Chapter 3
Elm experienced the world in cloudy snippets.
He was on his back, staring up at a gray ceiling, a foreign yet familiar pressure between his legs.
Then it was like he blinked and suddenly everything changed. He was on his stomach, on his knees and his forearms. His forehead was pressed to warm metal, and he had a direct view between his thighs. There was something down there, something that whirred and buzzed and thumped.
Something was caught in his ass, and he shook his hips, trying to dislodge it, but couldn’t.
“Initiating round eight,” a cool, pointed tone said somewhere to his left, but before Elm could try to turn toward it, the thing in his ass deflated and started thrusting.
The third time he became aware of his surroundings, he’d already forgotten all about the thing violently fucking him.
But not for long.
He was bent over the end of a table, wrists locked together on either side. His fingers were already gripping the edge of metal, noises spilling past his lips, strange and as if coming from someone else.
His legs shook, muscles aching, chest heaving, and his dick hung heavy and felt raw and yet needy all at once.
The machine he caught a glimpse of was still working him open, pumping in and out of his body with quick, deep motions that had his hips banging against the table bruisingly.
He might have screamed the word help, or stop. Maybe both.
Maybe neither.
He blacked out again before he could be sure.
Elm was on his stomach again the next time. Lying flat, but still with that torture device going at his rear end.
“Round thirteen raised his temperature,” that voice from before said somewhere far away sounding. “He went feral for about a half hour or so. Seems to be stabilizing with the fifteenth knot.”
“Fifteen?” a new voice caused Elm to startle, a part of his psyche feeling some type of way about knowing there was more than one person there, witnessing this. “Are you trying to kill him?”
“Omegas typically go an average of three days during their first heat,” the first voice explained calmly. “The machine is set on a timer. It knots every thirty minutes—”
“I’m sorry,” the second voice, female, asked incredulously. “What?”
“Every half hour—”
“Alphas don’t last that long.”
There was a brief pause and then, “I do.”
“The average male alpha can go fifteen minutes during penetration before coming, Levi. You’ve completely wrecked the data.”
“Should I start again?”
“Are you serious?”
“I don’t appreciate your tone, Butcher.”
“I don’t appreciate you messing up such an important experiment.”
“Get out.”
Elm was glad to slip into oblivion that time.
“Stop wailing, you’re giving me a migraine,” the voice dragged Elm from the darkness.
He blinked, finding himself on his back, with his legs lifted high in the air. His ankles had cuffs on them which were attached to chains dangling from the ceiling. The position kept him spread wide and resting with most of his weight on his shoulders and upper back.
The machine pummeling his insides altered course, skating across that bundle of nerves which was so over stimulated by this point, the result was a shocking wave of electricity that had him screaming hoarsely.
“Seriously?” the voice growled, and a second later a man was standing at Elm’s side, face hovering over his.
No, not a man.
An angel.
An—
That probably wasn’t right either actually.
Did angels probe people with sex devices?
Doubtful.
The angelic not-angel tipped his head, the anger that’d been there draining away. “Did you just smile at me, omega?”
“Pretty.” It hurt to speak, and he instantly regretted it, but that didn’t change the fact that it was true.
The man had hair so blond it was practically white, and glacier gray eyes that seemed to track every tiny shift of Elm’s expression.
“It’s only been a day and a half,” the not-angel said. “Are you coming out of heat already, omega?”
Elm scrunched up his nose. “Who?”
“Ah. So you are.”
“I don’t—” his sentence ended on a strangled sound when the thing inside of him stopped and then a larger thing pressed its way inside.
“Knot number seventy-three. I believe this will be our last. Subject is showing signs of heat completion.” The not-angel stared at him a little longer then sighed. “Pity.”
Elm welcomed the darkness.
* * *
“What the hell did you do?!” Sadie screamed at Allen and shook him while Elm caved in on himself in the corner.
He’d woken up in this room with rotting walls and the smell of fish.
The needle already buried in his arm.
If only he’d shaken the sedative sooner…
He didn’t even know where the hell he was. The only reason he knew the two currently screaming at each other was because their names had slipped when they’d dragged him to their creepy serial killer van before the tranquilizer they’d given him fully kicked in.
That was not whatever had just been given to him now.
“What…” His tongue felt too thick in his mouth, his throat tightening.
His balls drew up and there was a weird pang in his chest, like someone was pressing a button that sent waves of heat throughout his body from the center outward.
He shook his head, which was a mistake because the room spun, and tried again. “What did you do?”
“Yeah, Allen!” Sadie shoved the older man hard. “Tell him! Tell him what you did!”
“I saved us, motherfucker!” Allen landed a punch across Sadie’s chin.
“Focus,” Elm hissed, and he wasn’t sure if he was talking to them or himself.
Either way. It didn’t seem like anyone was going to listen.
“Do you have any idea what you just did? He’s the Dominus’ brother! If Kian finds out—”
“We’re on Synastry,” Allen reminded. “It’s the Leviathan we should be worried about! What do you think he’ll do when he discovers we nabbed the wrong brother? Huh?”
Elm recognized those names.
The Leviathan was a scary criminal boss and Kian’s rival. And Synastry…The cramping in his lower body helped cut off the panic that started to form when he realized he was no longer on his home planet.
“A beta is useless,” Allen was still talking. “Think about it. Nothing is worth more than an omega. He’s also Kian’s brother. What makes the two of them any different?”
“Good fucking Light.” Sadie cursed several times, but then stopped pacing, seemingly coming around to the idea. “It’s done. There’s nothing we can do now anyway. Let’s just…”
“We stick to the plan,” Allen said. “Deliver Kian’s omega brother, like we were told.”
Omega?
Did they get Shiloh after all?
Did—
Oh.
Elm figured it out a second before his body shut down.
He really, really wished he hadn’t.
* * *
“Done crying, omega?” A calm, almost emotionless voice spoke from the dark, and Elm blinked. “Awake?”
He was no longer on the table, and there was no longer anything shoved up his ass.
That alone was enough for him to make a sound of relief, even as the aches in his muscles protested.
The mattress he was lying on was on the ground in the corner of a dark room, the only source of light coming from somewhere to his right.
It took all of the energy he could muster to turn his head, mind scrambling to sort through what he was seeing once he had.
There were bars…
The light was coming from the other side of them, from a single low hanging light orb that cast the only other occupant in the room in partial shadow.
The man lifted a lit cigarette to his lips and took a slow drag. He was sitting in a cushioned, high back chair that looked incredibly out of place for what was clearly a prison of sorts. He was dressed in black, but Elm couldn’t make out any details, and his eyes—
Memory flashed of those eyes staring down at him, there and gone.
Elm sucked in a sharp breath, and a second later, a flood of soothing alpha pheromones trickled from that side of the room, cascading over his sore muscles.
The man with the silver eyes took another drag and then blew out a coil of smoke. “Do you remember anything?”
“Stop.” He inhaled and tried to focus, giving up on sitting up or making any big moves of any kind within seconds. “What did you do to me?”
“It depends on how you look at it, I suppose.” Another pull from the cigarette. Another slow exhale. “You could say I either broke you or put you back together.”
“Let me guess, you’re going with the latter?”
“No.” He didn’t hesitate. “If it’s up to me, I would say it was the first.”
That…was off-putting.
It meant he didn’t care about getting on Elm’s good side.
He didn’t want to ask it, but…
“Omega?” He hated the way it sounded, a little bit like a plea, filled with obvious fear.
The man, the alpha, released more pheromones, and Elm clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Why are you resisting?” he sounded legitimately curious. “Soothing pheromones can help calm you.”
“I shouldn’t be able to sense any pheromones at all,” Elm whispered. Betas couldn’t. They were regular. Boring. Elm had never experienced anything like a heat or rut, hadn’t known what the feel or smell of pheromones were like.
This was all so overwhelming, it was tempting to start actually crying, but he somehow managed to hold himself together.
“Surely you learned what was happening when they—”
“I was unconscious,” he admitted. “I woke up with the needle in my skin and broke the guy’s nose for it.”
“But it was too late.”
“Yeah.”
The alpha put out his cigarette, then appeared to pop a piece of gum out of a small pack. “Accept the pheromones, omega. There’s no need to make this harder on yourself.”
“Rich, coming from the guy who I’m certain just—”
“I barely touched you.”
Elm turned his head again and glared, putting all the self-loathing and hatred he could muster in the look. “You used a machine on me like I’m some—”
“All right.” The alpha stood. “Don’t make it easier on yourself. No matter to me.”
“Wait,” Elm called him back when he turned and made to leave. “Wait…please.”