Contract Renewed (Contracted Book 3)

by Aya DeAniege

  That was the shitty end of the stick, as it were.

  The punishment for most crimes was death.

  Hence the metal room with the grate in the middle of it. Alphas weren't exactly keen on humane execution unless it was for their beloved companions. We would be killed at the discretion of the Dom. Our lives could be given to any Alpha in his territory, to do with as they pleased.

  With women, that was mostly slaughter. Males with the G14 could always be salvaged, even if it was as a gift for another Alpha.

  Any moment, the Dom would walk into the holding cell and claim me. Legal rape was all it was, and then I'd be a ghost of who I once was, willing to breed him if only to stop the pain. Once a G14 was broken, an Alpha could cause pain with a simple word, or even by just refusing to be in the presence of the companion.

  I'd rather be killed, but he wouldn't give me that option. He'd break it out of me. I wouldn't be able to take my life no matter how hard I tried. Even after he died, I'd still be indentured to him, unable to move to another, unable to think for myself.

  If I had carried the other marker, the one for homosexuality, I would have been let off. Maybe they thought homosexuals had been persecuted enough.

  Why in the hell couldn't they think the same thing about women?

  Of course, Alphas needed breeders and could only beget more Alphas on those who carried the G14 marker, which was why we weren't immediately executed. Anyone of value or special beauty, sometimes even those who were nuisances, were saved from execution to lend their genetic material to the Alpha gene pool.

  The men didn't exactly get off easily. if a second law was broken and they found themselves in a similar room. If they weren't picked up by local Alphas, they were auctioned off on the national market. If they didn't sell there, they were executed, but the rumour was, few ever made it to the national market.

  Rumour said all Alphas, every last one of them, was bisexual. They also had high sex drives, probably because they had to have a ton of sex to get a woman pregnant.

  Only men on the planet not to feel like less of a man because they had a low sperm count. Ask me, they should all be castrated for all the damned good they do women.

  There were two female Alphas, and only two. Rumours abounded about the pair, but it all boiled down to the same thing. No Alpha who valued his life was going to try to make the females breed with them. In this case, the female of the species was a great deal more dangerous than the male.

  Rumour even said that one of the females was born of an incestuous relationship, think that stopped the males from bidding for one of her harvested eggs?

  They hadn't had females amongst their numbers in almost four hundred years. There was no way they were going to turn one down because her mother might have raped her brother/father.

  I heard something in the hall outside the cell. Without giving any indication of what I was doing, I walked back to the corner of the room and sunk to the floor. I could hide my face, but that wouldn't stop the Dom from sniffing me out. Once an Alpha was locked onto your scent, they said, it was impossible to shake him off.

  Of course, there was one other person in the world who smelled exactly like me. Looked like me, moved like me. The only differences between us were that she was considered the more playful and carefree sister.

  And she was broken and bred by the Dom. Three boys, all bound to be the strongest of Owen's children, even if they were sickly looking things. That was why he wanted me. If the carefree 'weaker' sister produced that, well, he imagined my children might be higher blood.

  I'd kill them all in their cribs, but then...

  “I'll be good, I'll be good, I won't do it next time.”

  The naked woman pacing the length of the room, her breasts heavy with milk, hair a mess, had probably chosen that route and look at her. About to be dead.

  I heard the key set into the lock, and I relaxed every muscle I could. My eyes slid closed, and I breathed out slowly. I let my mouth hang open just a bit.

  My father trained and fought alongside Alphas. He had learned their tricks for hearing things. Turns out, most people when they breathe through their noses quickly, make a sound. Especially if they've recently had a cold or blown their nose. Their next instinct is to sniff, which of course makes a louder noise. It's easier to take in a deeper breath through an open mouth. It also gave me the opportunity to use that air to fill my lungs, pushing out my breasts.

  Alphas might be bisexual, but any of them over the age of twenty-five hadn't been allowed to touch or so much as look at a woman until twelve years previously. They were like teenagers still. If boobs moved, that's where their eyes went to.

  The door opened, and two of them walked in.

  Once upon a time, they had their own pronouns. At the birth of the females, they started questioning if they should continue with the pronouns. By the time the girls hit puberty, the Alphas had come together and agreed to shed their age-old pronouns in the vested interest of respecting the females. Calling them by the male pronouns was apparently an insult of the highest regard.

  With no way to recall the female pronouns, it had been the logical choice, I suppose. Having three new sets of pronouns outside of the male, female, and gender neutral just seemed insane to me. How did one ever keep them separated?

  A lot had changed since I was born, however.

  When I was born, Alphas were on the sidelines of society. They created our gizmos and fought in our wars. They were our artists and great thinkers, but they were strictly controlled. Alphas couldn't even breed without the permission of the government.

  Someone had gone and poked the beast in the eye. Then the government added gasoline to the fire. When it was discovered that every Alpha carried the G14 genetic marker and that many of them carried the secondary marker which made them homosexual, the shit hit the fan. The Alphas had fought to make those people nothing more than objects, only to become objects themselves.

  A war broke out. In the end, the Alphas won. Even with their numbers at one to every thousand, they won.

  They always win.

  In the dust of the civil war, they were learning their new place in the world. Territories were destroyed overnight, and the ranks were slowly setting up, with the owners of fifty miles to two hundred miles being called Doms. Above them were the Masters, above them was Abraham. No title for him, just his name.

  The rest of the Alphas were still in flux. They challenged the Doms but left the older, more experienced Masters alone. The last Alpha to try a Master had found himself under Abraham, broken and nothing more than a drooling husk. The Alpha was still on display as a warning to those who thought themselves better than the pecking order.

  So it wasn't much of a surprise that, of the two who walked in, I only recognized one. The guard of the facility and a lesser Alpha. For the most part, Alphas were Alphas. There was everyone, and then there were the Alphas.

  But spend some time with them, and you'll notice the differences.

  The other one, the stranger, was taller and broader than the guard. His features were in the 'gorgeous' spectrum, which was not a thing many Alphas could boast. They had almost flawless skin. Alphas apparently didn't suffer from pimples. They always had full heads of hair and could grow the thickest beard you've ever seen.

  An Alpha doesn't have to be pretty to pass on his genes, however. It was their companions and breeders who were chosen based on their beauty, a choice that they hadn't had until the civil war. Before that, the government had been purposefully diluting the Alpha blood by offering up inferior, frankly ugly, women for breeding.

  This one, though, was a higher blood. That was what they were called, higher blood. They were almost entirely of the new generation and only borne to certain lines. Older lines, beautiful lines. The Master of the area was said to be gorgeous, and he had been born in the time of starvation. There were mutterings of what he could have been, if only he hadn't been starved as a child like all Alpha young were before the war.
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  The stranger had light brown hair. He was scruffy, hadn't shaved that morning at the very least. As his blue-grey eyes roved over the room, he reached up and scratched at his chin idly.

  He was dressed in, get this, a torn t-shirt and worn out shorts.

  Flip flops on his feet.

  Flip flops.

  I detest flip flops. The sound they make, how people drag their feet just to keep the damned things on. Flip flops spoke of laziness and carelessness.

  No Alpha would be caught dead wearing those things in public.

  Yet this Alpha was. He wasn't dressed to impress. Even his hair was messed up. I was betting that if I got close enough, he hadn't brushed his teeth that morning either. Or worn deodorant, if the guard's scrunched up nose was any indication. The stranger's smell wouldn't be offensive to my nose, but to the guard, it would be about the same as smacking him about the face with a dead and decaying fish.

  The guard served in a close position for the Dom, I couldn't recall what, but he wasn't just a low levelled Alpha. He had managed to get himself close to a Dom. He might not have looked like much, but he was bright enough to find himself in a position of power.

  The stranger, in his worn out clothing, and bodily hygiene, appeared to have no rank whatsoever, yet the guard still put an arm's length between the two of them. Smell or no smell, an Alpha always kept within arm's reach of a stranger so that they could simply reach out and take control. The smell of another body, at the end of the day, meant very little. Especially when no one but the Alphas could smell the odour.

  Being in that cell made the stranger dangerous. He could have been friend or foe of the Dom. Some Alphas would give criminals to their enemies to buy time, or sway favour.

  “Down,” the stranger commanded.

  The other four sat and turned their attention to the stranger. He watched the reaction placidly.

  Those who inherited the G14 genetic marker but were not blessed enough to inherit whatever it was that set the Alphas apart from the rest of us, were typically seen as prey for a good reason. Alphas were capable of giving commands to everyday people and G14 carriers alike.

  Sitting where I was, I refused to budge as his eyes flitted from woman to woman. He seemed to be inspecting each of them as if searching for something.

  A cold crept over me as his eyes fell on the one who had recently given birth. His gaze hesitated.

  Alphas didn't take kindly to baby killers.

  I didn't want to see someone ripped apart before my eyes. One way or another, it was probably going to happen because I wouldn't just give in to the Dom. If I couldn't kill him, I could kill his favourite breeders and their sons, which meant that in a few weeks to a few months, I'd be in that woman's position.

  Those blue-grey eyes locked with mine and I almost wet myself.

  Yes, wet myself.

  This wasn't just a man who might have control over my life. The Dom wasn't there. The stranger was of better blood than the guard, probably had better training. Was bigger and stronger. There'd be nothing stopping the stranger from doing whatever he pleased to any of the women in that cell, myself included.

  “There are only four on the list,” the stranger said.

  “That one's been claimed already.”

  “I'll take her.”

  “She's been claimed.”

  “By who?”

  “Owen.”

  “I'll take her. Age?”

  “Twenty-three. Virgin. Educated. Owen has her mother and sister. She'd probably be more comfortable with him.”

  “I'll take her.”

  “She's been claimed!”

  The stranger turned ever so slowly to the guard. “Am I speaking a different language? Are the words coming from my mouth not making sense to you? I said that I would take her. Da needs a breeder, and he's jealous of those who touch his companions before he does. A virgin would be good. Educated even better. If Owen's bred her sister, then obviously she's a worthwhile breeder, I'll take her.”

  Don't laugh. In my generation virginity was something that was tossed aside by fifteen at the latest. Alphas were about free sex. Common folks were taught to insist on condoms and sleeves for the Alphas they coupled with, to practice safe sex, but we weren't ever told not to.

  The only reason I hadn't had sex was that I suspected from a young age that I was a G14, like my mother and father before me. The marker travels through the maternal genes, but having a father with the marker and a mother pretty well guaranteed that the child would also carry it.

  Sex did not mean breaking, but it was a favourite route of the Dom and his servant Alphas. The Dom had drawn in several young men to his ways. So I simply avoided it altogether.

  The marker meant that anyone could break me. With an Alpha, the chances of coming out whole were supposed to be higher, if one believed the rumours.

  The stranger sniffed the air. If he could smell beyond his own bodily odour, that'd be something real special.

  Alphas have two eyes, two ears, faces that look exactly like everyone else's. The higher bloods tended to be more beautiful, but at the end of the day, it was pretty easy for most Alphas to walk amongst commoners without being noticed by look alone. It was the behaviour that gave them away, not the looks.

  Despite rumours, their eyes did not glow, their ears were not pointed, and their teeth were not longer in any manner. Those same rumours also claimed that Alphas could fly, really were psychic and that there was, once upon a time, a creature beyond an Alpha that made the males and females alike quake in their boots.

  Most of their differences were internal. Bodies that rarely failed, senses that were heightened compared to that of the average person. Depending on their upbringing, they were highly intelligent as well, to cap everything off. Those though? They didn't waste time being Dom, they just fucked up anything that stepped onto their territory, or looked at their territory, or breathed near their territory.

  Even to others of their kind, intelligent Alphas—those the rest of us were coming to call higher blood—were scary as fuck. They weren't just predators who stalked the shadows. They were the beasts that the predators were afraid of, who had no problem hunting those who walked in the light of day, if more exciting game wasn't about.

  “You, come.”

  Every other woman in the cell drifted ever so slightly closer to the stranger. They eagerly wanted to obey the edge to his voice, but that edge wasn't for them. It was for me, still pressed against the back wall and not moving in the least. I had to lock my knees, one of my hands pressed against the floor as I tried to subconsciously respond to the command.

  The stranger's head cocked to the side. His eyes roved over me, almost curious as he seemed to consider every inch of me.

  “Come here,” he said, louder than before.

  What? He thinks I'm hard of hearing?

  “No,” I said through gritted teeth, trying not to allow my body to react.

  I only spoke so that he wouldn't repeat the command again. The other women were in various stages of whimpering and muttering to themselves. I wasn't certain what state the others had been in before the stranger had arrived, but they were acting like broken playthings after his second command.

  “Now,” he said. There was no doubting his command.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I was walking across the cell as the others parted to give way to me. I stopped just within arm’s reach of the Alpha, every bit of me tense. They had left the door open behind them, but that didn’t mean I’d make it very far. If I caught the main Alpha off guard, kneed him hard enough, and if I got past the lesser Alpha and if they hadn’t brought a third with them?

  I'd make it to the end of the hall, where the door was locked with a key card.

  Then I’d really regret it.

  “Wrist,” he said, almost sounding calm as he held out his right hand.

  I lifted my right hand but didn’t place it in his. His eyes darkened just slightly as he frowned at my hand. Perhaps
he was then wondering if I was daft, or from another land. Immigrants arrived all the time, flinging themselves at the feet of the Alphas, if only for a chance to try to breed them. When those eyes met mine, I dropped my right hand and raised my left.

  They had conceded to the wrist because most people had their wrists uncovered. Something about blood pumping through the heart let off certain pheromones. It didn’t even sound possible to me, but for them, it was a very real thing. They had wanted to go for the throat. It was a lot closer to the heart than the wrist. Common people were understandably squeamish about an Alpha greeting them by placing tooth and jaws that strong so close to such a vital blood vessel.

  He took my left wrist in his hand and raised it a little higher before bending and sniffing the skin right where the wrist and palm met. As he sniffed, his nose grazed against my skin. I swear I saw his hair lift off his head just slightly as he tensed.

  Not this again.

  Every Alpha that met me just had to take the next step—lick it.

  The nose and tongue are connected. Alphas were more sensitive to nearly everything than the average person. Normally it was a sniff in greeting, and that was the end of it. Only after a G14 had been claimed by an Alpha were they excused from being sniffed.

  The lick was meant to identify strange scents, to nail down those who were curiosities. It was said that Alphas could pick up mutated genes with that lick, but I never believed it.

  Even though his head was bent slightly, I saw the lips pull back from the teeth. Instinctively I tried to yank my hand out of his, only to have him clamp his teeth down on my wrist. I had to grit my teeth to stop from making a sound, but as he broke the skin, the sound trickled out anyhow.

  For a moment he stayed like that, teeth sunk into my flesh, burning beginning to spread. The pain hadn't quite started by then, though I knew it should have begun. When Alphas found a G14 they liked, they were ever so careful with the person. One wrong move and they could break the G14 by accident. Something everyone wanted to avoid.