Page 1 of Bound to Four Alphas

Chapter 1 - Selena

The long warm evenings of summer had begun to fade into the golden-red haze of autumn when they finally came for her.

Selena had spent the day like she always did. Tending her small garden, grinding herbs for medicinal poultices, walking into the village to trade with hunched shoulders and downcast eyes against the sneers and mockery.

It was worth it for the wool that she could spin into a thick, warm fiber for a new winter blanket. The days were getting shorter, the nights colder. And she was an omega, alone, unmated. Rogue. The villagers called her witch.

In the end, it was no surprise when they came for her.

The rough ground of the forest beyond the village was cold and unyielding beneath her bare feet, stray rocks and sharp thistles biting through her skin as she was half-dragged through the foliage. A bag was over her head, blinding her to every tripping root or twisting hole. But she was in the forest. Beyond the borders of the Silverthorn Kingdom.

The wilds.

Monsters lived in the forest.

The jeering was loud, snatched insults and cries ricocheting through her aching skull, the hands grabbing and pushing at her cruel and bruising.

“… Told you we’d get the bitch, she never heard us coming!’

“… Fucking disgusting, look at her, crying and screaming like a whore …”

“… Always so smug, look where it gets you, filthy omega pig!”

Alphas, nearly all of them were alphas. Their scent, acrid and rotten, caught in her throat, choking her. They had whipped themselves into a frenzy, manic and dangerous, and even though Selena knew they were hungry, knew they were underfed, she also knew she didn’t stand a chance against even one of them.

And from the shouting voices and grabbing hands, there were a lot more than one of them.

She thought about crying, about begging, pleading to their protective instincts, but it wouldn’t work. She wasn’t a part of the village pack. She was a rogue, an outcast, just another mouth to feed for all they cared. She had no alpha to invoke pack protection on her behalf. She was alone.

The air grew colder the further they traveled, and Selena’s hands and feet ached at the lack of warmth. Seeing her shiver, one of the alphas waved a blazing torch near her, the heat of the flames licking near her arm, and she flinched away from the burning sensation. There was a fresh round of laughter, mocking.

Fear choked her.

What were they going to do to her, dragging her so far from the village? Even when she was younger, her mother had made it clear that she was never to be alone with an alpha she didn’t know, never to go anywhere where there might be lots of alphas unless she was bonded to one. Selena had asked her mother why, but had always been brushed off.

It’s for your safety, Selena, you’d be in danger alone with alphas. Just remember that.

As she grew older, wiser to the ways of the world, she had come to realize what exactly her mother had been warning her against.

There weren’t many omegas, certainly not enough for the number of alphas, so many went unbonded and wanting. And any omega that was stupid enough to find themselves alone with a group of angry, unbonded alphas, well…

Selena knew she would rather die. This wouldn’t be a forced bonding. This would be something far, far worse.

Their taunts didn’t help. Comments about her curvaceous body, her breasts, her hips, her stomach. Some of the things they said, the dark desires they voiced, it turned her insides. She tried to fight, to shuck their grip and disappear into the woods, but it was no use. Her wrists were bound behind her back with rope, her vision cut off by the bag. She was cold, bare-footed, and outnumbered. She was not escaping them.

After what felt like hours, they finally stopped, and a hard shove pushed Selena to her knees. She whimpered at the jolt of pain as she connected with the hardened earth, although blessedly it seemed covered in soft grass rather than sharp stones. The myriad of cuts and scrapes on her feet and ankles made her whine out, and she huddled into herself, pulling uselessly at her restraints.

The bag was ripped from her head, and she squeaked in fright, blinking against the sudden onslaught of light and movement and chaos around her.

There were at least ten men, all alphas from the village, circling her with peeled back lips and hard, cruel eyes. They were in a clearing of sorts, surrounded on all sides by the forest, and Selena had been dumped beneath a lone silver birch, its twisting limbs reaching up against the clouded night sky.

Some of the men branched out, slashing their burning torches into the night air, whooping and hollering. Warning anything that might be lurking in the darkness.

They were fools to think they were safe here.

A few tears slipped down her cheeks as one of them yanked the rope tying her hands together backwards, fixing it to the trunk of the tree, knotting it several times over. The skin at her wrists burned, rubbed red and raw, and she half-heartedly tried to buck away from the man behind her.

But she was tired, so tired, fear and cold stiffening her limbs and making her movements slow and shuddering.

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