Breeders, page 3
But then, that’s what the heat did—it sent males into a frenzy and kept them so high on their girl they could get hard again and again, as much as she needed until her heat was through.
We didn’t do that here, of course. The baby’s father had to be anonymous. For the pack.
For the pack. The idea of maybe fathering children on a breeding female had never bothered me before, but then, there’d never been a girl in my life like Cassie. If only I’d looked at the file hung outside her door. Could I have known who was inside and avoided all of this?
But would I really have walked away if I’d read her name? Even I didn’t know the answer. I liked to think I would have, that I would have known it would mean something to me to have her and put the pack first by walking away. With a sigh, I braced the back of my head with twined fingers and leaned back into it.
The pack’s laws around mates had never bothered me before. It made sense after the pack wars pitted pack-loyalty against family-loyalty and chaos ensued. The twelve main packs had agreed to remove families from the equation. We were all brothers and sisters, aunties, and uncles, a unified pack. No family above Pack Family.
It just worked, but now? The thought of someone else walking in there and taking Cassie, satisfying her, and maybe even fathering pups by her made my blood boil. The very thing the alpha and our council of elders had wanted to squash by outlawing romantic entanglements and requiring children to be fathered anonymously.
The rage pumping through my veins was physically painful, filling me with tension until I didn’t know what to do with myself. I let loose a feral scream and stood, slamming my fists into the wall hard enough to crack into the drywall. Fuck, we’d have to get someone in here to fix that, but in an environment where alcohol use was encouraged and wild parties were the norm, at least no one would ask what had happened.
I flooded my system with heaving breaths to calm myself, but I could already feel the need to change, making my skin feel too tight and itchy. Like it wasn’t even mine, and I needed to rip it off and embrace my real skin. Find a way to run off all this anger and arousal. Not wanting any of my roommates to see me, I unlocked the bathroom door and slid out the bathroom window. It was plenty big enough to fit through and a short jump down to the ground. Nothing on our property was built higher—maybe because sometimes lycans really did need to get outside and breathe in the piney scent of the woods to calm down.
I let the peace of the woods and the distant birdsong soothe me. A calm change was a better change—a safer change—and one less likely to result in sprains or strains. It was a good thing I could get out to shift and run because at some point soon Cassie would be finished with her heat. Then she’d move into Pack Breeders 103C where her beautiful body would drive me mad with desire. Until her next cycle when I could once again don The Ram’s mask and fuck her to my heart’s content.
After a shower hot enough to melt my skin, and a quick change into the knit turtleneck and jeans, I felt more like myself, my long blonde hair tied up into my usual tight ponytail. I sat on the squashy chair, shaky, but working on processing everything that had just happened. Was that really me laying myself out on the bed, eagerly awaiting a slew of strangers to take me and fulfill the needs burning through my body?
Now I understood why anyone not assigned to be a breeder took drugs to suppress their heat. I couldn’t imagine being able to work or focus on anything but sex when I was in that state. The heat had been all-consuming, stealing my identity and dignity in one fell swoop, and leaving me a helpless, crying animal splayed out on a waterproof bed.
And I’d liked it—welcoming each new man with the same zeal as the last. Even now, with my hips bruised and aching and every muscle strained from clenching and squirming for what turned out to be eighteen hours, the thought of my heat coming on again was exhilarating. Never had I thought of experiencing such pleasure or hitting such highs, but when I thought of the night and the parade of men who had claimed my body as theirs, The Ram stood out. His hands on me had been the perfect combination of feral need and gentleness with a focus on my pleasure that had taken me to a height beyond anything I had imagined.
The others had come in and done their duty to the pack, of course, depositing their seed into my vessel of a body with eagerness, but lacking an interest in helping me find my pleasure.
The Ram had been different, and the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced it was true. It was him I was most looking forward to seeing at my next cycle, his hands on me, his grunts in my ear.
With a shudder, I blew out a breath, standing up and brushing some invisible dirt off my jeans. I’d really lost it. My role here was simple—achieve a pregnancy and bring pups into the pack with the right genetic combination determined by the record keepers. Sure, I could enjoy it, but fixating on one man was forbidden.
The freshen-up room was cozy with comfortable brown chairs, but this wasn’t a place where the coordinators wanted women to linger. A white plastic egg timer had been set after the coordinator had helped me to my room on wobbly legs. There were only a few freshen-up rooms, and while we were all expected to come out of our heats at different times, there was no telling when the next woman might need this space.
I made full use of the massive bathroom. I couldn’t make myself rush as I took soap from the dispenser on the wall and grabbed a fresh washcloth from a metal hanging rack. I was stalling, and I knew it, running out my timer until it was almost at zero.
I was to be housed with the men and women in the breeding program until my next heat took hold, and I simply didn’t know how to face all the men who had seen my face and would recognize me from my breeding party while I had no idea who had been behind the rubber masks they’d worn. It seemed a ridiculous arrangement, but the council and the alpha wanted us having as much sex as possible and housing us together encouraged fornication. Pregnancies happened outside of the heat even if they were less common, and the council was nothing if not efficient. The sooner I was pregnant, the sooner my pups would join the pack, and the breeding males could be cycled out and put back onto their posts.
Most of the males were members of the guard, having made the cut and been honed for service as fine physical specimens. The occasional worker was included, but it was less common. The record keepers favoured physical strength in the breeding program, and those selected as guards were the best of them.
All right, I couldn’t put it off any longer. I slowly opened the door and squinted into the bright hallway. I’d still been a bit out of it when Ms. Lab Coat had helped me to the freshen-up room, and I hadn’t realized how dim and soothing the lighting had been. My senses were still messed up from the heat, and the bright light from the hallway felt like it was burning straight through my skull. I shielded my eyes and shambled out, my gait off as I tried to walk through the lingering soreness in my hips.
Breeder housing was connected to this area, and I followed a few neon orange arrows directing me around the corner, past some more white doors, and to a plain-looking brown door at the end of the hallway. With a deep breath, I wiped sweaty palms on my jeans and swung the door open with a confidence I didn’t feel.
A familiar scent slammed into me, and I looked up to find the same kind of air fresheners from my breeding room secured to the ceiling in a grid around the room. I wrinkled my nose. I’d hoped it was just a breeding room thing, but apparently, they wanted to mask our scents here as well.
My eyes scanned the circular room and fell on a massive brown sectional dominating the space. The lush pleather looked ridiculously comfortable, and in front of it, a mounted large-screen TV was hooked up to at least three different gaming systems. My mouth dropped.
We had a few systems in 7C, but they were shared among at least fifty of us gamers, and it was always a struggle to get a turn. That, and there was always so much work to do in the family compound between tending the kids, cleaning, and preparing the meals—I almost never got a chance to game. Okay, maybe this wouldn’t be too bad. I’d just get lost in a game and try to forget all the amped-up men who wanted to get into my pants. Well, back into my pants. I shuddered at the familiarity so many of the men I was about to live with would have with my body.
But my heat felt less like a real event and more like a dream the longer I was away from the room with its low light, bed rails, and black straps. Now that the arousal had drained from my system, I barely recognized the wanton creature who had begged man after man for more, more, more. But I was her, and the memories—hazy though they might be—were pleasant. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling a sudden chill.
Where was everybody? I’d been told I would be housed with a few other breeding females and the same group of men who had been assigned to me with a few less desirable candidates assigned to the others. They considered it an acceptable risk to get pregnant from one of those not-genetically-incompatible, but not ideal.
This common room should be teeming with people, but it was empty. An expansive kitchen looked out onto the living room area, barstools neatly tucked under the counter, and I slowly made my way over to it, marvelling at the gorgeous drop lights illuminating an oversized white marble kitchen island. My fingertips grazed over the smooth counter, and I admired the swirling white marble. But my purpose here tainted my thinking, and I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d made it so big to allow the occupants to use their surroundings for more variety—vegetables and meat shoved aside in favour of the new angle a countertop height would provide.
Different types of alcohol lined one of the kitchen walls, and while I barely recognized the various shades of amber, I knew the wooden barrel with white tubing coming out of the top must be beer. We’d had one of those to celebrate the harvest last year. I opened the double fridge to find the whole side door filled with beers. All right, message received, we were supposed to drink and fuck during this rare time where men and women mingled freely, but that wasn’t me. Swallowing, I moved around the island to find a handwritten note in front of the coffeemaker. I frowned down at my name in the scrawling black ink.
Cassie,
Welcome to our little hideaway. We wanted to give you a chance to explore without everyone crowding you. Please do whatever it is you want to make this space feel more like home. We’ve got the absolute best video games, and the fridge is STOCKED, and I do mean stocked. Just let the staff know if there’s anything you’re craving, and they’ll get it for you. Your room has a marker with your name on it, so you’ll know where to go. We’re out for a group run and will be back after 5.
Welcome to the family!
–Pack Breeders 103C
Pack Breeders 103C? I guess that was us, or at least, the name I’d seen on the sign outside the front door. A small smile crept up my face as I stared down at the note. Maybe I’d been freaking out for nothing. After all, if they were kind enough to give me my space, they couldn’t be half bad. If I could pretend I’d never met them before—certainly never been fucked by any of them—and we could just hang out and eat delicious food while gaming. I just had to forget what his hands had felt like on my body, and maybe this could actually work.
Even the run wasn’t helping, and it was usually the only thing that could ease my tension. Or maybe it wasn’t the run, but the company. A bunch of frisky wolves out for a simulated game of cat and mouse in the woods that always ended in a hyped-up fuck.
But she was all I could think about. Cassie. Cassie coming into the apartment and checking it out, touching my things. Cassie, Cassie, Cassie.
Fuck. I stopped running, foregoing fur and fangs for skin and teeth as I leaned heavily against a tree trunk and took a few shuddering breaths to recover. My muscles twitched from the change as my spine fell into place.
Would Cassie like what she saw back at the apartment? Was she going through our things right now, running a delicate finger along the pleather couches? I wondered if she would check out any of the bedrooms. Hers was clearly marked with her name, but I’d purposefully left my door unlocked—an invitation she only needed to turn the knob to discover. The thought of her looking around my room made me rock hard.
A rustle in the bushes on the other side of the tree caught my attention, and I peered around curiously to see a large grey wolf playfully nipping at the heels of a light brown wolf as they raced through the bush. The brown wolf came up short in the small clearing beside where I hid and began circling behind the grey wolf.
Shit, she’d been caught. Well, not really, but she was admitting defeat, which meant—I swallowed back a groan when they shifted into their human forms. The scent of their arousal drifted over to me, gliding along my already frayed nerves and leaving me even harder.
The she-wolf—Rebecca—was gorgeous. Stunning really. She’d been with us for three heats and found she enjoyed sex—a lot. We were encouraged to sleep with one another, and I’d had Becca more than a few times myself. She was quite the exuberant partner, and my stiff cock twitched in reaction to her hardened nipples and smooth tanned flesh. She eyed Bentley like he was a plate of food, and she was starved.
Poor, sweet, shy Bentley. He’d found that he liked to fuck too, but he’d never gotten over his nerves with the girls. I wasn’t surprised when Becca was the one to close the distance between them and grasp his cock in her hand. Fuck, why was this such a good vantage point? Fucking torture.
I could join them. Step away from the tree and offer myself. I imagined Becca’s luscious lips curling up in delight when she saw me. Damn, those lips had always felt so good wrapped around my cock, but Cassie refused to leave my head. The image of her writhing in pleasure, her tight pussy clenching around my cock as the near constant orgasms of the heat took her, kept me rooted to the spot.
But I didn’t want Becca, damn it. Not even when Bentley finally gathered his courage and walked her over to a neighbouring pine, and she hiked her leg over his hip obligingly. He took her, hard, and without warning. Her gasp of surprise carried over to where I stood, still hiding like a coward behind the tree. Shit, no foreplay. Bentley really wasn’t great with the ladies, but Becca didn’t seem to mind. Her hands reached around to grasp his butt and massage the cheeks in encouragement.
He groaned, and I grasped my own painfully hard cock at the sight of him slamming into her. Fuck, I imagined it was Cassie and that it was me shoving her into the ground, spreading her hips wide, and pressing her into the dirt and twigs of the forest floor. Shit, that must’ve stung, but Becca was lost in the act, her heavy breasts bouncing in time to Bentley’s grunts and thrusts. Her throaty moans blended into one long note of pleasure.
With a roar, Bentley hoisted Becca up into his arms and lifted her up and down on his cock. Wow, okay, Bentley wasn’t so hopeless after all. Becca clung to his shoulders, her mouth open in an ‘o’ as he relentlessly impaled her on the full length of his cock. But it wasn’t Becca. In my mind, I was watching Cassie, and I grabbed my painfully hard cock and pulled on it, hard. Pumping it with a ferocity that matched the rutting couple I spied on. I tilted my head back against the rough bark and got lost in my memories of Cassie and me, how good she’d felt—how right—how perfect. The girl I’d always wanted, but had never spoken a word to, clenching around my cock like she’d been born to do it.
We all came together, and I could only hope my own involuntary grunt was lost in the sound of Becca’s dove-like cry and Bentley’s thunderous roar. I continued pumping as my cum trickled out, staining the surrounding patch of twigs and rocks. Becca and Bentley would only have to wander past this way to know they’d been watched, and that the watcher had enjoyed himself. Would they care? I’d been considering joining them not long ago, but the thought of them knowing I’d chosen to watch rather than participate made me balk, and I gently tugged some weeds loose and placed them over my spill to hide it from prying eyes.
Chapter 3
It had been so long since I’d had time for gaming, and I’d forgotten how fun it was. Of course, they would have first-person shooters and the bright red pop I loved to sip on while getting lost in a mission. This place was practically made for me.
Maybe that’s why, despite being exhausted and eager to explore the apartment to learn more about the people I would spend the next month with, I grabbed some cheese puffs, my precious drink, and planted myself on the smooth, supple pleather cushions.
By the time I checked the clock, it was already four. If I’d been back in the family compound, I’d be helping with food or starting to corral the cows in from the field. Instead, I found a fuzzy blanket hidden between two thick couch cushions and settled in.
I’d never been in a fight and certainly never seen a gun before. Ever since the fall of the human world and the rise of the lycans, they’d been outlawed. Not that they did much good against us anyway, but humans didn’t heal as quickly as we did. They’d damned near wiped each other out, scorching the land with their bombs and guns—an event we were hardy enough to survive, but they weren’t. They’d practically handed this world to us, and I took a moment to be thankful the only thing left of those days were video games. My character hunched down in camouflage clothes. Because that’s what humans did—I reminded myself—they couldn’t shift into a wolf and blend in seamlessly with the forest. They had to wear clothes that allowed them to hide. So weird to think about.
Lost in thought and the mechanics of the game, I drifted off, awaking to the game over screen flashing an angry red. It was dark. Shit, someone must’ve returned by now. Had they found me sleeping like Goldilocks on their couch? Ugh. Sighing, I rubbed at the pillow creases on my cheek from the ribbing on the armrest and stood up.
But the apartment was quiet. Even if they’d come in and gone to their rooms, I was sure their entrance would have woken me. What I’d done to deserve this much time to process things, I didn’t know, but I refused to waste it. With a squeal, I raced into the kitchen, grabbing some fried chicken from the back of the fridge and cramming it into a flower-rimmed bowl. I crammed the food into the microwave and hit start, dancing on my toes as I anxiously awaited the bing, letting me know it was done. I couldn’t wait to satisfy my rumbling stomach and retreat to the safety of my room. With any luck, I’d make it out of here before the others got back, figure out which room was mine, and hide out for the rest of the night. Just the night, I promised myself. In the morning, I’d be ready to face them. I had to be.
