Читать книгу Rebirth - Dmitry Nazarov - Страница 10

– Wake up, underdogs! – A loud low voice boomed through the hangar, snapping you out of your deep, clingy sleep. – Let’s get you decent! It’s not right to appear before your future alphas wrinkled and smelly, like pieces of dog shit!

I lifted my head and immediately cringed because my neck and back were so stiff. A new character was here today to perform the ablutions. He was tall, like everyone else here, but he looked skinny, in contrast to the previous closet-shaped warden. Though on closer inspection, he was rather wiry, with sharp, overtly aggressive features, and certainly not looking any less dangerous than his predecessor. The cages around me hissed, and so did I, sighing and groaning and kneading their stiff bodies. Except now we were all naked. The clothes were a ragged mess, and it was hard to hide the fact that all of the guys were hard up, without exception. In principle, it was the normal morning state of healthy young men, except that I myself felt wildly horny for some reason. The smell of lust literally flooded the entire hangar. Stop. The smell of lust? How could I smell it, and why was it unmistakable? «Well, maybe because you were a goddamn dog at night, and they’re kind of okay with their sense of smell,» my subconscious threw in a sarcastic remark. The puzzled looks around me, the noisy breathing and snorting, told me that I wasn’t the only one with a keen sense of smell all of a sudden. This time the washing felt like an act of humiliation again, and for some reason directed against me and Nadia. Especially against me. If the skinny bastard washed the guys rather quickly and without focusing on certain parts of the body, we were in for a real treat. He deliberately directed a powerful stream of ice on one breast or the other, in the face, in the lower abdomen, or between the buttocks when we tried to look away. As soon as I covered one vulnerable spot, the water would hit the other with force. He lingered at my cage for a long time, watering me until I was numb and making nasty comments like, «Rub yourself good, you little bitch. You should be clean before you die.» As he did so, he pawed me shamelessly with his eyes and smirked and licked his thin lips nastily.

– Hey, stop mocking her, you brute! – Lekha could not stand it, interfered, and my tormentor, put down the hose, went to him with such a wicked expression on his face that I was afraid for the guy.

But I heard the sound of car engines outside, and the skinny man changed his mind.

– Listen up, you miserable sons of bitches! One simple truth: absolutely no one is happy to see you, and the right to life has yet to be earned,» he said loudly, heading quickly toward the door. – You’ve passed your first turn, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing. Now the alphas will come in and choose who they deem worthy to be among the warriors of their packs. Anyone not chosen will die. The trash must be disposed of so that it does not create an even bigger mess. We don’t intend to let idiots out on the street who have no idea who they are now, who can’t control themselves, their circulation and associated desires, and who can create more problems for us.

– Well, you should have taught him! – I threw it back at him.

– Why the hell bother with someone deemed too weak, and therefore useless! – The skinny one snorted contemptuously. – Don’t you say anything, you’re as good as dead. So, you will be let out of your cages and beaten back. If you hold on for a minute or two, you live. If you try to run, you die. You talk back to the alphas, you die. Eyes only on the floor. You start crying and whimpering…

– Die, you understand. – One of the boys interrupted the lecturer irritably. – You better tell us whether we’re gonna get something to eat or not.

– Only those who survive!» said the skinny one and laughed like it was the best joke possible.

– What a freak,» Nadia muttered, and the door to the hangar rattled open.

One by one the men began to come in, and I was struck once again by the surrealness of what was going on. Most of all they reminded me of some of today’s wealthy businessmen, the kind who literally have a recent criminal past written on their foreheads, and under the expensive suits probably hid prison tattoos. They were nouveaux riches, with heavy looks of «I do what I want, I take what I see,» with just a touch of respectability and civility, behind which was a distinctly inhuman, aggressive power. There were four of them, and evidently they were these vaguely mentioned alphas, and each was accompanied by several guards. Though I doubt very much that they really needed them. It was more likely that their presence was required by status, hierarchy, or whatever the hell it was supposed to be. Each group of people entered the room in an emphatically separate manner. They began to talk softly about something, and the dialogue was conducted only by the alphas, the rest stood silent as if they were idols, drilling the other groups of escorts with unkind glances. I looked more closely, and saw the blond man who had dragged me here, and the big man who had tried to kill me. They were obviously from different teams. No one even looked at us, as if a crowd of naked people in cages were some kind of objects of the local, rather annoying and not worthy of attention interior. Having finished their quiet conversation, the four alphas finally deigned to notice the prisoners and moved leisurely down the aisle between the cages, accompanied by today’s jailer. They not only scrutinized the lads narrowly and appraisingly, but seemed to sniff them out, as if they were about to grop them or bite them in the teeth, like the stallions in the market.

– How much? – One of them, a classic blond, blue-eyed man, with a slight graying of the temples and deep forehead wrinkles that symbolized the eternal dissatisfaction of others, asked the warden in a curt voice.

– Twenty-nine in all since the last full moon, Alpha Vidid,» he answered tidily. – Two girls.

Six did not survive the turnover. So that leaves us with twenty-one heads.

Heads! It’s like we’re cattle, for God’s sake! It didn’t slip my mind that Nadia and I weren’t counted, as if we were automatically excluded from any claim to anything. I glanced around the cages and realized that some of them were really empty, and I hadn’t noticed at first.

– It’s a little much this month! – growled another alpha, a brunette near-Caucasian with a very noticeable «broken» bump on his nose and unpleasantly shining dark brown eyes.

That’s a lot of [bleep] for him! It was as if someone in the cages had competed or pounded their doorsteps to get here.

– And none of us asked for it! – I yelled, and immediately regretted it. All eyes were fixed on me, and I could clearly read the judgment in each one. The alphas’ smug faces grimaced almost equally, as if they’d seen the sight of some extremely nasty mold in my place.

– What the hell is that? – snorted a contemptuous snort from his upper lip, a big man in a silvery gray suit, obviously from some fancy house, with cloudy green eyes slightly rolled out.

– Two girls, I told you, alpha Rugott. Both survived,» it was said as if Nadia and I had done something offensive or indecent without dying. The scrawny jailer literally killed me with his gaze. – Eyes to the floor, you cheeky bitch!

– Fuck you, you fucking bastard! – I grinned at him, unexpectedly, even to myself. – If you say I’m gonna die here, I don’t need to fuckin’ follow your rules!

And really, they can’t kill me twice. And I wanted to spit in their ugly faces, it made my jaw ache. If I was a suicide bomber anyway, at least I could have one last pleasure.

– I see a girl with a very impertinent tongue is in a hurry to the other world! – Another alpha, with a cold mockery, with a filthy sandy rich hair, who looked more like a huge barrel of limbs. No, he was not fat, of course, just so wide that I could safely lie across his chest and his legs would probably not dangle. – Gentlemen, if no one’s claiming, why don’t we do her a favor and put her out of her misery?

Fucking humanist! The guys in the cages looked at each other and stomped around nervously, and I realized that I was going to be killed in front of them just to make everyone understand that no one was kidding around here. They’d probably do it to the first one who disobeyed me anyway, and I just made it easier for them to choose an object for a demonstration of intimidation. Besides, I wasn’t even the least bit sorry for myself, I couldn’t be a fighter. He looked as if he were just waiting for me to give the command, and so he rushed to unlock my cage. Noticing his enthusiasm, the alpha-box grinned and added:

– No fucking, Luca! We don’t mock the changed ones. We either take them into the family, or we kill them painlessly.

The skinny one seemed to stumble at his words and immediately lost most of his enthusiasm, to which all four of the overbearing bastards laughed sarcastically.

– Come on, Luca, I know what you mean! – The sneer was sustained by the pudgy blond, looking at me in a way that made me want to curl up in a corner, covering everything I could. – If I wasn’t sure if Marina would smell me and have my balls wrapped around her fist, I’d take her for myself. The little ones are usually woozy, flexible, and much tougher than they look at first glance!

Then he turned to Nadia and gave her a look of approval.

– I’ll take this one,» the blond nodded at Nadia’s cage. – A fine bitch after a good cut! If she’ll do well, she’ll be as good as any fighter, and if she doesn’t do well, the males will have something to blow off steam on. A bitch like that won’t break quickly.

– You are very clever, Vidid! – smirked «caucasian». – Of course, it’s a sensible idea, but I wouldn’t take a bitch. Then endure in a pack female squabbles for a hell of a long time!

As they continued their casual conversation, fucking Luca came into my cage and tried to grab my hair. But only fuck was I going to give up just like that. Kicking him in the knee with my heel, I grabbed his outstretched hand with my teeth, and he howled, shoving me off to the other corner nearest the open door. A moment of his confusion allowed me to leap fish-like into the suddenly free exit. I don’t know what I was counting on, maybe I just wasn’t ready to sign up to be a sheep, walking meekly to the slaughter. Naturally, I hadn’t gone a couple of steps before my hair was caught in the «gray suit’s» grip, and he jerked me so that I collapsed on my back, right under their feet. The guys around me started screaming and whistling and pounding on the bars, demanding that I be let go. Thank you, boys, I don’t know you at all, but you’re good people. Except that it wouldn’t do me any good.

– Shut up! – The Alpha who caught me barked, and there was so much knocking power in his voice that the silence was immediate. – Well, if no one protests, and no one is prepared to take this convert into their family, I consider her fate sealed! – he proclaimed as he lifted his foot in a designer shoe over my face, and I could see the image of his blow splitting my head open like an overripe watermelon.

– Hmmm, I protest! – Another unfamiliar voice came from behind the men, and suddenly absolutely everyone turned toward the door, and a general low, menacing growl vibrated in the air.