Chapter 108: 16.4.1 x
The scent of old blood and cheap ale led Koen through the wheat like a dirty thread. He’d been on their trail for two days, the Blackburn Gang, five alphas and two betas wanted for slaughtering a tax collector’s entire household. His boots crushed the golden stalks, the late afternoon sun painting everything in long, accusing shadows. The barn was their last known stop. It stood ahead, a crumbling monument to neglect.
He felt the first prickle at the base of his spine an hour ago. A creeping warmth he’d mistaken for the sun on his back. A stupid mistake. He was dense, not oblivious, but denial was a powerful drug for an omega who lived by the gun.
Now, as he crouched at the tree line fifty yards from the barn, the denial shattered. A wave of liquid heat rolled through his gut, so intense it stole his breath. His skin tightened, oversensitive; the rough canvas of his trousers scraped like sandpaper, the worn leather of his gun harness chafed. A slick, familiar dampness seeped into his smallclothes. Fuck. Not now. Not here.
His focus, usually razor-sharp when sighting down a barrel, fractured. The world swam. The gang’s scent—sweat, leather, male aggression—wasn’t just a trail anymore. It was a fog, thick and tantalizing, coiling around him, pulling at something primal and stupid in his hindbrain. Gabriel’s perfect, clean alpha smell was a memory, utterly drowned out by this immediate, grimy musk.
He tried to stand, to back away, to regroup. His legs trembled. A low, involuntary whine caught in his throat—a demotic sound, needy and weak. He clenched his jaw, angry at himself. “Get it together,” he muttered, the words slurred. He fumbled for the revolver at his hip. The polished walnut grip felt foreign in his slick palm.
Inside the barn, Rorke, the gang’s leader, paused in sharpening his knife. His head lifted, nostrils flaring. A slow, ugly smile split his bearded face. He was a broad alpha with knife-scarred knuckles. “You smell that?” he growled to the others.
The two betas by the door shifted, uneasy. One of the other alphas, a younger man with hungry eyes, sniffed the air. “Smells like… ripe fruit. And demon. That hunter. The one with the price on his head.”
“Smells like he’s come down with a pressing condition,” Rorke chuckled, sheathing his knife. “A generous one. Find him. Bring him in. Gently, now. A omega in full bloom is a fragile thing.”
Koen was stumbling backwards, his vision blurring at the edges. The heat was a furnace in his veins, burning away reason, leaving only raw, screaming need. Every rustle of wheat was a promise. Every shadow was a potential alpha. He panted, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. He needed Gabriel. He needed his mate’s bite, his weight, his claim. The absence was a physical pain.
He didn’t hear them until they were almost on him. The wheat parted silently, and two of the alphas emerged, flanking him. The younger one, Larkin, licked his lips. “Look at that. Lost little puppy.”
Koen snarled, a demonic rasp, and tried to raise his revolver. His arm felt like lead. Larkin was on him in a flash, a brutal hand clamping over Koen’s wrist, wrenching the gun away. The other alpha, Burne, grabbed Koen from behind, thick arms pinning Koen’s arms to his sides.
“Feisty,” Burne grunted, his breath hot and sour against Koen’s neck. Koen thrashed, but his strength was leeching away, converted into pure, undiluted hunger. Burne’s scent—unwashed, dominant alpha—flooded his senses, and a treacherous part of him shuddered with want.
“Don’t mark him,” Larkin said, pocketing Koen’s gun. “Rorke gets first taste.”
They hauled him, half-dragging, half-carrying, towards the barn. Koen’s struggles grew weaker, his protests dying into pathetic whimpers. The overwhelming, sickening aroma of multiple alphas in close quarters short-circuited his last defenses. His body betrayed him utterly, slick soaking through his clothes, his skin flushed and burning for touch.
They kicked open the barn door and threw him onto a heap of mildewed hay. Dust motes danced in the slanted light. Five alphas and two betas formed a loose circle around him, their eyes gleaming with various shades of lust and cruelty. Rorke stepped forward, planting a boot on either side of Koen’s hips, looking down at him.
Koen curled in on himself, a flush of shame burning through the heat. He was a weapon, a hunter, and he’d been reduced to this: a trembling, wet mess on a filthy floor, presented to scum.
“Pretty thing,” Rorke mused, reaching down to hook a finger under Koen’s chin, forcing his head up. Koen’s orange eyes were glassy, unfocused. “All those freckles. And look at those little teeth.” He traced a thumb over Koen’s sharp canine, and Koen instinctively snapped, a weak bite that only made Rorke laugh. “Spirited. I like that. Makes it better when you break.”
“Please,” Koen rasped, the word torn from him. “Don’t.”
“Please don’t?” Rorke mocked. “Or please do?” He leaned down, his voice a gravelly whisper. “Your body’s saying ‘please do,’ omega. Screaming it. We can all smell you. You’re drowning in it.”
Rorke’s hand moved from Koen’s chin to the front of his trousers, palming him roughly through the fabric. Koen cried out, back arching against his will, a bolt of agonizing pleasure shooting through him. The rough touch was all wrong, it was vile, but his heat-ravaged body couldn’t tell the difference.
“See?” Rorke said, grinning at his gang. “Begging for it.” He kept his hand there, rubbing, as he looked over his shoulder. “Larkin, Burne. Hold him down. Let’s get a proper look at what we caught.”
The two alphas moved with a casual brutality that spoke of long practice. Burne’s knee ground into the small of Koen’s back, pressing his face into the hay, while Larkin wrenched his arms wide and pinned his wrists to the rough wooden floor. The rotten straw filled Koen’s mouth with the taste of decay and his own desperate panting. Rorke’s boots scraped as he crouched, his shadow swallowing Koen whole.
“Let’s see, then,” Rorke said, his voice a bored drawl that belied the avid gleam in his eyes. A belt buckle clinked. Calloused fingers, smelling of metal and dirt, fumbled with the buttons of Koen’s trousers. The fabric, already soaked through with slick, yielded easily. Koen convulsed, a full-body shudder of revulsion that melted helplessly into a quiver of raw need. The cool barn air hit his exposed skin, a fleeting shock drowned by the inferno beneath.
Rorke whistled, low and appreciative. “Filthy little thing, aren’t you? Soaked clean through.” He didn’t use his hand. He used the worn toe of his boot, nudging Koen’s thighs further apart. The rough leather rubbed against oversensitive flesh. Koen screamed into the hay, the sound muffled and broken. It wasn’t pain. It was too much, a confusing torrent of sensation that his heat-wracked body interpreted as a grotesque promise. His back arched again, betraying him, pushing himself against the crude contact.
“Fucking hell, look at that,” one of the betas muttered from the periphery, his voice hushed with a mix of horror and fascination.
“Told you,” Larkin grunted, his grip tightening on Koen’s wrists. “Ripe. He’ll take anything now. Won’t even need to hold him down soon.”
Rorke finally used his hand. He spit into his palm, a thick, wet sound, and then wrapped his fingers around Koen’s cock. Koen jerked like a gaffed fish, a broken, wet sob tearing from his throat. The touch was all wrong—too rough, too dry despite the spit, utterly devoid of the reverent greed Gabriel possessed. It was a utilitarian grip, assessing. Rorke gave him two slow, punishing strokes, his thumb smearing precum over the head. “Responsive,” he noted clinically, as if examining livestock.
He released him, wiping his hand on Koen’s thigh. The loss of contact, vile as it was, left a void of agony. Koen whimpered, his hips giving a tiny, involuntary cant upwards, seeking friction, seeking anything. The humiliation of it burned hotter than the fever. He could smell his own scent, cloying and sweet, mixing with the gang’s stench, an invitation he never meant to give.
“On your back,” Rorke commanded, rising to his full height. Burne and Larkin flipped him over as if he weighed nothing. The exposed rafters of the barn spun above him, a blur of cobwebs and darkness. His trousers were bunched around his knees, his shirt rucked up to his chest. He was laid bare under the gaze of seven men. His skin felt atom-thin, every stare a physical abrasion.
Rorke unbuckled his own belt, the leather sliding through loops with a fatal hiss. “Figured my share of the bounty would be coin,” he said to the room, his eyes locked on Koen’s glazed ones. “This is better. We’ll have our fun, and when he’s broken in and reeking of us, maybe we’ll sell him to a salt mine crew. They’re not picky about scent marks. Or well keep him, could be good stress relief.”
Panic, sharp and clean, finally cut through the hormonal fog. A salt mine. A slow death in the dark, forgotten. Gabriel’s face flashed in his mind—the archangel’s sharp smile, the way his true form made the air hum, the possessive burn of his mating bite on Koen’s shoulder. That bite was there, a dormant brand under his freckled skin, useless now. His alpha wasn’t coming. The thought was a cold nail driven into the heat.
“No,” Koen breathed, more a plea to the universe than to the men.
“Yes,” Rorke said, and pushed his own trousers down. He was already hard, thick and ruddy. He didn’t prepare Koen. He didn’t need to. The slick was a river, a humiliating testament to Koen’s own biology conspiring against him. Rorke spat into his hand again, slicked himself roughly, and positioned the blunt head against him.
The first breach was a violation so profound it stole the air from Koen’s lungs. It was a burning, stretching wrongness, a tearing pressure that had nothing to do with pleasure. He threw his head back, a silent scream cracking his lips. Rorke grunted, a sound of effort and conquest, and sank deeper in one brutal, steady shove until his hips met Koen’s ass.
“Tight. Like a fucking vise,” Rorke groaned, his composure slipping into base animal grunts. He didn’t wait, didn’t allow for adjustment. He pulled back and slammed home, setting a punishing, mechanical rhythm. The hay scratched Koen’s back raw. Each drive punched a choked gasp from him.
The heat intensified.
It devoured the pain, transmuting the brutal invasion into a different kind of fire. His body, traitorous and primal, began to clench and flutter around the invading cock, seeking stimulation, seeking release. The slap of skin, the grunts, the creak of the floorboards—it all dissolved into a roaring white noise in his ears. His own cock, untouched and weeping, lay heavy on his stomach. A deep, shuddering coil of pleasure began to wind in his gut, independent of his horror, fueled by the relentless friction and his own cursed biology.
Rorke fucked him like he was trying to break something inside him, which he was. He leaned forward, his sweaty chest pressing down, his breath hot and foul on Koen’s face. “That’s it, take it, omega. You love it. Smell you. You fucking love this cock.”
Koen turned his face away, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his cheeks. He saw the other alphas watching, their hands on their own belts, their eyes dark with impatient hunger. Larkin was licking his lips again, stroking himself through his pants.
“Gonna fill you up,” Rorke panted, his rhythm growing jagged, erratic. “Mark you up inside. Your mate won’t want you then. He’ll smell me in your guts.” The words were a poison worse than the act. Koen squeezed his eyes shut, but he couldn’t shut out the sensations, the building, unwelcome pressure in his core that threatened to snap.
Rorke’s pace became frantic. He pistoned into Koen with short, brutal slams, his fingers digging bruising trenches into Koen’s hips. With a final, snarling thrust, he buried himself to the hilt and held there. Koen felt the hot, sudden flood deep inside, a claiming he never wanted. Rorke shuddered, cursing filthily into the crook of Koen’s neck, before collapsing his weight for a moment.
He pulled out with a wet, obscene sound. Koen felt the trickle immediately, warm and violating. He was empty, gaping, and somehow the emptiness was worse. The heat, momentarily banked by the shock of the climax, roared back with a vengeance, a yawning, desperate need that the violation had only aggravated.
Rorke stood, tucking himself away, wiping his hands on his trousers. He looked down at Koen’s wrecked, trembling form with cold satisfaction. “Who’s next?”
Larkin was on him before Rorke had fully stepped back, his eager hands shoving Koen’s legs apart wider. “My turn.” He didn’t bother with his trousers, just unbuttoned his fly and freed himself. He was thinner than Rorke, but the frantic energy in his movements was worse. He positioned himself and pushed in without ceremony, sheathing himself in the wet, used passage Rorke had left behind.
“Gods, he’s hot inside,” Larkin moaned, his bony hips snapping forward immediately. He fucked with a greedy, scrambling pace, his hands pawing at Koen’s chest, pinching his nipples hard enough to make Koen cry out. “C’mon, omega, make some noise for me. Let me hear you.”
Koen bit his lip until he tasted copper, trying to trap the sounds. His body however, was a separate entity, convulsing around the invasion, slick easing the way despite the raw ache. Larkin’s scent was all sharp, frenetic alpha, like ozone and panic, and it grated against Koen’s senses even as his heat-muddled brain latched onto it. The beta named Elias watched from near the door, his face pale, but his eyes were fixed, unblinking.
“Think his demon half likes it rough?” Burne chuckled, kneeling nearby to watch. He trailed a dirty finger through the mess on Koen’s stomach.
Larkin grabbed a fistful of Koen’s ashen hair, yanking his head back. “Doesn’t matter what he likes.” His thrusts became harder, deeper, aiming to bruise. Koen’s breath hitched, a traitorous spark of pleasure flaring white-hot in the pit of his stomach. He felt his own cock twitch, a bead of precum welling. The shame of that physical response was a colder, deeper violation than any cock.
“Fuck, I’m gonna—” Larkin’s words dissolved into a high whine. He slammed himself deep and froze, shuddering as he emptied another burning claim into Koen’s guts. He collapsed forward, licking a stripe up Koen’s neck, over the mating bite that had no power here. “Tastes like failure,” he whispered, before pulling out.
The emptiness was a taunt. Koen’s hips gave a feeble, involuntary jerk, seeking friction, resolution. The heat was a coiled serpent in his belly, squeezing tighter with each deposit, each brutal filling. It needed more. It wanted him packed full, drowned in it.
“Burne,” Rorke said, lighting a hand-rolled cigarette. “Then the betas if they’ve got the stones. He’s still dripping. Won’t last much longer conscious.”
Burne was methodical. He turned Koen onto his hands and knees with a rough shove. The change in angle made Koen gasp as everything inside him shifted. Burne spat on his own cock, rubbed the head through the leaking mess between Koen’s cheeks, and then pressed in with a steady, inexorable pressure. He was the biggest of them, and the stretch was agonizing, a burning tear that made black spots dance behind Koen’s eyelids.
“There we go,” Burne grunted, his voice a low rumble against Koen’s back as he seated himself fully. He didn’t move at first, just let Koen feel the overwhelming fullness. Then he began to move, not with Larkin’s frenzy or Rorke’s violence, but with a slow, devastating piston-like rhythm that stole the air from Koen’s lungs with each deliberate withdrawal and crushing return.
Each thrust pushed a broken sound from Koen’s throat. His arms trembled, threatening to buckle. Burne wrapped a massive hand around Koen’s stomach, holding him up, pulling him back onto his cock. “Take it all, bitch. Deep as it goes.”
Koen’s vision blurred. The world narrowed to the slam of that thick cock into his sore, ruined hole, to the wet slap of skin, to the overwhelming scent of alpha cum and his own relentless slick. A pathetic, tingling heat was building at the base of his spine again, his body scrambling for release against the onslaught. He couldn’t stop it. A low, demotic whine crawled from his lips.
Burne heard it. His rhythm faltered, then became harder, faster. “Yeah, that’s it. Gonna come inside you. Gonna pump you so full you’ll slosh.” He fulfilled his promise with a series of sharp, grinding thrusts, roaring as he spilled, his knot swelling impossibly at the base, locking him inside. The pressure was monumental, stretching Koen further, sealing the flood within him. Koen screamed, a raw, torn sound, as his own orgasm was ripped from him untouched, his cock pulsing weakly onto the filthy hay, a final, utter humiliation.
Burne remained knotted inside him for what felt like an eternity, heavy and possessive. When he finally softened enough to pull out, the release was followed by a gush of warm fluid. Koen collapsed onto his side, curled in a fetal position, trembling violently. He was utterly spent, hollowed out, yet the fever still simmered under his skin, a low, relentless burn.
Rorke nudged the beta, Elias, with his boot. “Your turn. Or you too good for used goods?”
Elias swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He looked at Koen’s wrecked form, at the mess glistening on his thighs. A strange, determined hardness settled over his features. “I paid my share into this gang.” He walked over, unbuttoning his pants with stiff fingers.
He didn’t speak. He rolled Koen onto his back again, pushing his legs up. He was rough, not with alpha aggression, but with a beta’s brittle need to prove something. He rutted into the slick, overflowing channel, his face set in a grimace of concentration. It was quick, impersonal. He came with a grunt, withdrew, and walked away, avoiding everyone’s eyes.
The other beta, Cade, followed. He was faster, almost frantic, as if trying to get it over with. His fingernails dug into Koen’s hips. “Just relax,” he muttered, a pointless, absurd command. He finished soon after, pulling out with a sharp breath.
The last two alphas took their turns as Koen faded in and out of a gray, pain-ridden haze. They used his mouth, his thighs, his ruined hole again. He stopped fighting, stopped making sounds. He floated somewhere above his body, watching the succession of grunting, sweaty men eclipse the dim light from the barn door. Each new load added to the hot, sticky pool inside him, a reservoir of violation. The distinct, coppery scent of his own blood now mixed with the other fluids.
Finally, it stopped. The gang moved away, buttoning up, laughing softly amongst themselves. Koen lay perfectly still, his orange eyes open but unseeing, fixed on a crack in the ceiling. A deep, profound ache had settled into his bones, a hollowed-out feeling that went beyond the physical wreckage. Something inside him had fractured, and his demonic regeneration couldn’t touch it.
Rorke took a long drag from his cigarette, smoke curling in the dusty air. He looked over at Koen’s limp form, at the pronounced swell of his abdomen, distended with their spend. “Look at that,” he chuckled, a low, rasping sound. “Absolutely packed. Like a cream-filled pastry.”
Larkin grinned, wiping his mouth. “Gotta be at least two pups in him after all those loads. Probably more. His little omega factory’s working overtime.”