by Loki Renard
Every now and then, she would think about Dominax. It wasn’t that she missed him, necessarily. But she did miss a certain part of his anatomy. That cock was… mmm. She’d touched herself more than once remembering being in his bed, or in his arms in the middle of the fucking sky. He had given her pleasure like no man ever had — but he’d also been a disciplinary monster who brooked no dissent.
To make matters worse, the search was intensifying. She no longer felt safe going out other than during the depths of night, where people couldn’t see her eyes, which were a dead giveaway. Avoiding eye-contact only worked sometimes.
To make matters even worse, she was sick. She didn’t know what was going on, but every part of her body was achy and she was overwhelmed with nausea on a far too frequent basis.
Katie must have missed the knock at the door in the violent midst of the full expression of that nausea. One moment she was disgorging the contents of her stomach, the next she was hosting an unexpected guest.
“What’s wrong with you?”
She opened her eyes to find Darma standing over her, looking confused and somewhat annoyed.
“What are you doing here? Why do you keep following me?” She asked the question with weak irritation.
“You’re supposed to keep your food inside your stomach,” he told her, as if that were something she didn’t know. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” she grunted. “It’s your shitty, weird, wing-person food. It’s making me sick.
“Well, then you’ll be glad I hunted you down again. I brought you something from the palace,” he said, holding up a greasy bag. “Burger and fries?”
“Oh, thank god,” she said, grabbing for it. “This is so fucking cool of you, you have no idea.”
She spoke while she was shoving the burger into her mouth. Earth food was so fucking good. There was literally nothing as good in the entire universe. This was what she’d needed. A taste of home.
Darma looked incredibly unimpressed when she deposited all of it directly onto his shoes less than a minute later.
“You have to stop that,” he growled. “These boots are made of… well, your stomach contents now.”
“I don’t know why I am sick. Maybe I’m being poisoned.”
“There are no human doctors in this city. So we can’t get you any kind of medical treatment,” Darma frowned. “But you can’t stay here alone like this, sick.”
“I’m not alone. I have you. You show up literally every two seconds.”
“But I’m not here all the time,” Darma sighed heavily. “If you fall over and hit your head and bleed out in that pink suit you’ve been wearing for, what, almost three months now…”
“I’m not going to fall over and hit my head. There’s not even room in here to fall over.”
Darma did not look happy. It was nice of him to be concerned, but it also really wasn’t his business, or his problem. She was surprised he kept coming back.
“I’m not leaving you like this. I’m not leaving you at all.”
“God, stop fussing, I’m fine. I was just sick a couple of times.”
“If anything happens to you, Dominax will…”
“Hey, fuck Dominax. What has any of this got to do with him?”
“He’s the king who has soldiers and spies looking for you all over the city,” Darma said. “He’s not giving up on finding you.”
“Why is he still looking for me? It’s been a hundred days. How does he know I’m still in the city? I could be anywhere by now. I should be anywhere. I should have skipped onto a freighter and blown this…”
She was interrupted with another wave of nausea. This time she managed to keep everything, which was actually nothing, down.
“He has good instincts,” Darma said. “That’s what makes him king.”
“Yeah. Well. Mine are better. But you’re right. I’ve spent too long in this city. Eventually people are going to catch on. I need to get on a shuttle or freighter. Hell, put me on a rocket ship to Mars.”
“I agreed to help you,” Darma said. “But helping you off this planet, that puts me in more danger than you can understand. Dominax is running out of patience. He’s on the verge of tearing the city apart with his own bare hands.”
“Yeah. Well. Fuck that guy.”
She didn’t really mean it. It was actually very flattering to be pursued this hard. Flattering, and a little bit completely fucking terrifying. She still remembered the whipping the king had given her when she’d cursed him out. She couldn’t imagine what he’d do to her when he caught her.
“Just… Stay in here, alright? No running around the city. There’s a bounty out for you.”
“Has he actually managed to put together a picture yet? Or are you all still describing the concept of humanity to one another and getting confused where all the pieces go.”
“There are some artist renditions.”
“Oh, I have to see them. Please.”
Darma made another one of his sighing sounds. “You are enjoying this far too much, human. I’m starting to believe the text on the flyers.”
“What text on what flyers?”
He pulled one from the pocket of his pants and showed it to her.
There was a passable version of her face staring back at her. Not exactly accurate. It looked like someone had dictated features into a machine and the machine had put them together in roughly the right order.
“I still can’t read this shit.”
“It says WANTED: HUMAN. Badly behaved, wildly criminal, foul mouthed, and surprisingly bossy.”
“I bet it says none of that.”
“No, but that’s what it should say,” Darma said. “I knew you were trouble when I first saw you, but now you’ve got me tangled up in this scheme with you so tight there’s no way out for me or you. You have to keep your head down. If you get caught now…”
“God. Chill. The guy is desperate. Putting up pictures of me like a lost dog. There’s no way anybody is going to recognize me from this.”
“I have to go,” he said. “Try not to do anything really stupid before I can come back with more food.”
“I won’t do anything st…”
BAWOOOOOO!
A trumpet sounded, a massive hollow noise which vibrated every roof slate, wall siding, and rivet in a several mile radius. She felt the sound to her bones, and in the core of her teeth.
“What the fuck was that?”
“Not what. Who. That is the call of Konan, the Beast King. His ship must be in port.”
“Konan, the Beast King? That’s a hell of a title.”
“He will distract Dominax. That is good news for you. Now may be the best time to make an escape.”
“Escape? Oh. Right. Yes. Absolutely. I should escape. Nothing for me here, huh.”
“Not if you want to ever return to your world.”
“Yes. My world. Earth.”
Darma tilted his head and looked at her. “You know, you could have been gone about a hundred times over already.”
“Don’t rush me. I’m still preparing.”
“You mean you’re sick.”
“I am not!”
The statement was emphatic, but somewhat undermined when she threw up again and passed out, only narrowly avoiding braining herself on the corner of her pod bed when Darma caught her.
14 The Prodigal Brat
“Dominax.”
“Not now, Darma. Konan just landed. And you know he hates to be ignored. There is no greater insult in his culture…”
“DOMINAX.”
Dominax turned around to face his younger brother, and stared.
“Is that…?”
“I found your human,” Darma said. “She’s sick.”
She was more than sick. She was passed out in Darma’s arms. Dominax hardly recognized the scrap of humanity, dressed in rags, hair matted, a foul odor emitting from he didn’t want to know where.
“What has happened to her?”
/> “She went feral,” Darma said. “She's been surviving by scavenging on the streets, running from the law, evading all your scouts and spies.”
“How did you… it doesn’t matter,” Dominax said, overwhelmed with relief. He came forward and took Katie from his brother’s arms. He had dreamed of holding her again, but not like this. She had lost weight. Her cheeks were sunken, and her hair looked dull. The streets had not treated her well.
He couldn’t believe that she had actually been found after all this time. He had been on the verge of losing hope, though not even close to giving up. He was ready to tear the entire universe to pieces if it meant finding her. But that was no longer necessary. She was lying insensate in his brother’s arms, a delicate human flower wilting before his very eyes.
“You’re going to need to abduct a human doctor,” Darma said. “She’s been sick for weeks.”
Dominax’s head snapped up, his black eyes narrowing. “How would you know that?”
“That’s what she told me. I found her in one of the transition pods. You know, the ones aliens use when they’re just staying for a few days? Down by the docks?”
“She’s been living down at the docks. Like a scavenging rat?”
“Well, yes.”
“Give her to me and call the royal physician.”
He extended his arms, and was thrilled to feel her weight in them as Darma relinquished his prize.
“I owe you a great debt,” he told his brother.
“Oh, I know,” Darma replied. “I’m going to find the doctor. You might want to get her in a bath. She smells. Bad.”
Dominax didn’t care that she smelled. He was just so relieved to have her in his arms again. Even in her sickened state, she was beautiful. He knew she didn’t understand, but he had truly committed himself to her as her owner the moment he put the collar around her neck. It was still there, he noticed. Nothing else was familiar. She was wearing a pink and green sort of attire, which looked like a suit cut into a skirt. She must have made it herself.
“Come, pet,” he murmured to her insensate form. “We will get you cleaned up, and you will feel so much better.”
She didn’t respond, which was concerning, but he didn’t know how to heal her. He could clean her and take care of her as best he could. And he could try to make sure she never felt the need to flee him again.
Dominax had been thinking about Darma’s rant ever since it had happened. Most of it could be put down to a tantrum being thrown by a young prince, but some of it rang true. He had never tried to make his pet happy. He had simply told her that she would be happy.
He ran a bath and carefully undressed his pet. Her body was still beautiful, but it bore the marks of the harshness of her existence as a free beast.
“The doctor is on his way,” Darma said, appearing in the bathing chamber.
“Good. Tell me everything about how you found her. Someone must have been helping her. I want to know who kept her from me all this time.”
“Uh, yeah. I don’t know. I think she did most of it on her own. She’s pretty smart.”
Dominax carefully lowered Katie into the water and watched as the filth of the city floated free from her body.
“I am going to make you feel so much better, pet,” he told her. “You’re never going to be sick again.”
He knew he was promising something it wasn’t possible to promise, but he was overwhelmed with the need to do something, change something, make something better for this vulnerable human who had put herself through so much in the attempt to escape his, well, tyranny.
She was warm. So warm, and so cozy.
She felt water lapping around her body, playing against her ears. She felt a strong arm beneath her head and shoulders, keeping her face up out of the water, and another hand gently maneuvering a cloth around her body.
Katie didn’t want to open her eyes and ruin the moment. She could feel the care being given to her like a warm glow all around her. For a long series of very deliberate moments, she avoided thinking about who was doing this to her — though on a biological level, she knew.
She could smell him. She could feel his strength. And she wasn’t afraid. Instead, she felt safe. She felt as though she was being protected from the worst of the world, from her own failings and weaknesses.
But she couldn’t open her eyes, because the moment she did, she was going to have to face the king. And she didn’t want that.
So she laid there in Dominax’s arms and let him take care of her in the most basic and intimate of ways, ways she had barely been able to take care of herself.
“Wake up, pet," Dominax murmured gently.
There was no way she was going to ‘wake up’. She was enjoying being in his embrace, but she was not enjoying anticipating everything she’d have to deal with once he knew she was conscious.
Dominax lifted her from the bath and placed her, soaking wet, on a nearby couch.
“Watch her, brother,” he said to someone she couldn’t see. “I am going to get a towel.”
“Of course.”
She knew that fucking voice. She opened her eyes immediately and glared at the Homelander who had betrayed her.
“Darma. What the fuck!? You turned me in?”
“You needed medical treatment,” Darma hissed under his breath. “And he needed you back. You were going to kill yourself out there for no reason other than to spite the king.”
“You’re his brother! His brother! You could have mentioned that.”
“You would have hated me for it.”
“Probably. I hate you now. You dragged me back here. That’s fucked.”
“No. What is fucked is dying in a ditch because you’re too proud to go back to the king you love, and the palace you can live in.”
“Who said I love Dominax?”
Darma gave her a dour look. “You refused to leave the city. And you were always almost getting caught. You stayed just to be a thorn in his side. You wouldn’t have done that if you didn’t care about him. You would have sneaked onto a ship and been gone weeks ago.”
“Care isn't the same as love.” She struggled to sit up. “And I don’t care about him either.”
“Sure. You get free of the evil king who stole you and then make absolutely no attempt at actual escape from his evil realm. That makes a lot of sense.”
“Shut up.”
“You can both shut up,” Dominax said, walking into the room with a towel over his shoulder. He was shirtless and broad shouldered, handsome, and winged. He was everything she was just getting done swearing she didn’t want, and she was so inexplicably happy to see him.
“I am glad to see you again, pet,” he said. “Even if you were so filthy it looked as though you didn’t bathe the entire time you were out of my care.”
“I washed myself with moist towelettes,” she protested.
“Oh my…” Dominax sighed. “Pet. Why did you leave?”
“You know why. You beat me, and your guard helped me run away.”
“You taunted me into giving you that beating. You practically begged for it. I think you enjoyed it. You were wet. Even wetter than you are now.”
She made a growling noise of denial, but the truth was that it was hard for her to maintain a facade of annoyance and reluctance when she was actually more comfortable than she had been in weeks.
She had wondered what would happen if he ever found her. This was not what she had imagined. She had expected pain, and a lot of it. She had assumed that she would be chased down and dragged back against her will. She never imagined that she’d just pass out and wake up back in his care, being bathed gently and now dried by the king himself.
Darma was still there, watching her. She was not happy with him.
“Well, Darma knew what was happening with me. He found me the very first day I escaped.”
A gasp came from Darma, as Dominax’s face took on an expression of pure fury.
“You KNEW where she WAS!?”
“I…”
“Get out of my sight, Darma,” he growled. “You little bastard. You will suffer for this. You will never have another lover again, that I vow. I will have you made eunuch…”
“Okay. So you’re not in the best mood, but I kept her safe.”
“This is not safe. She’s seriously ill. You kept the truth from me. You…. Get out. Now.”
15 Wanna Be Sedated?
A rogue guard. A traitorous brother. And a rebellious pet. Dominax sincerely hoped that these problems only happened in threes, and were not indicative of rot and rebellion throughout his home.
Darma fled the room, which was the only smart thing he had done in three months.
“He did help me a bit,” Katie said. “So don’t actually kill him. He protected me from being caught by soldiers, and…”
Dominax let out a low growl. “I don’t want to hear about my brat brother. I want to know about you. You’re not well.”
“I’m just sick sometimes. That’s all. It happens to humans.”
“You could have come back to me, pet. I will always look after you.”
“Sure, and you would have beaten the shit out of me.”
“I would have spanked you. I still intend on spanking you as soon as I know that you are well enough to be spanked. You’ve been a bad little pet, running away from your king, making him worry for you.”
She loved the way he said those words. They sent one of those thrills through her, the kind she had not experienced before Dominax — or after him, for that matter. Dominax did things to her she couldn’t explain. But she couldn’t admit that. She had to argue. It was the human way.
“I don’t think I’ve been bad at all. Someone let me out, and I went and saw the world. I liked the city, by the way. I’d like to go back sometime.”
“On a leash, perhaps. Or in a cage, as an example to the people you spent almost a hundred days robbing blind.”
“Well, what was I supposed to do?”
“Turn yourself in and return to me.”
“Obviously, I wasn't going to do that. You whipped me. You hurt me.”