by V. K. Ludwig
My answer burned my throat. “No.”
He smiled as if that caressed his ego. “I guess it goes without saying that I’ve never been with a female, either.”
“You fuck droids.”
“True, but they don’t hiss and bite as prettily as you do.” His fingertips brushed across my forehead. “Would you believe me if I told you that I voted against this occupation?”
“No.” My jawline tensed even as I spoke. Three wardens led the Vetusian Empire, only two of them trueborn. If he’d voted, he had to be one of them. “Who are you?”
He sighed, and his eyes tightened around the corners as he shoved my chest covering higher, exposing my breasts. “My name is Zavis.”
“Zavis, of the house Broknar?”
“That one.”
Numbness spread across my face, all blood draining from there until it left my cheeks cold enough that I shivered. Was it not corrupted enough I had mated with a Vetusian who ransacked my home, but it had to be the one who gave the order?
“They say you’re insane.” A demon with no soul, artificially grown inside a chamber as void of light as his spirit was of conscience or care.
“Clearly,” he rasped and lowered down beside me, letting his palm weigh the flesh of my breast before he suckled a nipple into his mouth and released it with a wet pop. “Instead of hunting down Jal’zar warriors like I ought to, I’m lusting between the legs of one of their females.”
Hearing him say it ached, and that crack widened, pouring anguish into my chest. “You are heartless monsters. Liars who made us look like savages before the eyes of Earth leaders. Telling them we wanted to steal their resources when we only meant to trade. All so you could protect them from a threat you conjured.”
“Correct on all accounts. We fight this farce of a war to save my kind from extinction.” His fingers dug into my waist with bruising strength, but it didn’t burn nearly as bad as the path he kissed from breast to jawline with a tenderness he should not possess. “Earth isn’t entirely blameless, you know, with the way they keep refusing us their females, although we asked so nicely and did their bidding.”
“And if they continue to refuse?”
“This is our final attempt at merging our gene pool with that of Earth without bloodshed,” he said. “If human leaders won’t come to heel, we will invade.”
No matter how I arched my back, horns scraping along the rock, I couldn’t escape his kisses. They continued at an unhurried pace along my forehead, down the bridge of my nose, and to the corner of my mouth.
Then he nuzzled my cheek. “Let me kiss you.”
“Try, and I will bite you bloody.”
A lopsided smirk tugged on his lips as he finally lowered his head into his palm, elbow propped against the stone. He stared at me, our breaths mingling in the sliver of space between our faces.
“Your eyes are… fascinating,” he said, letting his thumb brush over my brow. “A bright purple like one of the Three Suns, but with specks of yellow if one looks deep enough.”
I didn’t like how this intimacy crept up on us one caress at a time. I hated how I saw all those things I’d previously missed: a scar hiding underneath his beard at the bottom of his chin, the faint glow of his irises, how his nose stood slightly crooked as if he’d broken it at some point.
“What happens to the warrior?”
Another twitch of his nostrils. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because he’s weak and a liability to us.”
His smirk tugged higher as he said, “I told him he’s no match for you.”
“What will you do to him?”
“Where do the other warriors hide?” He let a breath of silence pass — two, three — then clasped my chin. “I don’t expect you to tell me where they are, but don’t expect me to tell you what we’ll do with him. Out there, I do what I have to do and you do what you have to do. But in here? Right now? I don’t want to be a warden, warrior, or Vetusian.”
“But you are.”
“I’m also a male, Naney. One who longs for closeness, love, family.” Zavis abandoned my face, but he continued messing with my braids, grinning at how I could do nothing to stop him. “What do shamans do, Naney?”
I sighed. “We commune with Mekara, so the goddess may allow us to guide our people away from the wrath of ragna.”
“You do a poor job of that, too.”
My gaze dropped to where his nail tapped against the thin, tooled metal clasped around the end of my braid. “Mekara no longer speaks to me, nor does she listen. She stopped the sun my brother died.”
All that remained was hate.
Still bound, I couldn’t fight how he wrapped his arm around me and pulled my head to rest on his chest. “What happened to him?”
“You happened to him.” A slight tremor cut through his arms, as if he fought himself from holding me tighter. “The first wave of your troops killed him.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. Truly, I am.”
I scoffed, “What do you know of loss?”
The rise and fall of his chest stalled for a moment until his voice returned somewhat brittle. “For our first crop, my father had three eggs fertilized. Both my brothers killed themselves before my eyes. Fenju took a gun to his head and scattered his brains across the gardens. Karem slit his wrist during a delightful family meal.” The pain in his voice scraped me somewhere, but it ached when he said, “Being Vetusian doesn’t mean I’m a stranger to loss, Naney. From the moment I was harvested, I’d lost so much already: a mother, potential sisters, a mate to love, children to raise, a family to protect.”
No matter how I tried to hold it together, his words fractured something inside me. Why, I couldn’t say. I shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t have felt that twinge between my ribs. But most of all, I shouldn’t have sensed this urge to tell him I was sorry, too.
So, I said the only thing that helped me cling to my loathing for his kind. “I hate you.”
A single chuckle rumbled through his chest. “Say it again.”
“I hate you.”
“Again.”
I hadn’t wanted to hesitate the way I did, our eyes locking, suspending time for a breath. “I hate you.”
Of all the things he could have done, he smiled. “For a moment there, I feared you would tell me that you already miss me and that you can’t wait for me to return to you soon.”
“You will never hear such words from me.”
He placed a kiss on my head. “I hope not.”
Eight
Zavis
Not real.
My mind chanted the words as I traced the shell of Naney’s ear. The caress continued down her neck, along her collarbone, and across a thin line of blackened skin from a scar long healed.
Not real.
I hadn’t truly spent the night with a female in my arms. Hadn’t listened to the occasional hitches in her breathing. And I certainly hadn’t placed my hand onto her chest more than once, assuring myself that she indeed possessed a beating heart.
None of this was real because all of this was rotten. She rested it my arms because I’d bound her. Her breathing had hitched because she sobbed in her sleep. And her heartbeats…? They contained loss and grief.
Courtesy of the Vetusian Empire.
None of this was real, but I was content in enjoying the lie. Until her heat came to an end, I would pretend.
Pretend she was my female, so strong and fierce that I needed to fuck her into submission, lest she would chew my balls off. Pretend I was her protector, not the villain who sacked her planet, killed her people, and gave her nightmares.
Birds screeched somewhere outside, and streams of sunlight filtered through the fissure of the yoni. The air held traces of ozone and a freshness I’d only ever witnessed after heat and solar flares.
“Naney.” I stroked her braids between her horns. “We have to leave before someone finds us.”
Fussing with her hair always teased a reaction. Her head jerk
ed, and her gray horns clanked against the stone as I’d already freed them.
“I’m going to untie you now,” I said, and leaned over her as she blinked sleep from her mesmerizing eyes. “If you feel the need to kill me, please consider that I feel a greater need to fuck you.”
My cock joined the conversation, winking in her face. I angled my hips away in fear she might bite and untied the knots on my leather harness.
My muscles tensed as it loosened.
Would she jump me? Drive her tailclaw straight into my brain? Or would she only poke my temple while she sat on my cock and sated her mating heat? That was what we did, wasn’t it?
We fought, then we fucked.
We fucked, then we fought.
Nothing but obligation and lust on my part.
Nothing but nature and hate on hers.
To my surprise, she pushed herself up to sit and rubbed the marks on her wrists. “I fell asleep?”
“Drooled all over my chest.” And I fucking loved it. “Should I accompany you to your tree? Only for a part of the way, considering all I have left to wear are my chest holster and boots. They survived.”
She rose and shook her head, oddly quiet, downright suspicious with how she hadn’t hissed yet. “They might be searching for me… It’s best we part ways.”
Without a fight?
That was… odd.
I got up and put my chest holster on, then slipped into my singed boots, which I’d brought inside earlier. “Are you in pain?”
Now she hissed, even as she grabbed her leather covering. “I don’t need your seed. Not for a good three suns.”
I made a mental note to return on night four. “Are you this placid to trick me? Will you stab me in the neck once I turn to leave?”
Leather dangling in one hand, she rubbed the other over her forehead as her gaze went adrift on the water of the yoni. “I believe I had a dream. Or a vision, but…”
When her voice didn’t return, I holstered my gun and knife. “But what?”
“It doesn’t matter—” Her eyes snapped to something behind me, and her tail lifted the way it did when she felt cornered.
It drove a shudder across my skin, which tensed my muscles when I turned.
Fuck.
Two of my warriors stood inches from the fissure, their black uniforms a foreboding backdrop against the confusion on their faces. Their hands had stalled inches from the guns strapped to their chests — likely the moment they’d spotted their warden wearing little more than boots.
Or a half-naked Jal’zar female?
Violent heat spread across my body like wildfire, and I squared my shoulders, fighting for every sliver that blocked their view of her. “Turn around!”
“Yes, warden,” both shouted, and turned on their heels, eyes downcast.
“What are you doing here?”
“Forgive us for the… i-intrusion,” one of them stammered, and my breath hitched at that last word. The last idea I needed them to have was that they’d interfered with something. “Warden Torin sent us to search for you after you didn’t return to camp last night.”
A glance over my shoulder, where a dressed Naney snuck up, clearly ready to strike down my warriors with how her tail flicked.
What an awkward scenario.
The male in me reached for his gun. I could shoot one, Naney could kill the other. Threat of being discovered…? Eliminated.
But instead, the Vetusian in me reached for her shoulder, and I shook my head before I barked toward the warriors, “Wait outside!”
“Yes, warden.”
“They saw us,” Naney whispered.
“They saw nothing. We didn’t touch. We didn’t even stand close. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.” And I had about half an argos to come up with it. “Leave. Let me take care of this.”
Her lower lip trembled. “We need to kill them.”
“You truly expect me to kill two Vetusians? My own kind? Two of my warriors?” A scoff escaped me. “And if it were two Jal’zar who had found us, hmm? Would you ask me to kill them, too? Kill me if I tried to kill them?”
She sucked in her lips, pressing the little that remained into a light-gray line. The answer it provided roiled my stomach — not that I should have expected any different. She might have been my female for one night. But out there…?
She was the female I couldn’t have.
I was the enemy she had to kill.
“Never would I ask you to attack your own kind. Not with me, not for me. But I’m the one without soul and honor?” I raked a hand through my hair. “In four nights, I will—”
“This is our yoni, not yours,” she choked out, and an unreadable expression crossed her gray features, purple eyes flicking nervously around the cave. “Don’t come here again. Stay away from me, or I’ll kill you.”
“This is getting old.” I sighed and stepped toward the fissure. “Wait ten minutes, then go home, Naney.”
The moment I stepped outside, naked like the day they pulled me from the plastic bag that grew me, the warriors pulled their heads away from each other.
They said nothing.
They didn’t need to.
The way one of them curled an upper lip as he glanced back at the yoni? How the other ground his teeth as if it helped loosen the tension that pulled his jawline tight? Yeah, I needed to squash their talk fast before they spread among camp.
“My uniform burned in a heat flare,” I said, chin jutting toward the two saddled yuleshis. “My mount took off during the chaos. Did you bring any field equipment?”
One of them dipped his head. “My saddlebag has a spare uniform, warden.”
I acknowledge it with a grunt, headed toward the beasts, and rummaged through saddle bags until I found it. The shirt was nowhere near wide enough for me, so I didn’t even bother. While the pants stopped a good hands-width above my ankles, it covered my cock.
Partially dressed, I took the reins of one of the yuleshis and mounted. “You brought no additional mount?”
“No, warden.”
“Too bad for you.” I reined my mount toward camp, hand pointing toward the yuleshi I left behind. “It’s a bit tight up there for two warriors. You can take turns. Make certain you remain together. That’s an order.”
I kicked the yuleshi straight into a sprint and left them behind to walk. That would buy me enough time to explain all this. Whatever happened, I would not compromise Naney. Not after this sense of purpose she’d gifted me, as if I were actually good for something other than killing, if only for a night.
As soon as I arrived at our camp, warriors, engineers, and the occasional scholar eyed me warily — more so than usual. Torin soon joined them, wrinkles between his eyes furrowing deeper the longer he stared at my bare chest.
My boots hit the ground even before my yuleshi came to a stop. I handed the reins to a young warrior, but my attention already rested with Torin.
“Heat flares trapped me inside the yoni with a Jal’zar,” I said. “Remember when I said don’t come searching for me? I meant that.”
“Remember when I asked you not to bathe there? I meant that, too.” His green eyes took me in from wavy chest holster to barely buttoned pants. “Where is your uniform?”
“Burnt up.”
“Inside a yoni?”
“Yes. No.” Dammit, there went the rock-solid explanation. “Outside. I undressed outside and draped my stuff over a branch. Keeps the grit out of the fabric. Ragna struck. I fled to the yoni and remained there the night.”
“With a Jal’zar?”
I walked toward my temporary habitat, nothing but a palathium cube beside Com Central. “Uh-huh. Female. Now if you’d excuse me, I need a—”
“You spent the night with a female Jal’zar?” Of course, Torin wouldn’t let it go and followed behind me along the path of compacted ash; the air so dry each swallow was like choking on sand. “Naked?”
There was no point in denying what the warriors w
ould confirm later. “Mm-hmm.”
The moment I reached for the holographic access panel on the door, Torin grabbed my wrist. “Wash up later. There has a been a development with the warrior you captured. You need to look at this.”
“Brother, the seams on these pants squeak with each step. Surely, the Jal’zar—”
“His behavior changed significantly less than half an argos ago,” he said, and the way he straightened his spine invited no excuses. “It might not last, and I want your opinion on this. He has become aggressive to a point we had to sedate him.”
“Sedate him?” The warrior it had taken one breath to overwhelm?
“Scholars cannot explain it,” he said. “The shift was abrupt, reported to me only moments before you arrived.”
I stared at him for a moment, utterly aware of the sweat clinging to my skin and the remnants of my coupling with Naney. Still, the last thing I needed was rousing suspicion by being difficult.
With a nod, I followed him toward the large, rectangular building. The heat of the morning already distorted the air above the silver roof, where solar panels spanned the entire length.
The automated door opened with a hiss, and a blast of cool air pebbled my skin. Guards dipped their heads, mumbling, “Honorable wardens,” as we walked along the hallway. Empty holding cells lined the left and right, and a static hum resonated from the blue laser bars.
My nostrils twitched at the stench of burned flesh. It intensified toward the end of the corridor, where beastly grunts echoed from the metal walls. They turned to roars, and a relentless bang-bang-bang made my muscles twitch.
Torin stopped before the cell. “He keeps ramming the walls.”
Walls the warrior had torn open in some spots, the sharp edges of the exposed metal liner streaked with blood. At least a dozen cuts crisscrossed the warrior’s forehead. He added to them whenever he rammed his dark horns into the wall, the dents deep enough to fit my fist.
I clenched and unclenched my hands to combat the spreading numbness there. “You mentioned sedation?”
“His aggression must have worsened when I went to get you.”
