Sitting up, I swipe a hand through the air and find He’Nr, the Xar’s second-in-command on the resulting holo screen.
“Commander T’Kan, we have a report that a fleet of Kaidorian ships have overtaken the base outside of our Zstetic dystranean mine. Get your ship there as soon as possible.”
My ridges flatten. The Zstetic asteroid belt is our largest deposit of dystranean crystal outside of the one in the Darlanz asteroid belt—the contention of ownership for which kicked off the Three Generation War. Used to power the faster than light drives on most interstellar ships, it is one of our most high value resources, it is kept under heavy guard by several warships.
If the Kaidorians have actually managed to overtake the Zstetic base then the casualty count on our end must be high.
With a nod toward He’Nr, I sound the alarm and prepare for launch.
In a blink of an eye, our ship is informing me that we have arrived at the Zstetic base, and I head toward the command station. “T’Kan!”
N’Thn. My cousin is the only one who dares to be so informal with me. Even though, I have been promoted to his lieutenant commander, he still addresses me as if I am boy who moved into his father’s mansion after my mother died of the Extinction virus.
I turn to reprimand him once again for his insolence but am interrupted by a loud explosion.
Another blink of my eyes and a group of savage Kaidorians have flooded the ship.
“Look out!” I hiss to N’Thn but before the words have barely left my lips a Kaidorian soldier, head bowed and horns pointed, charges at my cousin. Right before my eyes, one of its horns pierces N’Thn’s back and bursts through the front of his chest. Blood spews in an arc, and my cousin eyes glaze with shock and agony.
“N’Thn!” I hiss, rage and denial blasting through me in savage pulses.
Another blink and I am charged by another Kaidorian. Pain splinters through me as I am pinned to the ship’s wall by its horns.
“N’Thn!”
I must find him. I crawl over the body of the Kaidorian who attacked me. One of its horns has been ripped from its head. I think by me. It matters not.
My cousin. I must find him.
But several hands grab hold of me, pulling me in the opposite direction. “Let me go! N’Thn!”
“Commander, he is dead,” a voice tells me. “We must leave. You are gravely wounded and nothing can be done for him—”
No, not true. “N’Thn!” I hiss-scream his name over and over again, refusing to believe him dead.
“How does he fight so hard with his wound. More hands. We need more hands to subdue him!”
“N’Thn!”
“More hands!”
I buck against their grasps, frantically fighting them off.
But then a sweet melodic sound comes from nowhere, drowning out the fight. I do not understand this. I freeze despite the chaos surrounding me, the strange but beautiful voice soothing me.
The hands pulling at me disappear, replaced by the feel of someone stroking my cheek.
I open my eyes and realize I am no longer on my old command ship, no longer just a commander. No…I am the Xar now…at my cabin…and surrounded by melodic sounds even more beautiful than bird song.
Zin’nia….
My head is cradled in her lap as if I am a Xalling, and she is speaking to me in strange melodic tones.
I have no idea what she is saying, but as she speaks her melody, emotions I have not experienced in much time wash over me. Peace. Warmth. No, I don’t understand her words, but my eyes close with the certainty they are the most beautiful I have ever heard.
“andiluvyouiluvyouiluvyoulyknevrbeefor…lyknevrbeefor…lyknevrbeefor.”
The song trails off and it feels like I am losing N’Thn all over again. Grief and pain clutch at me when she attempts to remove my head from the cradle of her lap.
“No,” I click sharply, reaching out to hold on to her. I will not let go. Cannot let go. I need her near.
“Luv…” I say, working my mouth and tongue to hiss out one of the words I think I heard her say when she spoke to me like a bird. Then I touch my throat.
Her forehead creases briefly, but she nods and once again starts to speak her strange word song.
And by the stars…it is a soothing balm to my scarred realm spirit.
But then she once again uncradles my head and attempts to scoot away. I briefly panic, before she settles down beside me, pressing her soft body into my side and wrapping her thin arms around me.
She keeps speaking her word song, and for the first time since the Last Battle, I fall into a peaceful sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Zinnia
4 weeks later
Last night I fell asleep on the pallet I made in the corner of the cabin farthest from the sleeping mats. However, when I wake up I’m no longer curled up in my little corner near the front door but lying next to the golden Xalthurian. My body is half splayed across his, and he has one heavy arm wrapped around my back, his clawed hand possessively cupping my ass.
I don’t know what’s more disconcerting. The nighttime sleep position switch or the fact that I’m no longer surprised to wake up in the exact opposite place from where I fell asleep.
When I’d laid down with the huge Xal after singing to him that first night in this cabin, it was only supposed to be a one-time thing. But every morning since, I’ve woken up cradled in his large arm, my body feeling heavy and warm for reasons I don’t quite understand.
A now familiar sense of being watched makes me lift my head, and sure enough, I find the golden Xal staring back at me. His violet gaze so calm and steady, I have to wonder how long he’s been awake.
He greets me with a couple of distinct clicks I’ve come to recognize after four weeks of waking up inside his heavily muscled arm. I’m pretty sure it means “Good morning.”
And, even though I’ve once again been dragged over here in the middle of the night, I think about saying, “Good morning,” back in New Terrhan. But I’m still not certain he understands anything I say.
He has this way of looking at me when I talk. Like he’s listening deeply to everything that comes out of my mouth. But when I ask him the obvious questions like, why he’s brought me here, what does he plan to do with me, where the moons are we, he never answers. In his weird click-hiss language or with any of the hand gestures we’ve both resorted to for simple communication.
Really, after four weeks I’m still trying to decide whether I should be frustrated or scared shitless by the situation.
“How long have you been awake?” I ask. Testing.
He doesn’t answer. Just continues to watch me intently with his head resting on the top of his shoulder. And there goes my pussy again. A now familiar warmth pools between my legs and my folds clench, wanting things it shouldn’t.
Our faces are so close. Just a shoulder’s distance apart. If I raised up on a little, leaned in, then I could press my lips to his…
But why would I want to? The inner chastisement chases away the strange compulsion to kiss him. He’s a Xal. And he’s brought me to this place against my will.
I drop my eyes from his mouth, ashamed of myself…only to see that the sheet covering our lower halves is now severely tented.
I freeze at the sight and he does, too. Then he hisses and leaps to his feet, with a surprising quickness, given his size.
Is he embarrassed? Angry? Maybe.
He disappears into the indoor toilet room and stays in there for a good long time. And I get the feeling it’s not because he’s in awe of having an indoor waste disposal system, like I was the first few times I used it after a lifetime of peeing and pooping outside.
I wait. Not sure how I feel or should feel about all of this.
Other than moving me every night, he hasn’t touched me since that night on the Xalthurian ship. Which is good. I don’t want him to touch me. My pussy might be acting some strange sort of way every morning, but my good sense
is still running the show. I would scream, bite and kick, if he tried anything.
Which, to be clear, he hasn’t.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve fallen into a routine of sorts. Every morning he’s gotten up, used the toilet, took a shower, thrown on one of those silver body armor uniforms, hopped in his flyer and disappeared over the horizon.
Meanwhile, I stayed behind and just…well, occupied myself the best I could considering it was too cold and killer animally to go outside. I’d pick up a little. Rebraid my hair. Run through theories about the five long shimmering shift dresses he’d given me to wear after ripping Kira’s bark cloth outfit up. Where had they come from—a much taller girlfriend? A wife? And how the moons had they been constructed? They were made of the softest, most comfortable material I’ve ever encountered, but didn’t appear to have any stitches.
I also was low-key trying to teach myself how to read the Xalthurian language. But with only the squiggly lines and dots on the cabin’s appliances to guide me, it wasn’t going so well.
I didn’t love sitting around useless and mostly bored when I had people on New Terrhan counting on me. Which probably explains why I often felt happy to see the golden Xal, when his flyer set down every evening a little before sunset, and he entered the cabin, bearing packages of warm food which we ate at the table. Yes, that’s probably why….
“Am I, like, some sort of pet for you now?” I’d asked during one of those dinners. “Is that why you brought me here?”
He’d listened intently to my question, but hadn’t answered.
After dinner, he would touch his throat and utter a word that strangely sounded like “love,” which I’d quickly figured out meant he wanted me to sing. So I did. Softly serenading him with Fleetwood Mac along with several songs from other old planet music acts I’d memorized.
Usually he worked while I did this, on a hovering screen that appears when he swipes a hand through the air, but not for me. Believe me, I’d tried several times during my long hours of waiting for him to get home.
When my voice got tired, I simply stopped singing and went to bed on the pallet of extra sheets and blankets I’d made in a corner near the door, as far as I could get from his mats without sleeping outside.
He let me go to sleep without a click or hiss of protest, but he never let me stay there all night on my pallet. And quite frankly, the nightly ritual made me feel like the bear Nova made for Glee out of bark cloth when she was little. I was something he tucked into his arm to help him fall asleep. That was all.
And it made a sort of sense. It’s like Kira had complained, the Xals only used us for wombs. Only wanted us to push out their males.
He’d already bred me. And look at me. It’s not like any of the other boys in our settlement wanted the dark village cripple. Of course, he wouldn’t want anything other than comfort from me. I’d understood that.
But today’s sheet tent made that “of course” feel shaky. And my understanding of our pet/master relationship morphed to wonder. Had that morning wood been…after a lifetime of rejection, my mind struggles to reconcile the thought? But could it have been for me?
I stare at the closed toilet closet door, waiting for him to come out. With a weird feeling in my stomach. I think it’s dread.
But I’m not sure.
Not sure at all.
And my pussy is still clenching.
Chapter Fourteen
T’Kan
I must stop touching her at night.
I sit upon the simple toilet with my head in my hands, regretting my choices from last night and every night previous.
I’d sworn not to breed Zin’nia again, and every eve as I watched her make her pallet as far as she could from my sleeping mat, I had thought, perhaps this would be the night. The night I let her remain across the room. The night I did not move her from her makeshift mat to mine after she fell into heavy sleep.
I had kept my vow not to breed her. Technically. However, I had yet to arrange the medical testing with my friend, L’Gon, and the mind rot became worst at night, whispering in my head about tasting and touching. Refusing to let me sleep, until I gave in and fetched her from across the room.
And after laying her upon my mat, I could never deny the call of her soft body. My fingers would find their way to her dampness and sometimes my tongue. Last eve had been such a tasting night. Unable to resist the aroma of her breeding slit, I had pushed the front flap of her dress up for what had become a twice, sometimes thrice weekly routine.
Lapping at her breeding slit juices while I stroked my diijo to completion or she started to moan to the point I feared she would wake. Last night had been the former. I had spilled into one of the silken sheet as her wet folds clenched in and out around my tongue.
I had thought myself satiated, if not necessarily satisfied after depositing my seed-covered sheet into the launder unit, and returning to the mats to pull her to my side. As usual, I had enjoyed a peaceful, dreamless sleep with her inside my arm.
But this morn…
The way she had looked at me. Her beautiful face so soft in the morning light, her breeding slit emanating that intoxicating smell…my diijo had responded as if last night’s spilling had never happened.
And now I sit in the facilities, hiding from the hu’man I stole.
The last time I was this embarrassed was when I was a ladling, during my first day of combat training. I’d been soundly defeated and then scolded for my failure. But that embarrassment does not come close to this, this betrayal of my own body.
And to think I lamented over my lifeless diijo only a few weeks ago.
I am tempted to rub the flesh between my legs if for nothing else to give myself the relief I desperately need. One touch and a loud hiss escapes my mouth. I freeze, and remind myself that she is wide awake and could very well hear my urgent self-ministrations.
I am left with no choice but to stand here and force it down with the deep calming breaths used to achieve battle mind. It is taking much longer to suppress my diijo than when she was wounded and that worries me.
I have resolved to snap her neck if her belly does not swell with my child, and yes, I have managed not to fuck her. But the mind rot has only gotten worse since making those decisions.
She haunts my thoughts, even while I attend to my duties at work. Instead of staying in my well-appointed office to deal with council reports and other holoscreen minutiae, as soon as my second-in-command, F’Syn is done with his end of the day debriefing, I pick up dinner for the two of us and rush back to the cabin. Just so that I might have her word songs after last meal while I work from home.
Lately she has begun smiling upon my return. I like her smile. I like it very much. I like what we have. And at night, she speaks to me in that strange melody I have come to hold dear to my hearts. The luv words, as I have secretly labeled them.
I should be happy she flees to her corner every night. It is better that I keep my distance, so that I can do what I must do when the time comes…
Yet, the scent of her sweet hot, even from across the room is more than I can stand every night. The fact that I haven’t taken her over and over again is a testament to my willpower. But if this morning’s unbidden diijo rise is any indication, that willpower is nearing its breaking point.
I must stop touching her at night, I conclude again. It would also serve me well to visit the pleasure station near Darlanz, when I accompany my Kel to the Kaidorian peace talks….
My diijo responds to this thought in a most unexpected way. Deflating in an instant, no further battle mind required. I look down at it, my ridges rippling with confusion. The mere thought of mating with another female has rendered it as lifeless as it had been before I found Zin’nia buried in the red dirt on New Terrhan. And now there is a heavy ache inside my chest. I rub the spot, yet the sensation only increases.
I release a heavy sigh, not certain whether I should be grateful or worried to have hit upon this strategy for keeping my
diijo in line. In any case, I should no longer delay. I must make breakfast for myself and Zin’nia, then go to work on the other side of the planet.
After taking a gamma shower, I head to fish my uniform out of the laundry unit with only a glance in my captive’s direction. But that one glance stops me in my tracks.
There is blood on the white sheets. A lot of it. My Zin’nia has been hurt!
Chapter Fifteen
Zinnia
I try to keep my face as neutral as possible when the door finally opens to reveal…
Oh…his dick is once again hanging.
Which is great, since the only reason I’d been watching the door was to make sure he didn’t try anything when he came out. I’m glad. Glad his dick deflated.
That’s what I tell myself as I swallow down the weird lump in my throat. The lump allows itself to be suppressed, but settles into the pit of my stomach like it plans to stay. And for some reason I recall my body’s strange response to the conclusion of my breeding on the metal X. How my pussy had kept clenching after he pulled out of me. Curious, like it wanted more.
But I don’t want more. I don’t.
Pushing those thoughts away, I roll and start the unwieldly process of getting up without a walking stick. But just as I’m rolling onto my stomach, the golden Xal grabs me and flips me onto my back, throwing back the white covers.
What the moons? His nose ridges vibrate as his eyes scan the front of the shift dress he gave me. I haven’t ever seen this expression on his face. But I think it’s fear…concern maybe…for me. But why?
I immediately understand when I follow his gaze to a red splotch at the front of my dress.
Okay…well, wow. This is happening. Hot embarrassment burns up my face as I realize his breeding didn’t take.
The golden Xal’s eyes roll frantically. Then without warning, he rips the front of the dress in half. Then the next thing I know I’m on my back with him pressing the bedsheets to my vagina, as if he’s staunching an open wound.
His To Steal Page 6
