by V. K. Ludwig
Melek’s words pulled me out of my thoughts, and I touched the rubbery, round implant at my neck. “Stop acting as if I’m going to run.”
I had to run.
Had to make it out that door once more.
Just how much DNA did it need to open?
Skin flakes? Blood? Both?
With everything anchored to the furniture, there wasn’t much left to throw at Melek. Ever since I’d tried to stab him with a fork, they’d only served me finger-food, so nothing resembling a weapon entered this room. Not that I wanted to injure my healer. But shouldn’t I want to?
I shrugged that question off.
I was sure there was a psychological explanation for the fact that I didn’t want him dead. But scratched up a little? That I could live with.
If skin and blood underneath my fingernails were enough, I couldn’t say, but that wouldn’t keep me from trying. So far, I always tried to run out the moment he approached the door, putting us head to head whenever I took off. But what if I got myself a head-start?
A simple plan formed in my brain. Scratch and run.
I strolled over to my desk and pointed at the breakfast tray. “If I ate something now, would that make you happy? Show some goodwill?”
“That would make me very happy.” He leaned against my desk and gave me an encouraging smile. “Look, I really want you to come to terms with all this.”
“Uh-huh.” I picked up the tray.
“We’re not going around raping everyone, you know.”
“Yeah.” I lunged out.
“A Vetusian is entirely devoted to his one fated mate, and — what the fuck!”
The tray crashed against the side of his head, resonating my tiny room with clanks and clunks. A plate slipped. A bowl of grits poured down his uniform.
I immediately dug my nails into his flesh, dragging them along the side of his neck over and over again. Left, right, left, right. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Then I took off toward the door, a startled Melek stumbling around in the corner of my eyes.
Pushing past the fearful constraint in my legs, I sprinted along the hallway, hands held high above my head. I ran, and I hoped, barely seeing a thing with the way I must have clenched my eyes.
Underneath me, the soft bounce of the carpet changed into something much harder, much colder. Before I could process what had happened, my naked soles flap-flap-flapped across the metal floor of the white hallway. I did it! I made it out!
I turned sharp right, the bright lights above me glaring, blinding me. So I lowered my head, witnessing the dark grays woven with silver underfoot change into molten lead as I picked up speed.
My name sounded from somewhere behind, followed by Melek’s pleas to come back. For a fraction of a moment, I almost felt sorry for him.
But only almost.
Other Vetusians came and went from my vision. White uniforms. Black uniforms. Combat boots. Hover carts with medical supplies. Droids smiling at me.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Melek ate away the distance between us with long, powerful sprints. His lips pouted and shoved. Then I heard it.
“Si’dat!”
One poke from the tranquilizer implant and my legs slowed. No matter how I commanded them to run, they only turned wobbly and weak underneath me. Any moment now, I’d stumble and grind my face along the metal floor.
I didn’t want to go back.
Couldn’t…
Tears flooded my eyes. Soon they would become so heavy they’d close. When I’d open them again, I would be staring at the ceiling of my prison.
Melek shouted something in Vetusian, which made soldiers and healers hurry toward me. My legs seemingly split in half. They had to, with the way I lost balance and fell back.
Too heavy to flail them, my arms hung lazily by my sides. Then, something pressed against the small of my back. An arm?
Someone caught my fall, resting my head inside his large palm, cradling my body against his hard chest. A subtle hint of rosemary clung to his black uniform.
My heart pounded at the scent as if a memory tried to push through the sedative.
And as I gazed up, finding a set of emerald eyes filled with shock, I heard the Vetusian say only one thing. “Why would you run into my arms again, after I gave you a chance to stay far away from me?”
Chapter 6
Torin
I stared at the lifeless body draped across my arms - for the third time in my life - my heart going still inside my chest.
Her hair seemed a shade lighter than that day at the pharmacy. But if her eyes fluttered open without a doubt this female would stare back at me from a set of brown irises. Supposedly an ordinary color for humans. And yet, even with their dullness and lack of vibrancy, they had haunted me for many a night.
Why was she here on my ship when I had clearly ordered her to be brought to Seneca? Out of my reach… though never quite out of my thoughts.
Ardev Five held close to three million human females now. Four million warriors. One million healers. Of all those souls I could have encountered walking down this hallway, I caught her from falling? From scratching that ivory skin I yearned to touch? Bruising those high cheekbones I wished to kiss?
The word fate came to mind and not for the first time.
My instincts had screamed it at me the day I captured her. And while Vetusians believed strongly in being fated to one mate, destiny didn’t always know best. Surely life couldn’t be so cruel as to make her my genetic match?
A healer ran up to us, his eyes wide, his posture showing unease in my presence. “My sincerest apologies, Commander. The female… she…”
His voice trailed off, searching for an excuse where none existed. One look at his two-toned eyes and disgust filled me, putting the derogatory term sgu’dal onto my tongue, but I kept it to myself. The idea of having this ex-addict caring for this female doused me with anger. He was unworthy of her presence.
“What is her name?”
“Eden.”
“Eden,” I repeated slowly, shoving her name around my gums, tasting it, sucking it like I had wanted to suck her mating cleft the day I’d captured her. The day I’d pressed my penis against her like an animal, that need to place my seed inside her a force within me I could barely constrain.
I narrowed my eyes as the memory plagued me. How could I have shamed myself in such way?
“The female figured out how to open coded doors,” the healer said, his tone apologetic, pitiful. And yet his words sent a shiver down my spine, making me marvel at the female’s resourcefulness while still wanting to subdue her for falling out of line. Then he went on. “I’ve had to sedate her almost daily to varying degrees. She is not necessarily aggressive as her intake remarks state. But she is… difficult.”
No, she was definitely aggressive.
That much I remembered.
For a moment, I sensed that throbbing again I had carried in my thigh for half a lunar cycle. It was long gone, but the memory of how she had shot me seemed fresh again, searing, bleeding.
The healer might have called her difficult.
What would I have called an Earth female who punched the Commander of the First Brigade on the day of her capture? Shot him? Kicked him? Made him act so inappropriately between her legs?
A fighter? A fool?
I had let my guard down that day, the radiant color of her hair making me wonder what she might feel like wrapped around my shaft. All I had ever experienced were the droids we used for pleasure. Some Vetusians enjoyed interspecies copulation. And while the Empire didn’t deem it illegal, it certainly was frowned upon and considered below me.
But humans were different.
They were so closely related to our kind, scholars had proven decades ago they could conceive our seed. Bless us with daughters. Save us from our quickly approaching extinction.
“I was the one who captured her,” I said, watching her, taking her all in. Then I asked t
he question I shouldn’t have. “Did we already match this female?”
“No, Commander. Sir. Her genetic profile came back two Earth weeks ago, but in her current state of mind, my superior delayed running it through the databank.”
She was unclaimed. That intrigued me.
Although it shouldn’t have.
The other Wardens would have agreed.
Granted, their opinions were colored by their political ambitions. What better way to let one of the last noble houses die than to prevent an heir? So that they may place another Warden in my stead, and spread their corrupted roots?
But my lack of suitability to claim a mate remained solid, nonetheless. The way I had fisted this female’s hair, pinned her against me, and kicked her to the ground made it all the more evident. It was not that I had wanted to be this rough with her fragile body.
My roughness was inborn.
The lack of tenderness inherent.
But who argued fate?
If this female was destined to be my mate, who was I to ignore the signs? Even now, with her body once more limp and pliable against mine, I sensed how she spoke to a part of me I never knew existed. I wanted to capture her all over again. Claim her. Then seed her with our child and protect both with my life.
But what if I couldn’t protect her from the darkness inside myself?
I should hand her over to her useless healer, return to my bridge and forget she existed. Instead, I set into motion and carried her into the direction she had come from, saying, “You will show me to her room. There, you will upload her profile, and see if she matches one of our Vetusian males.”
The healer gulped first, then nodded. “Yes, Commander. Right this way, if you’d please.”
The moment he reached his arms out to lift her from me, a primal grunt resonated from somewhere deep within my chest. He flinched. So did I, not knowing where that possessiveness over her body stemmed from. But it coursed through my veins so rapidly, giving her up seemed an impossible task.
“I will carry her.”
He fell into a bow and opened his arm toward the hallway, mumbled another yes, Commander, and showed me the way. Ignoring whatever salutes and bows came my way as I carried the female past the many doors, I followed the healer through the one which retreated into the wall at his approach.
Reluctantly, I lowered her down to her bed, a slight tremble settling onto my fingers as I pulled away from her body.
“Your name?” I asked, stepping over to the wall and taking in the countless and repetitive drawings.
“Melek, sir.” He opened his com and switched her profile around, pointing at the artwork while he waited for the upload to finish. “A childhood memory. Her mother took her to this cabin whenever her father deployed.”
“Her father is a military man?”
“Yes, sir.”
I pulled one of the drawings off the wall, staring over the bursts of red, yellow, and orange. Trees shed their leaves their reflections mirrored on the surface of a lake. Before it, a human habitat gleamed in the sun, the windows abundant to one side of it.
I watched how the holographic image of Melek’s com searched for her genetic match, my stomach turning into one big convulsion. “Does she know? Assuming she has a Vetusian match, does she know what our hopes are?”
“Yes, sir, she does.” His voice carried a faint tremor, which explained itself in the words which followed. “The female said, and I quote, ‘I’d rather take three fat human dicks up my ass than spread my legs for one of you so you can turn me into an incubator’. My apologies for the crude language. Her vocabulary can be… colorful at times.”
The surrounding air thickened as if there wasn’t enough oxygen in this entire vessel to allow me a clear thought. What was I doing here?
Given the way she had fought me, it didn’t take a scholar to figure out she would never mate with one of us willingly. Least of all me. Of course there was force — something which had always come so easily to me. But wouldn’t that prove how unfit I was?
Rape, among other things, was punishable by death. A law I had established for the success of our mission, rather than the sake of the females. Bending it to my needs would have been easy enough.
What to do? What to do?
I folded the drawing twice and shoved it into my chest pocket, making my way toward the door.
Eden was everything I shouldn’t have wanted, for she deserved everything I couldn’t give. The least I could do for her was to ignore the way I felt drawn to her.
Beep… beep… beep.
The sound of the com crippled my steps.
My heart beat faster, my ribcage suddenly too small, too compromised to accommodate the muscle. It couldn’t be.
“This is something else entirely,” Melek said. And if I would have glanced over my shoulder, would I have seen shock on his face? “You said you captured her, sir?”
I turned, slowly, my composure peeling in layers. “I did. She… shot me.”
“Sounds like Eden alright,” he said with a scoff, then quickly straightened himself as he noticed his slip of professional manner. “Do you mind me asking what you felt when you captured her, Commander? The information might be valuable to our research.”
I did not like the implication of that question.
Or perhaps I liked it too much.
“Nothing.”
Liar.
I’d felt things I couldn’t name the moment I had set eyes on her, cradling her against my body for longer than necessary. An unreasonable devotion for her had taken hold within me. A force I neither managed to shake nor control.
Melek’s muddled eyes met mine, his posture straight, competent, concerned? “Commander, this female matches to your profile. I am happy to announce you and Eden share a Gaia link.”
A trickle of pity flowed through my veins. For her — not me. Learning the reason why she kept calling me into her life did little to sustain that slipping control.
Of course, I knew they would find my match at some point. And then I would have turned her down, never knowing the freckles of her face, the mounds of her breasts, or the powdery scent of her hair. But now I knew all those things about Eden because destiny kept throwing her into my arms. Arms unfit to wrap around her.
“Sir?”
Had he asked me something?
All I could hear was the way blood rushed through my ears.
“Sir,” he repeated once more. “Would you like me to assign her as your potential mate?”
“No.” I spoke without hesitation in my voice, and yet my legs refused to take another step toward the door. “Wait. You will leave us alone for a moment.”
His head jerked. “Sir, they instructed all healers not to —”
“Do you question the honor of your Commander? Your Warden?”
“Of course not.”
He scrambled to his feet and fell into another bow. The way he kept glancing at her as he retreated, left no doubt of Melek’s concern. If I grabbed her neck now and severed her spinal cord for no apparent reason, I would only have satisfied everyone’s expectations. I was… different. Defective.
“She carries a tranquilizer implant. A simple voice command will sedate her if necessary.” Those were his parting words as he left me with her, complete silence settling uncomfortably into the room.
I hated silence.
Loathed being alone with my thoughts.
I stared at her for a heartbeat too long, but eventually walked over and sat down beside her. The mattress gave in underneath, making her body sway gently toward me. Then I did what I shouldn’t have done and pulled her listless frame against mine.
Holding Eden in my arms was a revelation.
Strands of her hair slung around her cheeks and shoulders, forming a perfect frame for her temporarily peaceful face. This would have been a good time for me to leave. Ignore that this female was my match. But my body refused to rip itself from this fascinating creature.
She looked like a
Vetusian female but smaller, more delicate. But no matter how little effort it would have taken me to break her body in two, her mind was strong. But was it strong enough to be mine?
Before this day, I would have gladly left the mating of females to my troops, my warriors. Now the thought of another male coming close to Eden flared my nostrils, and balled my fists.
No. I decided right then and there to claim her as my own. Her body had chosen me to be her mate, and her mate I would be. Nobody argued fate, so why should I?
I took a pillow and propped it underneath her head, then lowered myself onto her bed and placed my head against her chest, whispering, “Why are you doing this to yourself, anam ghail de min? I sent you away, twice, and yet you came back.”
Her heart beat slow and easy, the sedative allowing her body to rest. And while she slept underneath me, I listened to the even beat, mesmerized by the sound of it.
I was a prime example of a Vetusian male harvested from an artificial exowomb. I had no mother, no father, no past. And if I had a future, then it slept beside me right now.
Did she remember me?
Remember how I had pressed my engorged penis against her?
After going back to my quarters that day, bullet still stuck in the fibers of my muscles, I couldn’t help but pump the thick flesh into my fist until I had spent all my seed.
A moment of hesitation passed, but I eventually placed my hand onto her abdomen, feeling a need to make her mine rise inside me. She was my mate, and I would put my child in her womb, giving it that heartbeat and that mother I never had.
But how?
Garrison Earth was in a fragile state, the mission more than once at the brink of failure. I had a duty to my people, my warriors. There was no time to wait around for Eden to give herself to me willingly. If she ever would.
Until yesterday, I’d considered myself a rather decent male.
Given the circumstances.
I commanded the First Brigade alongside my troops, leading them wherever the Empire needed them. I spared lives when I could and ended them quickly and without suffering when I couldn’t. I was pragmatic. Efficient.
And yet, the way she tempted me to take myself in hand and mate with her right now, had me thinking I was probably not nearly as decent as I believed.
