Meanwhile, he just stares in at me, limitless gaze filled with a lust that I know well. It intensifies the longer he watches me and I know I need to fight it. Forcing myself to break his gaze, I quickly scan my surroundings. Like many that ringed the white valley, the front half of the alien’s home is glass while the back half is buried in a mountain made of hard black rock. Through the clear panes, I have a view of the entire village below, which is now just scattered orange lights glowing against a backdrop of shadows — and white.
The cold white falls from the sky slowly, in huge star-shaped lumps each as big as my palm. They’re stunning. What would Svera think? What would anybody on the colony think? None of us have ever seen anything like this before.
I shake my head and focus on the steps I need to take. One after the other, just like I’d place my feet if I could feel anything besides pulsing need below the waist. One. Get away from him. Two. Get away from this house. Three. Get away from this planet. I should probably find some clothes somewhere in there, but fuck it. I’ll hazard the snow if the docks are close. But where are the docks? Where are the transporters? How did we get here?
For a moment, my thoughts flash to my mother. Sitting between her legs. Her fingers yanking tangles out of my hair unforgivingly. I wince from the memory, and from the realization that I don’t have a way back to her. Does it even matter? You’ve been dead to her for rotations.
I clutch at my chest as my gaze finally lands on a small table against the far wall. A few objects lie scattered across it and though none of them look sharp enough to stab, they could be heavy…if only I could reach them. If only I would reach for them.
But I don’t. I just…sit there.
It must be shock. That’s the only way to explain it. Shock doesn’t account for lust. My gaze flicks back to him.
He holds onto the frame of the door as if it’s the only thing keeping him anchored, from tearing his way forward. The muscles in his corded arms ripple and muscles I’m sure human males don’t have slither and pulse down his neck, across the plates slathered across his chest where pectorals should be. The top half of his suit is bunched around his hips and his black hair hangs in thick, mud-locked chunks all the way down his back to tickle the sharp V-indentation that starts at his abdomen and disappears below the edge of the suit where I can no longer see it.
He’s covered in strips of brown mud and darker smears of grey that I think is the blood of his own kind. It covers his breadth — and he is broad. I knew they were broad. I’ve always known. But he seems bigger. More powerful. Maybe it’s because that’s how he is. Or maybe it’s because that’s how I see him after what he did…or maybe, after what he didn’t do. He’s huge. And powerful. I can’t believe I fought him. I can’t believe he felt, at any point, defeated. And I can’t believe that at no point, I did.
He took me. He took me in the way I feared the most. In the rough way I’d once been taken. In the way the red alien ruined me.
But he ruined me more. This purple alien with a single blazing streak at the front of his hairline just as white as the outside’s cold must have broken something in me when he looked me in the eyes and whispered his words, that unholy incantation, that blasphemous rite. Warrior, he called me, Kiki. He asked me if I was untried, but I…I felt it break. I felt it go. I got to try again. I got to start over. And when he took my virginity, I hated how much I loved it. Because I loved it so much it hurt to breathe. It still hurts. And I regret nothing.
Never, I promised myself, never again with any male. Kill, I promised myself, kill any alien that I come across. But I helped alien females and I even defended one and I helped males find alien females — even if that was unknowingly — and when I was down in the village, I saw the leader wrapped in the arms of a male, covered in pink mud and smeared in a brutal happiness that brought tears to my eyes and heat to my cheeks. Never again…but I started over again and I started over again with him and he’s as alien as they come.
“My Xhea,” he says, voice low and deep. It pulls at my insides. “I will…take care of you.” His words are full of implication that draws an unfettered moan from my throat.
He closes his eyes — eyelids blinking from the side — and seems to struggle to open them, despite the commands he’s given me. “I will first tend to your wounds. These are your new hasheba. They are honored to tend to you. Kuana and Kuaku, take your Xhea to the baths.”
The soft patter of footsteps against the soft white floor pulls my attention away from the male. There, two female aliens stand in the doorway and I’m shocked to recognize both of them. They were both with me in the cave and I think again of Svera and her Tri-God for a moment. Of course these two females would be here. The bitch and the green one.
“The hasheba are here to assist you. Do not be wary of them.”
As he speaks, I lock eyes with the bitch. Somewhere along the way she’s been cleaned up and freed from her hides. Now she just wears a leather, fur-lined skirt and nothing else. Her chest is flat, just plates studded by little nipples slightly darker than the rest of her, and even though I can’t search her expression for tells, I can feel the bite of her claws in my flesh when she reaches forward to grab my arm. I break the hold with one upward cut of my wrist and she stumbles back, ridges flashing white and then pink.
“I don’t want them to touch me,” I say, but my throat is gravel and sore and I don’t recognize the sound of my voice. It’s been too long. Since the last Hunt when I was hurt, I hadn’t spoken a word until the Mountain Run. So much hard hating work, undone. “I don’t need any help.”
There’s a lag, in which time the male just stares at me passively. How can he be stone when I’m melted wax? I feel ashamed. Get ahold of yourself! I’ll fight. I’ll lose. I’ll fight anyways. Until the end. That’s what I’ve been searching for all along, isn’t it? I wince because a seed of doubt has now been planted. I still want the end — whatever end — but in the meantime…I’d like some more of what I felt on top of the mountain too.
Deep rumbling that you can scarcely call words reverberates behind me when I turn away. “Whatever your Xhea wants. And when she is prepared, bring her to our nest with the medical kit.”
“You do not wish for us to fetch the healer?” The bitchy one asks.
“Nox.” The pressure of his voice fills the entire room and I close my eyes. It’s too much. All I see in the darkness of my eyelids are black stars hanging against the backdrop of a blue moon. Paradise must not be far…
“I will not have another male in our Xhea’s presence until the Xanaxana is settled, not unless absolutely necessary. Now go. Move dutifully, and quickly. I can smell her blood. I need her wounds clean and free of infection before I will suture them. She may be a warrior, but she is still human and human skin is more delicate than I believed possible, so please exercise extreme caution with her.”
“Come with us, my Xhea,” comes a small voice in front of me. The little green alien is standing halfway across the room, gesturing at another doorway with her six-fingered hands. “We will show you the way.”
“I don’t need help,” I blurt out reflexively. Her forehead blares yellow like a beacon and she quickly looks down at her feet and I feel something horrible rise up within me — a desire to treat her some other kind of way, any other kind of way. A desire to be different. That would mean getting rid of hate, but without hate, what is there? What’s left of Kiki?
Nothing.
“Do not be long, my Xhea,” says the voice behind me. The one who is my enemy. The one who calls me queen.
I grit my teeth as a nail bomb erupts inside of me, devastation increasing in impact with each step away from him I take. Does he feel it?
He releases a growl and I hear the whoosh of a door, and then a second from the one we pass through. The green alien shoots me tentative glances over her shoulder as we walk down a wide, white corridor, lined on either side with doors like the one we came through. No, not tentative. Frightened. She’s frigh
tened of me. It occurs to me then that to them, there’s only one alien in the room.
“Move.” The word is accentuated by a sharp elbow to my spine. I stumble, this time, catching myself on the green alien. She winces when I touch her and I open my mouth to apologize on instinct before thinking better of it.
I jerk away from her and snarl over my shoulder, but the bitch is unmoved. Continuing, the white walls give way to black stone and I start to wonder if the little bit of mind I’d saved hasn’t also gone, because I swear that the walls have started to heat. I nearly jump out of my skin when I step down on a spot that’s hot to the touch.
“Have no fear, Xhea. The dagger mountain has many underwater pools. They are heated and as such, warm the Okkari’s house by way of the stone. Screa. It’s a conduit for heat.” She speaks so softly I can barely hear her and my hatred only grows. Hate her. It’s easier than admitting the truth…
I say nothing and when I feel another light shove against my spine, I am filled with renewed purpose. Thank the stars for the bitch behind me, because without her, it would be even easier to forget. Too easy. Maybe that’s because I want to…
Eventually, the black walls have swallowed us up and strange coiled lamps fluttering with light are all that we have to illuminate our path. Cut into the stone walls in intricate shapes, I can’t even fathom what could make light like that and for a second, I think of Miari. An inventor as much as she is an explorer, she was always distracted by the way things were put together.
Coming home from training with Jaxal, I find Miari sitting on the stoop of our shack. She has a package in her lap and I appreciate that she doesn’t try to smile at me like Svera’s always trying. Like the world is good. When Miari opens the long, wrapped gift, I see what she’s done. She’s attached some kind of electrified blade point to a long staff — one made out of steel, though comets if I know where she got the metal for that. It’s a beautiful gift. The first time I really felt like a warrior.
My thoughts jump back to the present. Where is she now? How quickly I’ve forgotten her… I’m ashamed yet once again, and at the same time, reminded of where I am and what I am. I’m human. Not one of them. Never one of them.
The small green one turns left, stepping through a large archway cut into the stone. I turn towards the misty darkness beyond it, peering into the chamber hesitantly, but when I don’t move forward I’m rewarded with another light punch to the spine.
I jerk forward and the green one releases a little chirp. “Kuaku!”
“Don’t. call. me. that,” comes the acerbic response.
The green one flutters around me, but doesn’t try to touch me again. Instead, she steps between me and the bitch and the horrible sensation I felt before returns in force. She’s protecting me…
“It is what you are,” says the green one in high sing song, “A hasheba. And it is a very respected position.”
Red surfaces in Kuaku’s face and looks wretched against her dark grey skin and the even darker walls behind her. It makes her whole forehead look like it’s bleeding. “I am no one’s hasheba, Kuana,” she sneers.
“You are,” Kuana says, a little less confidently this time. “And I am proud of my title.”
“You are weak. You should be proud of your title because it’s all you’ll ever amount to…”
“Hey!” The both turn to me, white on their faces, and it takes me to that second to realize the word was my own. And now I’m protecting her. “For comet’s sake, shut up. I just want to get this mud off me.”
“Of course, Xhea, apologies.” Kuana rushes ahead and pulls aside a heavy black curtain that I’d mistaken for a wall. Beyond it, the white in the air is thick — too thick to see the far wall through. It looks…well it looks like steam. But how can it be? I’ve seen steam before on very hot days and over boiling pots of water — there were pockets of steam floating above the mire — but I’ve never seen so much of it at once.
“Is that a bath?” My mind blanks as I approach Kuana. She holds the curtain aside and a very small smile quirks on her face.
“Hexa, my Xhea. It is.”
I inhale deeply, moving towards the black basin nestled halfway into the room’s rocky floor — the steam’s provenance. “What’s that smell?” I hear myself say, speaking as if the voice is not my own.
“It contains healing and cleansing minerals, to help you ward away infection.”
“I can smell them.”
“I hope they are to your pleasure, my Xhea.”
“Yes,” I whisper, lost. And then because I forget to hate her for one singular moment, I whisper a vulnerable truth, “I’ve never had a bath before.”
Realizing what I’ve said, I glance up, embarrassed. White flashes again, only this time is followed by something darker, the color of cinnamon. She bows to me slightly, breaking my gaze. “Baths are an everyday occurrence here, my Xhea, you will have many. As many as you like and as often. We have no shortage of hot water…”
Her voice is killed by the bitchy one’s laughter. “That doesn’t surprise me. You’re a filthy species, covered in all that disgusting hair and sweat. I can still smell you through the mud. Unfortunately, I don’t think a bath will ever help you be rid of it…”
“Kuaku,” Kuana says again in a surprised tone. As if she can’t imagine anybody ever doing anything evil to anyone. As if the universe is truly a good place in her eyes. “You shouldn’t speak to the Xhea this way. Okkari would have you banished for it.”
“And who will tell him? You? You are a coward and this flimsy little wretch here is little more than an animal. Would he even believe her?”
I round on her and try to force some elasticity into my limbs, which are hot soup at this stage and little else. Her bug eyes widen as I advance and I can see my reflection in them. I look like a monster, like the animal she says I am. I falter, but only for the second it takes me to remember that she’s the enemy and I’m meant to fight her. Lifting my arms, they’re too weak to level a proper punch so I throw my whole torso forward instead. I smash my forehead into her mouth, butting her like a beast. She shrieks and stumbles back into the hall and I grin when the automatic door glides shut between us.
I turn to where Kuana cowers by the entrance, clutching the heavy hide curtain to her chest. After a few seconds, she says, “Are you alright, Xhea?”
“Don’t call me that,” I mutter.
I approach the massive black basin sitting in the center of the room, water rendered black inside of it. I twirl my fingers over the steam that coats it and my heart pounds harder when I lift one leg over the edge, and then the other. I sink in. Paradise… I close my eyes and give up for just a little while.
Time passes. I don’t know how much of it before a small voice finally disrupts the quiet. “Sorry, but what should I call you then? Va’Rakukanna?”
Heat that has nothing to do with the hot water enveloping me licks up my spine. “No. Call me human or nothing at all.”
“Human. You wish that I call you human?”
“Yes.” It’s a good reminder. Them. Us. We are not the same even if she does smile so tenderly it reminds me of Svera.
“I…alright.” She inhales, then exhales shakily. “Human, may I help you remove the mire from your hair?”
I think of my mother and what she would say to me now and wince. I almost say no. Almost. Instead I choke out, “Do what you have to.”
Alien fingers in my hair. Running diligently through my locks and over my scalp. Running water — hot water — through my muddied locks… And I don’t stop her.
It must be shock. It must be what keeps me from rebelling and killing her and finding my escape. It must be shock…
“I will need a stiffer comb to get through your hair, my Xh…I mean, human. Let me fetch one. I will be right back.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t even open my eyes. She doesn’t deserve it. No. She doesn’t deserve this, the way I’m treating her now. I flinch again and only when I hea
r the curtain rustle do I dare look up. The room bowls around me, all dark rock with those strange lights switching across its craggy surface. They pulse, making me wonder if they aren’t alive. It’s frightening. It’s incredible.
I follow the traces of lights until one meets another, then I follow that. I follow the patterns they make until I can’t follow them anymore, even tilting my head all the way back.
Wondering how in the comets the water stays hot even though I feel myself shriveling up inside of it, I paw at its surface, watching air bubbles bloop and blip as they rise. I can feel dirt lining the bottom of the once clean basin now and am shocked when I reach back to touch my hair to feel how soft it is.
“I should just drown you now.”
I start at the sound of the bitch’s voice but refuse to let it show. Instead, I glance dismissively over my shoulder at the female standing against the wall, a white rag to her mouth to staunch the flow of copper, nearly orange, blood. I smile a little at the sight of it.
“What happened on the mountain?” I ask, not because I care but because I want to know why she’s here.
Her ridges burn an even brighter red even though her expression doesn’t change in the slightest. “What do you mean, what happened? I wasn’t selected. The hunters who found me smelled my clothes and ran off again. You gave me your filthy human clothes and like the pathetic savage you are, you ruined my chances!”
“You weren’t the only one carrying my scent. So why were you the only one who wasn’t chosen?”
“I…” She falters.
I grin. “So now what? You’re his slave? Or what? A whore?”
“What? The Okkari’s…if you weren’t…I would…you dare insult me!”
I try to revel in her pain but something painful breaks across my sternum. Shame again. A new friend. And something else I refuse to name. Because the thought of the Okkari’s other women makes me restless. I don’t like it.
Taken to Nobu: A SciFi Alien Romance (Xiveri Mates Book II) Page 6
