Captured by the Monsters

by R. L. Caulder

  “Honestly… I had no idea. When I was in The Above, I thought your kind was maybe eating them or raping them,” I muttered in a weak response. “Or both.”

  At the time I would never have considered that any humans would be compatible for breeding with a different species.

  I didn’t know why it hadn’t crossed my mind that they would want children—given the perilous outlook of their species, it should’ve been common sense. Perhaps I was too wrapped up in how good it felt to be with them, that I ignored all the warnings that it was leading in this direction.

  All three men gave me pained looks at my answer to their question, but in my defense, what was I supposed to think before I came down here?

  It seemed to be one of The Above’s most guarded secrets: the Rumilus didn’t want to eat or terrorize human women—they wanted to cherish, protect, and love us. But that did nothing to change the fact that I never wanted children.

  Not in this messed up world.

  The Above was no place for a child—especially a female—and I was learning that neither was Paratiisi. Maybe, once upon a time, when the Queen ruled with her Trifecta and the crystal nourished the land, Paratiisi would have been a good place to have a family. Unfortunately, it seemed no better than The Above from what I had witnessed in the short span of my days here.

  “Sera, the heat isn’t something you can fight,” Sylan cautioned, probably worried about my silence and what was going through my head. “To ignore it will cause…”

  He didn’t finish his sentence, as seemed to be his usual throughout this conversation, but I didn’t need him to.

  To ignore it would cause immense pain.

  Now that I knew there was a reason for what I had been feeling, I understood the roaring desire in me that had overridden all logic. It didn’t care what was going on or where we were—it demanded I be satisfied.

  To deny it, even for just the short time that I had been, I had felt my grip on my mind slipping as I spiraled into a frenzy of need and frustration.

  There was no choice but to succumb, right? Why did that feel like a prison sentence?

  I couldn’t escape this. A voice in the back of my head asked: Do you want to escape it, knowing all of this information?

  The truth was that no, I didn’t want to escape my monsters or their touch, but I wouldn’t change my mind on not wanting a baby. They should have told me this before I had agreed to the claiming. It seemed like pertinent information to withhold.

  Yes, I had been struggling to accept all the changes to my body, such as when I realized I needed their cum as sustenance, so I couldn’t blame them for being concerned about what my reaction would be to this…

  But it didn’t mean that they still shouldn’t have told me.

  This heat would drive me mad until I begged my mates to take me, over and over, until eventually I was with child. Which was clearly something they wanted. They wouldn’t deny their primal needs.

  I wanted to cry, hating that once more my choice was being taken from me.

  Hugging my arms to my body, I glanced over all three of them and asked, “Will I ever get to make my own decisions?

  I had learned how to be adaptable—I had to be if I wanted to survive—but I was sick of having all my choices taken from me. Everything was either out of my hands or was another person’s decision. As much as I craved my monsters’ touch, I craved independence more.

  The slumping of their large shoulders and remorseful eyes made it obvious they did feel bad. And they should.

  “I’m sorry, Sera,” Sylan whispered, glancing at the floor. “If we wouldn’t have completed the claiming, then we could have lost you here today. You could have gone to another Trifecta who might not have cherished you or cared about you in any way. We couldn’t take that risk.”

  I was sensible enough to understand the dire situation we were all put in—especially after what had occurred at this castle today—and there was no way I would have ever allowed myself to be given to another Trifecta. These were my monsters. But the withholding of information had broken the tentative trust we had only just managed to build.

  It wouldn’t be something I’d forget easily. There would always be doubt in the back of my head now, wondering if they were telling me the truth or the full scope of a situation.

  Taking a deep breath as a wave of desire sucker-punched me, I blew it out and focused on where we would go from here.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing we can do?” I asked, trying to remain calm but failing as the gravity of this hit me. “What if the True Queen is never found? What then? We watch our son die alongside us when this land perishes? Is that something you can live with in the back of your head as he grows up—because I can’t.”

  My three monsters remained silent, and I was unsure if they didn’t know how to respond or if they truly hadn’t thought about this, but within seconds of being told I would get pregnant, this became my paramount concern.

  “Just like you can’t avoid the feelings of your heat, we can’t escape the overwhelming need to impregnate you, gem,” Rowen explained as he closed the space between us and glanced down at me. “It is wired into our DNA in the same way your body screams to be impregnated with the heat.”

  My eyes bulged. “Are you saying that even after the situation I just described, you still want a child?”

  He smiled softly as his hand came up to brush my cheek with the back of his knuckles, avoiding his claws making contact. Electric sparks simmered beneath the skin he touched, and my legs rubbed together at the need building between them despite my mounting frustration.

  “Yes. I still want you to be the mother to my children,” he admitted, “because look at how you already care about protecting them from hypothetical situations. You would be an amazing mother.”

  My mouth dropped as I struggled to compute his words. I spluttered, “This isn’t a hypothetical situation. That is the exact trajectory this land is on.”

  Axton crowded in on my right and ran a claw gently down my arm as he asked, “But what if it isn’t?”

  “What do you mean?” I snapped, exhausted by this conversation and frustrated that no matter my agitation right now, this heat still had me picturing myself being fucked by them.

  He dragged his claw up my shoulder and to my chin, tipping it up. “What if we do find the True Queen? What if our lands are restored and we prosper? It could be a magical place to raise a family.”

  Before I could answer him, Sylan boxed me in on my left as my back hit a wall. Their presence was overwhelming as I glanced between them all and felt their intensity. I managed to force out a trembling question. “What if your ‘what ifs’ don’t happen?”

  Sylan ran his claws through my hair as he parried for Axton. “But what if they do? None of us know the future and what will come of it.”

  Their hope for the future was beautiful, but for such an important decision, it wasn’t enough to convince me otherwise. When the day came that the land was restored and I saw a change in the way their species treated others, then we could talk.

  They must have seen my unwavering stance on this topic, for they all nodded at the same time, as if finally accepting it.

  “Do you want to know what we are sure of, gem?” Rowen purred, and I felt my knees tremble at his seductive tone.

  “What?” I asked breathlessly, feeling my chest rise and fall sharply as my breathing became uneven.

  Leaning down to rest his forehead against mine, he whispered, “That we were mistaken for not telling you about this when we thought you wouldn’t be able to handle more information. We were wrong, and now we have likely broken your trust because of it.”

  I couldn’t help but blink rapidly at his admission. Everything he said was correct.

  He continued on, “But I also know that we will do anything to rebuild that trust. If that means we need to abstain from sex to prevent you from becoming pregnant, we will. We will try to help stave off the worst of the heat in other
ways.”

  It was a nice offer, but it was one that wouldn’t work. “My body would never allow me to. The desire wins out over my logic,” I admitted as a shiver ran through my body, emphasizing my exact point. “Plus, you guys admitted to having that same need in terms of getting me pregnant. How would you deny that?”

  “I don’t have all those answers,” he whispered, “but for you we would try to figure them out together.”

  “We’ve made many mistakes, precious,” Axton added, and I closed my eyes as I absorbed his words. “We did not even consider that you may not want children because it’s so ingrained into our culture, so we didn’t tell you it accompanied the claiming. All we can do is learn from our mistakes and not repeat them.”

  “Beauty, please give us a chance to prove we care about you making these decisions,” Sylan begged from my other side. “That we care tremendously about you and what you want.”

  Their sincere remorse and desire to attempt to abstain from getting me pregnant was the first step towards rebuilding my trust.

  Opening my eyes, I whispered, “Okay.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  SERA

  Their smiles at my answer tugged my own lips up in return.

  For the first time since being down here, I felt like they were treating me like an equal and taking into consideration my wants and needs as a person. They weren’t trying to tell me it was out of their control and that it would happen whether I liked it or not.

  The reality was that I didn’t think it was truly possible to ignore the heat, but there was no way I’d just give in immediately to being impregnated. If this was just day two of feeling the effects of it, I couldn’t imagine what it would grow to after going longer without their cum inside of me. I had to try though. At least then I wouldn’t have any regrets.

  A thought popped into my head that had me blurting, “Wait, how do we know I’m not pregnant already after having sex with all three of you?”

  Axton took a deep breath before seeming to forcibly take a step back from me, “You wouldn’t feel the heat still if you were. Your body would instead be focused on growing our child.”

  The heat had to be messing with my fucking mind because I found it attractive when he referred to it as ‘our child’ so casually. This was ridiculous.

  Their words swarmed through my mind, the what ifs of this world going back to its previous beauty and how amazing it would be to raise our child here. Damn them for planting those seeds in my mind while I was struggling with fighting off this heat.

  “Okay. Well, how are we going to try to stave off the desire? Orgasms for me clearly don’t do the trick,” I hedged, needing us to hurry up and find that dang solution before the image of us all living happily ever after in our dream world won out.

  Rowen began to push his pants down, fisting his growing erection as he smirked at me. “I have an idea.”

  I swore my traitorous mouth salivated at the drop of precum beading his tip. Snapping my mouth shut after licking my lips, I asked, “And what’s that?”

  Stroking his cock languidly, he explained, “If your body wants our seed inside of it to stave off the cravings, then perhaps we just need to feed you more. You need it in replacement for meals anyways, so maybe let’s try keeping you full of it that way?”

  My lips thinned, as did my eyes, as I deadpanned, “This seems like a win for you guys.”

  He shrugged and winked at me. “I never said it wasn’t, gem. I love your lips wrapped around our cocks. It’s a beautiful sight to see you gagging on them.”

  The fucker knew dirty talk was the quickest way to turn me on, and I huffed out a breath of annoyance. “Anyone else have any ideas?”

  Axton’s cock was hard and straining behind his pants as he shook his head. “I don’t.”

  Sylan was rubbing his chin thoughtfully as if really giving it a chance to percolate in his mind. When he dropped his hand, he too pushed his pants down and admitted, “I actually think Rowen is onto something, and I don’t say that for my own pleasure. It makes sense to try to satiate the need for our seed in a manner that has it inside your body in a different way.”

  I rolled my eyes, but as I lowered to my knees, my hunger to taste their cum began to take over. This was absolutely still something I would enjoy.

  “We don’t have the luxury of time right now, so open your mouth, precious,” Axton commanded as he began to stroke his cock.

  Rowen spit down on his, and my pussy clenched at the sight as I opened my mouth and looked up at them all from beneath my lashes.

  All three began to grunt as they pumped their cocks at different paces, completely correlated to how they liked to fuck.

  Rowen was going so fast and focused on the base of his cock, while Sylan was the opposite, slow and long strokes from the tip all the way down, and Axton was an in-between.

  “Stick your tongue out for us, precious. Show us you want us to coat your mouth with our seed,” Axton groaned, and I quickly did as he requested.

  Soon enough, he was panting as he stepped up and put his tip into my mouth and continued to jack off until he was spurting down my throat. Quickly, he moved back, and I swallowed before sticking my tongue out again as I opened my mouth for Sylan next.

  He waited for me to put my mouth on him—ever the gentleman—but as soon as my lips clamped around him, he shuddered and came long and hard, spilling down my throat too.

  Mmm, I’d never get over the amazing taste of their cum. It made this all the more enjoyable.

  Rowen was last, and as he approached, he growled out, “Open wide for me, gem.”

  There was a challenge in his eyes that I was more than happy to rise and meet. Opening wide, he fisted my hair and shoved himself all the way to the back of my throat and began to fuck my mouth.

  He didn’t stop until tears streamed from the corners of my eyes as I gagged and maintained eye contact with him. “So fucking beautiful,” he praised as he finally finished, stilling and pouring into the base of my throat.

  Damn did I love the way they satisfied the different needs I felt. Somehow with their combined traits, I managed to feel cherished and loved, but also challenged and sexy as hell.

  When he pulled out, I swallowed and smirked at him. “You know I’ll never back down,” I teased.

  His usual smirk was present, but this time his eyes softened as he answered, “I know, gem. That’s why you are perfect for us.”

  My heart swelled with affection, and as he took a step back, I focused on how my body felt after being filled with their cum. It definitely staved the need enough for me to focus on something other than the need to fuck them immediately, but the undercurrent of pins and needles was still vibrating beneath my skin.

  It wouldn’t last long.

  Rowen offered his hand and I took it, pulling myself to my feet.

  “Let’s go to the crystal so we can say you’ve been presented, and after that, we can go home and figure out a better solution,” Rowen suggested, squeezing my hand.

  Nodding and squaring my shoulders, I squeezed his hand back, ready to get this over with so we could move onto more pressing matters. I was immensely grateful that his touch didn’t create a haze of lust that overrode my brain from the touch, but I wasn’t naive enough to think it would last long.

  Silently, Rowen led me down a hallway nearby while Axton and Sylan followed. “I passed the crystal on my way to find you. It isn’t far.”

  Although I had only been here less than a week, the idea of returning to the peaceful grotto home my monsters had built for me sounded like heaven. I was aching to be back in the warm water and safety of our haven.

  When we reached the end of the hall, I looked around nervously, wary of this space that actually looked like a dungeon. The walls were lined with holding cells, hanging manacles, and other objects I couldn’t identify.

  Did they torture prisoners? Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me because of the savagery I had seen since being in their la
nd, but I wanted to think of their kind in a positive light. Deep down, I knew they weren’t all bad—my Trifecta was proof of that—but desperation and mortality had warped them into what I saw today.

  My eyes tore away from the manacles and towards what lay at the far end of the large expanse of the room—a giant peach-colored crystal backed by a stone wall. Even in the darkened space, it seemed to emit a radiance of power without energy to fuel it—I couldn’t imagine what it looked like fully intact and glowing.

  I was in awe of being in front of the piece of their land that singlehandedly could change everything.

  Still holding my hand, Rowen tugged me forward until the crystal was towering directly in front of us. Pulling at my hand to place it on the crystal, I began to shake, nervous as hell.

  Gently, he placed my palm on the surprisingly warm surface. I swore I could sense a pulse—albeit very weak—deep within it. It was as if it was truly alive and thrumming. Sylan put his hand on my shoulder and Rowen followed suit, but when I felt Axton at my back, I withdrew my palm.

  Something about the situation had my heart pounding in my chest and my stomach churning.

  “We have to know, Sera,” Sylan reminded me gently, and I nodded my understanding.

  Put your big girl panties on to prove you aren’t the Queen so we can get the hell out of here. Simple enough.

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I put my hand back on the crystal once more as Axton’s hand came to rest on my lower back.

  We were here. A Trifecta and their destined mate, awaiting judgment by this crystal.

  How had this become my life? I felt like I was in one of the fantasy books I used to read.

  The moments that followed were tense with silence. I held my breath and waited. After a minute, the air whooshed from my lungs in relief at it not lighting up, but when I caught Sylan’s sad look, it melted away into guilt.

  Was it wrong of me to be happy I wasn’t the Queen, when that’s what these lands needed? I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to be a queen, especially when I was still learning the ins and outs of this society. How would I have led them?