by C F Rabbiosi
I tense as his fingers work in between my legs, preparing me, and the discomfort is amplified by anger that grips into my spine with its claws. I shake my head, and a terrible scream bursts through my lips. Brekter moves back in alarm as I take ragged breaths, trembling upon the altar. “Calypso,” he says so calmly it frightens me. “You promised me.”
I shake my head, trying to speak, trying to choke out the words that would explain the gutting feeling that rips through me, but nothing comes out. I did promise I would try, and as much as I don’t want to be with Brekter, this isn’t about that! I just can’t be flayed open and exposed in front of all these beings. Not again. Not like this. I’m already pregnant—this ceremony is inhumane.
Fire sparks in Brekter’s piercing quicksilvers, and I cringe as his hand violently takes my throat. “Little animal,” he seethes, “you have humiliated me again.” I’m lifted from the altar by his powerful grip and slammed back down. Sharp pain splits through my skull, as do my village mate’s shrieks. Brekter’s hot breath rasps into my face. “You will take my seed this night. Will being unconscious make this easier for you?” He slams his fist into my cheek and throws me onto my belly. My fingers grasp toward the ones who watch, begging for them to stop this, blood dripping from my lips.
“Brekter, you don’t understand,” I whisper through the ache of sorrow in my throat. You’re ruining us forever.
“You are nothing but a stupid animal. How dare you deny a god.” He rips the dress up my back and hits the flesh of my ass. His handprint sears in and I cry out, so many areas of pain flaring from head to toe. “I loved you. I gave up everything for you!” He rips me down to all fours and transforms me into the animal he speaks of. “But you chose your weak husband over me. An insignificant attachment that couldn’t possibly have compared to our love.”
“What are you talking about?” I smear black across my arm, wiping my tearful eyes. “Kassien is anything but weak—” Then it hits me. He’s not talking to me anymore.
“I was going to be gentle,” says Brekter spreading my cheeks open, “but a slave should be fucked and broken by its master. So you shall be.” I brace myself as his large crown moves against my backside.
“Stop, please, Brekter. I’m not her! Don’t—”
Another hit into my back drops me to my stomach.
“How can you do this?” I crawl back up, choking on blood. “How can you allow him to do this?” I scream at their stone cold countenances, wondering why they are letting him beat me with his child’s survival already a fragile thing. “You monsters!” I fly up, bursting with hate, and attack Brekter. My teeth sink into his neck and I knee him ferociously in the groin.
I taste his flesh in my teeth and he buckles from the onslaught. My nails tear into his face before I fly to the floor.
Fuck their ceremony.
Drakon’s commanding voice finally rings out. “Enough! She has made a travesty of our sacred traditions, and you, Brekter, have only made it worse!”
Brekter recoils his fist from its strike toward me. “I know! Rage flows uncontrolled when it comes to her.” He forces me against his chest. “But I will salvage this.” He strokes my bloody hair back and desperately cups my face. “I love you.” He blinks hard and shakes his head. “Forgive me.” He kisses me.
“No, you vile creature, you’ll never touch me again!” I bite at his face and he grimaces, holding me away.
“You cannot possibly allow this to continue.” Gerakon stands up and addresses all of them who watch.
Drakon crosses his arms and tips his head to the side. “It most certainly will continue. She won’t be allowed to get away with destroying the ceremony. And there will be far worse repercussions when it’s over.”
“I will not allow you to punish my mate, Drakon,” says Brekter.
“Would a Koridon female be beaten into submission?” Gerakon interjects, coming head-on with the commander.
“Of course not,” he replies, his sons appearing next to him. “Our females would never behave like little bitches to deserve it in the first place.”
Gerakon peers over at Scarlet, who holds black-haired Alice in hysterics. “If we want to blend our people, we cannot behave like this.”
“I agree, father,” Efaelty says, standing in front of me.
Brekter cradles me against him as I struggle. “Calypso, listen to me. I thought you were her. I thought you were Maria.” He strokes my hair, and his tears trickle down my face. “Speaking of her has possessed me, and all the anger of a hundred years overtook me. Forgive me,” he whispers so only I can hear. “Please, I will do anything.”
The ache in my flesh turns my heart cold. I could ask him to bed me in private, to end this nightmare like I already tried, and then I’d forgive him. But I’d rather suffer than give him that. What he’s done is indefensible. If I must be tormented, then so shall he.
“I will never forgive you.” I spit blood into his face. That strange pulsing rises in my hands as the pain and fear tearing through my body becoming concentrated. I clutch his wrist and he buckles, the color leaching from his face. “Now do what you came for tonight, but know that this is the beginning of the end.” I release him with a sense of reclaiming my power, my bruised body and soul no longer feeling any pain.
He blinks rapidly and steadies himself, a red-stained tear tracking down his cheek.. “It changes nothing.” He drops me to my back and parts my knees. “I love you, Calypso, and I will make you feel it.”
He ascends across me, and with his shaft in his hand, guides it in as my body naturally resists.
16
A huge crash shatters the air and Brekter rips away from me. He extends a protective arm around my back as everyone in the room jumps to their feet. A man in a black robe stalks into the banquet hall like a predator under the moonlight.
“Identify yourself,” Drakon demands, and several Koridon females move forward, Arek and Kraetorr at their backs.
The intruder raises his arm and points a large weapon with moving parts that glide as though they were submerged in water at the approaching Koridons. They draw back immediately, and though it’s reasonable to fear it, something about their reaction makes me look closer. A shimmering, moving mass of blackness attaches below the barrel, and without having any idea what it is, my heart still beats wildly at the sight of it.
“Release my wife,” the large stranger says and pulls the hood off. His familiar voice matches his face in that moment, and I shove Brekter away to rush to him.
“Kassien!” I cry. He keeps the weapon pointed but grasps me into him with his other arm.
“And others you will be happy to see.” His striking eyes pierce through my chest, and I hesitate before looking away. Behind him others rush in and remove their hoods. I collapse, but my mother catches me and I hug her tight, our tears spilling against each other’s cheeks.
Finn, taller than I remember and nearly unrecognizable with anger and worry, steps beside me with arms crossed in front of his chest. He isn’t the boy I used to see him as. Hardship has always made him seem older, his physique wracked with muscle and scars from dangerous hunts, but tonight he reminds me nothing of the mischievous young boy he was named after. The playful part of Huckleberry has gone away.
“Kassien!” yells Drakon. “I would ask how you are alive, but judging by that dark matter transcender, no explanation is necessary.”
“Well hello again, Drakon. I have been looking forward to killing you. And no chance will it be by this thing.” He moves the weapon’s end to his lips. “Too quick, and I had days to plan your execution as I hung.”
“What then?” Drakon asks, splaying his fingers to the side of his face. “Would you have expected me to spare you? One who kills our own to protect a human? You deserve worse.”
“Calypso is one of us. And I will kill every one of you for her.” He rushes Drakon and takes him by the throat. “Are you ready?” Drakon squeaks just before he slams into the ground. The smaller Kori
don kicks wildly beneath him, but Kassien subdues him without breaking a sweat. He places his thumbs over Drakon’s eyes and presses.
“Stop!” he yells out. “Desist immediately or I swear the Veragotan clan will hunt you down and every one of these humans you care about!”
“You think because I am outnumbered I will bow to you?” he chuckles darkly. “I think you are intelligent enough to know I am capable of doing exactly as I say.” He holds Drakon’s eyes deeply into his sockets and turns toward me. I hear his whisper: I just got you back…
I shake my head, warning him to stop. My mother’s here now, and all my village mates are hanging on by a thread. What if the murder of Drakondoes send a Koridon force from the skies after us? My expression softens as it sinks in. He’s really here. Everything will be well now, because he’s here.
“All right.” Kassien releases the pressure, and Drakon lets out a relieved groan “You may keep your pathetic life for now. On the request of my love.” He drops a fist into Drakon’s nose. Then another blow shatters his cheek. He beats him rabidly, blood spurting through Drakon’s teeth as he grunts.
A Koridon woman steps forward, one I’ve never seen before, and the atmosphere of the room somehow changes for the regal and beautiful being. She speaks in her tongue, but I recognize enough of it to interpret what she says: “Enough! Kassien, release him.”
“Thank you, Eladia,” Drakon chokes out, scrambling away.
“Drakon, I have come back to stop you,” she says. “If what I have heard is true, I may let Kassien continue.” Her voice as sharp and elegant as her features. She commands the room, and not a soul can look away from her.
Kassien steps away, his weapon trained on the commander who crawls to his feet. “Sovereign, you will have to kill us both then.” Drakon turns his mangled face to Kassien.
“Yes, I am quite aware of the prince’s involvement. But he didn’t kidnap a village of women and keep them chained, either.”
“It is a new world now, Eladia.” With hands raised, he steps forward and Kassien aims the blaster at him. “You have been gone for years, searching for some place we can belong. But here, we belong.” He stops to spit blood on the floor. “And we have found a way to continue on.”
Eladia stands next to Kassien. “I have heard your plans. To enslave the human race and force them to bear your offspring. It is monstrous.”
“No.” Drakon glides his arm toward Scarlet, who is being shielded by Gerakon. “The women of earth are finding themselves content with their new lives.” Glenda’s pained expression toward Kraetorr speaks worlds. She’s scared, and yet she wants him anyway. She doesn’t want to go back to being locked inside the village with no future. “Perhaps we will all be more than content one day.”
“And when one of them is impregnated with a male?” I ask. “What will happen to her then?”
“We will ensure survival of mother and child by all means necessary,” says the commander. Gerakon cocks his head cynically.
“I’m not content,” I say at Kassien’s back. He’s alive, and mixed emotions rush through me. I’ve been so angry, but seeing him now, along with my mother, it’s the happiest I’ve felt in a long time. “I did not choose to be mated to Brekter.”
Darkness surrounds my enemy lover as he moves toward Kassien. “And yet, she is mine now, Prince. You will not take her from me.”
“Oh, I will,” Kassien replies, “but only to free her. She will then choose who she loves.” He turns his head slightly toward me. “If she still loves at all.”
That isn’t something I can answer anymore.
“She has been stolen from you,” says Brekter, “in the only way it matters.”
“She did not give her heart to you, fool. So she is not stolen.”
“Not her heart,” says Brekter. “I did not need her heart as I impregnated her womb.”
The weapon shakes in Kassien’s hand, and his eyes dart toward Gerakon. “She is pregnant?”
Gerakon nods one, begrudging time, then says no more.
Brekter runs his hands down the sleek blackness of his ceremonial wear. “Will you deny the true laws of our kind then, and take her from her rightful mate? Take my child?”
“What say you, Eladia?” Drakon asks. “Calypso is proof that interbreeding is possible. She herself is half-Koridon. Can you not see what this could mean for us? Beginning with Brekter and Calypso, life for us is saved.”
The Sovereign’s fascination is obvious as she considers the possibility.
Kassien pulls a cylindrical object from inside his cloak and points it at Brekter. “Never going to happen.” He hits a button, and a blinding blue ray bursts from the tip. It strikes Brekter and his body pulls apart into a thousand suspended bloody pieces. Screams shatter my ears.
A brave, stupid female rushes Kassien and he blasts the other weapon. The shimmering dark substance fires out and splashes the air as though it hit a wall, and a black hole rips the world open. She’s sucked into its haunting nothingness, and Arek gets caught in its pull. He grasps at the floor as he flies feet-first into it.
“Enough Kassien!” cries Eladia. “You may already be put to death for these crimes! Do not kill any more!” He keys a sequence of code into the weapon and the blackness recedes and slams back into the barrel. Arek falls to the ground, panting. “I will speak with both leaders on the matter of blending our species.” She moves to Kassien’s side and lifts her chin toward Brekter.
Brekter’s bloody flesh, disseminated and frozen in time, twists my gut, and I relive the horrifying expression on his face as his body pulled into pieces. He’s dead. It’s more than I could have hoped for, my freedom handed to me. And yet, something still tugs at me. Why? Why do I care? It angers me that I have any feeling for him at all!
Finn runs to his sister. “Are you all right?” my mother asks, touching my swelling jaw.
“Yes,” I tell her with a nod. “I am truly all right now.”
Kassien bows his head. “Are you entertaining the idea of allowing this kind of union?” he asks his queen. Something stirs inside me as I watch him. He’s different somehow, but a glimmer of the perfection he planted inside me blossoms once more. He’s a big brute like the rest of them, but he showed me who I am, and mere days together made me feel more alive than I ever have. I yearn for the love I thought I felt for him, and the place inside that greenhouse where we became one. Only he can erase Brekter’s toxic infection within my system. Make me good again!
“I cannot make that call alone,” says Eladia. “But we must consider it, if both human and Koridon can find happiness together.”
“You said it was an unnatural forcing of the universe.” His harsh voice cracks as sad eyes fall on me.
“Yes. But what are we willing to do to survive? The instinct to reproduce is the most natural and powerful force within biological creatures. There may not be much hope out there.” She gestures toward the ceiling.
He keeps the weapons pointed. “But what if we’ve had our time already?”
Eladia moves to his ear. “That is not for me to say. Why give creatures such intelligence if we cannot use it to survive? What is fate anyway?” She nudges him. “Reassemble Brekter. You cannot kill a Koridon just because he possesses the mate you want.”
“You saw what he did to her,” Kassien says with a warning flickering in his supernatural irises. Dominance emanates from his powerful build, and for a moment, I believe he’ll blast everyone in this room to pieces. He raises a brow at the floating pieces of flesh. “Anyway, I quite like him this way.”
“Do I need to remind you of my command? That if me or my instructions are compromised in any way, the storm that will be rained down upon you and this entire planet?”
He turns toward me and I freeze, wondering if he wants me to beg him not to. He let Drakon live because I willed it, so would he defy everything we believe in now if I conveyed my answer in a sly smile? He reluctantly aims the obliterator with the most subtle tremble. If he
disobeys orders, he’ll be punished with his life. If he doesn’t… he’ll be saying goodbye to me. The blinding light reappears, and the floating flesh squelches back together in an instant. Brekter falls to the floor, a quivering mass of nerves.
“He’ll be in agony for quite a few days,” says Kassien. “But in time will—”
Firm arms snake around my waist from behind and yank me against a steely chest. Kassien flips around and takes aim, and my mother stifles a gasp but doesn’t move an inch from my side.
“Drakon!” Kassien roars. “Release her.”
“Shoot one of those projectile weapons off and see your human sucked into freezing, suffocating space, or torn into a million pieces.”
“What is it you want?” Eladia asks, her perfect calm unwavering. “Because you have taken it upon yourself to change the course of our history, and I just told you I am willing to consider it.”
“There is no chance of me missing, Drakon.” Kassien lightly fingers the trigger and swipes his tongue over his lip.
“Do you wish me to snap your bitch’s neck, then?” Drakon gives me a fierce squeeze, but with a grimace, I refuse to whimper. “Place the weapons on the floor and step away.”
He checks behind him and holds his ground. “Stay back, all of you! I still have an intense desire for blood right now.” He growls at Brekter’s shivering form. The shadowy figures of Drakon’s sons and the females in the dark background stop dead.
“Don’t do it, Kassien,” I say. “Never give this sadistic pig power again.” I think of the servant boy who was mutated into a vicious creature, the brandings into the skin of my friends, and the cruelness in his voice when he told Brekter to force himself on me as I lie bleeding.
“Fire on me, and I throw her into the blast,” he says, his claws digging into my waist. “I am willing to chance my survival, sure that I will be upon you in that split second you hesitate from grief.”
“You hung me on hooks and took my woman,” he snarls. “I will kill you, whether it’s now or tomorrow.”