Aartan sank down beside him, put his arms around his twin. “Maybe it was wrong. But in the end, who did we hurt? All three of us had one perfect night, a night of pure ecstasy. She’s young. She may be sad, now, but she has her whole life ahead of her. She’ll find someone else, and we’ll be just a naughty, secret memory. As for you and me…”
He rose. Headed for a niche in the corner of the room. Pulled away a cloth to uncover an ancient statue carved from a single block of stone. The statue he and Azar were given at their Mating Ceremony. Every pair of Tharan males received a similar statue, each one a family heirloom passed down through countless generations. The image of twins claiming their mate. Together, as was the Tharan way. One male half-reclining while the female lowered herself onto his enormous erection. The other twin standing behind her, gripping her hips and taking her in her rear passage. The Sacred Ones, Bonding with their Mate. The female had a look of rapture on her face. A look he’d dreamed of seeing on Aliya’s face. But it would never be.
Aartan touched a flame to the amber chunks piled in metal braziers on either side and bowed his head as the smoke wafted around it. Then he picked up a crystal flask from the table in front of the statue, poured two silver goblets of tharonberry mead, and took one to his brother.
“Blessings and peace to Aliya forevermore – and to all creatures in the Universe.” They clinked glasses, threw their heads back, and drank. A toast – and an epitaph to their love.
Chapter Seven
Azar
“What do you mean, she’s been taken?”
Rhom ignored Azar’s angry roar, kept his tone calm. “I’m sorry. I’m sure this must come as a shock. I know how much you care for her but I’m also aware you chose not to make her your mate. In the absence of a formal mating bond, military protocol does not allow me to divulge information about a missing being to unrelated individuals, whether Tharan or alien. Despite that, Rhynn and I made the decision to break the rules and tell you once we were certain of the facts.”
“Once you were certain?” Unlike his twin, Aartan’s voice was low. Almost menacing. “Exactly how long ago was she captured?”
“The trip back to Tharon should have taken six weeks,” Rhom said. “The ship was in constant contact with us on the Gemini and with command central back on Tharon until two and a half weeks ago,” Rhom replied. “Then all transmissions ceased. We never picked up a distress call and no silent alarms were set off by the captain, so for the first two cycles our crew treated it as a routine interruption in communication services. Solar flares from whatever sun they were near, or problems caused by minor asteroid damage to the com devices mounted on the exterior of the ship’s hull.
“After that, we began routine protocols. We contacted alien ships nearby, asked them to attempt communication. When that failed, we rerouted the nearest starcruiser to intercept them based on their last known location. They’ve been searching the vector for the last five cycles, hoping the ship had simply lost power and was drifting somewhere.”
Rhom placed a hand on Azar’s shoulder. “Last night, the Tharan High Council received a message. It was from Bophe. He’s intent on exacting revenge on Tharon for taking what he considers his property, bought and paid for. Kyra and Ceres from his stable on Tanis Major and then Saige and Aura from the Rapture Dome on Girra Sola. Not only did our warriors sneak in under his nose and rescue females he owned, we made a fool of him in front of the entire galaxy. Twice.”
He stopped, took a deep breath. “He informed us a squad of his soldiers mounted a sneak attack and seized our transport ship. They slaughtered the crew and took Aliya to Tanis Major. Bophe says he’ll release her if our warriors can defeat any enemy he chooses. He wants to regain his pride by winning an epic battle in front of hundreds of millions of spectators all across the galaxy. He gave Chancellor Kal the option of choosing which Tharan twins will go to Tanis Major and fight in the Arena.”
Rhom went on but refused to meet their eyes. “If our warriors do not appear in the ring by the end of one Tanis moon cycle, he’s going to have Aliya tied up and staked in the center of the Arena – and post a live feed as she’s torn limb from limb by his Gornian dragons.”
Aliya
She’d been taken captive again. So far, this whole space exploration gig sucked.
She tested her restraints for the hundredth time. Iron shackles around her neck and her right ankle, both attached to a long chain tethering her to a rusty metal ring bolted to the floor of the cargo hold. She’d tried to slip out of the shackles, work the metal ring loose from the floor, but despite their age, the devices immobilized her.
The hull was dim and cold. She’d had to check out most of the time, using the special skill all the Luna’s crew members had been trained in that allowed them to withstand drastic changes in temperature. She’d been stripped naked when she was captured, and the technique allowed her to lower her heartbeat and respiration at will, slow her bodily functions to keep from suffering from hypothermia in the enormous ice-cold metal box they had her in.
The door opened and two aliens appeared, shadows silhouetted in the bright light of the corridor behind them. Obviously here for their once-a-day routine of caring for their prisoner. One carried a tray she knew by now held a bowl of some unappealing alien type of grain soaked in water. It reminded her of the gruel served to orphans in a story she’d read once set in Victorian England. The other alien had a metal bucket to swap out for the one she’d been forced to use to relieve herself.
Aliya emptied her mind and tried to read her captors. They never looked at her, wouldn’t even speak to her, unless it was absolutely necessary. She regarded it as a blessing of sorts, since they hadn’t tried to molest her either. Even proximity to a naked and defenseless alien female couldn’t override the palpable stench of fear they gave off. It made her wonder who could instill such terror.
She brought herself back to full consciousness and tried yet again to connect with them. “Can you at least tell me where you’re taking me?”
The aliens glanced at each other. Thin, gray-skinned beings, about five feet tall, they wore darker-gray one-piece uniforms that made them nearly indistinguishable from the metal hull of the ship in the gloom. One of them shrugged. “You are being transported to Tanis Major.”
“Tanis Major? Isn’t that the world Bophe rules?”
She could feel the palpable air of tension in the room increase as soon as his name left her lips. They glanced at each other again, as though exchanging a silent message, then dropped both the tray and the bucket right at the edge of her range of movement and left without answering.
Bophe. She’d been wondering ever since she was captured who was behind it. An alien who ordered an attack on a peaceful transport cruiser traveling through free space under the Tharan call sign had to know he was committing an act that would be answered with the full might of their military forces.
She’d been taken to the cargo hold of the unmarked ship after the transport cruiser was boarded, but not before she watched a squad of similarly dressed aliens swarm into the control room of the cruiser and slaughter every Tharan in sight. She’d had to step over some of the bodies as they dragged her from the ship.
As a trained medic, she knew the victims were beyond hope. But she still suffered from the guilt of a military officer who manages to survive when her team is slaughtered around her. Logically, she knew it wasn’t her fault. There was nothing she could have done all alone against a squad of armed invaders. But the faces and the stories of the young Tharan males she’d grown to respect and care about during the voyage still haunted her every night.
Now that she knew who ordered the attack, she understood the ferocity of it. Bophe had run up against Tharan warriors twice in the last six months. First, when cyborgs Jax and Jynn went to Tanis Major to rescue Kyra. Bophe bought Aliya’s fellow crew member Kyra to fight in the ancient arena he owned. Earthers had not explored that vector of the galaxy, and a human female was a novelty, d
rawing a huge crowd to the arena and an even wider audience for the expensive holographic feeds he streamed to faraway worlds.
Kyra had described Bophe and her ordeal in the arena in detail. The arena master hadn’t expected much in the way of a fight from the little human. Kyra was slender and tiny, barely over five feet tall. When Bophe paired her with an eight-foot female from Palioxis, he thought it would amuse his spectators to see the giant toy with the Earther before killing her.
Instead, Kyra won the hearts of the crowd. A trained gymnast, she used the lower gravitational field of Tanis Major to perform feats of daring the likes of which they’d never seen. She’d run straight at the Palioxan, who stood in the center of the arena, holding a sword nearly as big as Kyra, then launched herself in the air, somersaulting over her opponent’s head at the last second while delivering lightning-fast slashes with her own smaller weapon.
Aliya had held Kyra in her arms as she sobbed when she described how the Palioxan begged for death at the end. The alien lay in the dust of the arena covered with blood, unable to struggle to her feet. Kyra saluted the cheering throng and started to walk away, but her opponent stopped her.
“Have mercy,” the Palioxan said. “Kill me.”
Shocked and appalled, Kyra refused.
“Do it. I beg you.” The creature spoke in the guttural tongue of the arena. “Let me die quickly, with honor. I’m of no use to my master, now. I can never fight again. I can’t even stand. Bophe will send in the Gornian dragons if you don’t. They’ll tear me limb from limb. Eat me alive as I scream in agony, while the crowd cheers.”
She couldn’t turn away from the female’s eyes. Pleading for cruel mercy.
Through her ability to see into the minds of others, to know their thoughts and experience their emotions, Aliya felt as if she’d been at Kyra’s side when she relived that moment.
Even now, she could picture the scene. The ancient stone arena, packed with two hundred thousand spectators from all over the galaxy. All screaming for a bloody spectacle. Her tiny friend lifting a sword nearly as big as she was, twirling it over her head with both hands. She heard the sickening crunch even over the cheers of the crowd when Kyra closed her eyes, brought it crashing down, and severed the head of her opponent.
Bophe lost a fortune covering all the bets. Furious that the little human managed to survive against all odds, he tried to make the best of it by offering Kyra as the prize to the victors of the day’s final battle. She used her skills once again, creating a diversion, then dashed to freedom, along with the two Tharan warriors who came to rescue her.
Little Ceres, the young slave girl they brought back to Tharon with them, never spoke of her years with the cruel master who’d bought her when she was just a child. Aliya knew only as much of her story as the girl had shared with her adopted mother. Bophe had reason to hate Ceres as well. She’d attacked him and helped the twins and Kyra escape from the arena.
That wasn’t his only defeat at the hands of Tharan warriors and their human mates. Saige had been a huge draw at the Rapture Dome, the pleasure palace he owned on a mining asteroid. The only human consort, she was a profitable possession – until Keir and Khaun showed up on Girra Sola and stole her away. It was no wonder Bophe unleashed his rage on the Tharan transport cruiser and its crew.
Aliya scooted to the farthest edge of her reach, picked up the disgusting bowl of gruel, and tipped it up to her mouth. She forced herself to swallow every morsel, knowing she’d need to stay strong physically as well as mentally. Then she sat down, crossed her legs, emptied her mind, and resumed her slow, deep breathing, taking herself far away again.
* * *
One day flowed into the next, marked only by the changing of her guards. Shrewd as he was, her captor would never allow the same ones to see to her needs day after day. He couldn’t risk having her seduce any of them into helping her escape. By her count, ten days and nights had gone by before she felt the vibration of the ship’s engines cease.
A new pair of guards showed up in the doorway, followed by a third alien, obviously the one in charge from the way the other two cowered before him. “Stand up and turn your back so we can release your restraints. You will accompany us to meet your master. If you offer any resistance, you will be punished severely.”
She hadn’t heard so many words in days, and her Tellex chip was slow to process the strange language. When she didn’t immediately get to her feet, one of the guards grabbed her arm and yanked her upright, while the other delivered a harsh blow across her naked bottom with a long stick.
Aliya bit off a scream. She’d never been physically disciplined except for the two spankings Azar gave her. But she’d read about caning, an old form of punishment doled out to naughty students and wayward wives with a thin wooden rod, usually on the bare behind. After one vicious whack, she vowed she’d never unwittingly do anything to warrant getting another.
One guard unlocked the shackle around her ankle while the other did the same with the chain attached to the iron band around her neck. They bound her wrists in front of her with one end of a rope then yanked on the other end to march her out of the cargo hold and off the ship.
After days of near-darkness, the bright light of the landing port blinded her. Aliya narrowed her eyes into slits and depended on her other senses to deliver information about her surroundings.
The intense heat as she stepped outside overwhelmed her. After days spent in the frigid cargo hold, it was almost too much to bear. Blazing sun burned her skin and the hot, sandy surface of the planet scorched the soles of her bare feet with every step.
Next came the smells. The stench of unwashed alien creatures, the aroma of meat roasting on an outdoor spit, the faint scent of some unfamiliar but cloyingly sweet flower carried on a breeze hotter than a blast of air from a huge oven.
She’d carefully closed off her consciousness, allowing only one sense in at a time. Sounds came last, blending together into a din. Gradually, she was able to distinguish them. Growls and roars coming from the direction of the nasty smells. Most likely alien creatures being unloaded from other ships to star in one of Bophe’s epic battles. In his arena, both professional gladiators and defenseless slaves often faced terrifying beasts from all over the galaxy.
Next came the cacophony of voices. A babble of squeaks and grunts and shrill whistling noises making up dozens, if not hundreds of alien languages. So many her Tellex chip couldn’t sort them out.
The guards marched her along, one in front, leading her, while the other prodded her from behind, occasionally giving her backside another thwack with the wooden rod if she wasn’t moving quickly enough.
Gradually, her eyes adjusted to the glare. They’d landed at the edge of a bustling tent city, teeming with aliens from every world she’d ever seen or heard of, along with others barely recognizable as sentient beings. More were embarking from other transport vehicles around the outer fringes of the landing site. Aliens sold hunks of flesh, both roasted and raw, from stalls side by side with rough wooden tables piled with a dazzling array of merchandise. Cheap trinkets next to gold jewelry set with precious stones. All of it arranged in ragged rows with narrow lanes in between, so the alien visitors were funneled past all the stalls as they disembarked.
In the distance, massive stone columns rose up out of the dirt, supporting an ancient circular structure easily thirty stories tall. The site of the most infamous battles in the known Universe – the Arena of Tanis Major.
The crowd flowed toward it like a living stream, carrying her along in the current.
Chapter Eight
Aliya
From what she’d seen so far, Tanis Major was an enormous open-air bazaar, a galactic tourist trap centered around Bophe’s infamous arena. Though embarrassed at being led through the streets unclothed, she wasn’t attracting as much attention as she’d feared.
Dozens of naked females from other alien worlds dotted the narrow lanes, some in chains like her, others crawling along on
leashes. None of them attracted more than a passing glance. The planet offered too many other oddities for passersby to spend time staring at lowly female slaves.
Bizarre alien beings strode past in a nonstop procession. A cluster of two-headed hermaphrodites wore long scarlet robes strategically cut to display the male and female sex organs on each one. Lizard-like scaled beings tottered by on their back legs. Even creatures that looked like giant cockroaches, easily nine feet tall, hissing and clacking their jaws fiercely as they haggled over chunks of blue anderite as big around as a grown man’s fist.
And their dress! The visitors were clad in a rainbow of color and texture, from soft, clingy fabric to shiny metal armor glinting in the sun to thick fur skins of beasts she knew only from mythology. She found herself staring in revulsion at one female draped in what looked like a mass of wriggling vipers. Servants cleared the way for a group of courtesans from the pleasure world of Zaqmos, each wearing only an intricate web of gold chains connecting their pierced body parts, from noses to nipples to huge, swollen clitorises the size of an Earther male’s cock. That group had a trail of fascinated males following them.
They headed straight for the arena, along with everyone else. Giant blaring trumpets rang out from a catwalk along the top story, calling the masses. Unlike trumpets back home, these horns shook the very ground she walked on.
The crowd divided as they approached the building, funneling into smaller lines headed for dozens of wide, arched entrances. Her captors headed for the far right side, where enormous wooden doors opened onto a dark passageway leading deep into the bowels of the arena. A different alien race guarded the opening, taller, more muscular beings. They reminded her of holograms she’d seen of ancient Roman centurions, except for their blue skin.
Defending their Mate: a Sci-Fi alien romance (Tharan Warrior Menage Book 6) Page 5
