by Lizzy Bequin
My only goal for now is survival.
For now, it’s just a waiting game. I only need to outlast these males.
Sooner or later, these feral Alphas will have to go find food and water. The same goes for me, but at least for now I have an advantage. While I’m perched up here safe in my tree, I’m not expending any energy. But if those frenzied Alphas keep running and jumping around down there, eventually they will wear themselves out.
I have an idea to speed up the process a little.
“Is that the best you can do?” I shout.
I doubt these monsters can understand my taunt, but if I can make them even more agitated, maybe I can wear them out.
“Come and get me!” I call. “If you’re man enough, that is!”
While some of the Alphas continue testing the tree trunk, others let out desperate, almost painful groans. One of them falls to his knees, grunting and furiously jerking his massive, gnarled cock. Another of his companions follows suit, spitting onto his palm before jacking himself violently.
Their nostrils expand, and I realize they are drinking in my omega scent. That realization sends a tremor of disgust up my spine.
With a loud grunt, one of the Alphas unloads, spewing his seed in a series of long white ropes until at last he flops onto his back in exhaustion, his cock drooling a few final spurts onto his scarred stomach. Before long, the other one ejaculates as well.
Gross.
But at least my plan seems to be working. I persist.
“What’s the matter?” I shout to the other three confused and enraged Alphas. “Don’t you want this omega pussy?”
I wriggle my body seductively, taking care not to lose my balance.
Two more Alphas give in, tugging at their dicks so hard it looks like they are trying to rip them off.
The remaining Alpha—the biggest and ugliest one—just stands there glaring at me, his face darkening with a look that is a mixture of hatred and lust.
“What’s the matter?” I shout, trying to disguise the tremor of fear in my voice, “Don’t you want a piece of this, big boy?”
I wiggle my butt on my perch. Being seductive has never been my strong suit, exactly. And playing it up for these repulsive creatures is even worse. But if I can just get this fugly bastard to give in to his urges and wank, maybe the whole pack will slink off and leave me be.
But the biggest Alpha doesn’t give in. He doesn’t slink off.
With a heart-stopping roar, he leaps high into the air. The claws of his fingers and toes grip the tree trunk briefly, but instead of trying to climb, as before, he leaps again with a sudden, violent exertion of his entire body and manages to catch the lowest branch.
“Oh shit,” I breathe.
As his dazed pack mates watch from below, the Alpha drags himself up onto his branch. There is a splintering crack as the limb gives way beneath his weight, but not before he leaps again, grabbing onto another branch farther up the trunk.
No. This can’t be happening.
The other Alphas below begin hooting and howling, cheering the climber on. Like an awful, hairless ape, the thing clambers toward me, leaping from one branch to the next.
I squeeze my thighs tightly around my branch, hook my ankles, and switch my knife to my left hand. Then I draw my pistol.
“Come and get it,” I snarl, aiming my gun at the beast.
This time, there is no hint of seduction in my voice. If this freak wants my body, he’s going to have to fight for it.
I fire a three shot burst.
The Alpha leaps away with frightening quickness, and the shots miss, sending up three explosions of splinters as the bullets bite into the branch where the Alpha was just crouching.
I aim and fire again and again.
Impossibly, the Alpha dodges each shot. His movements are lightning fast, and too erratic to predict. By pure luck, one shot connects with his shoulder, sending up a red mist of blood.
The creature merely grunts and continues his ascent.
At least now, he’s close enough to present a pretty big target.
I line up the sights between those bloodshot eyes.
“Die,” I hiss between gritted teeth.
I squeeze the trigger.
Click.
The hammer falls on an empty chamber.
A sickening chill ripples over my flesh. How could I have wasted all of my ammo already? I should have kept my cool and waited until the thing was closer, so there would be no chance of missing.
Now that mistake is going to cost me my life.
And possibly a whole lot more.
Suddenly a new sound booms through the forest. An almost deafening roar that echoes between the ancient trees.
The climbing Alpha, who is now just feet below me, pauses his ascent. He perches like a gargoyle and cranes his neck in the direction of the sound. A low, canine growl rumbles in his throat. Below, his companions have ceased there hooting and are sniffing the air.
Something is crashing through the underbrush. Something big.
Another, an even louder roar erupts through the forest, and a massive figure explodes out of the trees, flying straight for the Alphas on the ground. It moves so fast that it is little more than a blur in the shadows and dappled moonlight.
Shrieking, the Alphas below are scattered like bowling pins. In a flash, the attacker pounces on the nearest Alpha, and there is a sickening crunch of bone.
The attacker rises to his feet and tilts his head up toward me.
“Sloane!” he bellows.
“Dog?” I manage to stammer breathlessly.
It’s really him. It’s Dog. He survived.
He is dressed only in his form-fitting black shorts and nothing else. No shoes to help him run over this harsh terrain. No weapons.
Dog doesn’t need them. His body is his weapon. He was big before, but now that he is in full-blown attack mode, his physique looks absolutely terrifying. Layer upon layer of striated muscles traced with bulging veins.
He sees the Alpha perched on the branch below me and snarls. But the other three Alphas on the ground are already on their feet and they have him surrounded. He’s outnumbered three to one.
That doesn’t matter.
With another booming roar, Dog explodes into action.
The other Alphas are no joke, but their attacks are wild and undirected. Dog has the advantage of training.
I see moves that I recognize from my own regimen, a mixture of disciplines—Muay Thai, Krav Maga, and jiu-jitsu—all executed with such superhuman speed and precision that the untrained wild Alphas don’t stand a chance.
The Alpha perched below me in the tree watches as his pack-mates are brutally slaughtered by Dog. For an instant, the beast seems to consider helping them, but then it whips its face upward toward me and snarls.
“Your friends are dead you bastard,” I shout. “Run away while you can.”
The Alpha ignores me, or perhaps it just doesn’t understand. It leaps to another limb, then leaps again. One massive, hairy hand catches onto the branch where I’m sitting, and the other clutches my leg. Sharp claws bite painfully into my shin.
I scream, a piercing sound born of pain and rage. There is a flash of steel as I plunge my knife into the creature’s wrist, and it releases me with an agonized howl.
The beast swings, ape-like, and hooks one leg over the branch, struggling to hold on. I rear back one boot, preparing to kick the creature straight in its hideous face, but I don’t get the chance.
There is a sharp crackle of splintering wood
“No,” I gasp.
The branch gives out beneath the combined weight of me and the Alpha, and my stomach leaps into my throat I as I find myself tumbling head over heals. Branches and twigs whip at my body and the pillars of the dark trees whirl in my vision.
“Dog!” I scream as I plummet to earth.
CHAPTER 7: DOG
Three Alphas lie dead on the ground, and the fourth one, wounded, retreats i
nto the depths of the forest. Smart move.
These were Farlander Alphas—twisted, inbred beings that are much different from the Alphas who inhabit the central ruins. They are called Farlanders because they have shunned the Source and live like filthy beasts in the hinterlands of the Zone.
I have no time to bask in my victory, however.
A piercing shriek from overhead grabs my attention, and I look up just in time to see Sloane and the last remaining Alpha falling toward the ground.
There is no time to think. Pure instinct takes over, and my muscles seem to move with a life of their own.
With an explosion of energy, my legs propel me upward toward the falling figures. My jump is perfectly timed. I reach the apex of my leap and begin to descend again just as Sloan’s body reaches me. The differential allows me to catch her without injuring her.
The other Alpha streaks past and lands with a hard, wet thud on a thick, gnarled root.
A moment later, I land too, but on my feet. I keep my arms loose to gently cradle Sloan’s body.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Her eyes flutter open, and she looks around, dazed. Then those beautiful blue eyes lock with mine. By some trick of the moonlight, they seem to darken to a deep sapphire hue.
“Sloane, are you okay?” I repeat.
She nods wordlessly. Her close-cropped head is cradled in the crook of my arm. A tiny, almost imperceptible tremor quivers her lower lip, and I feel something stirring in my blood.
Her scent.
The smell of her body envelopes me like a cloud. It’s like nothing I’ve ever smelled before, unlike any perfume. It is raw, natural, feral, and feminine. As the warm aroma fills my nose, my cock swells inside my shorts.
There’s no question about it.
She’s an omega now.
Her body is scalding hot in my arms. Between the gaps in her ripped, black environmental suit, her flesh pebbles with goosebumps. She can smell me too.
“Dog,” she half whispers. “You…”
A pained groan comes from the forest floor nearby. Apparently the hard fall didn’t quite finish off the last feral Alpha, and the wretched thing is trying to drag its broken body away into the shadows of the forest. I have a sudden impulse to end the creature, to put it out of its misery.
But Sloane is quicker than me.
In a flash, she has sprung out of my arms.
“Sloane!” I shout.
In one fluid movement, she scoops her knife from where it has fallen on the leaf strewn ground and pounces on the Alpha. The steel glints in a quick motion as she draws it across the creature’s throat. Arterial spray patters on the dead leaves and pine needles like rain, then gradually subsides as the Alpha’s blood pressure drops and its heart finally expires.
Sloane rises, standing over the dead thing like a huntress. She spits, and wipes the bloody blade off against the thigh of her suit.
“You saved me,” she says without looking up. “Thank you.”
Something in her voice suggests that her pride has been hurt. Perhaps she feels that as a soldier, she shouldn’t need saving.
“How did you find me?” she asks.
I gesture off into the woods.
“As I was falling, I saw your chute go down somewhere over here. As soon as I recovered from my landing, I headed this way. When I got close, I heard your screams.”
She turns toward me, eyes wide.
“Dog,” she stammers. “All that stuff I was saying to the Alphas to entice them…I was just trying to get them riled so they would wear themselves out. I didn’t—“
I smirk and raise one hand to quiet her.
“I know, I know. You don’t have to explain. It was a good plan.”
Sloane sighs with relief. Apparently she really cares what I think about her.
But what I just told her about finding her by following her shouts is only half true. I’m leaving out the part about how I caught her scent from over a mile away. Hell, I could have found her blindfolded.
That scent is going to be a problem. It’s going to draw more feral Alphas down on us. We made short work of these five, but if they arrive in greater numbers we’ll be in trouble, especially in this darkness.
“We need to get out of here, find some shelter for the remainder of the night.”
Sloane nods.
She seems rattled. At first I think it’s because she’s still shaken by her fall. But maybe it was something else. Maybe it was that moment we shared when I was holding her in my arms. Maybe it’s the implications of the fact that I’m an Alpha and she’s an omega.
“We need to find the ship,” she says. “With any luck we can send a message back to Central Command.”
“It went down somewhere in this direction,” I say, pointing. “I saw the smoke over the trees.”
“All right,” she says. “Lead the way.”
***
Scattered flames from the wrecked craft light up the crash site, casting a wavering orange glow against the wall of trees surrounding the clearing. At one end there is a swath of broken trees, their trunks shattered to toothpicks, then a long deep gash in the grassy ground where the fuselage plowed through the earth.
Only the front half of the ship remains, and the interior is exposed by a ragged hole where the back half ripped away on impact. The edge is fringed with broken piping and wires, some of which are spitting yellow sparks intermittently.
The destruction is worse than anything I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen more than my fair share.
“What a mess,” I grumble.
“Let’s just hope the communicator is still working,” Sloane says.
Her black protective suit was all ripped up from the tree limbs, so she used her knife to cut away the tattered fabric from her thighs down, leaving her lower body covered in a pair of ragged shorts that expose the tanned curves of her long legs. She removed the top part of the outfit completely, and now she’s only sporting the thin, white tank top that she was wearing underneath and her military dog tags around her neck.
Right now, I’m trying, without much success, to ignore the way her erect nipples are poking through the tight, white cloth.
I enter the wreck first, hopping easily inside before offering my arm to pull Sloane up after me. She is so small, she might as well be weightless.
“Careful,” I tell her. “The deck is unsteady. Hang onto me in case the fuselage shifts.”
I’m happy when she does as I tell her, clinging tightly to my arm. I lead the way toward the cockpit, bracing against the empty seats and scorched wall as we traverse the deck, which is slanted almost forty-five degrees.
The fires inside the ship have mostly gone out, leaving the space dark. I navigate mainly by feel. As we move forward, I pick up a sickly sweet smell of barbecued meat, and I know what it is before my eyes even have a chance to adjust to the low light.
The remains of our team.
An arm here, a pair of legs there, boots still on, strips of environmental protection suit melted to the cooked flesh.
“Don’t look,” I hiss over my shoulder.
But it’s too late. I can tell by the squeeze of her fingers and the hitch of her breath that Sloane has already seen. In fact, there’s nowhere to turn without looking at a mangled piece of something that used to be a person.
Sloane composes herself.
“What are we waiting for?” she says. “We need to salvage whatever we can. Weapons. Food.”
Shit, she’s a tough one.
But there’s a wobble in her voice that undercuts her tough demeanor. It’s not that the devastation of her teammates hasn’t affected her. It’s just that she isn’t going to let it get in the way of her survival.
And she’s right. We need to grab what we can and haul ass.
It’s the middle of the night in the Zone, and there are Alphas about. Farlander Alphas. The worst and most savage kind.
If it was just me, I wouldn’t be so worried.
Now,
however, I’ve got Sloane to protect. And she’s in heat. Her scent will draw the bastards in. We can’t waste any time.
True to form, Sloane sets to work immediately. She releases her grip on my arm and makes her way to the armament rack at front of the craft. The rifles are scattered about on the floor. She picks one up, examines it, tosses it aside. Then another. And another.
Her movements grow frantic,
“Fuck!” she hisses.
Her small fist slams hard into the bulkhead as she releases her frustration and anger with a punch.
“They’re all fucked,” she says as she regains her cool. “Every last one of them is broken.”
Shit. So much for weapons.
It looks like we’ll have to rely on my strength and Sloane’s knife.
“Come on,” I whisper. “Let’s check the cockpit.”
I climb in first.
The windshield is cobwebbed with cracks from the impact, but somehow it’s still intact. The bodies of the pilot and copilot are still there, strapped into their seats. Miraculously, the devices on the control panel are not destroyed, and some of the switches and warning lights are still blinking.
Something overhead sputters and showers yellow sparks.
“Do you know how to work this thing?” I ask, sweeping my hand toward the comm unit embedded into the console.
Sloane nods, her face a picture of concentration.
“The question is, does it still work?”
She tries a few of the switches and dials, and the machine emits an electronic croak.
“Come in,” Sloane says into the device. “This is Lance Corporal Jessica Sloane reporting from…somewhere in the Quarantine Zone. Come in. Is anyone there?”
Silence.
Sloane tries again several times, but each time, the result is the same.
At last, dejected, Sloane drops her head.
I feel my heart sink too.
If we could only get through to Central Command, then they could send a rescue vehicle to save us.
But it doesn’t look like that is going to happen.
I start to run through the possibilities in my mind. I could try to escort Sloane all the way back to the Quarantine Wall on foot, but what would the guards there do when they saw us coming? Their orders are to shoot any Alphas or omegas on sight. The snipers might very well take us out before we could even get within shouting distance.