Taken to Voraxia

by Elizabeth Stephens

  My head spins. It’s a lot to take in and yet strangely the first thing that comes to mind is — he made a pact with Mathilda? That would explain the new houses the Antikythera Council built for themselves, but it doesn’t explain why our rations were just as low as previous rotations. Unless he’s lying. Or Mathilda was…

  “You will tell me now if you consent to these terms.” He is tense. He needs this.

  Maybe I do to, because I’m damn sure that the colony does. More than the food, more than the equipment, they need hope. Off-planet offers that. Knowing that they can choose their fates offers that.

  I nod. “On one condition.”

  He grunts and I swear I detect faint notes of amusement. “Of course.”

  “Can women who don’t want to take part in the Hunt, still maybe be considered to go off world?”

  “Don’t want to partake in the Hunt? Am I to…” he chokes. “I will ask you a question now and you will answer it. Am I to understand that some females who have taken part in past Hunts have not been willing?”

  I scoff. “No. None of them have.”

  Bright white lights up his face again. His arms fall slack at his sides. Yellow rides on top of it, followed by grey and then nothing. “You will tell me now if the Hunt is a human tradition.”

  Heat blisters me. I lean forward on the bed, feeling strangeld by an impotent sort of rage. I slam my fist again and he watches it dispassionately. “Of course it’s not a human tradition. Why do you think I fought so hard to get out of it? It’s degrading and sick.”

  “I thought…” His voice falls away. For the first time since meeting him, he struggles to hold my gaze. Failing, he breaks it. “I had assumed you ran to avoid me, not the Hunt as a practice.”

  “You? Why would I…” He thinks I hate him. Not aliens as a whole, but just the one. My nipples harden and I cover them with one arm. Goosebumps break out all over me.

  “No, I didn’t run from you. I didn’t want to do the Hunt.”

  His gaze flicks back to mine and I heat from the inside. “It is a common practice between consenting males and females on some Voraxian federation planets like Cxrian and Nobu, but not on Voraxia itself, our principle planet and where my home is located. I did not want to partake in this Hunt either. I was doing it for you.”

  He was doing it for me. But why would he… Our gazes still locked, a single word floats through the room and it comes from me. “Bo’Raku…”

  Raku growls and his voice sounds like a curse when he speaks. “And he will be dealt with, but for now I can assure you that there will never be a Hunt again if it is not by the consent of your people.”

  I take a breath, exhale it shallowly, daring…just daring to believe. “Then…I guess we have a deal.”

  “You will tell me if you believe us to have a deal or if we truly do have one.”

  The corner of my lips jerk. “Yes. We have a deal. I consent. I will be your…your Xiveri mate and you will stop the Hunt and help my people.”

  “Xhivey.” He inhales so deep his chest expands to fill the whole room. At least, his presence does. He takes a step towards me and I blurt out, hoping to stall him as the reality of what I’ve just agreed to sets in. “But I…you never said if you’d apologize to Svera.”

  “Nox, I did not and I will not.”

  “You shouldn’t have hurt her like that.”

  “It was inadvertent and I am Raku. I apologize to no one for anything, except to perhaps, you.”

  My fingers crinkle in the mattress. “Fine. But there’s just one other thing…”

  “You will tell me of this condition.”

  “It’s not so much a condition, it’s just that…you said…you mentioned being satisfied. That if you’re satisfied after the mating, then you’ll help my people, but I…I’ve never mated before. I don’t know how to satisfy a male…in that way.”

  I can build a replica machine from an ancient hologram generator and a few household items — a toaster, a monitor, copper wires from a hair diffuser and a stolen, defunct ion grenade — but I couldn’t even fathom what I would need to do to generate satisfaction in Raku. And now the fate of the colony depends on it.

  The purring in his chest picks up in force, that subtle growl gaining in volume, before finally, he says, “Look into my eyes, little one.” His voice is gentle in a way I haven’t heard it before.

  I hesitate, but do as he says. His face betrays a calmness that makes him look like another male altogether. Universes collide in his eyes. His lips are blue and full. I touch my own and the second I brush my bottom lip, his cock jerks.

  He grabs it and stars the sight of him palming his own manhood in front of me is almost too much. I focus on his face, terrified to look anywhere else as he grips that hard, iron length firmly, like he’s wrangling it into submission.

  “So long as I have your consent and your desire, Rakukanna,” he says, husky and deep, “there is nothing you can do to displease me. Nothing.”

  I feel warmth grip me, and it’s a pleasant sort of sensation. The first like it I’ve ever felt. I roll forward onto my knees with a confidence that surprises me. It must surprise him too because his left foot shoots a hair backwards and he pivots, as if he’s preparing for a fight. For the male who just tore apart beasts bigger than our colony houses, I can’t help but smirk.

  “Then it’s a deal.” I exhale, extending my hand.

  He stares at my fingers, head tilted to the left. “Is this the human sign for a pact?”

  “I guess, yes. Is there another Voraxian sign for a pact you would prefer?” I ask uncertainly.

  “There is a blood pact, but I would not wish to puncture your skin. It is very delicate.”

  “It’s not that delicate. I’m not a flower.”

  “But you are.” His gaze is searing and without pupils to guide me, I don’t know where to look. I start to fold my fingers, but he steps closer then and slides his palm against mine, totally circling my hand with his, the entire thing swallowed whole.

  “We shall accept the human pact,” he says, “Even if it is needless. I would not betray your trust. Not for anything.”

  “You don’t even know me…”

  He exhales and my whole body floods with heat that I know he must sense because the vibrations of his chest become louder. Deafening. “I do. As you know me. But if it brings you comfort, then we will do the human pact as well.”

  “We…call it a handshake.” Sweat breaks out across my forehead, but I roll my shoulders back and try to appear strong. I also try to untangle my grip from his, but he doesn’t release me. His face darkens. His eyes are ferocious and wanting.

  “M…my friends first, right?”

  He grunts, hesitates, then nods, but he doesn’t let go of me. Instead he leans forward and drags me to the edge of the bed before picking me up and carrying me to the far wall where he withdraws clothes — a tunic for me, trousers for him.

  “You will tend to your humans first,” he says, yanking the tunic over my head and hoisting me back up in his arms. “And then you will tend to your Raku.”

  I nod, unable to hold his gaze from this close, not with my lower lips pressed against him, dripping juices down to wet the waist of his trousers. “Hexa,” I say, because I’ve heard him, Svera and even Mathilda utter this alien word before.

  He shudders as he inhales, and suddenly we are moving fast down long grey corridors.

  6

  Raku

  “Kiki?” Her fingers stretch to the glass of the viewing pane, beyond which the traitor lies suspended in a merillian tank, her Xiveri mate standing over her.

  “Hexa,” I say, wishing to respond to my Rakukanna, though I do not know the question.

  She glances at me and fresh creases appear now across so much of her face. Her mouth turns down. My pulse thunders unevenly, as if I would be concerned for the human who betrayed me.

  It is illogical and I shake away the sensation, focusing instead on my Rakukanna as she says,
“Is she okay? What is the purple? It’s…is it alive? Is it tech or bio matter? It looks like it’s crawling over her.”

  The warble in her pitch tell me that she does not find it pleasing to see the traitor in the healing pool of merillian. I thought this would have pleased her, and feel baffled again.

  “This is merillian,” I say, “It is biological. You do not harvest it on your moon? It grows in the flowers produced in the nightshade trees of your mountains. It is extremely valuable.” Again, I am plagued by thoughts of another traitor, this one, one of my own. Bo’Raku. He will need to be dealt with. Harshly.

  “I…no. I’ve never even seen this before. No one in the colony has, and if we had I’m sure we wouldn’t know how to harvest or use it. Is it…it’s healing her?”

  “Hexa. Merillian seeds give life to the microorganisms. They are carrion creatures, feeding on damaged cells that they replace with complete cells in their excrement. Any injury she has ever had or scar ever born will be cleansed and repaired. It might have been faster to heal her with laser treatments, but given the extent of her wounds, I agree with Va’Raku’s decision. He is honored to pay the expense.”

  “Why?” I wonder if she is aware that her fingers have tangled with my hair and are pulling on them in a way that is not painful, but rather hypnotic. It takes me a moment to respond.

  “Because she is his Va’Rakukanna. As you are my Rakukanna. My Xanaxana breathes for you and the unborn kit I will sire in your womb.” One of my hands releases her and comes to cover her bare belly, below her mother’s feeding tube.

  She opens her mouth but does not speak. Instead she bites down on her lip and looks straight ahead at the glass while her stomach clenches beneath my hand. Her expression means nox to me.

  “Will he stand there like that forever?” She says then, and I sense that this is a distraction from another point, which she does not raise now.

  I glance past the tub of merillian with the traitor suspended inside of it, at my second against the far wall. His arms, which are a lighter, slightly redder shade than mine are pulled behind his back. His still blood-crusted breast is thrust forward.

  He does not look up from the female floating in the merillian, he does not move. He does not blink. He does not seem to breathe. It is his discipline, his calm under pressure, and the battle — hard fought and won against Dra’Kesh invaders — that led my Raku before me to select him as Va’Raku just two rotations before I was elevated to the Raku rank. It was a decision easily made.

  “Hexa,” I answer. “Until she is well, he will.”

  Just as I would for her. It is only by Xana’s grace that she is not lying right there next to the traitor. I stiffen at the thought and clutch her tighter to me.

  My little human shudders — because of my hold or something else, I cannot be sure. She frowns and I feel myself form a mirrored expression.

  “Kiki won’t like that,” she says and I wince at the slave name, used so casually and crassly.

  “She is Va’Rakukanna and on Nobu, will be worshipped as Xhea, at his side, following their union. It is his duty. His honor.”

  My hand on her bottom nears the curve, and my claws brush against sensitive flesh. She sucks in a breath that stiffens my xora until it is even harder than the screa that line the black crag valley. So dense, even their deceptively beautiful flakes draw blood.

  I lower her down my abdomen so that her thigh might brush my xora through the thin cloth I use to hide it. My arms shake as a powerful sensation thrums through me. Mate. Mate. Mate. I can hear nothing else over the Xanaxana’s call.

  “Do you wish to enter?” I ask, voice gruff as I reposition her in my arms, away from my xora. “She will not wake for another few solars, perhaps more depending on the extent of her injuries.”

  She seems to consider, but when she shakes her head and utters a barely audible, “Nox,” I near sigh in relief.

  I am ready to throw myself back down the hall and return to my chamber, but something in her expression holds me there. “Do not fear, my Xiveri. Xaneru is strong in her.”

  “What is Xaneru,” she says quietly, in a way that makes an unusual cold break out on the backs of my arms.

  “The inside.” I tap on her plateless chest. “What powers the Xanaxana. Without one there is no life.” I point up and she glances towards the ceiling as if she might see Xaneru there, now, floating among the panels. My mouth curves. “Xaneru is mate to Xana, who rules the cosmos. Together, they form the Xanaxana that rules us now and binds us as Xiveri mates.”

  She tries to look down, but I slide my clawed finger beneath her chin, careful again not to prick her much softer skin. So soft. Soft everywhere. I inhale deeply. Ranxcera blossoms grow on the vines that sprout from the xamxin river near my home. I long to take her there. To show her that I know where she belongs, even if she does not.

  “You are Rakukanna now,” I repeat. “You do not look down and show weakness. You look straight and meet the gaze of any you come across. Even me.”

  Her head dips momentarily before jerking back up. Her gaze meets mine squarely and I feel a strange but budding pride beat in my breast. “Okay.” The first command I have given her that she obeys. My foot jerks. I want to give her more. Give her everything. And take from her, everything in return.

  “Then we return to my chamber.”

  “Nox, I want to see Svera. Where have you taken her?”

  Seven setting suns and darkness await… “I cannot wait any longer.”

  My Rakukanna’s brow crease returns and her very full mouth pillows disappear inside. She carries the heat of a warrior in her eyes even though her little hand thumps pitifully against my plated breast.

  “You said friends first. Friends. That’s more than one. Now take me to her, or no desire. No willingness. You will have to tie me into the breeding belt because that’s the only way you’ll be able to mate with me at all.”

  My own torment at how many solars and lunars I have waited for this moment to finally come unravel me until I am a youngling in her presence, petulant in the face of her defiance. “You dare threaten your Raku,” I snarl.

  She starts to wriggle and struggle in my grasp, knees buckling when I finally release her. She hisses and takes a few light steps, as if acclimating her feet to the temperature of the floor. Is it too cold for her? Too hard? I should not have dropped her. She should be against me, flesh on flesh always.

  Her gaze tracks down the length of my body finally resting on the thick spread of wetness glistening against my abdomen. The sight of her watching it makes my xora lift, the bloated head curving towards my abdomen. And then she does something that shocks me more than a blitz attack. Her hand reaches towards me and here, directly over the thin barrier of my coverings, she molds her fingers to my xora.

  I imagine that were I wearing the ceremonial breeding cloth, she would have touched it directly, merely peeled back the folds of the cloth and initiated the sensation of her hand on my xora, all on her own.

  Even here, now, in this, to have her initiation is enough to cause the Xanaxana to brutalize the underside of my breast and pound out of time with my two hearts. This is not done by Voraxian or Dra’Kesh females. Those females know that their place is in the breeding harness. But this little defier knows nothing…and with her hand on my xora, I do not care.

  I jerk forward, but her body is not open to me. Only her hand and its firm pressure are mine for now. She squeezes the shaft, her small hand not fitting all the way around. But she holds it steady, just as she holds my gaze.

  “Svera first, then desire.”

  Pact. She does not desire but she knows what I want. I have made no effort to hide my needs, urged on by the Xanaxana, but for her to see them and use them against me so effectively is a concession of power I have never before felt. Negotiations with the savage Niahhorru warlords have not left me feeling so exposed or crippled as this. And yet…

  I grab her wrist and she jumps, angling her shoulders away fro
m me and positioning herself to withstand an assault. She still does not understand that I will not hurt her. Not ever.

  Ignoring the frightened movement, I slowly bring her hand down, and then all the way up to my xora’s engorged head. It is shamefully difficult not to let loose my seed there, for my sac is full and weighted, throbbing with its own heartbeat. Lust twists through my body and for a moment, my sight goes black. I return with a hiss.

  No female of our kind would initiate this contact, and no female of our kind of worth would allow me to maneuver their hand over my sex as I do this little hybrid’s hand now. I shame her by forcing her touch me in a way that I have only ever touched my own xora in the throes of youth, before my third stone dropped.

  But she does not recoil, or seem unwilling. Nox. It was she who initiated the contact and it is she who continues to grip my xora with a firmness that suggests she is not repulsed by this act as another female would be.

  And because of it, my xora throbs now with a pain I have experienced only once before — one rotation ago, when I had her in my grasp and could not sate the Xanaxana coursing through either of us.

  She may not know Xanaxana, or Xiveri, or my xora. She will know them all. But for now, she knows only pact. And I know only need.

  I speak gruffly. “I will take you to the traitor. You will see that she is safe and protected and when we return to my sleeping quarters you will consent, you will desire, and you will palm my xora like this without my guiding you.”

  I feel the pang of shame when the crease appears again between her dark, shadow-colored eyes. She must know how debasing this request is for a Xiveri male to his mate, yet her need to protect her friends outweighs it.

  After a pause, she nods. “Okay.”

  “Xhivey.”

  My hand falls from her wrist, but her fingers do not unfold from my xora and the force of the blood that pumps through it is enough to make me sway.

  She squeezes my xora and I bark out a curse in the ancient language, but she releases me and my eyes snap open in time to see the strangest expression cross her face.