Humphrey's P.O.V.

Aimlessly I ran, desperate to save my own life, but when a howl rose and shortly thereafter the unmistakable sounds of violence filled the air, I stopped and looked around through teary eyes.

"You hear that, omega?!" Hutch called to me from the distance, "that's the sound of everything and everyone you love being torn apart!"

I panted and sniffled as his words and the yelps of stricken wolves filled my ears.

"Why are you doing this!?" I yelled, desperately as I sat down and planted my back against a tree, "why can't you just leave us alone!?"

"Come on out and I'll be more than happy to tell you!" Hutch offered, mockingly.

I sputtered and pinched my eyes tightly closed as I tried to wrangle my emotions, but to no avail.

"No?" he called in my silence, "it's a pretty riveting story! I think you'd like it!"

From the distance at which he called, his voice seemed to come from everywhere as it echoed off of the rocks and trees around me, and in my desperation to hide from him, I had allowed myself to get turned around. I knew that I should run, but I had no idea which direction to go. I cursed and wiped away tears as I tried to gather my bearings, but my fear continued to dominate every fiber of my being.

"You can't hide from me, ook," he assured, menacingly, "I can smell your nasty, omega stench a mile away. I will find you, and when I do, I will kill you."

I dared to peek my head around the tree behind which I hid and when I saw him lumbering toward me from the distance, I immediately took cover once more.

"I would give myself up, if I were you!" he shouted, "because every minute of my time that you waste trying to escape the inevitable is gonna be another minute that I make you beg me to let you die."

When my eyes beheld the approaching threat, my heart began to beat so loud and so fast in my ears that I thought it would explode. My entire body quaked with fear and I swallowed as I searched for the strength to move, but for the moment, I was completely helpless in the face of my panic and therefore remained locked in place.

"Clock's ticking, ook!" he shouted as he drew nearer.

"Okay," I panted beneath my breath as I tried to gather myself, "okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Come on!"

With that, I took off in a mad dash yet again and as soon as my body left the cover of the tree, I heard the unmistakable sound of paws charging after me from behind. Every thought that ever lived within my mind seemed to collide in a single, vociferous clamor in this moment, but one thought seemed to speak louder than the rest, and it was a thought that I had tried to get out of my head since the moment that I heard the park erupt with the sounds of death. If they were after me, then surely they would be after Kate. After all, in the minds of the enemy, the existence of our litter was the most cardinal of sins and they would stop at nothing to prevent it from coming to term. For all I knew, Kate could have already been dead, and I would have nothing to return to even if I did somehow get away. That thought and the anxiety that it bred caused my stomach to twist itself into tightly clenched knots as I continued to try to evade capture and I felt sick as images of her bloodied body tortured my mind's eye.

And the most torturous thing about it was, I couldn't risk trying to save her. Even if I could save her from any alpha attackers, and I honestly wasn't sure that I could, if I ran to her side to protect her, I would be personally delivering the park's greatest threat straight to our denstep. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't, but in the moment, perhaps it was best that I didn't. Or was it better if I did? What should I do? What could I do? And would it even matter? I couldn't run forever and hiding was not a viable option either. But there was no way I could actually face him and win. He was far too demented and I was far too afraid of him. Or was that just my fear talking? Could I actually take him? I did spend the past several weeks in intense training sessions with Miles for this exact purpose, so if I could remember what he taught me, maybe I actually stood a chance?

Fuck. What did he teach me?

Kate's P.O.V.

"You like how that fat, alpha cock feels, don't you, bitch," Gauge growled as he continued to dominate me from behind.

Beneath him, I simply sobbed as his invasive rod spread me wider than Humphrey ever had, and I tried with everything I had in me not to look at what lied before me. In the midst of our struggle, I had managed to place myself only feet away from where my slain friend lied, and now, any time I opened my eyes, I would see his formless gaze staring back at me. Unable to bear the sight, I had spent the past several minutes with my eyes glued firmly shut, but when I felt a warm sensation begin to creep over my chest, I slowly opened them. Gods, how I wish I hadn't…

"Nooooo!" I shrieked as I watched my dead friend's blood begin to slowly engulf my body, "No! No! No! Stop! Please, stop!"

I sobbed hysterically as I thrashed to push myself out, but as soon as I moved, I felt Gauge's paw land on the back of my neck and he drove my face straight down into the pool of blood beneath me. I screamed when my face was slammed down into the sickly puddle, but that scream allowed some of his blood to seep into the corner of my mouth, and when the taste hit me, I lost it. Helpless and mortified, I began to vomit and cry uncontrollably.

And that sick fuck laughed. He laughed. In a manner so vile and so demented that it shook my body to its core.

"Gauge, please stop this!" I begged as more blood seeped into my mouth, "please stop!"

"Why?" he panted, sarcastically, "you worried that we're making your friend over there uncomfortable?"

I sputtered and sobbed, helplessly as I tried to rid my mouth of the foul taste of blood and vomit.

"I mean, I can see your point," he said, "he has been pretty quiet lately…"

Momentarily, he stopped and lowered his mouth down to my ear.

"Though, between you and me, I think he likes to watch," he whispered, sadistically, "after all, that old pervert hasn't taken his eyes off of us since we started."

He then began to slowly thrust into me yet again as he turned his eyes toward my friend's body.

"So wha'd'ya say, ya old fuck," Gauge called as he roughly slapped my hips with his paws, "ya enjoying the show?"

The den fell silent for a moment, minus the sound of my dry heaves and rapturous sobs.

"Yeah, he's enjoying it," Gauge laughed, derisively, "what a freak…"

With this, he readjusted himself and hooked his paws tightly around my hips once more. Freed from his oppressive weight, I picked my face up out of the puddle of blood and I began to frantically wipe my mouth with the fur on my shoulders, but all I ended up doing was smearing it all over my muzzle. In this moment, something inside of me broke. I had never felt more defeated and exhausted than I did as I lied there beneath him, covered in my best friend's blood. I felt an indescribable numbness slowly begin to creep over me and as it built, my will to fight faded until I just gave up

"Please…" I begged, defeated and exhausted, "stop this."

"Oh don't act like you don't like it," Gauge replied, smugly, "Your mouth may be saying stop, but your body is begging me for more."

He paused for a moment so he could throb inside of me.

"You feel how your walls keep squeezing my shaft?" he sneered, "Trying to pull me in deeper?"

I tried to control my body's autonomic functions, but it seemed the harder I tried, the more they reacted to the stimuli that the alpha on my back delivered to me.

"Mmm, just like that," Gauge moaned, "And it's all because, in spite of what you may have been stupid enough to allow yourself to believe, your body has an instinctual craving for alpha cock. Your body needs it, because deep down, you know that it's the one thing that can give you what that runt you call a husband can't:"

He stopped as his knot again slapped my labia, but this time, he pulled himself against my hips and I felt the head of his cock poke my cervix, and his knot spread my lips slightly.

"Total sexual fulfillment," Gauge growled, sadistically.

I winced as the tip of his cock entered the uncharted waters of my deepest regions and dug my claws into the ground.

"Like all alpha bitches, your body is a slave to alpha cocks," he continued, "Of course, seeing as how you've only been letting that filthy omega climb onto your back, you never came to realize that, but that's why I've come here. To show you what you really are."

I don't know what he did next, honestly, because by that stage in the game, my body and mind had been reduced to singularities. I was literally just an empty vessel, void of thought and of feeling, but when my body suddenly began to climb toward orgasm, I was shaken from my defeated trance and a violent churn balled my stomach into knots.

"No!" I cried, weakly as I struggled to fend off the sensations that built within me, "please, Gauge! Stop!"

I could almost feel the smugness when he chortled once and then began to work me over faster. It was as though in that moment I had issued him a challenge and he would make me pay dearly for it. Slowly it continued to build in me and I fought with everything I had to suppress it, but, sadly, my efforts were all in vain. When he drove the head of his cock into my cervix yet again, I could take no more and I crested into orgasm. Tears immediately streamed down my face as I felt that normally pleasurable sensation wash over my body and had I anything left in my stomach, I again would have vomited. I was so disgusted with myself and I was so ashamed. Why did I do that? Who the hell cums when they're being raped? Unless… was he right? Was I, at least on some level, actually enjoying it? Was I actually that sick in the head? I mean, I had to be, right? Because if I wasn't enjoying it, then why did I cum?

"I told you, bitch," Gauge growled, "and I can do it any time I want, as many times as I want."

And then he did it again, and over and over again, my body reached orgasm, and each time I came, I felt another small piece of me die…

Sigh…

Honestly, that was the worst thing that Gauge ever did to me. Worse than murdering my friend, and worse than raping me in a rapidly expanding pool of my dead friend's blood, he took something that I had only ever experienced with my husband, something that had, until that point, acted as a testament of my love for him, and turned it into nothing more than a sick game.

…

Sometimes I wish he had just killed me that day, because now I have to carry everything that he did to me with me, and what was merely meant to spite me before he took me out of this world is now the seed of a self loathing so deep that I feel like I deserved everything that happened. And the worst part is, I know it's bullshit, but in spite of this, I hated myself so much that I… well… I think these scars on my wrists say it all…

…

…

Humphrey's P.O.V.

Call it luck, divine intervention, or whatever else you want. I just called it sanctuary when my paw landed on the ground and the whole earth gave way beneath me and I suddenly found myself inside an old cave that had been overgrown and consumed by the forest years ago. I winced and groaned with pain as my body came to rest on the hard, stone floor of the cave, and for a moment, I couldn't seem to get a grip on what had just happened to me. My body was still in full panic mode, so as soon as I came to rest, I scrambled to get my paws beneath my body once more and once righted, I cast frantic eyes all around. However, all I saw was darkness save the thin light that poured in through the hole that I had created.

My heart still pounded like a drum and my breaths seemed to leave my lungs as soon as they entered as fear still clung firmly to my mind, but for the first time since the attack began, I had a clear thought. As I briefly basked in the seclusion of the cave, I realized that I might actually be able to hide and regroup, even if only for a minute or so. But first, I needed to try to cover the hole that I'd left. So, I quickly weaved the sticks and the other forest debris over the hole and once I was certain that I had covered up any physical evidence of my presence, I slowly backpedaled deeper into the cave and tried once more to settle my shattered nerves.

With my eyes fixed upon the hole that I had filled, I breathed deeply and collapsed to my haunches as I tried to collect my thoughts. However, in my moment of temporary reprieve from the Hell into which I had been thrust, everything that I had seen and heard suddenly fell upon me and my chin fell to my chest.

"Fuck…" I panted as I lifted my head once more.

However, a sudden surge of emotion overtook me and I turned to the wall beside me.

"Rrrrgggggg fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" I screamed under my breath as I repeatedly slammed my paw into the wall of the cave.

I then rested my back against the wall and began to sob, softly.

"I can't fucking do this," I cried, defeated as I slowly ran my paw through my head fur, "I can't. I…"

I trailed off and lowered my paw as I continued to weep. What the hell was I supposed to do? What could I do? I swore to myself on the night that my parents died that I would never be helpless again, that I would be damned if I couldn't protect the people that I loved, but who the hell was I kidding? Just like when I was a pup, as soon as the killing began, I ran and left everyone I love to die. The more things change, the more they stay the same…

I sniffled and allowed my eyes to drift over the dimly lit cave and that's when I noticed something strange near its center. Though the darkness made it difficult to see, there appeared to be some sort of shrine or memorial, as there were flat stones piled up on top of one another, adorned by wilted flowers and a necklace made from some sort of tooth. Curious, I rose to my feet and approached, and that's when I realized what I had stumbled upon. Somehow, I had managed to find myself in a place that had likely not been touched by living eyes for centuries: An ancient, human burial site.

In spite of myself and the dire situation in which I found myself, I couldn't help but to be awed by the significance of what I had discovered, and as my eyes traced over the crudely, yet carefully crafted shrine, I noticed that something had been written upon one of the stones that lied before it. Now, as crazy as it may seem, we are not so different, you humans and us wolves. We've shared this world for millennia, both as enemies and as friends, and we sorta evolved together to be what we are now. In fact, your language is actually derived from ours, and even though yours has evolved far beyond what your ancestors learned from mine, you can still understand us if you only listen. That's actually why we are able to communicate as we are now, and why as I read the short epic that recounted the life and death of the man beneath the rocks, something inside of me changed.

Kate's P.O.V.

What more do you want from me? I already told you in length about how Gauge murdered my best friend, raped me and weaponized my body's natural functions against me. What more do you want me to say? That even though he never knotted me, he raped me to completion no less than 4 times that day? Because he did. Or do you expect me to tell you that at the last minute he had a change of heart about killing me, or that my husband miraculously appeared and saved the day right before that asshole turned out my lights for good? I can tell you that if that's what you really wanna hear, but that's not what happened because this isn't some fucking fairytale where shit just works out because I'm supposed to be the hero of the story. No. Once Gauge finished vaginally and anally raping me, he forced me to suck his dick and when he didn't force me to swallow his cum, he would paint my face with it like I was nothing more than property to him. Then, once he was done with that, he decided that he'd finally had enough and he tried to kill me.

I guess that he wanted me to suffer, because he didn't just tear out my throat like he did to Miles. No, he used his claws to carve me up like a slain caribou and then left me to slowly bleed out while outside so many of my friends died trying to fend off the Traditionalist assault. I remember lying there on the ground, my abused orifices fissured and throbbing as I slowly bled out next to my best friend in a puddle of his blood, and I remember being so exhausted and so broken in that moment that I actually wanted to die. So I simply closed my eyes and allowed darkness to take me, but somehow, in spite of my injuries and the fact that I lost probably a quart of blood, I managed to pull through.

Do I feel guilty about surviving? Do I stare at the memorial that we erected for the victims of the Artist Epoch and hate myself, or walk among their graves and feel like I should be lying there next to them? You're goddamn right I do. I don't understand why it is that of all those the Traditionalists managed to get to that day, I was the only one who survived. What the fuck makes me so special? Why do I still get to walk this earth when so many others do not? Why am I the only one who visits them and leaves flowers for them anymore? Why do I seem to be the only one who still cares about what happened that day? Why can't I just let it go and move on with my life? Everyone else has…

…

…