by Roxie Ray
Nothing that I had just imagined could ever be made real.
As I adjusted the showerhead to wash the rest of my seed down the drain, I tried to process my attraction to the human and failed. It was undeniable now, the way I desired her. Undeniable, and undeniably wrong.
It would be wise, then, to keep my distance from the human. I could not compromise my mission by tempting myself with her. I could not allow my cruel longings to seep into the reality I faced as the captain of this ship.
Nonetheless, I longed to be near her again. Even the sour scent of her fear, I could conjure so vividly in my mind that it was almost intoxicating. The memory of her spicy anger, I enjoyed even more.
Perhaps, though…
Perhaps, as a general of my people and as captain of this ship, it would be appropriate to speak with the human female just once more. Someone needed to ascertain exactly how she had arrived at the auction house. Someone needed to check up on her after her fainting spell on the viewing deck, ensure that she would be able to return to good health. She would have questions, I was certain, especially if she had been captured by slavers rather than entering the slave trade willingly.
And now that she no longer believed she was dreaming, someone would have to finally ask her if she would agree to be tested by our specialists. Humans were all too rare throughout all of the galaxies, and whether or not they were capable of bearing Lunarian cubs was yet to be seen.
Perhaps if she was not willing, she knew of another human female who would be.
As general and captain, it was not only my desire to be the one to ask all of this of her—it was, in fact, my duty.
And now that my balls were empty and my lust satisfied—at least, for now… a
small audience with the human, I determined, surely could not hurt.
6
Bria
I dreamed of planets. Earth, then Mars, then Jupiter and Saturn, zooming past each of them so fast that the pinpricks of starlight all around them started to blur. Somewhere out past Pluto, I looked back and Earth was the size of a marble in the distance.
No matter how hard I struggled, I couldn’t get back.
I woke up panting, my fingers clutching at the sheets beneath me. But slowly, as I came back to consciousness, I realized that I hadn’t woken up alone.
“What are you doing?” I snapped as my gaze fell on the man standing in the corner on the other side of the room. The general. The one with the dark orange skin and the silver hair.
I was back in my little white-tiled cell, still wearing my thin hospital gown. But I was suddenly acutely aware of how cold the room was now, the way it had made my nipples achingly hard, so hard that they were pushing through the gown’s fabric and easily visible from beneath it.
Annoyingly, none of these aliens had felt it was necessary to provide their captives with bras.
I scrambled back into the corner of my bed, wide awake now, but the general didn’t move at all.
“I was watching over you while you slept,” he said simply. There was a look of interest on his face as he watched me pant and push away from him, but he didn’t make any motion to step back or leave. “I wanted to ensure that you were safe.”
“Yeah, it’s creepy. Do you do that to all of the other women you have locked up in your stupid slave ship?” It was a gamble. I didn’t know for sure that there even were other women here. At least, I didn’t until he frowned at my words.
“I do not, no.” His eyes narrowed and his head turned to the side. Like a cat catching sight of a laser pointer for the first time. “Cree-pee…this word does not register with my translator chip. What does it mean?”
“It…it means…” I stumbled over my words for a moment, then furrowed my brow in frustration. I’d already been kidnapped by this guy. Did I really have to give him a vocabulary lesson, too? “Pervy. Weird. Freaky. It means you’re doing something really unsettling to me. You’re acting horny and awkward in a way I don’t like. You—you’re a creep.” I scoffed. “Although, I guess I don’t know why I’m surprised by that.”
To my annoyance, he laughed. It was only a chuckle, but it was deep and booming. A little rough and ragged, too. The sound gave me goosebumps.
“Ah. Deviant.” He nodded in understanding. “You believe I am watching you sleep for sexual pleasure without your consent.”
“Well…yes. Aren’t you?”
Another laugh. “No. As I said, I was ensuring your safety until you woke up.”
“Yeah, well…I’m awake now.” I clutched my arms around me and nodded to the spot on the wall that he could make shimmer into an exit at will. “So, you can go.”
“No.” There was still laughter in his voice, which only made me more furious at him. He was talking to me like I was some kind of joke. “You fascinate me, vringna. I had never spoken to a human before I met you. Our research on your species was minimal at best. Not many in the galaxies seem to care much about Earth or the humans inhabiting it. There is no information to be found.”
“No surprises there.” I guessed that was part of why I must have passed out when I realized how far from home I really was. We didn’t exactly have extraterrestrial contact—at least, not publicly. If the government in the sectors knew about aliens like the general and his crew, they were probably still just waiting to figure out how to monetize it.
As far as I knew, I was the first human who had spoken to any alien at all. I guessed in that sense, the general and I had something in common.
I stared him down, my medical curiosity getting the better of me for a moment. There’d been stories of little green men back on Earth, sure. Flying saucers with green laser beams, stealing away farmers in Sector Three, leaving weird symbols in the corn fields and kidnapping cows. But this guy and the woman from earlier were orange, not green, and the general was the furthest thing from little. As I sized him up again, I realized he had to be more than a foot taller than me. He would have made good money back on Earth playing sports for the entertainment of the blue- and gold-classes in Sector One.
“On Earth, we don’t believe people like you even exist,” I admitted quietly. My voice was breathy and thin. If I wasn’t seeing him with my own eyes—if I hadn’t seen the Milky Way disappearing into the distance myself—I wouldn’t have believed it, either.
But I supposed I had no choice now.
“Yes. I have recently become aware of that.” He crossed his arms over his chest and gave me a gruff nod. “And so, I owe you an apology. This must all be…startling to you. I can appreciate that now.”
“Buddy, startling doesn’t even begin to cut it.” I shook my head. Even now, as he stood right in front of me, it was hard for my brain to even process him. Looking at him and trying to understand what I was seeing was like trying to imagine a new color. My head just couldn’t make the leap.
“My name is not this…bud-dee. I am General Kloran of High House Dyoval, as I told you before. Here on this ship, you may call me either General Kloran or Captain. Whichever is more to your liking.”
“Oh, so now you’re concerned about what’s to my liking, huh?” My lips curled back involuntarily with indignance, which made me a little nervous. I didn’t know what had come over me. If I’d spoken to Michael like this, he would have picked up whatever the heaviest expensive knick-knack in the room was and thrown it at me. And even though there were no knick-knacks in my little prison cell, given the size and sharpness of the general’s claws and teeth, it wasn’t like he would have needed one.
Instead of pouncing on me, though, the general frowned again.
“You are a guest here upon my ship. It is my duty to make you as comfortable as you can be.”
“Not a guest.” I was quick to correct him. “I’m a captive. Where I come from, there’s a pretty big difference.”
I would know. Back home, I’d been a captive in my own marriage for years.
“You are correct, I suppose, in a way.” The general stroked his chin thoughtfully. He
had a sharp jawline, broad at the back then narrowing into a square shape marked with a cleft beneath his lips. “I purchased you under the assumption that you had entered yourself willingly into the intergalactic slave trade. By law, you are mine until your contract is fulfilled. Now, however, I believe perhaps that is somewhat more complicated than I first believed.”
“Congratulations, General. That’s the first correct thing you’ve said since I got here.”
For a moment, his eyes shifted from purple to a dull, cloudy gray. He looked tired all of a sudden, like the weight of the entire world was on his shoulders. But they were pretty big shoulders. I figured he’d be able to handle it.
The question was…his world? Or mine?
“It is as I have feared, then.” He closed his eyes, lowered his head, and sighed. When his eyes opened again, they were returned to their normal purple shade. “Will you grant me a boon then, human?”
“Depends.” I tilted my chin back and stared him down. “What is it?”
“Will you tell me your name? I do not wish to continue referring to you as human. It seems…demeaning. I think perhaps you already feel demeaned enough.”
He was right there. I’d been demeaned enough for multiple lifetimes, as far as I was concerned.
“Bria,” I finally replied. “My name is Bria.”
“Bree-ah.” His voice was a low growl, then a breathy sigh. Almost a purr. It sent a shiver down my spine. Now, my whole body was covered in goosebumps. “Thank you, Bree-ah. Now, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me how slaves like yourself are treated where you are from? I still trying to make sense of the mutual predicament we have found ourselves in here.”
I blinked. Slaves on Earth? There hadn’t been slaves in the sectors for a long time. Blue- and gold-class families hired lower-class laborers, of course, and the prisoners in the Sector Five work camps were all but slaves, but…
“I’m not a slave,” I told him firmly. “I never have been, and I never will be.”
That’s not entirely true, though, a little voice in my head reminded me. What were you to Michael if you weren’t a slave? He sure did treat you like one.
I shook the voice off, though. If there was a time for me to play self-therapist, this definitely wasn’t it.
The general looked confused by what I’d just told him, though. Like it was something he wasn’t entirely able to comprehend.
“Explain to me how you came to be interned in a slave camp, then.” He stared me down like I’d just told him a big, fat fib and he wasn’t buying it. “How did your handler sell you for auction if you did not submit yourself to become a slave?”
“Don’t you think I’d like to know that too?” I shook my head. This was getting us nowhere. “Back home, I was a nurse, not a slave. I was drugged while…traveling. That’s the last thing I remember.” I was careful not to mention the marriage I’d been escaping. He already didn’t look like he believed my story. I didn’t need to complicate things even more with the truth. “When I woke up, I was here.”
The general nodded as if he finally understood me. His purple eyes were shifting color again, and rapidly. First, they deepened into a purplish-red, then to a purplish-gray, then a bright, stark green before they returned to their normal glowing hue.
Suddenly, he looked paler than he had when he walked in.
When I woke up on the general’s ship, I’d been convinced that somehow, this big shouty orange guy had been behind my abduction. Sure, he could wheel and deal and bellow and lie however he wanted, but he was still the one holding me prisoner. I didn’t know how it couldn’t be true.
But now, for the first time since I arrived here, I was beginning to believe that maybe I wasn’t the only one here who’d been bamboozled.
Whoever or whatever had tricked me into eating that drugged pie had obviously tricked General Kloran, too.
7
Kloran
I should have known from the start. Part of me, at least, had known—but so great was my hope that the female human, this Bree-ah, could be the answer to all of Lunaria’s prayers, I had not wanted to believe it.
But now, faced with the weight of Bree-ah’s testimony, I had no choice but to believe.
Every slave that had been brought aboard the Avant Lupinia during my time as captain before now had chosen this life for herself. Some had grown up on impoverished planets; the money they made by selling themselves into contractual slavery would save their families, sometimes their entire races. Others, I understood, saw it as more of a career. They enjoyed being pregnant, or at the very least, were good at it, and chose to become breeding vessels for their own sakes. Many of the slaves we had purchased had completed several breeding slave contracts, in fact. Their previous pregnancies spoke highly of their fertility and strength in childbirth. They could often get better prices for themselves each time they reentered the trade.
But Bree-ah had never been a slave at all. She had none of the training, none of the understanding of what was expected of her. What would have been expected of her, if I had not bothered to speak with her and uncovered the truth.
She had not chosen this life for herself. As she spoke, I had smelled the honesty on her, the salty scent of a fresh breeze coming off a calm sea.
And now, as we stared at each other in silence, I could hardly bring myself to look at her out of shame. None of this was my fault, no. And yes, all of this was as I had suspected. But there was a vast divide between suspecting and knowing.
Now that I knew, I had to take action. And fast.
I left her bio-cell without another word. My emotions were still flickering through me faster than I could track them. Fury at the auction house that we had purchased Bree-ah from for selling us an unwilling candidate, and at such a hefty price, too. My rage was also directed at whoever had captured her and passed her off to the auctioneer as a trained, properly oriented breeder. Her papers must have been forged, or at least partially falsified.
The intergalactic commission would have to hear about this. That left me filled with worry. First, I had feared that we would be barred from participating in the trade if Bree-ah died in our care. Now, I had a new fear. If the commission believed that we had knowingly made this illegal purchase, we would be banned just the same—and purchasing breeding slaves was Lunaria’s only hope for a future. Without that privilege, we would die out within generations. Maybe sooner still.
Sorrow came next. Bree-ah had been stolen from her people, her family. Perhaps on Earth, she may have even had a mate of her own. I did not desire my betrothed yet, no. But if she were to be taken from me, sold into slavery against her will as Bree-ah had been, it would have torn my heart from my very chest.
Then, shame again. I did not desire my betrothed, but I desired Bree-ah. I had longed for her so greatly, I had spilled seed to the thought of taking her, mating with her, claiming her for myself. I had known it to be wrong when I did it, but I had not cared, my need for her had been so great.
To my surprise, I felt a flicker of pride, too. Bree-ah had somehow remained so feisty and spirited, even when I had raged at her. Even when she was terrified of me, completely alone and with no one to turn to. Even as she had starved in my care, she had remained so strong.
She was too good for any of this to have happened to her, and she had not let it break her. Her constitution may have been fragile, but she had a warrior’s soul.
I did not know what to do next. I did not know how to make this right. But I strode to the bridge anyway, my communicator in hand.
I would call Leonix and Haelian. They were my highest-ranking subordinates aboard the Avant Lupinia. Together, we would devise a plan of action and seek to solve this terrible new problem that had befallen all of us.
Before I could call them or reach the bridge, though, I met Haelian on the way. He smelled of the same terrible mix of emotions that I knew were radiating off of me as well. The look in his eyes was a grim one.
“General. I have bad new
s—”
“I know,” I told him. “I already know.”
We met Leonix in the bridge and I regaled them both of Bree-ah’s tale. For Leonix, there was no mix of emotion at all. She smelled of rage as soon as soon as I confirmed our suspicions. It only grew as she heard what Bree-ah had been through.
“Humans have only recently started to arrive at auction houses. I have reached out to some of my contacts—carefully, of course—” Haelian gave me small nod of reassurance, “—and they have all informed me that Earth has no existing contract with any species for breeding slave trade. What has been done to the human female is, in fact, highly illegal on Earth. Any humans who have been placed into slave auctions have almost certainly been put there against their will.”
“Blood!” Leonix snarled. “Then we must find who is responsible for this and we must make them pay.”
“I agree,” Haelian said, to my surprise. Generally, it was I who was the angry one, the one with the quickest temper. But now even Haelian, who was usually so serene, was beginning to radiate the only spice of rage as well. “When I think of my younger sister, still only a cub, being taken the way the human female has…”
His eyes burned red. Leonix’s were much the same. Even mine, I could feel, were shifting toward the color of fury—but rage would not get us anywhere. Not now.
“We all need to calm down,” I warned them. “This is an atrocity, yes. But we will not be able to come to a solution for it if we do not keep our heads about us.”
After a pause, I watched them both follow the order. Slowly, the red shifted from their eyes.
“Good.” I turned to Haelian. “Now. We should take a look at Bree-ah—” I stopped as they both gave me strange looks. Of course—I had already forgotten. It would be strange to them that I knew Bree-ah’s name. Names implied personal intimacy, and as we had not yet purchased a slave whom we could keep, it had been an unspoken protocol to avoid becoming too close to those we brought aboard our ship. “The, ah, human female’s paperwork. If we can determine which handler sold her to the auction house, perhaps we can ascertain who is to blame for her abduction from Earth.”
