Ruled by the alpha, p.1
Ruled by the Alpha, page 1
Ruled by the Alpha
A Dystopian Omegaverse Anthology
© 2022 Reticent Desire Publications
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book or the images contained herein may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author. This includes electronic or mechanical transmission, photocopying, recording, information retrieval systems, or storage.
This book is a work of fiction and is intended for adults only. Some scenes may contain explicit material that could make some readers uncomfortable.
Any names, businesses, places, or events used in this work are fictional. Any similarities to living or dead people, incidents, companies, products, or organizations are purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Rage
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About Nora Ash
War Prize of the Beast
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
About Alison Aimes
The Unexpected Visitor
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About Merel Pierce
RULED BY THE OMEGA
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About L.V. Lane
Lost
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
About Hannah Haze
Taken by the Tanker
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
About V.T. Bonds
Mastering the Alpha
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About Anna Fury
Under The Golden Moon
Dedication
Act 1: The Golden Moon Rises
Act 2: The Golden Moon Falls
About E. J. Frost
The Alpha’s Revelation
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About Marlowe Roy
Alpha’s Freak Show
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
About Raevyn London
Ruin
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
About D.E. Chapman
His Dark Touch
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Epilogue
About Flora Quincy
Reticent Desire Publications
Rage
Protector Book 1
by
Nora Ash
Chapter 1
AX2
“Activate.”
Bright light floods his vision as consciousness returns. Mechanized beeping follows, and then the acrid, familiar smell of disinfectants.
And her.
His body tenses on blind instinct, muscles engaging as a snarl rips from his throat. But he doesn’t move to follow through on the threat; he has learned not to.
“Temper,” she warns him, unfazed, over the tapping of her fingertips over keys. “You will be pleased to know your body has fully healed during stasis. Your vitals are perfect.”
Pleased. He breathes evenly. In. Out. He holds the exhale until the sinking sensation of despair fades to numb indifference. This is not unexpected. Every assignment they send him on, every time he feels his body rip apart, he falls into unconsciousness with the faint hope that this time… this time, even she won’t be able to bring him back.
Every time, he wakes in the stasis chamber. Whole. And tasked with a new mission.
At least there is comfort in the predictability.
“How long?” he grinds out.
“Just five days this time. Faster than we anticipated, considering the damage. Any pain?”
“No.”
She taps on her keyboard. The light searing his retinas finally dims, allowing his pupils to dilate enough to take in his familiar surroundings.
The stasis chamber is as sterile as the lab beyond: white walls; a chair and a desk with a computer for her; a steel table and glass cylinders, tubes, and needles for him; and the mirror.
“Sit up,” she commands.
He obeys instantly, though the lack of pressure in his brain tells him she hasn’t activated his chip. She rarely needs to anymore.
He stares blankly at his own reflection as she moves from her chair to his side to detach the many tubes from his body. The mirror has been there since day one—hung on the wall, where it is the first thing he will see once he has been given permission to sit up.
In the beginning, he felt horror at the reflection staring back at him. They brought him back from the brink of death, he’s been told. Made him better. Stronger. And as a result, skin fused seamlessly with silvery metal, giving the appearance of a creature neither human nor machine.
Now, though, there are no visible hints of the engineering that went into crafting the U.S. Military’s strongest soldier. Artificial skin covers gleaming alloy, allowing him to blend in with the general population when out on assignment.
Not that it matters—he knows what he is underneath his human facade: something less than a person.
So does she. “Stand.”
Once again, he obeys her command without hesitation. The concrete beneath his feet is cool, every unevenness in the surface sparking along his hyperaware nervous system, just as every detail of the stasis chamber and the lab beyond lodges in his brain as he scans his surroundings.
“Eyes straight ahead,” she snaps, unexpected irritation flaring in her voice. She rarely offers any emotional response around him, her demeanor always carefully dispassionate, crafted to provide no added stimulation as he returns from stasis.
AX2 flicks his gaze forward. “Yes, ma’am.”
She huffs as she steps close enough that he can feel her body heat against his skin—both artificial and real—and any curiosity her minor burst of annoyance may have awakened in him withers to dust.
Focusing on nothing but his own slow breaths, he stares at a point on the wall above her head. When she brushes her palm over his bare chest, he wills his body to remain still, even as a tremor works its way through every nerve ending she touches.
He has learned to endure pain during his training. Exhaustion. Defeat. Endless exposure has forged the soldier they sought—unbreakable, even under torture.
But this?
This is the one weakness they have not been able to carve out of his flesh and replace with steel.
In. Out. His chest moves under her soft hand as he breathes, his tormentor oblivious to his internal battle as she manually checks over his body.
He knows what they’ll do if they discover this secret—his one remaining link to a humanity neither he, nor they, wish to be reminded of. It will be like it was when they rid him of his body’s reaction to pain: unrelenting stimulation until his receptors cease to respond.
He has endured months of agony. Months of sleep deprivation. Blood. Death.
But touch…
The warmth of human connection. The pleasure of another sentient being’s caress.
His nerves hum under her fingertips as she stretches up to press against his face, testing newly healed flesh.
This is the one thing he has left that doesn’t belong to them—and if they take this too, then he will truly be nothing but the machine they see him as.
That she sees him as.
He knows her name, but he tries
In the same way he is simply a sophisticated weapon to her, she is to him a nameless, faceless cog in the system that created him.
Except when she touches him.
In. Out.
“Still no pain?” she asks, stroking both hands down his shoulders with firm pressure, and he remembers how she answered a call in the lab a few weeks back. How the female voice on the other end called her Addie, the familiarity in the shortening of her name sparking his curiosity. To that woman, she is a person. Perhaps someone dear.
To him, she is anything but.
“No,” he grinds out.
She flicks her gaze up to his, light gray eyes behind black-rimmed glasses taking in the tightness of his jaw. “Any tension? Discomfort?”
“No.”
“Good.” She steps around him to inspect his back, and her shoulder gently bumps against his arm as she does.
He isn’t prepared for the pressure, isn’t braced, and without thinking, he sucks in a small breath, tasting her scent.
A faint whiff of her floral shampoo fills his nostrils, and panic hits his brainstem. But it’s too late; the kiss of her smell blooms on his palate, warm and female and human, and his body reacts.
Shit.
There is nothing he can do. They left too much man in him, too much alpha. His abdomen tenses, heat pooling low. Every touch of her fingertips against his back only tightens the pull in his groin, and it’s maddening and revolting, and fuck, he never wants her to stop…
She does, of course. Once she is sure her prized soldier is fit for battle once more, she pulls her hands from his skin and steps around to his front again. And that? That is why human touch is the worst of the tortures he endures.
It feels like having found the narrowest ledge on an otherwise mirror-smooth cliff surface. Like being allowed one final breath of relief, of hope, before the ledge crumbles and he plummets into the depths of despair once more.
She makes a small noise of consternation, and when he dares a glance at her, her cheeks are tinged pink.
She moves her gaze from his hard member rising proudly between his thighs, but she doesn’t meet his eyes when she says, “If you experience urges, AX2, you are instructed to take care of them. Privately.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She flattens her lips to a line, and he braces for the sting of his chip. In the beginning, when he had yet to learn caution, she tried to dissuade his urges with pain. Eventually she conceded, but made it clear he is to handle his biological needs when alone in the lab at night.
But today, no punishment follows from the chip imbedded in his brain.
“All this technology at our fingertips, and I still can’t separate the baseness of alpha biology without losing the strength you need to survive your conditioning,” she says, the same irritation from before flaring in her voice. “It’s been more than three years since your class was created, and we’ve been unable to make another successful prototype since. But every soldier we mold after those same blueprints has alpha issues.” She makes a gesture in the vague direction of his erection without looking directly at it. “Too much aggression, too much dominance, too much need.”
There are others like him? He blinks, shock throbbing through his blood. She has never spoken to him about others before, nor blatantly shown annoyance at the flaws she finds in him.
It’s the most human she has ever allowed herself to be in his presence.
She huffs out a breath and rubs a hand over her forehead, gaze flicking to his for a short moment. “Ensure you are at optimal functionality by tomorrow morning. We will be honored by a visit from the general at nine hundred hours, and he is bringing guests. He will expect nothing but perfection. Which means I expect nothing but perfection.”
She gives him one final, hard look before she turns to leave the stasis chamber.
Through the thick glass to the lab, he sees her switching off the fluorescent fixtures, leaving only a faint glow from various bits of electronics to illuminate the room beyond. Seconds later, the sound of the door locking behind her lets AX2 know that he is alone.
Slowly he allows his muscles to soften, his stance becoming imperceptibly less rigid even as her words echo in his mind. Something stirs in his gut—something nearly as base, nearly as human, as the yearnings her scent ignited.
Others. There are others.
He is not alone.
Chapter 2
Addie
“This is where you train them?”
The incredulity in General Thompson’s voice makes me hide a grimace behind my tight smile. “Yes. All our data supports the need for as little stimulation during training and downtime as possible. It has proven the best way to manage any, ah, temperament issues.”
He snorts and moves closer to the protective glass separating us from the white-painted, sparsely equipped training room where my oldest remaining cyborg stands, eyes locked on some point behind us.
“By boring the man out of his skull? Please. Forty-six years I’ve served, and never have I heard of a soldier who sharpened up by being locked in a sterile room twenty-four-seven.”
“With respect, General, he is not a man; he is a lethal weapon. They all are.” I touch my fingertips to the data pad I’m clutching and flick the button activating AX2’s chip. A shiver travels down the large soldier’s body, imperceptible to the uninformed observer. “A simple scan of your biometrics and you can control him as perfectly as any missile. Would you care to demonstrate for our guests, sir?”
General Thompson exhales, an impatient sound, but the three CIA agents he has brought in to see AX2 shift closer. While their faces reveal nothing, it’s not hard to decipher their interest. After all, what self-respecting intelligence agency wouldn’t want to learn more about a lethal asset who can be controlled via a data pad?
The general takes the pad from me, his silent reprimand wiping the twitch of satisfaction off my lips. Right. He doesn’t find my work worthy of pride, even if I’m one of the main scientists responsible for the strongest soldiers at the Pentagon’s disposal.
I clasp my wrist in front of me and step back, schooling my expression as General Thompson scans his biometrics into my data pad.
“And now?”
“If you push the button for the microphone, you can give him whichever command you please,” I instruct. “His chip is set to limited autonomy, so you don’t have to be exact. He is trained to employ his best judgement in how to fulfil your orders, but he will be compelled to execute them.”
“Compelled how, exactly?” one of the CIA agents asks while the general instructs AX2 to do some warm-up stretches.
“AX2 is fitted with a chip capable of overriding whatever impulses his brain would generate on its own. If given a direct order, he will obey. It is no different than programming a computer to launch missiles, or steering a tank.
“The chip has three settings: complete autonomy, limited autonomy, or full remote control. Currently, the AX class operates in limited autonomy mode during missions, but we have found that after about half a year, their training allows for safe activation of complete autonomy during most of their downtime hours.”
I nod toward AX2 as the general commands him to begin the training course. He looks like a normal soldier in his fatigues and combat boots—or as normal as an alpha so hugely muscular can look. But when he grabs the rope dangling from the ceiling and leaps into the air to begin the course, it becomes evident he is anything but.
“How does he move so fast?” one of the visitors asks. Even her CIA training is unable to mask her incredulity. “That is… That should not be possible.”
I follow AX2 with my gaze as he scales a twenty-foot barrier in two leaps, then scrambles underneath the barbed wire in the blink of an eye. “It would be impossible, were he human. But he is not. He may look like a man, and if you were inclined to have a conversation with him, he may respond like one, but he is more a product of engineering than biology.”
“What manner of missions has he completed thus far?” the leader of the little group asks. “Is he calibrated for more… delicate matters?”
I glance at the general. “Discussion of classified missions is above my paygrade, I’m afraid. But the AX class is highly trainable. I see no reason why any necessary skills should be unattainable.”
“I will brief the deputy director on any details, should your agency decide to move forward with this… collaboration,” General Thompson says. “For now, I believe Dr. Green is waiting to show you some of our newer AX recruits. They should provide a demonstration of how quickly they can be trained.” He turns to the microphone again. “At ease, soldier.”
