The Omega Within (Alpha's Woman Book 5) Read online

  "Who's that you have there?" he asked casually.

  "Oh, a very scrawny boy. I was thinking he might do well as a mole. He wouldn't be anywhere near tough enough for you."

  "I'll be the judge of that, Mach. Let me see him."

  "Well, he's unconscious, Sir. And he's really small. I wouldn't want you to be unhappy with him."

  It was the other man's low, dominant, "Now," that she awoke to, but she remained loosely draped over the first man's arm—at least until the point at which she found herself planted on her feet, cheek being patted much less than gently in order to rouse her.

  Keeping a painful hold on her wrist and repeatedly ordering that she stay still, Mach tried to arrange the boy to the best advantage, but she did her best to wiggle and squirm away from him every time he reached out to touch her.

  Finally, he'd had enough, laying the back of his hand across her thin cheek so hard that it knocked her back against the wall of the tent, only to be carelessly tugged back into a standing position.

  Before he got a chance to manhandle her again, the commander advanced on them, an enormous hand landing on a thin shoulder as he corralled her away from Mach and to his side.

  "This one will do. Submit your fee through channels to be paid," he said curtly, ducking through the flap in the tent with his new boy in tow.

  But the expression on the other man's face had Mach very worried, his stomach knotting painfully. How could he have known that the commander would balk at him trying to knock some sense into the boy?

  He dragged his hand over his face, wondering if he would ever see the money he'd been promised. He wasn't at all sure that he had enough guts to ask for it—definitely not from him, but he wondered if the quartermaster might not take kindly to his request, either, if the commander poisoned his mind against him.

  Meanwhile, things for her had gone from bad to worse. Her incessant hunger had caused her to be lured away from the relative safety of her fellow scavengers, her cheek was sore, and her ear was ringing, and now she was being force marched in front of the largest man she had ever seen in her life.

  He was so much taller than she was that it hurt her neck to look up at him, and she only did so once. His expression was as foreboding as the rest of him, and all of that combined had her nearly shaking herself to death right in front of him.

  He hadn't taken his hand off her shoulder, using it to guide her somewhere she was quite sure she didn't want to go.

  They ended up at a tent that was only slightly larger than the others but was no more ornate in the least. It could have been any soldier's tent, consciously not marking it as the Supreme Commander's.

  It wasn't much more opulent inside, really—certainly not what she expected from a commander's tent. The bed was the biggest part of it, but then it would have to be larger than normal to accommodate him. There was a good-sized table and chairs to one side, as well as another smaller table that obviously served as a desk.

  It was almost disturbingly sparse. There were no trophies, no historical trinkets or curiosities from the Before Time, nothing that revealed much of anything about him, beyond a set of shelves on which there were more books than she had ever seen in her life.

  "What's your name, boy?" he asked, turning to address her once they were inside the tent together.

  She opened her mouth to speak but couldn't.

  "C'mon, c'mon, boy. As long as you obey me and behave, there's no reason for you to be afraid of me."

  She tried again, fear robbing her of her mind.

  "Ol—" she started to tell him her real name, then her sense of self-preservation came to the fore and she thought that it would probably go better for her if he continued to think that she was a boy for as long as was possible. "Olly." Her tone was as low and soft as she could make it. It helped that her throat was parched again and everything came out hoarsely, to say nothing of the fact that fear was constricting every muscle she owned.

  "Olly, you may call me 'Commander' or 'Sir'."

  "Yes, Sir," she replied.

  She thought she detected the hint of a smile on his face, but she figured she had imagined it. The big brute didn't look as if he smiled much, if at all.

  "Very good. You are to be my cabin boy. You'll help me dress, fetch and carry, look after my uniforms and clothes, keep the tent clean, empty my chamber pot, and do anything else that I ask you to do. Do you understand me?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "In return, you will have a small stipend, as well as my protection. You will sleep here, on this pallet at the foot of my bed, and you will eat whatever remains on my plate when I am done eating."

  She didn't know what a "stipend" was, but he was listing it with the other positives, so it must be something good, she was barely able to reason. "Yes, Sir."

  "How long has it been since you had a good meal?"

  That answer depended on whether or not she should consider the food that caused her to end up here a good meal, but she had just enough brain cells that weren't terrified into uselessness to answer, "A while."

  To her surprise, he nodded as if he understood starvation personally—which hardly seemed likely—then produced a platter heaped with food that had barely been touched and put it down on the table. "Have a seat. Eat your fill, but don't stuff yourself. Sometimes a stomach that's been empty for a while will become violently upset at the idea of being full, and I have no interest in smelling vomit this evening."

  She didn't have to be told twice. Ollyah dove into the meal with both hands, only to have the food abruptly smacked out of them. She nearly dove onto the floor to cram every last, precious morsel she could find there into her mouth, but she was kept in her seat with ridiculous ease. One hand was placed in her lap—where there was a scrap of material that was softer than anything she'd ever encountered—and the other given something metal with a round bowl on the end.

  "It's a spoon. Use it to eat instead of your hands. If I see you use your hands again, I'll punish you."

  She did not want to know what that might entail, so she ate—however awkwardly at first—with the spoon he had given her. It was ambrosia, every mouthful of it. She had to swallow down the small moans of pleasure that bubbled up in her throat that would definitely have made him suspicious of her gender.

  A small glass of something appeared near the plate, and she sucked it down. It was refilled by his own hand, but he held the glass there when she reached for it.

  "Slowly, boy. This isn't water. It's mead, and if you're not used to it, and especially on an empty stomach, you could find yourself getting drunk, which would also result in a punishment."

  Olly wondered if there was anything that wouldn't result in a punishment, but she wisely kept that question to herself.

  Garron puttered around, watching the boy eat and getting some small things done about the place. He preferred strict order to any kind of chaos—he got enough of that as a small boy, and then again when he was in the midst of battle—and liked things around him to be just so. There was a place for everything, his father had used to say, and everything in its place. That was something he would make sure his cabin boy knew.

  Long before she was full, he took the plate away from her. "You can have more later, if that stays down."

  Suppressing the urge to dive at the platter as her eyes were glued to him putting it away from her, on his desk, Olly replied, "Yes, Sir," gratified to see that the giant looked satisfied at that—at least for the moment.

  Chapter 2

  "Commander," someone announced from outside the tent flap.

  Olly immediately jumped up and hid beneath the table, causing the big man to, again, almost smile.

  "Come."

  She could see through the chair legs that a large cask was being brought in that she thought resembled one of the few caskets she'd seen, although it was about three times the size, so it had obviously been made to accommodate him.

  But why would he want a casket in his tent? She frowned.

&
nbsp; The two men who set it down on a small, very sturdy platform that extended out from around it a bit with a tall lip at the perimeter returned seconds later, each carrying two large pails of hot water. Olly could see the steam rising from them. Hot water wasn't an easy thing to come by.

  She knew he was a commander, but this had her wondering if he was the commander, Garron himself. He certainly fit the rumored descriptions of him that she'd heard—that he was a true giant of a man. That possibility set her to shivering again.

  She lost count as to how many of them it took to fill the cask to the required level, but they each made multiple trips back and forth from somewhere.

  "That's good, men. Return to your duties."

  She couldn't tell how full it was when he stopped them, and she ceased wondering when he called her name in the same tone in which he had spoken to his soldiers—one that assumed obedience.

  Wishing desperately that she could stay where she was, she nonetheless forced herself out of her little hidey hole, but not far. She was no longer beneath the table, but she remained near it, just in case. As if she was ever going to be able to get away from the likes of him.

  "Come here. You must undress me. I'll get into the tub, then you are to wash me."

  She was never more grateful to be looking at the ground. He wanted her to bathe him? How was she possibly going to do that?

  Still, her feet—which seemed to possess better sense than her head did at this point—began to move the rest of her toward him, even though the idea of being close to him terrified her. He towered over her—even from a distance—and the closer she drew to him, the more intimidatingly large he loomed.

  She'd never felt so small or insignificant, and she'd never once felt that she had much value in this world. Now she was quite sure that she wasn't worth a plug nickel—whatever that was. She was just one of the many poor, struggling hangers on who were doomed to a life where they barely got by, one day to the other.

  Whereas, this man held most of the power in their small world. He got things done. Maybe not good things, but he obviously affected change of one kind or another—he wasn't merely buffeted about by fate or circumstances as she had been all her life. He commanded respect simply because of his size, and he'd obviously put that to use, bettering his lot in life.

  Olly jumped when he reached for a chair, looking at her expectantly.

  "You'll have to use this if you're going to get me out of my pauldron."

  She didn't know if he was so patient with her because he could hear how the chair was shaking beneath her as she did as he instructed, mounting the chair. After much fumbling and direction from him, she was finally able to remove that part of his armor. But his voice was surprisingly soft when he spoke to her, even encouraging.

  That was until she was utterly defeated by the weight of the thing and it crashed loudly to the ground. Almost before it hit, he'd lifted a foot onto the bottom rung of the chair and tipped her over his knee.

  The ragged, dirty pants she wore were rudely hiked up to her hips, and she was given ten very hard, very sharp swats to her bare bottom, the searing pain of each of them knocking the wind from her lungs, such that she was left unable to give voice to any kind of protest or express her anguish, either. It was over before she knew it, and he was setting her back down on the chair.

  "Now the breastplate. It is even heavier, and it fastens here and here," he informed her, as if nothing unusual had happened.

  She might have been a child of the streets, and she knew that she had been extremely lucky, but no one had ever done any such thing to her, and Olly wasn't at all sure how to come to grips with any aspect of it—what he'd done, how it had made her feel, or the burning sting that made her backside throb in time with her rapid pulse, even afterward.

  "Pay attention, boy, or I will think you need a more thorough punishment. And don't drop it."

  Her "Yes, Sir," was barely above a whisper.

  It was a struggle to hold the enormous breastplate and get off the chair, but before she did, she turned it so that it was curved around her, which made it easier to hold. Then she felt her way down, knowing that, if she lost her balance, she would do her best to make certain that it landed on top of her. It might well kill her in the process, but that was very much a more preferable outcome as compared to having to endure another spanking.

  When she'd removed the last of the armor, which was actually a combination of stiff leather and metal—feeling weak from having to heft the weight of it and arrange it, per his specific directions, on the armor rack that stood in the corner of the room, out of the way—he stood there in a gambeson and leggings, looking at her expectantly.

  Olly bit her lip. She hadn't really thought about the fact that he was going to want her to completely undress him, but she gamely set about doing so. It wasn't as if she had a lot of choice in the matter.

  So, after quickly assessing the situation, she remounted the chair and pulled the tunic like garment off over his head, which was no small feat because of his height and size, but she gathered the material into her hands as much as possible, so that it was less ungainly to handle. Still, she could barely do so and couldn't get it off his raised arms.

  When he brought them down in front of him instead, she was able to peel it off, folding it neatly as instructed and putting it in a leather bag near the armor rack.

  When she returned, he was standing there in nothing but his leggings and boots.

  The boots came off first, with him sitting on her chair and her taking each of his feet between her legs in turn. He commenced to push his other foot against her bottom as she held onto his boot, and they came off—but not without literally shooting her across the room.

  He issued one curt chuckle at that, although she was not at all amused, nor was she much interested in repeating the event, but she still positioned his other foot where she knew it needed to be.

  This time, he curbed his strength, and although she did stumble forward, she didn't end up with her face in the side of the tent.

  The enormous boots—that were also almost too heavy for her to carry—ended up in front of the rack.

  "This'll become easier for you as you put some weight on and grow."

  Olly said nothing, merely standing a little away from him, desperately wishing she didn't have to do the next, inevitable part.

  "Leggings, boy, and then I'll get into the tub. Quickly, now. I like my water to be very, very hot."

  "Yes, Sir," she whispered, wondering from which side she should approach the problem. She ended up standing behind him and pulling them down over his behind, reaching around him as far as she could to pull down the front—while avoiding touching him as much as possible.

  She kept her eyes on his feet, watching him step out of them before she scooped them off the floor and put them in another leather bag.

  Olly could hear the water sloshing as he got into the tub. "You will be responsible for the care of my armor. It should be polished frequently to prevent rust, and the leather must be supple in order for me to move easily. You will wash all of my clothes, too, as well as tidying up in here when necessary."

  Then he rumbled from behind her, "And, of course, you'll wash me."

  She began walking reluctantly toward him, until he mentioned casually, "Bring the chair. You'll need it to get to my hair."

  She'd barely ever washed herself, and when she did, it wasn't in a tub and the water was usually ice cold—and definitely rarely washed her hair—but now she was responsible for providing both of those services to a giant.

  If she could live through it, if she didn't die of embarrassment, or, much worse than that, do something that gave away the fact that she wasn't the boy he thought she was.

  Olly already knew that the only thing she could do was to try to survive tonight and then try to escape, somehow. But for the moment, she had no choice but to tackle the task in front of her.

  She took about as much time as she thought she could without
incurring his wrath getting herself and the chair over to him. Luckily, he just seemed to be leaning back against the end of the tub, relaxing.

  Maybe this wasn't going to be as bad as she thought it was.

  But she'd never seen a naked man up close before, and she wasn't at all prepared for the sight of him as she stood next to the tub, not needing the chair quite yet.

  "Washcloths and soap are on the dresser."

  Olly couldn't resist the urge to smell the soap—she'd heard that there had been such things as scented soaps long ago. Unfortunately—but not surprisingly—his didn't smell of anything in particular.

  But it was the first time she'd seen soap, too. On the rare occasions when she'd bathed, she usually used sand mixed with a small amount of precious water to abrasively clean her skin, although the condition of most of the water that was available to her made her just as happy to remain dirty.

  Trying not to delight too obviously in the suds, she used the wash cloth happily as a barrier between her hand and his skin, forcing her mind to consider that he was a beast she was washing—an animal rather than a human, which wasn't much of a reach—in order to divorce herself from the embarrassment she was feeling at having to touch him like this.

  But she was diligent and tried to be as organized and systematic as possible.

  Still, the inevitable happened when she'd washed everywhere else—except his hair—but for the parts of him that were most male.

  And he was no longer being particularly patient with her, either.

  "All of me, Olly," he ordered sharply. "There should be no shame about such things between two men."

  Biting her lip and looking anywhere but where her hands were, she plunged her cloth covered hand below the water to the area between his legs, grabbing onto the first thing her hand touched and scrubbing firmly up and down, then reaching lower to squeeze his balls.

  "Not so hard and fast—there's going to be nothing left! And stop squeezing!" he yelled, pushing her away from him and nearly off the chair. "Would you want to be handled like that, boy?"

  Her face scarlet, she mumbled, "No, Sir."