach and her veins prickle uncomfortably beneath her skin.
Her neighbour screams throughout the night too, and that's the only thing that grounds her to reality.
◆◆◆
It feels like years before morning comes. By the time the meal tray slot opens again, she's gone numb.
"Chow time!"
She doesn't taste the food.
When they come to take her to the showers and give her a clean change of clothes, she finally screams.
She cannot lose the last pieces of her mates that she has, the scent that is still ever so faintly inside of her and on her jumpsuit.
She screams and fights, thrashing back and forth, kicking and clawing at the guards until they put her in something that looks like a straitjacket.
They throw her under a freezing cold spray of water, still in her clothes, and she screams like she's dying, her voice a broken wail.
Multiple guards crowd in the shower room to stare hungrily at her body. The one who picks her up from the floor gropes at her, but she doesn't feel it.
She's numb, whether it is because of the freezing cold of the water or because she's finally snapped, she doesn't know.
"Are you going to behave like a fucking animal or are you going to get changed nicely?"
She doesn't look at the guard's face who's spoken, her eyes hazy and unfocussed.
"I'll take that to mean you're going to behave, then."
He takes off the restraint and removes her jumpsuit.
There's leers and open ogling at her naked body, but she doesn't see it. She doesn't see anything.
She can feel her body shivering with cold, but she doesn't feel it.
She can sense the wrong scent of these alphas, but she can't smell it.
They're saying something about her, disgusting lewd things that would make her stomach drop if she understood it, but she can't hear it.
After a long while, the guard finally redresses her in a new jumpsuit that smells like harsh de-scenter. He hauls her back to her cell and leaves her there without a word, the door swinging loudly shut behind him.
Her skin feels itchy. No, her brain feels itchy. She scratches at her scalp beneath the cold wet hair that's lying limply against the collar of her new scentless jumpsuit.
She scratches until there's blood against her fingers, but the itch is still there, driving her insane.
She gets to her feet. Fourteen push ups, twenty crunches, twenty-five squats. Then walking, four paces across, turn, four paces back.
Her muscles are sore today, and she shakes throughout her whole workout, but forces herself to keep going. That's good. If she's tired maybe she will sleep. Maybe she will finally have a reprieve from this hellish place.
◆◆◆
Another day passes. She only knows the passing of time because of the regular meal trays delivered through that slot in the door. It feels like years. There's nothing to do, no distraction, no comfort.
Her mind begins playing tricks on her, dreaming or hallucinating, she's not sure which, but the cop is there, but this time there is no pen to stab him with to defend herself. She screams as he forces her down onto the hard ground.
Then the alphas from that first horrible day are there, surrounding her, pawing at her, her skin crawling, the stench of aggressive alpha desire coming off them like garbage juice dripping out of the bag. She leans over and retches on the floor, heaving up liquid acid.
She collapses back onto the thin bare mattress, all her limbs trembling. A desperate, terrified sob rips from her throat before the nightmare begins again.
There's a guard at her door, unlocking it and swinging it open. She screams, scrambling to her feet and pressing herself into the corner. When he approaches her, she fights with everything she has, kicking and punching, her fingernails clawing at him.
"For fuck's sake! Will you stop? I'm taking you to go see your lawyer."
She stills at that. Is that true? How could that be true? She doesn't have a lawyer. He could be lying, she thinks, but her mind can't keep track of all these thoughts, each one slipping away from her fingers like it's been dipped in oil.
"W-where is he?"
He scowls. "He? I don't know who you're talking about. Your lawyer is female. Give me your wrists."
He puts those heavy shackles on her wrists and ankles again, and she's too shocked to resist.
Her journey back to the normal part of the prison is different than last time. There's only this one guard, and he doesn't seem to care enough to shove her around.
He leads her to a room close to the entrance of the prison where she had originally come through that first day.
This hallway is quieter and cleaner than the rest of the place, and the door he leads her through has a larger window in it with a table and chairs in the centre that have been bolted to the floor.
There is a woman sitting at the table, a beautiful statuesque alpha female wearing a pristine pale blue linen pantsuit.