by Viki Storm
She gets up off my lap but doesn’t take off her sleeping gown.
“Would you like it?” I ask. “Do you want to let me defile you in that way?”
She chokes out an answer, but I’m not sure what it is.
“What’s that?” I say. “I can’t hear you.”
“Yes,” she whispers. Her face is red with the shame of it. That’s good. It will be fun to turn her around, have her wild and pushing against me, eager to take my entire length inside.
“Good,” I say. “Now ask me to do it. I want to hear you say it.” Her face goes red and her eyes dart down to the floor. “Look me in the eye.” With great difficulty, she slowly brings her gaze up to meet mine.
“I’m ready for it,” she says. “I want you to…” But she can’t say the words. It’s too shameful for her. That’s okay; I’ll have her begging for it soon enough.
“Remove your gown,” I command. “Let me see if you’re ready.” She pulls her gown over her head and drops it to the floor. “Bend over.” She turns around and touches the floor, exposing herself for my inspection. I don’t have to look very hard to see how wet she is, how her lips are swollen and puffy.
“Your little pussy is ready for cock,” I say. “But I’m not going to give it to you. This is a good punishment. Denying you what your body truly craves.” I take her by the arms, and she stands up to face me. I think that she looks frightened, and I suppose she should be. I am so much bigger than her. As much as I try to be careful, I will stretch her to her limits.
Her face is even redder, but her nipples have stiffened before my eyes, turning into puckered knots waiting for my fingertips.
“Are you ready to let the alien invader fuck your ass?”
She hesitates, and I give her ass a final slap, causing her to give a little whimper of pain. Her cheeks are glowing red and warm, and I know she’ll feel the sting tomorrow.
“Yes,” she says. “I’m ready to have your cock inside me.” Maybe that’s the first time she’s ever said that word. It sounds filthy and wrong coming out of her mouth—and I love it.
“Get on the bed,” I tell her. As I stare into her face, I feel it happening. No, I think. Not the rutting. This cannot happen. My chest flushes hot, hotter than I’ve ever felt in my life. This is no little pinprick that I can will away. This is a thousand needles boring into my flesh. I don’t need to look into a mirror to know that my chest is turning a purple so dark it’s like a pregnant storm cloud. And that’s what it is: a storm brewing inside me, threatening to ruin everything.
Little Queen Bryn, she is my true mate.
The universe has spoken, the Fates have decided it.
I can’t hold it off any longer.
The physical reaction I’m having is a result of our connection, the way it always happens to the males of my species when we come into contact with our true fated mates.
The urge to mate with her is unbearable. The universe is trying to force my body to mate her, to claim her, to complete the bonding process that will forever entwine our souls together. If I mate her, we will exchange genetic material; she will react to my chemicals and hormones, and I will react to hers.
Mating will be the glue that binds us together. Forever.
This is the strongest, most powerful thing I’ve ever felt in my life.
It is so much stronger than rage or sorrow. It has to be. The urge to mate, to reproduce, to find a female and create a family unit—that’s the building block for society, planets, all life in the entire universe.
And I must deny it.
I cannot mate her, as much as I want to—as much as I need to.
This colony is going to be a new start for the Zalaryn race. We were almost wiped out, and we struggle to rebuild. High King Xalax has initiated a colonization program, sending us out to habitable planets where we can have huge, sprawling families. The planet Zalaryx is not suited for family units with many offspring.
Taking a human for a mate? That is the old way of doing things—what Zalaryns did out of desperation many generations ago.
This is a Zalaryn planet now, and she will have to evacuate with all the other humans.
My mind reels at this new development. It’s so hard to think. I’m scrambling to devise a plot where I get to keep her. I could mate her, bond with her, and then go somewhere. Anywhere.
But I don’t think that I could convince her to leave Lekyo Prime. And even if she wanted to leave, I couldn’t.
I have to fulfill my duty as colony captain.
Not because I want to. Because I have to. If I don’t, I go back to the dank dungeons carved underneath the Imperial Palace. My sentence for war crimes and treason is exile, to colonize this planet and never come back to my home planet. If I leave with this task unfinished, then my sentence is not served. The High Judge will send bounty hunters to bring me back. And then what would happen to Bryn?
“What’s this?” Bryn asks, pointing at the purple flush on my chest.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
“Nothing?” she scoffs. “It’s obviously something. Are you hurt? Is it a bruise? Are you okay?”
“It’s not a bruise. It doesn’t hurt.” I hope she doesn’t notice that I didn’t answer her last question. I can’t answer it because I’m not okay. I’m about as far from okay as I can get.
“But what?” she asks, but I take her face in my hands and kiss her.
This is our first kiss, I realize. What a fool. I should have been kissing her constantly, that’s how good it feels. Her lips are soft, and they part gently. Her tongue pokes into my mouth, swirling around my own like the movements of a hypnotic dance. She puts her arms around my torso and pulls me tight, squeezes me against her. Our bodies are flush, the surface of her smooth, nude body pressed against mine. She feels hot, welcoming, eager. Like she’s melting in my arms.
I need more of her. Our mouths have connected, and this only makes me hungry for a deeper connection, the most primal one of them all. The connection of our sex, entwined and united as one.
I yearn to bond, to take her and make her mine. Forever.
The need, the greed, the covetous desire is driving me insane. I can’t take it.
“You need to leave,” I say. This is the only way. When this is all over, I can find her. But I can’t have her here on this planet. “It will be safer. There’s someone in your own inner circle trying to kill you. And the Rulmek have their eyes on this planet. They take women—I don’t need to remind you of that. I can place you in my home planet. Friends of mine will take care of you. Then after the colony is set up, I will send for you. There are plenty of other planets where we can go to start over.”
“Leave?” she says. “Start over? What are you talking about?” She looks up at me and her eyes grow wide, welling with tears. I have hurt her, but I can’t think about her feelings. Her feelings can get a little bruised so long as the rest of her is safe.
“There are too many dangers here,” I say. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. But I need to establish the colony. And figure out what to do about the Rulmek. Once everything is over, then I can get you and we’ll go somewhere.” This is true. Though I have only been on this planet a short time, the thought of her being poisoned or taken by Rulmek slavers causes a physical pain in the pit of my stomach. A real pain—I could point it out to a Healer.
“Never,” she says. She sits up, pulling the furs over her nude body. “This is my planet, my home, and I would die here if that is my fate. I am not going to run and hide. Would a Zalaryn run and hide?” This vexing woman. She is so stubborn. She doesn’t seem to care that she’s in danger—and she doesn’t seem to realize how it would destroy me if something happened to her.
And she doesn’t feel the bond yet. That’s why she doesn’t understand my need to keep her safe, my need to be with her at all costs for the rest of my natural life.
In order to make her feel the bond, I must mate her, exchange genetic material and let the bonding chemic
als do their job.
But to do that is risky—I might only end up hurting her more by bonding with her and then making her evacuate.
“You are not a Zalaryn,” I say. My anger and worry make my words sound cruel when I do not mean them that way.
“And I’m glad of it,” she says.
My balls ache, and holy Void, I think they’re going to explode with the pressure of unreleased passion. I can’t think straight, can’t articulate an argument for why she needs to go. All I can think about is her ripe body and piercing through her purity membrane with my unreasonably hard shaft.
But I won’t let myself. I am here on Lekyo Prime to do a job. It is business, not pleasure.
High King Xalax sent me here as a punishment. Exile. To pay my debt to society.
And now I know the real punishment. Not the one handed down by our King and the High Judge.
The punishment that the universe is giving me: to show me the bonded mate that I can never have.
“Wait,” Vano says. We are already late, and I don’t want to give the councilors any more reason to criticize me and the decisions I’ve made. We have just left the royal apartments and must wind down several corridors until we get to the great reception hall.
“The meeting began—” I look at the small timepiece on my wrist. “Four minutes ago.”
“The meeting begins whenever the King and Queen arrive,” Vano says. “Act like you’re the supreme leader, for the love of the Void.”
“I do,” I say. “And part of my duty is not acting like a hypocrite. I expect my councilors to arrive on time, so I must arrive on time myself.”
“You have an odd outlook,” he says. “That’s the main benefit of power—getting to do whatever you want. And in case you forgot, I am the supreme leader of you—and I’m telling you to wait.”
I clench my jaw, trying to chomp off my argument. There’s no way I can convince him, so I need to wait him out, let him have his say, so we can get to the meeting. “Okay, what is it?” I say.
“After the meeting,” he says, “you must deliver these three notes.” He hands me three envelopes. The paper is thick and sealed with some adhesive that would make it impossible to pry open without destroying the whole thing. I look at the names to which they’re addressed.
“What are these?” I ask.
“Your poisoner is one of these three people,” he says. I’m almost too stunned to speak. I look at the names again.
“Have you lost your mind?” I say. I know I’m risking his anger, but I don’t care. This is absurd, and he needs to know it. “The person who bought poison from the old hag, who killed the stable boy, who’s got a vial of enough heartsweed to kill a herd of cattle, is one of them?” I shake the three envelopes at him. He grabs my wrist and lowers my hand. His grip is gentle enough not to hurt me, but it is iron and immovable.
“I have a plan,” he says. “And you must trust me. I want to find this treacherous serpentoid and string him up. On my home planet, traitors are hung upside down from the MagnetoSpire, where microwave radiation heats up all the water molecules in their body and boils them alive from the inside out.”
“We don’t have anything like that,” I say. “If there is in fact a plot against my life and we find the traitor, he will be given a trial and judged according to the evidence.”
“Then I will have to improvise,” Vano says. “He’ll be upside down and in a lot of pain. That I guarantee you.”
“I refuse—” I say. This is ludicrous.
“I never want to hear those words out of your mouth ever again,” he says. His mouth twitches in the ghost of a smile, but somehow I don’t think that he’s joking. “You must deliver those letters. I will explain the ruse later, but trust me. It’s one of those three men.”
“I will deliver the letters,” I say, “if you can promise me one thing.”
“You will deliver those letters,” he says. “You cannot attach conditions and stipulations to my orders. You don’t tell me, I tell you. That’s how it needs to be if you want to get out of this alive. The Rulmek are coming, and you have a traitor inside the palace walls. Right now, I’m the only one you can trust.”
I hate that he’s right. I say nothing, not giving him the satisfaction of agreement. Who would have thought that this invader, this alien who’s determined to steal my planet, is the only one I can trust?
“I will deliver them as you say, Captain Vano,” I say. I hope he notices my sarcasm, but if he does, he says nothing.
We make our way to the great hall, and as we enter there is silence. These councilors, they love the sound of their own voices. They never shut up. Except now, when their Queen walks inside the room in full regalia next to a Zalaryn warrior wearing nothing but an old pair of leather breeches and a mysteriously deadly weapon hanging from his belt.
That shuts them up.
I walk to the dais where the throne is perched, slightly higher than the other seats in the room. There is one seat, the seat my father occupied, the seat I occupy. But where will Vano sit? It is not appropriate for him to be below with the councilors, nor is it appropriate for him to sit on the throne while I sit below.
“We shall stand,” he whispers. “Both of us, in front of the throne.”
“As you wish,” I say, and in truth I appreciate the gesture. It’s gracious, perhaps more than I deserve considering the situation.
We stand before the councilors, and I begin to speak. “Please be seated,” I say. My voice echoes off the tall stone walls. “We have much to discuss.”
“A small caravan of farmers arrived this morning,” Stine says. “They brought four more cattle upon sledges, all in the same dehydrated condition. They said there are more every morning. At this rate, the herds will be decimated before it is slaughter season.”
Isn’t that a terrible phrase, I think, slaughter season.
“King Vano can speak to that,” I say. “He has experience in such matters. We are quite lucky that he’s landed here to give us his expertise.” I add the last bit to make up for my attitude earlier. But the words are barely out of my mouth when one of the councilors shouts out of turn.
“Ha, ‘lucky’ isn’t the word I’d use for it!” I can’t tell who it is, and it doesn’t matter because there is a murmur of assent from the councilors. I peer into the crowd, trying to suss out the man who spoke out of turn. I see Erwill Sonnes, the head of the merchants’ guild, in the back with a smug smirk of satisfaction on his jowly face. Was that him who spoke, or is he just enjoying the show?
“It’s the word I use for it,” I say, drawing myself up to my full height and summoning all the regal bearing I can muster. “We are faced with a ruthless foe, one as powerful as it is mysterious. And it just so happens that we have a shipful of men who not only know this foe but are equipped to vanquish it.”
“Men? They are not men. They are alien invaders.”
I look into the crowd to spot the insubordinate speaker, but the room is packed full, the light is dim, and I’m losing my nerve. I feel lightheaded, like I need to sit down and loosen the laces on my corset. Just then, Vano takes my hand in his and squeezes. I squeeze it back and feel steadier on my feet, more stable.
“One is now your King,” I say. I wonder what they would think if they knew Vano was not, legally speaking, their King. That I have been lying to them all. That I’ve been pleasuring the alien invader in the hopes that he decides not to evacuate all the humans in the settlement. “He will now speak to you and let you know of the foe that is draining the cows of their lifeblood. The foe is a name we have all heard before: the Rulmek.”
The councilors shut up for a moment while the significance of my words sinks in. Everyone in this room knows the name Rulmek. Everyone in this room had a family member, however distant, taken the day the Rulmek came.
“Yes,” Vano says as he addresses the crowd. “Your Queen is correct. The Rulmek are responsible for the assaults on the livestock.”
“They di
dn’t do this before!” one of the councilors cries. It is Hart, the chief Chemist who’s been examining the cattle. These men will look desperately for any reason to deny it’s the Rulmek.
“When did they come to this planet before?” Vano asks. “Ten years ago? The Rulmek have made a new alliance within the last few years. One of the fell races of the third quadrant has an insatiable appetite for blood. It is considered a delicacy. They can’t harvest on their own planets, so they import it. They make stews and fermented beverages from it. Enterprising mercenary races like the Rulmek can sell the blood for a tidy profit.”
“You’re telling us that Rulmek ships land here every night and drain a few cattle of blood, then fly back to the third quadrant to sell it?” Hart says.
“Not quite,” Vano says. “They send small flying drones to the surface while their ships hover far out of sight beyond the cloud layer. The drones latch to a blood vessel and begin to drain the blood. The drones are quite small, perhaps the size of a child’s fist. They connect to a flexible tube which sends the blood to the ship’s storage tank. When the Rulmek heard that there were planets paying for blood, they must have remembered Lekyo Prime from their previous raid.”
“Then why not raid again?” Stine asks. I can tell that he’s having a hard time believing all this. “Why not come down and take all the cattle? Why go through this prolonged engagement?”
“A few reasons,” Vano says. “Most importantly, delivering a small but steady supply of blood to the third quadrant will keep prices high. Flood the market with a large supply, and the prices will drop. Second reason is that much livestock would be killed in a raid. Third reason is that they have no room to house all these cattle. It takes time to efficiently drain them.”
“The Rulmek have returned in order to, what, harvest a food item that has become fashionable to some gluttonous third-quadrant race?” Stine says.