by Nora Ash
Despair
Feral 2
Nora Ash
Copyright © 2018 by Nora Ash
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any and all likeness to trademarks, corporations or persons, dead or alive, is purely coincidental.
Contents
Summary
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Also by Nora Ash
Summary
Taken.
Brutalized.
Claimed.
My mate became mine during a heinous experiment designed to punish her for her disobedience. The scientists who locked me in a cage and stole my humanity gave her to me to ravage. To break.
But she is far more than a warm body to distract me from my torment.
* * *
She is mine.
* * *
They took everything from me - but I won’t let them do the same to her. She fears me, but there is nothing I won’t give to save her.
Even my own life.
Despair is the second book in Nora Ash’s suspense-filled Omegaverse serial, Feral.
Please note: This series gets dark, and it gets dirty. If you don’t enjoy your romance scorching and your alphas rough & dominant, give this book a pass.
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1
Lillian
Everything hurt.
Every muscle in my body, but especially the back of my neck and between my legs, ached, and I was so exhausted all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep until the pain went away.
But a furious growl rolled like thunder around me, and an urgent twang from behind my ribs made instincts buried somewhere in the fog of my brain fight against the yearning for sleep.
“Jesus fuck, tranq the sonuvabitch again so we can check he didn’t injure her! She’s barely conscious,” someone rasped from far away. It sounded familiar and made my hackles raise. I groaned in protest and tried to shake my head clear of the fog, even if my eyelids refused to open.
I moaned in agony at the sharp pang in my neck, which was immediately followed by a roar and the unmistakable sounds of flesh hitting something hard. Groans of pain followed.
The panic in my chest finally made me force my eyes open, and I saw the blurry outline of a huge, naked alpha fighting against men with metal rods. They were shocking him with the ends of the rods, but he kept fighting and snarling, eyes locked on me.
I whimpered in panic as my chest constricted. He couldn’t get hurt—he couldn’t—
Three darts bored into the alpha’s neck. His next roar came out as a groan—and then he sank to the floor in a heap.
“No!” I croaked.
A small jab at the side of my neck was the only response to my distress—and then everything turned black.
The next time consciousness returned to my fuzzy head, it wasn’t the delicate ache in my body that first presented itself. No, it was a weird sensation in my chest, somewhere behind my ribs. As if something was hooked there, tethering me.
Only then did I notice the heavy warmth cocooning me from all sides, pressing me down against a sparsely cushioned surface. It was all-pervasive and penetrated deep into my muscles, easing the tension in them.
I twitched, the tether in my chest giving an odd lurch, almost as if it were alive somehow, my eyes popping open with a start. What the hell—?
A rumbling vibrated through me from the heavy mass resting against my back, followed by strong bands of warmth clamping tighter around my body until I couldn’t move my limbs.
Trapped.
I fought against the pressure keeping me down, disorientation and panic starting to set in as the tether in my chest lurched again.
Something flesh-colored maybe three inches from my face blocked my vision of my surroundings, but I could make out the surface I was getting pressed into—a bare mattress.
Another low rumble rippled by my ear—a scolding noise—and the weight on top of me shifted a little before teeth clamped shut around the back of my neck, making my body go lax without my consent.
That was when everything that’d happened last night came back to me.
351.
351 was wrapped around my back, pressing me into a mattress.
I wanted to shout at him to get off me, but his jaws around my neck made it come out as a pathetic whimper instead.
The alpha snarled, a questioning note to it this time, and somehow I knew he was checking if I’d calmed down.
I drew in a shuddering breath, but the panic in my brain was well and truly gone, washed away in the rush of endorphins his bite had released.
“Please. Let go,” I whispered. “It hurts.”
It did—pangs of tenderness radiated from where his teeth were still locked against my skin. He was aggravating the wound from last night, I dimly realized. Where he’d bitten me after he knotted me.
He’d broken the skin…
He’d… he’d put a claiming mark on me! I was his… mate!
My brain tried to push another panic attack on me at that particular thought, but the alpha’s bite didn’t allow it to. Thanks to the trigger points he’d clamped, I was forced to accept the grim reality of what had happened to me.
Flashes of the brutal mating, of my forced heat, and Dr. Axell’s lewd delight as he watched us made their way to the forefront of my mind, and I finally became aware of the dull throbbing between my legs, the conclusive proof that this wasn’t all some horrid nightmare.
351, perhaps sensing my horror as everything came back to me in vivid detail, finally released my neck and instead dragged his tongue over the impressions of his teeth in slow, languid licks.
I tensed against the expected pain, but it didn’t agitate my wound. Instead, it felt… oddly soothing.
The tether in my chest hummed pleasantly, as if in agreement. And then the most calming sound I’d ever heard reverberated from him, through my back, and into the length of my body. It penetrated my very bones, liquefying my muscles and shielding my psyche from the trauma creeping in. I had no idea why, but something about that sound blanketed me in bliss, as if… as if it was somehow connected to my very soul. It wasn’t anything like his other growls. It was softer. Gentler. Almost like… like a purr.
I blinked dazedly at the mattress when some faraway part of my mind still capable of analysis put the pieces together. It was a purr. An alpha purr. The sound they would produce for their mates and offspring in their most private, intimate moments.
And he was doing it for me.
I lay underneath the feral alpha as he licked my nape and purred for me, letting him soothe me into a state of complete and utter peace. He was so warm and strong on top of me, shielding and protecting me. Some faraway part of my mind understood that the vibrations of his purr were lulling me into accepting my situation, that he was forcing a biological response from my body I had no way of controlling. But right then, I truly didn’t care. He was warm and strong and would care for me, and I’d never felt better or more relaxed in my entire life. So I closed my eyes and let my mind wander, content to pretend everything was okay for as long as I could.
* * *
It lasted until the pressure in my bladder f
inally became too great to bear.
I forced my eyelids open again, the fuzzy sensation of true calm making it hard to do, and poked 351’s arm. “You need to move.”
Only a small octave change in his purr let me know he’d even heard me, because he didn’t move so much as a muscle.
“Seriously.” I pushed at his arm again, squirming to get free. “I need to pee. Please, get up.”
His purr cut off with an annoyed huff, but he rolled off me just enough that I could scramble up into a seated position.
The loss of his body heat made me shiver in the comparatively frigid air, but I was too desperate to care much. “Where’s the bathr—”
Which was when I remembered where we were… and what the facilities were like.
I stared at the stainless steel toilet bowl attached to the back wall of 351’s cell. Then I looked at him.
He was resting on his side on the mattress, blue gaze not so much as hinting that he understood—or cared about—my current dilemma.
I glanced back at the toilet. “Uh… Could you… turn around, please?”
351 didn’t respond, and when I looked back at him, he was just staring at me as if I’d not said anything.
Too desperate to wait until the alpha got my intentions through his thick skull, I got up and walked to the toilet, praying he would have enough civility left to do the decent thing and look away when a lady was about to pop a squat in his cell.
One glance back in his direction told me I had no such luck.
“Seriously, turn around!” I hissed, any vestiges of my previous calm dissipating at the prospect of having a captive audience for this.
351 growled, a disapproving frown marring his forehead.
“Ugh, just…” I bit my lip to stop myself from yelling at him—from the look on his face, he was moments away from reasserting his dominance over the disrespectful female making demands of him.
Deciding against testing him, I drew in a deep breath and—studiously avoiding his green-blue gaze—did my business as quickly as I could.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been mortifying, in light of what else I’d been made to do in front of an audience lately, but it was. Something about squatting over a steel toilet bowl in the corner of a cell drove home the inhumanity of my situation, and 351’s unconcerned stare didn’t help.
I was truly a test subject now, no better than an animal in the eyes of my captors.
No better than the alpha whose very humanity they’d stolen.
I didn’t return to him on the mattress after. Now that he’d stopped purring, there was nothing preventing the harsh reality of my situation from settling in full-force. Despite goosebumps spreading on my skin without his body heat to keep me warm, I skirted the mattress and went over to the bars to peer out, keeping my arms across my chest and pelvis to preserve just a modicum of modesty.
Not that anyone was there. The lab was desolate. Because it was the weekend, I realized. They’d all gone home to their families and hobbies, to get refreshed for the next work week, leaving the lab rats behind.
I shuddered and steadied myself against the bars as memories of doing the same came rushing back. I’d gone home night after night to my apartment, to make dinner and unwind with a silly TV show. And all the while, people had been imprisoned here. Like animals.
I glanced over my shoulder as the feral alpha got up and walked over to me, perhaps sensing my distress again.
“Can you talk?” I asked, biting my lip when he wrapped an arm around my midsection and pulled me back against him. His heat was comforting, but right then, I’d have given anything to just be able to talk with him. Discuss what we’d been through—to feel even halfway human again.
His only response was to nuzzle at the bite mark at my neck, an unmistakably possessive growl rising in his chest.
There was nothing human about him right now.
I swallowed thickly to push back the tears stinging in my eyes.
“Don’t bother. We gave him a double dose while you were both knocked out—to ensure the claiming takes good and proper.”
I jolted at the unexpected voice, but only managed to catch a glimpse of Dr. Urwin as he sauntered up to the bars, because 351 ripped me behind him with a furious snarl.
“He won’t be able to form words for at least twelve more hours. May I suggest you don’t agitate him in the meantime? He’ll be deep in his instincts, and a newly mated alpha can get quite assertive with his female until he’s certain she has submitted to him fully.”
351 growled, releasing his grip on me so he could pace in front of the bars, keeping his body between me and our captor without ever taking his eyes off him. His every aggressive move underscored Dr. Urwin’s point.
“What are you going to do to us?” I managed, despite my throat feeling too tight to produce words.
“We will continue with the next stage of our research,” he said with infuriating calm. “We need to know what demands we can put on him now that he has a mate he’ll want to keep safe, and which trigger points will be most efficient in ensuring his compliance.”
“So you’ll torture us.”
“No, not torture. Whatever you may think, this is a scientific study. We will provide stressors and stimuli, true, but for a much higher purpose than something as base as commonplace torture. We are truly grateful to you, Lillian—without your suggestion that creating a pair-bond requires more than just physical attraction, we would not have had this opportunity.” He sounded like his regular self, absorbed in his study—as if I was still capable of discussing scientific method after everything they’d done to me.
“You won’t get away with this.”
Dr. Urwin regarded me coolly. “There’s nothing to get away with. You signed yourself over to this study willingly, if you remember, just like all the other women. And thanks to you, we have a breakthrough that will improve the nation’s defense. You will be with us until your death, Lillian. I appreciate it will take some time for you to acclimate to your new life, but I suggest you try to do so as quickly as possible. Most women eventually find contentment with the alpha who has claimed them. Perhaps, despite the circumstances, you will too.”
“Do you think I’ve forgotten what you said to me?” I hissed. “What you did?” How dare he try to pretend he hadn’t said horrible things to me while he’d rubbed me between my legs? As if he could fool me into believing he was nothing more than a scientist, and I his willing test subject. Nothing about last night had been professional.
“Ah. Yes. I admit, we did not expect success from your mating.” He gave me a thin smile past 351’s shoulder as the alpha stalked between us, growling a low, continuous threat. “But since it did… it is only prudent that you be treated in the same manner as our other test subjects.”
“How comforting.” I hadn’t forgotten 351’s deep lash marks, or Gloria huddled on the mattress in her cell.
“May I suggest you spend the weekend coming to terms with things? Monday we will have more tests for you both, and they will be best faced with a refreshed mind.” Dr. Urwin snapped open a slot in the door, and I only noticed the tray of food he’d brought when he pushed it through. “You both slept through the earlier feedings, so I have increased your evening portions. Try not to make it a habit—we don’t usually coddle our test subjects.”
Feedings.
He truly saw us as lab rats.
“Enjoy your night, Lillian.”
I stared at his back as he walked away from the cell, until the angle of the bars didn’t allow me to see further.
Only when he was completely out of sight did 351 lower his hackles and turn his attention to the food.
It looked like a hefty portion of some form of stew, and next to it was an empty plastic cup.
351 took the tray and placed it next to the mattress. He grabbed the cup, along with one he had stashed by the concrete wall, went over to the small stainless steel sink next to the toilet, and filled both.
I w
atched him quietly as he set up, surprised he remembered the function of such things and that he was setting a place for me as well, a gesture made all the more clear when he finally crouched next to the tray of food and looked up at me expectantly.
A small part of my mind was too busy having a breakdown to contemplate such things as food, but the larger—and more rational part—was starving.
“So we’re just gonna sit here, butt-naked, and eat stew with our hands, then?” I said as I reluctantly knelt down on the mattress by his side. “But I guess this isn’t the sort of establishment to provide silverware, huh?” Or pants.
I drew in a deep breath as I looked at the food. It didn’t smell overly appealing, and I wasn’t keen on lowering my arms from my naked body to start eating with my fingers… but then, I’d already had to pee while being ogled like a zoo exhibit, so what did it matter if he saw my breasts while I ate? It was quite clear that the sooner I gave up on my dreams of humane treatment, the sooner I’d be able to get my bearings back and perhaps try to find a way out of this mess.
Only that thought—the faint hope that I’d be able to find a way out somehow—allowed me to push down the panic attack that kept trying to take over. With a deep breath, I moved my hand from my chest and reached for the tray.
351’s immediate growl made me snap it back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—do you want to eat first?”
He huffed as if irritated with my question and reached for the food himself. Only instead of scooping it to his own mouth, he offered me not only his now food-laden fingers, but also the first bite.
“No, that’s okay, I can eat on my—” Another growl, angrier this time, shut me right up. I glanced up at him and gulped at the impatience painted across his ruthlessly handsome face.