by Nora Ash
They’ve broken something in him, the woman who’d been my neighbor in hell had said.
And I knew she was right.
“Step aside, Lillian,” Jerome ordered when Eric and Jarl returned with what looked like a steel four-by-four.
The door was thick, and it took five heavy thuds of the steel battering ram before it finally splintered and fell apart.
The scent that curled in our nostrils made me shudder, but not from revulsion.
It was his scent. Deep and potent, filled with rage and pain—but it was his. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it until it wrapped around me like a tight embrace, filling my lungs with every breath.
A deep warning snarl rolled out from the room, underlined by a rattling of chains.
“No, let us investigate first,” Jerome said when I made to step over the broken door. He put a hand on my chest, holding me back when I tried to slip past him.
Eric and Jarl slipped into the cell, using the lights on their weapons as torches.
“Holy shit,” Eric gasped.
“Is he okay?” I pushed at Jerome’s arm, needing to see for myself, but the big alpha kept me in place.
“Hey, buddy, it’s okay. It’s us. We’re gonna get you out now,” Eric said. His voice was controlled, strained in an effort to sound soothing, but the horror in it was unmistakable.
A roar, and a clanking of chains rang through the cell, followed by the heavy thud of flesh hitting flesh.
“Shit!” one of the men inside snarled, and then a body came flying through the door and collided with a heavy smack against the corridor wall behind us. Jarl slid to the floor, his eyes glazed from the impact.
“Fall back!” Jerome snapped, but he needn’t have. Eric stumbled backwards out of the cell the next second, struggling to keep on his feet, eyes wide with unadulterated horror. A vicious rattle of chains, as if a large beast was straining at the end of his bindings, rang from the room.
“Shit,” Jerome growled. “What the fuck did they do to him?!”
“That’s not fucking Barnes,” Eric said, eyes never leaving the dark door opening. “They fucked him up, Willis. They fucked him up bad.”
“Let me talk to him,” I said, placing a hand on Jerome’s arm.
“Lillian—”
“No. No. Whatever they did, he’s still my mate. Let go of me.”
He cursed under his breath, but finally lowered his arm.
I climbed over the broken door, heart slamming in my throat as the darkness of the cell blanketed my vision.
A deep growl from the man trapped within resonated down my spine—it was the sound of a beast waiting for the right moment to attack, and some faraway instinct murmured about danger. But it never made it through the numb, electric buzz sweeping through my body as I approached him.
“Zach?”
A light flickered on. One of the men outside must have found a switch, bathing the room in a dim cider glow.
And I finally saw him.
My mate.
His skin was covered in so many fresh scars it took me a moment to realize it wasn’t just dirt marring his naked body. Despite the low wattage of the light, he held up a hand toward the source, eyes shut tight.
They’d chained him by the throat and wrists to the wall, but with enough length that he could move around a little. I stared at the mountain of a man still covered in thick bands of bulging muscle, still every ounce the alpha I’d met what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Zach?” I whispered again, and it was as if something in my brain slowly slid back into place, because despite the state of him, his name resonated deep in my core—in the deepest part of my soul.
He was still in there—I could feel him in my bond. Just the faintest sliver of the man I’d known in those brief moments when the drugs had worn off.
Zach.
He growled again, still such an angry sound, but I was sure I could pick out a questioning note.
“It’s me—it’s Lillian. I’ve come back for you.”
Slowly, he lowered his hand, squinting against the light.
“Hey,” I whispered, swallowing hard at the sight of the bruises on his face. I’d known the pain he’d undergone in the scientists’ hands. I’d felt it. But seeing it…
Everything inside of me ached, but it was different than it had been. It wasn’t a slicing agony tearing me up from the inside. It was this wave of emotion, like being drowned in sorrow and hurt and desperation after having been unable to feel anything but physical pain for so long. It was as if just a sliver of my own humanity returned on that wave of sadness, washing away the cold, empty hollowness that had taken over who I’d once been.
And then, at last, he saw me. Our eyes met, his narrowed to avoid the painful light, but he went rigid the moment our gazes locked, straightening to his full height.
We stared in silence at each other for three long seconds.
“Zach,” I whispered, reaching out toward him as I stumbled forward, pulled by the invisible hook yanking on me from behind my ribs.
I was nearly by his side when his lip curled up in in a silent snarl, a void sliding over his narrowed eyes—and he threw himself at me like a wild beast ready to maim.
Chapter 5
Zach
Nothing existed but pain and battle. Nothing but enemies to kill before they killed him.
And yet when he attacked the little female whose face and scent stirred up thoughts he couldn’t place—images that were something other than fighting and blood—he couldn’t end her life.
He dug his fingers into her flesh, pulling her up against him to crush her frail bones, but as his muscles strained to finish her, he found himself incapable.
Snarling, he stared into her wide, scared eyes, unable to grasp why she seemed… so familiar. What were those flickers in his mind calling to him? Why did her scent, struck through with fear as it was, fill him with… warmth?
He sniffed her again, closing his eyes when a tremor made its way up his spine.
“Zach,” she said.
He frowned and looked back down at her. That word… it was like hearing someone speaking through water. Vaguely familiar, but too muddled to understand.
“Zach. It’s me. I’m here.” She managed to wrench a hand free from his grasp. Slowly, she eased it toward his chest.
The warmth of her palm nearly made him lose his grip on her. It wasn’t painful, but the electric buzz that went through him reminded him all too clearly of his tormentor’s favored tool. Fury blazed in his mind and he snarled a warning, wishing he could kill the female and end this confusing encounter before they returned and punished him for his failings.
“Do you need help?” The garbled speech from outside the cell reminded him of the other alphas’ presence, and his anger spiked as he clutched the female tighter and pulled on his chains, challenging them to return and finish what they’d started when they encroached on his domain.
“Don’t come in!” The female didn’t look away from him. Slowly, she let her hand slide from his chest to the side of his face, seemingly unconcerned with the threat of his bared teeth. “Zach, don’t be scared. I’ll help you remember.”
Her voice was so soft—as soft as her body against his. He dragged her scent in through his nostrils, filling his lungs with it, knowing he shouldn’t—that feeling anything other than anger and terror would be punished until he wished for death. He should kill her now, before it was too late. Just squeeze her small body a little harder and she’d break, and it’d be over—
His pained contemplations came to a full stop when she slid her hand back down his chest and wrapped it around his cock. He jolted violently as sharp, hot tendrils of need rocketed up his body and down his thighs.
Pleasure.
His mind fogged as images of her face, contorted in pain and pleasure underneath him, came rushing back from the dark.
Mating.
He remembered what it felt like to rut. To fuck.
; That was why she smelled so good. That was why he couldn’t kill her—she wasn’t to be killed, she was to be mounted. Her hand around his cock filled him with a craving that intensified with each harsh breath he expelled, urging his body to thrust. Her touch sent hot, violent yearning up his spine, licking like flames, infecting him with an insurmountable fever.
He growled again, eyes narrowed as he searched her for any sign she might attack him. That this might be a trick. There was none—and finally, from the very depths of the darkness came the knowledge of what he had to do.
She screeched when he tossed her to the floor, but to his surprise she didn’t fight when he knelt over her. Her gaze flickered from his hard and throbbing cock, but the hesitance evident in her eyes at the sight of his anatomy softened when she looked at his face. Gently, she reached out and brushed a palm over his face before she relaxed on the dirty floor, offering him… permission?
He froze, unsure how to proceed without fighting for dominance, but when she tilted her hips up, he remembered. He shredded the cloth covering her lower half, yanking it off her long limbs until the place between her legs was bared to him. He didn’t think; he acted on instincts alone as the sweet call from her cunt made him bury his mouth where her alluring scent was strongest.
She yelped and jerked, hands flying to his head, and he snarled without lifting his mouth from her soft flesh. But she didn’t try to shove him away, instead clutching him tighter against her as he delved in between her folds.
She tasted exactly like she smelled—divine, feminine, salty musk, and something more. Something that pulled so hard at the aching chord in his chest he struggled for breath. But what was air, when he had this? Had her?
He licked and rubbed and sucked between her spread lips until she was bucking and panting, her pink folds slick and flushed open, revealing her opening.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and breathy now. “It’s okay. I’ll help you remember.”
He ignored her words; he didn’t understand them and didn’t much care what they meant. All he cared about, all he needed, was that glistening opening between her legs.
Her cunt.
The word rang through his brain as he fell on top of her and rocked his hips forward, desperate to be inside of her. But the broad head of his cock was too big to go in, instead rubbing up her slit, catching in the mouth of her opening.
The female shuddered and reached between them, but he pushed her hand away with a snarl and fisted his cock in one hand, aiming it at her entrance.
Her cunt resisted again, but he wasn’t about to be denied. Not when every instinct in his body roared at him, promised him that this was all he needed to survive. That nothing would ever hurt again once he was buried inside this little female’s body. With a growl and a brutal shove, he breached her, the wet sound of her pussy swallowing him drowned out by her pained scream.
“Ow, fuck!” Her hands flew to his stomach, pressing desperately at his abs, and he realized this was all wrong. She was supposed to be on her hands and knees to prevent her from scratching at his eyes and biting his flesh, but it was too late now. Electric jolts ran up his spine, making him snarl with the reminder of the torturous shock collar he wore, but the sensation was anything but painful. Her wet inners clutched at his cock, massaging it for every fitful spasm, the tight milking making him throb and fill out even harder than before. There was no force in this world great enough to ever separate him from her cunt again. She could claw out his eyes if she wanted—he was never gonna stop fucking her.
He shoved forward, seating the full length of his cock inside her wet heat with one slow, brutal thrust, penetrating her to her very core.
Her eyes were wild, lush lips parted in a pained grimace, but she didn’t claw at him. She didn’t even fight him. Her hands remained frozen against his stomach, trying and failing to prevent full penetration, but she seemed to have accepted her fate.
A tendril of sharp, near-painful bliss jolted through him as he allowed himself a moment to bask in the pleasure of her wrapped around him, from the very base of his dick to the his head pushed snugly up against the end of her trembling cunt. Memories, thoughts, and sensations screamed at him, flashing images bombarding his mind, trying to force him to remember. He pushed it all away until there was nothing in his world but her heartbeat drumming against his cock from where they were connected. And finally, he allowed his instincts to swallow him up, leaving nothing behind but a mindless beast, no echoes of pain or torture clouding his mind.
His first thrust made her yowl and clench her fists against his abs. Instincts made him bend his head and nibble at her jawline, distracting her from the pain of his too-big cock. She still sobbed as he fucked her, her wet heat never releasing its tight grip on his girth, but she gasped and mewled in between her cries when he sucked and licked at her neck. Soon her hands moved from his stomach to his chest, flattening against his hard muscle, no longer protesting his presence inside of her.
He’d known pleasure like this before, he realized as he pounded her cunt in savage thrusts. And he’d known her. He stared down at her as she cried and panted, memorizing every detail of her face. The bond in his chest hummed so loudly it warred with the physical pleasure of mating, trilling a joyful tune, and he knew this was where he was supposed to be, always. Between her thighs, inside of her, making her feel every bit as wonderful as she made him feel.
He pressed his lips to hers before he’d made the decision to, kissing her as the memory of how came back to him.
She startled in response, clearly not expecting anything from him but the rough, relentless thrusts in her pussy, but soon she softened, sliding her arms around his neck. When their mouths separated, the look of shock on her face was unmistakable. Then he pummeled the head of his cock directly into the spongy spot inside of her, and she threw her head back, her entire body clenching.
The pleasure that rocked through his cock and up his backbone was more than his mind could take. Her pussy squeezed him to a full stop, only to erupt in a series of fluttering spasms around him the next second as she screeched and thrashed underneath him.
He shuddered and roared, his knot forming before he could move. It grew inside her already dilated opening until it was too big to pull out, and he pushed in deeper, locking it in place behind her pelvic bone while she was still riding her climax.
She screamed again, twitching to escape it, but before she could so much as push at him, he’d knotted her fully.
He groaned and rocked his hips, grinding his knot against her pelvic girdle’s tight clasp. And then, finally, he came.
If fucking her had been pleasure, releasing inside of her was ecstasy. Every cell in his body flushed with bliss, his spurting cock sending ripples of raw sensation that resonated deep in his chest. He couldn’t control the moans ripping from his throat, sounding nothing like any sound he’d produced in so long.
And below him, she lay, face twisted in excruciating pleasure as she was forced to ride his brutal knot, her small mewls transferring to the spasms in her cunt as it clasped him so tight, promising to never let him go.
It was then, as he stared into her glazed eyes, he finally remembered.
She was his mate.
His mate had come back to him.
Chapter 6
Lillian
Sex with Zach had always been painful, his pure size and brutality making our animalistic couplings hard to get through. But the pleasure of mating was undeniable, even if it was shameful, and when I’d seen what they’d done to him and realized he didn’t remember me, I’d known on an instinctive level what I’d needed to do to bring him back to me.
I winced as Zach shifted and his knot ground against my depleted G-spot, his pleased rumble that wasn’t quite a purr unhindered by my flinch as he licked at my still-clothed breasts and bared neck.
There had been pleasure, and relief, as my bond snapped into place the second his body joined with mine, but the physical aspect
had not been the most powerful part of our joining by far. No rush of endorphins, not even the powerful climax he’d forced from the very depths of my sex, had dampened the soul-deep elation still singing through my entire being from finally being with him again.
And he’d kissed me.
For the first time, in the depths of the madness his captivity and torment had brought on, he’d kissed me.
Despite everything they’d done to him, he was still in there. I sighed and pressed my face against his neck, focusing on the hum of completion emanating from the thread in my chest and the pleasurable agony of fullness from where Zach’s knot dilated my still-spasming sheath. Even the pain of taking it again for the first time in so long couldn’t ruin the feeling of completion rolling through me in lazy waves. I’d hated his knot, once. Not anymore. It hurt to open for it, but nothing would ever tie me so completely to the man I’d thought I’d lost as the thick mass locked behind my pelvic bone. Nothing would ever quell the unbearable agony of our frayed bond so thoroughly.
“Zach,” I whispered, stroking his shoulders gently. “Are you back?”
Only a light nip on my neck let me know he’d registered me speaking.
“Zach? Can you… Can you understand me?”
The large alpha kept licking and suckling at my flesh, oblivious to my question.
I bit my lip, trying to force my mind to focus through the onslaught of endorphins and post-orgasmic lethargy. He might have calmed down, but our reunion hadn’t brought him out of the darkness. “Fuck.”
“Everything okay in there, Lillian?” Jerome called, breaking the illusion that it was just Zach and I in the world.
The combination of the masculine voice and my jolt of surprise cut Zach’s pleased noises short. He lifted his face from my neck, lip curling in a warning snarl at the door.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I managed. “But I think—I think we need to tranq him. They keep some loaded guns in the big room with the other alphas.”