It was a look I’d seen many times on pleasure stations when soldiers were on leave for a few days. The way they would practically devour the comfort females with their eyes before even touching them. Lust.
But this is no mere lust, I decide as I listen to Kel D’Rek threaten the girl’s parents. His voice is laced through with the same elongated hisses new recruits descend to when we force them to go without food for five days as part of their training. Not merely hungry. Starved.
I recall how he reacted to the absence of the girl after we rounded up all the Breeding vessels, stalking into the village after her as if none of the other hu’man breeding age females existed. What would it be like to want someone so badly all other females disappeared? I wonder this and I stare down at my dijjo, lifeless still underneath the ceremonial cloth.
Kel D’Rek slams out of the little red clay house with a piece of clothing in his blue hand, pulling me out of my thoughts. It must be something that belonged to the hu’man in question. We Xalthurians have a keen sense of smell which makes us excellent trackers.
“My Kel, what is the plan?”
My friend brings the cloth to his nostrils and inhales deeply. His diamond red eyes narrow and his ridges bristle. “It seems there will be a hunt after all.”
We sight the defiant hu’man a short time later at the edge of the settlement’s red woods. But she is not alone. There is another female with her. She stands taller than most hu’man females and possesses skin nearly as black as the dark jewels worn by the wealthy on Xalthuria. She sees us coming and points us out to the object of my Kel’s obsession. A short discussion ensues, then the two females take off in different directions.
My Kel immediately zones in on his hu’man. No surprise there. I briefly debate whether to follow and help secure the defiant runner. However, I doubt he needs my help to capture a single hu’man female. She may be fast but he is faster.
There is also the matter of the other female. There is a chance she is of breeding age, and without exception all twenty-one-year-old females must participate in the ceremony. She must be captured, and if it turns out she is of age, of course I must deliver the mandated punishment of ten lashes. Examples must always be made to ensure compliance.
But I find my interest piqued. Was the female’s skin really the color of onyx? This planet only has two moons to Xalthuria’s three. Perhaps it was simply a trick of the interplay between shadow and light?
Either way following my sense of duty and order, I refocus my hunting efforts on the taller hu’man only to find her disappeared from view.
“Essh!”
But she cannot have gotten far, and I am one of the best trackers on my planet. My nostrils flare in an out, attempting to capture the scent of the hu’man as I follow her into the planet’s red woods.
Without a piece of clothing from her it’s not as easy to trace her. But after a few moments of careful stalking, I catch the scent of an animal not of the four-legged variety.
It is the hu’man.
She is near.
But nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Five
Zinnia
The heavy footsteps suddenly stop right above where I’m lying underneath a pile of dirt. Please, please, please don’t let him find me! I desperately mind whisper to Asa, one of the gods from my dead parents’ continent on the old planet.
A beat of silence; nothing but the pounding of my heart as I wait for the god of mercy to answer.
Then suddenly the dirt is displaced with a loud crash, as a huge hand grabs me around the neck and pulls me up, like I’m a doll he’s removing from a box. The next thing I know, I’m kicking air and dangling from something as unyielding as the village’s thick iron irrigation pipe. It’s a golden arm I find out when the red dirt falls away from my eyes. And at the end of that arm stands a Xalthurian, shimmering gold with long black hair, whipping in the wind.
His body is bare, except for one thin loin cloth, and his torso is covered in overlapping platelets that look like scales. The moons’ shadows play over the sharp curves of his heavy muscled body. And his eyes…oh moons, his eyes…they’re black where mine are white, and relieved only by a set of light violet diamond-shaped pupils.
My heart stops. I can’t breathe. And it has less to do with the hand wrapped around my neck than the alien staring at me, his eyes flat but curious. Like I’m a science experiment he didn’t expect to find lying in a dirt grave.
As he chokes me to death.
I’m caught…but not weaponless, I suddenly remember.
Then I raise my stick.
Chapter Six
T’Kan
She strikes me. Me. The general of the Xalthurian military. With her pathetic stick.
Her assault has no more impact on me than a bothersome insect. I crook my head at her, not knowing whether to feel amused or annoyed. Then I simply pluck the stick from the audacious female’s hands and toss it aside.
But when I look back after tossing the stick to inform her that she will now receive an additional lash to the mandated ten, my thoughts trail off.
Her skin really is as dark as it appeared from afar, a midnight contrast to the gold of my hand. I think of the dual-race hybrids and can easily imagine a son with a here-to-fore unseen swirl of black and gold skin.
The scrape of her pitiful talons across my hand still wrapped tightly around her neck brings me back from thoughts of the progeny I might put into the womb of this insubordinate female. Slowly, I lower her feet to the ground but keep my hold on her neck only loosening my grip enough to allow her to draw shallow breaths.
She is taller than most hu’man females, but still not nearly as tall as me. Her head is level with my torso. I stare at her face, my eyes missing nothing, from her soft dark skin and large lips to the hair plaited into rows of thin braids that hug her scalp like a crown.
She is lean, but not in the way of a Xalthurian female. No, our females are perfectly slender with only slight bumps upon their chest. However, this dark female possesses full breasts and round hips. I raise my eyes back to her face. She is…
Stunning. She is nothing less than truly stunning. Taking in her exquisite features, a feeling much like the energy pulse we use to train soldiers to withstand intense sensations shoots through me.
And my diijo fully agrees.
It stirs to life, like a beast rising from a season’s nap. Large and awake and ravenous with hunger. Hearts beating furious and fast, I drop my eyes from her to my now severely tented loincloth. This hu’man…this female…she seems to be all the serum I need.
I raise my shocked violet gaze back to her fearful brown one.
But is she of breeding age? With a press of my thumb into her chin I bend her head…
The numbers written upon her neck fill my hearts with dark anticipation.
“You are of age,” I click at her. “I will punish you, dark hu’man. Then I will breed you until your womb is filled with my babe.”
With this vow, I drop my hand from her throat. For a moment, neither of us move as we stare into each other’s eyes, her round gaze and my diamond one.
Then she once again attempts to flee.
However, this time she takes not even one step, before I catch her by the back of her beautiful braids.
“Twelve lashes,” I click at her, as I haul her into my arms and allow myself a great whiff.
Delicious. She smells delicious. My diijo quivers at the thought of all I will do to her this night.
I toss her over my shoulder and head back to the ship, ignoring her screams.
For the next three hours, she belongs to me.
Chapter Seven
Zinnia
I’ve stopped screaming and beating my fists against the alien’s back by the time we reach the ship. I don’t think the alien can understand me anyway. Or feel my fists. The platelets aren’t scaly, like I assumed back when I’d gone my whole life without touching or being touched by a Xalthurian. They’re like leath
er. Not wet or slimy, but I’d probably have to stab him with something to do any real damage.
I think of Kira and the makeshift knife she’d shown me before running in the opposite direction of our hiding place. Under the accord humans are not allowed to keep anything remotely resembling weapons. Not even knives to cut our food, but she’d made a shiv like she was in a prison entertainment.
I can only hope it worked. That she didn’t get caught easily like me.
The Xals do things to the girls who try to run. Bad things they don’t necessarily recover from.
No, I’m not fighting anymore. Resistance is futile and might even make whatever punishment coming my way much worse.
There are two guards standing at the bottom of the landing strip, both wearing the Reaper’s distinct body molding armor. From my upside down position, I watch one put his long sleek photon gun in a front halter, then hold out his arms, offering to take me from my captor, I think.
But the golden alien hisses and clicks, and both guards stand aside as he walks with me up the landing strip’s wide plank. I’m unsure whether I should be relieved I wasn’t handed off or even more terrified.
When we get inside, there’s a long hallway to the left, but to the right, I nearly lose it when I see what’s happening in there.
It’s a round room, just like Kira’s sister said. But the scene is even worse than what she described. There are girls. So many girls. Girls I know, braced against walls or down on their knees, while huge jewel toned aliens viciously rut them from behind.
Some of the girls have their eyes closed. Some of the girls stare straight ahead. Some cry.
I see Jin-Hu, the neighbor who warned me about running on the other side of the room. She’s naked, on her knees, and appears to be moaning as another golden Xal pistons in and out of her. Her face is slack, her mouth hanging open in a way that makes me suspect her moans aren’t cause by pain.
Is she…is she liking it? Actually enjoying what that Xal is doing to her? Is that even possible?
The alien carrying me over his shoulder turns left and down the ship’s long hallway, abruptly cutting off my view of Jin-Hu before I can finish pondering those questions.
“Where are you taking me?” I demand when he palms open one door on the circular hallway. I ask him this, but I’m afraid to know the answer.
As it turns out, I’m right to be afraid. My eyes widen when he sets me down on the other side of the sliding door.
The dim room is almost completely empty except for a strange metal contraption, gleaming under its low light. It looks like a tilted silver X with pretty diamond cuffs attached to each of its legs. I would almost call it pretty if not for two things: One, as pretty as those diamond cuffs are, they look a whole lot like shackles. And two, even though, the contraption is tilted forward, I can tell it’s around the same height as me. Almost as if it were designed to hold a human.
No, hold isn’t the right word.
Imprison. It looks like this contraption is meant to imprison a human. Me.
Fear slices through me, and I instinctively turn to run.
But his clawed hand wraps around the back of my neck before I’ve even set one foot down in the opposite direction.
I wish I was as fierce as Kira, but I’m not. “No! No! Please don’t!” I plead as he shoves me forward toward the X, begging for mercy before I even know what he plans to do with me.
My words have no effect on him. Because he doesn’t understand my language or because he doesn’t give a pigeon shit about what I’m begging not to happen to me.
Either way his only answer to my pleas is a grim tug of my arm toward the X’s upper left cuff.
I tug back, trying to get away, but the cuff easily closes around my wrist as if I’m not offering up any resistance at all. The fight is almost laughably uneven. And he has an even easier time entrapping my other wrists and both my ankles in the other three diamond cuffs.
Before I know it, I’m lying at an angle upon the cross, completely spread eagle. I hear his heavy footsteps behind me. And that’s all the warning I get, before the sound of tearing fabric rips into my ears, and I suddenly feel cool air. On my back and entire lower half.
My skirt. He’s torn away my skirt!
Oh moons, oh moons, what is he…what is he going to do to me?
The answer to that question comes in a forceful instant. I release a choked cry as I try to process the shocking burn of being so suddenly impaled.
There is something inside of me now. Something thick and long and strange and much, much larger than Phil. It fills me up so completely, I can’t breathe, can’t think, can only panic as I push into the cross, trying to get away.
A weight falls across my back, heavy and five-fingered. His hand, I dimly realize. It’s his hand holding me down, so that I can’t fight. Can’t buck him off.
Oh moons, he’s going to hurt me. He’s going to hurt me so bad.
But then another clumsy weight falls against the side of my head and moves down the length of my long cornrows.
I still.
Is he…? Is he stroking my hair? Yes…yes, I think he is.
The cross tilts backwards, and I feel his hot breath on my neck as a bunch of low clicks and hisses float into my ear. A soft accompanying track to his clumsy strokes of my locks.
What’s he saying? Is he giving me a command? Or maybe he’s trying to soothe me? Or something else? I can’t remotely know.
But as he continues to stroke my hair and click in my ear, I feel my heart rate decrease. Slowly, gradually the burning pain ebbs away, and as promised in the sexual health texts we were required to read during our last year of colony ship school, my body begins to adjust to his invasion.
When he eventually pulls back, and pushes back in, it doesn’t hurt. Actually, it doesn’t hurt at all. It just feels strange. There’s something lining his dick. Some sort of ridging that sends strange sensations through me when the raised edges rub against my walls.
These sensations are almost…almost pleasurable. Call it pleasure adjacent, with the potential for more. Nothing like the few minutes of dry burning I experienced with Phil.
In fact, I adjust my hips up and then down with the sense I might enjoy this more at another angle.
Big mistake.
The golden Xal stills. Then he starts driving into me, wild and unfettered, his hips pistoning so fast, they feel like a machine between my thighs.
Until suddenly he stills again, the hand in my hair clamping down.
A pulsing beat…and he spills his hot semen, coating the walls of my pussy. Streaming into me for so long, it feels like it might never stop.
But eventually it does, and he pulls out with an enormous hiss.
I’m still blinking at the suddenly empty sensation, when the golden Xal reappears in front of me.
Gods forgive me, my eyes immediately drop to his dick and I see I was right. It’s covered in ridges, similar to the ones lining his nose. And it’s hanging, heavy and spent between his thighs.
Is it done then? Is it over?
I should be happy at the prospect. But for some reason my chest fills with a heavy disappointment. And my pussy…it’s clenching. Like it’s not done even though he is. Like it missed out on something and can’t accept it.
However, those confusing thoughts cut short when he moves towards the wall in front of the cross. I notice then something I hadn’t before. That it’s covered with all sorts of instruments. Most of them gleam like the cross. Alien devices made of alien materials that I couldn’t possibly recognize after twenty-one years on a red dirt planet with only the ruins of a colony ship.
But my heart seizes with fear when he pulls one of the instruments off the wall. One I recognize, after a lifetime spent watching old planet entertainments, mostly made on the continent Kira’s family hails from. It has several black ropes attached to a silver handle. And it’s not an electronic device, but a tool. A weapon.
A whip. He’s holding a whip.
He weighs it in his hand.
Then turns to face me, his violet eyes now flat and grim.
A cold dread overtakes me as Jin-Hu’s words echo in my ears….
The Xals do things to the girls that try to run. Bad things they don’t necessarily recover from.
Chapter Eight
T’Kan
The onyx female did not survive her twelve lashings.
This wouldn’t be the first time one of the hu’man females had died during the Breeding Ceremony, but I am responsible for the onyx skinned female’s demise so I stand with one of the translators, Feh M’Rir, as he delivers the news of her death to her brother.
This hu’man who has identified himself as Dan is also a member of this planet’s board of leaders. I study him, searching for a familial resemblance to his sister.
He is also tall by hu’man standards and slender, with a wide nose and large eyes, but that is where the similarities end. His skin is not nearly as dark as hers, sand to her black jewel. And though they share many of the same facial features, there is something about him that strikes me as avaricious. A Kaidorian in hu’man skin, I decide, thinking of our former foes, who’d made their race’s fortune pillaging their way through several systems.
He does not appear particularly disturbed by the news of his sister’s demise. The hu’mans are an emotional race. I have seen family members and lovers of these females fall to their knees, their eyes watering like babes when they received the news of their female’s death.
Dan merely twists his lips and says something to Feh M’Rir in the hu’man’s guttural throat box language.
M’Rir frowns before turning to me. “Xar T’Kan, the hu’man says, Zin’nia—that is how his sister is called—was dear to him, and that her loss will be felt deeply in his household and among the other villagers. Xar, he says that he should at least be compensated with extra rations for his loss.”
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