“It’s okay, Miari. He didn’t pick her. He’s…” And then she releases a quiet chirp. “God, it looks like he wants past the fence.”
“Comets…” My eyelids flutter and then it happens. This new serpentine friend of mine surges south in my stomach until it reaches the folds of my womanhood. Moisture collects suddenly at the entrance of my core, coats my lower lips, drips onto my thighs… Desire, need, and thirst all hit me with the zing of an electrical burn, of which I’ve had many. But I’ve never felt so shattered. So hot. Roasted alive from the inside.
“Help…” I start to crumble on myself as the sensation punishes me. The earth beneath my feet is gently pulled away.
“Miari,” Svera calls my name again as more of my weight drops onto her. “Miari!”
“No, I’m okay,” I wheeze, and it’s a lie.
I squeeze my legs together and press a hand over my crotch, trying to lessen the torturous pressure, but the threadbare brown pants I’m wearing are scratchy and, since I can’t afford to trade for undergarments, it hurts when the fraying fibers come into contact with my too hot, too sensitive flesh.
I whimper and the response is not one I expected — around me, the world growls. The sound is deep and masculine and bellows through the empty space, shattering the composure the gathered humans once had and sending them scattering.
Svera shouts words I can no longer make out. My eyelids flutter and my gaze is pulled, as if by magnet, through the shifting bodies, people grabbing each other and darting out of the way, pushing past me without looking back.
I see him. Raku. A stone’s throw away. Just on the other side of the fence. His gaze is ripping around, tearing through the crowd like a blade. He releases another desperate male roar before his hands close on the wooden fenceposts. In one swift pull, he rips the stakes free of the packed earth and tosses them aside in a jumble of wood, metal and barbed wire.
Gasps and screams ravage the mob and those that haven’t fled already, surge backwards, trying to create more distance between themselves and the alien barbarian. Mathilda and the Antikythera Council shout now for calm, but at a distance. My thoughts whirl. Another wave of pain-bordering-on-pleasure-bordering-on-pain guts me.
Someone — it could only be Svera — manages to get her hands around my waist. I feel her pull, but she’s so much smaller than I am. I can feel her trembling under my weight.
A command is barked in a masculine baritone from only paces away now. Over the chaos, Svera shouts, “He says to move out of the way!”
People scramble to follow the command issued, but as Svera drags me one way, I’m pushed another and I can’t seem to move anymore on my own. I’m anchored to the spot, rooted there like a tree, doubled over. Svera calls my name but the crowd shifts between us, shoving us apart. She’s gone like sand scattered in a ferocious wind, my name on her tongue.
I collapse forward with the awareness that I’m completely on my own but that I am not alone. I can feel his hearts beat. More than one of them. I can taste his skin. I can hear his breath. Spices I can’t name. The pattering of water on smooth stones. A blessed coolness.
I look up, straight into Raku’s eyes. Bleak and lonely, they are all black without the whites or the irises and are nothing short of furious to see me.
And stranger still is the fact that I recognize those eyes, as if from another lifetime, and all I can think as the pain of a fresh fear drags me to my knees is where have you been?
2
Raku
I had not wanted to join this pointless expedition, but I needed to understand why so much power was being supplied to this particular moon on the outskirts of Cxrian — a moon so small and insignificant that it was not even given a name.
Furthermore, something wasn’t right. What in the seven suns has compelled Bo’Raku and his Bo’Raku before him to travel with a contingent of Dra’Kesh elite to this feral umkempt moon each and every rotation? As Bo’Raku of his planet, an exploratory expedition is beneath him.
Liesure, he’d said. Sport, he’d said when I pressed. Hunting the creatures that live on this forgotten moon in the old practices of the Dra’Kesh, he’d admitted when I pressed harder.
He did not mention that these beings were sentient. He did not mention that there were females among them. Beautiful females with shocking features like the one kneeling on the dark sands before me now, face supine and lovely.
She bears some Dra’Kesh marks — her flawless carmine skin, her high, slanted eyes, her long, lean limbs and her slender tail, dragging aimlessly through a docile wind.
However, the large part of her markings are utterly alien to me — her soft brown hair, a color and texture I have never before seen, her multicolored eyes, her ridgeless brows, her soft, curved chin. Hybrid. The answer floats through my thoughts, demanding questions.
How is this possible? For how long have Dra’Kesh been breeding with these aliens without my knowledge or the knowledge of the Raku who came before? What species are these aliens that seem to practice the same breeding Hunt practiced by the ancient Dra’Kesh?
And how is it possible that my Xanaxana might call for one of them with the force of a star in supernova, universes unborn?
I exhale. Thoughts of treachery, lies, deception and deceit are too easily forgotten. By the pounding of my twin hearts and the dischord of my mind, I am overwhelmed. She is my Xiveri mate. The one I never searched for because I assumed I would be among the unlucky, never to be found.
I have spent nine long rotations without hope of finding my Xiveri mate, relegating myself to the idea that I would simply force a union with a worthy female to breed and ensure my line — it is not uncommon that a Raku does not find his Rakukanna. That two Xiveri mates do not find one another. The galaxy is vast, and the planets within my quadrant, immense.
But here she is. Squinting up at me against the suns, the scent of jujji berries and ranxcera weeping from her skin. She is close now. Close enough to touch. To take. To devour endlessly.
Her mouth parts and I catch a flash of pink. My Xanaxana rumbles loudly in my chest and my stiff xora jerks behind the leathers I wear. Consumate. Breed. The thoughts hit me harder than an ion round.
I grit my teeth, force my hand not to shake as raw masculine desire pulses through me. But I need to touch, to prove to myself that my eyes do not deceive me. That I have not sunk so deeply into the pits of madness to be hallucinating my Xiveri mate here.
Cautiously, as if attempting to stroke the outer edge of a bubble, I bend down and touch her hair.
Xok, it is soft. Even softer than it looks. A symphony of color, calling it brown would not do it justice. This color is not one we have in Voraxia. And her skin…it smells like the spices produced by the spindly Tevra trees near my Drakanna’s home. Before I went to train, it was the place I loved the most.
This female…there is no doubt in my mind that she was created for me, and me alone. She is my prize. Worthy of a Raku. So why is it then that I sense that something is wrong…
Disturbed by her lack of ridges, I cannot guess at her emotions. I cannot read her face. But when I inhale deeper, none of that matters. Because twisting with the breeze, I can taste the notes of her arousal. Grain and sugar, fruit, malt, and something sweeter, something just for me and it is so concentrated now, the scent alone threatens to destabilize me.
I glance down the length of her body, wanting nothing more than to toss her onto her hands and knees, spread her red thighs apart and claim her with one thrust — as is my right. I grit my teeth. Sweat breaks out between my shoulder blades and winds its way over my hardened plates and down my spine. My my resolve is a thread, worn thin and it takes a will I did not know I possessed to overcome such a conflict.
I pull my fingers free of her curls and gently, very gently, cradle her cheek. I have never felt skin like this. Like the outside of a petal. My thoughts are chaos, but around me, the world is still. I understand nothing. I understand everything. The fabric of the universe.
“I am honored to stand before you,” I tell her gruffly, dropping to one knee.
Her chin trembles and she jerks away from my touch. “What do you want with me?”
Is this a test? The Xanaxana has come alive within us. The rest should be obvious. I answer her slowly, “To take you to Illyria, Voraxia’s capital, where you will serve as Rakukanna to your people. Where you will live as Xiveri mate by my side.”
I reach for her again and again, she recoils. I frown and palm the front of my xerbu leathers. With my other hand, I reach for her hips and cup her mound. We hiss in unison.
The clothing she wears seems much too rough for her silken skin, yet I cannot force myself to withdraw. Not with a heat so unforgiving burning my palm, branding it with her scent. I have never scented anything — no female, no flower, no creature, no breeze — to melt me as that scent does here. I need to see it. Touch it. Devour it.
I lean forward to do all of those things and more, but she pushes my arm. The force of the movement throws her off center. She slips and when she tries to draw her legs away from me, I grab hold of her ankle and jerk her towards me over the hot sand.
She lets out a small scream. “Svera,” she shouts, “what is he saying? What does he want with me?”
Something is wrong. She cannot understand me. She does not wear a translator. If these beings were joining with Dra’Kesh in the breeding Hunt, then they would have been equipped with devices for communication…
An alien female wearing a strange garb covering her hair pushes through the crowd. “Let go of her,” she commands me, her Raku.
The world is washed in red. I would have slaughtered her then and there if I were a lesser male. Instead, I temper my pitch and seethe through clenched teeth, “You dare make demands of me.”
“I just…I…You shouldn’t be here,” she stamers, despite her utter and complete lack of conviction.
“You will tell me who you are before I have you whipped for your insolence.”
She squeals and the female below me swats my upper arm. Startled, I glare into her gaze. There is fire there. There is also fear. My Xiveri mate fears me. Something is terribly, wretchedly wrong.
“Don’t hurt her. And Svera, don’t try to be a hero. Just let him do whatever he’s going to do. We can’t stop him…”
I grab my female’s arm, the one she used to hit me. “Do whatever it is I’m going to do?” I parrot. “You know what it is I intend. I will bind us together in the way of the Xiveri. You are mine. Just as I belong to you.”
The female shaking where she stands makes a crude translation for my Xiveri mate. As the interpreter finishes speaking, my Xiveri gasps. “I…what does he mean? What’s he going to do to me?”
Water wells in her eyes and though she has no ridges to betray her emotions, I can feel her fear, her anxiety…her hopelessness. As if somehow in a perversion of the Xanaxana, meeting her Xiveri has become — not the singularly most important experience two beings can share, but the gravest torture.
I am breathing hard as I speak over the interpreter’s whispered words… “You will provide this female with a translator. Now,” I bark.
The interpreter shakes her head, light brown hands wringing together in a clear display of worry. “Translator? Only the Antikythera Council have translators.”
I do not know of this council and frown. A governing body within Voraxia that does not report, in some way, to me? Do they not know that I am their Raku? What lies and liberties has Bo’Raku allowed these beings?
Forcing myself to focus, I bark, “You will tell me then how it is that you come to speak the Voraxian tongue.”
“I learned.” Her replies are each dipped in an accent I have never heard before, despite that her words are, in fact, Voraxian. There is a charm in hearing her talk that I might have appreciated had her words not made me want to rip her tongue right out between her teeth.
Below me, my Rakukanna writhes, attempting to free herself from my grasp. I squeeze her wrist even harder, anger firing up my spine, and wrench her close. Close enough to feel her little body’s heat like a brand.
“You will tell me why my own Xiveri mate attempts to distance herself from me,” I say, locking eyes with my Xiveri mate as I speak to her interpreter who then whispers two words that haunt me — so foul I am sure that they will haunt me forever.
“What’s that?”
The dissonance of my twin hearts is a reckoning I cannot face and cannot fall back from. There is nowhere to retreat.
“True mates,” I whisper hollowly, “brought together by the universe, Xana, and her mate, Xaneru. He is the soul. Xanaxana is the mating power they create, that binds two Xiveri as one.”
“What is he saying, Svera?” My Xiveri mate asks of her kinswoman.
The female only shakes her head. “I don’t know.” She turns to me and reverts again to Voraxian. “I can’t translate because we don’t know what those things are. What is Zi-vair-ee? What is a Za-na? What is a Za-nay-roo? They don’t exist in our language so could you please…” She gestures wildly towards me and my Xiveri mate with her hands. “Would you please get away from her? She doesn’t consent and she isn’t part of the offering this rotation. She isn’t old enough. She’s not of age.”
Consent? Offering? Of age? I am tortured. There is nothing that a Raku does not know about his federation and yet here I am, faced by an entire species who knows nothing of our cultures, our customs, our ways — our xoking biology! — and I know nothing of theirs in return. How is this possible?
Bo’Raku…
I hiss and rip away from my mate. On my feet now, I feel enormous looking down at her small form. Punching my fingers through my hair, I try to control the rippling and ripping of the Xanaxana through my body. The realization is enormous and cutting. She does not understand the power of the Xanaxana or what it means for us.
She tries to cover herself with her broken pieces of brown fabric and desperately, she shifts away from me as if she truly does not know me with every inch of her soul.
I start to breathe harder, panting now with fury as I round on the little interpreter. She canters back towards her kind, who do nothing but brace against her, throwing her forward alone and leaving her with nothing but her little fists and a shapeless brown covering swathing her hair and her form to defend against my rage.
I long to release such rage unto her, but Voraxians do not hurt females. They bring life and are precious and without them, there would be no Xanaxana. No kits. No future.
“You will tell me what you mean by of age.”
“She isn’t yet seven rotations. We agreed with Bo’Raku that only women between seven and fifteen rotations would be offered. She’s only six.”
The interpreter nervously taps her foot, her gaze flicking between me and my Rakukanna. I might have otherwise interpreted this as deceit, but nox. I know this for what it is, even if she does not boast ridges on her brow: fear. One that my female shares.
“You will command my Xiveri mate to activate her life drive.”
“Life drive?”
Rage simmers and flares. Bo’Raku again comes to mind. Sentient beings within the scope of his juresdiction and he has not even provided them with such basic provisions as life drives?
I unfocus from my Xiveri’s face then, allowing my gaze to drop to her clothing. Ragged and worn so thin I can see her skin through the fabric covering her knees and elbows. Bony knees, bony elbows…
She is thin…too thin. I can see the bones of her chest where her tunic gapes around her collar bones. They jut forward, looking delicate and prominent. I could snap one of them between two fingers and it would take almost no effort at all.
Bo’Raku…
Hallucinating his decapitation, I roar, “What is this female’s line?”
“H…her line?”
“From what family does she hail?”
“She…she doesn’t have a family.”
“What?” This female — the one
intended as my Xiveri mate, who will be Voraxia’s Rakukanna — has no line? No kin? No one to claim her? “Who was the male to sire her?”
The interpreter looks away from my gaze. “They don’t…the aliens…the Dra’Kesh don’t introduce themselves before they breed us…we don’t know their names. Only Bo’Raku…”
Bo’Raku… I do not understand. I feel a fool. Raku, commander of the entire Voraxian Federation, its armies and its people, and I am brought to heel by the words of a puny female.
“You didn’t even introduce yourself,” she accuses, a rare glimpse of anger spearing the veil of her fear.
I rise up to my full height, menacing over her. “You dare. I would cut out your tongue for this, if it were not so valuable.”
“Stop!” My Xiveri mate rises from the ground and shoves her body between mine and her interpreter’s. Fearing me. Hating me. Completely ignorant of me even though she is mine and I am hers — the only male that is and that will ever be.
“Don’t hurt her,” my female says, staring deep into my soul. My Xanaxana rises, surging towards her, needing what she does not know she holds. “Please. Don’t hurt her. I’ll give you whatever you want.”
I inhale. My gaze sweeps her frame. Holes in the rags she wears, revealing red skin. Mine. Tangles in her hair. Mine. Ranxcera blossom rolling off of her. Mine. Grain and syrup. Her arousal. Mine. Reach out. Take her. Claim her. Rut her like an animal. Mine.
My fingers twitch. I speak to the interpreter, without breaking the contact of her gaze. “Is to mate with one below seven rotations a dishonor then, for humans?”
“Yes,” the interpreter answers quickly. Her voice is firm and strong.
I do not know what it is to age for these beings — I know nothing about their kind at all — but Voraxian and Dra’Kesh females can be taken for breeding as young as five. Any younger than this is a flagrant dishonor.
Males of age who take females younger than five rotations suffer the worst of all tortures. A lashing of the testicles. I would know, because I have administered this punishment to one of my warriors caught forcing himself upon the daughter of a Quadrant Three warlord who attacked Rheth, an outer Voraxian planet. It took six hours to administer punishment during his tribunal. Two of my fiercest warriors were sick watching it.
Taken to Voraxia Page 2
