During the height of her heat, which had lasted almost ten days, he had stayed with her the entire time. They had everything he deemed they needed there except for food, which was delivered to them regularly because it seemed that was how he had always had it arranged for himself. It eliminated his need to go out and get it for himself, which inevitably ended up with him becoming involved in other problems and situations and never actually getting to eat.

And he wasn't about to let that happen to her. She was already much too skinny—she would need sustenance in order to hold her own with him, even when she wasn't essentially insatiable.

He also made sure that she got enough sleep, although sometimes her exhausted body helped him with that, and she practically came and fell asleep in his arms within the same breath, he would swear. Sometimes, it seemed she could only fall asleep sniffling and hiccoughing, with a sore, stinging bottom that he had worn out because she refused to do so.

Since this was going to be her room, too, and she was going to be spending a lot of time in it, Zerk had Cat's things brought to his room, not that she had much, but he allowed her to keep her meager possessions in one of the drawers of his bureau. She had a small amount of clothing—mostly uniforms, and not a lot else besides a few trinkets, little of which was of much interest to him until his eye settled on one item, in particular, that she wished she'd never possessed.

She wondered who did these little errands for him—bringing food, emptying out her room—but within a few hours of her first orgasm, her mind was lost to her almost entirely. And—to her great mortification—she rarely thought about anything except how to get him to do that for her again. As she'd never had the urge to be that way with anyone else but him, she was no siren or vixen, but her glaringly obvious attempts to entice him back to his bed usually succeeded, although the laughter they elicited from him hurt her more than she could acknowledge in the moment.

She had even lowered herself—once and only once—to present herself to him, arranging herself on all fours on the bed so that her ankles were hanging off the side, just over the edge, then leaning down onto her elbows and consciously spreading her legs more than wide enough to accommodate his presence between them.

Cat could feel herself secreting a humiliatingly steady stream of her own dew down onto the already well-baptized bedclothes. She couldn't believe that she was doing this, but he had insisted on showering—without allowing her to do so—and he refused to take her until he'd cleaned up a bit.

So, that was the sight that greeted his eyes when he stepped out of the bathroom, and he abandoned the cloth he was using to dry himself in favor of taking her up on her offer with a long, low growl that incited an answering one in her as he sank himself into her.

It wasn't as if she wanted to act like that—she certainly didn't. But the combination of her rampant hormones, the frightening depths of her heat, and his presence within a thirty-mile radius of her, apparently, rendered her very little more than a brainless, eternally leaky, needy, weepy cunt.

Which, of course, was everything she had never wanted to be, and she was frankly surprised he put up with, but he could be quite patient with her—about some things.

She couldn't even stop herself from wanting him to fuck her when she was already terribly sore—inside and out. And, to her eternal horror and shame, she found she really wanted him once he'd punished her, which was sad but true, and she wished that neither one of them had discovered it.

Normally, he was up well before she was, and she usually awoke in his arms after he'd reached down to where she slept now to carry her to his bed, so that he could put her through that terribly humiliating process that she craved so much more than air or food, even though he'd barely been able to tear his hands from her the night before. As much as he wanted her, in particular, to rest, he sometimes had to literally force himself to stop mounting her long enough that the both of them could get some sleep.

That was one of the reasons she'd ended up where she was rather than sleeping in his bed, besides the fact that it reinforced her lowly new position in life. Cat sat up from the small pallet he'd made for her during her first days with him. It was on the floor at the end of his bed, and she had a thick, strong leather cuff around one ankle that kept her tied to one of those bolt holes that seemed to be everywhere she didn't want them to be in the floor of his room, no doubt put there by him so that he could tether whatever poor female he'd taken captive wherever was most convenient for him.

But, since the accompanying chain was long enough for her to lie next to him on the bed, but not to get into any other kind of mischief, he'd not moved it anywhere else—yet, anyway.

In fact, when they were alone, she was most often free, which had surprised her. But the door was locked from the inside while he was with her by a key that he wore around his neck on a considerably thick chain of something yellow and shiny, which, unless she could knock him unconscious, somehow, she doubted she'd ever be able to get from him. She had yet to get a chance to polish her lock picking skills on it because he was almost always in the room with her, and when he wasn't, her chain didn't extend nearly that far.

And there was no getting out or breaking the chain that held her there, either. She'd tried most of the first night he'd fitted her with it, after laying her down on the relatively comfortable nest of clean, soft blankets—some of the first she'd ever encountered—he'd made for her atop a surprisingly clean, very small child's mattress. Her attempts to rid herself of it had come to a screeching halt, though, and she'd frankly held her breath when his voice drifted to her from the bed through the darkness.

He didn't sound angry, but his low tone was still full of a warning she was definitely learning to heed—when he bothered to give her one. It was also laced with not a small amount of amusement that annoyed her no end. "Apparently, I didn't wear you out nearly as much as I thought I did if you're up being naughty and trying to escape when you should be sleeping, quita."

Cat had sighed at that, abandoning her goals and lying there quietly—hating him—and herself—with everything she had until she finally did fall asleep.

She'd never worn a cuff herself, but she'd seen the scars some men in the militia bore that had been bound like that for some reason in the past, and she wondered if her ankle would end up all red with ugly scars, too. But he'd swapped it out the second day for one that was just as stiff and unforgiving but was lined with an incredibly soft material that felt like her ankle was surrounded by a cloud.

He saw her looking astonished at it. "Well," he said, almost defensively, "your skin is damned near flawless, and I made that so that it would stay that way."

"You made this?" she couldn't help asking.

"I did."

He was a strange man, by all accounts. He was horrendously strict with her, punishingly her severely for even the smallest of infractions. His mentioning that she wasn't likely to ever sit easily around him wasn't bragging—it was her reality. And yet he took the time to do something like that. She didn't think that most men would ever even have considered it. Granted, he'd done it so that he wouldn't mar her, not for her comfort, but still.

The commander, which she couldn't seem to stop thinking of him as, regardless of how far she had fallen, did other things, too, that made it harder to hate him as thoroughly as she wanted to. He seemed to be concerned from the beginning that she wasn't eating enough, and instead of allowing her to feed herself like the grown adult she was, he would haul her onto his lap and do it by hand, himself.

As much as she hated it—how it highlighted what little control she had, even to what she ate—she also considered that to be a relatively brave act, since he rightly wouldn't dare to kiss her, yet he'd put his fingers practically into her mouth. But then, she was almost always sitting perched on an enormous, muscular thigh, her bottom throbbing and burning badly—even if he'd only just spanked her and not used any kind of an implement on her—and thus, she was probably much less likely to bite him. Probably.

But she did fight him, earning spanking after spanking at every mealtime, eating most of them while weeping outright because she'd held her hand up to cover her mouth or pushed his away. He ended up binding her hands behind her every time, making her just that much more vulnerable and dependent on him to keep her balanced, since he was so blasted tall that when she sat on his leg, her feet were well off the floor.

He hadn't needed to force her to eat once he put what he called a "cane" on the table, next to his plate. He'd only used it on her once, but that was more than enough for her. It had quickly replaced the cat as her least favorite implement.

One time, she had accidentally nipped him, and she had been tipped over his knee in an instant, getting her already well thrashed behind thrashed again—and for longer, although at least he hadn't reached for the dreaded cane.

But he'd still reduced her in a ridiculously short amount of time to blubbering uncontrollably and babbling that she was sorry, fervently promising him that she hadn't meant to graze him with her teeth, not that it had lessened her punishment in the least. He'd continued to thwack away at her until he felt she'd learned her lesson that no kind of connection of his skin—no matter where it was on his body—with her teeth was ever going to be acceptable to him.

Then he'd just righted her, ignoring how she was sniffling and hiccoughing and still sobbing outright, too, and continuing to offer her bits of food from his hand. Cat learned to lead with her tongue and not her teeth, which he found quite amusing and appropriately cat-like.

He kept his word to her, too, and not just about forthcoming punishments—he tended to address those situations as immediately as possible, too—but other things, also. He remembered to show her a picture of her other namesake, and it turned out to be quite a beautiful creature, although she didn't think of herself that way at all. They came in all colors and shapes and sizes, from big, dangerous ones he called tigers and lions, to smaller ones he said lived in peoples' houses with them, originally as rodent control, and then just as pets.

"Pets?" The term was unfamiliar to her.

"Animals that were kept around for the pure enjoyment of their company."

She wrinkled her nose in a manner he found very cute, sounding extremely doubtful about that bit of information. "That doesn't seem likely. It would be just another mouth to feed."

He had closed the book, looking pensive. "In those days, food was plentiful." He sighed in a manner she thought sounded a bit defeated, which was highly unusual for him. "Pretty much everything was better."

She bit her lip, and he knew she was feeling tentative about something. She was a naturally quiet little thing, and she tended to try to hide how she was feeling from him, although he was learning how to read her. He considered it his responsibility to do so. He took his responsibilities seriously, and she was at or near the head of them. She was his omega, and he intended to learn everything he could about her, so that he could be the best Alpha for her that he could possibly be. Zerk firmly believed that well-cared for, frequently well-disciplined omegas who were bred as often as was possible and who knew they were safe and cared about were happiest overall with their lot in life—not that he'd had that much experience with omegas, but he'd had two more than most men would have.

"Say what you're thinking, little girl," he intoned with a bit of a trill at the end to relax her. "There'll be no punishment for you in doing so, as long as it's not intended to be insulting or disrespectful. You're quite intelligent, and I'd like to hear what you think."

Cat could not have been more surprised, and it showed on her face, but he carefully kept his expression neutral so that he didn't upset her with his amusement.

She looked down, mumbling her answer. "I'm fairly dumb. I don't…I don't know much about…the Before Time."

To her surprise, he grabbed the back of her neck—where there would soon be actual hair for him to hold her by, since he had decreed that she would not be allowed to cut it any longer—and tipping her face up to his. "If I ever hear you say anything like that about yourself again, little omega, I will beat your behind every night for a month."

She swallowed hard, knowing he meant every word he said and wouldn't hesitate to act on them.

"Did I not just say that I find you to be intelligent?" Calmly delivered but fear inspiring, none the less.

"Y-yes, Sir," she whispered, hating herself for knuckling under to him in any way, even this small one that favored her.

"And are you calling me a liar?"

Her eyes flared. There were few words nowadays that were more incendiary than those, especially to an Alpha. Omega or not, she would have answered in the same hesitant, submissive manner. "N-no, S-sir."

"Good," he said, easing off on his hold. "Because not many are, nowadays. It's a rare, precious thing, something to be celebrated and nurtured, even in one's stubborn, recalcitrant omega."

She wasn't familiar with either of those words, but she had a general idea that they weren't meant to compliment her, since he looked as if he was trying not to grin.

"And not many people do have much knowledge about the Before Time, unfortunately, although they should."

"Why?" She was a naturally quick, curious person—although she usually kept that trait to herself—and she couldn't catch the question before it was out.

"There's a saying from back then that goes something like, 'those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it'."

Cat nodded. "That sounds like 'learn from your mistakes'."

He squeezed her tightly. "That's right. And that's also something you could stand to do, babygirl. Then maybe your bottom wouldn't hurt so much all the time."

She frowned at that. "Then you'd just find another reason to punish me when you wanted to."

Zerk let that unrepentant grin he'd been hiding spread over his face. "Right you are." Then he asked a question he had been meaning to ask her, even though he thought he probably already knew the answer, "Do you know how to read, quita?"

His little baggage shook her head. "Never learned."

"Well, then, that's something I can help you with. Maybe not with these books—they're kind of advanced for a beginner. But I'll keep my eye out in the next loads the boys bring in for something that might work for you."

It was the first genuine smile he'd ever seen on her face, and it disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared, so he was glad to have caught it as a brilliant blush replaced it. "I-I would like that very much," she said quietly. "Please."

He was determined to teach her manners, too, as well as a different aspect of respect for him than she'd had when she was part of his fighting force. Zerk didn't like her calling him Commander—and he certainly wasn't going to call her Captain. He'd already replaced her within his small command staff, not that he'd mentioned that to her. So, he required that she call him "Sir", and also that she use "please" and "thank you" when appropriate, with him, of course, as the arbiter of whether or not it was appropriate and with her on the receiving end of a punishment if she didn't.

Cat was sometimes surprised, though, at what he let her get away with. His attitude towards her was consistent, but strange, somehow, at the same time.

The first time he'd left her and come back, when he could tell that her heat was receding and they could bear to be separated at all, he'd immediately set her loose as soon as he'd locked the door, then he'd gone to stand in the middle of the room, where he disrobed completely, ending up standing there with his hands clasped behind his back, naked and defenseless. Well, perhaps not defenseless, but not armed, anyway, that she could see.

Cat had eyed him suspiciously, and he had turned to her with a raised eyebrow. "Have I managed to tame my little kitten in a mere few days? I'm surprised."

She stood there, staring at him suspiciously, equally naked and unarmed.

"And here, I thought you were a fighter of some repute," he taunted deliberately, "but I guess I was misinformed. I thought you might want to see if you could find a way to get the key from me and free yourself. I thought you were a tiger. But it turns out that you're a tame house cat—a pet—after all. Perhaps that's what I should have called you, instead." He shrugged. "I suppose I shouldn't expect anything different from a tiny little omega. It takes a lot of guts to—oof!"

She had run at him with her head down, ramming him hard enough to cause that very satisfying grunt. But that was really the only blow she managed to get in. She was horribly outmatched, and every time she came at him, he managed to trip or flip or otherwise frustrate her attack—always being very careful not to hurt her, she noticed, which only enraged her further and made her even less likely to get anything over on him.

He met every challenge she presented, diffusing and disabling nearly every one of her attacks almost immediately, letting her wear herself out on him and working out some of the frustrations that had to be building up in her at the same time. Zerk knew that if the situations had been reversed—although that thought was utterly ridiculous—he would have been furious to find himself where she was.

Zerk was well aware of the fact that she'd had more of a life than probably any omega had ever been allowed to until very recently, and although he knew he needed to be stricter on her because of it, he thought he was relatively well aware of how she felt, and that this was what he considered to be an acceptable way to allow her to blow off some steam. She was angry with him because of what he had inspired in her, how he had changed her life very suddenly and abruptly and in a way that she never expected or wanted. This gave her a bit of a chance to get some of her own back—or at least try to.

Sometimes, he let her wear herself out on him, letting her come at him until she could barely stand.

It was terribly humiliating for her. The man was gigantic and was a veritable field of scars from opponents who were obviously better fighters—or at least better armed—than she was, and yet she felt obligated to keep attacking him, finding it harder and harder to fight him, as well as herself.

He didn't put an end to it until she was unable to continue, utterly depleted and even more vulnerable to him than usual. But her orgasms when he did that were lesser, he thought, although he was always able to force her beyond the resistance her mind always required her to mount and make her respond to him—whether she wanted to or not. It was a bit more of a challenge now, since she wasn't in the grip of such a raging need as she had been when he'd first had her and had recovered her wits. But her body was still always more than willing to submit to him, even if her mind wasn't.

But what he loved to do—and she never knew exactly what approach he was going to take, because he didn't think that she had come to the same conclusion about her response that he had—was to capture her mid-assault. One time, he'd caught and held her delicate ankle in the air while he had her, forcing her to balance on the tiptoes of her other foot as he fucked her, looping his arm around her leg and her waist to hold her in place in order to free a hand for more important work. Those big, busy fingers immediately set about worrying her clit non-stop. Cat had continued to try to find a way out of the predicament he had put her in, at least until a few minutes before he succeeded in forcing an incredibly intense orgasm from her that left her sweating and panting and begging him to stop. But, of course, he didn't.

It seemed to him that, each time he took her when she was trying to actively fight him, her enjoyment increased noticeably, even though she was no longer in heat. He wasn't sure if he could get her to come at him when she was full blown—it was much more likely that she would try to have her way with him than try to get away, he thought. But he certainly didn't assume.

It didn't matter to him how he accomplished his goal, but he knew that omegas who were made to come while they were being bred were more likely to actually breed successfully. And he intended to get as many children on her as he could without damaging her health, although that was unlikely, since her body was made to bear his children.

One of the worst things he'd done, though, since he'd taken her captive, as far as Cat was concerned, was to conduct camp business in his room.

It wasn't long after her world had come crashing down around her ears that she'd found herself naked—as she always was now—in the corner of the room closest to the end of the bed, facing the wall. Her red striped breasts were pressed against the rough, cold concrete, her arms cuffed together and suspended so far above her that she couldn't put her heels down, ankles cuffed and chained on a very short leash to an eyebolt in the floor. It was the position in which he had been punishing her, with the solid wooden hairbrush his eagle eye had spotted as one of interest in the pitifully few things that had been brought here from her room. It was something she had prized at one time but now despised.

And then came the knock at the door.

Cat had gasped through tears. Her internal clock, which was relatively reliable, told her that it was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, so she couldn't imagine who it was, but she had an insight that it wasn't going to be good for her, regardless.

Surely, he wouldn't let the person into the room where she was—especially not when she was like this, would he?

Almost as soon as that horrifying thought was branded into her mind, she heard him say to whomever it was, "Come in."

Cat instantly knew that his visitor was a man because she could smell him—and she knew—since she heard their visitor take a big, deep breath in, that he smelled her, too.

His thinking in bringing Dune here was two-fold. He wanted to leave Cat to her own devices as little as possible. He was pretty sure she couldn't get out of this room, but he was damned sure he didn't want to make another mad dash through the tunnels again to find her if she did manage to escape again.

Secondly, it was a test. Any man who couldn't control himself was out. If what he thought was going to happen to this town in the relatively near future actually did happen, there would be many more omegas around than there were now—one. His. And he needed to be able to trust his men around them. As much as he—and their Alphas—would certainly try to protect them, he wanted his men to know that the punishment for going after any of them would make them beg for death.

The bald fact was that war was inevitably going to descend on his little attempt at restoring some sort of civilization to the world. He'd had multiple reports of a vicious confederacy formed of their neighbors—including the infamous fighting force that was the Skorge. And at its head was his longtime rival, Garron, who was the only man anywhere in the known world who had a possibility of beating him. Of course, none of the leaders who had banded together against him had been anywhere near as successful at governing their own little enclaves in the midst of the devastation as he had. They were corrupt; they were selfish and petty and out for what they could get, to hell with the people living in the small towns they'd taken over.

Their jealousy made them intent on either usurping or—more likely, destroying—what he'd built here. And he wasn't about to let them do either of those things.

But here and now, his legate was standing before him, eyes bulging and gulping hard. He could see how his hands were rhythmically forming fists.

So, he took a step closer to the man. "Is this going to be a problem, soldier?" Zerk's flat tone was deadly dangerous as his hand rested on the hilt of his dirk.

To his credit, Dune answered immediately and forcefully, "No, sir."

But his legate and best fighter was having a very obviously hard time not staring at the woman in the corner that he knew wasn't his. The one who was not only exuding a scent that made his own cock ache and throb and enticed him into wanting to take her for himself right now, commander or no commander, but she was also butt naked and had obviously been—or was being—thoroughly punished for some misdeed she'd performed. He heartily approved of the apple red hue that had been achieved on those lovely round cheeks.

And Zerk didn't miss a one of those thoughts that played across his face. He moved his arms—causing the younger man to flinch—but merely crossed them over his chest. "Eyes on me, soldier, or I'll pluck them out with my bare hands and feed them to you." She heard the click of heels coming together and knew that the man had come to attention in a more respectable way than he probably already was.

"Yes, sir, Commander."

She heard them take seats while she hung there, in absolute mortification. She knew the man and had liked him, as much as she did anyone. And now, he was sitting in the room in which she lived, undoubtedly reveling in how shameful her life had become. She was forced to not only appear naked in front of him, but she was unable to do anything to prevent showing him the unmistakable evidence that she was being subjected not only to being forcibly bred by their commander, but she was being punished by him, too, and in the most humiliating manner possible.

The brush was lying on the bed where he'd thrown it when he went to get the door, so she knew he wouldn't have missed that detail, either.

Cat tried to get herself to calm down as much as she could, when all she really wanted to do was dissolve into tears. Instead, she forced herself to concentrate on hearing everything she could about their conversation. She couldn't quite get all of it, but she did manage to overhear some words that gave her great cause for concern, like "mob,” "invasion,” and "war.”

Since she wasn't far removed from the military, certainly not voluntarily, she was very worried if only some of those words were to become a reality. They weren't in any way prepared for a large fighting force to descend on them. Most of their men did what she had done for much of her career—led raids in areas that were well away from the city, not reporting back in very often because of how far they had to travel to do so.

She was really curious about what he intended to do, but he had made it clear very early on that he wasn't going to allow her to be involved in things like that anymore. And her second question, a few seconds later, that was along the same lines had resulted in her first experience with the cane, so she was not much interested in making a third attempt.

Despite his previous breech of etiquette, Zerk had to commend his legate—not that he actually would. As he regarded his men, he had held fast to a saying he had learned from his abuela, "Only pet a sleeping baby."

If they got promoted, then they were doing well. If they didn't, then they weren't likely to last very long, anyway.

They settled down to work on the considerable and continuing problem that had brought him to promote Cat and order her to his office in the first place. It was a delicate situation that was going to involve asking for help from some of the outlying tribes he knew he could trust with his life—one in particular that was headed by an Alpha known as Lord Vaudt, whose First, Kosh, was the finest of warriors and should probably be heading up a tribe of his own. He'd also need to recall some of the cohorts that had been out there for a long while and were probably equally as wild and unreliable by this point—or outright dead, and thus, even less likely to help. He certainly hoped the one headed by Ciaran, who had been his close friend for quite some time, was still whole and reachable. He knew that old bastard wouldn't hesitate to come when he called—not that he wouldn't likely have to eat a ratio of shit because of it, but he'd gladly do that if it saved what he'd built over the past years.

Luckily for him, because he didn't want to have to break in a new legate when there was likely going to be a war, the younger man's eyes had never wandered again—at least not until he'd left, when they'd flickered to her for a mere second. That had prompted Zerk to growl, deep in his throat, and his legate had wisely made himself scarce.

When he turned around after using the key on the chain around his neck to lock the door again, he folded his hands behind him and leaned back against them, watching her. He didn't think he'd ever get sick of looking at her. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, growing even more so as her hair slowly began to come in. His Moia had been pretty but not gorgeous. Cat was going to be a stunner, and she was all his.

To the horror of the woman he was admiring, whose gut was twisted into knots at what had just happened, this incident was just the beginning. He began to have regular meetings—with more men than just his legate—often when she found herself in a terribly vulnerable and mortifying position or even when she was simply chained on her pallet.

When she could, she curled in on herself, fighting back tears and presenting them with her back, which was pretty much her only way of protecting herself from them in any way.