The Ultimate Series Book 1: Feral

Nothing was louder than silence. It allowed the voices in my head to scream uninterrupted.

I wasn’t really sure where they came from. Were they products of my dark desires or just another curse Myrin had saddled me with?

Either way, I wouldn’t have to listen to them much longer. My execution drew closer with every rasping breath I took.

It was dark in my iron coffin, small and cramped. Still, it was more enjoyable than the prison I had been tortured in for months.

The familiar biting chill of metal links wrapped around my torso, securing my arms tightly at my sides. My ankles were encased in manacles with a thin chain attached between them, and a heavy wire muzzle covered my face.

The fit wasn’t quite right, and the buckles dug into my cheeks. Despite all of this, I was the most comfortable I had been in a long while.

For once, the poison in my veins was calm. I started to hum a little nursery rhyme that gave the voices in my head pause.

A few of them started singing along with me. Others went quiet.

“She’s singing again.”

My ears perked up. It was too coherent to be one of the voices in my head.

They were here for me. Finally.

“Creepy fucking bitch.”

Two voices. Yes, it was time. They had sent my escort.

The door screeched open, metal against metal, like nails on bone. Or was it teeth?

My iron coffin cracked, and three stone walls greeted me. I blinked, adjusting to the dim, dank cell.

My bare feet hit the cement as I stepped out of the iron box, the chains on my ankles rattling against the ground. My blood had discolored the floor, staining it black over time.

Splatters of metallic silver glittered out of place there, too. The shackles hanging from the ceiling still swayed gently, empty now.

But memories seared my skin with ghostly pain. My struggles were etched permanently on my wrists from the countless times they had cut into my flesh as I’d writhed and thrashed against his cruelty.

It was loud in between these four walls. Screaming. Always screaming. But not now. Not anymore. Just silence.

I’d bled here. Wept here. Broke here. How boring.

I couldn’t understand the fear that had once gripped me. Perhaps when my sanity had been stripped away, so had my emotion.

I didn’t even feel anger, which had been my most loyal friend for years. The only thing left in me now was hollow indifference.

Before me, three Zeta agents, black like shadows, were wrapped in armor. Kevlar vests, helmets with dark visors, shin guards, and arm guards adorned their towering frames.

They weren’t taking any chances with me. Their weapons—a mix of tranquilizer guns and shock batons—were strapped at their waists and slung over their backs.

Behind them, Samson stood watching, arms crossed over his chest. He had risen to the position of One of High Lake territory, but I had little knowledge of him beyond his status as Myrin’s former second-in-command.

His gaze lingered on the grotesque scars etched into my stomach in jagged letters.

His gaze was stuck there, unable to pull away. Like the scars were crawling, alive, trying to eat him. I almost laughed.

Then he looked up and met my stare. I watched the shiver go through him. Weak. Just like the others.

They were all weak. I could smell it on them, sharp and bitter, laced with adrenaline. Delicious.

“Get her in the truck,” Samson commanded, his voice tighter than he wanted it to be. “Three guards at all times. She is not to be underestimated.”

The Zeta agents moved in quickly, checking that the restraints on my body were secure. They paraded me through the halls of Myrin’s mansion—Samson’s now.

I’d killed their leader here, right on this very floor. Myrin, that raving mad fucking scientist, had met too easy of a death.

I should have picked him apart little by little over the course of months as he’d done to me. His end was something I replayed in my mind over and over.

His blood still coated my hands, long dried and pulling my skin taut in an irritating sensation I longed to itch. But I could remember it fresh, dripping from my hand, splashing onto the white and gold marble.

A pool of sticky red liquid fanned from Myrin’s neck, covering the floor with its dark beauty. His body lay beneath my feet as I crouched, poised on his chest.

My toes dug into the flesh beneath his collarbones. My badly chopped bangs tickled my lashes, blood leaking from their tips.

I breathed out a sigh of delight, savoring the memory as I was prodded out of the mansion.

“She’s fucking rancid… still got pieces of him on her…,” a Zeta agent muttered as he hoisted me into the armored vehicle.

Another agent on the inside pulled me up.

“Shut up,” he hissed. “We’ll hose her off before the trial.”

Myrin’s flesh, still under my claws, had been there for some time. Besides the acidic ammonium smell from the piss that soaked my tattered clothes, it was probably the source of the stink.

Good. I’d let it rot. He deserved to decay in my hands.

I was forced into a seated position and strapped in further with the restraints attached to the walls of the vehicle. I stared at them above the wire muzzle, my gaze slowly moving from one agent to the next, watching. Piercing.

Their discomfort was palpable, their tension evident in every jerky movement. As the armored doors slammed shut behind me, sealing me in, I let out a soft hum of the nursery rhyme from before.

I could sense the unease ripple through the guards, even without seeing their faces. They knew better than to show fear.

But I didn’t need to see it to know it was there. I could smell it—thick, sour, and suffocating.

None of them spoke, but the voices in my head were more than happy to provide me with conversation.

Did it even matter? I was going to die soon. Why did I need to decide that?

Easy.

Death was easy. Just ceasing existence would make all of this go away. Would I ever be allowed such a thing?

I’d deserved it multiple times throughout my life, yet it had been taken from me. It was like I was not allowed the ease and peace of death.

What did that mean for me then? If I wasn’t to die, then what was left for me? I could not go through another Myrin.

I would not survive that again. Even if death was not the end, my shattered mind, my broken will, and my empty soul would be. Who I was would simply disappear.

I’d be forced to become someone else, something else. That in and of itself was a kind of death, I supposed.

The voices didn’t relent, pestering me with more senseless questions until I entered a light sleep. It was only seconds before my body jerked, muscles locking tight in response to the high voltage.

I whipped my head to the side, lip curling up as an animalistic growl rumbled in my throat in warning to the fucker who’d tased me. He flinched back. Then, remembering he was supposed to be the intimidating one, he raised his baton again.

“Get moving,” he barked, trying to sound tough. His voice wavered just a bit.

Not enough to satisfy me, but enough to notice. I sneered, my razor-sharp teeth kept in check beneath the muzzle.

The chains clanked, heavy on my wrists, ankles, and neck. The metal links were like a part of my body now, always there, always controlling, always reminding me of my place. Trying to anyway.

I walked forward, slow, letting them yank me along like a dog. They marched me up stone steps, grand, wide, and going on forever.

I blinked against the bright sky, squinting at the building towering ahead. Massive columns, white and pristine, stretched up into the heavens.

The architectural style was cold and imposing like it could crush you if you stared at it too long. It was meant to inspire fear. Heh. Nothing could scare me anymore.

Zeta agents were everywhere, swarming like ants. All in black, all armed, all ready to subdue me or their unruly crowd.

Protective barricades lined the steps, a buffer between me and the seething sea of bodies. They shouted their obscenities and their hateful words; they called for my death and booed my existence.

They hurled rocks, trash, whatever they could get their hands on. Rotten food splattered near my feet, and a rock glanced off my shoulder. I kept humming, the voices humming with me.

It drowned out the crowd. Drowned out the world. Objects flew past me—spoiled fruit, clumps of dirt.

One guard stiffened as a projectile hit him, but I didn’t falter. It wasn’t important. None of it was.

We reached the top of the steps, and the crowd’s roar faded as the doors closed behind us. I could still hear them buzzing like insects.

I focused on the sound of my chains dragging on the polished marble floors. Clean. Too clean.

They wanted to make it all appear so neat, so civilized, so righteous. It was all so fucking fake.

They led me through winding hallways, white walls, and high ceilings. Then, through a back room down a small set of stairs and into a containment cell.

It was small but clean. Soft light filtered in from overhead, nothing like the filthy holes Myrin had stuffed me into. I stepped inside, the door clanking shut behind me.

I stood there for a moment, staring at the clean floor and the untouched walls. I’d been in a room like this before. It had all started in a place like this.

This is where Myrin had found me. This is where he’d begun. The torture. The breaking. The madness.

I felt a faint twitch at the corner of my mouth. Not a smile. Just something else.

It had been nine years since my first consorting season, nine years of evading my consort. I’d made it eighteen seasons unbonded, setting an impressive record unlikely to ever be broken.

Most females bonded by their third season, fifth at most, because of the law mandating that any female unbonded by her fourth season had to attend the Finding. My defiance had come with consequences.

Zeta had hunted me for it, and I’d been caught after running for seven years and thrust into a containment cell just like this. They’d also had a hose like the one snaking behind the Zeta agent.

I’d covered myself in bear shit in my attempts to throw Zeta off my trail when I’d lived in the woods, and it had worked pretty well. Now, I was covered in urine and traces of Myrin.

I felt filthier now. The male switched the nozzle on, and water pelted me with a bone-breaking force.

Another Zeta agent attacked me with a coarse scrub brush. He cleaned me as best he could with the chains wrapping around my body. I was motionless as he cleaned me.

My hair was pulled sharply as the male grabbed chunks of it and cut them away, giving me an awful bob. A pair of cream linen pants were yanked up my legs, the drawstrings cinching tightly around my waist.

Nothing could be done about the tattered T-shirt with my restraints. I felt a twinge of satisfaction in knowing they couldn’t hide everything.

“Maybe we should have left her,” the Zeta agent muttered, pocketing the scissors. “She doesn’t look as much like a monster. She’s fucking pitiful like this. Did that guy ever feed her? She’s practically a walking skeleton.”

The other one came to my side to inspect me. “It’s what the council wanted.”

“She doesn’t seem feral. She hasn’t resisted at all.”

“Fuck if I know,” the male grumbled, tugging at one of the buckles on my muzzle that had loosened. He was too close, close enough that when he pulled back, our gazes clashed.

His face tensed for a split second. The emptiness of my stare unnerved him. He swallowed, trying to keep his hands steady, trying to pretend it didn’t get to him.

“She’s got to be dangerous if she’s capable of murdering a One,” he muttered, still avoiding my dead gaze. His voice dropped low like he was talking to himself more than anyone else.

“Just like you said, a slight breeze could knock her over, yet she overpowered a male twice her size. She’s got her claws and canines out, too. Normal females don’t do that.”

Everyone possessed retractable claws and teeth, but I often kept mine out, along with my sharp incisors. For females, displaying teeth and claws was deemed improper, supposedly making us unattractive.

But it wasn’t unusual to see a male display them.

“True enough. I remember seeing what she did to her consort at the last Finding. Gutted him like a fucking pig.”

Unfortunately, our highly regenerative bodies and the quick action of the Zeta agents had saved my consort’s life. It’d only taken me ten seconds after meeting him to decide I was better off without him, and I’d sunk my claws into his stomach to yank out his intestines.

My consort had declared me feral for all to see. I was to be euthanized that night if no one claimed me in the Consortpool, where the widowed or unconsorted females went for a second chance.

I would have preferred death over Myrin, but there was nothing to be done about it now. I was back here again in an ironic string of events, and now there was nothing that could halt my execution.

The World Council could not allow it. My sentencing was to be publicized and broadcast. They needed to make a statement in case my defiance started giving other females ideas.

Ferals were rare, and legitimate cases even rarer. It took a lot for one to lose their reason, to deteriorate into a bloodthirsty monster that had no goal other than killing.

They were unable to communicate, unable to feel emotion, and most importantly, there was no way to cure them.

Many so-called ferals were just strong-willed females who refused to submit to their consorts. Declaring a female feral was a convenient way to dispose of those who resisted.

But a consort had to proclaim their female feral for her to be euthanized. If you had no consort and were suspected of being feral, your consort had to be found and brought before you to make the call.

The World Council didn’t have to bother with that, thanks to my stunt at the Finding. Honestly, it was a relief to know that today would be my last.

I was tired of what life had to offer me.

The room opened up into a massive amphitheater, the walls curving in a wide arc, rising up in levels. To my left and right were tiered stands, filled with males of rank, each seat taken by Ones and their Twos.

All attention was locked on me, watching. Judging.

The air was thick with their anticipation, their unspoken disgust. Above them, banners marked territories, their insignias bold and vivid, like battle flags staking out the power each male claimed to hold.

It was a space built for dominance, for control. The seats were arranged in such a way that they loomed over the center—over me—like an arena for predators, and I was the prey on display.

The whole room was designed to make me feel small and insignificant beneath them.

I was placed on a podium before a raised platform. Nine males sat at the curved table, staring down at me. Nine males, two from each of the four Axes and one elected by the old council to stand as head.

Deft fingers grazed my cheek, working to undo the buckles of my muzzle. The Zeta agent watched me cautiously, waiting for me to decide to take some of his fingers for a little snack.

It was tempting. But I was surrounded, guns trained on me, filled with paralysis darts.

I didn’t want my last moments to be a heap on the ground.

This was where things would end. Or maybe where they began again.