Saved by Alpha

Gina

Every night, for as long as I can remember, I’ve had the same nightmare.

In it, I’m running barefoot through the forest, wearing a torn, blood-spattered dress, while the screams of the dying members of my pack echo all around me.

I don’t remember what my pack was called, where it was located, or even who my parents were. All I know is that we were attacked when I was five, and my parents told me to run, promising they would be right behind me—only to be murdered before my eyes moments later.

It was their blood that stained the once snow-white dress I was wearing that night.

Theirs… and the blood of the monster who killed them.

I don’t remember how he died. All I know is that one moment, he was standing over my parents’ bodies, his hands dripping with their blood and a nasty grin on his face, and the next, he was lying dead at my feet with a silver dagger buried in his back.

His killer, however, was nowhere nearby.

Maybe it was the shock that stopped me from staying there and crying over my parents’ bodies. Or maybe it was their words. Either way, I didn’t hesitate.

I did what they had asked me to do. I ran as far away as I could from the massacre being carried out against my pack.

I ran, stumbling.

Trying to escape.

Trying to hide.

Trying to find somewhere safe.

My little dress caught on bushes and tore as I pushed through them, but I didn’t stop running.

It was useless.

No matter how hard I tried, the nightmare always ended the same way.

One of the monsters would catch me and drag me by force to the main square, where the other captured children were already gathered. I was forced to watch as they slaughtered all the adults.

Then, one by one, they dragged us into cages in the backs of trucks and drove us far beyond the borders of our territory.

As usual, I woke with my heart pounding wildly, too terrified to move.

That nightmare had taken place fifteen years ago, but the memories of that night were still vivid in my mind.

Well…

Some of them, at least.

Whenever I tried to remember my parents’ faces, my mind came up blank. It was as if something inside me refused to let me remember the faces of the people I had loved.

I would have given anything for my mind to take away the other memories too.

The more gruesome ones.

Both from that night and from the fifteen years that followed.

I often wished I had been killed back then. It certainly would have been better than the fate that awaited me afterward.

And not just me.

The other abducted children suffered too, though most of them were lucky enough to die over the years.

As it turned out, we had been taken to become slaves. After the first selection, all the boys were killed.

More than once, I envied them.

The girls were spared. At the time, none of us knew why.

We found out much later.

At first, we were used as domestic help. Although even that was putting it too kindly.

We were more like enslaved servants.

We cleaned, cooked, and fulfilled every whim of the members of the pack we had ended up with. As time passed, however, the girls began disappearing one by one.

Usually when they reached puberty—or sometimes a little later—they would suddenly vanish.

I was the youngest of them, so I had no idea what was happening until the very end.

Until the day it was finally my turn.

On my fourteenth birthday, I was taken away from the pack house. It happened unusually late. Most of the other girls had disappeared sometime after their tenth or twelfth birthdays.

I was sure they were going to kill me.

Instead, they threw me into a cell in the dungeon and chained me up.

As it turned out, I wasn’t alone. There were girls in the nearby cells who had been taken before me.

Not all of them.

Many were already gone.

The ones who remained were emaciated, filthy, and terrified. None of them spoke, no matter how desperately I begged them to explain what was happening.

I didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

I got it that very same night.

I was sleeping on the cold, hard floor when the sound of a door opening woke me. A moment later, I heard heavy footsteps and the quiet, terrified whimpers of the girls in the neighboring cells.

The footsteps stopped in front of my cell.

Then I heard a deep, ominous voice.

“Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to you today. We’ve got a new toy to try out.”

The man laughed. It was deep and throaty, and the sound sent a shiver down my spine.

I pretended to still be asleep, hoping that whoever he was would simply walk away.

Instead, I heard keys jingling and the clank of the lock. Then my cell door opened, and slow, almost predatory footsteps approached me.

The chains attached to the cuffs around my wrists rattled. A second later, I felt a violent jerk upward.

My body lifted from the floor, and I gasped as the metal dug painfully into my wrists. I opened my eyes and looked up at the man holding my arms above my head.

His face was twisted with cruelty.

He smiled and licked his lips.

“I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to you often, sweetheart. And I doubt I’ll be the only one,” he muttered, his foul breath washing over my face.

Then he tore away the rags covering my emaciated body.

I shook my head, and a single tear rolled down my cheek at the memory from six years ago.

Or maybe I was crying because of all the memories from the past six years.

That night, the man brutally raped me. And, just as he had predicted, he came back many times afterward.

So did other men from the pack.

Sometimes several of them came in a single night.

Not just for me.

For the other girls too.

At least they were eventually lucky enough to die. One after another, their bodies and minds simply gave up.

I was still desperately waiting for my turn.

But death stubbornly refused to come.

And as their supply of “toys” for torture slowly dwindled, they used my body more and more often.

The last girl died a few months ago.

At least, I thought it had been a few months.

I counted the days based only on the few hours of peace I was given each day.

Since her death, they had come for me every single day. Sometimes they would line up outside my cell, waiting for one man to finish so the next could take his place.

That night was supposed to be the same.

And every night after it.

Until death finally showed me mercy.

When I heard the dungeon door open, followed by several pairs of heavy footsteps, I curled up in the farthest corner of my cell, even though I knew it wouldn’t help.

I squeezed my eyes shut, preparing myself for what was about to happen.

But this time, the footsteps seemed to pass my cell.

All except one pair.

They stopped for a little longer.

I opened my eyes and looked toward the bars.

A man stood there.

He didn’t look much older than me. His black hair was slightly tousled, falling against the back of his neck, while at the front it was only a few centimeters long.

He stared at my naked body, partly hidden in the shadows, with an unreadable expression. Still, I thought I saw a muscle twitch in his sharply defined jaw, as though he were clenching his teeth.

“Are you coming or not, Derek?” one of the men called from farther down the corridor.

I instinctively curled in on myself at the sound of one of my tormentors’ voices.

“Our Alpha is already doing you a favor by letting you take your dog instead of simply killing him for trespassing on our territory.”

The man—Derek—looked away from me and continued walking.

“Nico is just a pup. He got carried away during his first run. Soren was pretty understanding when I explained the situation,” he said.

His voice was rough as he addressed the men walking ahead of him.

One of them snorted.

“In my opinion, we should’ve killed him at the border, but Alpha Soren seems to have some kind of soft spot for you.”

“It’s just mutual respect. He knows that if he killed one of my people without explaining the situation to me first, he’d risk my anger.”

I listened to their conversation with curiosity.

This Derek was clearly the Alpha of another pack. And considering that the Alpha-tormentor—as I had come to call him in my thoughts—respected him, Derek had to be just as cruel.

Maybe even worse.

I heard keys jingling again, followed by the clank of another lock.

Then the bars farther inside the dungeon creaked.

“Did you beat him?” Derek asked, anger creeping into his voice.

“He resisted,” one of the guards replied dismissively. “You should be grateful he’s still alive.”

A threatening growl echoed off the dungeon walls.

“You’re lucky I came here peacefully. Otherwise, I’d tear you apart right here for beating one of my wolves and showing me this kind of disrespect,” Derek snarled.

The men fell silent.

A moment later, a quiet whimper reached my ears.

Then came footsteps.

They were coming back toward me.

When the dark-haired man reappeared, he was carrying a badly beaten boy in his arms. I couldn’t tell exactly how old he was because bruises covered his entire face, but he probably wasn’t much older than sixteen.

That was usually around the age when werewolves experienced their first shift. And judging by what Derek had said, the boy had been on his first run.

He had probably only just met his wolf.

Jealousy stabbed through me.

Mine had never come.

Under normal circumstances, I should have gone through my first transformation four years ago. But the trauma I had suffered while locked in those dungeons had prevented the connection with my animal spirit from ever forming.

I doubted it ever would.

The man stopped in front of my cell again.

Our eyes met.

He stared at me so intensely that a shiver ran down my spine.

“Interested in our little prisoner?” one of the monsters escorting him asked.

He made a lewd smacking sound with his lips, and I trembled.

Maybe I imagined it, but Derek’s jaw seemed to tighten with anger. His entire body tensed.

“I’m curious what she did to deserve being kept down here,” he replied flatly.

“With all due respect,” one of the guards said mockingly, “that’s none of your business.”

Derek’s amber eyes seemed to darken in the dim light. He shot both men an angry glare.

“Listen…” One of them raised his hands defensively. “The girl’s a traitor. She’s in here because she tried to kill Soren.”

Lies.

I snarled the word inside my head, but I didn’t dare say it aloud.

“Really?” Derek asked skeptically, turning his attention back to me.

His eyes seemed to soften.

“Then why didn’t you kill her?”

“Ask our Alpha if you’re that curious.”

The man waved his hand dismissively. Then, knowing he was outside Derek’s line of sight, he gave me a crooked smile and rubbed his crotch.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before they came back once they were finished dealing with their guest.

“I’ll do that,” Derek said.

Then he looked away from me and continued down the corridor, carrying his wounded wolf out of the dungeon while the two men followed him.

Once again, I was left alone with my fear.

I had no idea how much time passed before they returned.

Probably a few hours.

At least, that was what I assumed.

They rarely received guests in the middle of the night, so it must have been daytime when Derek arrived. And they only came for me at night.

When they finally appeared, I was more terrified than ever before.

Not because of what was about to happen.

I had stopped being afraid of another rape a long time ago.

No.

This time, nine men had come.

And among them was Alpha Soren, the most violent of them all.

When they stopped in front of my cell, Soren looked at me with obvious displeasure.

“You caught my guest’s attention,” he said, shaking his head. “Because of you, I had to answer some very inconvenient questions.”

His lips curled into a predatory smile.

“And that means I have to punish you.”

I flinched.

He unlocked the door and stepped inside, then gestured for two of the eight men accompanying him to follow.

“Today, sweetheart, you’ll have to deal with three of us at once.”

I froze as his gaze moved over my naked, battered body.

He licked his lips.

“You’ve only got yourself to blame, sweetheart.”

He laughed and began unbuttoning his pants. The two men beside him did the same.

A moment later, all three stood over me, holding their slimy, swollen cocks in their hands.

I pressed my back against the wall, desperately trying to get farther away from them even though I knew there was nowhere left to go.

Soren reached for me.

I screamed when he grabbed my wrist and threw me violently to the floor. The rough stone scraped the skin from my knees and palms until they bled.

He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me toward one of the other men.

The man was lying on the floor, rubbing the instrument of my torture with a smug grin.

“And now, like a good little girl, you’re going to sit on Jonathan and wait until all three of us fill you up. Understand?” Soren hissed into my ear.

He didn’t wait for an answer.

He threw me straight into Jonathan’s disgusting arms. Jonathan immediately pulled me toward him, forced my legs apart, and positioned me over his body.

I screamed and struggled, but he ignored me.

Then he brutally thrust himself inside me with a satisfied grunt.

Soren didn’t wait long.

He twisted my arms behind my back so I could no longer hit Jonathan. A moment later, I felt his cock pressing against my anus.

I froze in terror.

Then I screamed in agony as he forced his way into my ass, sending an enormous wave of pain through me.

My scream was cut short almost immediately when the third man grabbed my jaw and forced himself into my mouth.

I nearly choked.

He tasted disgusting.

Like sweat, filth, and something musty.

My stomach twisted, and I immediately felt like I was going to vomit.

I wanted to clamp my teeth down and bite off that instrument of torture, but he locked my jaw open with his fingers, refusing to let me move it even a millimeter.

I whimpered as tears streamed down my cheeks while they satisfied their lust by torturing my body.

I had never wanted death more than I did in that moment.

But I knew it wouldn’t come.

Just as it hadn’t come on any of the previous nights.

All I could hope for was to lose consciousness before they finished and it was time for the others.

It seemed my pleas were finally being answered.

My body began to weaken.

My vision blurred.

The sounds of their bodies slamming brutally against mine grew distant, as if I were hearing them from beneath the surface of the water.

I knew I was passing out.

Just before I lost consciousness completely, I heard Soren’s wild laughter.

And somewhere beyond the dungeon—

a furious roar.

Soren didn’t seem concerned.

He was far too absorbed in what he was doing to my limp body.