"My Omega tells me that I—we—have you to thank for saving both of their lives."
The doctor looked surprised. "You're welcome."
"She also mentioned to me that she thought you should be elevated from your current lowly rank, and I agree. From now on, you are my Surgeon Commander, in charge of all things medical—with her assistance, of course."
For a moment, he thought the other man was going to faint on him. Kel couldn't believe that this big, tough Alpha warlord was heeding his tiny Omega's advice.
"Don't look so surprised, Commander," Vaudt almost smiled at the man's astonishment. "She just gave me a son. Frankly, if she'd asked me to cut you up into little pieces, I would have done that without hesitation, too."
With that, he took his son away from the doctors who were hovering over him and brought him out to show him to the three brave souls who had stayed by his side through the most torturous hours he had ever experienced.
Chapter 6
Unfortunately, things between the other Alpha and Omega couple were not going anywhere near as well.
Kosh didn't know what it was—not that he had really spent a lot of time thinking about it—but something had gotten to his mate. He was pretty sure it was something that had happened while the four of them were all together, although he had no idea what it actually was.
The inroads he had been making with Tura had come to an abrupt halt. She had—especially at first—alternated between being disaffected and ignoring him as much as he allowed her to get away with and misbehaving at every turn, such that her bottom was a constant, angry shade of red.
Based on her somewhat better behavior, they had—previously—progressed to the point where he had even allowed her to spend some time unbound within the confines of the room. In fact, he had left her to her own devices, to go be with Vaudt as his son was born, and had come home elated with the good news that both Emmy and the child—who was to be known as Keev—were doing well. He was already full blown in anticipation of trying to make a baby of his own with her. The sight that greeted him, however, was not at all what he expected.
She was sitting cross legged in the middle of the room, and nearly everything around her—everything he had accumulated in his lifetime—lay broken and strewn around her. The only thing that pretty much escaped her wrath was the bed frame. Check that, he realized as he scanned the room. The bed frame and his books, for some reason, were stacked neatly against the wall. The bookcase was in several pieces, though. The mattress was curled over onto itself on the floor, well across the room, and the sheet and blanket were in shreds on the other side of the room. Each table was missing at least one leg—as were the chairs—and his electronics were scattered from one end of the small room to the other. Someone had had a temper tantrum.
As he stood there, assessing the damage in a wide-legged stance with his arms crossed over his chest, he saw that her shoulders—as well as the rest of her—were shaking.
Kosh took a slow, deep breath, then walked over to her, taking her wrist and lifting her onto her feet. He said not one word as he bent her over the end of the bed, moving her hands to make her grasp ahold of the slats above her head, figuring that he probably didn't have to tell her that she was not to move them again. The heavy buckle then jingled in warning as he removed his thick leather belt and looped it in half.
It was much too severe an implement for her, even though a steady diet of good food had already helped her fill out some. She was so small—there was not going to be any relief at all when the strap kissed her bottom, because it would sizzle across every bit of it, every time.
And yet, despite knowing that, Kosh didn't hesitate to use it, either. This was not a disciplinary session over his lap. There was deliberately absolutely no intimacy involved, except, perhaps, for the fact that one of them was nude.
There was no lecture. He had no doubt that she knew what she'd done was wrong and probably had a good idea what he was going to do to her when he found out, too, so he refused to waste his breath.
It was the purest form of punishment.
She certainly screamed a lot, but she didn't bother to beg him to stop, or even say that she was sorry, knowing neither of those things would have mitigated her sentence in any way. And besides, she wouldn't have meant them. She didn't want to demean herself enough to do either of those things.
When he began to have a bit of a problem keeping her still to receive that punishment, he tied her down with parts of his own armor, which had not escaped her wrath, either.
He wore his arm out on her, and when he was done, he took her, as hard and as roughly as he could manage—and that was plenty rough, considering their size differences. He stayed as fully clothed as he could and, as soon as he was inside her, he hooked her savagely, each powerful, knotted thrust lifting her feet clear off the floor as he kept her back and neck arched by holding a handful of her hair in his fist at the back of her head, doing his level best to make sure that she enjoyed it as little as he could manage—touching her as little as possible throughout—although removing all pleasure from it was probably a biological impossibility and really not to be encouraged anyway.
This was not really a mating, though. It, too, was a punishment. He made very sure that—aside from the feelings that he knew descended on her at times like this, and despite that it might mean she wouldn't conceive—she did not climax.
And still, he lost control of himself much too quickly, but then she'd always done that to him, and he found himself crying out at the end just as loudly as he had at other times with her—but this time, along with it being uncontrollable, it was accompanied by no small amount of anger.
He dislodged himself as soon as he could, standing and panting over her limp form, literally watching that beautiful bottom swell and bruise as a result of the slice of his belt.
Then he checked to see if there was anything on the floor that might injure her bare feet, removing some small pieces of wood that might result in splinters. A few seconds later, he untied her, hoisting the mattress back onto the bed, then taking a seat on it and leaning back against the wall behind it.
"You will clean this mess up as best you can. If you do not obey me now, I will not hesitate to punish you until you agree to do so. Create neat piles for wood, one for cloth, one for the things with wires and cords, etc. When you're done, come back to me."
Tura rose immediately and began to do exactly as he asked, if slowly, because every movement was agony on her poor bottom. But when she didn't move quickly enough for him, she felt the wrath of his palm there, which was quite an effective encouragement for her to try to work more quickly.
It was such a small room with relatively little in it, and she accomplished the task he set for her pretty quickly, going to stand in front of where he sat on the bed. Without another word, he secured her—bottom down—to it. Not just her wrists above her head this time, though, but the muzzle was back, as well as her feet tied to the corners of the bed frame. And then he blew out the lamp and left her there in the darkness, ignoring the muffled sounds of sobbing that were coming from the bed.
Once he'd closed the door behind him, she began to try to escape, but stopped because the movements were too painful on her butt. Tura had told herself that she wasn't going to cry—not during the punishment, or after, or ever again—in front of him, but she hadn't been able to do that, either.
She didn't really know why she'd gone crazy while he was gone. Well, that was a lie, she admitted to herself. She knew why. It was because he had simply, blithely, shut down Emily's suggestion about helping her to doing something she had dreamt about all her life when he'd said, "No, thank you," to the older woman teaching her to read. Suddenly, the reality of her entire situation had descended upon her, and she felt helpless and hopeless—and so, so angry.
Kosh was not Vaudt. She was not Emily. And it had been driven glaringly home to her that she had absolutely no control over her own life—and wasn't likely to be able to attai
n any—when he shut down the possibility of her accomplishing the one dream that remained in her life.
Despite the fact that she was safe—from everyone but him—and she had more than enough food to eat, clean water to drink and a clean actual bed to sleep in at night, albeit not alone, she would rather be taking her chances on the streets of D'Shu, and probably ending up dead because of it, than to spend another minute here with him. The more she'd thought about it—about how much control she had lost over every aspect of her life, how stifled she felt—the angrier she got.
Her body was quite content about the situation, and she almost felt as if it was working against her. She was her own enemy! And her weak flesh would have been very happy to have submitted to him and born his children. She put that down to her own nature, which was the underlying cause of the unimaginably strong urge to mate with him that was only slightly dulled when he wasn't there.
Tura was more than unhappy enough to give way to the fury she felt, and the mess she created was the inevitable result of such a release of frustration. The only thing in the room—besides the bed, which was metal so there wasn't much she could do to it—she couldn't bring herself to destroy were the books. They were too precious to her, even though she had no idea what they said.
Her mother had always wanted to learn how to read herself and then had hoped that her daughter might learn. It was a fervent desire that she'd passed on to Tura, but it had never happened. And now it never would. Especially now, considering what she'd done.
But she forced herself to stop sobbing and feeling sorry for herself. She knew what she had to do. She had to get out of here, and she would do anything she had to do to accomplish that goal. She couldn't allow herself to be swayed by the sensual tug of her biological makeup, and she couldn't allow herself to wallow in a false sense of security, either. She had learned to fight because she had to, and it was time she started to do that again, for herself.
At some point, she heard the key in the lock, as well as his familiar voice. He came in alone, though, untied her, and shoved her unceremoniously into the bathroom, standing in the doorway of it, blocking her escape. Only that might well not have been his true intention.
"Come," he ordered.
She could hear several men's voices, followed by silence, and then she heard someone take a step or two towards him.
She heard him say, as clear as a bell, "If you wish to continue breathing, Ahtel, then I suggest you stop sniffing around and get to work."
Apparently, the men he'd chosen were able to control their baser instincts—and, if she remembered what his commander had said, it seemed that being bonded to him did have at least that one small advantage in that her scent was less appealing—although not much else.
She heard the door to the room close, heard him walk over to it—probably to lock it behind them—and then he came back to the bathroom. "I suggest you take care of any of your needs right now."
Somehow, with him angry at her, as he obvious was—not that she blamed him, necessarily—it was even more embarrassing to do what she needed to do.
When she was done, he gave her a bottle of water and told her to drink it as he stood there, which she did—she was thirsty, and it helped to get that leathery taste out of her mouth. He brought her back into the room, and it had been emptied of all of the garbage she'd created, as well as everything else—except for the bed and the mattress. Even the books were gone.
"If you cannot respect my things—not that there's much left anymore after your little meltdown—then you cannot have use of them," he said, putting her right back where she had been—although it wasn't as if she didn't put up a struggle—she did.
But he overwhelmed her easily, as usual, and she quickly found herself bound with her hands above her head. But he left her legs free and didn't replace the gag, either.
Kosh stretched himself atop her quite fully, and although he was incredibly heavy, especially since he was still wearing all of that armor, she had no problems breathing and actually discovered that she liked it a lot more than she wanted to, but she kept that thought to herself.
"I had thought that we were beginning to get along better. You were behaving yourself—mostly—and thus you were allowed the freedom of the room while I was gone."
"Thanks ever so," she said sarcastically.
He stilled and gave her a look that made her wish she'd kept her mouth shut.
"You misbehaved—in quite a spectacular fashion—and now you have lost your freedom. I don't know what it was that happened to make you so unhappy—"
"Do you want a list?"
He ignored that, although it wasn't easy. His instinct was simply to fuck and punish her into submission. But he didn't want that. He wanted the kind of relationship that Vaudt and Emmy had, although when he'd seen what she'd done to the room, he had despaired of ever having it.
While he was gone, he'd talked to his commander, who was happily holding his son in his arms while his wife slept, and had grinned when he'd told him what she'd done. "She's got some guts, that one. I wish she was a man; she'd make a fine soldier."
"Guts? Taking apart my room and destroying nearly everything I own is guts?" he snorted in disgust.
"Well, think of it her way."
"What do you mean?" his second looked confused.
The idea was entirely foreign to him, as Vaudt had confessed that it had been to him, too. Alphas were known for the size and fierceness and their need to mate with and protect their Omega, but none of them had been taught to think much about others, except how they could be useful and whether or not they were obeying. Vaudt had been the same way until he and Emmy had a long talk one evening, even before she got pregnant, and she had explained what had happened between them from her side of the equation. It sounded to him as if, in her time, there was a lot more opportunity for such introspection, whereas, in the here and now, everyone was just trying to live another day, and that was something Alphas excelled at.
They did not excel at having emotions themselves or putting up with them in others. That, sometimes, made things hard between an Alpha and an Omega. But he impressed on Kosh the need to be as tender and gentle with Tura as he could.
"I know you want a son from her, Kosh. But believe me, you want her to be as happy as you can make her, too. Try to be gentle with her—she has more delicate sensibilities than we do. It will make things easier than you know."
He understood Emmy a lot better than he had because of it—he'd never have thought that would matter much to him, but it did, and Kosh thought that might be something that should matter to him, too, in regards to Tura, although he found it hard to think of her as delicate.
He adjusted his position a bit, pressing himself up against a cunny that he was glad to know—as the front of his pants, right over his perpetually hard cock—was almost immediately soaked through. He thought he saw her bite back a moan, too, but he wasn't sure.
"What I want is to know what happened that made you so angry? I know you're still adjusting to our relationship, but you'd been doing very well, and there must've been something else that set you off."
She closed her mouth stubbornly.
Kosh leaned down to take a nipple—that he noted was far from soft—into his mouth and suckle hard, swirling his tongue around and over it, and flicking the end with the tip of his tongue before making his way to its twin and doing the same thing, continuing to divide his attentions between the two, patiently, while, at first, she simply lay beneath him, gazing up at the ceiling as if he was in another room entirely. Then, after a few long moments, he was rewarded by a soft sigh and an attempt to shift beneath him a bit.
"Tell me what happened, little girl," he whispered huskily, redoubling his efforts until he had her trying to twist her breasts away from him, out of his mouth. Then he began to work his way slowly down the front of her, dragging himself and all of that leather quite deliberately over her most sensitive parts, until he was between her legs, his mouth just a
bove the top of her folds as one finger, then two, pressed their way between them, seeking and finding exactly what they wanted. Her gushing juices anointing their callused pads before he dragged them up and over a very swollen clit.
And there was no missing how her breath caught—as well as the slight moan she issued—as he began to worry her little pearl.
"Do I have to turn you over and lather your backside again?" he asked in a deliberately low, dark tone.
He felt her contract at that and pressed two fingers into her.
"Because you know I will. I enjoy blistering your behind. It makes you quite docile and very hot, almost as much as when I fuck you."
She gripped him so hard, he thought she was going to break his fingers off.
After a few more minutes of torturing her, he snapped, "Tura! Answer my question!"
"As if you don't know!"
Seconds later, she found her arms tied behind her back and herself over his thighs as he spanked her wickedly hard, although the softest of swats on her already beleaguered behind would have done it. She clenched her teeth against reacting to him in any way—at which she wasn't having much success—and that didn't last very long, either. What was wrong with her? She used to have a formidable will of her own, but that seemed to desert her any time she was near him!
Before he'd given her ten smacks, she was groaning and kicking her feet futilely.
"I'm going to spank you until you answer me," he stated matter of factly.
"No!" she sniffled in humiliation, "Please!"
"I've told you how to get me to stop, and therefore, I have no sympathy for you."
She snorted on a moan. "When have you ever had sympathy for me?"
Fifteen or so hard, crisp spanks later, when she'd been reduced to weeping over his lap, she whimpered, "All right, all right. I'll tell you."
He didn't let her up, as she'd expected him to, though. He held her in place, dangling from his legs, as if, if he didn't like what she told him, he was going to commence punishing her again.
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