TWO

The older woman who burst into the cell started crying the moment she saw the state of the girl she had raised with her own hands.

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..."

The old Nana half dragged her out of the cell and into the dark passages of the underground dungeon, but Odette felt they weren't moving toward the exit. Through her wolf's senses, weak and frantic as they were, she could tell they were going deeper and deeper.

"This isn't the way... out..." she whispered, starting to tremble, trying to pull away because, for one horrible second, she thought even the woman who had changed her diapers 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," the old Nana told her, looking at her with so much pain, so much grief in her heart.

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 ended up lifting Odette onto her back and running 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 last words before 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, with the will to live setting her blood on fire, the weak Omega managed to crawl forward and follow the wall all the way 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 a sharp stink of dampness and rot.

Just as Odette started squeezing through, her 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, feeling the slimy damp smear over her skin and the crawling things she disturbed skitter across 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.

With that certainty burning inside her, when the tunnel, after minutes and minutes of crawling like an animal, suddenly sloped into a steep drop, Odette let herself fall.

Her body plunged downward, and the thunderous sound of roaring water rose to meet her in the dark.

She was thrown into nothing, into the waterfall that crashed down the side of the cliff where the lavish mansion of the Midnight Alpha 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 hand dragged itself over the river stones, nails full of blood, pale skin covered in bleeding cuts.

Gasping and shaking, the small Omega with black hair and dull eyes had survived the whirlpool of the 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 man who could shatter her into orgasms of 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 every movement in her body stopped when distant howls rolled through the forest and began moving in her direction.

They were looking for her.

She knew it the same way she knew that, if she stayed there, they would capture her again.

So she forced herself to keep going. She managed to stand and, leaning on tree trunks for support, moved in a broken mix of limping and running, dragging her feet while the pack of wolves drew closer and closer behind her.

"I smell her scent this way! Hurry! Whoever captures her gets rewarded by Miss Celine!"

The roar sounded 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 men 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, her feet, which had already slipped more than once, stepped into empty air.

The scream caught in her throat as she tangled in vines and roots and fell hard into a place beneath the earth, some kind of hole.

Her head struck stone, and the world went black for a while.

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 understand no one had captured her. The place she had fallen into had probably hidden her from the wolves hunting her.

Where was she?

The small Omega 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 pushed her to her feet and made her move without direction, always 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, that scent that made her wet inside.

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 place that smelled like 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 in a way that seemed to imitate some kind of 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..."

The moan of pleasure slipped out of Odette instantly.