Vicious Traditions: Alpha & Omega Read online

  Vicious Traditions: Alpha & Omega

  J.L. Aarne

  Copyright 2020 J.L. Aarne

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover by J.L. Aarne

  Cover photos by Andrew Ly and Fernando @cferdo via Unsplash

  License Notes:

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or shared. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. No piece of this book may be sold for profit or adapted to other media without the permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Trigger warnings:

  rape, dubious consent, sexual abuse, humiliation, extreme violence

  1

  Bent over a dryer with a hand holding your head down, cheek pressed firmly to the warm metal, laundry softly thumping as it rotated, had a way of putting the world into stark perspective. From that angle, Sam saw things that he would never have noticed when walking upright going about his business. With his eyes inches from the dark crack below the shelf above the washer and dryer, he had no choice and he looked down into a whole, secret, uncharted universe of cobweb highways and termite tunnel cities. Dust gathered on the delicate arches of bridges constructed of hair and lint. Homes were fashioned of wings taken from the dead carcasses of moths and half decayed matchboxes. A mouse had wandered into the dark place behind the back of the dryer and died and Sam could just make out the tip of its tail peeking out of the shadows.

  He was going to have to clean that up when Slade was done with him, Sam thought. He was tempted to leave it alone if only for the escape it gave his imagination when he was eyeball to spider web with the whole mess and Slade came looking for him in the laundry room.

  It wasn’t the first time Slade had bent Sam over that dryer and raped him, but it was the first time he had used the handle of a hammer to open him up before he thrust his cock inside to finish the job. He had been raped with objects before, too; that alone wasn’t a new experience, but he would now have to add “hammer” to that ever-growing list.

  Slade had one hand fisted in the back of Sam’s hair, knuckles grinding into the back of his head as he held his head down, his other hand gripped Sam’s right hip, fingers digging painful divots into Sam’s skin as he held him in place and pulled him back against each inward thrust of his hips. Every thrust knocked Sam against the dryer, the sound of it was like the muffled bang of a gong, the pain of it had become not quite numbness, but a constant if tolerable ache and that too was like banging. The hollow sound of his body knocked against the dryer was the sound of that horrible feeling. He had been cored out, now he was being battered.

  Slade leaned over his back, panting hotly in his ear, and Sam closed his eyes and endured it. It was almost over. It would be over soon. He could tell from the hitching of Slade’s breath, from the way his fingers clenched in Sam’s hair and dug into his flesh. It disgusted him and shamed him that he had come to know Slade’s body so intimately. Like they were lovers when that was the last thing in the world they were to each other.

  Slade licked the back of his ear and Sam shuddered and cried out as Slade thrust harder, pressing deeper, into where everything hurt. Sam’s eyes snapped open and he noticed a spider making its way along the back of the dryer. It moved with the jerking, twitchy jiving motions of a spider that had recently been poisoned. It would die soon, but not right away. The poison would go to work on its nerves first and the creature would lose control of its extremities. Pretty soon it would give up, not dead, but resigned to it, and it would curl up like a dead flower and die quietly, alone in the dark.

  Sam envied it.

  Slade growled, “Fuck yeah,” against the back of Sam’s neck. He moaned, grunted as he thrust once more, then he came and the spurt of it inside of him made Sam want to die. He would have given anything in that moment to trade places with that wretched, soon-to-be-dead spider.

  Slade didn’t pull out right away, he stayed like that inside of him while his breathing evened out and his cock began to go soft. When he did pull out, he thrust his fingers into Sam’s ass and twisted to feel them slide sloppily in the mixture of his own come and Sam’s blood. Sam sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and bit down on it, shivering with revulsion and hatred, but he didn’t say anything or try to get away, he let him do it. If he fought it would be worse. Slade would beat him down to the floor and maybe, because the violence and seeing Sam at his mercy turned him on, Slade would get his second wind and fuck him again.

  Sam stayed over the dryer and listened for Slade to leave. He heard the clang of his belt buckle as he pulled up his pants and fastened it, the shuffle of him righting his clothes. Then Slade reached over and took the hammer from the top of the washing machine and leaned in close to him. His nostrils flared as he scented Sam, breathed in the smell of his disgust and pain.

  He smiled and ran his tongue up Sam’s cheek. “You’re not too fucking good for me, are you, Bowman? Nope. This is who you are. You getting used to it yet?” He put his hand down and smacked Sam on the ass, gripped a cheek tightly with his fingers before letting go. “See you. Later.”

  Once, Sam’s anger would have flared to the surface. His outrage, his pride, the certain conviction that who he was—what he was—meant that mean, crazy, disgusting pieces of garbage like Slade had no right to touch him and would not dare. He would have been overcome with disbelief once upon a time.

  He hadn’t really felt that way in years. When they had been children growing up together, Slade had been just another boy Sam rarely ever noticed. He would never be the alpha, but he wasn’t so low among his peers that he would ever be their omega either. Sam hadn’t liked him, but he hadn’t ever been mean to him. They hadn’t been friends, but Sam hadn’t had a clue how much resentment Slade harbored toward him for the refusal of that friendship. Slade didn’t hate him because Sam had hurt him or humiliated him or abused his power to bully him; he hated Sam because Sam had ignored him. Sam had looked down on him and he hadn’t even seen him standing there.

  For people like Slade, being invisible was worse than being hated.

  Instead of his anger flaring up, Sam felt nothing. It was a sad, despairing sort of nothing, but it kept him in his place, too. He didn’t move to put his clothes back on until he heard Slade hurry up the stairs to the main floor of the house. The door opened and closed behind him and only then did Sam push himself up from the dryer. He favored his weak leg more than usual as he pulled his pants on and retrieved his shirt from the floor. Slade wasn’t gentle with him, never had been, and he cared less than nothing for the pain he inflicted on Sam’s bum leg when he occasionally bore down on him with his weight in the wrong way. Sam had learned not to let him know he was doing it though, otherwise, depending on Slade’s mood, he’d just hurt him worse on purpose.

  Sam thought about going to the shower in his room, it wasn’t very far. His room was in the basement with the laundry, the furnace, the water heater and the storage rooms and it was only a few feet away. But he wasn’t finished with his chores around the house either and if someone caught him taking a shower in the middle of the day, they would want to know why and if he lied, he’d just get punished or yelled at. If he didn’t lie, well… If he didn’t lie, he might not get punished, but he wouldn’t get any sympathy either and it would get back to Owen.

  It absolutely could not get back to Owen.

  He also couldn’t just go about the rest of his day bleeding
from the ass, smelling like sweat and fuck either. Owen wasn’t home right now, but he would be back soon, and if he smelled it on him no one would have to tell him a thing.

  Sam stood there for several minutes trying to think, trying to make up his mind what to do, but he couldn’t. He knew what had to be done—wash up, chin up, forget about it, don’t let them see it gets to you—but he couldn’t make himself move or care. He was just very, very tired. He couldn’t find even a spark of ambition to get him moving from the spot where he stood rooted.

  He remembered the dying spider and lying down on the floor seemed like the only thing to do. So he lay down on the floor right there in front of the dryer with his back to it, the warmth from the tumbling clothes seeping into his skin. Shivering, he drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He could feel the uncomfortable wetness running down the back of his legs, sticking his jeans to his ass, seeping through the fabric. He might lose those pants and he regretted that because he didn’t get new clothes much and he liked those jeans. They were broken in just perfect.

  I’m dead, he thought. That’s what I am. I’m going to pretend that I’m dead and then if I pretend long enough, it’ll be true.

  Why do you do this to yourself? The voice that asked this question sounded a lot like his own, but it was the voice of a younger Sam. Sam before he’d been injured; Sam when his life had held such promise. Sam, the boy who would one day be king, never understood why.

  He used to know the answer to that question. Once, he would have had an easy and logical reason for why, but every year it got harder and harder to remember what those reasons were. Harder to believe it even when he did remember.

  He pictured himself dead there on the floor. Nothing would change very much at first. He would get colder and colder. His skin would become pale in places, dark and almost black in others. Because he was on his side, the blood would settle and the left side of his body would turn black. The insects would come. His eyes would turn brown then black. His lips would pull back from his teeth in a grimace that looked like a scream of pain, but there wouldn’t be any pain. All of that would be over.

  “The former things have passed away,” he whispered. He chuffed a soft breath of humorless laughter.

  He could smell himself, Sam realized. He smelled like sweat and fear, dust, laundry detergent, pain and blood. He smelled like Slade and like Slade’s come. He could still feel the hollow ache in his body from the way he’d pushed the hammer handle inside of him. It had a rubber grip and Slade didn’t bother with anything to lubricate it—he never did—so it stuck inside and pulled and tore at him as Slade drove it in, pumped it inside him while Sam bit his lips bloody not to scream. He’d still screamed though. In his mouth, with his lips bit tightly closed, he hadn’t been able to help it. And Slade, like some actor in the world’s most sadistic porno, breathing heavy, panting, getting off on it, asking him if he liked that, Yeah, you like that, Sammy, you like that? Take it. Fucking take it. Don’t be shy.

  Just picturing it, watching it and listening to it play over in his head, reliving it, Sam wanted to die all over again. He turned his head and retched. Nothing came up, but he felt his stomach lurch. He moaned and tried to go back to thinking about nothing. About being dead. That was better than remembering the way it had hurt, the way Slade panted, the things he said while he did it, mocking him, the rumble of his laughter.

  I am dead. I’m going to stay here and be dead, where it’s safe. Like the spider.

  The door from the main floor down into the basement opened and footsteps descended. Sam whined and started to get up. He didn’t want to be found that way or seen like that. No one would be surprised by it and almost no one would care very much, but he hated to be seen this way. It was pride, something which he had very little of, but he started to push himself up and crawl around the washing machine out of sight.

  “Sam?”

  Sam stopped and let out a sigh of relief. “Over here, Vanessa,” he called. He relaxed back on the floor and rested his chin on his arm.

  Vanessa followed his voice to where he lay beside the washer, and with one glance she knew what had happened. “Are you okay?”

  Sam never knew what to say to that. Not the truth; he hadn’t been “okay” in a long time. But she wouldn’t believe a lie either. Besides, there was no point lying about it when she knew how it went. She’d been where he was before.

  “I’ll live,” he said.

  Vanessa crouched down to help him up and got a better look at him. “Oh, wow. God, Sam. You’re bleeding.”

  Sam pushed himself up with a groan. “Figures,” he said.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Sam gave her a flat look. “What do you think happened? Slade came down here while I was finishing the laundry and he brought his very own hammer. Which he then proceeded to try out on my ass.”

  “He… hit you with a hammer?” Vanessa asked. She sounded almost hopeful and a little surprised. It wasn’t really Slade’s MO. She put her arm around Sam and helped him stand. “That’s—”

  “I’m bleeding. From the ass,” Sam said. “No, he didn’t hit me with it.”

  He let her figure out the rest herself, which didn’t take long. “Jesus Christ, Sam, he raped you with a hammer?”

  “The handle, actually,” Sam said. He got her to let him go and went over to the dryer to open the door and look inside. The clothes were dry, so he began unloading them into a laundry hamper.

  “What do you think you’re doing? You’re not doing chores,” Vanessa said. She took the laundry basket away and set it on top of the washer. “You’re going to lay down.”

  “I still have shit to do,” Sam protested.

  “Yeah, and it’ll get done, but you’re not doing it. My god.”

  “Vanessa—”

  “I said no,” Vanessa snapped. “And I think I’m allowed to do that and you have to listen to me. That’s pretty much your job description. So, if anyone wants to get pissed about their sheets not being ready yet, they can take it out on me. Look at you, you’re not going to survive that shit right now.”

  “Oh, I probably would,” Sam said. He let her take the laundry and steer him back toward his room anyway. “I mean, look at me. I ain’t no quitter.”

  “This isn’t funny,” Vanessa said.

  “You think I don’t know that?” he asked.

  “Then stop it.”

  “I don’t know if I can. I mean, all I’ve been doing all day is laughing and laughing.”

  They reached Sam’s room and his door didn’t have a lock on it, so she pushed it open and helped him to the bed. Sam collapsed onto it with a sigh and Vanessa stood by awkwardly for a moment. Then she went to his beat up old dresser and dug around for a change of clothes.

  “Do you need me to help you in the shower?” she asked.

  “No,” Sam said. He wasn’t sure if it was true, but he didn’t want her help in the shower. “You can… you know, leave me here.”

  “Uh, no,” she said. “You just got raped with a hammer by a guy who really hates you and you’re bleeding from the ass. These are really—like never—good things. And definitely not something that makes me inclined to leave you alone right now. You really need to tell Owen about this stuff. There’s no way he’d allow it. He’d probably kill that asshole.”

  “No,” Sam said. He sat up and looked at her sharply. “And don’t you tell him.”

  “But—”

  “No, Vanessa.”

  Owen knew enough. He had been born a wolf into the Hellgate pack just like Sam and their families all the way back to the beginning of time had lived in packs exactly like the one Owen ruled over now. Owen would have had to be a complete moron as well as blind and deaf not to understand what it meant for Sam to be the pack’s omega, so he knew. He didn’t know about Slade though, and he didn’t know how bad it could sometimes get, and Sam didn’t want him to ever learn because Vanessa was right; he would never stand for it.

&
nbsp; Except there was a tiny little voice of doubt in Sam’s mind that whispered to him, usually when he was most vulnerable, that Owen might not do anything to stop it. He didn’t know now, and Sam believed deep down that if Owen knew, he would make it stop and fight for him, but what if? What if he knew and he still didn’t do anything to stop it? What if he allowed it to continue because an alpha that interfered too much with what was done with an omega would cause unrest within the pack? What if he put the pack over Sam? That was his job, that was what he was supposed to do, but it would still break Sam’s heart. It was better for Owen to never know and for Sam to never have to find out the truth for sure.

  Besides, Sam had been the one to tell Owen that he couldn’t protect him from it and made him promise to stop. It made Owen look weak. It made Sam look weak. In the eyes of the pack, it was unnatural, an alpha interfering with or protesting the treatment of an omega. It made the omega seem pointless and useless. It risked Owen losing his position to another or at least being forced to fight to keep it, and it put Sam in danger of being driven out of the pack.

  Which, all things considered, might not be the worst thing that could happen to him, Sam reflected.

  “Sam, come on. You gotta wash up. You smell like sex and… well. You know,” Vanessa said.

  Sam opened his eyes and frowned at her. “You can’t tell him about this,” he said.

  Vanessa sighed. “Fine. I won’t tell him about it. I’ll tell him you’re sick or something if he asks. He’s going to find out though. Maybe not right now, but he will, and then what?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said.

  What if he doesn’t care?

  What if he never looks at you the same way again?

  Sam stomped on those thoughts. He couldn’t worry about that right now, and thoughts like that would only run in constant circles and never allow him any peace if he let them.

  “Here, help me,” he said, putting his hand out.

  Vanessa took it and put an arm around him to help him to the adjacent bathroom. She had to help Sam undress because of his leg. It pained him and the shock of what had happened was setting in and he was weak. She didn’t stare rudely at his body, at the bruises and blood drying on his skin, but she saw it all and her lips thinned with displeasure and anger.