Moon captive alphas, p.1
Moon: Captive Alphas, page 1
MOON
CAPTIVE ALPHAS
by
Wendy Rathbone
Moon: Captive Alphas Copyright © May 2021 by Wendy Rathbone
TITLE: Moon: Captive Alphas
Author: Wendy Rathbone
Cover by: Wendy Rathbone
© All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced wholly or in part without prior written permission from the publisher and author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages. Neither may any section of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or other, without prior written permission from the author, except as exempted by legitimate purchase through the author's website, Amazon.com or other authorized retailer.
Address all inquiries to the author at:
wrathbone@juno.com
FOR DELLA
always and forever
every star in my sky shines for you
Chapter One
Moon
Somewhere close by, an omega was in heat.
Full moonlight poked through the bars of my high square window, sending bluish striped shadows across the white tile floor.
I pushed my gold comforter away from my body and slid out of bed. Beyond my barred door, down the hallway, the expected footsteps echoed like sharp raps on a toy drum. I’d once had a toy like that when I was four years old. I loved to pound on it and drive my adopted beta parents crazy until they finally took it away. Later, the world took away far more from me than my favorite musical instrument.
I stood at my locked entryway, looking out through the bars. Darkness sparked by a sconce light ten feet away greeted me. My closest neighbor in the cell next door was an alpha named Cold. Silence came from that direction, but I knew he was awake. Who could sleep when omega scent wafted pure and clear on the still air like a tantalizing meal to a starving man?
Everything usually smelled antiseptic on this floor, cold and clean and empty. But an omega in heat painted the air with cotton candy scent, sweet and full of pheromones that kicked my alpha hormones into high gear.
Counting myself, there were five alphas on this floor. There had been six, but last week Endon had been taken away.
Eight betas had come to oversee the event. Betas made every law and decision in the world. That meant when things went wrong, they had to launch in-depth investigations, and they tended to crowd together and pontificate a lot.
Endon had left with them, silent and still and very much un-alive. The betas had carried the stretcher past my door, wordless, quick-walking, eyes averted, all pretending they did not see me.
It was a major tragedy on all levels of our culture when an alpha died. We comprised about five percent of the population and that number was slightly decreasing with every generation. Future projections stated if things continued this way, the population would decline to half its current numbers in less than a century.
How Endon had done it, I didn’t know. But whispers about his suicide were kept hushed and low so I couldn’t pick up on what was said. I was angry and curious. If Endon’s way out had been clever and painless, maybe one day I’d be brave enough to try the same.
The scent of the omega heat strengthened, full of sugar, full of dreams. I could practically taste the sweetness of him on my tongue, and feel against my skin the promise of his burning touch.
But that was just a fantasy. For me, omegas were mysterious and scary. I knew it was ridiculous, me being a large sized alpha, but the idea of meeting a real omega was intimidating. I’d only ever seen them as a child, and only on rare occasions, sometimes walking about town pregnant and elegantly dressed.
I had no idea back then that I would present as alpha, with my body consumed in longing at the scent of one of those omegas in heat.
Right now, the yearning and emotional part of me set aside my fears and hoped I’d get to finally see one, touch him, pull him to me as instinct craved to consume his fiery suffering with my own responding dance. But here in the hall of fallen alpha kings, it would never be. That was not the way our current world worked.
The footsteps in the hall drummed louder.
It was me the betas were coming for. The full moon glowed tonight. My time. For unknown reasons, my hormonal waves cycled on a schedule, moon to moon, and for three days my potency rate was highest. My sperm was coveted always, but on this night it would contain ten times as many swimmers per part. When omegas were induced to release more than one egg at once, my sperm insured twins, even triplets.
I prowled back and forth before my prison door. My breaths pushed hard through my nose and throat. In and out. A turbulent succession of hisses.
The scent they were using—whether real or not, I didn’t know—made me furious and extra-horny at the same time.
I paced faster. My lungs filled. I panted until I saw flashing lights at the edges of my vision.
My cock, naked beneath my robe, rose to full erection. Heavy between my legs, my balls swung. The robe was loose, but it felt all too constraining now. I wanted it shed and, despite my intimidation, nothing touching me except my imagining of the skin of the omega I could sense so close by.
It seemed to take forever for the footsteps to reach my door. As soon as I saw the two beta guards, my muscles tensed even as I surged forward, the nerves of my body programmed to respond in two different ways. I both craved and detested what was coming.
I recognized both guards. Wearing the black cloaks of the Hall of Alphas, their gray uniforms underneath were shadowed, their weapons and cuffs hidden.
Ragi was the taller, and usually more easy-going. His partner, not so much.
Dayon had trouble hiding his disgust, his disdain. We alphas were beneath him, he once told me. Didn’t matter that he was a beta. He was in charge and that was what counted in the end, no matter how much the populace valued what few alphas remained in existence.
They stopped at my door and I backed up a step.
Ragi took his cardkey out of his pocket and unlocked the little door set into the bars of my cage.
“Hands,” he ordered.
I put my hands through the opening and out of Ragi’s pocket came the cuffs. When my wrists were secured, I pulled them back in and Dayon took a second cardkey and unlocked the main switch. My door opened.
“Step out and stand,” said Dayon.
I knew the drill. I was no criminal. But strict protocols must be observed, all because they were afraid. Alphas were dangerous. Everyone knew it. We were taught that since we were kids. Because of alpha hormones, we tended to be brutish and big. Our physical strength and aggression was the stuff of legend. Supposedly. We were the reason our world had spent thousands of years at war, living in uncivilized packs with alphas ruling over their harems of submissive omegas and legions of sterile servant betas.
After the Beta Rebellion two centuries ago when they took over the ruling of every country, the world entered a golden age and was made a paradise. For betas.
For alphas, the world became a nightmare. From the day I’d been brought here upon my official presentation as an alpha, I had fought. I had been only fifteen at the time, and my fights back then were rude and verbal threats, nothing more. But as I grew bigger and stronger, I struggled against what was being done to me.
I was being punished for the past, a past I had nothing to do with.
The history I’d learned as a child told me that once alphas had been the princes of this world. The kings. The biggest, the strongest, the smartest. We were the only ones who could breed the omegas to perpetuate our species since betas, who made up about eighty percent of the population, were all sterile.
In history books all alphas were kings and ruled with a heavy hand. Millennia of war and strife led to endless battles. Violence and blood soaked the pack territories and country sides. The packs of old never knew peace. Precious omegas were fought over, bought and sold, made into commodities. Even today, in modern times, I saw no change to that. The only difference for omegas now was that betas, not alphas, held control over them.
Betas had once been the soldiers of the alphas, obedient slaves, always loyal to their pack leaders. But the Beta Rebellion changed all that.
Betas had organized. It took centuries, but they did it. Their majority in numbers assured they could win any coup against the alpha kings. In history books, front and center, were dramatic stories of how loyal soldiers and slaves turned on their beloved kings during the Beta Rebellion.
It was all to save lives, they said. Stop the bloodshed. End the wars.
Now in modern times, under beta rule, society flourished.
Tonight, two betas flanked me. Dayon stood behind me. Ragi at my front. Dayon kicked my legs apart. I gritted my teeth until my jaw ached. I would have lashed out in anger, snapping my leg back at him, had Ragi not held his Taser at the ready.
Dayon efficiently snapped chains to my ankles, lifting the hem of my robe without concern, without respect that I didn’t like to show any more skin than I had to outside my locked cell. He didn’t care that the humiliation soon to follow this ritual of taking me from my bed in the night never got easier for me.
While Ragi treated me decently, as a tool to finish the job he was hired to do, Dayon was different. He seemed to enjoy his work a little too much. He laughed at the most inappropriate of moments, and teased me about my prowess, for though the status of king remained an official label for all of us, we were completely powerless.
&nb sp; Modern rules insisted on overall respect for us, but the reality was completely different. There was no esteem for those who were outcast from society as unwanted or dangerous. And there was never respect for anyone who lived in a cage.
The hard floor pressed cold to the soles of my slipper-clad feet as the two betas led me away. The sconce lights glared a sickly yellow.
We passed by the five of my neighboring alphas’ cells. As I glanced through the bars of the first cell, Cold was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’d been taken for his duty earlier while I slept.
Moving by the next four cells, I saw three alphas sitting up in their beds sniffing the air, watching me pass. The last cell had held Endon. Before he died, he had turned nineteen. But he had looked younger, and always gave off an acrid bouquet of fear.
As we turned down another hall, I smelled pungent soap where janitors had recently mopped the corridor that led to the fleecing room.
I could still scent the omega somewhere nearby, his aroma heating and flushing the air, making my skin prickle and tingle. It was a trick. An enticement. A sham. Even if he was actually present, I would never get to see him. The betas would never allow it. I would never be able to fully understand his own unique craving and pain as I was meant to. As nature intended for us.
My muscles started to lock up and the betas beside me felt it. Each one grabbed me by an arm, one on either side of me, and began to force me toward the end of the corridor. The large door there had fancy wrought-iron grill-work on the front, and radiated a cool, yellow-pink light, as if the material of the door was somehow lit from within.
Despite the beauty of that entryway, I dug my heels in, the ankle chains rattling.
Dayon kicked the back of my leg.
Ragi had a more cerebral style of calming me. “Come along. There’s no need to call reinforcements, is there?”
They had radios cuffed to their wrists and cell phones on their belts. They could summon more guards in seconds.
The scent of the omega turned syrup-sweet, churning a hunger inside me I could not control.
Dayon laughed. “Come on, alphie, he’s right through that door. You want him, yeah? That cute little omega you can smell? You want to fuck him hard.”
A lie. Cruel words to engender a weird and false hope.
My cock wanted to believe, and stretched out against the satin of my robe. I wanted. I wanted.
My feet moved forward.
“Yeah, see?” Dayon teased. “He wants it, don’t’cha Moon-Moony-Moon?”
They never called us by our real names, only nicknames. Mine was Moon because of my potency schedule.
Out the corner of my eye, I saw Ragi scowl at Dayon’s bullying. But he said nothing.
Ragi opened the door and both guards dragged me over the threshold.
What greeted me was an omega-fragrant room with white walls and a few pretty potted plants in the corners. But none of that helped soften the sight of the cold, chrome appliances against three walls. Bright fluorescent lights came on overhead.
The cotton candy omega scent drifted on the air stronger inside this room, but there was no omega. There was never an omega. Only the tease and the trick.
“You love the fleecing room,” Dayon egged with his cruel voice. “Come on, admit it.”
Fleecing room. That’s the politically correct term betas used to describe it. What it really was was a milking room. This was where they gathered the semen of alphas to force-breed the omegas in heat.
About fifteen percent of the population tested as omega in their teens. Discounting the under-eighteens, or those too old to remain fertile, the actual omega breeding population of our species was eight or nine percent at best.
Betas controlled all breeding. It wasn’t easy. Alphas in captivity tended to die at a more rapid rate than other segments of our population. We did not live long and healthy lives no matter how well the betas fed us and saw to our material comforts. Some experts in social sciences believed it was because our natural violent and warring natures were stunted. But to me, the truth was simpler. Any animal kept in captivity becomes depressed and lethargic. Why would it be different for us? Still, the betas collected semen often and stored it in coldbanks to ensure the perpetuation of our lines.
Tonight, my pearly full moon liquid would not only be more potent, but also likely to throw alphas as well as omegas. Our world needed more of both.
Tonight they would pump me for hours, stimulating me with the fragrance of that hidden omega in heat.
Ragi and Dayon took me to the center of the white room and began separating the Velcro that held my robe’s sleeves. The garment was designed as two pieces, allowing them to disrobe me without unlocking my chains and cuffs.
I shivered even though my skin glowed fever-hot.
Dayon tugged on the two pieces of my robe with a sinister chuckle, making me growl.
I saw Ragi give him a hard eye-roll. “I got it.” Ragi stepped in front of his rude partner.
Ragi’s hands were gentle and barely touched me as he undid the Velcro on the sides and gently pulled the cloth away from my thighs.
Now I stood naked and erect before them. All I was allowed to keep on were my slippers. With time, the humiliation became easier to withstand. If I’d been born two hundred years ago as a king, these two would be my loyal servants or soldiers. If they disrespected me or betrayed me in any way, I could have had them killed with a single gesture of dismissal.
Instead, here I stood. Naked, exposed, tricked into arousal and utterly powerless.
This was my life and identity. Not a real king. Nothing more than alpha breeding stock.
Chapter Two
Kaydi
“Mama, it’s a castle! Can we go in there?”
“It is a very sacred place, Kaydi. It’s called the Hall of Alphas.”
Mama took me through Grand Park, all green and shiny and scattered with ponds swimming with big orange fish. I skipped at her side, excited to see new things, but more looking forward to the ice cream shop she promised we could go to after our walk.
The castle stood silver and blue in the sunlight, the tips of the spires and towers crowned with white spheres. The castle had a black fence around it with spikes on the post tops, and a huge arched gate with a big diagram of a wolf’s head surrounded by a half-circle of seven stars.
It was the symbol of our city, Lualand, named for the Lua pack our ancestors came from long ago. I learned this first thing in school, all on the first day, proud when I got all the facts right when our teacher, Mr. Bigelow, quizzed us later on.
“My friend in kindergarten says it’s where the kings live. Are they real kings? Are they beautiful like in fairy tales?” I asked.
“The alphas are our pure kings,” she replied. “And truly beautiful, each one more beautiful than the last. But they don’t have real power.” She spoke slowly, as if being careful with her words. I could see secrets in her eyes, but I didn’t say anything.
“Why not?”
“Because they couldn’t handle it, baby.”
“Can we go in and see them, though?” I asked.
“No, baby. We can’t go in. You have to work there to get inside.”
“How do I do that? I’m a hard worker. You said I do my chores so good. I can pick up toys and I can dust. I could get a job there helping. I could!”
“Shush, Kaydi. It’s not a place for children.”
“Why not?”
“It’s where grown up people do grown up things. Things that don’t concern you right now.”
“But when I get big, I can go there, then, and work.” I stomped my foot. I usually got everything I asked for. Daddy called me spoiled like it was a bad thing, but I liked it.
“Maybe, we’ll see.” But she did not seem to like saying that because her mouth turned down and her eyes got tight and shiny.
“Do the kings ever come outside and see the people?”
“No, baby. They stay in the castle and do their duty.”
“I’m going to grow big and smart and do my duty, too. Maybe one day I will be a king!”
