Chapter Ten
“They are rebels,” Anasi whispered, his eyes gleaming with excitement, as if he were on a tour of a new exciting place as Realm royalty. Lana ate her food ravenously. There was some kind of bread, which had an odd reddish tinge and looked like regurgitated meat but tasted better than anything Lana had eaten in her life. Anasi was smiling, seemingly at ease with his new lot in life. Lana was primarily focused on her food, and unable to control her ravenous appetite, but secondary to that feeling, she was relieved to see Anasi, and his calmness was soothing to her. “They’re rebels,” he repeated, a twinge of excitement in his voice. “Galleon rebels! They captured the Realm ship.”
Lana stuffed another piece of bread into her mouth. She wondered how long it had been since she had eaten, could not believe the way she was eating like an animal, and now wondered if she should have eaten at all. These ‘rebels’ could be drugging her, poisoning her...
“What do they want?” she mused aloud, between two enormous bites, which Anasi watched with mild criticism.
He looked perplexed for a moment. “Want?” he repeated.
Lana made a face and continued chewing. “Want,” she repeated.
Anasi shook his head and smiled condescendingly. “You. You’re the reason they hijacked the ship.”
Lana stopped chewing. “For what?”
Anasi leaned close to her, as if all this time they had been close friends and co-conspirators. “I assume they want to mate with you. They have a mating ceremony.”
He lowered his voice. “I think they killed everyone else,” he confided solemnly.
Lana tried to summon the strength to care but found she could not. If it weren’t for the fact that she seemed to be in just as awful of a predicament as the one she had left, she might have cheered for the red and black aliens, whoever they were.
Lana stared at him. “What?” And then she had another thought. “And what about you? Why are you here?” she demanded.
Anasi smiled mischievously. “I insisted that I am invaluable to you as a companion.” His eyes shifted to the door. “Please don’t tell them otherwise.”
Lana looked at him blankly. “Why would I... why would they even listen to me?” she mused, more for herself than because she thought Anasi could answer the question.
Anasi’s eyes widened. “Atrix 12,” he began.
“My name’s Lana,” Lana said, though she was unsure why she suddenly felt empowered to do so.
“Lana,” Anasi conceded, almost obediently. “It’s not outside the realm of possibility that your mate will be the leader of the rebel group, a powerful man, a king!” His voice grew excited.
Lana’s eyes narrowed. Hadn’t she already been bought by a king to begin with? What she wanted was to get back to where she came from, and this whole misadventure had served to shake her from the ridiculous stupor she had been put into by Commander Golan and Anasi.
As she had this thought, the last large jeweled plug that had been placed inside of her moved as she shifted her weight, reminding her of the cravings inside her body. She grew flushed, the competing forces inside of her fighting with each other.
“Don’t,” Anasi warned her quickly, as if he could read her mind. Which at the moment, Lana would have loved to be able to do as well. She looked at him blankly.
“Don’t try to escape,” he advised in a low voice. “There is nowhere to run, this is a rebel base. The rebels are primitive, physically superior warriors, and they are desperate for an Atrix to reinvigorate their bloodline. Your punishment would be... harsh.”
The now-familiar heat caused by the mention of punishment swelled to life in Lana’s chest and her pussy, as the ghostlike bite of Commander Golan’s spankings made her bottom flare as though sitting on a hot plate. She shifted again, and the plug stroked her insides, making her pussy well up and her chest go cold with her hatred of her own desires. Why couldn’t she take control of her body, and make it respond the way she wanted her mind to respond?
“It is most excellent,” Anasi went on, “that you have been trained to accommodate such... large appendages, and to please all manner of warriors. And that you remain a virgin, technically speaking.” He looked back at the dark stone door. “They are very possessive.”
Anasi rose, and Lana reached out for his arm. “Wait,” she said. “Wait, Anasi, what... what... what should I do? What’s going to happen?” She felt tears coming on. Anasi was not the person she wanted most for a friend, but he was all she had... the closest thing she had.
He patted her hand kindly, and then peeled her fingers from his arm. “I don’t want any misunderstandings,” he said furtively, with a glance back at the door. Lana was still pleading with him with her eyes. “I don’t know what will happen,” Anasi whispered. “But you have no choice, Lana. You must submit.”
“But what... what... what do I do?”
Anasi looked behind him again. “It is generally understood that the mating ceremony is... lengthy. They will present you to many warriors, and when you become pregnant, the warrior who has seeded you will take you as his mate.”
Lana blinked, her mouth open.
“The Galleon are very dominating. You must submit completely to their desires.”
“But I don’t—”
Anasi held a finger to his lips. “It doesn’t matter what you want, Lana. You will submit willingly, or they will make you. It is clear to me now that you were only pretending to have accepted our destiny during your training with the Imperial Realm.” His voice became warm. “I like you,” he confessed. “I am... I warn you, you must not try to escape these... men.”
Lana started to protest.
“They will stop at nothing,” Anasi insisted. “If you are mated, your mate will stop at nothing until you submit to him completely.”
Lana’s cheeks reddened, and she pushed her legs together, furious again with the betrayals of her body against her mind. She could not, would not give up on her escape, her return to her planet, her... freedom. She had to protect that idea from all this nonsense. If she had convinced Golan that she had been brainwashed, she could just as easily do so with these ‘rebels.’
The coiled strength beneath the dark black muscle of her captors flashed through her mind, and a cool, liquid sensation traveled through her lower abdomen.
Viph be cursed, she spat silently in her head, as she made an unintelligible gesture toward Anasi, a slight smile on her lips.
Lana observed herself in the reflective glass. The gown she had been given by Anasi for the ‘mating ceremony’ was made of a soft, beautiful fabric—by no means the technologically advanced fabric the Imperial Realm had draped on her, but very costly, and not what she might have expected from a band of rebel Galleon on some battered outlying moon. Or wherever she was.
It was a sumptuous red material that clung to her curves, which she had not seen in a reflection for ages. Her hair was loose and had fallen in waves in the strange, humid atmosphere near the great body of salty water she had glimpsed on the walks they had allowed her to take—surrounded by fearsome guards, with Anasi jabbering excitedly to her—through a village that seemed to have been emptied in advance. She felt like a pariah and a queen, and dread filled her as much as excitement.
She was pleased with her appearance, and pleased with the dress, even if she wanted to pretend to herself that she wasn’t. She had even left her plug in place until these final moments, anticipating that she would need to—and maybe even want to—please a man in all ways.
Her heart beat furiously in her chest, unsteady in its rhythms. When she thought of the aliens who accompanied her—the strength beneath their oddly colored skin, the human attractiveness of their features, the hardness in their eyes—she felt at once aroused and terrified.
Could a Galleon mate really be all that bad? she wondered. She thought of the thoughtfulness implied by their bringing Anasi here, rather than abandoning him on the ship. There seemed to be no other reason to have done it th
an to assure her comfort. Some of them spoke Anglais, so it wasn’t a question of practicality or communication, which they honestly didn’t do much of. That sort of thoughtfulness, for her well-being and psychological comfort, seemed out of place with the hard-edged rebellious warrior act they had going on, or the reputation of the Galleon species throughout the system. Would it really be so bad to give in to her carnal desires, and become a well-treated queen here among these warriors?
She shuddered.
She supposed it really didn’t matter; this was the middle of nowhere, and she had no means to escape—especially not now.
She could play the same game that she had with the Imperial Realm. Pretend. Submit. Be obedient. Fool them into thinking that she was who they wanted her to be.
Did it matter if she somewhat enjoyed it?
She looked into her own eyes. It didn’t matter, as long as she didn’t forget who she was, and what her plans were.
She touched a patch of skin where she had been burnt, as a child, escaping from Imperial guards with her mother. She had sacrificed everything for her freedom. Lana had forgotten that the scar was there: it was the same color as her skin, almost invisible to the eye, only noticeable when felt by slow-moving fingertips, near her collarbone.
That would serve as her reminder, she thought, stroking the skin.
She took a deep breath.
Well, she thought. On to her ‘mating ceremony,’ or whatever this was to be that Anasi felt had no translation and did not understand.
As if he had been summoned by her thoughts of him, Anasi burst into the room, breathless and looking as though he had been shocked. “They’re coming,” he breathed uneasily.
Lana turned to him. His eyes took in her appearance and he briefly looked pleased, almost to the point of smiling, but the unease returned to contorting his features right afterward.
“What is it?” Lana asked, a fearful feeling creeping into her chest.
“It’s... I think it’s a much different ceremony than I thought...” Anasi’s voice trailed off, and he looked at her helplessly. “I’m not sure I understood, they wouldn’t really explain it... it’s sort of a... I don’t know...”
Lana balled her fists. “Anasi, what?” she demanded impatiently.
He crossed the room and took her hands. “I think... the way it works is that you give yourself to all of them,” he whispered. “And then, there is some sort of... I don’t know what the word means, I didn’t understand, there is no word in Anglais... anyway, that happens, whatever it is, and you are mated to that warrior. I think.”
Lana shook her head, more to indicate that she didn’t understand him, and was about to say so, when the door opened to reveal the entire frame occupied by two enormous guards cloaked in an unusual garb; leather and fur of a richly coated, gray-brown animal covered their loins, and their chests were bare.
These two were particularly large males. Lana’s eyes widened.
“Time,” one of them intoned, clearly not the best speaker of Anglais.
Lana’s insides felt like they were boiling. What choice did she have? It was clear from the tensed muscles and the stance of these warriors that involuntary submission would not be difficult for them to achieve. They could have easily taken one of her arms each and lifted her, kicking and screaming, and walked with her like she was nothing more than a twig in their arms.
She glanced at Anasi, who was offering a kind smile, but seemed unusually nervous himself.
Lana managed a faint smile. These guys were supposed to be possessive, right? There was no way they could possibly have the expectation that she ‘give herself’ to all of them.
She straightened up and walked calmly to the guards, who parted to let her walk through them.
When she stepped out of the room, she felt a large, strong hand on each shoulder.
She was walking ahead of them, the hands said, with a gentle and firm squeeze.
But they were going to steer her there.
* *
She was led up a footpath, winding along the side of the deep chasm she had seen when she had left her first dark cell, to a cave entrance lit by torches. She noted that the torches seemed ornamental or decorative; her own quarters were lit by electromagnetic gas lamps.
The guards behind her prodded her gently but unsparingly into the cave. Their hands slipped away just as she adjusted her eyes to the dim interior, but she was aware of their presence, directly behind her, blocking the exit.
Inside the cave area, the interior had been painted a blood-red color and was marked by symbols and paintings that appeared to still be wet and fresh. A shallow pool of water shimmered at her feet. Across from it, a fearsomely large warrior, dressed in similar fur loin coverings, but also an elaborate headdress that gave the indication of greater status than the guards behind her, glared down at her from a large stone chair—a throne, it seemed—that had been carved from the stone of the cave.
Lana’s breath caught in her throat. This particular warrior was more arresting than any other, though it was difficult to say why. He was larger, appeared stronger, but it was not the sheer size of his muscles or the symmetrical perfection of his body that stirred the feeling inside of her. It was something else... perhaps his amber eyes, which seemed large and particularly fixated on her. He had a dark, smooth mouth, and a wild red pattern of coloring that curled around his neck and flicked at his chin, almost like a hand cradling his head, and it flared suddenly, as though an electrical current lived beneath his skin.
The flare of red faded, and the warrior stood looking at her intensely, his chest rising and falling as if he had just been running. Lana met his gaze, finding herself actually unable to take her eyes off of his. Her stomach was cold and writhing inside of her, and her heart was kicking her ribs.
Was this the man she would be mated to?
A flutter traveled through her body, something she had never experienced before.
“I am Zain, leader of this xalthxta,” the warrior said at last. Lana’s mind swam with the syllables of the final word, uttered in what she guessed was Galleon, unintelligible in the extreme.
Lana was unable to speak, so she forced herself to lower her eyes and give a small bow of her head. She hoped this was a sufficient gesture, but when she looked up and saw the alien glowering at her, she realized he had expected nothing from her.
“The mating ceremony will begin at the time of sunset on the planet Galleon,” he continued.
Lana looked behind her, at the impassive guards who had brought her.
She turned back to the warrior, and at the sight of him another tremor of fear raced through her. “Excuse me,” she squeaked, her voice cracking from the sudden dryness in her throat. “I’m... what is the mating ceremony? What does it consist of?”
“It is for this reason you have been brought to my chambers,” Zain growled, simultaneously waving his hand to the right, a dismissive gesture that sent the guards behind her shuffling outside of the entrance. They blocked it, she noted, with their bulky bodies. Zain rose from his throne and Lana trembled with sexual excitement and sheer fear: he was taller and bulkier than the guards behind her, it seemed almost by twofold.
“You will be taken,” Zain growled, “by all of the unmated warriors in this xalthxta. The progenitor of your offspring will claim you as his own, and you will be mated.”
Lana stared at him. But how? She wondered. How would this happen... how many warriors were here? How on Vipheon did they know who the ‘progenitor’ of her offspring would be? This was no better than her previous predicament; in fact, it seemed worse. She had at least been promised to one mate, and he was a prince. This made it sound like any warrior could mate with her. It was being left up to chance.
The warrior’s red markings flared again, and he stepped around the pool, his eyes on her like a predator on prey. He reached forward and touched her neck, his fingers hot on her skin. A shudder ripped through her body, and she was unsure whether it was pleasure
or fear. “You will be,” the warrior announced, “utterly submissive and obedient for the mating ceremony, and favor no one warrior over any other. The process of mating is not left to the determination of mere mortals.”
Lana sucked in a deep breath, realizing suddenly that she had not been breathing. “I don’t,” she whimpered breathlessly. “I don’t think... I can...”
“You will,” he pronounced solemnly. His eyes were fixed on hers, and she felt like he was absorbing her somehow. She felt like she could fall at his knees and submit to him; if she stood there much longer she would do it without even knowing why.
But all of the warriors? That was something else.
“What if... what if I... refuse?” she asked, her voice an unconvincing whisper.
The alien’s eyes flashed black for a moment, then back to amber. A pulse of bright red traveled along his markings, disappearing beneath the loincloth. Lana desperately wished she could take back her question, even in the brief moment he held her in his gaze without moving.
He moved like lightning to grab her wrist, spin her around, and bring her other wrist to her back, bending her over in a swift, fluid motion that left her tossed over one of his thighs. He had crouched to the ground in a kneel, one leg on the ground, and taken her down with him.
She closed her eyes as the gown slipped up past her hips, and her bottom felt cool in the cave air. She knew what was coming, and her skin tingled as though he had already punished her. She didn’t want him to, and she wished she could take back her insolent question or plead with him, but at the same time she could feel the hot liquid between her thighs, welling up in her pussy, craving the firm hand of this particular warrior.
He delivered a series of sharp slaps, which stung and spread across her skin as a stinging burn, each time hotter and sharper than the previous time. He said nothing until he had slapped her bottom hard five times, and with his hand on her burning skin, igniting her through to her wet pussy, he growled, “Galleon males discipline their mates just as humans do. I am told that you require a firm hand. So if you refuse,” he stroked her burning bottom, “you will be punished.”
Taken and Mated Page 11
