The Ugly Dukeling

by Bex McLynn

  The men who had run the siphoning den where Cisnetta was born hated the Otar. When drunk, they would fire flintlock pistols and throw empty bottles at the Ark.

  ‘Damned aliens. Mayreni Mongrels,’ the men in the den would spit.

  Because those men had despised the Ark, Cisnetta had grown to adore it. To dream of it. To long to be there more than anywhere else on Gisth.

  She'd often snuck outside to gaze up at the Otar Ark. It fascinated her to no end that she could see the spaceship during the day, like a daytime moon, and also flickering in the sky at night.

  Now, as she exited the ducal manor and descended the steps, she eagerly gazed up, as was her habit, to see the Ark.

  As she glimpsed the spaceship hovering high up in the clear sky, she lost her footing and started to tumble. Her frightened shout caught in her throat as the flagstones rushed toward her face. She would never brace in time. Her first instinct had been to tighten her hold on her ledger in her hand.

  A black blur caught her, snatching her up rather than letting her smack into the flagstones.

  Solid arms banded around her, pressing her cheek firmly to a warm, hard chest. As a comforting sense of security encompassed her, the man holding her jerked away.

  Startled, she gazed up and blinked at Lord Barbotière.

  Oh, if she could frame the view before her. He gazed down at her, the sun behind his left shoulder—shadowing his face—with the Ark over his right shoulder, an emblem of his esteemed pedigree.

  Cisnetta wanted to reach out and touch him, but tamped down the urge. She’d been living with these frenetic impulses all of her life.

  She tumbled with gratitude and embarrassment in equal measure. “Lord Barbotière, thank—”

  He pivoted, giving her his back, as he strode to her waiting lancar. Ridic, Trone’s longtime chauffeur, stood next to the Otaric vehicle with the door open.

  Ridic nodded. “Lord Barbotière.”

  Trone’s brother ignored the driver as he opened the backend of the lancar and tossed in his military rucksack. Then he lifted out her scuffed-up travel case and dropped it on the gravel of the drive.

  “Um, what—” Cisnetta shuffled forward.

  Surely her trembling legs were due to her almost-tumble and not from gazing up at her chivalrous rescuer who’d yet to utter one polite, courteous word.

  Lord Barbotière ignored her as he stomped toward Ridic. The driver closed the rear passenger door and stepped back, smoothly clearing the stampeding lord’s path to the driver-side door.

  “Very good, milord,” Ridic said with professional servility as Barbotière slipped inside.

  Cisnetta gawked as he drove away.

  Dazed, she shuffled up to Ridic, her eyes on the traveling lancar.

  “Very good, milord?” she said to the driver, sounding stunned.

  Ridic brushed imaginary dust off his coat sleeve. “Not the first time he’s done this, Miss.”

  “And what do you do when he does this?”

  Ridic’s shoulders dropped. “Go fetch the coach and four.”

  She bit back her miserable groan. Traveling by horse and carriage to Zentrale would take hours.

  Shaking her head, she continued to stare down the drive another moment before leaning closer to Ridic. “How long until he realizes that he has Cobbs?”

  Before the driver could answer, the lancar jerked to a stop. The driver-side door opened, then Cobbs tumbled out, his wings flapping in outrage. The swan snapped his wings closed and waddled away with his head held high. The lancar door slammed shut, then the vehicle sped away.

  Chapter 3

  Atrates spat a black feather from his mouth as he guided the lancar back to Zentrale, the capital of Mayren. Once there, he planned to barge into Colonel Tiranicen’s office and demand a return to post. Barring that, he would not leave until he received queen’s land orders that rooted him anywhere but the Andrake ducal estate. And far away from that woman and her hellish cob.

  Atrates chuffed a dry bark of laughter. Hell’s hounds had nothing on that infernal fowl.

  The comms panel on the lancar chimed. He glanced at the screen to see his Otaric sire’s farsimi ID. How like his sire, to pinpoint his location from OMC, Otaric-Mayreni Command, or from aboard the Ark, yet not hail him on his farsimi, but commandeer the comms of Trone’s lancar.

  He jabbed the accept command—but as a voice-only connection—with a heavy sigh. “Greetings One of Us,” he said in Otaric to his sire—his Otaric father.

  “Greetings One of Us,” his sire echoed.

  With his heart kicking in his chest, Atrates wondered how Miss Fowler’s scratchy Otaric would sound within the confines of the lancar. Indeed, she’d not been as cultured as his sire, but Atrates duly conceded that she’d uttered “Greetings One of Us” with earnestness in her eyes and determination in her tone. He could believe that she’d been truly delighted to see him—to be able to practice what she’d painstakingly learned—until he blasted the moment to hell with his brutish manners.

  He’d often felt that way—frustratingly disadvantaged despite his apparent privilege. That while seated at a formal dinner, others would be given fine silver utensils and he would be expected to make do with a sword and mace. Don’t worry, milord. Considering… Well, it’s understood.

  Their low expectations always struck him like the flick of a blade—sharp pain followed by bloodletting that would eventually drain him dry.

  His sire continued, “You’ve left the bedside of your father.”

  Atrates brusquely exhaled, his heated breath flaring his nostrils with his frustration. Over a decade had passed since Atrates last saw the duke, and much longer since he’d called the duke ‘father.’ Either Valment never took notice or refused to shelve the Mayreni pleasantries that the Otar precisely executed like each interaction had been scripted for flawless civility.

  Yes. Atrates had left the estate. If Valment restrained his interference to only commandeering the lancar’s comms rather than navigation controls, then Atrates would be in Zentrale within the half-hour.

  Hell, if Atrates could, he’d travel a farther distance. His skin tingled and his muscles tensed as the phantom curves of Miss Fowler’s body haunted him. Her adrenaline had spiked as she tumbled, releasing a scent-blast of fear that was clouded in magone, which now lingered on his clothes. He’d been tagged in the overwhelming floral notes of magone plus something Gisthly and tantalizing that wafted beneath that scent. Something uniquely Miss Fowler.

  “Atrates?” Valment called to him, making him aggravatingly aware that as he pondered Miss Fowler, he’d been frowning down at the flat panel of his breeches. No erection strained against the flap seams.

  “I am not staying there, Valment,” he grated out. “I’ve made other accommodations.”

  Well, he was going to do so, once he spat all the swan feathers from his mouth, cleared his taste and olfactory receptors with hard liquor, and then stumbled into his club where certainly some sympathetic soul would toss him onto an empty cot.

  “Not staying?” Valment’s polite tone struck him as gratingly hollow.

  He couldn’t always read his sire. The duke, however, had consistently and concisely communicated his emotions with his sneers and palms and leather belts.

  “I can’t linger by some bedside. Waiting.” Atrates tamped down on his bitterness, hoping he merely sounded irritated.

  Besides, if he hovered there, he would get impatient and suffocate the duke.

  The duke’s voice hissed in his mind. Where’s the ugly swain?

  “I’m returning to OMC.” Atrates spoke the words like he was issuing a command to his unit. Non-negotiable. Compulsory. Fucking obeyed.

  “They will not redeploy you abroad.”

  Fine. If they wouldn’t suit him in armatura, he would find another mission. One more worthy than mulling about a pungent sickroom waiting for a cantankerous old asshole to die.

  He’d fucking ‘make do.’ “Then I’ll request for
something on the queen’s land.”

  “I have something for which you are qualified. A den recovery facility requires a security overhaul.”

  Atrates scowled at the screen, rather thankful for the voice-only comms with his sire. Valment’s offer came too quickly. His sire hadn’t paused as if trying to identify an alternative. Valment had this assignment already in reserve.

  A den recovery facility of all things.

  While on the Continent, Atrates’s unit had specialized in identifying and raiding siphoning dens—horrendous hells where hyper-frenetic women would be chained to beds, being siphoned and raped by the den’s male clientele.

  The military was sorely unprepared for liberating these women. Breaking the chains wasn’t nearly enough because the women had already been broken. Some had been stolen from families who had lacked the resources to guard them, or worse, they had been sold by their kin to a den lord. Some of the women had been hollowed out, destroyed by the constant abuse.

  Well, if Atrates couldn’t be abroad, breaking chains like snapping matchsticks, then he could offer his services to ensure that liberated women were never kidnapped by another den lord.

  “Yes,” he told his sire. “I’ll do it. Transmit the information.”

  “Come to OMC first for synthetic bezeten.”

  Atrates knew a command when he heard one, and for once he didn’t bristle. Guarding hyper-frenetic women, who suffered full-body tremors due to their overproduction of bezeten, would present a powerful temptation to siphon. Therefore, any men who came into contact with them should be on mandatory synten, and especially ones like Atrates, who had frenetic tendencies.

  In this matter, his sire would find him readily compliant. Atrates told him so, and if he’d surprised Valment, his sire did not convey it in his parting before disconnecting the comm.

  Atrates rode the rest of the way to Zentrale in silence, staring at a black feather that had settled on the seat beside him.

  Cisnetta hobbled down from the coach and four before her Zentrale townhome, her spine and tailbone cursing a six-hour carriage ride courtesy of an ill-tempered hybrid lordling who suffered from low self-esteem.

  When she’d encountered Lord Barbotière in the hall, she’d seen wariness in every line of his bearing. His shoulders had been thrown back and his eyes had bored into her vacantly, as if he’d barricaded himself behind barbed fencing meant to deter rather than shelter.

  Well, she’d not hold his precautions against him. Over the years, she’d encountered many women who’d reacted the same after they’d been liberated from a siphoning den. Time, patience, and proof was what those women needed to repurpose their walls as places of sheltered solace rather than fortified retreats.

  Mr. Usberg, one of the townhome’s few night guards, greeted her with a tip of his hat. “Glad to have you back, Miss Fowler.”

  Cisnetta mustered a smile for Mr. Usberg. He was one of the first veterans to accept a security post for the recovery facility, despite the fact that Trone could only pay a pittance. He’d stayed behind, providing protection for their Otaric medical equipment which would be moving in two days.

  “Evening, Mr. Usberg.” She gave him her curtsey, which she knew was inelegantly executed, but the man earned her respect a thousand times over for his service to the rescued women in her care. “You’re not alone, are you?”

  What she would give to have a dozen more Mr. Usbergs. The Magone House, as Trone named the recovery facility, was burdened with multiple deficiencies. There were too many woman and not enough beds, food, doctors, medications, protection, and magone. When Trone’s limited quarterly living funds from the ducal estate were spent, he would then discreetly campaign for donations to carry them all through.

  Therefore, Cisnetta was grateful that people like Mr. Usberg forwent his pay, repurposing their meager creds to take in one more woman. To buy one more bedsheet. To stretch the pantry stores further.

  Mr. Usberg took up her travel case. “Nah, Miss. New bloke started this afternoon.”

  “New bloke?” Alarm tingled up her spine as she pulled out her ledger to confer her notes.

  She flipped several pages before she huffed and snapped the book closed. It was dark. Only ground lanterns lit the footpath to the front door. What did she possibly hope to read? Yet, in her own frenetic compulsion, she must have automatically flipped a half dozen pages.

  “Yes, Miss.” Mr. Usberg opened the door of the townhome—that badly needed new paint—and set her travel case by the narrow stairs. “The expert is here.”

  She mentally scrolled through her endless list and projects. “The retired officer that we were promised?”

  Mr. Usberg scratched at his neck. “I don’t right know if he’s retired, since he’s wearing his uniform and all.”

  Cisnetta’s hope swelled. “Oh! Do you think we’ve finally gotten royal funding?” She opened her ledger again and started flipping. “But the committee said at least four more weeks. And I haven’t gotten any certified communications. Unless they tried sending it over farsimi, but I told them many times to communicate directly with me, not through Trone’s comm ID. He hardly checks—”

  “Ciss! Good god, is that you?” Naosim called out to her.

  Startled, she looked up from her book. Well, hell. She’d done it again. While walking and talking, her mind settled on one task as her feet dutifully carried her to her obligation.

  She’d just traipsed down the tight, dark hallway, her well-programmed feet masterfully avoiding the jutting floorboard that often tripped the unsuspecting. Only her feet had carried her past the open door of the cellar.

  Plus, she’d been mumbling to herself. Mr. Usberg, who was probably used to her hopping from task to task, had simply left her to carry on.

  With an irritated huff at herself, she backtracked and looked down the dark staircase. A dim, flickering light came from the far corner and outlined the shadowed form of a lean fidgeting man.

  “Oh, Naosim!” Cisnetta cursed her own forgetfulness as she closed her book and hastened down the rickety stairs. “I’m here. I am so sorry. I got caught up at the estate and then the funding—”

  “Yes, yes.” Naosim stepped back, waving her down with one hand while offering her his other arm. “I say this with much sincerity: I love you, Ciss, but for the queen’s land, get your tight little bum down here.”

  She tsked without any true scolding to her tone. “I’m going to pretend I heard ‘tight bun.’”

  “If that’s what it takes to get you down here—” His voice, that had carried both his jesting and tension, devolved in a guttural moan as she grasped his offered forearm and he reflexively siphoned her bezeten through her palm. “God, Ciss. I’d ditch Trone in a heartbeat if you were a man.”

  “If I were a man,” she said, her voice also laced with the euphoric release of her bezeten, “then you wouldn’t be able to do this.”

  “You’re perfect as you are, Ciss.” He tugged her into the basement room. The oil lamp light flickered off the hard clay walls. “Tight little bum and all.”

  As he led her toward the worn couch against the wall, her eyelids fluttered closed and she moaned. The rush she felt, as Naosim siphoned her bezeten, started to smooth all her rough edges.

  “I know that moan, Ciss,” Naosim whispered. “I’m being a selfish arse.”

  “Don’t stop, Simmy.”

  “I won’t.”

  Naosim didn’t stop, but he no longer took ravenous pulls either. She knew he was constraining himself for her benefit, not his own. This way, when he siphoned his fill and withdrew, leaving her with bezeten coursing through her system, she wouldn’t crash into the wall as her relief abruptly ended. She would simply be left agitated and unsated. As much as nature would allow, Naosim was striving to be gentle with her.

  Naosim sank back into the couch cushions, his lean-thewed legs extended before him. Despite the dim lighting, she could see his pale skin and flaxen hair, marking him as not a native Mayreni, but
originally from Wuste, another region on the Continent.

  He sighed and lolled his head on the backrest, turning to look at her with eyes that glittered with arousal and satisfaction. “Talk to me about him.”

  Cisnetta settled back into the couch as well, sprawling in an undignified slump. Her bun pressed against the backrest and cricked her neck at an uncomfortable angle, but the lull from the siphoning muted all her concerns.

  “He’s doing well, Simmy,” she said. “He has a nurse on-site for the duke. The staff continue to take the duke his meals. I don’t think he’s stepped foot in the duke’s apartments in weeks.”

  Naosim’s light brown eyes, the tan of heated sands, watched her intently as she fed him information about Trone. The lust in his gaze was a residual symptom of his bezeten-low system tipping him into a frenetic episode. If she glanced at his lap, she would see his erection straining against his pant seams. She knew none of these reactions were because of her, nor would Naosim use his frenetic-induced arousal to justify his right to slake his lust. Men like Naosim were outliers on the Continent, where men took what they wanted. Where there was no even exchange.

  The glassy-eyed desire in Naosim’s eyes warmed into deep affection and heart-wrenching longing. “Well, the security specialist has arrived.”

  Then, on a regrettable sigh, he gave her a small, apologetic smile. He’d stopped siphoning several minutes ago, but she continued to hold his arm anyway because she knew Naosim was touch-starved. To be honest, she was as well.

  She lifted her hand away.

  “Is he a bloke?” She suppressed the shudder that trundled down her spine, leaving her skin itchy and her leg thumping with hyperactivity that Naosim had been unable to siphon away. “We’ve had enough of those.”

  Naosim shook his head, which was more a rolling of his head from one shoulder to the other. He must have teetered on the edge of frenesia if this siphoning session left him this lethargic. “He’s exactly what you’d ordered. Military-trained. Already on synten.”