Ciaran rolled to one side, his body still trying to surge into her as if he would never get enough of her, and he didn't think he would. He wanted to get up and clean the both of them—as he had before—but he wasn't at all sure he could stand up at the moment.

Ebby was lying where he'd left her, not even making any kind of attempt to cover herself up. He found her usual modesty to be terribly endearing, if misplaced with him. He could hear her breathing, which was at least as ragged as his still was, and her eyes were closed.

All of a sudden, he remembered that she was still bound and reached up to release her, although he did retie her hands in front of her, after which he had massaged her shoulders. He knew firsthand that being bound—in any position—made one's joints ache. None of his actions brought any response from her. Her eyes remained resolutely closed throughout, as if she couldn't be bothered to acknowledge anything he did.

He did manage to get up and perform the same ablutions as he had before to himself then turned to her. She allowed him to manipulate her limbs in any way he wanted, her only sign of objection a slight stiffening when he touched the cloth to her privates.

But it was what he saw on the pillow beneath her head that he knew hadn't been there previously—a dark splotch that indicated she was crying.

Ciaran had no idea what to do about a crying female, but then, none of the ones he'd encountered—not that there had been very many—had been his crying female. "Are you hungry?" he asked, thinking perhaps he might get away easily if he could just discover something that he could fix for her.

Mindful of what he had said about him considering that not answering was being disobedient, Ebby answered tonelessly, but in such a strained voice that he knew she was trying unsuccessfully to hold back tears, "No, thank you."

"Cold?"

"No, thank you." A little sob escaped at the end, but then she squelched it ruthlessly. She wasn't at all interested in having him know that she was crying, but she couldn't seem to stop.

"Tired?"

"No, thank you," she responded softly.

"Well, I know I am, but then, I spent the day fighting." And the night fucking, he thought, but wisely didn't say.

It was murmured so quietly that he almost missed it, "So did I."

That brought him up short, reminding him that she had not simply been a token in the skirmish they had fought today, she had been an active participant, and he was nearly livid. What if something had happened to her—she could easily have been killed in so many ways!

Suddenly, he found himself rock hard again, utterly unable and wholly unwilling to deny himself the ecstasy he knew he could find by burying himself between those thighs.

He was at her again in an instant, strong arms holding her still—holding hers crossed over her chest and out of his way—for his penetration from behind as she quickly abandoned the pretense that she wasn't crying and began to actively fight him. It was too late by far, of course. And she didn't have much left in her with which to fight him, anyway.

He was already there, poised at the entrance to her soaked pussy, and she was horrified to realize that she could feel her resolve slipping away in favor of those overwhelming, rapturous feelings he inspired within her, usurping control of her body and soaking her mind in that alarmingly potent combination of arousal and pain that her body only seemed to want more of every time he took her.

She cried softly at the loss of herself as he wrapped his arms around her and took possession of his omega, acute soreness already mingling with the way his imposing length scraped along her sensitized sheath, feeling every inch of him occupying her and making her groan with it through her tears.

The sound of her crying affected him the way no other had, and as he opened his mouth to try to soothe her, a sound he'd never made before rumbled out of his chest. It was more than a hum but less than a growl, closer to a purr than anything else, but not really that, either.

But when he made it, he felt the tenseness that had been present as she struggled to accept his presence within her unwind noticeably. So, he did it again, for longer this time. It didn't really take any effort on his part to produce, and he wasn't beyond utilizing any possible tool he might need in order to get sons on her.

Against her will—as everything in her life seemed to be happening today—her muscles began to unbend. She couldn't hold herself stiff any longer, and what's more, she quickly began not to want to. The hands that had been holding her wrists as he had driven himself into her had let go of them in favor of more interesting territory as big palms squeezed her breasts hard, pinching the impudent nipples he forced into prominence, twisting and rolling them and pulling them away from her body.

It didn't matter that her hands were free, though. He was too strong, and she was too small and too weak to resist the primitive call of her mate.

Her breath sizzled into her lungs as she felt as if she was drowning in wave upon wave of sensation. Ciaran kept up that low purr as he sank the curved spur at the end of his cock unerringly into the heart of that special spot. The stark, searing sting caught her unawares amidst the pleasure, and her arms flailed helplessly, but he gathered them against her body again with his own.

"No, babygirl. There is no escape, and the sooner you come to terms with that, the better. There is nothing for you but this. Even when you're finally pregnant—if the physicians say I can—I will continue to mate with you as often as I can, as if there isn't already a child in your belly. Every time I take you, the bond between us will strengthen, and you will find it harder to resist." He snapped his hips forward and purred at the same time, causing that delicious blend to bump her desire even higher.

He had sensitized her to the point that—even though all of this was new to her, and her body was naturally sore from overuse—everything he did just seemed to make the ecstasy that much more acute, that much harder to deny.

Ebby still struggled, especially when the pain overcame her and took her breath away, as it did again when her entrance was again forced to be grossly distended but still sealed around his thick, heavy knot. But then the bliss returned full force as he pulsed within her, holding her still for it, not allowing her to interfere in any way.

She knew what was going to happen, and it was a pipe dream to think she could prevent it. Indeed, any acts of resistance—mentally and physically—only seemed to spiral her need out of control. It was if she would have to learn to surrender herself to him in order to retain any autonomy at all, but Ebby wasn't at all sure that she could do that.

But neither he nor her own body were giving her any choice in the matter.

The culmination was at least as devastating as the last time, perhaps even more, and she was horrified to realize that—despite the incredible paradise he was bringing her to, she had begun crying again as soon as her body began milking him, partly from the overwhelming intensity of the feelings and partly in defeat as her body and mind were bathed in sensations of utter—unwanted—satisfaction.

Ciaran purred—and growled a bit—at her, which seemed to soothe her upset some, so he kept it up, even after he'd separated them, letting his instincts have full rein as he held her against him, crooning to her and stroking her as she softly sobbed herself to sleep in his arms moments later.

He had been absolutely truthful with her when he said that there was nothing for her but to be covered by him. Her life quickly came to consist of little more than the four walls of his tent, and Ebby quickly thought she was going to go crazy in several ways. At first, she was certain that she was going to go mad from being held physically captive as she was. She had always been an active person, but now she couldn't so much as scratch an itch.

It was very hard not to be able to move, and for the first few days, all she did—when he wasn't there—was sleep and cry as his sperm dribbled out of her, dampening the bed beneath her bottom, crying harder when she realized that it was no longer the remnants of him taking her that was doing so, but her own body weeping for him to do just that, instead.

But she was too intellectually curious and generally happy to remain depressed for long, despite the circumstances. So, instead of dwelling on what she couldn't do, she decided to concentrate on what she could do.

Her mind had always been sharp, and she had exercised it as much as she could, so she turned her attentions to doing that in her present situation, observing and memorizing everything she could about the room itself, first, then about him and his routines next. She saw others—guards—twice a day, and did her best not only to remember details about them—when they came to her, who came each time, and what they did—but also to try to befriend them. They were quite obviously not interested in her in the same way he was, and she was curious about why that was.

"Are you castrati?" she asked one day of the friendliest one, whose name was Dolar.

"What is that?" he asked, offering her another piece of meat that had been roasted over an open fire and was quite delicious.

Ebby blushed. "It's when a man no longer has…uh…"

"Oh, a eunuch. No, I am not. I'm an omega, just like you."

She was stunned. "You—you can't be."

Dolar laughed. "There are male omegas, although not a lot. I am one. Why do you think the colonel allows us to see to you? We are not rivals for you."

"Why not?"

"Because what my body craves is something that is very nearly as rare as you are—an Alpha female."

That was a very interesting bit of information. She'd never known that male omegas existed. Ebby wasn't sure how that might help her, but she filed it away, just in case. She talked to him—the other was monosyllabic at best and seemed to be annoyed that he had to babysit her—as often as she could, trying to discreetly acquire as much information as she could about the layout of the camp, the number of soldiers, how many others there were who could guard her—anything that would help her.

Luckily, Dolar was the social sort and not given to suspicion, except of an Alpha male. He treated her questions as entirely innocuous and answered all of them as fully as he could.

And when she was alone, she could escape this place, if only in her mind. So, she began to read her favorite books in her head, and, if she tried hard, she could almost pretend that nothing in her life had changed. She was in her tiny makeshift room, surrounded by those who loved her and cared for her and watched over her, sitting on her bed, reading Charlotte's Web or Anna Karenina or any of the other stories she'd read. She didn't know why, but she'd always remembered—like pictures in her brain—anything she'd read. She didn't have a lot of stories to recall—books were not considered a priority, and beyond teaching her to read, few around her cared to read for pleasure.

But one of the women shared her love of books and would give her one any time she could. Ebby had no idea where they came from—and, as the woman was one of the fiercest warriors in their group and therefore one of her best teachers—she wasn't sure that she wanted to know. But her special abilities along those lines made her an archive, of sorts, and she had tried—with little success—to get everyone to give her as many books as they could.

Unfortunately, she didn't have as much opportunity to escape that way as she would have liked to have had. Her days usually consisted of being bred—sometimes twice, once before he fed her breakfast by hand and once afterwards—before he left in the morning. A guard would visit her mid-morning to offer her food and water, change the sheets on his bed, and unbind her for ablutions, if needed, during which a gun was always trained on her, at first, anyway, and she wasn't allowed any kind of privacy.

Since she was kept naked at all times, she was surprised that bothered her as much as it did, but it left her very shy about such things, and that was no better around him, which he tended to tease her about.

Lunch was delivered and fed to her by one guard or the other, and there was a midafternoon visit, also. Occasionally, he would come to her mid-day—but not often—and more normally, he would arrive late in the day, sometimes looking as if he'd fought a war entirely by himself.

Those were the times when she knew it was going to be harder for her than it ever was, because instead of releasing her completely from her bonds, he would simply unbind her ankles, turn her over and free himself, sometimes barely managing to do so before thrusting into her fully, in one bone jarring stroke. Of course, her pussy was never not receptive to him, but that didn't make the way he manhandled her any more pleasant for her. Often times, when he was in a mood like this, she would find herself being spanked while he was fucking her, or—almost worse than that—he would hunch over her, reach down and hook her legs over his arms, practically lifting her bottom off the bed, both of which added to her discomfort considerably.

The latter left her even further open to him than usual, and he used her badly those times. To her horror, even that kind of treatment had her greedy privates grasping at him. During those times, he didn't bother with the niceties—such as they were—at all. There were no big, rough hands on her breasts, milking them almost as thoroughly as she would him later, no callused fingers on nipples that were kept at least as tender and sensitive as the rest of her by his close attentions. And neither his hot, wet mouth and that torturous tongue of his nor his demanding fingers would tease her clit.

Instead, she would find herself impaled by him and on him with no preparation whatsoever, hooked and knotted within less than a minute. And that, she was horrified to discover, was really all she needed—despite her mewled protests that he was hurting her, the grunts and groans she issued as he pounded relentlessly into her, how she tugged at the silken bonds around her wrists, as if she desperately wanted him to stop, when she thought she'd die if he did.

Ebby was terribly afraid that he had realized the same thing she had—that on those rough evenings, she came harder than at any other time. The imbalance—not in her favor—of sensations carried her away more quickly, more surely, and with increased intensity.

It did so for the both of them, it seemed. He was much more vocal that usual then, too.

Even afterwards, the purr he had begun employing with her at those times was much more like a demanding growl, and the hands that could be gentle and soothing when they wanted to be were, instead, plundering the areas he'd neglected, keeping her contracting and spasming, even though he was no longer inside her, until he could be again. And again. And again, until they both fell into an exhausted sleep, sometimes still partially locked together, with her continuing to grip him and spasm helplessly around him, Ciaran still gushing at her body's behest against the neck of her womb.

Dinner was late on those nights—often very late—but he wouldn't allow her to skip a meal. On routine nights, though, he would often remove her bonds—sometimes before, sometimes after taking her, but almost always when their meal arrived.

On one of those nights when he was late and he allowed her to go free, she had a bit of a plan she intended to implement. Ebby usually got up, even if she didn't really want to, any time it was offered just to change her position—but also to put as much physical distance between them as she could, so that his presence wouldn't befuddle her mind as it usually did. Not that that worked, really, but she kept hoping.

She had already eaten her supper, but he was eating at the table, and she was wandering around the room. She never touched anything—she might have if she was alone, but she wasn't about to while he was there.

It took her a while, but she worked up her gumption and asked, "What must I do to be considered obedient enough to no longer be bound while you are gone?"

Ciaran paused with a piece of meat halfway to his mouth, wondering if that was the first voluntary question she'd ever asked of him.

"Sir," he corrected, taking the bite he'd delayed.

"What must I do to be considered obedient enough to no longer be bound while you are gone, Sir?" She did her best to keep her tone from sounding snide, although she wasn't sure she'd achieved it.