“You are wrong,” the twin says. “But you’re just going to have to trust me on that.”
“Who are you?” Rae asks. “Tell me, or I will let my children murder me.”
Standing up, the twin tightens her chin. “I am Ruby, High Commander of the Republic’s army, the Kali. I’m the omega who will help rebuild this world.”
“If your war is over, then let me go,” Rae shrieks and starts forward, but Ruby takes hold of her arms.
Vash sighs, exhausted. He nudges his hand against his forehead and drops his eyes to the floor. “Go on. Tell her, already.”
Ruby swallows, nearly choking on her words. “She must know who I am. We were made from the same monster,” she says.
“Another clone,” Rae whispers.
“No,” Ruby says. “Your twin sister.”
Rae doesn’t have to let it sink in. She has faced so much that even the unbelievable feels authentic enough to accept.
As her eyes meet everyone in that room, she feels a sense of peace rise over her heavy shoulders. Vash. Killian. Lucas. Now, Ruby. They have all acted on her behalf.
If she is special, they are the ones to know it.
“Please. I don’t want to be abused anymore,” Rae sighs.
Ruby stops at the edge of the bed. “Just breathe. We have medicine here.”
Ruby spreads her legs and reaches for the equipment.
Rae gazes at them like a helpless, tormented rabbit. After a minute or so, the drugs sweep through her system.
Cradled in a warm blanket of pure acceptance, Rae gazes at the ceiling, directly into the bright lamps, watching as her vision gives way to the color of darkness.
She doesn’t feel even the catch of the knife as it brushes her open.
The next thing she hears is the sound of new life crying with beautiful sorrow, reaching out for the only one who can care for them.
Rae opens her eyes and nearly faints when she sees the three babes, covered in sinewy fluids and thin pieces of embryonic sack. They lie still, crying and coughing against the air, the sound of delicate fragility.
They are the most beautiful creatures Rae has ever seen.
Ruby carries the first two babies to her. They are two husky boys with chocolate hair, nearly identical to one another, except for a mole on the one’s neck. Then comes the next child, a sandy-haired brunette…
As if God was required to answer, Rae asks, “An omega?”
She gazes at the babe with wounded eyes. The boys are crying, but she is staring with silent curiosity. “Oh, child,” she whispers. “This world doesn’t deserve you.”
Ruby stitches Rae up and tosses her gloves into a waste bin. After washing her hands, Rae watches Ruby turn and peek a glance at the alphas. They are gathered around Rae in quiet awe.
They are a tribe, but Ruby is very much on the outside.
Clearing her throat, she steps closer to the door of the room. “I’ll give you time to decompress.”
“Ruby,” Rae says, voice cracking.
Ruby pauses with her hand around the doorknob. Noticing her hands twitching, Rae feels terrible for her.
Ruby lets them fall to her side. “Yes?”
“Thank you. For bringing us together. For making sure I was cared for. It’s the first time I’ve felt normal in a long time,” she says.
Ruby forces a thin smile. “Yes. Well, then.”
Vash starts after her, but Killian takes his arm. “Don’t,” he says.
Vash looks at his children and shakes. “I’ve got an awful feeling about being here,” he says. “What’s her deal?”
Killian doesn’t feel great about the situation either, but they have exhausted their energy levels. An alternative world is taking shape. Maybe they’ll be rewarded with a place in it.
“She’s a soldier,” Killian says.
“Soldier or not, she’s suspect,” Lucas says.
As the men sit and argue, Rae can’t stop staring at her children. The joy she feels is akin to being reborn. “We will follow her,” she says.
Vash kneels against her hospital bed. “Precious—”
Rae sits with a resolute look. “I don’t want to hear your protests. Not from any one of you. We have three children to think about, and this is what I need from you now,” she says.
Despite the possible danger, she is right. The alphas agree to her request.
Gathering around their kind, they observe and love in silence. After their tiresome journey sinks in, they each speak about what they went through.
Killian and Lucas relay what they saw in the city, and Rae confirms the power of the bombs. She remembers Cassian dragging her to his boat as bullets ricocheted over their shoulders.
She remembers Vash coming to her rescue.
Vash met his mother, a woman turned inside out from the wrongs of alphas. Each of them had mended a broken piece of themselves, finding more cracks in the system. The world’s power structures were finally shifting—a cause they predicted, but didn’t necessarily believe in.
They have put the carnage of the world on hold. For now, they have each other, and that matters more than anything else.
“We love you, omega. We will do anything you ask,” Vash says, bowing his head.
Killian and Lucas echo the sentiments by kissing the top of Rae’s feet. “Anything.”
Satisfied, Rae smiles, snuggling with her children. Years of suffering has led to her feeling whole.
As she closes her eyes, one thing comforts her the most. She will never wake up in a facility bed again, and she sure as hell won’t be controlled.
Epilogue
Ruby feels the weight of Rae’s eyes as she leaves the room. Walking through the hallway, she enters her office and sits.
“With the captive in possession, we can now fill the gap,” a voice behind her says. “She is the perfect queen, the most beautiful figurehead for a brand-new era of dominance. Do you not agree?”
Ruby turns her chair and watches as a guard shuts the door behind the beta male’s back. “Oh, it’s you, Severin,” she says. “Come to fill my heart with more despair?”
The man slithers close to the corner of her desk, fingers tracing the edge. The soldiers who serve under her command have lived well because of her, but she promised this man so much more. Now that they won the world, she isn’t sure how to approach things.
“Come now. Do I instill such darkness in you?” he asks.
Ruby gazes at the aging man, now in the later years of his ragged life. A relic from the old Republic, he and her priest were the ones who’d taught Ruby how to become a woman, and a leader.
Under strict observation from Cassian’s failing military, the fallen leaders took to hiding. Severin, however, bought, raised, and marry the girl. Together, they’d forged an army of their own.
He was, technically, still her husband.
It wasn’t his age that bothered her. It wasn’t his peculiarly small skull or cunning features either.
She knows the man too well. Knows his thirst for power. Knows how he turns when he feels helpless. She is the only one who can calm his nerves, but as she extends her knowledge and understanding, she wonders for how long they might last.
Seeing what her sister has with that wretched pack doesn’t make her feel any better. How they can give themselves over to love during a time of complete disaster and chaos makes her sick. But maybe it doesn’t matter what she wants anymore.
Ruby is destined for a life with no children of her own, and because Severin still owns her, he demands a suitable place for her twin and her twin’s mates.
None of it is fair in the eyes of Ruby, who would have rather kept them free and safe. “You stir my bowels more than you know,” she groans.
Severin shakes the desk with a quick flinch of nerves. “Need I remind you that you promised me a job as minister of propaganda?”
“Is that really the job title?” she scoffs. “Pathetic.”
Severin clenches his jaw. “Every empi
re needs a story. I can be the one to weave it for you.”
“And what’s in it for me?”
“Anything you want. Freedom. Time to pamper yourself,” he says.
She does not flinch.
“An acting job as prime minister,” he says.
That tickles her fancy. “Fine. You may have her when she has recovered,” she says. “For now, she will stay in strict observation.”
Severin loosens his shoulders and swivels off the table. Her offer isn’t good enough for him. He wants her now.
Standing tall and rigid, he towers over her. “I fought on the front lines for this.”
Ruby stands and presses her chest against his, raising her chin in defiance. “And I was there by your side,” she says. “I’d think very carefully before telling me how to run things.”
“I brought you to my town when the Republic fell,” he mutters. “Cassian would have murdered you if it wasn’t for me.”
Ruby glances away from the man she can only think of as pathetic. A heavy sigh rushes through her. “Yes. Your money went a long way. Now, go drink some champagne. You deserve it.”
“I don’t need a glass of champagne, dammit. Give me her instead.”
Ruby tries her hardest not to laugh, but the more she looks at Severin, the more she realizes she is alone.
She wants her sister’s children more than she wants the new Republic to succeed.
Ruby will agree to the terms they write up, but she will not let him control her. “Is that an order, Commander?”
Severin turns his back on Ruby, throwing the door open so hard it almost swings back and hits him in the nose. No, he isn’t one of the finest specimens, and he’s a mediocre leader at best. That is why she resents him—because she knows she will have to give up her only sister to keep her leadership.
None of this is fair.
His heavy footsteps echo throughout the hallway, but when they stop, Ruby braces.
He hurries back in the room to give one last word. “She will be in my possession. She is just another slave to be taken.”
He leaves. This time, for good.
The silence is deafening.
She thinks about the wreckage of the facilities. The strewn bodies, failed experiments of a mad man. “What’s left of them?” she asks herself, lost.
She tilts her chair back and eyes the cracks running through the window behind her.
Scanning the horizon, she watches the scavengers rummage through what is left of the city. Without warning, tears fall from her eyes, but she does not howl or make even a sound.
Instead, she inhales while focusing on the pressure of her pressed lips. “Forgive me, sister,” she says.
She needs to fulfill her duties.
Walking through the caterpillar of kneeling guards, Ruby pauses at the door of the med-bay. She listens to the faint sounds of familial laughter.
Suddenly, she wishes she was in there as someone entirely unlike herself. She yearns to understand what it feels like to be loved.
Twisting the cold knob, she walks into the room, leaving the door open. Two of the kneeling corporals stand and follow behind her in support.
“Rae,” Ruby whispers. “We will leave the city shortly.”
Rae’s alphas stand and block Ruby’s passage. “What’s with the ensemble?” Killian asks, pointing at the threadbare soldiers.
For a moment, Ruby falters, forcing herself to swallow. It gives her more time to think and relax her nerves.
When she feels her adrenaline waver, she cocks her head and nods at the soldiers. “Take them away.”
“What the fuck?” Lucas mutters through his teeth.
“We will keep her under strict observation,” she says.
“No,” Killian growls.
“This is an order,” Ruby says, saluting.
Bowing her head, Ruby’s eyes focus on Rae. She says, “I’m very… I’m just sorry.”
As she walks out of the room, the guards circle the alphas. One by one, they take them into custody.
“Hey,” Killian screams. “Get the fuck off me.”
Rae’s sister does not stop walking, but her sister’s cries feed into stifled pain.
“You said I was special,” Rae says.
“You are special,” Ruby says before slipping through the doorway. Then, allowing herself to pause without them seeing, she whispers, “And that’s why he gets you.”
“No,” she whispers, voice tightening. “My children… No, you can’t do this.”
She didn’t get to name them. Why are they doing this to her?
Rae’s alphas fight tirelessly, but the guards’ skill to their craft is at the highest in the world. They are no match as over twelve blades lower over their heads like spiked crowns.
“Arms out.”
The alphas are cuffed and taken to the holding bay where they wait assimilation. They are given a set of instructions. In twenty-four hours’ time, they are to taken to a holding cell to be processed. This is the wisdom of the bureaucracy.
Blindfolded. Tonsured and smacked around. Thrown into the cargo hold with the other prisoners.
Ruby runs to her office. She blocks her runny cries with her hands.
Whispering her prayers, Ruby focuses on the one thing she can control right now. Her throne. The rest of God’s grace will come later.
Her soldiers steer Rae to an unfamiliar room, where she will be looked after, prepped, and supervised for a week.
Neither Ruby nor Severin will see her.
As night falls, they take her children. When she lashes out in fear and confusion, feeling that all too familiar sorrow, they give her a syringe of the good stuff, and Rae finds herself back in her dark place.
She has no one anymore.
She is all alone.
As the men are in their respective lines to be sorted, they eye the masses surrounding them. There are many survivors. Alphas from the barracks. Dagon. Distant cities in the North. Everyone stands in line to be redistributed like trading cards.
Killian glances at the two. “What do you think?”
Lucas runs his fingers through the front locks of his fine hair. “I don’t think they’re bringing us back to the fields. The war is over.”
“So what the fuck do they want?” Killian asks.
Vash shakes his head. “Don’t be stupid. They’re going to throw us in some two-by-four cell and never speak our names again.”
Responding to some commotion in the back quarters, the guards prodded an elderly man until he is submissive and twitching against the concrete.
Vash grabs their shoulders, bringing them in so close that their foreheads touch. He can’t get Rae’s angelic face out of his head.
He can’t stop thinking about his children. He almost died for them.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not going down without a fight. On three, we fuck this place up,” Vash whispers.
Lucas twists his mouth, gnashing his fangs together. They are surrounded by guards. Completely outnumbered.
“You serious?” he asks.
Killian chuckles and rolls his shoulders. “I’m fuckin’ in.”
He longs for Rae’s taste, yearning to feast on her pussy one more time. Rae is their hard-earned prize, and no one else is going to stand in the way.
Vash lets his rage consume him.
“On my count,” he growls.
“One. Two…”
Three.
Born Claimed: Book Two
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings,
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cozy pa
rlor, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
-D.H. Lawrence
Prologue: Coronation Day
Planet Alpha.
After the Second Fall.
Location: Unknown
Salivating at the mouth, a monster watches Rae. As soon as he sees her eyes open, he grins, sharp and menacing.
“Slide it in,” he growls. “Deeper, yes. So fucking deep.”
Darkness envelopes her sanity like a warm blanket. Cavernous caresses from hypodermic needles tear through her arms, drugs that force her to stays docile.
Now she remembers.
Her own sister gave her up. She forced Rae into slumber, ordered her to lie in cold and dormant sleep until the time was right to wake her again.
Unfortunately, that time is now.
Rae has been fighting her entire life, struggling to hold on to some ounce of freedom and liberty. Fighting to survive.
Fighting for the men who took and left her alone again to fend for herself. There are no truths found. No solace to awaken to. There is only darkness, isolation, and the inevitability of her capture and death.
She groans, “Vash… Killian… Lucas…”
Heavy pain runs through her veins. A fog that refuses to lift envelopes her mind.
“Where are my alphas?” she asks.
“Your concubines will not be coming back,” the monster states.
Shrouded in darkness, he rolls a cigarette, tonguing the edges. He lights the tip and breathes in deeply. Tobacco spills onto the floor, and his eyes burn an ominous shade of red.
She hardly recognizes him.
The beast’s name is Severin, the appointed minister of propaganda of the New Republic. A tall and sinister snake of a man, he watches over her with elongated eyes.
She is a captive. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Soon, she will be reclaimed.
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