Good Girl by Sam Hall
Chapter 1
“So why don’t you tell me about that day,” my therapist said, sitting back in her comfy armchair, the light coming in through the window behind her head creating a glowing halo. The room was all creams and warm greys, comfy as a blanket. So why was I fidgeting on my couch? Her pen hand rose as she watched me, moving slowly to the clipboard as I let out a long sigh and then began.
“Stay in your room,” my mother snapped, those elegant brows drawing down hard. “The doctor says you’ll be revealed any day now.”
“But, Mum—”
“Stay, Cyn.” She stood in the doorway, a picture of the perfect willowy beta, and she would be if it weren’t for me. For most of the family, designation reveals were a straightforward thing. You went to bed a child and woke up a beta—sensible, hard-working, reliable, stable. “I know you don’t like it. I know you want…”
Her eyes followed mine, to the massive picture window behind me. We lived in a house that shared borders with the woods beyond. My second home. As an only child, I’d found my friends in the trees themselves and the creatures within, along with those that I created with my mind.
“The doctor isn’t sure how you’ll reveal.” Her full lips thinned down into a definite burgundy line. “But it’ll be soon. You need to stay put. I mean it. No going into the forest. Tell me you understand.”
“I understand, Mum.”
“Good girl.” Her mouth softened to almost a smile. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know this is hard. You want to be back at school, I need to be back at work. We’ve just got to wait this out. It won’t be long before you wake up and know what you are. Perhaps even an alpha.”
I saw it then, her aspirations for my seventeen-year-old body. It was evident in the shine in her eyes, the faraway look. To become an alpha was to put your stamp on the world, to climb to the upper echelons. To become someone. That agenda, no matter how benign, was a weird thing for me to witness. A destiny hand-picked and curated for me by someone else.
Then her smart watch beeped.
“I’m sorry, honey, I’ve got to join an online meeting. My boss is already baulking at the working from home conditions. You have your books, your art supplies, your tablet. Just think of this as a staycation until this is all sorted out.”
It took all of five minutes after she closed my door, when I heard her footsteps down the stairs and the door of her office opening and closing, for me to disobey her. I was usually pretty biddable, but not when it came to the forest.
She didn’t understand my need to go there but was able to rationalise it in terms of me being a strong, independent young woman, master of her domain. She listened to my stories, inspected my finds of robin’s egg shells the colour of the sky and leaves the most perfect shade of red or gold in the autumn, all with the same cool, calm interest she did everything. She loved me, I knew that. I’d had enough hugs, spent enough times curled up beside her on the couch, my head resting in her lap, her long elegant fingers trailing through my hair, to feel it. The fact she devoted so much time listening to, watching, talking about topics that she had no interest in made that apparent.
But love or not, the pull of the woods was something hard encoded in my blood, something I had no means to resist. Until I was revealed, I was a child, and this one loved the forest. So when she was locked away in her office, headset on, discussing forward projections and sales trajectories, I slid open my window, quiet as a mouse, and like a mouse, I scurried up the massive bough right outside, slid down the trunk in well-practised moves, and then felt it, the minute my feet hit the ground. The squish of damp earth, the crunch of leaves, and an electrical pulse I could never describe to another person because I hadn’t heard anyone articulate anything like it to me. It was a silent, secret feeling. One I craved like my next breath.
I was being difficult and this would cause my mother grief, so in honour of that, I looked back at the house, stared at the blind looking windows with their reflections of the sky above, and then turned my back on it all and walked into the forest, like a changeling, weaving between the trunks, down the winding path, until finally, it swallowed me whole.
I’d broughtfriends out here before, but they didn’t get it. It was boring and there was nothing to do, those domesticated children always said. They didn’t seem to feel the cool play of the breeze on your skin as a call to arms, didn’t trail their fingers over bark smooth and rough. Didn’t need to breathe in the resiny scents of conifers. There were no toys, no electronics, no expectations, and as a result, they had no idea what to do.
But I did.
I followed a circuitous route I always took, stopping to inspect the bushes growing new berries, glistening red and poisonous to boot. I paused when I heard the birds calling, watching them hop from tree to tree, poking their beaks into the open pine cones and ferreting out the pine nuts. I ducked under fallen boughs or walked along them like a balance beam, liking the way my body knew exactly how to move without falling. I stopped by the river, jumping down on a series of big flat rocks, to scoop up what my mother assured me was pathogen rich water but to me just tasted of earth and wet stone. I walked and I walked, taking in all the landmarks and sights, observing the way they were changing at the brink of the new season, my steel trap brain storing every change away.
Until I found them.
Other teenagers came out into the forest sometimes. It was a place to escape the eagle eyes of the adults, where they, like me, could be free. But what they did made my lips curl. Nests were destroyed with rocks, eggs left cracked and glistening on the ground with a wantonness that took my breath away. Fires were lit and not well controlled, leaving black scars on the land. And rubbish. They dragged all the stuff I wanted to escape from deep into the depths of the forest and left it scattered around, a small explosion of trash to mark their presence where it wasn’t wanted.
And then there was this.
I froze when I heard their voices. Too loud, declaring to the world all the things they were too scared to say when the adults were around, the shouts and whoops carried well through the forest. I shrunk down, slinking through trees and bushes, well-practised. I always knew where the hiding places were. I crept closer and closer still, spying on the interlopers.
Do all children stumble into adulthood this way? They were drinking, calling out, smashing bottles on the ground in a way that made me flinch, feeling the sharp shards in the soles of my feet, even as I stood several metres away. But it was them, young animals, full of their own strength and power and vicious with it, that had me pausing.
I’d seen foxes in the forests, snakes that would kill me with one bite, wild dogs too, but nothing frightened me as much as them. Young men, with the bodies of adults. Too tall, too muscular, voices too deep—alphas. But right now, they weren’t subsumed into the oppressive social structure that held the adults accountable. They had slipped away, wild and free, and were enjoying being let off the leash.
“Look what I found.”
My eyes jerked sideways, seeing a newcomer had arrived. Tousled dark brown hair and green eyes that appeared to glow in the forest depths, he presented a girl to the rest of the group, perched up on the wreck of a car dumped here long ago. They looked down at her like lions on a rock. One put the beer bottle he held to his lips, taking a long swallow, the others waiting until he threw it away, then jumping down and stalking closer.
“And what are you doing here, little omega?”
His voice sounded like the purr of my nan’s old grey cat, and how on earth was that possible? She seemed to wonder the same thing, staring up at him, wide-eyed—eyes that shone when he reached out and stroked the side of her face.
Marcus McCallum. She knew him, I knew him, everyone did. He had stalked the halls of my high school like he owned the place, and maybe he had. Before he left, the gossip around the school was that the teachers were scared of him, the male ones at least. And the females? I was unawakened, but even I had heard the stories about him and the biology teacher who’d been sent away. But for all his reputation, he looked like a golden god, similar to the images of angels in Renaissance paintings, with his longish blond hair, hazel eyes, and cheekbones as sharp as a knife blade.
Despite his alpha designation, I caught the slight shake of his hand as he stroked the girl. The omega, I corrected myself. This was bad, I knew that as sure as my next heartbeat. We’d had sex ed, had it all explained to us—the more decorous mating habits of betas, and then there were the alpha-omega pairings. Savage impulses driven by instincts hard-wired, pheromones and hormones, knotting and biting and…
Omegas were to be protected from the predations of alphas and their own instincts. To coerce or abuse one was to show yourself to be weak. We’d all heard the message over and over, knew it was up to us to keep them safe.
But safe was notthis forest, not with those boys. This girl, this omega, she didn’t see the trees or the birds or the changing coloured leaves on the ground. She just saw them. The others peeled off the car, dropping down, and surrounded the girl in a wall of muscle, something that just made her quiver. I watched her eyes roll back the moment they came close, dragging their noses down her neck, breathing her in.
“She’s in heat?”
“Soon,” the dark haired guy growled. “Smells pretty fucking juicy, but can’t have her in heat. I’m not going into rut, not yet, and neither are any of you.”
“We’re not getting tied down,” Marcus said. “Not until we’ve found someone that works for all of us, right? Right?”
The last word was barked out, an order that had all of them jolting, then nodding their heads.
“I just want to taste her fucking slick. You want that, omega?”
This guy was just as tall, but not as heavily built as the others, as if he’d come late to his alpha status, but the way he grabbed the girl, hand around her throat, the other sliding down her body, it convinced her all right. His russet brown hair glinted like autumn leaves in the stray rays of sunlight as he pushed down the strap of the girl’s tank top.
“I asked you a question.”
The hand tightened around her throat, something that drew a little whine from her, a reaction I hadn’t understood. This was like some kind of savage, incomprehensible ritual, one I should have scuttled away from. If I ran back, quiet as a mouse, scurried up my tree and back into my room, then put a call through to the Omega Centre, as we’d all been instructed to do, maybe I could have avoided all this.
Because I didn’t. I crouched down deep in the bushes as the swell of her breasts were revealed to the satisfied growls of the alphas, as their hands, too big, too rough, covered them, caressed them, plucking at those bead-like nipples until a long, whining cry escaped her.
Were they hurting her or making her feel good? My mind wrestled with the idea, which coupled with the sure knowledge I couldn’t do much about it either way. But that didn’t seem to stop me from becoming a silent witness.
“You like that, little omega? You have to say,” Marcus insisted, brushing the other boys’ hands away until her mind cleared. She stood there, panting like she’d run all the way here, stripped to the waist, her pale skin pebbling in the cool air. “You tell us what you want, and we’ll make you feel good. Give you what you need.”
“Yes…” she finally hissed. “Yes, Marcus, please. I want you.” She blinked when no one moved, giving the others a cursory glance. “All of you.”
The four boys came forward as one, running their hands over her skin, and she gloried in it. That craving, that need, it was as alien to me as if they’d cut her head off before me. I wanted to be at home, locked up in my room, reading my books and drawing pictures of strange lands. I wanted to be the good beta daughter my mother wanted me to be. I wanted…
“On the bonnet and strip her naked,” Marcus said, pulling his shirt up and over his head, revealing a body much talked about by the revealed girls at school.
Golden skin, broad shoulders covered with a full back tattoo of an eagle, this was the body of an adult, not a boy, and she seemed to know that. The others did the same, the dark haired guy’s back sporting a raven, the auburn haired one, a wolf. But he was the last to strip his shirt off. Shaggy sandy coloured hair falling half over his face, he said the least, made the least noise, and perhaps that was the reason for his tattoo. A bear was drawn in the barest of lines, using his already incredibly pale skin to form the animal, standing between several pine trees
“You want out, you gotta say, omega,” Marcus said, stepping closer as her clothes were removed, as she reclined like a babe in a car mag across the car. “We want you.” He unbuttoned his jeans, pulling out his cock and palming it as if to prove his point. “But you want this to stop, you only gotta say.”
She licked her lips as her eyes went around the semicircle, taking in the display of semi-naked flesh, but it was him, Marcus, that sealed the deal.
“You want to fuck me?” she asked.
“More than fucking anything,” he replied.
That was the moment it all shifted for me, from being a kid spying on some really inappropriate teenage shit to being shoved rudely into adulthood. That rough, corded voice, that sheer bleeding need. People don’t need kids, didn’t want them like those boys wanted that omega right now. She had a power she didn’t even understand, was too far gone on alpha pheromones to exploit, but I sensed it, caught up in a spell now, barely even able to blink. Not when she said yes, reaching for Marcus and getting the dark haired one, her initial resistance dissolving the moment his hard mouth slammed down on hers. Not when the rest of the guys got their cocks out, stroking them slowly to the sounds of the omega, not when the dark haired alpha’s hand slid up her thigh and into her cunt.
“Fuck, her slick…” dark haired guy said, pulling his fingers free and separating them so we could all see how viscous it was. He licked his fingers messily, the other guys grabbing his hand and sucking it clean. She watched, the tightening of her spine making her disquiet evident, but when the dark haired one dropped to his knees, burying his face in the source, that all bled away. Her cries sounded like the birds as they filtered through the forest, and some called back in recognition.
“Don’t knot her,” Marcus said, sliding up behind the dark haired one when he pulled back, face glistening, running his hand up and down the other alpha’s hard stomach. “Don’t bite her. We don’t make anything permanent. Not until we all agree.”
The others nodded at the order of the alpha of alphas.
“Gonna give you what you need, little omega,” the dark haired one, his purr a throatier, deeper thing, like the feel of velvet being rubbed on your skin.
The boys all watched with fascination as he thrust his cock into her weeping cunt, her thighs glistening in the dim sunlight, the noise he made when he bottomed out sounding like his soul was being fractured, then put back together again. It was a sound I’d carry with me all the way into adulthood, a life goal to hear someone make that same groan when they were with me.
Because that was what the life lesson was here, one I didn’t realise until I got to my feet, catching the moment Marcus’ fingers pierced the dark haired boy like he did the omega.
“That’s it,” he crooned, moving in time with the other boy’s strokes. “Give her what she needs, and I’ll give you what you need.”
And then they kissed, savage and biting things, the way alphas do when they have no omega to soften things. But they had one, right in front of them, something that made her curl up, still gasping with pleasure, but confusion warring within that. The reddish haired one pushed her back down, taking her mouth with the same degree of brutality, which had her lying back, a wild, squirming thing again.
“And how didthat make you feel?” my therapist asked me, and I answered her as best I could, but there was only so much a beta can understand. That something woke inside me that day, in those boys’ kisses, in their harsh grips, their desperate thrusts, something I was still struggling to get my head around. But as is often the case with designations, my body had other ideas. A sweet perfume, like sugar and wildflowers and sun-warmed laundry filled my nose, drowning out all other scents, making my brows knot, and then I felt it. My slick, I realised later on, but at the time, it had felt like I’d pissed my pants. I jerked at the sudden rush of wetness, staggered back towards the trees, not caring at what kind of noise I made. I ran, some instinct that had just been awakened kicking in, telling me to run, run, run, all the way home.
“Perhaps you were running from the changes to your body,” my therapist suggested. “Perhaps you still are. You’re…twenty-five now. Most omegas find their alphas before then, if only to stop being plagued by the attention.”
My polite smile twisted at that, becoming something harder.
“I should let an alpha knot me, bite me, and claim me just so I won’t get hassled by guys on the streets?”
“More than hassled.” She looked over her notes at me, her gaze steady. Probably because she could with me. I was an omega, so I was always going to look away first.
“You don’t have to,” my trainer always said to me. “You might want to, but you don’t have to. Feel the discomfort, the pain, and do it anyway. Meet my eyes.”
So I held the beta’s gaze long after my body began to riot, the muscles twitching around my eyes, a sharp spike slamming into my skull, but was rewarded when she finally looked away.
“Cynthia—”
“Cyn. I told you to call me Cyn.”
“Cynthia, you know why we’re here, why your mother organised these appointments. The Omega Ball is coming up again, and she—”
“Wants to see me safely squared away in the arms of an alpha, so she can get on with her life.”
That should’ve been a snappy retort, but in the end, I was a fucking omega, even if I was a shit one. My eyes dropped, the psychologist’s consulting room fading away as I saw seventeen-year-old me stumbling into the backdoor, my mother emerging from her office, taking in the state of me with a gobsmacked expression. She saw the leaves and the dirt from where I’d fallen over, but it was the front of my pants that had her shaking hand rising, then a frown setting in.
“What did you do?” she asked in that thunderous way that made me question her designation. Surely this was the bark of an alpha, because it hit me like a slap to the face—her anger, her disgust, her fear. “Get in the shower right now, young lady!”
She apologised much later, after hauling me into the bathroom, commanding me to strip down, and then just staring at me like I really was that changeling child. No longer her sweet, soon to be beta daughter, I was this. My mother watched me, her body frozen, caught in between fight or flight, I worked out afterwards, making sure I scrubbed myself until I was clean, and then just a little bit more.
Despite my skin being flushed and warm in ways I didn’t understand, I huddled up in my bed as Mum called the doctor, all thoughts of the girl in the forest gone now. Me, my focus was on me, in the utterly selfish way kids have, wondering what the hell I had become.