Page 2 of Ensnaring Their Rabbit

He smiled again, flashing me a mouth of pointed teeth and long sharp fangs that had me shivering despite my best efforts.

“Don’t worry, omega, it will all be over soon.”

I didn’t get to question what that meant before the dark wrapped its way around my heart and into my throat. It infiltrated my brain, and I could no longer see anything but blackness. Then I saw nothing at all.

CHAPTER2

RIVEN

I sighed heavilyas the sound of the siren interrupted my attempt at a nap. I probably wouldn’t have managed anyway, but there would be no hope for it now.

“Fuck, it’s already time for another hunt?” My twin brother Reeve asked from where he was sitting in the bolted-down chair by the bolted-down desk, the only thing that consisted of furniture, besides the bunks, in our tiny cell.

I grunted in response. These fucking hunts…I was over it. I was honestly at the point where I’d just rather not shift at all than deal with this shit show. That wasn’t possible. Our bodies needed to shift into our wolves, even with these fucking collars the good ol’ government made us wear, but after ten years of the quarterly hunts, I’d grown sick of them.

I slipped my feet into the prison-issue slippers and sat on the edge of the bottom bunk, getting my bearings. This was the warning bell. It meant in twenty minutes Western State Penitentiary would be on complete lockdown, our collars would be deactivated and some unfortunate prey would be let loose.

I looked into Reeve’s dark brown eyes, eyes that matched my own. Like everything else about the two of us, they were identical. The only things that weren’t identical about us were the serial numbers printed into the jumpsuits they made us wear and the neck tattoos Reaper basically forced us to get when we first got here. He was the unofficial leader amongst most of us, having been locked in here since Reeve and I were still pups at our ma’s breast, and wanted a way to tell us apart besides our prison number. So I had an all-black wolf howling on my neck, while Reeve, the more sentimental of us, got two wolves snuggling each other.

“What’s the plan?” I asked him.

We discussed it a lot, skipping the next hunt and what we would do to protect ourselves. But talking about it, and actually doing it were two different things. If Reeve decided he wanted to participate, I’d be right behind him, having his back like I always did. It was what kept us alive all this time in this hellhole.

Reeve’s nostrils flared as he sucked in a breath through his nose, his eyes turning the bright blue of our wolf’s for a brief second. That had been happening more and more lately. The collars we were forced to wear were meant to prevent us from shifting or using any of our alpha abilities. We were supposed to be completely cut off from our animal forms until they deactivated the collar. And for the first nine years that’s exactly what it was like. That was the hardest adjustment, when we were thrown in here. The cut off was instant and immediate and it was like losing a fucking limb. So many of these guys chose to end their lives rather than deal with the emptiness being separated from their animal form left.

Eventually we got used to it. It was never easy, the missing part of us always ached, but it became more manageable. In the last year or so, things started to change. I still couldn’t feel my wolf, not the way I could without the collar, but occasionally something would happen, like our eyes changing colors, or an instinctual feeling I just knew was my wolf. We kept that shit to ourselves, obviously, but I did wonder what it meant.

Anyway, Reeve sniffed the air before his eyes returned to normal, and he looked at me. “We stick with the plan. Shift and hunker down. Fight only if necessary. I refuse to be part of ending another poor omega’s life.”

I tilted my head in acknowledgment. It was how I felt, too. I didn’t know where they got the omegas from, it’s not like we ever had a conversation with them, but they were probably homeless, or whores, or maybe prisoners themselves. Whatever it was, they didn’t fucking deserve to be hunted down in the halls of this place, mauled and brutalized by some of the worst criminals this country had. Cause you didn’t end up here for petty crimes. We were all career criminals, or murderers, alphas too dangerous to be put in a normal prison. It’s where pieces of shit like us came to die. These dangerous predators only got four chances a year to show those true colors, during a hunt, and the poor sods on the receiving end didn’t stand a chance. Sure, some survived for a few days, some even were claimed as pets, but they didn’t last long. I could only hope that the life of the unfortunate creature that was today’s prize ended quickly and painlessly. It was the best they could hope for.

The closer it got to the time, the rowdier our cell block got. We were all locked in our cells; it was always like this, they sounded the alarm when we were secure, lessening the risk, I guess. But even doing my best not to scent, the air was thick with alpha musk, cum, excitement, and danger. So many of these fuckers lived for these, like this was the best they could ever hope for in their sad, meager lives.

I long ago stopped thinking about the actions that led to my brother and me being here. It was what it was. I didn’t regret it, even with this outcome, and knowing what I know now, I’d do it again without hesitation. We’d come to terms with this and managed to carve some kind of pathetic existence from this hellscape. But every now and then, with the scent of predators ready to hunt heavy in the air, I thought about what our life could’ve been. It was a waste of time and fucking depressing, but sometimes it was hard to stop the thoughts. Though, honestly, we’d probably have ended up here or a place like it eventually. Reeve and I aren’t saints and never fucking were. Our alpha dad spent all our lives in and out of prison. It was in our fucking blood.

Reeve squeezed my shoulder, bringing me out of my spiraling thoughts. “Are you ready for this, brother?”

No, I’d never be ready for this. Like I said, Reeve and I were far from good people. But the shit that was about to happen here, it was pure evil, and I’d never get used to it.

I still gave Reeve a tight smile and a nod. He knew I was full of shit, but he let it go. Silently, we began stripping, getting ready for when the shift would take over us.

Under normal circumstances, it was something we could control. But since our wolves are kept from us most of the time, when they got a chance to get free, we couldn’t stop the change. As soon as the collars were turned off the shift would start, and there would be nothing we could do to prevent it. So we and all the other prisoners in our cell block stripped–the guards didn’t take kindly when we tore our jumpsuits–and stood poised and ready for the hunt to begin.

When the alarm went off this time, it meant go time. The frenzy hit fucking hard, and for a few minutes all I could focus on was my wolf as it clawed through the metaphysical chains that kept it locked up. There was a time, a long ten years ago, where shifting was as natural as breathing. It was a seamless shift between my human and wolf forms. Now though, the transition was slow and painful, every bone breaking and stretching, overriding every other sense with unbearable pain.

I would be extremely vulnerable, if every other shifter in this fucking place wasn’t going through the same thing. Screams filled the air, and it was impossible to make out which ones were your own.

Eventually, the pain started to recede, my vision clearer. The cells were all still locked, they didn’t open until the shifts were complete, but the howls, growls, and roars, replaced pained screams. Instead of tattooed and hardened humans, the cells were now filled with massive bears, mean looking wolves, vicious tigers and lions, and a variety of other predators, all vibrating with aggression.

My own wolf’s head lulled to the side, needing to put eyes on the other half of his soul. Reeve and I were close, closer than even most twins, he was my other half. But our wolves, they were really two parts of the same being. Our mother, when she was still sober enough to care about her children, used to speculate that we were one wolf that the Goddess split into two.

Reeve’s all black wolf howled before burying his snout into my neck. I tilted my head allowing him to scent, and showing submission to the wolf that mine willingly and happily followed. That was always the anomaly in Mom’s same wolf theory, Reeve’s was definitely the more dominant one, but it was one of the few happy memories we had of our mother, so neither of us ever brought it up.

I whimpered as Reeve’s wolf lightly nipped at my pitch black fur. It was part playful, part reminder of who was in charge. It wasn’t necessary. I knew. Wolf knew. But we all found comfort in the ritual.

We didn’t have nearly enough time to scent each other before the whines, howls, and growls of the other shifters gained my attention. Before the cells were unlocked, the guards always pumped the scent of whatever poor shifter they had captured through the block and into our cells. It sent more of us into a crazed frenzy. Especially when our natural predatory instincts were always shut down, even the tiniest hint of prey made most of us feral.

My brother and I worked hard to lock that shit down. It was impossible to avoid the omega’s scent forever, but we could prevent ourselves from being smacked right in the fucking face with it from the get go. It kept our more primal natures at bay and allowed the human side to keep some control. It wasn’t easy, and sometimes we lost the battle–we weren’t perfect –but we had a decent success record.

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