Bhyr

by Penelope Fletcher

  Interesting how what should have been messy and unappealing made his mouth dry and his hips rock.

  Clinical holovids hadn’t prepared him. The rawness of touching his breeder’s chalice and its response was overwhelming.

  The barb between his thighs emerged from his abdomen, pulsing in time to her cries. It swelled into a painful hardness. Well versed in shouldering pain, Bhyr gritted his teeth and endured.

  The internal storm her punishment created was unexpected. Who knew administering discipline would test his control? He thrust his finger faster, a gruff trill at the back of his throat.

  She ground her hips.

  I knew this would work.

  Bhyr’s predecessor made him aware that their species faced extinction during his adolescence. How naïve he’d been. In his young mind, he had assumed he would visit the farms, select the strongest breeder, then sire spawn so fierce, they would become legends. It was not to be. Disappointment haunted him for solars. Then came the chill of fear as the reality of his species’ end drew closer. Resignation had taken hold. He and his people retreated from the universe. What choice did they have? Aeons passed and his species faded, an ignoble death. Nothing he tried revived them, and there was no slowing their self-inflicted decay. What miracle cured the consequences from a millennium of tradition?

  Then came rumours of an infant species, hardy and adaptable. Hope sprung from an unlikely source. He’d tried to secure a sampling from the L’Odo slave planet, but a storm hampered his efforts. His acquisition escaped before retrieval. Once he’d tracked her down, a clan of Rä warriors already claimed her for their own. She was beyond his reach. Then came another, the Verak Queen, and with her fresh opportunity. His audience with the Great Alpha led to fruitful gains. He’d coerced the coordinates of planet Earth from Lumen of the Stars, and with it, he secured the future of his people.

  While it cost the Horde a beneficial alliance, it had been worth the loss.

  Before now, he couldn’t comprehend why the strongest males he knew sacrificed so much to protect their females.

  Bhyr now understood why Zython’s Avatar and the Great Alpha acted the foolish supplicant to their mates. Had he not been on guard and taught since the cradle to resist temptations of the flesh, the treacherous human would have enslaved him. He’d seen his female through the window of her unnatural nest–a place of sheeted glass and engineered stone–and he’d known she would bear his son. The high brow and sweep of her profile drew his gaze. Her sharp features were much like his people’s bone structure.

  The rest of her was alien.

  Skin a rich brown seen only in the most precious of gems, eyes of endless night, lips the colour of prey blood.

  The flare of his breeder’s hips bucked against his palm, and a moan slid from the length of her fragile throat.

  He pulled out his finger to explore the tender lips of her puffy sex. It was a graceful organ. Much unlike the flowering void of an Aztekan female and no stinging feelers either. This he could admit without feeling too deviant.

  ‘Make it stop,’ she begged.

  She grabbed handfuls of the tangled mane crowning her scalp and yanked.

  Bhyr curled his fingertip to investigate the wetter, softer spot inside. The nails on his fingers were not long, but grew shaped in knifelike points. He disliked shedding them, so he moved with slow intent, careful not to puncture.

  Thrashing with enough force to lend strength to the blows to his chest, her channel seized. It rippled in contractions. Her body slumped, beads of water emerging on her brow. How many liquids did she secrete? From how many orifices? Shuddering as she gasped for air, the scrunched nubs on her breasts remained tight. Her sheath quivered a last weak spasm.

  She can take no more.

  ‘Good.’ Bhyr pulled back and exhaled. Her scent was thick in his nose. His hand twitched with the need to touch her, but stayed curled and out of temptation’s reach.

  He lifted it to study the sheen of juices glazing his skin.

  She snapped closed her knees and struggled onto her elbows. His breeder looked at his hand. She glanced at his expression then turned a ruddier shade of brown.

  ‘I meet defiance with discipline.’ He rubbed his fingers together. Would she taste creamy? ‘Is this lesson learned?’ Satisfaction was a hot bloom in his chest when she said nothing. ‘Speak.’

  Bhyr expected her hatred.

  He even braced for her to lunge at him with futile rage.

  ‘What’s this called?’ She fingered the metal shielding her female core.

  ‘A Keeping.’

  Her reclined body tensed. ‘What does it do to me?’

  ‘Stimulates the nerve clusters under your flesh.’

  Delicate, pliable flesh.

  ‘Stimulates?’

  ‘Overwhelms, then.’

  ‘Why?’ Her voice wobbled. ‘What purpose could you have to justify doing this to me?’

  ‘We created the Keeping to subdue the violent females of our species if they refused to breed. It readied them.’ He tapped the metal. Ignored her flinch. ‘We adjusted the sensitivity parameters for humans. Now it will tame my breeder.’

  Anger crackled in the air.

  She did not attack.

  Interest in what she wasn’t saying stirred. ‘Speak.’ The irony of wanting her words after ordering their absence was aggravating.

  ‘It’s effective,’ she said, almost inaudible.

  Shadows darkened the golden brown eyes that had yet to look at him. That might be dangerous. Her eyes changed with her emotions. An easy way to hide her defiance would be to avoid looking at him. And had he not given her ample excuse by ordering her not to do so?

  ‘Will you take it off if I do as you say?’ she asked.

  ‘It thinks to bargain.’

  Head coming up higher, she nodded, eyes elsewhere.

  Amused, he scratched his chest plate, lifting the hand that carried her musk. ‘Does it not see its mating oils?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I took what it offers.’

  ‘I’m offering a chance to earn my compliance.’ Heat from the blood rushing to her face warmed the air. ‘Willing compliance.’

  ‘Willing or unwilling makes no difference.’

  You are wrong.

  He waited for her to say it. She didn’t. It itched at him because he could almost feel the words pass in the silence lying thick between them.

  She slid away from him.

  Intrigued by her abrupt reticence, he chased her.

  She drew her legs into her chest and hugged her arms around them. Four-fingered hands cupped her elbows.

  He went onto his knees and trapped her there.

  She closed her eyes.

  There was a thin line of hairs bordering her eyelids.

  Human eyes were fragile.

  The protective hairs made evolutionary sense, but the effect the sweeping fans had on him as they fluttered to her cheeks was profound.

  They reminded him of moth wings, delicate.

  Bhyr breathed in her face.

  He wanted her attention, and she would give it.

  ‘I can’t do this with you like that.’

  Bhyr edged closer.

  ‘It’s touching me.’ She mumbled into her hand. ‘Digging into my belly. And he wants to chat.’

  He glanced at his barb.

  It pressed into her stomach under her teats. Solid and leaking into his pouch.

  ‘My sex organ is uncomfortable.’ He stilled, eyes slitting with realisation. ‘Humbled not because it is docile. This warrior’s flesh shames it.’ He had not won her submission. The thudding organ in his chest thrummed.

  His tongue prickled.

  ‘Get that thing off me.’

  Rash words.

  Tired and angry words.

  Her weariness was there for all to see. In the bruised skin circling her eyes and in the trembling of her limbs. They lay slack despite the plentiful fuel of her defiance.

  ‘Or
what?’ he invited.

  She intuited the warning that lurked beneath his reply.

  Her hand protectively cupped her sex. She glared, lips remaining pressed closed against his challenge.

  ‘My name,’ he said at last. ‘Does it know it?’

  ‘Do I care? You refused to tell me before. Rude.’

  ‘Know it now. Bhyr.’ His mouth snapped shut.

  First.

  He’d meant to say First.

  ‘Bhyr. That’s your whole name?’

  I should not have said that.

  Why the urge for his breeder to know his name? The most intimate part of his title, no less. She should have no cause to address him at all.

  ‘My name’s Indira,’ she said heedless of his internal struggle. ‘I mentioned it before. You can stop calling me “it” now. It’s not having the belittling effect you’re going for. You’re just pissing me off. Call me Indira. Or Indie.’

  ‘Lower its gaze.’

  Scowling, she did.

  A proper response, but the stab of disappointment surprised him. He ignored his conflicted heart. ‘It has no name. This warrior is Hel Bhyr, God’s Chosen, Avatar of Destruction and First of the Azteka Horde.’

  ‘A mouthful.’

  ‘It may call me First.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll call you “it”. See how you feel.’

  He levelled her an unblinking stare.

  She blanched, inching back until her back hit the wall and her toes pressed tight against her rump.

  ‘As it is awake and able to argue, it can finish its treatments.’

  ‘Treatments?’ Her eyes flashed. Anger, but a hint of fear, too. Her delicate hand lifted to press her temple.

  Interesting.

  It was where the healing pod had fitted her translation device during stasis.

  ‘What treatments?’ she asked. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Healed you.’ Done with the conversation and his disturbing reactions, he stood. ‘Follow.’

  ‘Where are we going? You took my clothes. I can’t go outside naked. What if someone sees me?’

  He looked at her.

  The clean lines of her limbs and the skeins of waist-length hair mesmerised him.

  Why hadn’t the sacred text handed down from father to son spoken of how distracting females were? Perhaps the fault lay within him alone. A sickness of the mind that kept him from controlling the baser urges of his gender. His barb still leaked, his shaft a solid weight between his thighs.

  The organ ached to cram inside her. It would be agonising, but his desire threatened to eclipse his fear of it.

  How did she disarm him with so little effort?

  A subtle defence mechanism of her kind?

  Her scent, he thought.

  The rich fragrance sought him as if sentient. It lowered his defences and made him crave acts so taboo, he felt ashamed.

  ‘It is not its place to question.’ Bhyr exhaled hard through his nose and focused on the task at hand. ‘Follow.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere without clothes.’

  His steady tread did not slow. ‘If it is not beside me when this door closes, I will leave it to starve.’

  ‘You won’t do that,’ she said after a startled pause. ‘You won’t destroy the breeder you travelled across a universe to steal.’ Her gaze drilled the back of his skull.

  Thick ridges stippling his scalp tingled at her attention.

  Clever female.

  ‘Is it the only human female aboard this warship?’ he asked darkly.

  On a hissy gasp, she gained her feet and pattered to his side. ‘You win.’

  As if I ever lose.

  6

  Bhyr

  They left the pen.

  The breeder fled.

  Bhyr followed her progress by listening to the slaps of her feet. He waited for her to realise all doors but the one he chose were closed to her.

  She returned, gaze wary.

  Chuffing, he led her to the sterile healing chambers and pointed at the ovoid floating in the middle of the room.

  Cool green light splashed from its interior. A medicinal smell lingered in the air, sanitising mist pumping through the ceiling vents.

  ‘Lay down inside.’

  She hugged her middle. ‘I’m not sure about this.’

  Patience for her prattle long spent, Bhyr bent. He tucked a hand behind her knees to knock her off her feet, then caught her across the back.

  She squawked, arms cinched around his neck. ‘Don’t drop me.’

  He snorted.

  Her weight belied her appearance, and he found the rounded give of her body tantalising against his.

  Drop her, indeed.

  He who dragged beasts a dozen times his heft across mountainous furlongs as a youngling.

  ‘Will it hurt?’ she asked. ‘Will there be needles? Probes?’

  Shaking his head at her persistence, he looked into her upturned face, a reprimand on the tip of his tongue.

  Her dark eyes were fierce, but her soft mouth trembled. ‘I hate needles. It’s a phobia.’

  ‘No needles.’

  He set her down on the padded surface. He went to close the lid, and she baulked.

  ‘Wait. I also hate small spaces. Claustrophobia.’

  He frowned.

  ‘It’s a thing.’ She sat up, clutching the sides of the healing pod.

  There was plenty of room inside the machine. The design of healing pods accommodated the largest Horde warriors, including him.

  Why do I debate this?

  ‘It will lie down and be still,’ he said. ‘It survived the pod before. It will again. This session is short.’ He lowered the lid, hoping she’d accede, but she refused to obey. The lid’s automatic sensors powered the pod down.

  He bared his pointed dental ridges in frustration.

  ‘Please, don’t.’ She panted, eyes too wide and shiny.

  ‘Needles. Tight spaces. Solitude. Starvation.’ He listed the damning weaknesses she had displayed. A frail human who declared herself his equal. ‘Does it fear everything?’

  Hurt crossed her expression. She lay back, twisting her face away and refusing to look at him.

  She meant to punish him.

  Bemused, Bhyr ran the diagnostic sequence. She had been unaware and in stasis during the difficult part. A good thing. He grimaced at the thought of managing his breeder’s temperamental fits each time he tried to better her.

  The Keeping would malfunction if he disciplined her as often as she misbehaved.

  Pulse quickening, he imagined spans spent between his breeder’s legs. He would administer torturous rapture to correct her wickedness.

  Bhyr sighed and adjusted his stance. The stress of monitoring himself for perverse behaviour was tiring.

  Everything about the human encouraged his own rebellious behaviour.

  Dangerous.

  He already stood on the wrong side of the conservatives.

  They declared the use of aliens to breed the next generation as sacrilege and the last thing he needed were accusations of losing himself to carnal depravity.

  Bhyr glanced at the glass inlay on the pod’s lid. He checked she wasn’t damaging the machine to escape, then went back to the monitor.

  Humanity.

  A contradictory species.

  His the most changeable of the lot, he was sure. The female confounded him. Brave enough to defy his will yet falling apart when asked to submit to a painless examination. The pod had run had a dozen cycles on her human body, making it tougher. Stronger. It implanted her translation device and cured her eyes of their imperfections. Widened blood vessels circulated her blood faster. Combined with the increased mass of her heart, her body now compensated for Vøtkyr’s oxygen percentage without the use of drugs. A side effect of these changes included a greater endurance when under physical duress. The machine introduced digestive enzymes, so she might grow capable of digesting the food native to his lands. Finally, it seeded her immune sy
stem with hybridised microorganisms. They would fight infections. Bacteria. Abolish rouge genes that cause degenerative disease. As a result, he could now measure her life cycle in hundreds rather than in tens.

  What was a span of discomfort when weighted against the benefits?

  The pod loosed a series of high notes, then slid open with a whoosh of air. The sequence had finished.

  He smiled at the readouts.

  Her species was as adaptable as promised. His female alone had endured six intensive treatments inside the pod to ready her for Vøtkyr. She had seamlessly assimilated the foreign material introduced to her genome. Her body would prove a hospitable environment for his spawn.

  He waited for the breeder to explode from the confines of the machine. He glowered, striding over to peer inside when she remained elusive.

  He blinked, stepping back.

  The female lay curled in a ball. Her body trembled, hands pressed so hard into her face they’d turned white through blood loss. Broken sobs tore from her throat when she peeked past her fingers. Her hand clasped the edge of the pod and helped heave her body upright.

  She shook, face waxen.

  Bhyr stared.

  Even during his raid on Earth, she hadn’t seemed so distraught. Guilt nipped at the edges of his mind. He shoved it aside and turned on his heel. He gave her time to gather her composure.

  Bhyr crossed the room and used the control panel to call up the hip-high chest from his quarters. It appeared within chimes, appearing from an aperture recessed into the wall. He opened it then waved away a cloud of vapour from the cold stones. He perused the foodstuff with an impatient touch, checking for the right colour and feel. He brought the orbs with their white peels and tangy scents to his nose slits.

  Inhaling, he smelled no rot, no disease. He selected two others, happy with the flavours he detected.

  The oily skins, rinds, crunchy seeds and starchy flesh were crushed in a mortar. He scooped out the fragrant mash and swallowed it in three gulps. Acidic sweetness tingled on his sensitised tongue. It had not stopped throbbing since he first administered his female’s punishment. His foot bounced as he waited for his fore gut to break down the macros into a digestible slurry.