Chapter Text
Tommy blinked himself back into consciousness.
His mouth was as dry as sandpaper, his arm hurt like hell and his brain felt like someone had taken a whisk to it.
The ceiling above him was too white and spinning slightly. He tried to shift, to turn away room the unforgiving white but he strapped down to a metal gurney, the heavy buckle of the restraint at his waist biting into his hips, another binding his broken arm to his chest, which pulsed with heat and pain. A pressure bandage hugged his forearm, but he could still feel the wrongness beneath—bone set, yes, but too recent to feel anything like real relief.
Everything smelled like antiseptic and copper and blood. His blood. His chest was still sticky with old blood. Dried smears curled like rust over his ribs. A white sheet had been casually tossed over him, barely covering his dignity.
The became aware he was being watched and squinting against the nausea the movement induced, he turned his head to the side
And there she was.
A heavily pregnant omega. Her belly jutted like a ripe moon between them, taut and full. Her arms were folded on top of the swell, her face marred by an ugly muzzle, her vivid green eyes were boring into him like knives.
She was staring at him with murder written on her face.
Her voice, when it came, was low, furious, menacing. “Who the fuck are you, and why do you smell like Joel?”
Tommy’s sluggish mind couldn’t latch onto her words before she suddenly changed tack.
“Don’t say a fucking word,” she hissed—and then it was like a spell had been cast.
She transformed.
Her posture softened, her eyes went wide and vapid, she cocked her head to the side like a shy infant, and even with the muzzle Tommy couldn’t fail to notice that her lips were parted in a soft little smile. She leaned forward, dainty fingers stroking his dark, sweat-tangled hair.
“…and I could braid your hair,” she cooed, pitching her voice high and soft, “I could make it look sooooo pretty.”
Tommy barely had time to process the whiplash in her behaviour before a pair of medical techs rounded the corner.
“Shouldn’t she be in her room?” asked a male tech with sallow skin and a terminally unimpressed expression.
“No,” replied the plump, motherly one with the compression stocking that was walking beside him. “She has to get her exercise. It’s on her notes.”
“But she shouldn’t be hanging around an alpha, surely?”
“Oh, chill out, Grant. She’s pregnant and he’s off rut. What harm is there? Besides, with all those hormones coming off her, she’ll probably keep him calmer than anything you pump into him.”
“You’ll take good care of him, won’t you, sweetie?” the woman said, patting the omega on the head like she was a pet.
Tommy blinked. The omega giggled and purred like a puppy, and Tommy was starting to think he was so far out of his brain he was dreaming while he was awake.
“Just don’t let yourself get tired out,” the woman added. “You’re carrying precious cargo, remember?”
The omega nodded very seriously and followed it up with a breathy giggle.
As soon as the pair of tech were out of sight, the illusion was once shattered again.
She turned on him like a stormcloud. Menace in her eyes and a tight snarl on her lips.
“You better tell me why you smell like Joel,” she said, striding toward him with an unnatural grace for someone so far along in pregnancy. “Or I’m going to hurt you.”
Tommy blinked again, forcing himself to focus. That face, those eyes—green and sharp and wild—they were so much like his brother’s. The same ferocity. The same unwavering determination.
“Are you…?” he whispered, uncertain. Although the anti bite bit had been removed from his muzzle, his words were still slurred and muffled. “Are you Ren?”
That stopped her.
Her expression twisted, her eyes widening before they narrowed again, filled with suspicion.
“Who are you?” She growled.
“I’m Tommy. I’m Joel’s brother.”
It was like flipping a switch.
She was on him in an instant. Her arms circled his head, and she pressed her face into to his neck. Not just confirming his scent—but embracing him, hugging onto him like a brother, like kin.
He felt her baby bump pressing against his bare chest and stomach and cleared his throat awkwardly. “Uh—uh, careful. That’s err…a little close to—uh—somewhere.”
She pulled back with a hiccuped laugh and glassy eyes but her voice shook when she asked him a question.
“Is… is he okay? I can’t get through to him. The Soulhowl, it’s just static.”
Tommy felt pain then—not from the break in his arm, but from the look on her face. He had no strength to lie to her.
“It’s the rut hormones,” he mumbled, thick-tongued, his words slurring. “They… block the link.”
Ren tilted her head, confused.
Tommy tried to explain, but everything was fog. He clutched at the words like they were feathers in a storm.
“They… they pump us full of it. Alphas. The breeding stock. It messes with our heads. Blocks the howl. Makes you aggressive, horny… obedient if you’re damn well broken enough.”
Ren looked like she was going to be sick. “They did that to him? To you?”
Tommy nodded. Wishing a second later that he hadn’t as the room span around him.
“He’s been taken twice to the breeding rooms.” Tommy’s voice broke. “They make us…you know…with the omegas…their drugged…we’re all drugged.”
She crumbled before him. All her earlier fury and strength gone. She sank onto a nearby stool, hugging her swollen belly.
Tommy could barely see straight, but he could still see the heartbreak in her eyes.
“Does it… does it make them….want to do it?” she whispered.
Tommy wished he could lie.
“No, it’s not like a real rut” he said softly. “But it makes it hard to resist.”
Ren bit her lip until it bled.
“I don’t think he did,” Tommy added quickly. “I mean I know he didn’t the first time and I didn’t get to talk to him long after the second time. Not before he—” He shifted his arm, indicating the cast.
“Joel did that?” She seemed genuinely shocked. “Why?” she asked her voice tremulous.
Tommy stared at the ceiling. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. He tried to tell me something….A message….But I can’t remember. Fucking drugs.”
He was slipping again. The room rocked and dimmed.
Ren took his hand in her, bending over to press her cool check to it.
“Stay with me, Tommy.”
He nodded but didn’t know if he could. She leaned closer, her scent warm and spicy with maternal weight. Even under the sedation, it was soothing.
Together, they started working the staff.
Ren used her pregnancy hormones like a weapon. She cooed and giggled, stroked his hair, whispered nonsense while the staff watched, amused. It was true that Omega hormones did calm alphas and that pregnant omegas produced more of them but not to extent the staff were foolish enough to believe. The pair played up to the humans misunderstanding and the staff bought it easily. Tommy? He might overplayed his part, but no one seemed to notice. They were all too convinced by Ren.
She washed his feet. Braided his hair. And good help him, she painted his nails.
“Where the hell did you get nail varnish?” he muttered.
“Don’t ask,” Ren replied with a grin.
He only saw her in short bursts. She couldn’t stay long without drawing too much attention, and the twins were clearly wearing her down. But by the time the shift changed, the fog in Tommy’s mind had lifted enough to grasp the memory that had been bouncing out of reach.
“I remember,” he rasped. “Ren. I remember.”
She was immediately at his side. “What did he say?”
“He says you have to get the omegas ready to go. To fight. We only have three days to get everything in place. We’re breaking out.”
Ren went very still.
“Two days,” she corrected softly. “You’ve been asleep for most of this one. Besides… I know what’s coming, when it’s coming.”
Tommy frowned. “What is it, Ren? What’s going on?”
She looked away, then back at him. “In two days… they’re taking me to the main research lab. They’re going to extract the babies. Then… they’re going to cut me into pieces.” She said it so matter of fact, her tone of voice flat and unemotional that Tommy was literally dumbstruck. His mouth opened but nothing came out as he stared at her.
“I won’t let them, Tommy,” she whispered the fire returning to her voice. “I’ll kill them myself before I let Fedra have them.”
Tommy just nodded. There was nothing else he could say. No realistic comfort he could offer.
Then his eyes widened.
“There was more! Joel said—he said I had to get back to the kennels…I have to rile the alphas up, get the handlers to start swapping us out. Get them to pass on the message.”
Ren leaned back, already waddling toward a supply cupboard.
She returned with a pen and a pad covered in childish drawings. She shrugged when she saw him looking at it.
“Here,” she said, scribbling six digits on a torn corner. “This is the override code for the collars.”
He stared at her.
“How?”
She shook her head, “it doesn’t matter, a friend.”
She showed it to him, then slid it deep inside his cast. “But listen, Don’t forget it. Okay, Tommy? Don’t forget it!”
He nodded.
“But how am I supposed to get back to the kennels?” He asked
“I don’t know,” she shrugged, “just start acting more …alphary. Listen Tommy, I know it must hurt like hell, but suck it up. If Joel went through this, if he put you through this, just to get the message out—it must be important.”
“How am I supposed to act alphary?” he asked “Break something else?”
Ren sighed. “Figure it out.”
Tommy thought for a beat—then, with exaggerated effort, started huffing at her like an alpha in heat.
She blinked.
Then burst out laughing.
“Oh my god—I’m sorry, Tommy, it’s just—just weird. You’re like my brother.”
Tommy’s face soured. “It’s not going to work if you laugh at me.”
She bit her lip, smiled less. “Okay, okay. I promise I won’t laugh this time.”
They played the part well.
Tommy huffed and preened like an alpha attempting to make a move on an unclaimed omega. Ren’s fake distress was just convincing enough for a tech to call for him to be moved.
Before they came, they had one final minute alone. Ren leaned forward, pressing her brow to his in a soft nuzzle—a gesture of pack, of love, of family.
“Stay safe, Tommy. Good luck. I hope I’ll see you again.”
He whispered, “Me too.”
Then she backed away, hands on her belly, whimpering as the staff reappeared and wheeled him out of the room.
Back to the kennels.
Back to the plan.
Back to war.
Ren didn’t sleep. She couldn’t.
There wasn’t time—not when everything hinged on the next thirty-six hours.
She curled on her side in the narrow cot of the medical wing, belly heavy with pups, eyes burning from fatigue, and her mind wide open. Even when her lids dropped, even when her bones begged for rest, her soul stayed sharp, reaching.
She was hunting.
Every quiet moment, every lull between checkups or fake naps, she opened herself to the Soulhowl.
It began as a whisper. A single thread spun out from her core. One by one, she followed it through the murky, medicated voids that dulled every imprisoned omega’s mind. She felt resistance—heavy, drugged, barely conscious—but she pushed. She whispered into their sleeping thoughts, clawed her way around the chemical haze.
“Be ready.”
“It’s coming. Hold on.”
The hardest part wasn’t the connection. It was seeing what lay beyond the haze. So many were broken. Not just bruised or sedated—but gone. Hollow shells with shattered minds. But still, she tried.
In the dark of her mind, she flashed the override code—112909—again and again, imprinting it like a symbol of hope. She pushed it into the minds of the omegas who could still comprehend, even the faintest flickers of will she could sense.
Some whimpered.
Some growled.
A few responded. Quiet, flickering echoes of yes, of ready, of fight.
She found Trin. And Kaya. And Ana—the girl who hadn’t spoken in weeks—was suddenly there, blinking with startled awareness.
Ren didn’t stop.
She reached for wolves further out—presences on the very edge of her reach—half-feral ones locked deep underground or so thoroughly sedated they barely registered as conscious. She reached them anyway.
When her body buckled from effort, when her vision swam and bile rose in her throat, she still did not, would not stop.
She crawled to the sink, vomited thin, acidic bile, then returned to the cot and resumed her mission.
“Don’t eat the food. Don’t drink the water. Flush your systems. Hide what you can. We break free in two days. Fight with me.”
Only when she had touched every mind she could find, when her soul rang hollow and raw, did she let herself collapse back into her cot. Her belly aching. Her head throbbing.
And finally—finally—she whispered her last message into the dark, casting it like a flare through every level of the building, hoping beyond hope he might hear.
“Joel… I love you.”
Tommy had been moved back to the kennels.
The staff assumed he was still groggy, still nursing his broken arm. After all, he’d barely reacted when they tossed him into the rest block—where alphas not quite ready for breeding were housed. The handlers hadn’t realized their mistake.
Because Tommy wasn’t broken.
He was waiting.
The other alphas in the rest kennel—four of them—watched him warily at first. But when he chirruped low, almost testingly, and then huffed an ancient signal of a pack call to readiness, they sat up. They knew what it meant.
They didn’t speak—none of them dared—but Tommy didn’t need words. He mimed. Gestured. Let his scent sharpen with anger and purpose.
By the end of the night, the other alphas had caught on. They fluffed themselves up, postured aggressively, snarled at each other—convincing the handlers they were too rowdy, too volatile to be grouped together.
By midday the next day, all four had been split up. Swapped into different kennels, and just like that, the four who knew became eight.
The message would spread.
Tommy had done what he could. Now, like Ren, he could only wait—and pray it was enough.
Joel’s world was heat and pressure.
The rut-inducing hormones were stronger this time. He could feel them—molten beneath his skin, seeping into the marrow of his bones. His cock was hard, aching, uselessly twitching and weeping against his thigh.
They’d milked him again.
He didn’t want to think about it. But he couldn’t stop the memory—the humiliating suction, the shame of coming so fast and so hard, that his vision had blurred and the techs had actually applauded. Like he was some champion stud, instead of a broken man being turned into a breeding machine.
“Excellent yield,” one of them had said, proudly noting the double-volume vial.
Fuck them.
Let them think him their perfect fucking machine. Let them believe their monster was thriving. It would only make the destruction all the more satisfying.
Joel snarled and snapped as they dragged him back to his kennel, propping him up against the bars so they could release the restraints and unlock the muzzle while he was behind the bars.
They shocked him for the snarling. Baton prods slammed into his ribs, his thighs, his back.
He didn’t care.
It hardly registered anymore.
He was gone—slipping beneath the weight of his fury, his heat, his despair.
He was becoming what they wanted.
And when that happened?
He would rip this place apart.
He collapsed once the handlers left. His body curled tight, heart pounding like war drums in his chest. He snarled. Growled. Bit the inside of his cheek until blood pooled in his mouth. Then, mercifully, sleep took him.
And in the darkness—Ren was waiting for him.
She stood in a field of ash.
Dressed in white, hair wind-tangled, her green eyes shining.
She didn’t see him.
She was whispering something. Over and over. A mantra. A prayer.
“I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Joel tried to call out—but no sound came. He tried to move—but his limbs wouldn’t obey.
He stood frozen.
And yet his heart pounded like thunder.
“I love you.”
His voice tore free at last.
“Ren—I love you too.”
He dropped to his knees, choking, gasping, confessing everything.
“I’m not whole without you. I’m sorry. I should’ve fought harder. I should’ve gotten to you sooner. I swear to God, I’m going to get you out. I’ll find you. I’ll kill every bastard in this place if I have to—I’ll burn it to the fucking ground. I want our pups to be born free. I want them to have you—not this nightmare. I want…”
His voice cracked.
“I want forever with you.”
She never looked his way. She simply stood there, whispering her love to the wind.
Joel woke up to a scent he hadn’t expected.
Familiar.
His bleary eyes focused.
There. Across the hallway bars.
Samuel.
Bruised. Leaner than before. His arms wrapped in makeshift bandages, one eye swollen half-shut. He looked like he’d aged a decade in weeks.
But he was alive.
And his gaze—steady, piercing—locked onto Joel.
Samuel’s lip curled into a half-smile.
“Tommy says hi,” he said softly.
Joel blinked. Sat up.
The dream was already fading, but his heart was full.
He wasn’t alone.
They were still in the fight.
And it was almost time.