She hated the bastards.
Any ill turn she could do to them, she would.
But she couldn’t let them cripple her mind with that hate.
She needed every brain cell functioning clearly.
She found she still couldn’t actually accept what Kadin had told her—not that she doubted his word. She couldn’t think of any motive to lie to her. But … she’d been born free and it was hard to accept that she wasn’t still free.
Well, as free as anybody else in the world she’d left, she supposed, when the government regulated pretty much everything but breathing.
But she’d still had choices.
She’d chosen to live in the cabin away from pretty much everybody, because she’d never really been able to fit in and people made her uncomfortable. And she didn’t feel alone or lonely when she was in a place where she couldn’t be passed by and ignored.
Now …. Her future wasn’t her decision. Her body wasn’t hers anymore. She was a breeder.
So, did that mean if she accepted her fate and let Kadin breed her that it would get her back to Nye sooner?
Not that she could prevent him from trying if he decided he wasn’t going to let her reluctance get his ass killed.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
On the other hand, it didn’t seem she had a choice and since she’d been separated from the baby for a purpose, she thought this must be it.
One thing that occurred to her that disturbed her way more was that she had doubts almost immediately that she could be bred by the alien man, that even that seemingly simple solution to her biggest problem—getting Nye back—would elude her.
Granted, there were almost as many similarities as there were differences, but the differences were vast.
But maybe they could create something that would appease the bastards and they’d let her have Nye back?
It occurred to her that it wasn’t likely they’d just thoughtfully put her back if it transpired she couldn’t breed with Kadin—or anyone on the ship that wasn’t human.
Would they just dispose of her? Flush her from the airlock as Kadin had said?
Horror washed over her in a wave of cold and for many moments she couldn’t push the horrific images from her mind. It was a struggle to calm herself.
Kadin helped by climbing on the platform with her and kissing her stupid again.
And then fucking her brains out.
He had ‘the touch’. There was no denying that.
She felt mellow enough when he’d finished she simply passed into the sleep dimension.
She was hungrier, if possible, when she woke again.
Worse, she needed a toilet.
Kadin, bless his heart, got off the platform and passed through a narrow door. She heard the splash of water and nearly peed her pants—that she didn’t have.
She didn’t know if it was a bathroom or not, but she was damned well going to turn it into one!
Struggling not to look like she was in a frantic rush, she headed that way as soon as Kadin exited.
Thankfully, it actually was a bathroom—of sorts.
She supposed she should just be grateful that it had a wall between the outer wall and the toilet—pot—but she wasn’t.
One more thing to hate those bastards for!
The semi-privacy wasn’t really enough, but she managed to unlock her muscles sufficiently to make use of the facilities.
There was even a drip feed water source sticking out of the wall. She hit at bathing with it by waiting impatiently for enough drips to fill her cupped palm over and over and finally drank. The water seemed to hit the bottom of her empty stomach like a rock. She could feel it sloshing as she headed back into the main room of the cell.
Kadin was eating something when she came out, totally diverting her from her discomfort. He glanced at her and held out something in one palm.
It looked like a wad of bread.
“What is it?” she asked when she’d taken it.
He shrugged. “Food.”
Dismay rippled through her. “Is this … all?”
He sent her a speculative look. “You’re asking if I’m hiding the rest?”
She gaped at him. “It didn’t occur to me.” Anger followed the surprise. “Are you?”
“Why would I need to? I could just eat it … could have while you were occupied in there.”
That was inarguable. “I wasn’t insinuating that you were. I was wondering how they expect two people to survive on this,” Emma said testily.
Trying not to think about what they might be feeding baby Nye, if anything, she settled and ate what tasted like a small cake of sawdust.
Upon reflection she decided not sawdust. It actually didn’t have that much taste.
And it was such a little bit it just seemed to float around on the gallon of water she’d drank to try to appease her empty stomach.
She sat for a while afterward, nursing it, trying to think about anything but throwing up. Thankfully, their ‘hosts’ thought of something to distract her until her stomach finally settled.
They opened the door to their cell.
Emma would’ve refused to go out.
Well did.
Kadin simply grabbed her and yanked her out.
The door slammed behind them as swiftly as it had opened, leaving the two of them naked and standing in a bizarre sort of ‘exercise yard’, she supposed, of nudists.
“Must be the breeding pen,” Kadin muttered after surveying the area.
“Oh my god!” Emma gasped in a hoarse whisper.
* * * *
Gaelen was too preoccupied with his own aches and pains to allot time for anything beyond that for a good day after the battle. As the pain began to subside, though, he became aware of the voices of others of his kind.
The count was fifty—a very respectable force even without weapons—but there was little they could do with that information at the moment.
Another day passed before he heard the tiny voice he realized he had been searching for and a profound sense of peace settled over him.
Nye was alive.
* * * *
Hauk had never been inclined to focus on the negative. He considered himself a realist, though, and, pick it apart thought he might, he could see no silver lining, no possibility of turning the tables on their captors that would be an acceptable risk.
They had been expecting one of their ships to arrive to rescue them and there was some chance, he was sure, that the ship might have been close enough to see them taken, but he could not convince himself that that had been the case. Their only hope, as far as he could see at the moment, was the possibility that their rescue ship would hunt them down when they discovered they weren’t with their broken ship any longer.
Assuming, of course, that the Sheloni had simply abandoned it.
It seemed indisputable that they would put a good deal of effort into tracking them—to rescue Nye, at least.
Otherwise, they would have to toe the line until they reached their destination and/or they had the infant King safely in their hands so that they had some chance of winning freedom without unnecessarily endangering him.
Always assuming the child was still alive, he thought grimly, unable to calculate the odds that that was likely.
He did not believe the Sheloni would kill the child outright when they would see he was of some value, but they were not above deciding to take him apart to study him and there was also the possibility of negligence.
Unless they had enough sense to return him to Emma?
He was not convinced that was likely. It seemed they would be more likely to hold him to insure her cooperation.
He got up from his platform and began to pace the small space allotted to him when it occurred to him he had no more idea whether she was alive than he had of any of the others. It seemed unlikely the Sheloni would have simply killed them or used them in their experiments when they were a race totally focused on profiting
from other species and they would be worth more alive than dead. But one never knew with those bastards.
It would have been handy, he thought wryly, to have the telepathic abilities of the Hirachi. He’d never really understood how it worked, and it seemed that it was better under water, but he knew that Gaelen was able to pick up ‘whispers’ at least, even at great distances and in atmosphere and the ability seemed to work almost as well in the vacuum of space as it did in water.
Unfortunately, that only went for other Hirachi. He might be aware of Gaelen if he chose to probe his mind, but they couldn’t actually communicate.
Which was a fucking pity because he would have liked to know what the hell was going on.
It seemed unlikely he was going to get any answers at all, soon or late, and then without warning, the door of his cell popped open and he heard a tinny Sheloni voice ordering him out.
It set his back up immediately to be ordered, but he knew the futility of rebellion under the circumstances. He moved to the opening and stepped out.
Which was when he discovered just how many slaves the Sheloni had collected—because they’d turned them all out, he supposed, to exercise in a common area.
It did not take more than a handful of seconds to discover the others in his group.
Contrary to what he had expected to feel if and when he saw them again, however, relief was not the dominant emotion.
* * * *
Kadin knew they were in trouble as soon as he saw the first male glance their way and freeze.
“Get behind me, Emma,” he growled.
Emma was stunned at the command and then indignant … until she followed the direction of his gaze and saw what he was looking at.
She scurried behind him, trying to make as small a target as possible, struggling with the urge to peer around Kadin to see if the huge yellow alien was still heading in their direction.
From Kadin’s tense stance, she thought she could safely assume he was, but that didn’t make the urge any less urgent.
It was a survival thing, she supposed. She needed to know if trouble was coming and how fast.
When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she very carefully leaned to peer around the wall of flesh that was all that stood between her and annihilation.
She sucked in a breath edged with a scream when she saw there were five or six headed their way, two of the yellow skinned ones that looked a lot like Gaelen—but weren’t—and two that were less humanoid and one similar to Hauk.
Kadin stiffened, but he didn’t glance around. “What part of hide did you not grasp?” he muttered in a low growl. “Get back if you do not want to get trampled. I am about to need fighting room.”
“Oh god,” Emma gasped, wondering how much room he needed and if she would still be hidden if she moved so much as an arm’s length.
On the other hand, she was pretty sure she’d been spotted already.
Would more join them if she was spotted?
Abruptly, far too soon, it seemed to her, for the males headed her way to have actually arrived, two alien males landed heavily on either side of Kadin.
To her surprise, instead of instantly attacking either of them, or vice versa, the two took up defensive stances beside Kadin.
Which was when it finally dawned on her that it must be Hauk and Gaelen.
She wasn’t actually familiar with their bare asses so she couldn’t positively identify them, but it seemed indisputable.
Nothing else happened and when Emma finally got up the nerve to peer out again, she saw that the—now nearly a dozen—males had paused while still more than a running jump away from them.
She might have been impressed except she wasn’t as certain it was because they were intimidated by the three men or not as she wanted to be. Before she could decide, they bellowed challenges and charged.
She screamed ear splittingly.
It echoed around the cavernous chamber like a siren.
Almost instantly the horrible metal monsters that had terrorized her before appeared from the walls, heading straight for them.
Unfortunately, the men were already engaged in trying to kill each other and the robots were upon them before they realized they’d joined the melee.
It was all over but the weeping in a matter of seconds.
The combatants gave a good account of themselves, even barehanded, by taking apart three of the machines, but they were overwhelmed. All of them were rounded up and Emma, as well, and she hadn’t done a fucking thing!
Like it was her fault she had everything out and dangling—in a public place!
Unreasonable bastards! They had stripped her bare and not given her a damned thing to cover herself with.
It was her last thought before she felt the prick of an injection and lost consciousness.
Chapter Ten
The first thing Emma noticed when she rose toward awareness was that her throat felt tight. It brought on a sense of choking and she jolted into full wakefulness, clutching at her throat.
It wasn’t a nightmare. There was something heavy around her throat.
“Dis control ting.”
Emma nearly jumped out of her skin when he spoke, whipping her head to look at the man lying next to her so fast she felt her neck bone pop.
She wasn’t exactly relieved to discover it was Gaelen lying on the platform beside her although that certainly beat the hell out of waking up beside a complete stranger.
She was still thoroughly confused, but she couldn’t seem to gather her marbles to figure out what was wrong with the picture at the moment.
“What happened?” she asked hoarsely.
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Dey zap us.”
And put this … ‘control ting’ around her neck?
And also his, she saw now.
It looked like it was made from some sort of metal, but she had a bad feeling it was something like the control collars they made for dogs to be used with ‘invisible’ fences, except probably worse.
“Take de head off if dey feel like it.”
Yep. Worse. Way worse. She closed her eyes and settled back again, struggling to focus and beat back the rise of hysteria in her throat before she had a full blown panic attack. It was that effort to focus that finally produced memories from just before the blackout.
“Did you …? Did you bring me here?” she asked tentatively after a few moments.
“Dey brought us.”
Dey? They? The robots? She was about to ask why they had done that, when she’d been with Kadin before, why had she ended up with him, but almost as quickly as she wondered, an answer seemed to materialize.
It wasn’t just by chance.
She didn’t think.
No more than it was just by chance that she’d been tossed in with Kadin and without a stitch of clothes.
She was still confused. The aliens wanted her bred, why switch her partner so quickly?
God! She supposed she was lucky they’d given her this much privacy instead of tossing her into a pen and turning a half dozen ‘bulls’ loose on her!
“You’re suppose to … uh … we’re supposed to … uh ….” Ok there was no delicate way to put it.
He lay back, staring up at the ceiling. Silence enveloped them. “I no touch you no want.”
Well fuck!
Thank you for being so kind as to put me in the position of having to ask for it, she thought indignantly!
She swallowed against a knot of misery in her throat. She liked him. She didn’t want to make him feel bad. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t find him the least bit attractive. He was very attractive.
For an alien man.
Well, honestly, any man.
“That’s … that’s sweet.” She bit her lip. “But … uh … what will they do if we don’t do what they want us to?”
He said nothing for several moments. Then she heard him swallow. “Dey will gibe you to somebody else.”
Emma thought for several moment
s that her heart would beat her to death. Someone else like Kadin? Or Hauk?
Or someone else like the thundering hoard that had tried to get to her just before all hell broke loose?
What was he thinking? She’d rather be with anybody else?
She’d actually rather not be ‘bred’ at all, damn it!
But she had no choice and that being the case, she thought having sex with the guys she’d come with beat the hell out of having sex with alien males she hadn’t even set eyes on before. She at least knew that the three that had brought her to the ‘dance’ had some sense of decency, that they wouldn’t hurt her or allow it if they could prevent it.
And really, Gaelen was probably the sweetest of the whole bunch—as far as she could tell.
She just wished she thought she had time to get used to the idea at least a little bit, but she had a bad feeling they were being monitored and the bastards would know they weren’t fucking.
Sucking in a sustaining breath, she very carefully moved to her side facing him. “I … uh … I don’t think I want to find out what they’ll do to you or to me if we don’t cooperate. This … uh … this entire thing has been … uh … un…” Unpleasant wasn’t the word she ought to use, she decided. “Scary.”
He rolled toward her. “Dey watch an dey listen,” he said on a low voice.
Faced with a wall of yellow flesh, Emma discovered she had to make several attempts before she could swallow past the damned choker the aliens had fitted her with.
She hadn’t been this close to him before, hadn’t truly appreciated how damn big he was even though she’d thought about all of them as giants. “That’s—that’s what I thought,” she murmured, reminding herself that she’d managed to accept Kadin because she’d realized she really didn’t have a choice and also because it had occurred to her that, if he could achieve the deed, she might get Nye back.
Not that it had been a terrible chore or challenge. He was attractive in a very exotic way, physically, and also personality wise.
She could say the same for all three of them—handsome, very well built, and character to be admired, she believed.
Birth of a King Page 8
