Page 3 of Chain Me Knot

The woodwork is flawless, the hinges concealed, but there's a draft, subtle enough that I wouldn't have noticed if every cell in my body wasn't on high alert. I feel around until my fingertips catch on a faint seam in the woodwork, so slight it’s a masterpiece of craftsmanship that would fool any normal inspection. I'm far from normal right now, my senses hyped up and firing on another level. A hidden catch clicks under my fingers and a section of wall swings inward with well-oiled silence.

“Holy shit,” Soren whispers.

Everything in me locks down as I stare at the stairs plunging into darkness. That scent slams into me in full force. The sweet honeysuckle and vanilla is thick and cloying. Corrupted. Wrongness claws through my senses, forcing bile to mythroat because down there, hidden beneath layers of shadow and agony, is an omega.

Not just any omega.

Ourmate.

Chapter Two

Emma

Darkness wraps around me like a shroud, familiar and absolute. I've forgotten what natural light looks like, how it feels on skin that's now as gray as the concrete walls surrounding me. The mattress beneath me might as well be part of the floor. Threadbare, stained, reeking of despair, terror, sweat, blood, slick, alpha cum and absolute hopelessness.

I curl into myself, listening to the house above living its life without me. In spite of me. Each muffled sound is a reminder of a world I no longer belong to, if I ever did. My omega status wiped out any choice I might have had in the matter.

Being omega is a biological prison. I’m nothing more than a hole to fuck. A vessel for alpha seed. An animal driven by heat and need. I don't even blame society for thinking it because I am that animal. Begging, writhing, desperateduring the four terrible heats I’ve endured down here. No matter how much my mind screamed no, my body said yes please, Alpha. More, Alpha.

I fucking begged for release from the pain of my heat, but not with them. Not that way. Not with alphas who fill me with revulsion and despair. I’d rather die than be filled with their knots. Yet they still fucked me when I was so delirious I didn’t know what I was doing.

Still forced their knots into me.

Still ordered me to present on the dirty, cold concrete like a good little omega, slick running down my thighs thick enough to make me slide across the floor with the force of their thrusts. Just as Hugo and Lars trained me to do.

Such a good little omega. Such a good little fuck toy. My heats are my only value.

That's what omegas are, society's perfect little whores, programmed by biology to submit, to breed, to serve. They dressed it up in pretty words at The Haven Institute—”precious,” “cherished,” “treasured”—until I was forced into the Basement and the truth was revealed. At least there I had Mira and Leah. They were the only people who made living tolerable.

Here I have no one.

Nothing.

Not even hope.

Just the endless cycling of the gilded lies society chooses to believe of us running through my head. We're nothing but walking wombs, sex-crazed beings who need to be controlled and contained. Our bodies betray us, force us to respond to alpha commands, make us wet and willing even when our minds scream in revolt.

Nothingabout being omega is a choice.

Half-formed bonds are the cruelest trap. Their bites mark my neck, forcing their twisted emotions—lust, contempt, dominance—to flood me. I feel it all. Their pleasure in my pain, their indifference when my heat fades, their contempt when they starve me. But they never feel my terror, my hatred, or my silent wish for death. They don’t know what it’s like to be broken in body and soul.

They get their fun, their twisted pleasure, while I drown in their emotions without any way to make them understand mine. Just another way to remind me that I'm not a person to them.

I'm a possession.

A starved, broken one.

My stomach cramped its hunger protests days ago. Now it just sits, a hollow void matching the one in my chest. The sink drips its steady rhythm—my clock, my lifeline, my only source of water when they forget I exist.

I suffered through a total of four sporadic heats locked down here in the darkness. The first one, though, I experienced on the auction block in a room stuffed full of alphas and their pheromones. I was bid on and bundled into the trunk of a car. They brought me down here, bitten and part-bonded before I was lucid enough to know what was happening to me.

I’ve suffered three more heats since that one. Three more hellish heats marked by their cruel attention, their disgusting touches.

I move my legs and the chain connecting me to the wall scrapes on the ground. The cuff around my ankle, stained with blood and a wound that never heals, is heavy steel that marks me as owned. As if the bars I’m locked behind aren't enough to keep me. As if the bite marks scarring my neck aren't enough to stop me in my tracks.

The dripping sink reminds me of my parched mouth. I should get up, should drink. Should fight. But…why? My body made the choice for me when it started to shut down. I haven’t had a heat in months. At least, I think it’s been that long. There’s really no way to tell in the endless darkness.

At least no more heats means no more fuck fest.

---