Moon captive alphas, p.4
Moon: Captive Alphas, page 4
Doctor Turner returned very quickly. The exam was pretty painless, though embarrassing when he examined me internally. It felt cold and mechanical when his gloved hands pressed into me from behind, probably feeling to make sure I wasn’t deformed, or filled with tumors or something.
He was finished in minutes and said, “Your blood test results will be quick, within a day. Once they are assessed, you’ll be ready to go during your next heat.”
I sat up, rubbing nervously at the back of my head.
“I can already see you are in perfect health,” Turner said. “So we’ll make that appointment for next week when you hit your heat cycle. If anything comes up, we can change that date. How does that sound?”
It sounded rather awful. I knew about pregnancy—at least all the science and biology behind it—but I was still scared.
“Fine,” I lied.
“I need to ask. How are your cycles? Do you ever have pain?”
“No.”
“How would you rate them on a scale of one to five with five being extreme where you are very disrupted and unfocused from your normal routine and one being not much different from day to day health?”
“Uh, a two to a three,” I answered. “Pretty mild most of the time. I’m not impaired by my cycles. But I certainly notice them.”
“Good.” Turner made some notes by hand.
“All right then. I’ll see you back here in a week. You can get dressed but don’t leave yet. A nurse will be in to take some blood.” He turned toward the door.
“What happens if my tests come back—uh—not normal?” I asked quickly.
Turner swiveled. “That shouldn’t happen. I see no indication of ill health in you.”
“Yes, but what happens to non-viable omegas?”
“We treat you, of course. Try to fix any problems. Not to worry, Kaydi. As an omega you’ll always be well taken care of.”
It wasn’t the answer I was looking for. I had always wondered what happened to omegas who couldn’t contribute, who could not carry a child to term, or who got sick.
Everyone always said omegas were well taken care of. The older ones were able to retire on very nice pensions, which were only a little less than they made as breeders. But the ones between eighteen and forty or fifty years old who, for any reason, could not do their duties—did they get pensions? I never heard them spoken of. My beta parents were not friends with any omegas. Did they have communities within their housing? Did they take care of each other?
I could never get answers. My classes had not addressed such concerns beyond the vague notion that all omegas were taken care of. And my beta parents knew nothing about those sorts of details.
When Doctor Turner left, I got up and quickly dressed. After giving blood samples, I left.
On my way out, I saw the doctor conversing with the receptionist. He glanced at me and said, “Kaydi, there is one other form we’d like you to fill out.”
“Uh, okay.”
I took the clipboard back to the waiting room and started reading the questions. This form was not quite as medically oriented as the last ones. The questions were more personal, such as:
Are you a virgin?
Have you ever had any friends who presented as alphas at puberty?
Have you ever been approached by any of these groups:
Society for Freedom
Alphas Inland
Omegas Unite
Explain your interactions with anyone from these groups.
I was most definitely a virgin. I’d never, to my knowledge, known an alpha. I was home-schooled after the age of thirteen. Every male in my classes growing up had, as far as I knew, presented as beta except one kid who vanished from class one day.
I had suspected he presented a couple months before me as omega because he was, as all omegas were, small and pretty. Any alphas and omegas were always removed from public schools after they presented, and taught privately.
Also, I’d never heard of any of those groups on the list. Not online or from kids’ whispers. Nothing. It was strange to think groups existed with those names. I wasn’t sure what it meant. Or if they had anything to do with me. Maybe they were religious groups? Or political factions the current regime did not like?
But the names with words like freedom and unite sent a shiver down my spine. I might have been apprehensive about living my life pregnant all the time, but as nervous as I had been this past week, I’d never thought of fighting it, or running away and joining some secret sect to be brainwashed. I wanted to be with my family. I wanted to be safe. I couldn’t imagine never seeing my parents again, or my sisters.
I finished the form and turned it in. Strangely, as the receptionist reached for it, Doctor Turner, who must have been standing by the desk the whole time I’d been writing my answers, held out his hand.
“I’ll take that,” he said.
I blinked up at him.
The receptionist looked confused for a moment, then smiled. “Thank you, Kaydi. See you next week?”
I raised my hand weakly, still staring at Doctor Turner who was briskly walking away, his shoes making sharp raps on the hard tile floor. Why did he seem so interested in my answers to that final form? I had written absolutely nothing exciting. My experiences so far in my young life had been limited and boring.
Something in my chest tightened. Maybe he had noticed an imperfection in me. Maybe I was going to be categorized differently from other omegas. I did wear glasses to read. Would that be enough to tag me as not sufficient to breed?
As I left the office, I felt hot and kind of sick. I wondered if the two quick shots he’d given me in my butt were already affecting me.
It was so strange, this feeling that my life was changing. That I was ending one way of being and beginning another.
As I rode the elevator down to the first floor, I was alone in the car. I touched my flat abdomen, trying to imagine what it might feel like to grow life inside of me. Life I would never get to see or know. Life that was going to be attached to me for only a short time, then break away and leave me empty and ready to form another new life inside me.
How many babies would I have before my body grew too worn out to produce any more? Twenty? Thirty? It had been taught to us we could conceive that many if we took good care of ourselves and remained healthy. But not every omega had an easy time of pregnancy and delivery. Everything was a gamble. A risk. Though dying during childbirth was rare these days, it could happen.
By the time I got to the parking lot, my hands were shaking.
I sat in my parents’ car quiet and still for a long time before finally starting the engine and driving home.
Chapter Five
Moon
“Something’s up,” said Saski. He brought me lunch Mondays through Fridays. Always on time. Always five minutes past noon.
Saski was a small beta with dark curly hair. He worked in the Hall kitchens.
A few minutes ago, I’d heard him talking to the twins down the hall but could not make out the words. They were too far away. He’d said nothing to Cold who was in the cell next to me, but that was normal. Cold didn’t like to talk.
“What are you talking about?” I took my lunch tray and set it on my table.
Saski peered through the bars of my door. “Plans are to take you all to Warden Del’s office. Today.”
“Who all?”
“The five of you on this floor.”
There were thirty floors in the Hall of Alphas. I knew there were more of us alphas here, a lot more, but I never saw any but the ones on my floor.
“Why?”
Saski’s voice lowered to an almost whisper. “Rumors are the warden is making changes. My theory? It’s about the suicides. There are too many and it doesn’t look good for this facility’s records.”
“Too many?” I’d heard rumors of alpha suicides happening before Endon left us, but I figured they had happened over many years or decades, and were not common.
“There have been four just this past year,” Saski said. “It’s a lot when you consider the population of you guys in this place.”
“I’ve always wondered how many alphas are here in the Hall.”
Saski scrunched one eye. “Well, I’m not supposed to say. But don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s less than one hundred.”
That didn’t correlate with the city’s population of fifty thousand. There should have been at least two thousand of us spread out between this Hall and three other Halls that existed outside city limits.
“Well, surely the other Halls have more?” I asked.
Saski shook his head, his eyebrows rising. “It’s not public knowledge, but alpha numbers are diminishing. Five percent of the population, they say. Hah! There are fewer and fewer alphas around to inseminate thousands of omegas. Sure they have the coldbank, but rumors say that will run out in five years if things keep going as they are. Suicides. Fewer children presenting. It’s a problem.”
“But all five of us are to see the warden together? Are we to be moved? Are we in trouble? Is it going to involve more doctors? Something horrible?” I gripped the edges of my robe’s sleeves, a habit I had when I got really nervous.
Saski held his hand up as the questions tumbled from my throat. “I don’t know. It isn’t horrible. You alphas are a commodity. Hell, the warden wouldn’t have a job without you all. And the more you produce, the more funding comes in.”
I swallowed hard.
“It’s the talk today in the locker room and the halls. All the guards are wondering. It’s all speculation right now. But I do know one thing. Stuff’s going to change around here.”
I took a slow step back from the barred door. “Thanks.”
“Gotta go, Moon. Have a good lunch.”
I nodded, not looking up. Saski’s footsteps echoed down the hall.
I glanced about my room. My cage. I had everything here. Painting supplies for my art. Exercise equipment. Books. Games. Movies and TV. A computer with a one-way online system.
My bed was lush and filled with pillows. No one ever wanted it said alphas weren’t treated well. But we were captives. Never free. And we were milked often until we were sore, aching from it, which was such an extreme invasion.
Every day I woke more bored and alone than the last. I did not blame Endon for finding the brave way out. Hidden cameras spied on us. How he managed to do it without being seen was a testament to his intelligence during the endless days we all had to think, to dream, to plan.
But I didn’t want to die. That wasn’t the answer for me. Not yet. Maybe never.
I wondered about this meeting as I ate my lunch.
*
I was napping when I heard footsteps and low voices in the corridor outside my cell. I’d just spent another late night in the fleecing room—over two hours again which culminated in four knotting sessions. I was exhausted and aching but restless. What Saski had told me never left my mind. I didn’t get to sleep until six a.m.
The warden was meeting all five of us from floor five at the same time. This had never happened before.
Three shafts of sunshine stabbed through the bars of my cell’s high window, bright as spotlights angling toward the floor. I winced, trying to see through the bars of my door. Everything but the light was in shadow and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust.
I got up and changed into a clean robe. Today I wore a red one because it seemed to define my mood. The silken feel of it, light and airy as down, still grated against my sensitive skin.
A voice I hated rang through the air.
“Get up! Get up, alphies!” Dayon was leading the pack of guards today.
“Great,” I muttered.
As excited as I was to be seeing the warden, I kept my expectations low. She was a forty-something beta who nodded in all the right places and pretended to listen to complaints, but I figured out early on she heard nothing.
When I had first arrived at the Hall, a child of fifteen, I’d asked her why we had to be locked away. Didn’t she think alphas would be honored to do their duties to society? Why did she think we might run?
She gave me non-specific answers. The cells were for our protection but she didn’t say from what. And she kept reiterating how we could have whatever we wanted in our cells except for two things: weapons and drugs.
I didn’t understand why we had to have uniformed guards who looked and, in some cases, acted mean. And why, if this wasn’t a prison, was she called a warden?
I’d never forgotten her reply. She’d spread her hands in a dramatic gesture and grinned. “None of you are prisoners, my sweet boy. All alphas are kings. That makes you a king. And at such a young age!”
After living seven years here, four of which involved visits to the fleecing room several times a week, I understood Del a little better now. Simply, she had not wanted to admit to young teens like I was at the time that she managed and ran an upscale prison. She never wanted to admit that society’s strongest and most virile gender were criminals merely by being born alphas.
Dayon yelled at me through my entryway bars. “Hands up and through the slot!”
I was still blinking the sleep from my eyes. I came forward and put my hands through the little slot at waist-height in my door. The cuffs burned cold against my wrists.
I had to pee, but I guess that was going to have to wait.
Ragi stood to the side. He and Dayon usually worked together, for which I was grateful. His presence smoothed over Dayon’s rougher attitude.
Down the corridor I heard more voices and the heavy clicks of doors opening and closing. More guards were getting the other four alphas ready for the trip to Warden Del’s office.
My door opened and Ragi held the chains for my ankles, bending quickly to snap them on. I was conditioned to that touch and sound. Ninety-nine percent of the time it meant I would be going to the fleecing room. Even after the long hours of last night, my cock gave a little twitch, as if disappointed that this was not to be one of those trips.
After the chains were attached, I faced my brothers who shared floor five with me. Cold was closest to me, hair black as night and shaved low on the sides, his bangs twisted forward into a point against his high forehead.
Next down the row was Deep, wearing a yellow robe that showed off his golden attributes. That alpha was like a sun shining in the shadowy depths of a darkness which could not seem to touch him nor diminish his stature and power.
In the past, he would have been one of those noble kings that everyone loved, even his worst enemies, for how could you be enemies with a guy who looked like that? And he was always smiling like this was some big adventure and he had no worries. No worries at all.
Past Deep were the twins. Seven and Midnight, chained, were trying to get to each other but two guards blocked them. I heard one of them say, “It’s been two years. Can’t I just give him a hug?”
Obviously, they hadn’t been taken out of their cells together since they were under eighteen. They were twenty now. At least they’d been placed side by side so they could talk, which they did. Sometimes their voices echoed softly throughout the night until dawn swept its pink gaze into our mornings.
“Let’s go.” Dayon’s tone was sharp. He puffed out his chest and rocked from foot to foot.
Ragi moved forward, hand on the back of my upper arm. I came within three feet of Cold, the closest I’d ever been to him. He eyed me askance, his lips curling up on one side. It was not even close to the beginnings of a smile. More like a hostile greeting.
He looked burly under his black robe. The skin of his cheeks and jaw line was smooth and fine, and he had rosy lips and dark long lashes. He was stunning even if he looked like he was about to bite. He was tall, but I was taller.
We all bunched up until, as a somewhat single group, we walked quietly past Endon’s empty cell. No one glanced at it. Maybe it was too soon and we all needed to pretend it and Endon never existed.
It was a relief when we reached the end of the hall and turned away from the fleecing room. Moving around another corner brought us all up to face a large door. It led to an elevator.
One of the guards pushed the up button. The warden’s office presided over us all from the very top floor.
The elevator held all fifteen of us—five alphas with two guards each. We were chained so it was a rather ridiculous amount of guards to my mind.
The doors opened onto a well-lit, wide reception area where a couple of betas sat working at desks. An ordinary day for them with an ordinary job.
Beyond them were two double glass doors. Two of the guards went to the doors and opened them.
Warden Del sat behind a vast wooden desk that took up one whole side of the large office. She stood as we entered.
She’d always been a slim beta. She’d been seven years younger when I’d first met her. Now she was in her early forties and wearing a dark blue suit and tie, her brown hair tied back in a ponytail. Her appearance was average but her presence was not. She exuded an energy of alertness, as if she were juggling many things at once.
Her gaze swept over all of us and she gestured toward five chairs already set up in front of her desk.
“You’re to sit,” Ragi said to me, voice soft.
Other guards gave orders to their charges. We alphas stepped forward and sat. Our guards all remained standing.
Del wasted no time. Her voice rang clear and quick.
“We’re starting a new project here at the Hall. You five are to be a part of it.”
My heart rate began to increase. My stomach clenched. A new project in this place did not sound good. Not for us alphas.
I clutched the arms of my chair.
I saw Cold’s chest expand as he took a deep breath, his face hard, his eyes unmoving. Midnight and Seven glanced at each other. Only Deep put his head back and looked interested.
As Del spoke, she met none of our gazes. She talked over our heads as if we were beneath her, not impolite, but almost stiff as if uncomfortable.
