by Loki Renard
“You deserved it.”
And just like that, they were back in complete and total opposition. No matter how hot and dominant the king was — maybe even because of how hot and dominant he was, she couldn’t submit to him.
“I don’t think I did. I think I’m a person. You think I’m nothing more than a pet.”
“Nothing more than a pet? Being my pet means being my everything,” Dominax growled. “It means being in my care for the entirety of your life. It means I will always look after you, in ways big and small. You do not know what your absence did to me, do you? What pain it caused…”
“Was it as much pain as being lashed with a leather belt?”
He did not reply to that, but started running his hands through her hair, massaging her scalp with the sweetest, most delicate of oils and she somewhat lost interest in rebelling.
It had been thrilling to be on her own for a time, but it had also been hard, and lonely, and she had found it almost impossible to properly fend for herself.
Now, Dominax was taking care of everything. Once he had oiled and combed her hair with those huge hands of his, he finished toweling up the last few wet spots on her body, her shoulders and upper back which had re-wet themselves with the fall of her hair.
She felt the towel stop at her shoulders.
“What have you done here?”
“I don’t know. Can’t remember. Can’t see either.”
“You have bumps on both your shoulders in the same place,” he said, running his hands down over them. Now, strangely, she could feel what he was talking about. Previously, she hadn’t noticed anything there. “One is underneath the tattoo of some kind of creature. I always meant to inquire about that…”
“Oh. Yeah. That’s a pig.”
“You have a pig tattooed on your body? An Earth animal? Does it hold great significance?”
“No. I just thought it was funny.”
“You marked your body permanently for amusement?”
“I’m human. At least half of what we do is because we’re bored and the other half is because we’re horny or hungry.”
“You’re leaving out the things you do out of sheer, pointless rebellion.”
“I guess tattoos fall under that category too, sometimes.”
He sighed and finished drying her off, paying careful attention to her breasts and between her thighs, down her legs, and the soft down between them. He had absolutely ravaged her in all those places at one time or another, but now he was being careful and treating her like someone or something that mattered.
Dominax helped her stand, and reached for a golden silk robe, sliding it up her arms and over her shoulders, he took care to secure it about her waist and slide her hair from beneath it. Every movement was made with more gentleness than she had expected upon her recapture from the brute king.
He had never clothed her before, she realized. This might have been the first time he’d ever seen her as anything other than an animal toy. Maybe things were changing. She didn’t say anything, in case it shattered her assumptions. Better to live in a realm of imagination than to have to suffer through unpleasant truth. When she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that he was a human lover, and that they were a pair about to embark upon a life of domestic bliss.
But when she opened them, he was still the same dark eyed, winged monstrosity of pure dominance who would possess her at any cost.
“Come,” he said. “You need to rest in a proper bed. Those pods you were staying in are not comfortable.”
“They were okay. I’ve crashed in worse.”
“I’m sure you’ve crashed into all sorts of things,” he replied. She didn’t bother correcting the idiom. Whatever universal force for immediate translation was at play, it clearly had its limits.
Dominax took her by the hand and led her to the bed chamber. The same place he had fucked her. The same place he had whipped her. The place she had made her escape. Looking at the bed brought back a great many intense memories, along with a tingle of desire which had long gone unsated.
“DARMA!” he called his brother’s name. “Where is the physician?”
“He’s coming,” Darma said, entering the room. He must have been hovering outside waiting to be summoned, or maybe trying to eavesdrop in case the king truly was planning on having him castrated. “I was reading about her symptoms. Many human women become quite ill when they are pregnant.”
And there it was. The thought she had been trying to avoid saying out loud, because saying it out loud would make it real, and making it real would be fucking terrifying.
“I’m not pregnant," she said, diving deeply into full blown denial. “How could I be? We’re not the same species. How are we supposed to reproduce? How many chromosomes do you guys have?”
“Uh.”
“Well, I see you’ve put a lot of thought into this,” she snarked. “What was the plan? Shoot your cum into me and see what kind of fucking monster emerged? Even if I can get pregnant, you don’t know that the baby would be viable. You don’t know…”
“Calm down,” Dominax said, invoking the two words most universally unlikely to make anybody calm.
“You calm down,” she snapped, fighting fresh waves of nausea.
“You called, your highness?”
A new Homelander stood at the entrance to the royal bed chamber. He was the doctor, she guessed. He was wearing a white coat, which might have been coincidental, but then she saw that it was emblazoned with a golden moniker in the shape of the sign of Asclepius, the same branding used by all human doctors. That was creepy.
“Where did you get the staff with the snakes design?”
Dominax sighed. “Does it matter what he is wearing, human? He is a doctor.”
“He’s wearing human doctor clothing, but he’s one of you. He has those dark eyes and those fucking wings, and…”
“How long has the patient been experiencing fits of the obvious?” The doctor smiled as he asked the question, softening its sarcasm just slightly.
“This is WEIRD!” Katie declared. “I didn’t want to mention it earlier, but you know what. This is just weird.”
“You may have mentioned it once or twice,” Darma said. She didn’t know why he was still there, hovering about. A second or two ago, Dominax had wanted to kill him, now he was ordering him about like a servant. Murder might still be on the table, but apparently, not in front of the doctor.
There were now three very large, quite handsome — okay, insanely god-likely handsome males around her, including the doctor, who, of fucking course, had the bone structure of someone stepping off an Italian fashion runway and into the Olympic village.
Dominax was still by far and away the most handsome among them. She wondered if Homeworld chose its kings in some kind of beauty pageant.
“Try to calm yourself,” the doctor said. “Deep breaths. My name is Mandrake.”
“Of COURSE it is,” she said, standing up, only to be gently, but firmly pressed back down into a seated position by Dominax. “Mandrake. Like the Earth herb. Do you guys have no original anything? Or…”
“She is certainly agitated,” Mandrake observed. “Human, your world does not have a monopoly on small mouth sounds. Mandrake is likely how my very alien name is being translated to your human ears by your human brain. If you were to hear it for itself, it would be unpronounceable to you.”
“Oh.”
“I have only recently recaptured her, no thanks to my brother who decided…” Dominax trailed off with a sharp glare at Darma, before returning to the more important topic at hand. “She has only been back for a matter of hours, having spent several weeks alone in the Golden City. It’s possible that she is pregnant.”
“Well, we will have to see. I have studied human anatomy as a matter of curiosity, but it is not often we have a live subject to…”
“What the fuck does that mean,” Katie interrupted. “You have dead subjects? You’re out here chopping up dead bod
ies? Is that it? You fucking ghouls.”
“We have models and textbooks and programs which simulate humans,” Mandrake said, his brows lowering in displeasure.
“Oh.”
She’d made an idiot of herself twice inside a minute. That had to be some kind of record. The truth was, she was scared. If the doctor confirmed her pregnancy, then she would be having an alien baby, and if she had an alien baby, then she would have an alien baby-daddy, and she hated that term but it insisted on popping into her head anyway.
“I would give you a sedative,” Doctor Mandrake said. “But I think we should do a full physical first. How were you able to feed yourself while in the city?”
“I just like, stole food, or whatever.”
“So you ate the disposable products which are made available for aliens and the snacks of convenience sold to our juveniles?”
“I ate whatever it was I could eat that didn’t have the consistency of a literal brick. And Darma brought me burgers sometimes.”
“Did he,” Dominax growled.
“Yeah. He did. He was really sweet, actually. Never lifted a finger to me. Never tried to make me do something I didn’t want to do. He kept me safe.”
“He should have brought you back.”
“I guess he respects me more than you do. He knew I didn’t want to come back. He… hey!”
The doctor had picked her up, deposited her on her stomach, and was preparing something that looked very much like a thermometer with some gel that looked a lot like lube.
“Relax,” he said. “I am going to take your temperature. You can continue your argument from this position.”
But she couldn’t really because it was hard to argue face down, and because he had flipped up the back of the robe to reveal her cheeks, and…
“Hey, cut that out!” She reached back and swatted the thermometer out of the doctor’s hand, and onto the bed. “I don’t want that thing in my butt. I feel fine.”
“If you wouldn’t mind restraining your pet, sire,” Mandrake said smoothly. “It will be easier for her if we get this done quickly.”
“It would be my pleasure, doctor.”
Dominax scruffed her by the back of the neck, pinning her down. He also put another hand on her cheeks, parting the left so that the doctor could spread the right, and together they managed to slide the probe into her bottom.
She was left making angry, offended sounds while the thermometer did its work, thoroughly humiliated and very pissed off about the entire situation.
“Her temperature is within healthy range for a human,” the doctor said, withdrawing his probe. “But her temper is…”
“Oh no, they’re all like this. I spent some time observing the people of, where was it again, oh yes, New York. If that was the new version of York, old York must be entirely populated by psychopaths. Humans are incredibly bad tempered when they want to be, and often when they don’t want to be.”
“Let fucking go of me,” she growled, squirming her way up and pulling her robe down. “You fucking muppets. You’re incompetent, that’s what you are.”
“Sit still and let the doctor finish his examination,” Dominax growled. “If I have to punish you, I will.”
“Of course you will. It is all you do.”
“There’s no need to punish her. I can sedate her, and we can do the rest of the exam before she wakes up.”
“You’re not going to sedate me! I’m not sick! And I’m not pregnant!”
“Katie, you’re making this so much worse for yourself.” Darma was still there, being the voice of reason, as usual. But she was not interested in reason. She didn’t want the doctor telling her she was having a baby. She didn’t want anything from any of them.
She pushed the doctor away, and Dominax too. She was prepared to fight them both if necessary, just to get a little space. It was too overwhelming. She almost wished she was back in her little pod. It might have been filthy and lonely, but at least she had control of herself there.
“Get the fuck away from me! Get the fuck…”
She felt a little prick in the back of her arm a moment later, and then there was nothing but dark calm.
16 Weird Biology
Dominax watched his pet slip into deep sleep as the doctor capped the needle.
“She needs to be trained to take medical attention, or she’s just going to become stressed every time we try to handle her.”
“I had barely begun to train her when she ran off,” Dominax replied. “And apparently, my brother decided to let me go insane looking for her rather than telling me where she was.”
“You told me you didn’t need my help.”
“That's no excuse, Darma. You could have told me. Not telling me meant that she stayed out there longer and got sicker than she needed to. You colluded with the human. You aided her escape. Darma, you could have cost her everything. Are you truly so bitter?”
“I helped you. And her. I brought her back to you. I could have put her on a ship and sent her anywhere in the universe. I could have sold her to the scythkin. They worship humans. They construct entire gardens to keep their humans in.”
“You could have. You didn’t. But just because you didn’t do something worse, doesn’t mean that what you did wasn’t bad.”
“Just tell me what you’re going to do to me, Dominax. Are you going to exile me? Execute me?”
“You are my brother,” Dominax declared. It was a simple declaration of fact, but it carried a great weight of implication. Family could never be harmed. No matter what. There were great dungeons beneath the city, designed to hold royal traitors who could not be killed because of their blood connections.
“I’d rather you threw me in the lava than lock me up, Dominax.”
“I’m not going to do either. You’ve obviously formed a bond with Katie, which is a good thing. And I am down a guard, thanks to Alf’s betrayal. So you will be her guard. When I cannot be there, she will be in your care.”
“So I’m to be a glorified babysitter.”
“Yes.”
Darma sighed. “Fine. That’s fair. You’re going to need all the help you can get.”
“So glad you agree,” Dominax drawled.
Darma’s smile broadened as he turned away. He had to know he was fortunate. Dominax was not given to mercy. This was, on the surface, very merciful. But Dominax intended to hold Darma responsible for any infractions associated with Katie. She would not be out of his sight or Darma’s for a very long time. If Darma thought that he was going to get off lightly, he was wrong.
Before they could discuss that matter in greater detail, the physician returned. He looked concerned, which made Dominax concerned.
“Your royal highnesses, I have something like a diagnosis.”
“Let me guess. She’s pregnant,” Darma said. It was also what Dominax was thinking, though he had more patience.
“No,” the physician said. “She’s not pregnant. She’s growing wings.”
Dominax and Darma looked at one another, expressions of amazement and confusion appearing on both their faces in quick succession.
“No fucking way,” Darma exclaimed.
The physician brought up a panel with some images. One of them was on the back of her shoulders, where she did in fact have a slight bump.
“I was worried that these might be some kind of tumor or other malignant growth, perhaps caused by exposure to our atmosphere without any kind of shielding. I took some ultrasounds, and there is no doubting it. Those are wing buds emerging from her scapula. I imagine the transition is not pleasant for a human at this stage of growth. Has she complained about pain in her shoulders?”
“No,” Darma said. “She’s complained about absolutely everything besides that. Although she did mention being achy all over.”
Dominax had to hold himself back from expressing his irritation that Darma knew her better than he did.
“Maybe they’re not causing her physical pain, but they are almos
t certainly putting her body through serious stress. She is mostly past the natural growth phase — though her brain will continue to develop for several more years. The human frontal lobe is not fully developed until twenty-six years of age.”
“So she has some time to learn to make less reckless decisions. Good.”
“Fewer reckless decisions.”
“Less, and fewer,” Dominax snapped. He was not pleased at this piece of news. It was another complication he did not need — and the news that she was not pregnant was also disappointing. He had hoped that some element of their trysts had survived the distance and the time and the mystery.
“We should inform the patient. Understanding what is happening to her will help her, I believe. My tests reveal the obvious, that she has been under a very great deal of stress for a protracted period of time. She needs to be kept quiet and calm. I also have something to keep her nausea under control.”
Katie hadn’t slept this well, or this long, in a long time. It took her a moment or two when she woke up to remember where she was and how she had come to feel so relaxed.
“Motherfucker…” she pushed back the covers and discovered that she was naked. She had no idea what the doctor had done to her while she was out, but nothing hurt, so that was good.
“No need to be angry, you’re fine.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” She vented her ire at Darma, who was sitting in a nearby chair.
“I’m guarding you. That’s my punishment.”
She snorted and pulled the sheets up around her neck. “Doesn’t seem like much of a punishment.”
“Trust me. It’s plenty punishment.”
Katie guffawed.
“I’m going to tell Dominax you’re awake. He needs to talk to you.”
He got up with a swoop of wing, dropping a few small feathers as he left the room. She didn’t want to talk to Dominax, but she knew she wasn’t going to get a choice in the matter. The king had her back in his custody, and her free will had evaporated in the process.
It did not take long for Dominax to return, along with the doctor who had sedated her. She did not want to see either of them.
