by Marie Harte
Feeling a kinship he’d always been lacking, Zachem could no longer contain himself and came hard into warmth, imagining the new slave fitting him with such snug acceptance. Zachem would come in his mouth, in his ass, all over his body. He groaned and came again, filling the Ragga with enough seed to make a thorough mess. But it wasn’t enough, and it wasn’t right coming in this man. Not when the new slave belonged to him.
Soon, he thought. But not soon enough.
3
It took Tarn two days to fully recover. He didn’t want to rush the healing and make his guards suspicious. Besides, while he waited, he did some investigating. On the third night since his bout with the beast, Tarn teleported out of his cell into the bathing area that rarely saw any use.
Quickly shifting into the shape of a threll, Tarn took on the six-legs, dark, coarse fur, fangs, and claws of the canine. Unfortunately, he couldn’t completely pass as normal in this form. He stood two heads taller than the largest threll guarding the slave pits.
Still, in the darkness no one should notice. He couldn’t just teleport all over the station. He needed a working knowledge of The Pit to map the place. Then he’d ’port to retrieve the crystal and make his escape.
Trotting into the main corridor leading to the slave pens, he followed his nose.
Hundreds of slaves slept in the dark caverns of the Compa Caves. The natural rock prison contained those sold or taken against their will to serve Master Furon. Though the System tolerated the existence of slavery, Tarn found it distasteful. He had no intention of letting The Pit survive after he found what he’d been sent to retrieve. He just had to find the Dorvian crystal for his nephew and return before Rafe’s deadline.
Rafe of Mardu, a peacemaker and Dreyk’s boss, needed the crystal returned. It meant something to some backward delegation from a far-off world. Tarn hadn’t caught much more about the mission than that Dreyk had a conflict about the job. Boredom also factored in his decision to help the peacemakers, though truth be told, Tarn had come to care for Dreyk and his giant mate. Dreyk was the last living piece of Tarn’s brother, and as such, demanded looking after.
Snarling at the necessity of being here to do such, Tarn jogged past the pens until he reached another section veering off toward the guard berthing. He mentally calmed the guard thrells gearing for an attack and surveyed the area before moving on.
All in all, his reconnaissance proved fruitful. Three dozen guards slept in the lower level. Above the pens, another thirty or so stood watch. The weapons cache he’d been tempted to breech remained unlocked on the upper level. Arrogant when they should be careful.
He shook his head and looped back toward his temporary cell, where they would keep him until he proved his worth. No matter what their grand slave, Beast, deemed, Master Furon had promised that Tarn would only be as useful as his stamina in the ring.
As if thoughts had conjured him, Beast’s scent exploded on Tarn’s senses, triggered a confusing lust and a need to follow the trail back to the male. Annoyed yet intrigued, Tarn followed the powerful lure past the majority of the slave pens. Running over the narrow, cold stone path, he found a corridor off to the side. A threll and two guards stood watch. Unlike the other slack security in The Pit, the two giant watchmen stood at the ready.
Tarn growled under his breath. He didn’t like teleporting into areas he didn’t know, but the urge to follow that scent overwhelmed him. Before the threll by the guards’ side could sense his presence, he teleported into the secure room.
There, in the center of a monstrously large pallet, lay Beast.
Tarn sat and closed his eyes. He opened his mouth and used the threll’s enhanced olfactory glands to taste the male so close. Stars and planets beyond. Tarn’s cock hardened, and his instinct to fuck intensified. He couldn’t help growling, eyeing the male like a piece of tasty meat.
He salivated and rose to his feet. Stepping closer, he moved to the edge of the bed. Just in time to watch Beast wake and roll to meet him.
They stayed there, eye to eye, for a breathless moment.
“Damn,” Beast murmured, and his breath washed over Tarn.
Hunger hammered at him, the need for blood and seed and sex growing uncontrollable.
“Easy, threll. I don’t know how you got in here, but you need to get out before they find you.”
Instead of the fear Tarn expected to see, he instead saw curiosity. Beast’s aura flashed with gold, a wash of pleasure that made no sense.
The silver-haired man studied him with narrowed red eyes. “You’re huge. And wild. I can smell it on you. You don’t belong here.”
Neither do you. Tarn cocked his head, intrigued at the calming influence Beast’s words had on his libido. Still hard, he could now at least relax enough to listen to the captivating male. But when the giant sat up, he tensed and growled.
Beast immediately stopped. “Easy. I’m not going to hurt you. Here.” He held out a hand.
Tarn sniffed then licked Beast’s fingers. The taste of him sent Tarn into a euphoric meltdown. He wagged his spiked tail, thumping over the hard ground. He licked the beast again.
Quiet laughter met his raspy tongue, and he gave a sigh as unfamiliar contentment stole through him.
“Well, well. All you needed was a little affection, hmm?” Beast shocked him anew by scratching behind his ears. All four of them. The touch felt otherworldly. Too right to be real.
Tarn scooted closer and rested his head on Beast’s lap. Good Night, but the male’s firm flesh felt good against him. He wiggled his head under Beast’s hand and huffed a request for more.
“Greedy little bastard, eh?” Beast continued to pet him, his hand large and callused but curiously gentle as he stroked Tarn’s coarse fur. “Can’t blame you. Out there, they’ll as much use you for sport as work. No rest for us. Not ever.”
Long fingers eased down his neck but stopped at the spiky scales along his back.
“But there are compensations. You look well fed. Your fur is thick, your eyes rich with energy. So bright, so green…” He paused, a curious look on his face as he stared at Tarn. Beast inhaled and tensed. “You smell like him.”
The door handle of the cell turned. As soon as Beast’s attention was diverted, Tarn teleported out of the room back into the corridor.
Stepping back into a shielded alcove, he heard curses and watched as more men arrived to subdue Beast. Sorry for the trouble he’d caused, Tarn quickly departed. A jog down to Master Furon’s quarters was in order, and it would help him ignore his odd reluctance to leave the beast back in his cell. He stopped outside Master Furon’s room and put his ear to the door.
Inside, Furon grunted and moaned. The sound of a female’s cries echoed, cries not of pleasure but of fury. And maybe…pain?
“Good work, whore,” Furon gasped. Then the sound of a thump and angry, feminine complaint. “The guards will take you back.”
Guards? Tarn hadn’t seen anyone. He hurried out of the way back into the shadows as approaching footsteps neared the other side of the door. When it opened, he scented three males and the female. She smelled sickly and looked worse than he’d expected.
One of the men dragged her still swearing and threatening Furon away from the doorway down the corridor. Unfortunately, the door swung closed again. Not all the way, but enough to hide those inside.
“By Atta’s balls, I can’t wait until we get our next shipment of women. The whores we have now aren’t worth a damn,” Furon complained.
Atta’s balls? Atta was the Melan god of strife. It figured Furon hailed from a planet where war and chaos were a way of life.
“You came hard enough,” one of the guards rumbled with disgust. “Stars sake, Furon. Did you have to hurt the girl? We have plenty of others who give it away willingly enough. And did I have to be here to see it?”
“Watch your tone, Pyrgo,” Furon snapped. “You know as well as I do Jenna gets off on the pain. She’s just angry I wouldn’t let her bite me.”
“I don’t care what you want. I like having an audience. Now behave or I’ll show you just how much fun an ass reaming can be.”
Silence.
“Well?” Furon asked in a low, interested voice.
“My mistake, Master Furon,” came the strangled reply.
This guard didn’t sound like the others. He didn’t smell ripe with filth either. He smelled like…home? Tarn wanted to get a good look at him when Furon’s next words took his attention.
“That’s right, Pyrgo. Your mistake. The next one you make will be your last. Now tell me about the crystal.”
Tarn’s interest perked.
“The Mardu that stole it won’t sell it until The Slave Trade.”
“Damn it. That’s another ten days from now.”
Shit. Ten more days in this hell hole?
“I know. But he let me see it. He attended last night’s fight. The crystal is the one you want. It glowed brighter the closer it moved to the beast.”
Tarn blinked. What did the crystal have to do with Beast?
Furon chuckled. “The Dorvian crystal and our beast. Now what do you think the two have in common?”
An interesting question, and one Tarn didn’t have time to answer.
The other guard had returned.
“Mother of Mines. Where the hell did you come from?” The guard lifted a phaser and glared at Tarn. “Not one of Yorum’s thrells, not this big. Boss? I think we have a new candidate for the blood sport tomorrow night. And I’m betting this one’s a winner.”
Tarn swore to himself, irritated at his inability to act and think like a fucking leader of warriors. He was the Ebrellion Destroyer, caught twice now in the span of one night.
He didn’t give the excited guard a chance to react. Whipping his tail at the male’s hand, he knocked the phaser aside. Slicing a claw down the guard’s abdomen, he injected the male with threll toxin. Not enough to kill him, but enough to make him violently ill.
Pleased he’d at least managed that, he caught a brief glimpse of Pyrgo’s face when the door opened. Tarn swore under his breath. Another Ebrellion in the System this far from Mardu? It couldn’t be a coincidence. Before Pyrgo could confirm Tarn’s identity as anything other than a feral threll, Tarn raced away down the corridor. He glanced over his shoulder and stopped when he saw no one behind him. Between one heartbeat and the next, he teleported back into his cell, shifted into a man’s form, and slumped to the floor.
While catching his breath, he thought about all he’d seen and heard tonight. A Dorvian crystal. The beast’s aura. Another Ebrellion on a slave planet. But most importantly, he pondered the beast’s curious effect on his libido.
The latter occupied him well into slumber. Tarn tossed and turned as he dreamed about the silver-haired, red-eyed Creation built for sex and destruction. Which he would give Tarn, only fate could say.
4
The next day, Zachem rose from his pallet, healed from the inside out. Self-healing—a gift from his Creator, the shifty drun. Stretching, Zachem couldn’t help wondering when he’d get to see the new slave again. The male had been on his mind all night long. Especially after encountering that mysterious creature last night.
He still had no idea how the thing had entered his cell. Or why it had seemed to have the same eyes and feel as the handsome slave he couldn’t stop thinking about.
No matter how much Zachem tried, he couldn’t identify the slave’s origins. Something about him looked Mardu, except for his size, which could only have come from a Ragga background. In the Vrail System, races did not interbreed. Due to some odd construct in their genetic chemistry, progeny of differing races only ever produced and retained the characteristics of the “dominant” race.
Which was why Creations so intrigued the geneticists of Eyra. Zachem possessed the genetic combination of several races in the System. He had brawn, strength, and agility, much like what he’d sensed from the new slave.
Yet the new slave didn’t appear to be a Creation. He looked too normal, except for that one brief instance when he’d blinked, and a nictitating membrane, like some reptilians and thrells were known to have, had shielded his eyes. That an alien awareness seethed in that stare.
What did he see when he looked at me? Did he see a Creation? A killer? A fool who trusted the wrong person and wound up a slave?
Zachem snorted at his fanciful imaginings and ignored the guards’ mutterings. A quick glance at the thrells snarling more than usual at him told him what he knew to be true. The threll he’d touched last night had not belonged to the guards. Though most thrells came up to his own mid-thigh, the one in his cell had been several heads larger. A giant in its own right. Full of danger yet docile under Zachem’s touch.
He clenched his fists and followed the guards out of the pen to the feeding chamber.
Forced to sit at a rough-hewn table, he glared at his captors, pleased when they hurried away. Were it not for the collar at his throat, he would have killed them and escaped long ago. Unfortunately, the thin shock collar was more than symbolic. Zachem, for all his strength, couldn’t withstand bursts of enon energy for any length of time. Hell, just one jolt from the collar put him on his ass. It left a memorable imprint, one he had no inclination to experience again.
Other slaves began entering the chamber. He saw the females from last night, who shyly waved at him, as well as the Ragga who pretended not to know him. Most of the slaves kept to their own kind. Mardu sat with Mardu, Melans with Melans. A few of them intermingled, but like the System in which they’d been born, like stayed with like. Hence, Zachem remained alone.
In his entire life, he’d only ever met one other being like him. He’d had to kill the male in order to avoid being killed. The Creation had been crazed, like the scientists in the lab had warned him to expect.
“You want to leave us? Where would you go? If anyone learns what you are, they’ll kill you on sight, and us as well. Your crazed brethren have done us all a grave injustice.”
He recalled the conversation as if it had happened yesterday. The horror of learning just what he was, a hated Creation, remained with him. The Eyran War of 2845, centuries before his existence, had turned those in the System against his kind. Though engineered from the best genes in the System, most Creations suffered immediate problems.
Apparently, the first batch had been so subservient they’d had to be told when to breathe. The second batch had become too assertive—genius killers who butchered their creators, handlers, and everyone else they could reach.
Zachem had had no option but to stay with those who’d made him. Created to serve, he’d at first loved his creator, and even his handler. He’d endured their tests, the pain, the constant demands to perform. When he’d been bought by Master Caegon, he’d lived a life of relative peace, despite his use as a battle slave. Though the sex he’d experienced had never been pleasant, it satisfied the growing urges within him to mindlessly destroy. Or at least, it had.
In a way, he now needed The Pit as much as they needed him. Within these walls, he rarely felt a desire to kill. Fed on fights and sex, he could withstand the daily doldrums in the caves without harming anyone who didn’t deserve it. He flatly refused to fight anyone he didn’t consider strong enough to withstand a few punches without dying. Those rabid enough to try to kill him deserved death. He had no problem sharing violence when needed.
More slaves filled the area as he continued to eat. The guards brought him a second and third tray filled with rich meat and fruits, food unlike the mealy protein substance the others were served. He forced himself to slow down, wanting to wait until the new slave arrived.
Finally, he walked through the doorway. Like Zachem, the slave had to bend not to brush his head against the upper frame. As soon as he entered, his gaze sought and held Zachem’s.
Excitement drummed through Zachem’s body. He waited.
Taking his time, the new slave picked up a plate of food. He skirted the other tables and made his way to Zachem.
The rest of the room stilled, as if anticipating the beast’s reaction.
“Sit,” he said when the slave paused by his side.
The dark-haired male raised a brow but sat across from Zachem and studied his plate. The rest of the room resumed conversation.
“What’s your name?” Zachem asked, impatient for the introduction.
The slave grimaced at the food he’d been given and pushed it aside. And no wonder. Zachem had refused the substandard fare as well when he’d first arrived. He shoved his tray at the slave, who accepted it with thanks.
“Your name?” he growled, needing to know.
“Tarn.” Tarn took a bite of succulent melon and sighed. “Damn, I needed this.” He paused. “So what do I call you? Beast?” He snorted.
“My name amuses you?” Curiously, Tarn showed little fear in his presence. A definite challenge to his ego.
“I’ve seen my share of beasts. You aren’t one of them. An alien warrior with those red eyes, silver hair, and glowing skin. But no beast.” The warmth in Tarn’s gaze surprised him.
Zachem didn’t know how to respond. Tarn seemed to be complimenting him, but he wasn’t sure how to feel that the male didn’t find him threatening.
“Your name?” Tarn asked around a mouthful of zarva meat.
“Zachem’zen. I answer to Zachem.” And Beast.
“How long have you been here?” Tarn stared at his collar and frowned.
“Too long.”
“I don’t see anyone else around here wearing a collar. Guess you’re the lucky one.” Tarn’s green eyes flashed with amusement, and Zachem responded with a smile, unable to help himself.