Page 59 of The Runaway

It was an entirely miserable existence, but it was made worse by one extra detail that Connor had so far been unable to find a way to avoid. With no regard for the state of his omega’s body or the health of the child, Thomas had continued his daily habit of mating with Connor. For the first six months, it had been no worse than it usually was, uncomfortable and undignified, but largely unremarkable. But around the middle of the seventh month, a startling change had taken place in Connor’s body. Usually, he climaxed only once during a mating, if at all. By arching his back and avoiding too much pressure from the knot, he could usually avoid it altogether. There was no pleasure in it, he’d learned long ago. It was more like being forced to take a piss, messy and smelly and only encouraging his master to fuck him more vigorously next time.

But as the baby inside him grew, it left less and less room for his alpha’s prodigious knot, and by the time Connor was entering his third trimester, his body had simply run out of room. It came as quite a shock one day, as he was bent over a bale of straw in the barn, his master’s cock firmly locked up his ass, that he quite suddenly climaxed, with no control over his body and barely any warning. He cried out, his fluids spilling over the side of the straw bale, and he heard Thomas chuckle from behind him. “You like that, do you? Little omega slut likes my cock now? I knew you would. Omegas always get randy as hell when they’re all stuffed full of a youn’ un. You took your time about it, but at least you’re paying attention now.” He pressed his knot in harder, rolling his hips, and with all the force of being kicked by a horse, Connor climaxed again.

“Fuck! Shit, I… God, no. Please, stop.”

“Stop?” Thomas laughed again. “Oh, no, I’ve been waiting for this. I’m going to enjoy you.” He rolled his hips again, and a third orgasm was forced out of Connor’s body. It was a fresh new hell, a whole new way for his master to make him feel helpless and to exert control over his life. And once the discovery was made, Thomas had taken great delight in wringing five, six, even seven orgasms out of Connor each and every time they mated.

Now, midway through his eighth month, he was simply enduring the treatment, having long ago given up pleading for any kind of mercy from his master. Thomas owned his body, he’d been told again and again, and Connor had no right to complain about his master taking whatever pleasure in it he chose. Once again, Connor was being roughly mounted. He felt nauseous at the stiff push and pull inside his body. His belly was aching and heavy, hanging down below him as his knees pressed into the thin mat on the floor. He knew what was coming, having endured the same indignity every day for the past five weeks. With each passing day, however, it was getting worse. The master climaxed, sending fluid pulsing into Connor’s belly, and then his knot swelled. Connor climaxed almost immediately, his balls feeling tight and inflamed, his ass aching fiercely. He was barely allowed to catch his breath before Thomas was rocking his hips and shoving his knot deeper, and by the end of the session, Connor had come a grand total of nine times, each climax as unwanted as the last. He was panting and exhausted, his hands fisted around the blankets like he could somehow end his own suffering by wringing the life out of them.

???

Present Day

Gabriel watched the tears flow down Connor’s face as he finished the story. He’d given birth alone, in the damp room where he and the other omega slept. Once it was over, a beta had been sent in to collect the child, but no one had spared a thought for Connor, and he’d lain on the floor in a puddle of blood and fluid until Audrey had finally come to bed. She’d taken the soiled blankets away and replaced them with new ones, doing her best to mop up the mess in the process, but that was all the assistance he’d received. And barely a week later, while he’d still been sore and bleeding, Thomas had resumed his daily mating with Connor, offering only rude complaints as his omega cried out in pain.

“Thomas deserves to be shot,” Gabriel said, after Connor had fallen silent. He lacked the words to express how deeply disgusted he felt with the treatment Connor had endured. “People are just awful.”

Connor sniffed and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “Yeah, they are,” he agreed. “But…”

“But?” Gabriel prompted him, when he didn’t continue.

“But you’re not,” Connor said, chewing his lip as he looked over at Gabriel.

“Aren’t I?” Gabriel asked. “I let Avril go back to the Martins without doing anything to help her. I watched dozens of omegas in the army be abused without doing anything to help them.”

“Did youtryto help them?” Connor asked.

Gabriel felt a familiar trickle of guilt. “At first, yes. I tried to get people to treat them better, or get their rations increased. No one wanted to listen.”

“Then you’ve done far more than most people will ever do. Most alphas would just join in the abuse. Some alphas, and most betas, would turn a blind eye to it and pretend it’s not happening. And a very small number of people would actually try to do something about it. And even if those people fail, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still good people.

“See, there’s a difference between being unable to help someone and deliberately trying to hurt them. I couldn’t stop people hurting Jackelyn or the other omegas back on the baby farm. But at the same time, I didn’t steal their food or their blankets or report them to the alphas for doing the wrong thing. So if you can help someone, then yes, I think you should, but a lot of the time in life, things are just too big or too far out of our control for us to be able to stop them. Do you think I was weak or evil for not being able to stop an alpha from beating Jackelyn?”

“No, of course not,” Gabriel said, aghast at the idea. “How could that possibly be your fault?”

“Then why is it your fault if some other alpha does bad things and you can’t stop them? You keep behaving like alphas and betas and omegas are all equal, but that doesn’t make any sense if you then try and take all the blame for things going wrong, when you’ve got no more control over it than a beta or an omega would.”

“Alphas have a responsibility to make this world a better place,” Gabriel insisted. Connor’s explanation was just too simple.

“But you’re also fighting against a whole pile of other alphas who want to make it worse. Sometimes you’ll win. Sometimes you’ll lose. But the fact that you’re trying is the most important bit. Do you want some dinner?” Connor asked, swiftly cutting off the discussion and changing topic. “I’m hungry.”

It was getting dark, and the temperature was dropping as the sun went down. And there was no point in making Connor go hungry while Gabriel continued to ruminate on his own failings. “Yeah, some dinner would be good,” he said, willingly accepting the distraction. “Let’s get this fire started, then we’ll see what Adalene packed for us.”

???

Lying in bed that night, Connor diligently attempted to go to sleep. Gabriel was snoring softly beside him, having dropped off almost the moment his head hit the pillow – or in this case, a bundle of clothes shoved under his head as a workable substitute. The tent was small enough that it was almost impossible to turn over or bend his legs without kicking Gabriel, and so Connor was trying his hardest to keep still.

But his mind kept wandering, going over the day’s events and the conversations they’d had along the way. He’d been taken aback when Dante had tracked him down this morning and tried to talk him into going with Gabriel. The news that he’d been leaving in the first place had been shocking, but for Connor to muscle his way in on the trip was nothing short of outrageous. Surely an alpha would already know his own mind, and if Gabriel had wanted Connor to go with him, he’d have said so. But Dante had insisted that sometimes even alphas needed a good hard shove in the right direction, and so Connor had shown up with a packed bag and as much of an attitude as he could muster. And just like that, Gabriel had let him come along.

Setting up his bedroll in the tent next to Gabriel’s had been audacious, to say the least. And then he’d been so terrified that Gabriel would tell him to move it again that he’d bolted off into the forest, on the excuse of collecting some wood. But when he’d returned to the camp, his bed was still where he’d left it, with nothing more said about Connor’s bold move, and he’d spent much of the afternoon trying to figure out what to make of that.

Dinner had been simple but palatable – bread, honey and dried fruit. There wasn’t much growing in the vegetable garden yet, so Adalene hadn’t been able to send much in the way of fresh vegetables with them, but Gabriel had said there were some potatoes they could roast on another night, perhaps with some fish, if they managed to catch some in the river. But though the food was simple, Gabriel had shared it willingly, on a bizarre assumption that Connor, an omega and an uninvited interloper, was just as entitled to it as Gabriel was.

After spending another hour or so gazing at either the fire or the stars, it had been time to go to bed. Lying beside Gabriel in the dark, Connor was reminded so much of the night after his heat. He’d lain naked beside Gabriel then, their skin touching in various places and neither of them uncomfortable about it. He’d listened to Gabriel breathing and imagined what it would be like to be able to touch him again, to have an alpha mate with him so gently and carefully.

But then Gabriel had gone to such efforts to create distance between them in the weeks that had followed, and it was only now, after spending an afternoon listening to his guilt and regrets, that Connor was beginning to understand why. Perhaps, if he rolled over and put his arm around Gabriel, the alpha would understand that Connor was here willingly?

Perhaps, if he put his hand on Gabriel’s bare chest and kissed his shoulder, Gabriel would understand that it was an invitation? And if he questioned it, as he almost certainly would, Connor could whisper that he’d enjoyed having Gabriel touch him, and that he wanted to try it again and see if it was just as good when he wasn’t in heat.