Chapter 2
The elderly woman who burst into the cell was Odette’s nursemaid, the one who had raised her since birth.
She started crying the moment she saw Odette.
She unlocked the heavy, rusted shackles and let them fall with a dull clang against the floor.
The moment Odette was free, her body almost gave out beneath her.
"No, you have to hold on and run. There's no time, my child, no time. Come on..."
Nana half dragged her out of the cell and into the dark passages of the underground dungeon, but Odette could tell they weren't heading toward the exit.
Her wolf's senses were weak and frantic, but they told her the two of them were going deeper and deeper.
"This isn't the way... out..." she whispered, trembling as she tried to pull away.
For one horrible second, she thought even the woman who'd raised her was betraying her.
"Of course I can't take you through the entrance. There's a drainage tunnel. You'll have to crawl through it. It lets out in the forest beside the mansion, near the borderlands of the Temple of the Goddess," Nana explained in a rush.
They were moving too slowly.
Odette could barely take a step on her ruined legs.
"And run. Run as far as you can without looking back," Nana told her, her face twisted with pain and grief.
Only now, with everyone distracted by the celebration, had she been able to do anything to free her.
"And you?" Odette asked, worried.
"I..."
The old woman was about to answer, but a crash came from the hallway they had left behind.
"She escaped! Find her now! Follow the blood on the floor!"
Celine's maid screamed, and both of them jolted in terror.
Odette understood they would never get away at that pace.
No matter how hard she tried to force her injured feet to move, her body refused to go faster.
"Leave me. Hide and leave me here," she said, pushing weakly at the woman.
"No. No, or I'll never be able to die in peace and face your parents."
The sturdy old woman hoisted Odette onto her back and ran as fast as her body allowed.
When they reached the old storage room, she set Odette down on the floor and bent over her, taking her tear-soaked cheeks between both hands.
"I'm going to die either way, but if my death gives you even one chance, then it'll be the best thing I've ever done in my life."
"Nana, no. Don't do it. No!"
Odette could only see a shadow bent over her.
She could feel the touch on her cheeks, smell the salt of the old woman's tears.
"Live... just live, no matter how."
Those were the old woman's final words of comfort.
Then she told Odette to keep going to the back of the storage room and slip through the drain.
Odette felt her move away.
Then the door shut, and a heavy bolt slid into place.
Outside, the guards' footsteps and roars were already closing in on them.
With the last of her strength and the will to live setting her blood on fire, the weak Omega crawled forward, using the wall to guide her to the back of the room.
Her fingers found a narrow opening first, then the bars covering it.
She tried to focus, but her eyes, burned by acid, wouldn't obey her.
When she pulled with what little strength she had left, the grate finally gave way and fell to the floor, releasing the sharp stink of damp and rot.
Just as Odette started squeezing through, Nana's bloodcurdling scream reached her ears, right as the storage room door was kicked open.
She had no time to cry for her, no time to mourn the death of possibly the last person in the world who still cared whether she lived or died.
She crawled into the narrow drainage passage, feeling the walls close around her, the slime and dampness coating her skin as the crawling things she disturbed skittered over her body.
"She's escaping through that hole! Grab her foot, quick!"
A guard shouted, and Odette felt a clawed hand almost close around her bruised ankle.
She kicked back like a madwoman, blind and desperate, and heard a roar of pain followed by more curses.
No one would stop her.
She wouldn't go back to those dungeons, to that hell, to Celine's hands.
She had to escape, and somehow, any way she could, she was going to survive.
Minutes later, after crawling like an animal, the tunnel suddenly sloped into a steep drop, and Odette let herself fall.
Her body plunged downward, and the thunderous sound of roaring water rose to meet her in the dark.
She was flung into the waterfall crashing down the side of the cliff where the Midnight Alpha's lavish mansion stood.
The house where she had been born, the place she had once called home, the place she was leaving now and never intended to return to.
* * *
A bloody hand scraped over the river stones, its nails broken, its pale skin covered in cuts.
Gasping and shaking, the black-haired Omega had somehow survived the raging current.
She coughed up water until it felt like her lungs would tear out of her chest, then collapsed on the riverbank.
Far in the distance, the enormous mansion rose several stories high, full of lights and life, full of celebration for the Alpha King's engagement to her cousin Celine.
Tonight, Odette was supposed to have been the bride, not the fugitive crawling out of the river half dead.
She stared up at the sky, even though she couldn't see the moon or the stars anymore.
There was only darkness, growing thicker and more terrifying by the second.
She curled onto her side, folding into herself as the waves of heat returned.
The aphrodisiac had forced her Omega into heat, and her body begged to be taken and filled by a male who could make her shatter in pleasure.
Crying, Odette wanted to slide her hands between her legs, if only to give herself some kind of relief.
Her small, hard breasts pressed against the cold river stones.
She was almost naked, with filthy scraps clinging to her skin.
But she froze when distant howls rolled through the forest and began moving in her direction.
They were looking for her.
She knew it as surely as she knew they would capture her again if she stayed there.
So she forced herself to keep going.
She struggled to her feet and leaned on the tree trunks for support, half limping, half running as she dragged herself forward while the pack of wolves drew closer behind her.
"Her scent leads this way! Hurry! Whoever captures her gets rewarded by Miss Celine!"
The shout came much closer than it should have.
Torches moved through the night forest.
Odette was starting to panic.
She felt as if she couldn't go on, as if her consciousness were slipping away, as if the scent of those males made her want to stop and lie down right there on the ground, legs open.
Begging for their cocks, begging for their cum and their thrusts, like the whore Celine said she was.
In the middle of that agony, just when she was about to be found, one foot slipped into empty air.
The scream caught in her throat as she tangled in vines and roots and fell hard into some kind of hole in the earth.
Her head struck stone, and the world went black.
When Odette came back to herself, she was lying on a stone floor with darkness closing in all around her and only the soft rush of water moving through underground cracks.
She made no sound.
She only waited for the torture, for Celine's voice, for that victorious laugh.
At first, she thought she had been chained again, but she wasn't.
Only then did she realize no one had captured her.
The place she had fallen into had probably hidden her from the wolves hunting her.
Where was she?
Odette lifted her head and tried to focus her eyes, but they hurt too much, and all she could see were shadows.
Her wolf was drowning in heat, and it became even worse when she caught a scent that drove her insane.
Odette couldn't hold back her impulses anymore.
They drove her to her feet and blindly forward.
Her feet touched the cold water of some underground pool.
She felt the current move around her legs, but she kept following that scent, the one that left her slick between the legs.
She reached what felt like a stone platform and climbed by touch until her hands found something hard.
A leg, or something shaped like one.
She didn't really know.
Her dirty fingers followed the shape of the stone upward while she stayed on her knees, leaning toward the source of that pure, obscene glory.
Heavy musk.
A wild beast in heat.
Exactly what she wanted with a desperation that hurt.
She tore away what was left of her panties, leaving the ruined fabric hanging from her waist.
Odette climbed over those stone legs, carved with what felt like fur, until she was straddling the statue, seated over it.
Her thighs opened, and her hot, bare pussy fit perfectly against the hard protrusion jutting from between the statue's legs.
"Aahh..."
A moan of pleasure slipped out of Odette.