Otherworldly

by C F Rabbiosi

“Yes!” Pulling my head back, he strokes down the length of my locks.

  “Am I not the unworthy one, a tainting in your superior genes?”

  “Yes,” he says with a throaty whisper. He presses the small of my back and roughly brings his lips to mine. They hover, the slightest movement to be his undoing. I’m stuck tight and becoming frightened by his change in demeanor. The hatred, the anger, it has dissolved into something scarier.

  “Then why do you still desire me so badly, Brekter?”

  His eyes gloss over and, as I search him, he transforms into the desperate being struggling against his restraints when Kassien held me below him. He holds my face against his. “I cannot accept what I feel for you—”

  “You have lust for me. Kassien explained the appeal that seeps from my skin and infects you. It isn’t real. Not for you.” The realization hits me that Kassien’s love may also be just that. But this is not the time to worry when he may not even be alive any longer.

  “I know what this is supposed to be! But you are the one who said that it is more than science, a powerful potion, a spell. I have read your books. I know what magic is. And as I watched you two, I saw your words come to life.” He holds my face and his kiss, raw and rabid, forces onto my lips.

  I shake my head and he forces me back, a hand firmly over my chest. “We can have that, too.”

  “But we can’t. I belong to Kassien now.”

  “Then I have to mate you as he did. Then you will be mine.” He doesn’t hear my protests as he pulls the gown over my head, material ripping. My full breasts pop out and he tongues them, long wet strokes, one after the other. “Please let me try. You know the truth now, that I love you. Please let me make you feel the same.”

  He positions himself between my legs and works toward the place he desires but I clench my legs and push him away.

  “No!” I say despairingly. “Mating me now is the worst thing you could do!” I accepted Kassien and Tanak before, so badly wanting my people to be free from the fear and isolation they have always known, but I won’t do this. My entire being burns with the force of holding him back. I am Koridon too, and stronger than I ever imagined. I release my palm from his chest to bring my fist smacking into his temple over and over, grunting with the force. He secures my wrist as I scream and crushes me into the ground.

  He shakes his head and touches the broken skin on his face. “You could have my child instead. This is the only way.” His thrusting pressure seizes my body as he forces his oversized maleness through my Kassien-slick flesh. My nails find his tough skin and as he growls his utter satisfaction, I hear a thousand pounds of angst pull away from him. He has entered a dark heaven and the fight leaves me. I jar up and down with tears squeezing a trail down the side of my face to swirl into the dirt. Tense and disgusted, it hurts more than Alexander hurt me, even though it isn’t so much physical. I bite the inside of my cheek and try to drift away, willing him to finish and end the misery.

  This doesn’t change who I am. It doesn’t take away from my newfound heredity, and I no longer fear that being mated by a Koridon will kill me. He will finish, and I will survive. Somehow, I will escape him and find Kassien. In my heart, I know I have already conceived and this mindless beast who could not stop himself will be punished severely by Kassien once he finds us. And he will find me. It isn’t just chemicals between us. He was willing to give up his rule for me. What started out as lust transformed within days into something genuine and worth everything. He will find me.

  26

  ~Calypso~

  Brekter enters his releasing moments and holds me into him by the back of my neck as he pumps and pulses his hot liquid. I grit my teeth and wait, the huge knot giving no pleasure as it did in my heightened arousal with Kassien. Within minutes, he smooths his hand down my back several times, then collapses me back down to lay on top of me. Running his fingers over my lips, he bends down to them. “I will take you again, and this time you will respond to me.” He plants a kiss and I jerk my head aside. “I was being gentle with you, like Kassien was, but maybe you need something more.” An eerie note plays through his words, a song that convinces me I have no past and no future. He drags me to my knees, then hits me down to all fours. A push into my head puts my face to the ground.

  “Please,” I whisper into the dirt. Not again. I can’t endure this again!

  His tip moves between the cheeks of my backside. “I will grind you into the forest floor the entire night. Hard, brutally. You will learn to love it. Beg for it, even.”

  More empty than I’ve ever felt, he asks me to be hot and responsive for him, but I’m so cold. “Please, Brekter. Can’t you see? The kind of love you seek cannot be forced!”

  “What do you want me to do? Tell me!” He rips me up to my knees and shakes me violently.

  My body aches. My spirit is broken. I don’t know what has happened to my prince. “Something selfless,” I say weakly.

  He brings me to my feet and dusts the crumbled leaves and dirt from my skin. “Go then. Go home. I give you your freedom.”

  I squeeze my burning eyes shut and drop my head. “Brekter—” My joyful sob muffles into his shoulder. This is truly unexpected. “Thank you.”

  “But listen to me.” He kneels and puts the back of my hand to his cheek. “You must come back before the child is born. I will return to the ship and negotiate Kassien’s release. Go wherever you will, but with your promise. Is this selfless?”

  There is nothing I can do to help Kassien. This may be his only chance. Brekter can’t be sure he will be able to undo this floodgate, but it’s more than I can do. And I miss my mother so much suddenly, I can barely breathe. “Yes.”

  “I fear for your safety, anyway. Efaelty’s clan leader, Drakon, will not accept you yet. That is why you must go back to whatever safety you know for now.”

  I have never told them about my village, not even Kassien. “I know where to find my mother and father. We travel south this time of year toward warmer places. I will go to them.”

  He slips the blue gown into my hands. “You are a nomad?” He nods with sorrow touching his dark features. “Our deal is struck.”

  With horror tingling my extremities, I promise him. “If you will spare Kassien and let me go to my own family, I will return to be your mate.”

  With a strong sigh he braces me against him. “In ten months, I will be waiting at the ship for you with all the medical aid you will need—not that you aren’t strong enough to bear our child on your own.”

  What are the chances of becoming pregnant by this second coupling? I did stand up immediately after Kassien and I were finished. I felt his warmth stream out, but he released into me for several minutes before, so hopefully…

  A strange violet and orange flower catches my eye. It’s the one Efaelty told me held special ingredients for my Koridon blood. I will need to find these during the pregnancy as the baby will need its alien nutrients. “Yes, I agree.” I watch the sun descend low in the clouds and know that direction is west. I can find my village by tomorrow morning. As much as I care for Kassien, home calls to me. The people who raised me, and Scarlet. I will find out if she made it back. And Momma must think I’m dead. Joy wells up in my soul and Brekter’s kindness softens my feelings for him. What if uniting with him still means changing the world?

  I want to give him a taste of the love he yearns for and pull him down to my mouth. His massive form melts against me, and as my hand runs down his face, I pull away. He silently begs me to let him have my body one last time before I go.

  I pull the torn gown over my head and smooth it down my thighs. “Ten months.”

  He removes his robe and puts it around my shoulders, and I leave him standing alone in the wilderness.

  His roar booms through the forest, and I run, exhilarated as freedom bleeds through my pores. My feet take me with unwavering speed toward home, and my excited laugh enters the atmosphere.

  Several times I flip around to observe my surro
undings, but he isn’t there. I am alone and so free, my blood bubbles with happiness. I run toward the sun until it turns the sky red. I don’t stop to rest until the darkness threatens to turn me in the wrong direction. Running water sounds from somewhere nearby, and I follow it to a stream to settle down for the night. I drink and rehydrate. At the first sign of light, my hidden village will be only a few hours away. I will know it by the willow tree that stands out in a forest of oak. As I gather foliage and moss to sleep upon, I find some of the violet and orange striped flowers Efaelty described. They line my path and I pick a few to chew on the petals. These will need to be found to keep me strong while I’m back at home. Holding Brekter’s warm robe around me, I settle into the brush pallet and let the rustling of nocturnal animals moving about and humming insects put me to sleep. Thoughts fight against my rest: the new life within me, Kassien, the marriage with Brekter I’ve agreed to, and lastly, home. But those thoughts finally carry me into dreams.

  The howl of a wolf jolts me awake. Heart racing, I listen to the patter of their feet, the snapping of twigs. Though many animals out here could tear me to bits, I am not afraid. With the blood of the warrior race of Koridon running through my veins, they should fear me. Dawn’s light cracks through the trees and I stretch, excited about the morning and my mother being only a few hours away.

  Drinking again from the stream, I douse my face with the cool water and swipe the rogue hair back. Shins on the ground, my eyes get caught on the raised scars peeking out from the blue dress upon my thighs. Slicing my skin used to feel like opening my body to allow the thing inside me to escape, but that is not what it was. The thing inside me was Koridon, and it never could have torn its way out of me. It was the incredible beast’s cry for violence, pain and the seeping of sparkling rubies sliding slowly down pale skin. I am a new creature, and possibly the beginning of a new race.

  Beauty surrounds in ways I have never experienced before as I near the planted willow tree marking my cloaked village. Though my bare feet ache from various cuts, I run, and enter the barrier, its cool plasma reminiscent of the terrarium back with Kassien. Embers smolder in the middle of the square and there isn’t a soul is in sight as I move toward Momma’s cabin. The quiet grips me; it’s too empty, no one moving about to begin the cooking, or preparing the day’s work stations.

  I fling the door open and Momma immediately sits up.

  She gasps and runs to me. “My daughter! Oh!” She embraces me and I hug her right back, our faces covered in tears. “You made it home! How did you—” She squeezes and takes a shuddered breath.

  “There wasn’t anyone in the square…”

  “Curfews are in place since Scarlet returned and—”

  “Is she all right?”

  She nods and wipes a side of my salty dampness. “She said a Koridon got you, dragged you away. What those men did to you…oh, my child, I’m so sorry for what you must have endured.” But she has a very good idea of it.

  Lying cold in the forest floor, blood flowing from my body and having Alexander’s disgusting man climb on top of me…had Kassien not been in the area and caught my scent, I would have died. “Momma, you know, don’t you?”

  “You know, then. The truth about who you are.” She nods and gives a look of unshakeable strength. “Good. This is why you survived them.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I sit on the weathered bed and speak calmly. She’s been through enough, and of course has her reasons, but little pangs of betrayal hurt my stomach. Never knowing why my features were so different, never understanding the aggression boiling in my blood, I’ve always been an outsider. A mutated freak.

  “Being born of Koridons is far worse than being born with a defect in the minds of humans,” she says.

  “But there must be others if we are known throughout the world.”

  “Yes.” She wets a rag and washes the dirt from my feet, sleep still touching her lovely features. “The truth lies only with the leaders, to prevent fear and from the child being turned away from the village.”

  She frowns, deep in thought as she washes the dirt away. She wrings out the wash rag and grabs a towel. “Momma,” I can hardly contain my excitement. “One of the females explained the reason for my early passing.”

  She stops mid grab toward the towel rack and flips around. “What do you mean?”

  “They need a certain nutrient that doesn’t grow on Earth.”

  Her eyes squeeze shut. “Then…So do you.” I nod with a happy gleam and she runs to me. “You won’t die?”

  “No.”

  Her embrace crushes me.

  My thoughts drift to the possible life growing inside me. “There’s something else.” She sits next to me and wipes her tears. “I became the mate of their prince.”

  Lashes pasted to her forehead, she nearly chokes. She can’t decide between horror and fascination. She searches me, her own memories again realized and worse, because her own flesh and blood has now been touched by the curse. “Why did this happen? Did they hurt you?”

  Kassien wasn’t pain; he was ecstasy. Being near him made me come alive, and when we shared moments of physical love, his body stroked that ecstasy into something deliciously evil. “It was…very hard to describe. But their race is dying. Their young are not making it through the pregnancy, or if they do, they are lost shortly after being born.”

  She scoots over and rattles the bed. “He thinks a child with a partly earth-born woman will ensure be healthy.”

  “Yes! Exactly. And being half,” It’s strange saying such a thing to her, “half Koridon already, their bloodlines will carry on.”

  “My beautiful girl. Your worth realized. The others like you, they might want to find them now.”

  And with that, I must bring our excitement to a halt. She needs to know how my story ends. “I may be with child. They know when I woman is ripe, and the prince made sure our union was witnessed by his clan, one of which, was a rival of his. Aided by another clan, he seized him and took me.” Brekter’s unwanted touch still burns, and I don’t have to say any more of what happened next; she already knows.

  “How did you get away from him?”

  “He, well, he sort of…Had a change of heart.” I explain to her about their culture’s mechanical relationships without passion or lust, and how Brekter watched love unfold between Kassien and I. The quick pace of my story and the excited notes can’t be hidden. So much of my tale was frightening, but in the end, it was an adventure of a lifetime. “But now I am promised to Brekter,” I tell her. “He begged me to love him like I do Kassien, and I told him it wasn’t a choice. He broke down and begged me to tell him what to do. So I said, Do something selfless. That’s when he let me come home with the promise that I will return to him.”

  The color leeches from her face and she jumps up to look outside. “My daughter.” Her eyes fill with tears.

  “What is it?” I stand beside her and look out into the hazy morning and startle. One of our women, Alice, moves across the grounds toward the animal cages. I relax and puzzle toward my mother. She laces her fingers back and forth, working something out in her mind.

  “Is there any way this Brekter may have followed you here?”

  “No. He—” I think of his sorrowful state, the way he kneeled to hold me around my waist and made me promise to come back to him when the child was born. “He has claimed me, hoping I carry his child.” It hurts to say it aloud. From my depths I still scream for Kassien. “He’s ashamed of the way he feels, but he’s in love with me. And I have promised to return to him. In fear of what he might do if he comes looking for me, I have to go in ten months’ time.”

  “I won’t let you go! No, not again.”

  “If there is a child…” I touch my belly. “I can’t do it without them, Momma.”

  “I did, and I do not have your Koridon strength.”

  “I am strong. Especially since drinking their tea.” My heart hurts for her, empathizing with the terror as some
strange thing grew inside her body. Transferring to a new village, I can’t imagine how awful. And our leaders helped her, kept her secret. Even fabricated a new story about the day the men died on that hunting trip. The perfect opportunity when the question of my father came up later. And all the people who knew the truth about me. Did Alexander, I wonder?

  “I’m astonished by your strength when it came down to having me.” She probably thought it was going to kill her. I wonder what she must have thought when my odd coloration was revealed, poor Momma. But if it turns out to be a male that grows in my belly, birthing it could become more complicated. They get big, and we definitely need to gather the violet and orange flower to ingest as soon as possible. I touch the pocket in Brekter’s robe and feel their bumpy presence. “What if I put you and the others in danger by staying here? Let’s not give him a reason to come looking for me.” On that note, Kassien could be the one to find me. We weren’t far from here when he first id, and because we use their cloaking technology, he would probably recognize it. I was so careful never to tell him about this place. “Momma, how did we get their technology? It seems strange that—”

  A scream rips through the morning and we rush back to the window. Alice. We race out to the square toward the animal cages where we heard her cry, but my feet stop dead in the dust.

  A line of Koridons in black war armor stand inside our protected dome.

  27

  ~Calypso~

  Brekter holds Alice by the back of her neck, her toes suspended a foot from the ground. “Go back inside,” I growl at my mother.

  “Let her go!” I yell to Brekter. The ones beside him, and Drakon, the enemies who burst into the ceremony yesterday, stare with dark intent at Alice and my mother. Several windows move with curtains being pulled aside, and I want to sink into the dirt, lost forever and from what I’ve done.

  “Hello, pretty animal,” says Brekter with his lips pulled back in a wicked grin. Alice kicks and her skin beads with sweat, her face a suffocated purple.