by Corin Cain
The second greatest pleasure. The greatest is to experience the Bond, but that has not happened in over 3,000 years.
4
Jasmine
Heat and noise assail my senses, as I’m dragged out to the center stage.
This is no high-end flesh market, with nobles sipping expensive drinks in leather chairs and perusing purchases.
This is a mass of sweaty, jeering Toads that fill me with revulsion. My hands are bound with rough rope, and I’m tied to a post in the middle of the wooden stage by the auctioneer as if I’m nothing more than livestock. The collar around my neck and the rough tunic they forced me into are the only barriers between me and the horde of sweaty, slimy aliens.
But despite the humiliation, I keep my head up high.
They can take my freedom, but they can’t take my mind. I will never submit.
The Toads speak in their alien dialect, spittle flinging from their mouths as the crowd talks among themselves. All eyes are on me as they make garish jokes about what they’ll do to me once they own me.
Slavery is illegal in the Human and Aurelian empires. The deeper you venture into Toad territory, though, the more squalor, inequality, and crime you find.
My eyes widen as I see two Aurelians in the back of the crowd. I move back involuntarily, but the post is firm behind my back.
Rage overpowers my disgust and terror at being sold in the alien auction house. The eyes of Toads on me might fill me with disgust, but when the Aurelians stare at me I feel only blind hatred.
Aurelians are the reason I’m forced to scavenge in the desolate deserts of Bugra.
My father paid only half the taxes he owed, hiding his true income in an attempt to provide for us. My mother told me that he’d been working late nights trying desperately to earn enough to send me to a school and give me a life different than his.
The Aurelians shut his construction business down after the small tax violation. Then they threw him in prison for a five-year sentence. We barely had enough to survive even before the Aurelians took their hefty cut of our profits to “protect” us.
But that’s how they work, isn’t it? Aurelian “protection” is as much about perception as reality.
For example, the Aurelian Empire has the harshest punishments for slavery – which is illegal across the Aurelian empire. In theory, the punishment if the authorities found two rogue aliens here would be death…
…yet now two of those self-same hypocritical bastards are in a Toad auction-house. It just goes to show - Aurelians aren’t pure. Not like they want you to believe.
The two Aurelians stand tall above the Toads, with chiselled bodies and implacable faces. They have strong jawlines. They’re just like humans physically, if humans were seven-feet-tall and had skin the color of a marble statue like you see in the histories.
There’s a huge Toad in the front row, with a slaver’s bracelet around his wrist. Three naked women are chained to his wrist, and they sit submissively, looking down at their knees. I can only imagine the horror of their lives.
Oh, God. I’m about to experience that same horror. No! I’ll escape. Those females have given up, but I won’t. No one can break my spirit.
I shudder as I see the fourth chain from the bracelet hanging on the slaver’s arm.
It’s empty. He’s come here for a fourth slave.
The auctioneer raises his arms now that the audience has had a chance to look at the newest prize for sale. The bidding starts. The auctioneer inflames the crowd as the price on my head rises, telling raucous stories – including disgusting jokes about my proficiency at giving fellatio.
Soon, the huge Toad in the front has offered a year’s salary for me. The Aurelians at the back raise their hands, their eyes burning for me. I shudder, facing the horrible realization that I’ll either end up on the Toad’s leash, or under the Aurelian’s thumb.
Despite my hatred for the Aurelian’s, looking at their chiselled, muscular bodies – compared to the disgusting, warty Toads – makes the decision easy.
The bidding slows. The auctioneer pauses, about to sell me to the Aurelians. I brace myself, knowing I might have one last chance to escape before I’m trapped…
…and then the auctioneer grunts and rips the cloak from me.
Suddenly, I’m naked.
The crowd yells and cheers as I’m exposed, shivering and vulnerable. The bidding starts again, fast and furious, and in the end the huge Toad wins.
He unclips the leashes from his wrist, passing his three slaves to his assistant so he can hop to the stage in one, massive leap.
The Toad is only five-feet tall, but he must weight close to 500 pounds – every ounce of it fat and muscle. He eyes me with naked lust, and trails a slimy hand down my naked belly. I shudder, revulsion mounting. My hands are secured, but I still kick at him with all my force. He jumps to the side, moving quickly for his bulk. Then he snaps his leash around my collar.
The auctioneer undoes my hands.
I don’t think. I act.
I punch the Toad, and reach for the bracelet around his wrist. I watched carefully how he clipped it on, and I know how to get it free. I touch the bracelet, about to get my freedom…
…then lightning pain flows through me.
I fall to my knees – naked, and writhing in pain. The Toad laughs. His belly shakes as he guffaws, enjoying the sight of me squirming in agony on the floor. Then the pain stops, and the world is clear again. I gasp for breath. The agony was unfathomable.
“Foolish slave! I control your pain through the leash. Do that again, and you get a full minute of it!” The Toad laughs cruelly.
I shudder. The pain lasted only seconds, but it felt like an eternity.
“Look, you’re already on your knees for me. I know you want to suck my big, Toad cock – but I have big plans for you. I’m the greatest slaver in the universe. I’m the first Toad to enslave three Aurelians, and I will use you to keep them under my control.” Spit flies from his mouth and lands in my hair. I wipe it off before the acidic spittle can burn through the follicles.
Then I gasp, as his words finally hit me.
I’m going to be sold to not one… Not two… But THREE Aurelians.
5
Baldur
I grab Raegan’s shoulders and help him to sit upright. I’m just glad he woke up. He slept deeply – at some points, his aura so faint I was worried he’d died in his sleep.
But Raegan was stronger than that. We all were.
As Raegan sat up, I shrugged my own shoulders – my muscles aching from the night spent on the stone floor. The Toads didn’t even give us clothes, so there hasn’t even been the thinnest of barriers between our bare skin and the cold, hard floor.
But despite that, Raegan is getting stronger. So am I. I can still feel the pain from the brutish device the Toad medic used on my yesterday chest – but however primitive it was, it still did the job. Both Raegan and I will survive… At least long enough to fight another day.
“Eat,” I say, passing Raegan one of the bowls of slop the Toads had delivered to us. He doesn’t argue, downing the gruel in thirsty gulps, despite retching at the taste.
“The food’s worse than fighting a Scorp unarmed,” laughs Karan.
I don’t know how he manages to keep his spirits up while we’re trapped in this shithole – yet his aura is barely simmering with anger, rather than boiling over with the rage I feel.
It’s because he knows we’re going to escape before the next fight. By the Gods, I fear Raegan won’t make it. What would it be like to feel his aura extinct from my mind?
Raegan puts the bowl down and chuckles wearily. His pain is worse than mine. A lesser man would be whimpering on the floor, but his face remains stoic.
There are no Toad guards near us, but I’m not going to take any chances. I furrow my brow and transmit my thoughts to my triad.
“We escape today. Before the feature battle. We overwhelm the guards, take their weapons, and break t
hrough the wooden doors. Raegan, are you strong enough?
Raegan nods slowly, rubbing his hand over his wounded leg. “Strong enough to kill Toad guards. Not strong enough to fight Scorps in the arena again.”
The meaning is clear. If we have to battle again, he’ll die, and most likely Karan and I will as well.
Karan gives him a piercing look. “We have no choice but to escape. They’ll send us up against an even greater foe. They can risk having rumors of a gruesome execution, but if the Aurelian Empire finds out they’re using us as gladiator slaves, Bugra will fall under our wrath. They can’t leave us alive.”
I grimace, showing my teeth. “The slaver is a fool to think he could hold an Aurelian.”
“Much less three,” says Raegan, grimacing in pain as he rearranges his leg. He’ll be slow, but he can still move. All we need to do is escape the compound, steal a ship from some Toad bastard, and get off this godforsaken planet and back home – to our promised reward.
I ache for the sun-drenched marble palace that awaits me, and the throng of women who will serve my every need.
I’ve never met a woman who didn’t drool over Aurelians, and I know I’ll have my pick from them when I return. Human women are just lining up to experience the luxury and opulence of Aurelian estates – and it’s not just the riches that attract them. It’s as if their species are addicted to our bodies – our dominance, our commanding presence, and rough copulation.
Two Toads with long poles walk past the iron bars of our cells. They might be guards, but they stand as far back as possible. They look at us with naked fear in their eyes, steeling themselves and waggling their weapons threateningly.
“Time for another fight already? Whatever you put me in the ring with, I’ll kill it,” growls Karan.
The first Toad shakes his head and I breathe a sigh of relief. We won’t have much of a chance with only a night’s sleep to recover from our wounds. Drools drips from the Toad’s jowls as he shakes his head.
“Master coming. Behave. Or we hurt you!”
Master coming?
Our reaction is not subservient enough for the Toad. He aims the pole at me and presses a button on the hilt.
And arc of lightning flies from it and sears my chest – right where I was already badly wounded yesterday. I scream out in agony, falling to my knees…
…and then I pull myself up.
My anger is boundless. I grip the iron bars with my hands, flexing and staring down the Toad – who instinctively retreats back. The bars don’t even budge before I give up trying to bend them, wishing I had the strength to escape now.
But that will have to wait. This cell was made to house a huge monster, and the bars are as thick as my arm.
I look down the hallway and my eyes go wide.
The huge Toad slaver who captured us is walking down the hall. He’s fatter than any Toad I’ve ever seen before, and his enormous belly wobbling with each step.
Instead of the three meek women at his side, there’s just one – a fiery-eyed thing who keeps her eyes up.
She’s unlike any human I’ve ever seen. I’m used to submission from their species. In her eyes I see only defiance, and my cock stirs at her presence.
“Eyes down, bitch,” says the slaver, and I see the chain turn blue with electricity. She screams, falling to her knees. When she finally picks herself back up, she looks down at the ground as instructed – but there’s fire in her gaze.
With Baldur’s help, Raegan pulls himself to his feet. The three of us are transfixed by the human female who seems so unlike all the others we’ve ever seen.
The Toad slaver looks at us. “She comes from Terra.”
The four words hit us like a slap.
She’s our subject. We’re sworn to protect her.
“If it’s true, we can’t escape today. Not without her.” Raegan telepaths the words, but we all know them before he says them.
I can feel Raegan and Karan’s lust mirroring mine. We all want this scrappy young woman.
What it would be like, to tame such fire?
“You Aurelians think Toads are stupid – but I’m not stupid! I know you big, strong beasts can escape if you want. But you can’t, because it is Aurelians who are stupid. You can’t leave a subject behind.”
I growl, hating that the Toad knows we’d sacrifice ourselves to keep a subject of the Aurelian Empire alive. My fingers twitch, aching to tear his heart, still beating, from his chest.
“I am the greatest slaver in the universe. I know how to control you,” he boasts. Now that he’s not in front of a crowd of jeering spectators, the slaver’s reverted to a more guttural form of his language.
The woman at his side is young, perhaps twenty-years-old. Her long hair is caked with dirt, and her face is sweaty and sooty – but I can still see the beauty behind it. She’s wearing a rough tunic against her suntanned skin.
The Toad grabs the leash, pulling her closer to him. My hackles rise. Karan and Raegan are feeling the same protective, possessive instincts. There’s something about this human female that means more to us than her just being a subject of the Aurelian empire.
We want her. I ache to make her scream out my name.
“You have big fight tonight. Win? You keep her. She’s your little toy. Lose? I sacrifice her to a Scorp Queen I have in captivity. It will lay its eggs inside her while she still breathes. What a show that will be!”
The slaver laughs heartily, acidic spittle flying from his mouth and splattering against the iron bars. It dribbles down them, sizzling and smoking.
Suddenly, a new plan comes to my mind. If I can just grab a Toad guard, I can rip his spit gland right of out of his jiggling throat – and then use the contents to weaken the steel bars.
I quickly transmit the image to my triad.
Unable to detect our telepathic conversation, the human woman instead listens to what the slaver just told us – and she shudders at the Toad’s cruel words. There’s no fate worse than being used as a Scorp-laying body host; staying alive sometimes for days as the eggs hatch inside of you.
A Scorp Queen is a twenty-foot tall, monstrous, thousand-year old beast that lays its eggs right inside whatever human, Aurelian, or Toad its warriors can capture and bring back to it. The Scorps have no technology, but they travel through space in huge organic ships; living pods that are sent out to gather potential hosts and bring them back to their Queens.
I’ve faced a Scorp Queen before. In the claustrophobic confines of a Scorp nest, my triad cleared through wave after wave of Scorp warriors to finally battle her.
The beast ripped through twenty Aurelian’s before my blade ended its fetid life.
The slaver undoes the human’s leash from the bracelet around his wrist. Instantly, the young woman punches at his round face and turns to run.
She makes it two steps before the guards grab her.
Feisty. So unlike the submissive droves of women who bow down to Aurelians, begging to be picked for our harems. This one is a true prize. She tried to fight, even though they outnumbered her. By the Gods, she’s even braver than some Aurelians are.
The female screams her defiance until the larger of the guards slaps her hard across her cheek. She crumples to the ground. The slaver grabs the end of the leash that was attached to his bracelet and affixes it to the metal bars of our cell with a satisfying clink.
Then, the Toad slaver growls and rips her bodice from the female. She’s suddenly stripped bare. Her hands go to cover her breasts, and slinks to the floor, trying desperately to cover her exposed body.
My cock surges at the sight of her, aching to tame the young rebel.
“You can look. Later, when you’ve won in front of the crowd – and the nobles who have come from far and wide watch the first Aurelian slaves to fight in combat – then you will have her. In front of all of us – or you all die.” with that the Toad slaver utters a long, low laugh, and leaves.
The naked woman pulls herself up using the
iron bars. Her body is perfection. I stare at her, hunger growing inside of me to make her mine. My cock shoots up, filling with blood instantly – my erection totally beyond my control.
I need her.
Our race is dying out. It has been over three-thousand years since there has been a Bonded female. Could she be ours?
Aurelians are a race of males – and for thousands of years, we have only continued our species through technological means.
When an Aurelian dies of old age in a cryo-pod, his aura can be used to sire a single Aurelian son.
One dies, one is born.
The problem? Most Aurelians don’t die of old age. We die from Scorp stingers and betrayal, from orb-beams and axe hits. Our race is dying out.
We’ve all heard the stories of a different way of siring children, though – an event so rare it’s almost legend. When Aurelians meet a human female who can be Bonded with us, she can be made pregnant the… traditional way.
For that reason, Aurelians gather huge harems of women, trying to find their fated mate and sire a child the natural way. Our emperor is that last known Aurelian born of a physical being. Any child born of a human is stronger, more intelligent, more powerful than an Aurelian born of our advanced technology. Our current system is deeply flawed.
So, when I see this young, feisty woman, I wonder if all the old legends are true. I feel instinctively that they are. I ache to mate her and find out for sure if she is truly my fated, Bonded pair.
Now the Toad slaver is gone, the naked woman loses all her shame. She is still naked, yes – but instead of cowering and covering herself, she stands regally; as if she is a queen, and we are nothing but dirt standing before her.
The female looks at the three of us with disgust and hatred – as if we’re worse than the Toad scum that captured her.
I shudder, my muscles tensing as I feel her gaze. I have to stop myself from smiling.