Chapter 1

The armrests on my shitty chair dug into my bony hips as if whoever had chosen it didn't give a shit that I'd be sitting here for the next twenty-four-plus hours with only brief backroom breaks and a few scheduled naps. This wasn't my first observation, and you'd think I'd be used to the shitty seating, but this one was terrible. That and the dark, cramped room where they put us watchers wasn't something you got used to. My ass sure hadn't.

Fuck me. At least they'd provided a mini fridge with sandwiches and drinks, and I could press a button if I really needed to use the bathroom. Otherwise, I'd be allowed to use the facilities in exactly eight hours from start time.

Leaning back into the poorly padded chair with almost no movement, I studied the monitor in front of me, wondering what sort of girl I'd be watching this time. The last one had been a scrawny thing with enormous eyes and small tits who had squeaked when she came. Fucking squeaked. I'd still rubbed a few out, purely out of boredom. At least the coordinators knew enough to provide an ample supply of lube.

You didn't watch people fuck for days of your life without needing some release. But somebody needed to watch them—to make sure the rules were followed. Masks stayed on. Touching kept to a minimum. No one spoke. Ensure the girl was okay. There was a guard to call if one of the breeding males got out of control, but mostly I was here to watch the women. I've never had to pause a heat before, but it's happened. At thirty hours without water, your body was none too happy.

I wondered if I'd ever have to stop one—rush in there like a hero and unstrap the girl, force her to drink through her lusty moans until she imbibed enough fluid to keep her organs from failing.

Sighing, I stretched my arms over my head, fingertips grazing the walls of this tiny box of a room. I wished, not for the first time, that I was a smaller man, but I was tall with broad shoulders, making this small room comically tight. I unzipped my backpack and carefully took out my charcoal and sketchpad, placing them carefully in the small space in front of the monitor.

At least I could draw in peace.

Or I could have had the monitor not come alive with a flurry of activity. The door opened to reveal a girl, tall and luscious, with a gorgeous golden tan to her skin. Her chin length hair, an unusually light ash-blonde appearing almost white on my monitor, accentuated her high cheekbones.

What a fucking goddess. I would definitely need the lube. My hand moved of its own volition, sketching out the confident smirk twisting at her plump lips. She laughed with the coordinator while she climbed on top of the bed. My hand turned jittery, moving lower to sketch out the curve of her breasts, peeking out through the slip she wore and trying to capture the way her nipples peaked the fabric.

The coordinator put the straps around her ankles, and my jaw clenched. The curve of her legs taunted me, and I longed to feel if they were as smooth as they looked.

I bet they felt like silk, and they'd wrap around her breeding males in a few minutes. A growl rose in my throat, and I self-consciously looked around in case someone heard. Nope, still an empty room.

The woman laughed when the coordinator held out the vile of purple flowers that would induce her. Full on laughed, her eyes twinkling and her face transforming into something even more stunning than before.

Fuck, she was a pretty one, and I'd seen enough to know. The uncomfortable chair was forgotten. The tiny room disregarded.

She took the bottle, swiftly unstopped it, and breathed it in with a confidence that I'd never seen before in a breeder. Usually, they were nervous about the physical trial ahead.

Not her.

She pulled off her shift, and I leaned forward in my seat, trying to get closer to the monitor and see her better. Fucking things were grainy as shit. I couldn't even see her eye colour on the thing, and I felt a tugging in my chest, a pull to know if they were brown or blue. Maybe hazel—the green swirling with brown.

My hand itched to sketch her. I indulged the urge, flipping through the pages of my sketchbook to find a new page where I could draw out the beautiful face of the girl on the monitor. The delicate curve of her neck. Those pert breasts begging to be touched. I couldn't wait to watch her be bred, to watch the breeding males come in and do their thing. Would she squeak when she came? Or maybe she'd scream. Yeah, I bet she was a screamer. She looked like the type.

I was lost in the art, tracing her lips and the curvature of her face over and over in an effort to get it right, when it happened.

My hand paused—the tip of my charcoal poised above the paper. The girl on my monitor was crying.

It was the kind of crying you reserved for time spent alone. Large wet tears dribbling down her crumpled face. No, these tears weren't to impress somebody or to seek comfort, these were for her.

Mouth hanging open, I ripped at the lewd drawing I'd been making. Tearing off the page, I started fresh.

This was her. Scared. Vulnerable. This was what I needed to capture, and my hands skidded across the paper, desperate to preserve the sorrow etched into the beautiful girl's face. The girl who had been laughing a moment ago, smiling so damned big, I'd thought the coordinator was going to make a pass at her.

But that wasn't her. This was her and—fuck.

I wanted to know why she was crying. What had caused the beautiful woman on my screen to feel so utterly broken? Sobs shook her body, and my heart clenched.

A desire unlike any other took hold of my chest and squeezed. I'd seen a dozen girls being bred in the breeding rooms, but this one…

I wanted to know her.

I slammed a fist into the table, rattling the monitor.

Get to know her. Right. That was an impossibility. All I could do was watch, and watch I did, completing my sketch of her tearful face and starting another, determined to catch the glimpse of despair I'd seen in her eyes of an unknown colour.

I watched as her cheeks flushed and her breathing quickened. She leaned back on the bed and fumbled for the remote beside her. Eyes glued to the screen, I watched as she hammered the button, her slight chest rising and falling erratically as the heat took hold. She wiped at her face until there was no trace of tears, though how she had the presence of mind to do so was beyond me.

Normally, girls were so overcome they sometimes forgot to press the button, and the coordinator had been forced to come back in to verbally obtain their consent before sending the first male in.

The first male entered wearing an eagle mask, the fake feathers pressed into rubber. He was rock hard when he stepped forward between her legs. She took him with a gasp, her back arching prettily when he sank to the hilt, and began pounding into her without restraint.

Fuck. The Eagle didn't even let her catch her fucking breath. He went up on his toes, pressing down on her abdomen to get deeper. The crying girl moaned in ecstasy, her voice breaking. She grabbed the rails beside her, panting when he gripped her hips and pulled her back to the edge from where she slid. They should really put some kind of grippy shit on those mattresses.

My hand moved to sketch the look on her face as she neared release. The tension in her features, and the moment they slackened.

Perfection. I grabbed for my hard on, not bothering to pull down my pants, and gave it a few quick strokes before finding my release. I hadn't needed the lube, barely had to touch myself. My body responded to hers when I wasn't even in the same room. She came down, but not completely. The heat didn't allow for that.

The Eagle wiped himself off, leaving the girl to moan in the bed. With the man out of the room, I fumbled with the file on my desk, desperate for more information about the crying girl.

"Sylvia."

I don't know why I spoke her name aloud or why it felt so good to say it, but my tongue caressed each syllable. I wondered if she went by her full name or if she had any cute nicknames. Sylvia's panting on the monitor caught my attention, and my breathing quickened right along with her. My body was desperate to align with a girl I'd never seen in person and could barely make out on the shitty monitor. But she was just in the other room. Close enough, I could bust in there and take her myself.

Only that wasn't my role.

I was a watcher, and so I resumed my vigil. My breath hitched when she leaned back on the bed, helplessly fondling her breasts and moaning in quick little pants.

She was suffering, and I wanted badly to replace her hands with my own. To take my place between her legs and press into her wet heat, fucking her endlessly until the heat released its hold.

The next man entered. This one wore an alligator mask, the snout almost comically long, but the snarl on the rubber mask's face was anything but. He was huge, tall like I was, but thick. His cock looked like it might break my crying girl, my Sylvia. I watched with bated breath as he took up a position between her legs and eased into her entrance.

Sylvia's jaw dropped and she squealed. Straining my ear, I detected no pain in the noise. Shit, what would I have done if she had been in pain? Busted in there like some kind of fucking hero and pried her off The Gator's enormous dick? Not that I could manage to move such a mountain of a man. No, my wasted body was far too weak for that, and my hand tightened into a fist. I was powerless, pathetic, defective.

A watcher.

If Sylvia really was in trouble, I wouldn't be able to protect her, not like this. I'd have to go through the embarrassment of calling our resident guard.

Shit, I need to get it together. Shaking my head, my shaggy blonde hair fell into my eyes. Annoyed, I brushed it away. The Gator was fully seated now, and Sylvia was stretched tight around him, twisting and turning as the heat madness consumed her. He moved gently, rocking his hips, careful not to hurt her, and I said a silent prayer that I didn't need to intervene in some completely embarrassing way.

He came after only a few minutes, releasing inside of her with a guttural growl I could feel in my bones.

A shiver raced down my spine, followed by burning as it traveled its way out from my chest. My clothes were too tight, the cotton of my most comfortable joggers and t-shirt turned itchy against my skin. I wanted to be in there with her—badly. I was hard again by the time The Gator left the room, and I looked down at myself in shock.

This shouldn't be possible, but Sylvia moaned again. Begging to be filled now that The Gator had taken his leave, and I moaned right along with her. Sharing in the experience. Pretending it was me wearing a mask and waiting to enter the room.

Scattering my precious drawings, I stood up, getting as close to the monitor as I could. Feeling every pant. Every tantalizing sound she made.

The next man entered wearing a tiger mask, and I pulled down my soiled pants, taking my cock in hand.

He stepped up to her and pressed inside, moaning at the sensation. I fucked my hand to the rhythm he fucked her, dreaming, wishing it was me in there. The slapping of skin—my own and theirs—echoed all around me, mingling with our moans into a beautiful cacophony I never wanted to end. Only it did with a shudder on Sylvia's part, the smallest thing shaking through her that sent me barreling towards my release. My cum splattered on the monitor, and I angrily wiped it away, pissed that it would dare obstruct my view of the angel on the screen.

An angel. Yes, that's what she was, and she had been sent to me. I watched as The Tiger cleaned himself up and left Sylvia without a backwards glance.

Hours passed in a haze of pleasure, my body helplessly responding to hers until I lost count of how many times I found release.

This wasn't normal.

But it was happening, and I'd become a helpless participant in Sylvia's heat.

My body only slowed when hers did, the telltale agitated movement common to those in heat easing and leaving her laying on the bed, relaxed with a frown puckering her brow. Fuck, what colour were her eyes and why was it so important for me to know?

With a sigh, I looked around at the absolute mess I'd made of the room. Now that Sylvia's heat was over, I felt like a fool. My eyes fell to the floor where I'd shoved my drawings of her, and I angrily bent to retrieve them, brushing a bit of dirt off the one of her sorrow. I stared at the image, wondering what had been going through her head when she'd cried. If it was something I could help with. But she wasn't mine to help. She was one of the elite, and I pulled up my soiled pants over my scrawny hips and sat down hard into the uncomfortable chair I'd barely used. At least my ass wasn't sore, even if the rest of me was.

Grabbing a few tissues, I worked to clean up the sopping mess I'd made of the table. My legs were shaking with fatigue. The way I'd reacted to her was severely fucked up.

It reminded me of a woman I'd observed a few breeders ago. One of her breeding males had been so desperate for her he'd climbed right onto the breeding table to fuck her. She'd been touching him, too, and it had been one of the most beautiful things I'd seen. There'd been something between them, and I'd felt—for the first time—like I was truly intruding on an intimate moment.

I should've reported it, but I didn't. I couldn't. To do so would have been to call that desperate passion wrong. Then they'd come to me and asked about her, that breeder. She'd left with him, her ram. Fucking left. Unprotected into the icy wasteland of the world.

Packless, friendless. I'd hated myself every day since for not speaking up. The poor girl was probably dead by now, and I could've stopped it.

I understood their passion better now. I'd never felt it myself, but my reaction to Sylvia had felt akin to it. With a sigh, I looked up at the monitor, expecting Sylvia to be unstrapped and helping herself to the water. Fuck, I didn't even know how long it had been. Like her, I hadn't used the bathroom, hadn't slept, hadn't drunk water. I checked the clock in the room and was startled to find it had been twenty hours.

Twenty hours lost to this woman, and I'd be happy to lose twenty more.

Only Sylvia wasn't unstrapping herself. She was laying back watching the door expectantly.

What. The. Fuck.

But her heat was over. I'd seen it. I'd felt it. I watched, my mouth hanging open, as a man wearing a panda mask entered the room, and Sylvia began wiggling helplessly on the bed. She was acting. Barely a moment before, I'd seen her laying perfectly still and not within the throes of her heat. The masked man didn't care. He took her anyway, positioning himself at her entrance dutifully and sliding into what must be a mess of fluids. He pounded into her, and Sylvia continued her charade, moaning and crying out as though the heat still consumed her.

It didn't, and I couldn't understand why she wouldn't press the button. Why she would make a choice to stay? My body ached after accompanying her in her heat—my legs tremored and my cock was sore. She must feel worse, but she carried on as if her heat hadn't ended for three more masked men.

When the third left, she sat up with a sigh, and I saw it again—the mask of sorrow overtaking her features as she sat up and her hair fell forward. She reached out and pressed the button calmly before moving to undo the straps on her legs.

Frantically, I reached for my paper and charcoal, sketching her. Every detail. Every feature. Every bit I could see trying to recreate the way she'd moved during those countless acts. I was desperate to have something of her to hold on to, and I managed a few more pictures I knew would never do her justice before the coordinator entered the room to check her and declare the breeding party over.

She left the room with him, wearing that smile of hers. The one I knew was an act, a fake. She clung to his arm and disappeared out the door, leaving the room empty. Leaving me empty. I looked down at my papers, happy at least to have something to hold on to.

The experience I'd had here in this room would be one I would remember for a long time, but the way Sylvia had cried, the sorrow on her face, would haunt me forever.