Claimed by the Conqueror

by Alyx X

  22

  Emma

  The bed bounced and I opened my eyes. Sleep wanted to hold my heavy eyelids closed, but I heard Roe laugh beside me and I was suddenly alert. I sat up and held the sheet against me, the familiar ache between my thighs telling me everything I needed to know about why I’d woken up in Qui’s bed. I blinked, trying to bring Roe into focus as she began to talk.

  “Look at you, wasting the day away in your sex-induced coma.” She laughed.

  I swallowed to ease my dry throat and began to shake my head. What? Why was Roe here waking me up? “Rude,” I managed to force out.

  Her expression turned urgent, her words more rapid as she reached out and shook my knee. “Come on, you haven’t got time for this.”

  I pushed her hand away. “Stop that, Roe.” My annoyance at her lying to me coming out in my tone. I glanced at the empty bed next to me, and the warm feeling of being held against Qui all night faded to nothing. When had he left? Where had he gone? I tried to scrape my thoughts together. I hadn’t slept so deeply in a long time.

  “Where’s Qui?” Even as I asked the question, memories began to fall into place. “Oh, fuck,” I whispered, and Roe sat back a little, satisfaction smoothing her forehead as she nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  “I need to get dressed.” I shoved the sheets out of the way and stood, but I was in Qui’s room, not Roe’s, and I hesitated. Yesterday’s clothes had half the buttons missing and looked like they’d been in a fight with a pack of desert lions.

  “Got you covered, girl.” Roe held up a fresh outfit from her room and I dressed more quickly than I’d ever dressed before, thanking her.

  “I’ve got to save my planet,” I muttered as I fumbled with one of the buttons.

  Roe grabbed my hand and tugged me out of Qui’s bedroom, heading toward the bridge. “Right. Things are going to move quite quickly from this point,” she said. “We’ve arrived at the warship with the extraction equipment, and they only need to finalize the details before heading back to Earth and doing…” She hesitated. “You know. The thing.”

  “What do I do?” I didn’t even know where to start. I was just one human against an entire ship—two ships now—of Euquanians. They were much bigger than I was, and they didn’t shy away from holding people captive who got in their way—Qui had shown me that. Hell, they didn’t even stop themselves from destroying entire planets. Apprehension slithered through me as self-doubt replaced my earlier fury. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know how to do it.

  I’d had a plan before. “But…but the moon?” I turned to Roe. Why was I still on board Qui’s ship?

  She shrugged. “He changed his mind, I guess.”

  I almost stopped in the corridor, grasping on to those four small words. He changed his mind. If he’d done it once… “So what do I do?”

  Roe shrugged. “No one stops Qui but you. I can’t do this, and with our history it would be wrong of me to try.” She looked me up and down appraisingly. “Use your womanly wiles or something.”

  I sighed. Because that had worked so well with Qui before. Sure, he wanted me, but it was clear he wanted my planet more. The first time I’d appeared naked in his bedroom, he’d told me I was to never go there again. Still, I’d spent the previous night very much in his bedroom, so maybe he wasn’t as immune to my charms as he thought. I was willing to try anything. I’d fuck half the crew if it would save Earth.

  As I started to move again, the whole ship groaned and lurched, and metal crunched against metal as everywhere seemed to shake. Solar flares sometimes created tremors on Earth, but I hadn’t experienced anything remotely similar on our journey.

  “What was that? Did we get hit by something?” I reached out to the wall to steady myself as the lights dimmed, then hummed back to full brightness.

  “No.” Roe shook her head. “No, that was the ship finalizing the docking sequence with the battleship. Men will be able to move down a tunnel between the two now.”

  Shit. I had no more time to waste. If they were ready to move between the two ships, that meant they’d soon be heading toward Earth with everything they needed to blow it up or whatever that computer sequence had shown.

  “I need to get to the bridge now.” I started to move away, but Roe threw her arm out and grabbed me, squeezing me to her side. Panic flared inside me, but the world suddenly blinked and we were further down the corridor, then it blinked again and we were outside the door to the bridge. What the actual hell? My entire body prickled and electricity seemed to sizzle from me.

  I lurched against the closest wall and bent over, heaving while trying to prevent myself from vomiting all over the floor. “What in the living fuck was that?”

  “A better and faster way to get here,” Roe said, shrugging. “But I forgot how tiring it is with a passenger.” My head felt light as the room spun around me, and I wobbled as my view of Roe split into two before slowly merging to one again. I heaved a second time and covered my mouth.

  Roe opened the door to the bridge and nearly shoved me through it. I staggered inside the now-familiar room, lurching from desk to desk, as I tried to regain my balance from the teleporting thing. All eyes turned to me, most of them surprised, a few outraged. I opened my mouth to speak, but instead released a loud burp as a greeting. Epic. I covered my mouth and heaved again, before holding a finger up to tell everyone I would speak when I was ready.

  I’d wanted to come in here shouting orders and instructions and letting everyone know just how unamused and personally offended I was by their plans. Instead, I’d arrived looking like my Dad after one too many glasses of the weird alcohol he brewed on the farm from the rotten potatoes. Only I might’ve looked worse.

  I bent over one of the consoles and tried to stop the room from spinning around me, my eyes shut tight, but it didn’t help. Maybe my whole brain was moving, rocking up and down inside my head.

  “I’m here because—” I shouted three words, then closed my mouth against a rush of bile up my throat. I swallowed and tried again. “You have to stop—” But it was no good. I couldn’t look around the room and address the men as I wanted and still speak to them at the same time. There was also no way I could use any type of wiles when I needed to direct so much concentration on keeping my stomach’s contents in their place.

  I glanced around again and found Qui, focusing on him entirely. He needed to hear this message most of all. I narrowed my focus on him, trying to ignore the rest of the room and the unwanted way it moved it around me.

  “Leave my planet alone,” I began, and I intended to say a lot more, but my eyes blurred with more than Roe’s blink travelling. I couldn’t stop the sudden wash of tears that stole my vision. “Okay.” I sucked in a breath. “I wanted to come in here like a superhero or something, and order you all to stop what you’re doing, but I can tell already it isn’t going to go down that way.” I broke off and sobbed, my chest aching.

  Qui stepped toward me, but I held my hand out, like that would be enough to keep him away. Strangely, it was. He stopped and just watched me.

  I had so much to say, but I hadn’t planned my speech properly. I hadn’t even considered it the previous night—I hadn’t thought of anything but Qui’s vibrating body. I could barely put the words together, and instead I just let the tears fall as I pointed out of the window.

  “It’s not dead. It’s not dead. People are alive down there. They’re working and loving and living. They get up every morning and go to bed at night. They get married and have children. They bury their dead.” I swiped angrily at my eyes. I didn’t want to be an emotional mess while I did this, but I couldn’t stop the tears now.

  Qui just gazed passively at me, so I took his silence as an invitation to continue telling him what I thought about his destructive plans. Around him, his crew had all stopped moving, and every gaze was still directed at me, but I kept my focus on Qui. If I looked left or right, I’d probably lose my balance again.

  “On
Earth, I worked on a farm. My father still does. We grow shit. Food. We grow food. We feed people, and we nourish them. There’s more to life than destroying things. We conquer death on our dying planet. Every. Single. Day. We get people to the next day, and the one after that, by making sure they eat. Now you just want to obliterate all that? Everything we do? It’s everything I do, everything I work for, and it will all be gone just because you decided you want the core? Maybe I need to teach you a thing or two about saving things instead of destroying them.” I sucked in a breath.

  No one in the room so much as moved, but they were probably waiting for Qui to kill me. I hadn’t witnessed anyone talk to Qui like this the entire time I’d been here, and I knew I was likely crossing a line. Or several. Above anything else I’d done while here, this was probably the most dangerous thing because it directly challenged Qui in front of his crew. I’d even suggested I teach him, which cast total doubt on his judgement.

  But I didn’t have time to doubt myself now. I had other things I had to say—just so someone besides me might know they were important. And I’d come too far to quit now, I was dead either way. Nothing left to lose.

  “Two things, Qui, two things.” I held up two fingers so he could see how many that was, and he folded his arms across his broad chest, but I refused to flinch or cower away from his subtle change of stance. “One.” I spoke the word nicely and clearly into the silence, wanting to ensure every man in this room heard me. “If you need the core of a planet so badly, why can’t you find a planet that is truly dead?” I gestured around. “I mean, you’re in a fucking spaceship that can take you anywhere. Really, guys? It’s not like your options are limited.” I huffed my disbelief at their behavior. “Two.” Again, I went with loud for the convenience of anyone stupid in the room. “If all you actually want to do is mindlessly conquer, go and overthrow that ridiculous TerraLink corporation and liberate my people. TerraLink has done a lot of damage with their regime, and by taking advantage of humans too scared to do anything but beg for help.”

  Even Dad was ruled by those expressionless TerraLink zombies. None of those reps had a drop of empathy. “I know you’ve overthrown governments and ruling regimes before, so that’s definitely also conquering.” I stopped and sucked in a big breath, all out of words. I reached out blindly for the back of Qui’s chair and lowered myself into it, glad when the room finally stopped spinning.

  The room was still quiet. No one had said anything in response to my speech, and I was starting to become a little unnerved. Was I missing something? I looked up at Qui, surprised to see his gaze fixed entirely on me. That gaze was considering, which was even more surprising than the fact that I wasn’t already dead. Had I actually gotten through to him? Or—I realized with a jolt—was I too late?

  With that harrowing thought in my mind, I glanced around the room, fully expecting someone to come at me. If I was too late to stop their drill, too late to save my entire planet, then I’d just screamed at the conqueror of several entire planets for no reason. Summoning all of my strength and unearned confidence, needing to make a move before they did, I launched myself at Qui. It was a hairbrained move, one full of desperation, but I told myself I was doing everything in my power to stop his madness. I couldn’t let him speed us all to Earth to take everyone down there out in a river of lava and lost gravity.

  Qui caught me easily and held me against his body while I struggled, still crying. When I looked up at him, his lips tweaked into a small amused smile, his eyes only showing affection. My heart stuttered. Both from the softness I beheld in his eyes, and from the proximity to the man I loved. I could feel his heat through our clothes, feel his heart beating steadily in his chest. Yes, I loved him. Despite everything he was threatening to do, or had already done, I loved him.

  As I waited breathlessly for him to speak—to put the final nail in my coffin, to break my heart—he just smiled down at me. “You heard Emma,” he murmured into the quiet. “Fin, we need to tell Tir we’re setting a new trajectory.”

  23

  Emma

  Several months after I told Qui exactly what I thought about his plans to destroy Earth, I now stood in the largest cargo hold of his ship, looking at the rows of plants we were growing to feed the crew. ‘We’ was a bit of a stretch though, as it was mostly me growing them, but I’d managed to hijack a few lower crewmen to act as my apprentices. They seemed to like the change of pace, although they had an annoying habit of falling to one knee every time I walked past them.

  I just really wanted to prove to everyone that ‘conquering’ could include creating new life. What was more badass than conquering a dying planet by saving it? In the short amount of time since I’d been up here in space, I’d learned to truly appreciate my father and his farm. Our farm.

  In the farthest corner of the room, a lone cow mooed mournfully, her pregnant belly growing bigger by the day. Whenever Roe ventured into the growing room she glanced at the animal appraisingly, but so far I’d managed to convince her that milk for months would be better than steak for a week.

  I breathed in the heavy aroma of damp compost as I sweated in the humidity. Fin had made an adjustable system that funneled the heat from the ship's engines back into the hold, and it was working perfectly. It was exactly like the greenhouses on Dad’s farm, except we didn’t have any glass. It was strangely familiar, and I smiled at the feeling.

  I wandered down one of the rows. “Be careful with that one—the stems are fragile,” I instructed one of the crewmen, marveling at the leaves he held in his hand. I’d never seen anything like some of these vegetables, which made growing them all the sweeter. Seemed everything on this ship responded to my special blend of love and stubbornness.

  As soon as he became aware of my presence next to him, the crewman dropped to his knee, earning an eye roll from me. I waited for him to stand up, inspecting the vegetable bed he was tending. The entire row was an experiment that I was pleased to see succeeding. Qui had brought some Euquanian seeds aboard and jokingly told me to see what I could do with them.

  Well, the joke was on him, because they were growing, and I couldn’t wait to try the vegetables they produced. We had Euquanian fruit trees onboard too, and they were also doing well. I could even see some tiny little fruits starting to mature on the branches.

  Slowly but surely, I was starting to conquer the challenge of growing produce in space, and Qui seemed prouder of me every day. Most recently, he’d brought me some volcanic rock chippings from Euquaniar’s dry lava beds.

  “For drainage, he said. “I won’t try to eat these ones.”

  I’d laughed at him; glad he’d finally loosened up a little from the angry warrior intent on destroying anything that got in his way. Roe always watched us with a knowing look, like she’d planned this all along. That seemed a grandiose claim, even for her. Perhaps she was glad not to be the only female onboard anymore, and our friendship had only grown in these recent months.

  I walked on from the vegetables, heading to check on the newest fruit trees. I turned a corner, past our most mature specimens donated by Dad, and almost walked right into Roe. She glanced at me before she took a huge bite from a shiny red apple.

  “Hey,” I chided. “You can’t keep coming down here and eating all the apples.”

  Her next words were muffled, and she sprayed bits of apple out of her mouth as she spoke, but I knew what she was saying anyway. Quality control. She said that every day when I caught her crunching on the freshest apples.

  She grinned as she swallowed her mouthful. “Good as ever,” she murmured.

  I nodded and flashed her a quick grin. “If you left any for the rest of us, maybe we’d all get to find out.”

  She nudged me. “Hey. And after I came all this way to tell you Qui’s done for the day and on his way back to the room? So rude.”

  I grinned and patted her shoulder as I turned and jogged between the rows of plants, heading for the door that would let me climb back to the sleeping
floors.

  “You’re welcome,” Roe called out behind me.

  I flipped her the bird as I rounded the last corner, and her laugh boomed out behind me. I picked up speed as I slammed through the door and took the steps two at a time. I could wander around the ship blindfolded now if I chose to, entirely at ease with the twisting corridors and maze of rooms.

  I wanted to get back to our room before Qui though, and be waiting for him when I arrived. However, when I swung round the doorway and into the room, he was already there, back to me, gazing down at the bed. Cursing silently, not wanting to disturb him, I watched him pick up the items I’d left for him to find.

  “Hi.” I spoke softly, and he turned toward me, his eyes wide. He held the tiny onesie and the booties out toward me and opened his mouth. Then he shut it again and his eyes glistened suspiciously.

  I smiled, suddenly shy, and nodded. “We’re going to have a baby.” Qui made a muffled noise I didn’t recognize—the closest I’d heard to a sob from him—before he quickly closed the small distance between us and picked me up to bury his face in my neck.

  His joy turned to frantic kisses up my throat and along my jaw before he hungrily claimed my mouth, a growl ripping from his lips before his tongue slid against mine. I laughed and wound my arms around him to draw him closer, but he stopped abruptly and pulled away. He still held me in his arms, but was now assessing me with worried eyes.

  “Hey now… We weren’t even at the good part.” I pouted at him and folded my arms, ensuring I displayed my best assets prominently in his face.

  “But…” He paused and lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “But the baby.”

  I laughed again. “As satisfied as I am with your body, you’re not going to poke our baby in the eye or vibrate its brain out with that magic cock of yours.”