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  Claiming An Alpha’s Heart

  Hidden Gems Dark Omegaverse Book Two

  A.R. Ford

  Claiming An Alpha’s Heart

  Hidden Gems Dark Omegaverse Book Two

  A.R. Ford

  Copyright © 2020 A.R. Ford

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, transmitted, photocopied, scanned, faxed, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Please contact the author to obtain permission to use parts of the book for other purposes.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2020

  www.authorarford.com

  [email protected]

  The characters, places, and events in this book are figments of the author’s imagination. Any similarities with persons living or dead is merely a coincidence.

  Warning

  This story contains mature content and potentially triggering material including complete power exchange, violence, and sexual situations intended for adults 18+only.

  Claiming an Alpha’s Heart is written in the dark omegaverse trope. If you are unfamiliar with this trope, please research it before proceeding further. Alpha, Omega, and Beta behavior differs from “normal human” behavior.

  If you are offended and/or triggered by such material, please do not read or purchase this book.

  Note from the author:

  I’ve received quite a bit of backlash from one reader who posted a review stating that The Hunter and Doppelganger were nothing more than pedophilia and that underage girls were being raped by older men.

  I wanted to address the issues that person had with my books.

  -Nyssa in The Hunter was eighteen when she met Luca. Hailey in Doppelganger is twenty-one-years of age. There are several passages where age for both characters is mentioned. I did this after consulting other authors I trusted because I knew there would be dense people who refused to do the math:

  -Doppelganger, Chapter 5: From the ID card everyone was required to carry, I knew a few facts. She was twenty-one years old.

  -The Hunter, Chapter 1: His [Dreven] men brought the girl when she was just fifteen. (Dreven, a gang leader had his men buy Nyssa from a nun in order to use her psychic ability to make money for the gang. She was not sexually assaulted/abused in any way during her time there.)

  -The Hunter, Chapter 1: They held her for three years before she escaped.

  -Let me do the math: 15 + 3 = 18. At least that is the solution in the math classes I took throughout school.

  -Eighteen (18) is the legal age of majority in the United States and most civilized countries in the world. The age when young adults can sign a contract, obtain a loan, buy a car, move out on their own, start dating, get married, start college, find employment, and even, gasp, have sex without anyone's permission.

  -Pedophilia is defined as a sexual attraction to children.

  -The word children is defined as anyone below the age of majority.

  -I do not condone or support pedophilia, fictional or not.

  Third: Before a customer purchases a book on Amazon, there is a nifty thing called a blurb that we authors like to put out there so people can read and see if the book might be to their liking. I plainly mention that there is: mature and potentially triggering content intended for adults 18+. Doppelganger's blurb clearly states it is a dark m/f (male and female) omegaverse. I don't know about you, but when I stumble upon a new trope, I read about it. The first omegaverse book I read blew my hair back. It was raw, racy, gritty, and twisted. I won't mention the author's name, but I will say that I researched omegaverse before I came to a knee jerk reaction.

  Fourth: A professional editor, several beta readers, Amazon, and ARC readers failed to mention either books contained content bordering on pedophilia. But thanks for pointing that out.

  Finally, I write raw, graphic things about life. I wish I could sugarcoat my works of fiction. I refuse to do so. If any reader thinks my work is dark, try some of the other dark writers out there. Just type in a search for dark romance, dark omegaverse, anything DARK and you’ll get more than you bargained for. One author had a major television series based on his series of books. That series was amazing. There were some dark themes like incest, murder, and those sorts of things, but that was okay, right? Really now?

  For those of you who get me and want to read my work: Thank you! I’ll keep my dark, twisted writing coming just for you. And for those of you who do not like my work? That’s fine. Make sure you read the descriptions on those books you get from Amazon before you click purchase now. And scroll right on past books written by me.

  ~A

  Dedication

  To my beta readers: Angel Nyx, Julie Thorpe, and Carla Bischler. Your feedback and help during this phase were invaluable.

  To my readers who truly get the dark, twisted stories I write. Thank you for getting it.

  Chapter 1

  Emmy: Five Years Earlier

  Dust puffed upwards each time my foot hit the ground. Sun beat down on top of my head making it feel hot enough to fry an egg without difficulty. My mouth was dry as fall leaves but I dared not ask for a drink of water. Asking too many questions led to him tugging a strand of hair right at my temple where the skin was the most sensitive. It only took one of those tugs to make me realize I had to keep my mouth shut. At least he didn’t hit me and he made sure I had food and water. Other than that, tall man didn’t do anything other than walk fast and yank my hand so I would keep up.

  I lost track of time in that mindless sort of way that my mind was fond of when it wasn’t entertained. The next time I looked up a shack sat off to one side of the path.

  Tall man banged so hard on the door hanging by one hinge and a piece of leather nailed into the wood it made the entire shack shake. Scurrying sounds and whispering came from inside. Another knock brought a muffled curse from someone inside the hovel. Seconds later, the door swung open.

  Skinny man squinted up at tall man. “What the hell. My old buddy has come to visit me. What brings you around this neck of the woods?”

  “I don’t have all day. I have a proposition for you,” tall man muttered. “Come outside where we can talk.”

  Skinny man hummed before he stepped outside and closed the door behind him. Nothing they said interested me so I spent time looking around to see if I knew where we were. Thick forest surrounded the shack. Mountains rose high in the sky all around us. Overhead a wisp of white teased its way across the azure blue above. Funny, I hadn’t noticed how pretty the sky was when we were walking.

  Something pulled my attention back to the men standing beside me. Tall man’s voice got loud and rough. One of his fingers pointed right at skinny man’s nose. It bobbed with each word flying out of his mouth.

  “What happened to us taking care of each other? Huh? Or did that shit fly out the window the last time we parted ways?” Tiny droplets of spit flew out of tall man’s mouth when he said each word. His face twisted in a way that made a icy ball of fear form in my stomach. I wanted to run and hide but knew I wouldn’t get far.

  “I don’t have time to take in another stray,” skinny man spat while eying me.

  I couldn’t understand why someone would hate me, without knowing who I was. Skinny man may not have hated me, but it sure seemed that way. His eyes were narrowed, brows drawn together. He spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground, inches from my feet.

  “You owe me, Emmett,” the man who brought me to the shack in the middle of nowhere, muttered. “She has an estrus suppressing implant in place. Maybe, by the time it stops working, this shit fest will be over. I don’t kno
w about you, but the conflict between One World, and the remains of the resistance, is dragging on too damned long.”

  At least now I knew his name.

  “The way I see it, you owe me. I saved your ass from that bear, didn’t I?”

  A wad of money, encircled by a rubber band, left tall man’s hand, only to find its way into skinny man’s. “That should be enough to pay you for your troubles. If things don’t settle down, I’ll be back to get her, myself. Might be worth a few credits in the hands of the right person.”

  “You always were a slimy son of a bitch, Rafe,” the man named Emmett muttered. He looked at the wad of credits, thumb shuffling through one corner of the bills. “I’ll do it, but not forever.”

  The man named Rafe laughed when he walked away. It made my stomach twist to hear the sound. That’s all I was--something for money to exchange hands. I couldn’t remember a lot before now. Only waking up in a dirty clinic in some town, with the underside of my arm stinging.

  The day I came to live with the Rowe family, was bad. It got worse. For no reason, Emmett, or his wife, Gretchen, would go into some rage over me stealing food from their daughter’s mouth. The daughter who was as much a sister as I’d ever had. The daughter who was just a year old when I got there. I was only thirteen at the time and needed something like her to make me feel loved. Katrina was the only thing that kept me there. That, and fear of the unknown. I knew the wasteland was bad. Sometimes, I wondered if it could be any worse than living here, with two people who hated me. They found any excuse to beat or whip me. Usually, because I was curious, or they thought I’d eaten more than my share of the daily rations.

  Five years passed without much of a change. Every now and then, crazy things that reminded me of dragonflies, hovered over the shack. A red eye looked all the way around. Most of the time, it seemed to focus on me. It made me feel funny. I don’t know how many times I woke up after having a nightmare about those red eyes.

  Maybe I was the bad person the Rowes told me I was. I didn’t think I was bad. Bad people wouldn’t help gather firewood for a family who hated them. Bad people sure wouldn’t play with a sister who wasn’t even a real sister.

  One thing was for sure. I couldn’t wait to find someone, somewhere, who would love me just the way I am.

  Chapter 2

  Emmy: Present

  The wasteland was never a place meant for survival. Those who managed to cling to an existence survived in one of two ways. They were either skilled survivalists. Or found a place in one of the towns that slowly rotted into the dirt.

  My family died a few years ago. They coughed, sneezed, ran a fever. Then, the sneezing stopped. It worried me when they coughed up yellow phlegm, tinged with blood. We did the best we could with herbal medicine. A traveling doctor came by one day. He took one look at them before shaking his head.

  “Ain’t no saving them,” he spat. “You best leave ‘em before you get it. They’ll be dead before sundown tomorrow.”

  Traveling doc was right. One by one, they started bleeding from their nose, coughing up blood. They kept telling me they were drowning. It wasn’t long before they died.

  I shouldn’t say family, though. They were only my guardians. The elder Rowes hated me from the time I came to live with them. Katrina was the only good thing about staying with them. That, and the fact I didn’t know where I would go if I left. I did the only thing I could at the time. I scavenged what I had to have to survive. I burned the old shack with them inside. It felt odd to sit there while the flames leapt in the wind.

  Dancing orange flames, tinged with yellow, signaled the end of my life as it was. Bits of ash floating down around me reminded me of snow. Dark, smoke-scented snow. Something I’d only seen once that I could remember. The world was getting warmer after the war destroyed almost everything. Just like some plague destroyed what was home.

  One glance over my shoulder revealed the collapsed roof. Twisted, rusted metal, over a framework of saplings. That was a roof in the wasteland. You were lucky if you could find an old tin roof to scavenge. I sat there with tears rolling one at a time down my soot-covered face, watching as the shack I once called home, slowly, but surely, disappeared. The tears were for Katrina. I couldn’t bring myself to cry for Gretchen and Emmett. They had beat, or whipped me, one too many times. That sort of thing has a way of killing out the love in anyone.

  I walked away once it was mostly gone. There was nothing left for me here.

  Finding a secure shelter was a priority. Solitary women, the weak, the old, and children, didn’t fare well in the wasteland. A lot of violent gangs, and men who took what they wanted. Being kidnapped, and forced into prostitution, was a real fear. It happened nearly every day if you believed the word-of-mouth news that filtered down from traveler to traveler. I knew it was true. Any town we visited for supply runs had a whore house. Unspoken law of the land said whore houses had to be painted red. That way, everyone knew. Most of all, anyone who wanted to visit the whore house, knew. Men visited, most of the time. Every now and then, a woman would show up. There were no back doors. If you visited a whore house, you went in the front door.

  It took a week to build a decent shelter. My first challenge was finding a suitable location away from where I lived with my family. The cliff was perfect. A hollowed-out area, more than large enough for me, would provide a space for sleeping. Now, to put some walls on the place. I was dripping with sweat, and nearly exhausted by the time I managed to drag enough fallen trees to the location. Each tree was wedged against the rock wall just beneath the rocky overhang. More debris served a dual purpose. It provided protection from the elements, and disguised the shelter.

  The skills I used over the next weeks were ingrained in me, since childhood, by my guardians.

  Sadly, those skills did not ensure Katrina’s survival. As the days stretched endlessly onward, I found I missed my Katrina most of all. The times we would snuggle together in one bed to stay warm. The times when she followed me around, asking questions, wisps of blonde hair gleaming in the sun. Of the times when she would look at me with wide eyes, the same color as the sky. Of the times when her sticky, tiny hand would find its way into mine. Of the times she made me feel like I was the only person of importance in her world. I missed all those times, and more. Too many to list. Too painful to recount, again.

  The few supplies I managed to scrounge from the shack, dwindled away to nothing over time. I scavenged and gathered berries, nuts, and other edibles as much as I could. I made it for a few years on my own. The icy chill of fear gnawed at my gut; in much the same way a rat gnaws away at food. Choices lay before me, spread across the racing neurons of my mind. Stay, and starve. Go, and risk being taken.

  Weighing my options helped make the decision. It was near the end of winter. I had no weapons with which to hunt. Snares failed to catch any game. Edible, gatherable food dwindled in winter months. The shelter’s close proximity to the shack meant most of those things were picked clean. Going a few days without food, convinced me. The will to live remained strong. I was only twenty-one-years old and hoped for a better life one day in the wasteland.

  Emmett’s heavy coat disguised my breasts. Already short hair would help me pass as a man. The only drawback was my decidedly feminine voice. I screamed inside the shelter the night before I departed. Screamed. Raged. Purged. So hoarse, I could barely speak, I knew my new voice would serve me well.

  Walking to Exeter was a physical activity I was accustomed to. At least once a month, sometimes more, two of us would walk into town for supplies. The crumbling town was a half day’s walk in perfect conditions. Nature cooperated with me on the journey there.

  Exeter’s town limits were surrounded by rusting, burned out automobiles, alternating between collapsed buildings. The debris created the perfect barrier between town folk, and predators. Predators ranged anywhere from the four-legged, to the two-legged variety. Deep in my gut, I knew two-legged predators were the most dangerous of them all. />
  Buildings slowly degrading. Foundations crumbling. Asphalt shingles rotting, and covered in moss. All were signs of our previous modern world’s decline. Plants grew from great gouges in the asphalt. Most of the streets were nothing more than dirt, or mud-covered paths. I made sure to stay on the main path where shops lay on either side of the street.

  The general store was located in a white clapboard building that leaned haphazardly to one side. The porch’s surface had more than one loose, or rotted board. Carelessness here could leave you with a sprained, or broken ankle. Either were a death sentence if you lived outside Exeter.

  Screaming the night before gave me the added edge I needed. I slipped into the general store. The clerk gladly gathered supplies before placing them in a burlap sack. I bought the supplies I needed with the last of the family’s money. A sigh of relief whispered past my lips when I stepped into the street. Home free. I should have known my luck would run out.

  Halfway between the entrance to town, and the general store, two thugs caught me. My struggles to be free earned me a punch in the gut. They took the burlap sack, and each man, one of my arms. Dragged through the streets, kicking, and screaming, I knew what my fate was. Right to the whore house. Thrown in a room with a bed, dresser, and basin on a stand.

  A man with a face twisted with scars came inside not long after they tossed me in the room. “You ready to work?” he sneered after spitting on the floor.

  “Never.” My voice was a low rasp. My throat was much worse after all the screaming.

  “Never is a long time if you ain’t got food.”

  “I haven’t had much to eat in three days, anyway. What’s a few more?” I stared him right in the eye. I wanted him to know I meant business.

  “You’d best take care of the customers. You don’t wanna know what happens to girls who refuse to work.” With a scrape of his boots on the filthy floor, he was gone, but not before laughing. A cold, harsh sound that grated down my spine.