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

  Slowing her pace and cleaning him thoroughly was one of the hardest things she'd ever done in her life, but she did it and was as proud of herself as she'd ever been for the accomplishment. It she could get through that, she could bear anything he threw at her this evening, at least until she could escape.

  It would be hard to leave the relative safety of this place and all of that lovely food, but she couldn't risk being found out. Even staying until this evening was pushing it, she realized.

  But not all of it was horrid. She enjoyed washing his hair, and he seemed to like her efforts, also, if his deep rumblings were to be believed. Then she got to pour water over his head to rinse him off, which was another high point. It almost made up for the spanking he'd given her, but not quite.

  When he stood, naked as the day he was born, water sluicing down every excruciatingly delineated muscle and plane of his body, she busied herself with putting the accoutrement away, before doing as he asked and unfolding the bath sheet, which was made of an even more luxurious material than she had ever known existed.

  As she hid behind the towel as much as possible, instead of looking at him, she simply traced it over his body, getting him as dry as possible without ever having to actually come into contact with him—even though he required that she dry all of him, just as he'd required that she wash all of him.

  The drying was easier. She could be brusquer without incurring his wrath.

  When she was done, she helped him don a robe that was belted around his impossibly thick but trim middle, hiding the evidence of his gender from her and making her feel much more relaxed.

  "Not bad for a first attempt, boy."

  Olly basked in some of the first praise she'd ever heard, and she was already of a mind that he wasn't that easy to please, so it meant that much more.

  But then, as she turned away to hang up the towel to dry on one of the ropes that held the tent up, she almost fell off the chair when she heard him give an order that she knew she couldn't obey.

  "Your turn."

  Her heart—and still full stomach—froze painfully in place. Any bit of relaxation she had begun to feel vanished as if it had never been, and she was back to shaking so fiercely that she could barely stand up, such that she got down off the chair immediately lest she fall off it.

  Olly figured it couldn't hurt to try to talk her way out of it.

  "No, thank you, Sir."

  He stopped on his way to his desk and turned back to her.

  Perhaps, if she had simply gone along and tried to shield herself from him as much as possible during the process, she could have gotten away with it. Surely, he wasn't going to want to bathe her! But it was too late for that now. She'd gone and called attention to her own reluctance to take a bath.

  "It wasn't a request, Olly. You smell like you've never taken a bath in your life, and I find it offensive. So, you will take a bath after me, which you will do every time I bathe without fail. Am I making myself clear, boy?"

  He hadn't raised his voice, but it had such a hard, unforgiving edge to it that she felt as if he'd take his hand to her behind again.

  But it was more than that. Large, unfamiliar parts of her wanted to obey him. She'd never felt like that around anyone before. She'd lost good living conditions on more than one occasion because she refused to bow down to the leader, preferring to go it on her own than be degraded by or submitting to anyone else, such that she'd eventually stopped trying to join groups, partly for that reason, and partly because she knew that she would likely remain undiscovered for longer, the fewer people she was close to.

  She had yet to answer him, standing there defiantly with her back to him.

  Garron took a step toward her. Usually, that was all it took to get a boy of any intelligence to obey him—just the threat of a punishment. She'd had a small taste of what it was like to be spanked by him, and that was often more than enough for most boys to do pretty much anything they could to avoid earning anything worse than that. But this one—who was smaller, slimmer, and more delicate than any other boy he'd had—stood there, motionless, as he walked toward him.

  Only, the closer he got, the more he realized that he was far from motionless. He was trembling so badly, Garron was surprised the boy could still manage to remain standing. That was no excuse for disobedience, however, so as he got closer to him, he reached out and grabbed the neckline of the ragged, dirty tunic he wore and rent it in one obscenely easy motion, repeating the motion with his ill-fitting pants. Both garments—that were both ridiculously big on him—floated to the floor, revealing his nakedness.

  And as Garron watched from behind as the boy hugged himself, his eyes narrowed as he looked him up and down, taking in the slight flare of his hips and the lack of breadth and musculature around his shoulders as the sound of high pitched sobs reached his ears.

  But mostly, without the fetidly soiled and bloody covering, there was no mistaking her scent, which easily overwhelmed any of her less attractive smells. Stunned, he reached out and wrapped his fingers around a frail, thin upper arm, turning the "boy" slowly around to face him.

  Olly tried to fight him, but it was a useless waste of energy on her part, and she ended up exactly where she least wanted to be —standing utterly naked in front of him, arms crossed mostly over her breasts, one arm extending down to cover her mons as she cowered and physically caved in on herself.

  "Bloody Hell, you're an unbonded omega!" he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.

  As soon as he said the words, something in him awakened that had never come to life before, and it did so now with an uncontrollable roar, making his entire body ache for her in the most unbearable, wholly unavoidable way. He felt as if he'd been hit—hell, rolled over—by one of his own tanks. He lost all reason, all ability to think, succumbing to a desire that had been ruthlessly suppressed for much too long, having gone from not caring in the least about omegas and their supposed allure to desperately wanting to make this one his and his alone.

  There was only one way to achieve his goal, and that was getting her beneath him as quickly as possible.

  Her screamed, "No!" as he reached for her was smothered into oblivion when his mouth descended on hers, robbing her of her breath while his arms contracted and crushed her against him.

  There was no hope of escape, not that she didn't try, at least until he adjusted his embrace such that she could no longer move, could no longer even pretend that she could fend off his advances in the least.

  She was caught—in just the way she least wanted to be, in the way she'd been trying to avoid since she became sentient enough to realize how much danger she was in by merely existing.

  But surprisingly, that wasn't the worst of her problems, and that realization was what hit her hardest.

  No, he was a problem, all right, but there was another—bigger—one brewing that loomed even larger, and that was the enemy from within.

  She'd never been interested in having any kind of relationship with a man—certainly none of the ones she'd encountered in her life. She'd never felt the kind of urges other women seemed to have and was just as happy that she hadn't. It made her life so much easier not to want anything from any man, not to feel that tug or pull toward anyone.

  All they did was complicate things, from what she could see by watching other women and how they were treated—omegas in particular. They might be rare and precious, but they certainly weren't treated like that, as far as she could tell. They were treated like objects or commodities, or worse, brood mares, by their Alphas.

  And she would never be able to settle for that. She'd take herself out of this sick, filthy world long before that happened.

  But the moment his mouth found hers and he pulled her against him with almost bone cracking tightness, a spark came alive low in her belly, a deep, hot ache travelling from there north and south, to her breasts and her crotch, spreading that undeniable, uncontrollable need throughout her entire body and even into her brain.

  Sh
e would swear she could feel her conveniently small breasts swelling, tips tightening as if inviting his mouth to find them and suckle hard, which was exactly what he did when his lips left hers.

  She was so small that he could manhandle her easily, arranging her the way he wanted her like a doll, without consulting her in the least. Garron bent her back over his arm, forcing her breasts into an embarrassing prominence—despite their small size—that had every inch of her flesh flushing hotly as she tried to take control of her body again and fight against the both of them.

  Her hand actually came up to press against the first flat, plate sized chest muscle it came in contact with, but after a second of futile pushing, Olly felt his hot, wet mouth close over a helplessly displayed nipple, and he began to suckle strongly.

  A screaming groan clogged her throat, and she threw her head back as a wave of painful pleasure ripped through her, but she refused to give voice to it. She might not be able to protest what was happening to her in big ways against his greater strength and size, but she would do what she could to defy it—and him.

  It was going to be precious little, she knew, but at least it would be something.

  The fact that she was already panting made it that much harder to contain, but she closed her mouth and clenched her teeth together fit to break them.

  The same impulse nearly overwhelmed her when he switched nipples, licking and sucking his way across the small valley between them then up the next slope to capture the as yet untouched bud.

  Olly'd had no idea this kind of ecstasy existed in life. She'd known but not really come to grips with the truth of his accusation, and that was the only thing that would account for the level of unfulfilled bliss that was taking over her body, crowding out rational thought and reason and replacing it with carnal desires that were terrifying in their scope. She'd never wanted any man to do to her what she would gladly die trying to get him to do to her.

  The last dregs of her rational mind called out against being stripped to the basest core of herself. She was unable to deny her body's wants and needs, left largely unable to think or reason, condemned to live a life with periods of forced sexuality, when neither her body nor her mind were her own, but rather, her Alpha's, to do with as he pleased.

  And what he would please would be to keep her naked and bound to him and preferably full of his babies, bred at every possible opportunity for days on end during a heat, kept confined and cloistered, lest she drive men to fight him to the death for a chance to breed her themselves.

  As if her thought had been his, Garron paused and listened, hearing restless movements of men that hadn't been there before.

  "Commander, is everything all right?" someone asked from outside the tent.

  That prompted him to jerk himself roughly away from her no matter how much it killed him to do so, turning back to threaten sharply, "Don't move."

  As much as she wanted to run screaming from the tent when he turned his back to her, if what he thought was true and he had awakened the omega within her, there would no longer be anywhere that she was truly safe.

  Chapter 3

  Still shell-shocked from this catastrophic, unexpected—and unwanted—change, she barely paid any attention to him as he set about moving the braziers that had been placed strategically around the room to various points that were closer to the walls, parking one in front of the flap of the tent, too.

  Then he crossed to his chest of drawers and took out a packet of something he sprinkled generously into the fire, changing the color of the flames from orange to green.

  "Yes, Sergeant?" he asked, taking up his previous position in front of the entrance, his broadsword already in hand, just in case he didn't get the response he expected.

  There was a little delay before they heard his answer. "Nothing, Sir. I'm sorry to disturb you."

  "See that you don't—and that you don't allow anyone else to, either, Sergeant."

  The strict, stern tenor of his voice made her shiver all over again, her trembling and shaking having gotten lost in the lust he was inciting within her.

  "Yes, Sir."

  Still, when he turned back, she was headed toward the small flap at the back of the tent, but he caught her before she could make it out—and it was a good thing, too. Without the protection that he was providing her, via that herb he had discovered that could neutralize an omega's scent, she would have been descended upon by a pack of Alpha wolves in the form of his troops, each intent on killing the other and getting to her. In their single-minded attempts to claim any part of her, she would have been torn asunder.

  The thought filled him with such a dread that he tucked her under his arm like a sack of grain and brought her to an old sawhorse that had seen better days. There he threw her over it, tying her before she got a chance to move—wrist and ankle—to its legs, rendering her largely immobile. After that, he opened a trunk that rested between her pallet and his enormous bed. "Do you know what would happen to you if you left this tent, Olly?"

  Distracted, he asked her another question on his way back to stand by her side. "Is that your real name?"

  On seeing him there, she began to sob as she pulled uselessly—convulsively—at her bonds, unable to stop herself from doing so. "Ollyah."

  He merely nodded, casually slapping the wooden implement he'd retrieved against his palm, each resounding crack causing her to cringe visibly, although he paid her no heed. It would have been more notable to him if she hadn't acted scared at the prospect of being punished by him.

  "Answer me, b—woman," he roared, squatting down by her head.

  Since she'd been avoiding looking at him this entire evening—especially when she had been bathing him, which he now understood her reluctance about—it startled him a bit when she turned her head and met his eyes full on to deliver her reply.

  "Yes. I would be killed."

  Her matter of fact answer, delivered in a monotone, gave his first ever taste of stark fear—his mouth went dry, his palm was sweaty, and his heart banged away in his chest. He'd never really been afraid of anything. He'd had a goal and a plan for his life since as long back as he could remember, and he did his best to accept whatever happened to him in pursuit of that goal.

  But this was a twist he had never been expecting, and he was amazed to realize that the mere thought of her being in such danger felt like a sledgehammer to the gut. He was literally on the verge of losing his dinner, and that only made him angrier—and even more terrified—that she didn't seem to care whether she was alive or dead.

  Garron wasn't at all sure how to deal with her response. It wasn't that he hadn't seen that kind of fatalistic resignation in people before—he'd seen it more often than not, even in his own soldiers.

  But she was something rare and priceless and special, and he hadn't expected that she truly didn't care much about what happened to her.

  Not that it was going to deter him from disciplining her for attempting to leave. She might not give a damn about herself, but she was his, and he jealously guarded what he owned. He hadn't even had her yet and he was already more than willing to die to keep her with him.

  And he was going to make sure she knew that any attempt to put herself in harm's way—in any possible iteration thereof—was going to land her here, on the receiving end of a very painful lesson.

  Before he rose, he caught her chin as she continued to stare, blank eyed, at him.

  "You are mine, and if you should, at any time, incur so much as a hangnail in the naughty pursuit of disobeying me in any way, you will come to regret it, such as you are going to come to regret trying to leave me a few seconds ago. And," he continued, rising to stand slightly to one side of her, placing a big hand on the small of her back while resting the hard wooden paddle up against a backside that was still red and tingling from her previous spanking, "if you make me have to come and get you—which would inevitably result in the death of who knows how many of my troops, and land you right back here, anyway, I promise you
that—I shall punish you every night for as many nights in a row as I have lost men."

  With that, he said nothing more, letting the paddle speak for him. And he didn't descend on her in a flurry of ill timed, badly aimed swats that ended quickly, either, as she may have hoped.

  No, instead, he was downright evilly methodical. The commander took his time delivering each and every blow, bringing the paddle cracking loudly down onto a rear end that was far from how rounded he envisioned it would be when she had been well fed for a while, and waiting a beat or two between each stroke for its effects to set in.

  And set in they did, viciously so. The paddle was of a size such that it covered almost all of her bottom with every descent, so within the first few strokes, almost every part of her bottom was being painfully ignited every single time unyielding wood met vulnerable flesh.

  It wasn't just her rump that he set fire to, though. He marched that paddle up and down the backs of her thighs, too, but most of the resulting wicked snaps of his wrist landed on her bum.

  Olly screamed almost from the first swat, futilely trying to dance away from her punishment, but unable to move so much as an inch. Just so that she didn't attract any unwanted attention on any front—although he highly doubted that her screams were likely to stand out amongst those that inevitably occurred routinely in a camp such as this—he left her to fit a hunk of leather that had been wrapped in several layers of cloth that would absorb any sounds she made. Then he wrapped the ends around her head to tie it securely in the back.

  Then he relentlessly resumed his task.

  It wasn't just the bonds around her wrists and ankles, either, that prevented her from moving. It was the surprisingly intimate hand on her lower back that kept her in place, too, while setting that spot, and the even more private ones below it, on fire in a very different way.

  Her newly discovered libido hadn't cooled down in the least, before or during her punishment. In fact, she was horrified to realize that it was much more prominent while she was being paddled, her muffled screams occasionally sounding disturbingly more like moans.