Krygor’s Hope: Braxians 3

by Abel, Regine

Siona bristled at that comment and glared at the Ambassador. Zerien cast a glance in her direction, an amused smile stretching his lips before looking back at Hartuk.

  “Or maybe I should convince the Emperor to ally with them instead and be on the winning side of the war,” Zerien deadpanned.

  Hartuk failed to hide his initial shock at that comment. Regaining his composure, he leveled a cold stare on the younger male. “You would so easily turn on the alliance between our peoples?” the Ambassador asked with an icy tone.

  “There is no official alliance between Sarenians and Guldans,” Zerien replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “According to all the prophecies, the Great War will start around the time my father will step down from the throne and my reign will begin. The Veredians have been building formidable alliances, and their technology rivals, if not surpasses, yours.”

  “But the Veredians will not be the ones ruling the galaxy in the next decade. The Galactic Council will,” Hartuk hissed. “They will force you into their way of life, deprive you of your choices and freedoms, and cause the financial collapse of your planet.”

  “The Braxians have joined the Council and banned slavery on their world,” the Prince countered, holding Hartuk’s gaze. “If such a ‘primitive’ species—as you label them—has managed to turn their economy around, then a more advanced race such as ours should be able to prevail as well.”

  “What are you saying, Prince Zerien?” Hartuk asked in a clipped tone.

  “Merely that your little show has given me food for thought,” Zerien replied nonchalantly before caressing Siona’s cheeks with his knuckles. My daughter stiffened but didn’t pull away. “For now, however, the spectators are growing restless. You should proceed with the rest of your plan.”

  Hartuk harrumphed with a stiff nod then gestured at someone I couldn’t see. Some kind of horn blared, and a hush fell over the audience. As the note slowly faded, an eerily expectant silence settled on the Arena. And then, on the left, narrower side of the Arena, the walls slid open with a grinding sound followed by the roar of a beast. Cold shivers ran down my spine, and my skin erupted in goosebumps.

  A nightmarish beast slowly came out through the large doors. Well over two meters high and at least five meters long, its body reminded me of a red and black crocodile with a long, club-like tail covered in vicious spikes. It didn’t crawl but walked on its six legs. The head resembled that of a worm and opened like a flower to reveal a terrifying maw filled with razor-sharp teeth. Two rows of disproportionately tiny eyes lined the sides of its face—although it could have also been its neck. Four thick stinger spikes protruded from its back in an almost perfect square. I’d heard of a Verlenk but never imagined they’d be this dreadful in the flesh.

  The beast lifted its head, bobbing it slightly as dogs sometimes did when sniffing the air, although I couldn’t see any snout on the creature. My stomach knotted as it continued its slow advance towards Krygor and his men. They had no weapons, and the chains still attached to their magnetic shackles would weigh them down and slow their movements.

  “Don’t be scared, Mama,” Siona said with the same unshakable confidence she’d displayed ever since Krygor had claimed her as his daughter. “Papa will defeat that beast with the same ease he crushed those two idiots.”

  “Watch your tongue, female,” Ambassador Hartuk hissed before I could respond. “Your whore of a mother may have taken you off Guldar, but once the Prince is done fucking your tight cunt, I’ll make sure to remind you of a female’s place.”

  “Leave my daughter alone, you piece of shit!” I shouted, jumping to my feet, at the same time the Prince turned to the Ambassador with an outraged expression on his young face.

  “You dare?!” Hartuk exclaimed.

  As if in slow motion, I saw his hand rushing towards my face to backhand me. Initially paralyzed by shock, I started moving too late, fearing the brutal blow that would no doubt split my lip open, if not knock out one of my teeth. But the impact never came. Moving at lightning speed, Faolen blocked Hartuk’s arm before kicking him squarely in the chest, sending him flying back against the stone railing of the box.

  Faolen’s murderous glare echoed that of every other Sarenian guard surrounding us, and the outraged look of the handful of nearby females. Hartuk’s two guards, who had reached for their weapons, hesitated in light of the overwhelming condemnation from their hosts.

  “You strike an ally over a female? A slut?” Hartuk asked, disbelieving, while rubbing his chest.

  “Disrespect or threaten this woman again—” Faolen said through his teeth.

  “Or her daughter,” Prince Zerien interjected.

  “And you will get far more than a kick to the chest,” Faolen concluded.

  Hartuk opened his mouth to argue, but Emperor Nemrox rising from his throne to approach our box silenced him.

  “Females are created for a male’s pleasure and to prolong his bloodline through the pains of pregnancy,” the Emperor said in an icy tone that gave me chills. “And in exchange for those precious gifts, a male’s duty is to reciprocate that pleasure, protect the females, and provide for them. Raise a hand again to a female on my home world—any female—and I’ll chop it off myself and feed it to you raw.”

  I instinctively knew the Emperor would make Hartuk eat his own hand through compulsion. However horrible that picture was, a sadistic side of me I hadn’t known existed actually wished to witness it.

  “Emperor—” Ambassador Hartuk said with a shocked expression.

  “Silence!” Emperor Nemrox interrupted. “Tread carefully, Ambassador. I am starting to be tempted to side with my heir as to the value of this alliance.”

  The roar of the beast had all our heads snapping towards the Arena where the three Braxians had begun a lethal dance with the creature. My heart skipped a beat as it charged my giant. Spinning both of his chains joined together, Krygor stood his ground until the last minute. Then just as the Verlenk opened its terrifying maw to swallow him, my man swiped the chains at it. The blow resounded like an explosion. The beast’s head violently jerked left, making it stumble out of balance. Zartag and Yulan, moving in sync, rammed it on the side to topple it over.

  To my shock, instead of lying helplessly on its side, the Verlenk pushed itself back on its short feet. The four spikes on its back suddenly shot out, attached to tentacle-like appendages, and attempted to spear the men. They scrambled out of the way, while the creature continued to charge them, reeling in its stingers only to launch them at the men again.

  With the Braxians scattering in different directions, the Verlenk focused its attack on my giant. It simultaneously attempted to strike Krygor with two of its stingers at once. He dodged the first and knocked the second out of the way. But before he could regain his balance, the other two stingers darted towards him.

  “Krygor!” I shouted, jumping to my feet when he fell to the ground onto his back.

  He caught the first stinger with both hands, moving his head out of the path of the second in extremis. The Verlenk attempting to retract the stinger my man had caught ended up yanking Krygor off the ground. Hanging on to the base of the stinger, Krygor flew above the beast’s head to land onto its back. For a moment, I thought he had lost his mind, but then I realized he stood in the creature’s blind spot, preventing it from effectively targeting him with the other three stingers. While the beast lashed at him in vain, Krygor tore the stinger he still held off the tentacle it had been attached to.

  The Verlenk screamed in pain and reared on its four back legs. Yulan seized the opportunity to swing his chains at its exposed neck, while Zartag swiped his own at the creature’s hind legs. The beast roared again and shot out its three stingers. Krygor caught one, and each of his men did the same, allowing the creature to reel them onto its back like my man had. The Verlenk thrashed about to knock off the men, but they made quick work on tearing off its remaining stingers.

  The agonized cries of the beast hurt my ears. A part of m
e felt sorry for it. And yet, I joined my voice to the encouraging cheers of my daughter and the crowd as the Braxians hung onto the spikes on the creature’s back to remain seated atop it and stabbed at the Verlenk’s back using its own poisoned stingers. Within seconds, a red foam appeared at the rounded tip of the beast’s head. Its movements became jerky while its massive spiked tail frantically swished from side to side. In an apparent desperate last move, the Verlenk lashed at its own back with its tail. The men jumped off just in time for the vicious spikes of the tail to embed themselves into the creature’s lower back.

  With a drawn-out groan, the Verlenk toppled to the side. Its clawed feet twitched, a shudder coursed through it, and then it went still.

  The crowd erupted in a powerful roar of approval as my own soared with gratitude and relief. My feet carried me to the ledge of the box. Eyes locked with mine, Krygor also took a few steps towards me. Even bloodied and covered in gore, my giant was the most magnificent beast I had ever laid eyes upon. In spite of our current predicament, I felt no fear. His Berserker energy continued to course through me, making me strong, invincible. My skin tingled, but it was a different fire that was now setting my body ablaze. A predatory grin stretched his lips—the hungry smile I’d grown to know well in our far too short time together, making my nipples harden and moisture pool between my thighs.

  “Your father is a formidable beast,” Prince Zerien said to Siona with undisguised admiration.

  Although his words echoed the thoughts that had just crossed my mind, the disruption in my lusty trance with my man irritated me.

  “He is the best and the strongest,” Siona replied, her voice bursting with pride. “And he will destroy anything and anyone who threatens him and his family.”

  “And yet, that savage won’t leave this planet alive,” Hartuk said with a condescending tone, clearly displeased by the outcome of his little show.

  “No, Ambassador Hartuk,” I said in a hard voice, my eyes never straying from my man. “It is you who will not make it off Sarenia in one piece if you don’t leave in all haste. What he did to those two men will be nothing in comparison to what he’ll do to you.”

  Krygor’s arms and legs straightened, once more controlled by the magnetic shackles around them, and his body levitated as a group of six Sarenian guards entered the battleground. The same occurred to his men. My gaze followed them as they were escorted out.

  * * *

  I sat next to Gatina in the imposing hot tub of the Serail’s spa, large enough to accommodate a dozen adults. Hamara, another Sarenian, sat across from us. In the deeper pool adjacent to us, a human female named Nadia was performing some water aerobics. Tall, lean, with long, candy pink hair and a few piercings along her left eyebrow and navel, Nadia was a beautiful fifty-two-year-old female, obsessed with maintaining her flawless appearance. I couldn’t blame her, considering how breathtaking everyone looked on this planet.

  For the hundredth time in the past five minutes, I looked over my shoulder through the glass wall at my daughter lying face down on a massage bed while a female slave was placing hot stones along her spine.

  “Seriously, your overprotectiveness of the young one is getting silly,” Gatina said with genuine confusion. “She’s in a safe environment, and she’s grown.”

  My head snapped towards Gatina, and I glared at her. “She’s hardly grown, she’s a child!” I exclaimed, annoyed beyond words that they didn’t understand something so simple. I turned to Nadia who was running in place with water up to her shoulders. “Your people understand well that you’re not an adult at twelve years of age.”

  Nadia stopped running although she kept walking in place. “Adulthood and age of sexual consent are two very different things,” the human said. “Children are becoming sexually active at younger and younger ages. Aside from some highly conservative colonies, a majority of humans have their first sexual encounters in their early teen years, meaning around your daughter’s age.”

  “But it is of their own free will and with someone of their choosing,” I countered. “And even then, it is discouraged. They do not have the maturity to deal with the consequences. What if they get pregnant? Can you imagine children raising children?”

  “It would be a disaster, which is why it doesn’t happen here,” Gatina explained patiently. “All of your species are trying to fight the natural order of things by imposing all kinds of laws and rules. Our bodies know when they are ready for coupling, and that’s when we blossom into puberty. There’s also a reason we get horny during our fertile cycles. But unlike the rest of the galaxy, instead of shaming, denying, or controlling, we embrace our normal and natural desires.”

  “And then you end up with a bunch of teenaged mothers,” I replied in a cold voice.

  “Yes,” Gatina said with a dismissive shrug. “I had my first child a few weeks shy of my thirteenth birthday and gave birth to my ninth one five months ago.”

  “You have nine children!” I exclaimed, my eyes all but popping out of my head.

  “I have eleven,” Hamara said smugly while Gatina nodded with an amused smile.

  My head turned towards Nadia who burst out laughing.

  “Nope, not me. I have no use and no patience for children. I just like to fuck,” Nadia said with a lecherous expression on her face. “Give it to me hard, give it to me soft, missionary, gangbang, anal, you name it, just give it to me. I can never get enough cock, especially not when it’s attached to those ridiculously hot and sexy Sarenians. They are the best lovers any woman could want. They will not leave you alone until you’ve come at least five times. Even now, I wish one of them would fuck me into next week. I’m what the Sarenians call a Temptress: a single, willing female, either no longer fertile or taking contraceptives—although back home they call me a nymphomaniac.”

  My face heated at the crude language, and the unrepentant smile on her face left me speechless, which had the other two females giggling.

  “Nadia isn’t the only foreigner to have come to Sarenia specifically to find sexual fulfillment without the judging and shaming of their own worlds,” Gatina explained. “Hamara and I are what we call Sirens: single, willing females that are still fertile. As you may have noticed, our males outnumber us four to one. The Serail system was put in place to avoid the bloodshed that used to occur because of men fighting over females, especially for a chance to keep their bloodlines going.”

  “With the Hunt, it is all about the survival of the fittest,” Hamara said. “The best male catches first the most coveted females. Any female he manages to catch, he fills with his seed and then moves on to the next. The more females he inseminates, the greater the chances one of them will bear him an offspring.”

  “Although, another could catch that same female during the Hunt, and spill his seed inside her as well. So, if she does conceive, it may not be the child of the first Hunter,” Gatina specified.

  “True,” Hamara conceded. “However, some Hunters will want to increase the chances of conceiving with a specific female. Therefore, if he manages to catch her, he will insert his gem in her armband. That effectively eliminates her from the Hunt. For the next month, she will live with him, and he will bed her daily to try to impregnate her. It is a great honor to be so chosen,” Hamara insisted at the sight of my horrified expression.

  I examined the faces of all three women, shocked that they would consider so natural and normal to basically be sexual toys and broodmares to their males.

  “And what of those children they keep conceiving on you?” I asked, speechless. “Hamara, you say you have eleven, and Gatina nine. And yet, I’ve been here three days and haven’t seen a single child here or any of you leave to go care for them.”

  “Oh, fuck no!” Gatina exclaimed with a horrified expression. “I’m still too young to deal with that kind of responsibility. I wouldn’t trust myself with one child, forget nine.”

  “I’d be even worse,” Hamara confessed without the slightest remorse. “Like Nadia
, I do not have a single maternal cell in my body. I would make a lousy mother, but I take pride birthing beautiful children for our greatest bloodlines and for proper parents to raise.”

  “You birth children that you abandon?” I asked, my voice barely higher than a whisper from shock.

  “I realize this sounds horrifying to you, especially seeing how protective you are of your daughter,” Gatina said in a surprisingly understanding voice. “Like I said earlier, we approach sexuality and reproduction very differently from the rest of the galaxy. Children shouldn’t raise children. No teenager is capable of properly raising a baby. But even a twenty or thirty-year-old lacks the proper maturity for parenthood. Those are our true formative years, when we define who we are and what we want in life.”

  “Those are also our prime years physically and reproductively, when we want to be carefree, have fun, and enjoy the wilder things in life,” Hamara continued. “We can’t do that with a bunch of toddlers demanding attention and to be taught everything. Which is why we have Matriarchs and Patriarchs. On Sarenia, you cannot be a parent before the age of fifty. Between studies, our youth is to have fun and reproduce. Once we reach true maturity between fifty and sixty and go through drortak—our final molt—we begin our social duties. While I lack maternal instinct to raise children, I have a great scientific mind. I will work in our research labs, train and mentor young graduates, and help teachers keep their scientific materials up to date.”

  “But… Do you at least get to pick which parent raises your child?” I asked, bewildered.

  “No,” Gatina said with a shrug. “It can take years for us to know if our offspring survived long enough to achieve its first molt.”

  I gaped at her, almost rendered speechless by such indifference. “What do you mean?”

  “We are amphibian,” Gatina explained, while kicking her feet underwater. “Our pregnancies last only three months after which we will lay our tadpole in a large body of water. It will fend for itself and hunt for its own food for four months. If it survives the predators in the river, the tadpole will have grown arms and developed legs beneath the sheath of its tail, which it will shed during the first molt. At that point, the child will leave the water and climb the hill of the Tenyema River’s shore. It is fairly steep and slippery. If the child hasn’t gained enough strength, it will die trying or get snagged by birds of prey hunting the region.”