Born Taken: A Broken Angel Prequel Page 3

  Holding her ass above his waist, he slowly lowered her down. Inch by inch, she fell onto his cock. Rae’s screams filled the room. She frantically turned her head left and right, causing Cassian to smack her in the jaw once more. As she collapsed onto the alpha’s thick pole, her screams caught against the back of her tired throat. Earth-shattering vibrations of pain flowed into a rich, burning sensation that never seemed to dissipate.

  He overpowered her. Shook her. Pumped her full of him until it wasn’t a question of whether or not he’d fit.

  Small pools of abundant slick oozed onto the alpha’s cock. As Cassian surged forward, a cherry of blood formed around the base of his shaft. “Break your walls,” he whispered, soothingly.

  Like an egg, he cracked through the thin barrier, stewing the red yolk until it was a mash of warm fluid. Cassian slipped forward and ground his hips like a steed. The knot inside him swelled and bulged, but he held himself back from blowing.

  “No…” Rae’s voice turned into a muffled whimper as her tears hit the sordid floor. All of the man’s ugliness poured inside of her, managing to tear her down to another level of hopelessness. In her moments of choked trauma, she vowed never to open her eyes again. Like a sleeping beauty, she let his thorn prick and consume her. Pathetically, she fell into the void.

  Cassian lowered his lips to her ear. Tenderly biting the ridge of cartilage, he grunted and shifted the weight of his body. “Come,” he whispered, breath rancid in her runny nostrils. His voice rose with every word he wretchedly uttered. “Fucking come, you whore!”

  He traced the edge of his tongue down to her small and swollen tits. Pinching her nipples, he tugged until the spongy flesh turned a deep shade of purple. She cried out one last time, wrists cutting into the chains that held her stationary. She would never come by his touch.

  He disgusted her.

  Mouth exposed in a silent shout, Cassian opened his eyes and shook. For a second, he looked vulnerable. Weak. But as his cock bobbed against her chafed and stinging walls, she felt the steamy cum flutter out in luscious waves of his satisfaction.

  The man forced his hand around the girl’s throat and managed a weak look of peace. Quickly, that expression turned deep, fading into self-righteous anger. He gripped and crushed until he heard the rattling of her saliva against her throat. The obstructed air path threatened to cave, and she had no sense that he would let go.

  Rae gazed at the nightmare man who raped and killed her night after night. Locked in the dream, she was forced to spread her legs until the muscles gave out, until she really felt his knot furrow into her belly. The mass twisted inside of her, latching onto her ovaries, tearing into every part of her. Now, she was his. She was complete.

  Completely ruined.

  No, she would never wake from this. The memory reduction treatments given to her by Cassian’s specialists were heavy enough to sedate her for the future. She would not fight him anymore. She would wake and become his, naturally.

  But something inside the girl’s heart shone like a light tower, begging to be nurtured.

  With a twist of fate, her eyes opened.

  Chapter Four

  Cassian lingered outside the door of the prison cell, located underneath the arms barracks. Horrid sounds of excruciating hammering came from above their heads. The men didn’t want to know who was dealing out the punishment today. It was already horrible enough to walk on the blood-covered grounds, barefoot and susceptible to diseases. If there was anything Vash feared, it was biological impurities.

  “How could you do this to our progress?” Cassian said, voice hollow with confusion.

  Vash hadn’t heard his brother talk like this before. There was great pain with every word spoken, and he looked more tired than ever. Both men experienced some level of devastation from the long-lasting war, but their father’s passing was the final nail in the coffin. It created a vacuum of distrust between them. Eventually, Vash caved, but the throne was always up for grabs.

  “Haven’t spilled my seed in months. I merely wanted to smell the filthy cunt,” Vash said with sudden hunger.

  Cassian grinned and drove his nose out as if she were in front of them now. “You could have asked for permission to do that, brother. I know how to share.”

  In all his years of living, Cassian had never regarded him as his brother. When he used the term, he meant it in the most negative way possible. Vash nudged his body forward, but a set of chains locked him to the metal bars of the room. “Care to loosen?”

  Cassian ignored him, and Vash quickly changed the subject in hopes of tiring him out faster. His pack was brought into separate rooms, and he could only think to ask of their fate. “What…what will happen to the rest of my alpha pack?” Vash asked.

  “They will be given their freedom after they complete their tour in the upcoming raids,” he said.

  “You’re shipping them out again? They’ve served for four years, Cassian.”

  Cassian turned toward a grimy sink, held in place by a single rusted pipe. Leaning over the cracked porcelain, he used a set of pliers to pick up what looked to be a long, thin strand of fabric. However, as Cassian came closer, Vash saw the strand curl into the air.

  “Don’t worry. You’re not going back there,” Cassian whispered. “Your punishment will be dealt out much differently.”

  Immediately, Vash’s nerves wound rigid and tight. He clawed away from his brother, sliding against the caged door. “Brother, you will regret this!” Vash bawled.

  “Do not tell me what I will regret,” Cassian growled and leaned his head down. “Betrayal is met with death.”

  Saliva foamed on the edges of Vash’s mouth. “We are the great leader’s sons,” Vash muttered through his teeth.

  “We? You are charity,” he said.

  Cassian pulled the root of Vash’s hair until he collapsed onto the concrete. “Stop… squirming,” he snorted.

  “No! No-Nn-AHHH!!”

  Tormented cries left Vash’s throat as Cassian lowered the thin worm into the white of Vash’s eye. Forced to blink, Vash allowed the worm to roam freely into the back of the socket where the odd pressure started to seem like a painful malfunction of reality.

  “I will keep your misery visible,” Cassian muttered, spit rolling down his lips.

  “Why…?”

  “The pressure is the first symptom of many. You will experience dry mouth. Depression. After about a week, your gut lining will erode. Your shit will spill from your insides before you can clutch your ass around a toilet seat. You will undergo minor facial paralysis before it makes its way into your central nervous system, littering your nerves with extreme tics before it shuts down completely. When you are fully compromised, no one will be able to tell. You will starve to death, and the last thing you see will be the fading lights of my world, my universe.”

  Vash convulsed against the floor, and Cassian watched with curiosity. Pools of spit drifted around his lips. It was strange for him to see Vash like this, like a helpless animal. Like Rae.

  Vash was behaving like the spoiled bitch Cassian kept under lock and key. Cassian had given his brother everything. He’d offered him a seat at the table. Yes, it was underneath his great authority, but at least he’d taken the trouble to do it. Had Vash turned on him before the Coalition fell, things would have turned out differently. Vash would have stayed silent, and Cassian could have diligently developed the omega more.

  “What…what is she?” Vash whimpered.

  Cassian sat next to him, sighing with exhaustion. It had been a tiring week of fighting, and Rae was almost ready to wake for him. “The perfect being. But you knew that already,” Cassian said.

  “What makes her so special?”

  “Besides her three-chambered uterus?” he asked.

  Three? Vash frowned. “You’re lying again.”

  A cheap grin placated him. “No, brother. This time, I am not.”

  Although not probable, it was possible. There were women born with strang
er deformities. Cassian had the bitch under his control, but it was clear what Vash had to do. He needed her. With this revelation, the whole fucking pack could breed her.

  “And the rest of the filthy cunts? Do they share the same abnormality?” Vash asked.

  “They all serve a different purpose. The worst copies go to the nightclubs. Let the men pay for their flesh. The others stay frozen in the cryo chambers,” he said.

  The thought of all those women locked away in godless machines… It made Vash’s stomach turn. “You— You’re a monster,” Vash growled.

  Cassian stood, but he took Vash’s jaw in his hands and squeezed. Pulling out a small flashlight, he shone the beam into Vash’s eyes. His vision shrank into a sharp pin of red.

  “You see? That’s what I cannot understand,” Cassian said. “Decades ago, man cloned the fruit then multiplied your tasty vegetables, so people would not starve. Did they not? It is our destiny to continue the growing process. The long tradition of paving the road to the gods is almost complete.”

  “They did, and all of that effort failed the generations before us,” Vash said.

  Vash didn’t know how to react. Everything he was hearing was too much for him to take in. It was certainly clear he was in over his head. His pack was right. They’d warned him, but he’d relied on his authority to get him through. In the end, they went to the wrong fucking place.

  He could see a key ring buried near the opening in Cassian’s small satchel near his waist. As his brother taunted him with nightmarish visions of his death, he strained his arm forward. Vash kept careful eye contact with his brother so as not to be obvious. “You will be stopped. Eventually, someone will match your evil,” Vash muttered.

  He lowered a finger into the bag and carefully threaded his finger through the ring.

  For a brief second, Cassian’s eyes flashed with murderous rage. Luckily, Vash’s new infection seemed to please his brother enough not to kill him on the spot. “I have hundreds of enemies. They have all been crushed.”

  Vash ran his tongue against the front of his teeth and lips. A slow and methodical laugh emerged from his throat as he shrouded the key into his palm. “I have heard of an army,” he said.

  “You know nothing.”

  “They’re rebuilding the Coalition’s militia,” Vash whispered through his laughter. “They have explosives. The biggest the world has ever seen.”

  Cassian pondered this for a second and, eventually, nodded his head. “The warriors of the old republic. They were a grand army, but their insolence destroyed them.”

  “So. You have heard the rumors.”

  “Rumors are exactly what they are. They might utilize some of the best technology in the world, but they will be no match against men whose only wishes are to die for their pack.”

  What wouldn’t Vash give to watch their army penetrate through the outer forces’ walls? He would have given a lifetime of torture to see that happen. “Regardless,” Vash continued, “you will die, eventually. We all will.”

  Cassian beat him. Each blow his knuckles dealt to him pulverized his face like a juiced fruit. Swollen, disregarded, and left to die, Cassian swung the door open and roared with sanctimonious craze. “Close your eyes, dear brother. Fate has caught up to you.”

  Vash didn’t dare move. For minutes, he didn’t make even a sound. Sucking in his pain, he spat out a molar and tasted the blood pooling inside his cheek. Every bone ached, but he would not be silenced.

  Unlocking his wrists, he stretched his fingers against the stale air from the cell. A few were broken, but they’d heal soon enough. When he saw his reflection in the splotched mirror, he finally groaned in pain. He looked on the outside as Cassian did on the inside, disgusting.

  “Fuck,” he whispered.

  He spent the next hour listening to the guards’ footsteps outside his cell. He had no idea what they were doing to his pack brothers, but he actually believed what Cassian told him. They were useful soldiers with high kill counts, so sending them off to the war fields in the South wasn’t such a terrible idea.

  But fuck that. They needed the girl. Now, too much depended on it.

  When the guards’ conversations fizzled, Vash knew this was his only chance to escape. He took Cassian’s key and unlocked the cuffs that bound him. He dropped to his knees and peeked underneath the door. Strangely, the door inched open. The hallway was silent. Was this a ploy to get him killed?

  No, if Cassian wanted him dead, he would have killed him right then and there. There was something else afoot—someone was leading him somewhere important, but he had no time to stop to weigh the consequences. Despite their issues, they were still family, and Vash knew he was the better brother. He’d kill him eventually.

  The lights had been shut off as if the whole place had been evacuated. Running through the hall, he checked each cell. His pack-brothers were nowhere to be found.

  “I am sorry it has taken this long to find a safe place to care for you. I didn’t want anyone to see you,” Cassian said.

  Carefully folding the satin sheets over his mother’s body, he made sure she was comfortable. Not too warm. Not too cold. The facilities, he admitted, were not a place to live in, but her secrecy was a priority to him. There wasn’t a man in this world who loved his mother as much as him, and if anyone found out, it would have been another problem for him to shoulder.

  “For now, this will do,” she said, eyeing the cryogenic chambers.

  The women inside were silent with loving, blue lips and gentle eyes. Each copy was a terrible attempt at something beautiful and, perhaps, even holy, but she housed her thoughts very judiciously.

  “You like them, don’t you?” Cassian asked. His finger traced the rough edges of her sheets.

  Every now and then, she thought she saw one of the women peek at her, but she knew that was an illusion. She was now in her late eighties, and her every thought had to be dealt with caution. The one thing she could be certain of these days was that she hated the women with a passion. Although the copies were a magnificent first step of ending the alpha-omega dilemma, they were lackluster in the details.

  “I don’t like seeing their faces,” she protested.

  Cassian smiled gently and patted her sheets down one last time. “This arrangement is short term. We just need to sit out the rest of the war. Then, you will be moved.”

  “Into a new body…” His mother could barely get the words out, but once she did, they gave her new energy.

  Cassian stood back. “Long live the new flesh.”

  His mother looked down at the prosthetic limbs protruding through the silk sheets. A mess of wiring and cables could be seen underneath the clear silicon abdomen, serving as a reminder she didn’t have much time left. She relied on the central networks of the machines inside of this new facility. In so many ways, she was just as helpless as the rest of the whores.

  “Have you found your brother?” she asked with strange dynamism.

  Cassian circled around her, hesitant to acknowledge the creases that engraved her face like old river trails. His father was the rightful ruler of the seven continents, but the fucker was dead. His mother was everything to him. She was the one who taught him the value of life.

  “There was a minor setback,” Cassian admitted before anxiously clearing his throat and running to his own defense. He was constantly being reminded of his shortcomings, but this time, it wasn’t his fault. Rebel forces had opened fire on the prisons. There were more important matters to attend to. “That being said, we will find his corpse when the parasite consumes him.”

  She raised an eyebrow but did not smile. Her eyes were bloodshot from the lack of sleep. “You have done what I asked of you?”

  Had she been standing, Cassian would have knelt and bowed his head like a good boy. During times of weakness, she made him feel strong. Vash, on the other hand, never received the same treatment. Always on the outside, he was forced to cope with his conscience. It echoed Cassian’s weakness
and made him shake with violent drive.

  “I have done it, mother. I have killed my own brother,” he whispered.

  Abruptly, the realization sank into his fat gut. He had killed so many people during his lifetime of war that he’d never stopped to consider how it might feel to kill a family member. Despite the ease of the action, he didn’t anticipate the level of depression he might feel after.

  “Oh, honey,” she whispered. “Surely, you will learn to move past this.”

  He nodded and swallowed down the last of his saliva. A breath of cold air allowed him to relax and set his eyes on the clones. “You’re right. We are so close. Soon, the world will be ours.”

  His mother looked off into the negative space above her bed. “Yours,” she corrected him. He didn’t say a word back. It wasn’t like his mother to be jealous.

  Eventually, a new smile crept against her cheeks. Compromise. It defined solidarity.

  But Cassian could no longer compromise his goals. His thoughts were of the whore omega. She ought to have been his bride had no one interfered. “I should have made sure he was dead,” he whispered. He disgusted even himself.

  “Your brother was not born a warrior,” she whispered. Cassian nodded and waited for her to keep speaking. He loved hearing her words of encouragement, and she knew that more than anyone. “When she wakes from her torturous slumber, she will adore you.”

  But as much as Cassian wanted to believe her lies, he was deep in worry. Despite Vash’s parasitic weakness, he was concerned that all of his actions would add up to nothing. Like the tyrants of power before him, he was afraid all of this was a pillar of rock to be turned to sand.

  “Remember…” he whispered. “There are two.”

  “We won’t discuss such matters,” she said. “For now, you will do as I say. For once, you will rest. Then, you will wake her.”