Staff Sergeant Dominic Kane stood at the reinforced counter, his dress uniform crisp despite the years of mud, blood, and frostbite still living in his bones. The officer on the other side of the glass — a soft-handed major who had never jumped from a plane — checked the ledger one last time.

“Two thousand, eight hundred and forty-seven merit points, Sergeant. That’s more than enough for a permanent Class-A allocation.” The major’s voice was professionally neutral. “Full retirement eligibility. You’re young for it. Most men wait until they’re broken or dead.”

Dom didn’t smile. He hadn’t truly smiled in years.

“I’m not most men.”

He slid the requisition form across the counter. The major scanned it, eyebrows lifting slightly at the selections.

“Permanent breeding allocation. Top-tier fertility profile. Healthy, unbroken stock. You want one you can retire with and… expand the bloodline.” The major cleared his throat. “Ambitious. The nation thanks you for your service and your future contributions.”

Dom’s jaw tightened. Future contributions. That was the polite way of saying breed as many loyal citizens as your body can manage before the war finishes what it started with you.

He had earned every single one of those points the hard way. Normandy. The hedgerows. The frozen hell of the Bulge. Every confirmed kill, every perfect inspection, every time he swallowed his disgust and followed orders that left good men in pieces. Discipline and death had bought him this.

And now he was going to spend it on something soft. Something alive. Something that could still grow.

The major tapped a few keys. “We have several new intakes from the eastern territories that match your criteria. Would you like to review files or see them in person?”

“In person.”

The selection gallery was a long, narrow room with one-way glass along one wall. Behind it, the women stood or sat in simple white shifts, numbers projected above their heads. Most kept their eyes down. Trained. Broken. Reclassified from “enemy citizen” to “national resource.”

Dom walked slowly, hands clasped behind his back, boots echoing on the tile. He had seen enough dead bodies to last ten lifetimes. What he wanted now was the opposite.

He stopped in front of the third alcove.

You.

The number above your head read 47. Your eyes — wide and still holding the faintest flicker of something that hadn’t been fully extinguished — lifted for just a second before dropping again. Your body was exactly what the breeding profiles promised: soft and made for survival and for carrying life. Breasts strained against the thin fabric of the shift. A gentle curve to your belly. Hips and thighs that spoke of easy pregnancies and plenty of milk. The kind of body that had been rare in the starving territories these last years.

Something in Dom’s chest — something he thought the war had burned out of him — pulled tight and hot.

There.

He didn’t need to see the rest. The file confirmed what his eyes already knew: high fertility markers, no major health issues, recent reclassification, still relatively sheltered before capture. Perfect.

“I’ll take her.”

The major didn’t even blink. “Number 47. Permanent allocation. Your points will be deducted immediately. She’ll be prepared and brought to the claiming suite. Congratulations, Sergeant Kane. Or should I say… retired Sergeant Kane.”

Dom didn’t correct him.

The claiming suite was small but private — a bed, a washbasin, a table with a simple meal already laid out, and a locked door that only his new access code would open from the outside. Dom stood in the center of it, jacket off, sleeves rolled to his elbows, watching the door.

When it opened, two handlers escorted you inside. You were still in the white shift, barefoot, hands clasped in front of you like you’d been taught. The handlers left without a word. The lock clicked behind them.

For a long moment, Dom just looked at you.

You were even softer up close. The curls framed a face that was still too innocent for what this place had done to you. Your lips were slightly parted, breath coming a little fast. Your nipples had tightened against the thin fabric from the cool air — or from fear. Probably both.

He stepped forward slowly, like approaching a skittish animal. One large, calloused hand came up and caught a curl between his fingers, rubbing the silk of it.

“Soft,” he murmured, almost to himself. “They said you were fertile stock. Didn’t say you’d look like this.”

His other hand settled on your waist, fingers sinking into the plush give of your side. He squeezed once, testing, then slid lower to the flare of your hip. Wide. Perfect for what he intended.

“You know what this is,” he said quietly. Not a question. “You’ve been told. You’re mine now. I paid for you with every drop of blood and every year they took from me. Two thousand, eight hundred and forty-seven points. That’s how much your body and your future are worth to me.”

He tilted your chin up with two fingers so you had to meet his eyes. They were dark, intense, and utterly serious.

“I’m not going to use you and send you back. I retired for this. For you. You’re going to be my wife. You’re going to take my cock and my seed until your belly swells with my children — as many as I can put in you. That’s how I serve now. That’s how you serve.”

His thumb brushed your lower lip.

“I used to believe in a lot of things,” he continued, voice dropping lower, rougher. “God. Country. Happy endings. The war took all of it. But it left me with enough points to take something back. And I’m taking you.”

He didn’t wait for an answer you weren’t allowed to give.

Dom’s hands moved to the hem of your shift and pulled it up and over your head in one smooth motion. The fabric whispered to the floor. Cool air kissed your bare skin.

A low sound rumbled in his chest. Not quite a growl. Something closer to reverence mixed with hunger.

“Look at you,” he breathed. “All this softness. All this life waiting to be filled.” His palm slid over your belly, pressing gently as if he could already feel the future he was going to force into it. “War makes everything thin and hard and dead. But you…” His fingers dipped lower, parting your folds without warning, finding you warm and already slick from whatever conditioning they’d put you through. “You’re going to be warm and full and mine.”

He walked you backward until your thighs hit the edge of the bed. With a firm hand between your shoulder blades, he bent you forward over it. Your cheek pressed into the rough blanket. Your soft ass and the glistening seam between your legs were presented to him like an offering he had more than earned.

Dom unbuckled his belt with one hand, the other still gripping your hip hard enough to bruise. He freed his cock — thick, heavy, already leaking at the tip from the sheer relief of finally having something good in his hands after years of nothing but death.

He didn’t tease. He didn’t ask.

He lined up and pushed inside you in one long, relentless thrust.

Your body yielded around him with a wet sound that made his vision blur. Tight. Hot. Alive. He bottomed out with a groan that sounded like it had been ripped from somewhere deep and wounded.

“Fuck… there.” His forehead dropped between your shoulder blades for a second, breathing hard. “This is what I fought for. What I killed for. What I earned.”

Then he started to move.

It wasn’t gentle. It was years of pent-up desperation and control finally unleashed. Each thrust drove you harder into the mattress, the wet slap of skin on skin loud in the small room. His hands roamed constantly — gripping your waist, reaching under to squeeze and lift your breasts, sliding over the curve of your belly like he was already claiming the space where his children would grow.

Between harsh breaths he spoke, low and rough against your ear:

“You’re going to take every drop I give you. Every time I get hard, you’re going to open these pretty thighs and let me breed you. No more thinking about the world outside. That world is dead. This is your world now — my cock, my seed, my children growing in this soft little body.”

He reached around and rubbed tight circles over your clit, not to be kind, but because he wanted you to come on him. Wanted to feel you clench and milk him when he filled you for the first time.

When you did — a broken, helpless sound tearing from your throat — Dom followed with a guttural curse. He buried himself as deep as he could go and came hard, pulsing thick and hot inside you, hips jerking with every spurt like he could force it deeper, plant it permanently.

For a long moment he stayed there, cock still twitching inside your fluttering heat, one hand splayed possessively over your lower belly.

Then he pulled out slowly, watching his cum leak from you with dark satisfaction. He used two fingers to push it back in.

“Stay like that,” he ordered quietly. “Let it take.”

He cleaned himself with a cloth from the basin, then came back and pulled the blanket over your trembling, marked body. For the first time since he’d entered the room, his voice softened — not much, but enough to show the crack beneath the steel.

“Rest. We leave for my new quarters in an hour. You’ll sleep in my bed tonight. Every night from now on.”

He brushed a hair from your damp cheek, his thumb lingering.

“I lost too much to let anything take you from me. So don’t fight it, little one. The war’s over for both of us. Your only job now is to be soft… and to grow what I put inside you.”

Dom sat on the edge of the bed, one heavy hand resting on your hip like an anchor, and watched you with the eyes of a man who had finally found the one thing left in the world worth guarding with everything he had left.

His reward. His wife. His future.