The Nine Realms of the Uti I: Warrior Prince

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  Deciding to ignore that discomfort, she found the clothing Rama had stripped off of her and dressed. She went to her bag then and got a micro-drone out and carefully placed the samples inside and then moved to the window, trying to decide how long Rama had been gone and what the odds were that he would send someone to fetch her.

  Dismissing it after a moment, she shoved the curtains aside, opened the window, climbed onto the ledge and sent the drone homeward, watching until she was certain that it wasn’t detected and shot down.

  * * * *

  Lauren had pretty much lived in her hab suit since she’d arrived in Proushta. Partly that was because her wardrobe was so limited, but mostly it was because it was damned cold in the castle even with fires roaring on every hearth and also because she didn’t trust that she was safe from attempts on her life.

  Rama had made it clear that she was his guest and under his protection, and she was pretty sure no one would have the nerve to try anything, but she didn’t especially want to stake her life on that assumption.

  Regardless, she found that she was reluctant to wear the suit to breakfast.

  She refused to acknowledge why she was, but she found she couldn’t dismiss the urge and yielded to the impulse to wear something attractive rather than protective.

  She was glad she did when she encountered the princess—not that it helped her feelings very much, but she was sure she would’ve felt ten times worse if she’d come out wearing the shapeless suit.

  Rather than the cheesy costume.

  When she met up with the princess in all her glory—heading to her suite to ‘freshen up’.

  The woman acted like she was invisible, which is why Lauren was so self-conscious as she made her way to the stairs and started down.

  She knew the woman had examined her as thoroughly as she had the princess.

  Rama, she discovered, had waited for her—not terribly patiently, but he had waited. The moment she arrived, he led her to the table and signaled the maids to serve.

  Lauren was secretly amused.

  Rama was a big man and very active and he had a big appetite to go with all that muscle. She suspected the princess got a cold welcome arriving as she had at breakfast.

  Maybe not. It was possible it was entirely her fault that he wasn’t in a particularly good mood because she’d kept him waiting, but clearly he’d been occupied with greeting his newest guest and helping her to settle.

  Her amusement waned fairly quickly, though, when Rama’s mood didn’t seem to especially improve with the filling of his belly. He was cool, distant, and preoccupied.

  What had she expected, she asked, mentally berating herself?

  They’d had a wild night of sex that had totally blown her mind and had felt like something truly monumental to her.

  He was king of all he surveyed. There probably weren’t many women in his entire life that he’d desired even a little that hadn’t been his for the taking.

  She was just one more notch on his belt.

  Brutally honest with herself, she couldn’t think of a damned thing that even might have set her apart from the others.

  In fact, although she didn’t want to think about it at all, she knew that, biologically, she’d probably been a vast disappointment. If she’d had giant boobs and or three vaginas, she might have blown his mind.

  But she just had one ‘lonely’ vagina and he had nowhere to put his second cock except to stuff it in with the first—when she was wet enough he could wedge it in.

  Of course it felt fantastic to her once she’d realized it just felt like she was going to burst at the seams, but she doubted it was equally thrilling for him.

  But did central command care about that little detail that put them at a disadvantage with Uti men compared to their own women?

  Hell no!

  They were just supposed to lay down and collect samples!

  They were supposed to be clinically detached about the process and get their jollies off the knowledge that they were collecting for an important cause.

  She supposed she wasn’t supposed to be able to focus on anything except the nightmare epidemic at home, but if she hadn’t been able to push that to the back of her mind she would never have been able to carry off her deception as well as she had. It required a lot of concentration to live a lie!

  She had to be careful every hour of every day not to do or say something that could get her killed.

  Under the circumstances, she was more relieved than sorry when they finished breakfast. The lady princess hadn’t shown herself and Lauren supposed she’d had her food taken up to her suite.

  Or maybe since she’d arrived before good daylight, she’d gone up to her room and climbed in her bed?

  Lauren was tempted herself.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t rested very well after the climax she’d had after Rama’s massage the night before, or that he’d woken her particularly early, but she felt drained of energy even after she’d eaten.

  She suspected it was depression and there was little room for doubt of the reason, but she refused to acknowledge it because she just couldn’t afford to let herself mope over it. She was halfway through the week she’d been given. She was going to have to try harder to find what they needed if it transpired that the semen wasn’t it.

  That thought put her in mind of the time and she began to wonder if they’d had time to run tests.

  Well, they would have to grow cultures and that could take a good bit of time, but DNA testing didn’t take long.

  It would probably be evening or tomorrow before they had results, she thought glumly.

  That left her with nothing to do except suffer over the fact that the princess was beautiful and looked to be barely legal, age wise—way younger than she was.

  Not that there was such a thing as a legal age of consent on Kali. Any female old enough to breed was old enough to be considered as a mate as far as the Uti were concerned.

  Well, historically speaking it had been like that on Earth during the dark ages—and well into modern history. They hadn’t actually begun to frown upon it until the normal lifespan had doubled and more.

  Of course that was the main reason the typical life span of a ‘woman’ was so short. This predated birth control. A woman started bearing children when she was barely into the cycle and didn’t stop until she died or reached menopause—on Earth.

  That didn’t appear to the case on Kali. In point of fact, the higher classes seemed to have a lifespan comparable to theirs and the human lifespan had been lengthened considerably from their medieval times.

  She dismissed those thoughts after she left the great hall, reminding herself that none of it had anything to do with her. She had a job to do and little time to complete it before she had to return to the colony. She needed to focus on possibilities.

  Like all of the goblets and other potential DNA deposited at breakfast.

  With that in mind, she dashed up for a collection and kit and managed to make it back down before the servants had cleaned everything and collected more samples for testing.

  She had only to find a time and place then where she could send off the micro-drone carrier.

  This was no easy task, unfortunately, because even though Rama gathered a fairly large hunting party and left the castle, the princess had arrived with an even larger entourage and beyond that there was a virtual flood of potential entertainers that arrived throughout the day to perform for the royal guest.

  She might have thought it was an interesting development if she’d only been sent, as they’d claimed, to form a connection with the natives. Since that wasn’t the case, it was just unnerving to be crowded by so many more aliens and frustrating to try to find a quiet place to contact central command without being overheard or observed.

  It would have to be the ledge or nothing she finally decided when she’d ‘casually’ wandered all over the castle and keep searching for a place that would work. She had been very leery about using
it since Rama had caught her but the midday meal had come and gone without a sign of him and she was fairly certain he meant to make a full day of it as he had the last time he’d gone off to hunt. It was still several hours till supper. She thought it was as safe a bet as any.

  As unnerving as it was after the unpleasantness of being caught using it to communicate with the colony before, it transpired that there was news—some good, some not so good, some very bad.

  With the contributions from her and the other volunteers, they had made some progress in developing a treatment that had cut the number of new cases by half and significantly lowered the rate of deaths.

  The not so good news was that they hadn’t managed to produce enough to go around working from the tiny samples they had.

  And the very bad news was entirely personal.

  Her best friend, the person who’d inspired her to volunteer, had taken a turn for the worse and had had to be put in cryo.

  She struggled to keep from being crushed by the news. Where before the need to move the sick to cryo to prevent immediate death had seemed almost like a burial itself, that it was unlikely they would ever come out again, the progress they’d made meant that there was still hope for Jana, for all of the people they’d had to freeze.

  She couldn’t help Jana—anyone—by falling apart. She had to hold herself together and keep working as long as she could.

  Chapter Nine

  “She was behaving very strangely—which is why I followed her,” Gil-liana said in a low, breathless voice.

  Rama’s lips tightened. He was tired and he was frustrated. He and his men had spent the better part of a day trying to get enough meat to provide for so many extra mouths to feed and they’d only managed to get enough for perhaps three days.

  If her royal highness decided to grace them with her presence much longer, they would have to go out again and it was beginning to snow.

  He was in no mood to listen to Gil-liana machinations.

  He was certain that that was all that it was—jealousy of his interest in the Di-ore.

  But he couldn’t entirely dismiss her claims when he still had suspicions regarding Lauren himself.

  “Strange in what way?” he growled, partly because he resented Gil-liana’s interference and didn’t want to encourage her and partly because he didn’t really want to hear anything that might confirm his suspicions.

  Gil-liana frowned, as if she was trying to decide what she could claim or maybe just to recall. “It was … as if she was looking for something,” she said as if suddenly inspired. “That’s it! It was like she was searching. I thought she might have misplaced something, but she was staring up at the ramparts and I don’t think that she’s been there atall since that first day. And she went through all of the outbuildings and even the storage areas.”

  Rama felt a little sick to his stomach.

  It sounded far too much like someone assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the keep to his mind.

  “And what then?”

  “She went back inside. I waited a few moments and followed. She went directly to your suite and then she climbed onto the ledge outside the window. I was so stunned it took me a moment to gather the nerve to move closer. When I did I discovered she was speaking to someone! I could hear it as clear as day! I mean a response when she spoke, although of course I could not understand what either was saying because she was speaking in the star people’s tongue. So I moved the curtain ever so slightly and I could see she was completely alone!

  “I am convinced she had summoned a demon and she was speaking to it!”

  Irritation flickered through Rama. He was tempted to simply send her on her way, but this was dangerous talk. “She was speaking to her people. I have seen her use this thing before,” he said tightly.

  Gil-liana frowned. “Oh.”

  He could see she was vastly disappointed that he had shot down her theory of witchery. He caught her attention by grasping her throat and dragging her close in a threatening manner. “And as much as I appreciate your diligence, Gil-liana, I believe that I had made it very clear that you were never to enter my suite again—for any reason. Did that slip your mind while you were working so hard to find something you might use against Lauren?”

  Gil-liana’s eyes looked as if they might pop from her head. She blinked at him. “I … uh … I thought ….”

  “No. You did not think. If you had you would have realized that it might be more than your life was worth to trespass where you had been forbidden. I will let this go, but if I hear that you’ve been wagging your tongue in an effort to cause trouble, or if you are involved in anything else that I have forbidden, you will find yourself on the road to looking for another place to stay. Is that clear?”

  She nodded with an effort and he released her.

  He knew as he watched her scurry away, though, that it was unlikely she had been frightened out of her meanness. She would cause trouble. The threat might make her more careful, but she was too stupid to take his warning to heart.

  And he very much feared that the lovely Princess Althea had been cut from the same cloth.

  She had actually had the gall to send word that she fully expected the whores in his household to be sent elsewhere for the duration of her visit. She knew his reputation and she was willing to overlook it, but she was not willing to have his whores running around her household as if they owned the place.

  He might have sent them away for the duration out of consideration for her sensibilities if she had not ordered it done. It was not as if he could not live without them for a space of days, particularly when he was far more interested in Lauren than any of the women available in the keep.

  But he did not take orders from any man—let alone a woman.

  Whatever his advisors thought, regardless of the fact that she’d scarcely landed and he had had no time to become better acquainted, he was inclined to think there was no way in hell that he would find it acceptable to tie himself to such a woman.

  The problem was that he had agreed to consider her as his queen and he had no doubt that her people thought it was all but a done deal.

  Not that it was his problem what her people thought, but extricating himself from the mess was going to be tricky if it transpired that his first impression of her was not off by a hair.

  * * * *

  If Lauren had had any notion that she would be seated on one side of Rama and his bride to be on the other she would have hidden instead of presenting herself. Unfortunately, she didn’t know the plan until she was escorted to what had become her usual seat—to Rama’s left hand. Princess Althea was escorted to the place to Rama’s right.

  This was going to be just lovely for all concerned, Lauren thought unhappily.

  But at least she didn’t have to stare the woman in the face or vice-versa! It was a silver lining but it didn’t actually amount to a great deal … because Princess Althea decided not to ignore her.

  Naturally she waited until the food had been served, however, so she could be sure to give everyone indigestion.

  “It is very odd, do you not think, Sire, that the sky people have been here so long and have never tried to befriend any of the Uti in all that time? Until now, I mean. I have heard that they have sent their pleasure whores—I mean the Di-ores to each of the realms. What do you suppose they might be up to?” Princess Althea asked with patently false innocence.

  Rama tensed and sent a tight look in her direction. Before he could respond, if he had even intended to, the princess leaned forward to address Lauren directly. “What is it your people hope to achieve in this endeavor?”

  Lauren hesitated, knowing the woman was trying to trip her up and expose her. On the other hand, she’d addressed her directly. She couldn’t just pretend she was deaf.

  She was sorry she couldn’t.

  “I understood that offering a Di-ore was an offer of friendship?” she responded finally, trying to sound as innocent as the princess had.


  “Friendlier to some than others, I expect,” Princess Althea responded with just a touch of cattiness. “And this is a custom of your people, as well? That is so …. Handy!”

  Lauren could feel her face turning red at the not so subtle accusation. She managed a confused frown. “Oh! I suppose it would be very coincidental, but I don’t recall that I said it was our custom.”

  The woman gave her a blank stare and then sent Rama a triumphant smile.

  Lauren rolled her eyes.

  Rama caught it and made a strange noise somewhere between a choking sound and a cough.

  Which may have been because he accidentally snorted a sip of his drink.

  Lauren resisted the urge to pound him on the back.

  “Well! I am confused!” the princess announced.

  No, you’re stupid, Lauren thought. “Really?”

  The princess frowned at her. “Explain.”

  Lauren’s lips tightened but when she glanced at Rama she saw that he, too, was waiting to see what her explanation would be. She shrugged. “We thought it would be … polite to observe the local traditions … since we could not expect you to be familiar with our customs.”

  “What is your custom?” Princess Althea demanded.

  Lauren considered it. She’d never paid a lot of attention to politics and she wasn’t certain that the answer that came to mind was actually correct, but it wasn’t as if they would know. “We meet. We exchange friendly conversation and sometimes gifts and … well, I guess it’s very similar.”

  Except, of course, they didn’t give people away—or loan them out.

  Not anymore anyway. They might have historically since everyone had owned slaves at one time or another.

  “I am confused,” Princess Althea repeated.

  Lauren had to suppose that was one of her most common observations or maybe complaints? She nodded. “Yes. It is confusing.”

  Althea’s eyes narrowed evilly. “Are you suggesting I am stupid?”

  Lauren gaped at her.

  Rama, thankfully, intervened. “Speaking of your gift to us, Dear Heart, what is it you plan for our entertainment tonight?”