Alphas of Pandora, page 26
Aura gripped the edges of the blanket and pulled it around her still naked body, glaring at him. “I hope you burn in hell.”
“If there is a hell, then we are all living in it, both wicked and righteous alike.” His piercing gaze took her in, lingering on the places where the thin blanket gaped to reveal tantalizing bits of flesh. “You’ll have ample reason to hate me by the time I’m through with you, I hope you take comfort in the fact that any other woman in your position would be subjected to the same treatment. Nothing about this is personal.”
She felt a great number of things at the moment and comfort certainly wasn’t among them. “I’ll keep that in mind when Castor rips out your throat.”
Faseer had the nerve to laugh. “How precious. Do you really still believe that he can save you? If he cared at all, then it would not have been I who recovered you from the pawing hands of those neanderthals. You should be on your knees and kissing my feet.”
Her first thought was that if her mouth got anywhere near him, it would be to bite off a sensitive part of his anatomy. “He’ll come for me and then you’ll be sorry.”
“I’m taking you to Vigil, dearest. Far beyond the reach of your child King.” He sidled closer, studying her form as if he couldn’t wait to pick her apart and weigh the pieces. “If Castor places even a foot on our land without permission, it will be an act of war. He wouldn’t risk that for you, if he even figures out that we have you in the first place.”
She couldn’t listen to anymore of it without wanting to vomit. “You disgust me.”
“A pity that isn’t enough to stop me.” He closed the small distance separating them and gripped the blanket hard enough to whip it away from her body. “Every part of this lovely form will be poked and prodded until you beg for the relief of death.”
Her hand lifted to cover herself, but he batted them away with ease. When she tried to fight him off, he gripped her arms hard enough to bruise and wrenched them behind her back. “Get off me.”
“You have no idea what awaits,” he murmured against the bend of neck, fetid breath hot against her skin. “And when the worst of it comes, I want you to remember this disrespect as you beg me to aid you. Because I will.”
He took her mouth in a biting kiss even as she tried and failed to evade him. His free hand slipped lower down her body to graze her bare cunt. Her hips lurched to avoid his touch, but he held her firmly with the other hand. With his mouth still forced against hers hard enough that his teeth dug into the skin, Faseer let out a low growl. But the sound was a pathetic thing and nothing like a true Alpha could produce. Despite the searching fingers playing at her folds, she remained drier than a desert.
As if she would ever respond to him, Alpha or not.
“Not for you,” she growled, gaze full of seething hatred. “Never for you.”
His smile was pure malice. “We shall see.”
Blinding white light consumed her vision as she lay strapped to the medical gurney, arms bound to her sides with her legs elevated in a pair of stirrups.
Shame coursed through her at how easy it had been for them to subdue her. Aura had kicked and fought as men dragged her from the skycar and into the makeshift medical facility, but it had made little difference. She liked to imagine that she had at least left a few bruises in her wake before being tied down.
And Faseer had watched it all with a smile on his face.
Pain spiked through her body as she shifted her limbs, the hands that dragged her in here had not been kind. And they had not even been trying to hurt her. Fear mounted as a vision swam through her head of what they planned to do with her.
For now, they had left her alone to stew in her juices, likely as a psychological technique to keep her disoriented. What little of Vigil she had seen seemed identical to the landscape of Pandora, although they had landed in an area that appeared sparsely populated.
Faseer had his goons hesitate before dragging her to the doors of the derelict building that looked as if it had been abandoned for years. She took in the desolate and barren landscape stretching into the horizon as despair washed over her while the skycar lifted away.
He wanted her to know that even if she attempted an escape, there was nowhere to run.
Part of her hoped they would drug her and allow the sweet escape of oblivion, but she wasn’t that lucky. Instead, the cold grip of reality made it seem as if the walls were closing in on her.
Squinting against the light, her gaze scanned the room. One of the men who dragged her inside had haphazardly tossed a sheet over her after she was tied down. It did little to make her feel better, but it was a barrier against the chill in the room. Dingy walls that needed fresh paint were a mismatch with the sharp chemical smell of bleach, as if the room had been recently sterilized. A barred window high above her head was so small that it couldn’t possibly be an avenue for escape, even if she had not been strapped to the table.
When her gaze fell to the metal tray next to her full of various implements meant for slicing through flesh, a keening sound escaped her lips.
The double doors opened. A man wearing a lab coat and a serious expression strode into the room with Faseer trailing behind him.
“I am Dr. Thaser,” the man announced, as if they were meeting socially. “We’ve been waiting to have you here for quite some time. I’m so looking forward to working with you.”
She glared up at him as the man came to stand over her, thinking that was a pleasant way of describing of a kidnapping. “Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing.”
Faseer shifted closer and his hand slid over the exposed skin of her bare thigh. He laughed when she tried to twitch away and the shackle on her ankle arrested the movement. “You should show some respect, girl. This is the man responsible for your evolution. He is the one who developed the treatment that allowed your latent dynamic to express itself and made you a true Omega.”
Aura realized then that she stared up into the cold eyes of the man who had engineered her destruction. This doctor was to blame for everything that had occurred since she was taken from the station. With a low growl, she fought the bindings at her wrists while both of them looked down at her in amusement.
“I told you she was feisty,” Faseer commented as he leaned against the wall in front of her. He stared down at the valley between her spread legs that was still covered by the sheet. “You should have a grand time bringing her to heel.”
“A cure for any ailment can be found with rigorous application of the scientific method.” Dr. Thaser reached for a pair of gloves and snapped them on with the ease of long practice. “Behavior is simply a consequence of biology and that is something we have the ability to control.”
Aura glared at them both, anger momentarily overwhelming her fear. “If you touch me, Castor will kill you.”
Dr. Thaser appeared unconcerned. “Your King would have to know where to find us to be a threat and I assure you that this facility is both remote and well-secured. You are one of the few Omegas that survived both inoculation on the space station and the journey here to the surface. I would be remiss if I did not take great pains with your safety now.”
“What of everyone else on the station?” Aura asked, thinking of the family she had left behind. As much as she detested this man, if he had answers to her questions then she would ask them. “Where are they?”
“The station was derelict. It had to be destroyed to avoid the risk of a systems failure that might bring it crashing down to the planet.” The response seemed almost absentminded as Dr. Thaser picked up a nearby vial and began filling syringes with the cloudy substance inside. “All those who survived were brought to Vigil, most to become laborers in the fields.”
It did not surprise her that Vigil was the sort of place that maintained the institution of slavery. Individual rights seemed to matter little to them. “You people disgust me.”
A small smile briefly touched his lips as Dr. Thaser set down the vial. He removed a handheld tablet from his pocket and swiped across the screen with one finger. “I’m sure we must seem quite strange to you, particularly given how long your people spent floating in the darkness of space. Your civilization, if you could even call it that, was bound for inevitable destruction given the sickness and food shortages on that station. I’m sure you’ll find in time that what we have done, and will do, is ultimately for your own good.”
Aura turned away because she couldn’t stand the sight of him. She realized that was a mistake as her gaze landed on Faseer’s and the evil smile on his face sent a chill up her spine.
“What are you going—”
Without warning or preparation, the doctor pushed his gloved hand between her thighs and shoved two fingers deep inside of her. Dry as a desert, there was nothing to ease his passage and Aura could not bite back a moan of pain as her sensitive walls were abraded. Faseer watched with a cruel light in his eyes.
“Stop it,” Aura cried, ineffectually shifting her hips away as the doctor only pushed harder.
Dr. Thaser thrust in and out of her in a controlled fashion, watching the painful spasms cross her face. Without tearing his gaze away, he spoke to Faseer. “As you can see, manual stimulation remains painful, and the Omega does not prepare her body for penetration as she should. Even with the addition of a mating call, it is unlikely that slick will be forthcoming.”
He let out a low growl that was deep enough to reverberate through her bones. But it was only noise and her body did not respond to him, Alpha or not. Her cunt continued to quiver in painful reaction at the onslaught, but there was not even a hint of pleasure, not even the unwanted kind that Castor had drawn from her body despite her protests.
The thumb that shifted to flick over her clit might as well have been strumming at the thick skin of her knee for all the reaction it elicited. Her flesh crawled with disgust and the intense desire to have that horrible touch off her.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” she screeched, wishing her own hands were free so she could claw the odious man’s eyes out.
Dr. Thaser removed his hand and turned to retrieve one of the syringes he had filled earlier. When he held it up so that it caught in the light, she could see that the contents were a dingy yellow in color with darker particles floating inside. “Do you know what this is?”
“Poison, I hope. One that kills quickly.”
The doctor gave a small sigh, as if he were disappointed in her. “Things will become easier once you’re able to become what you were meant to be. When you are happy and mated, all this unpleasantness will seem like a distant dream.”
“I have a mate,” she growled, acknowledging both out loud and to herself for the first time that it was true.
But the doctor simply shook his head, voice chiding. “That claiming mark on your body is a shackle that holds you back. But do not fret, we are here to see that you are made whole again.”
The shackles made it impossible to resist as he grabbed her arm and brought the syringe closer with the other hand.
“This will only sting a bit,” the doctor murmured as the sharp needle pierced her skin and he pushed the solution into her tense bicep.
The man was a liar. Excruciating pain started at the injection site and spread as the substance traveled through her bloodstream. Whatever poison the syringe contained burned like fire as it entered her flesh, making every muscle in her body ache.
“What the fuck is this?”
“Language,” Dr. Thaser admonished. “This is a much more concentrated version of the compound that was fed to you in your rations while on the station. The effects should be significantly more pronounced than they were before.”
Horror twisted her features as the painful burn changed to something altogether different. Prickles of alternating cold and heat started underneath her skin, rippling outward in a way that made her belly clench. Her nipples tightened, turning to hardened pebbles that were visible even from under the sheet. It felt as if she had suddenly fallen ill with a fever.
Her fingers clenched on the thin mattress as she tried and failed to focus her attention on anything aside from her body’s reaction. Even as disgust thinned her lips, a tingling sensation had already started between her legs. In another few minutes, she would beg these terrible men to fuck her.
This was a worse torture than the simple violation of her body, this violated her mind.
The doctor watched the change come over her with a clinical curiosity, as if he was making observations to catalogue later. For a moment, he studied the shifting emotions that crossed her face and a satisfied smile teased at his lips. His gaze rose to Faseer as he spoke. “Now watch closely.”
And then his still gloved hand was back to toying between her legs, tracing the outer lips of her opening with his fingers before penetrating her. Aura keened, a sound that would have shamed her if she’d been enough in her right mind to hear it. Her hips lifted off the gurney of their own accord to increase the depth of his thrusts.
The straps on her ankles kept her legs spread wide open for him as the doctor used his other hand to rub the clit that had become saturated with her juices. A pool of slick gathered on the bare mattress underneath her, the sweet smell of it rising to taint the air.
But even as her body responded, her mind screamed for escape from the torment. The flow of slick moistened her channel and allowed his fingers to ease in and out of her without resistance, but her mind rebelled. She wanted to crawl inside of herself and disappear as the pleasure warred with revulsion. Her jerking movements were enough to dislodge the sheet draped over her which then slid to the floor, leaving her completely exposed.
Dr. Thaser spoke to Faseer over her writhing form, his mild tone in sharp contrast to the hands that worked her body into a frenzy even as she begged him to stop. “As you can see, the compound is incredibly effective at stimulating a response. I’ll give her an inducer to force a heat cycle and then we will be ready to proceed.”
Faseer bent low to whisper in her ear, as the doctor continued to stimulate her. “Let me tell you what we have planned for you, pretty. That mark you bear is an annoyance, but not an insurmountable one. The good doctor has theorized that if you’re stuffed with enough hormones while being mounted by as many Alphas as we can find, it will break the bond with your mate. I’m very much looking forward to testing his hypothesis.”
The unwanted orgasm tore from her body hard enough that stars danced across her vision. But the peak preceded an inevitable fall as she crashed back into herself on a wave of shame and terror.
Unable to cover herself or even close her legs so her dripping cunt was no longer on full display, all Aura could do was let angry tears fall down her cheeks. She proceeded to tell both men in explicit detail what she hoped became of them. Most of her screeching threats were incoherent, but it was obvious they involved sensitive parts of the male anatomy being ripped apart.
Faseer stroked sweaty strands of hair from her cheek, following the movements of her head as she tried to whip away. “I hope you’ll remember these insults when you’re in the midst of your heat and begging to be mounted. Perhaps, I’ll have them delay for a bit while you suffer. Unrelieved estrous can become unbearable without the aid of an Alpha, particularly an induced one.”
Despite her rage and fear, it became difficult not to fade in and out of awareness. Aura was barely aware of Dr. Thaser picking up a second syringe and injecting her with its contents, likely the chemical meant to induce her heat cycle. It was difficult for her to remember the details of what had transpired between her and Castor while she had endured that first heat, but all that had made it bearable involved his touch. She recalled being cradled as if she were the most precious thing to ever exist in the universe and coaxed to accept her Alpha’s attentions in a way that brought pleasure instead of pain.
And now she would be torn apart by strangers.
Dr. Thaser gathered up his supplies. “It will take a few hours for the inducer to take effect which gives us some time to prepare.”
Faseer stroked Aura’s lower lip, pulling it away quickly with a laugh when she tried to bite him. “I am alight with anticipation.”
She had never felt more powerless in her life, stripped naked and strapped to a gurney in a decrepit building. But worse than that was the recognition that no matter what horror they subjected her to, in the midst of a heat, her twisted biology would compel her to beg for more.
And she had no one to blame for this but herself. She had run from Castor with no understanding of what waited for her outside the gilded walls of the cage he’d kept her in. But that cage didn’t only serve as confinement, it also kept the rest of this terrible world at bay.
She prayed that whatever chemical cocktail they forced on her would be enough to end her completely because death would be preferable to whatever they had planned. Already the rage of fever burned, bringing beads of sweat to her brow. Perhaps it would surge high enough to burn away her consciousness, leaving just an empty shell to be brutally fucked into the ground.
And if wishes came true, Aura would likely never have been born in the first place.
They’d left her staring up at the ceiling. A painful prickling bloomed behind her eyes at the strain of staring into too bright light. But it wasn’t enough to distract her from the deep ache starting in her belly that would grow until every muscle in her body was painfully tight.
Aura closed her eyes and pictured her mate, his face swimming behind her eyes as if she could summon him from the ether. She held no illusions of rescue, but she wanted his visage to be the last thing on her mind before they turned her into a dark and twisted thing with no desires of its own.
Exhaustion washed over her like a crashing wave and she welcomed the temporary peace of oblivion. The only place she could ever hope to see her mate again would be in her dreams. Because when she woke, the true nightmare would begin.
