Alien Penetration

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  When she had settled, folding her hands in her lap, she waited, listening to the faint sounds around her. Finally, when she had composed herself, when she realized that the woman would not show herself without prompting, she spoke. “You might as well come out. I know you are here … Simone.”

  Again she waited with what patience she could muster, trying to close her mind to the possibility that Camryn might return and find her, an intruder in his private quarters where she was never allowed. She knew it was doubtful, but it was impossible to completely dismiss it. One could never truly count on anything in life except the unexpected.

  “I would not have had the code to enter, or known that you were here if the prince had not told me,” she said, trying again after a few moments.

  She’d begun to think her ruse would fail when she heard a faint sound. It drew her gaze and she watched with a mixture of amusement and empathy as the woman crawled out from beneath the bed.

  Her sight was not what it once had been and yet she could see clearly enough that the woman was wary of her—mayhap because she had expected her to be. After a few moments, she moved toward her and Lielani studied her as she approached, noting the natural grace of her movements, the completely unconscious seductiveness of her stride.

  As she drew close enough she ceased to be a blur and came into focus, Lielani felt her belly tighten, felt a pang of envy she had not expected to feel.

  She had not really expected the breeder—Simone—to be such a lovely creature, she realized. The ugly things that Arrek had said had colored her perspective. She should have realized that there was a very good reason that Camryn, Kael, and Ean had become obsessed with her and, with a man, it was always what they saw. They were never inclined to search beneath the surface, not with a woman, to see if the lovely façade was no more than that.

  She was so young, Lielani thought unhappily!

  Simone settled in the chair opposite the woman with as much composure as she could manage, staring at her without any pretense that she wasn’t measuring her. She discovered it was nearly impossible to guess her age. She was certainly a mature woman.

  She knew the woman must be older than her, but her face certainly wasn’t heavily lined with age. Her hair was black without a sign of gray, her breasts still high enough and round enough that she could have passed for a younger woman than her face indicated.

  It wasn’t a particularly pretty face to Simone’s mind, but then men had different perceptions of beauty than women did, and she couldn’t deny it was an interesting face and projected a sweetness of disposition—whether she actually was or not.

  “You’re Lielani.”

  The statement startled her. Lielani wasn’t certain whether to be pleased that the woman had heard of her or not, but she thought she was pleased. “You have heard of me?”

  “I’ve heard them mention you.” Simone tried to keep her voice neutral, but she suspected some of the resentment she felt slipped into her tone anyway. “Why are you here?”

  Lielani studied her rival assessingly. “When they came to me last night they were so angry I thought it best to make certain that you were alright. I … comforted them, of course, as I always have.”

  Simone recoiled almost physically from the calm statement. It had occurred to her until the woman said it how confident she’d been that they wouldn’t immediately go to Lielani, whatever she’d said. How stupid was that? She hadn’t realized she was conceited enough to be so stupid.

  It was because she’d believed, regardless of what she’d told herself, that they cared about her. It really was only about sex, though, and if she refused them ….

  Except she hadn’t! She had given them what they wanted and they’d still gone directly from her to Lielani! The bastards!

  To spite her for being so hateful, she wondered? Or was it only that she’d been so stupid as to plant it in their minds?

  Lielani watched the play of emotions across Simone’s face until she was completely satisfied, until she began to feel guilty for her cruelty and finally relented. “I lied,” she said quietly, “or at least implied a lie.”

  She almost felt worse at the painfully hopeful look Simone sent her. Frowning, she struggled to compose her thoughts. “It is a habit with them, I suppose, though they are grown men now—warriors of great note and well respected among our people. They have come to me for solace since they were first brought to the palace when they were no more than six summers. In time, the reasons for their distress changed and the comfort ceased to be someone to dry their tears and cheer them and became the need to expend themselves as men, but in a sense nothing really changed. I love them as they love me. I had to know that you were not the evil creature that Arrek has portrayed you to be. I needed to know that you would not harm them … at least not intentionally, not out of malice.”

  Simone swallowed convulsively several times, trying to blink back the tears that had filled her eyes, struggling with a mixture of hurt and anger. “Now you’re saying they didn’t … you didn’t .... I’m supposed to believe that?”

  Lielani smiled. “I have tricked you and now you have no trust.” She shrugged.

  “You would not have trusted me anyway. I am drak even if I am a woman and you see us all as enemies, do you not?”

  “I don’t consider people that kidnap me as friends,” she said tartly. “I’ve certainly not been treated as anything but a captive!”

  Lielani frowned. “You have been treated as all women have always been treated by my people—no better, no worse.” She thought it over. “Perhaps somewhat worse. It would be hard to say. No woman of Macedon would have dared to do the things that you have done. If they had, they would’ve been punished just as you have. The drak have far more important things to deal with than the silly concerns of women and no patience for it. They are taught from the time they first begin to understand anything about their world that females are only here for the purpose of breeding more drak warriors and to give comfort to the needs of men. Their very existence is owed only to those things they are useful for.”

  “How can you stand that?”

  Lielani spread her hands. “We have never known anything else.”

  Simone digested that, trying to understand how it was even possible, but she supposed she had to consider that they were aliens. Their culture was entirely different.

  They were different. Maybe they’d never wondered what it was like to be free? “You don’t, ever, feel any resentment? It doesn’t make you angry to be treated like an animal when you know that there are plenty of things that you could do that are important?”

  Lielani snorted. “You are asking if there isn’t a spark of what you have in us? I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but yes. There have been many times I have felt resentment, though, mostly that was when I was young. Time has a way of defeating your spirit more surely even than the design of men. When I was very young, I … pretended to be what I am now, because it was expected of me—demanded. After a while, I became what I am—a hollow shell only waiting for them to fill me and give my existence purpose.”

  Simone frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose I’m in a position to judge. I’m … not very brave. We’re … protected where I come from, by the laws of the land, even by the changes in our society. It’s easy to forget it wasn’t always that way because there are so many of us that never had to fight for anything. Not that we don’t still work hard to be accepted, but we don’t have to work as hard as our mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers did. We have rights they worked for and never got.”

  Lielani nodded. “This is what you were chanting the day you turned our world upside down?”

  Simone stared at her blankly. “I don’t know what you mean. You’re talking about the march?”

  Lielani chuckled. “You are truly surprised? Is that not what you intended?”

  “Of course! Well, not really. We didn’t want to start trouble. We just wanted them to realize we’re people, too. We
have rights the same as they do.”

  Lielani studied her. “Your world must be very different than ours if you are so naïve as to believe what you did was a simple thing that would not cause ‘trouble’. The men of Macedon have never been opposed by mere women, child. In truth, it did little to change their way of thinking—in a good way. It was rather more like kindling pushed beneath a caldron already nearing the boiling point.

  “Our men have no one to blame but themselves. They have controlled everything throughout the history of our people. It’s no wonder they gave little thought to women in the scheme of things. They never have. It took many generations for them to bring us to the brink of extinction, and they still could not be bothered to consider that it was their blindness that was the heart of it. I am not certain they do now, but the anger and resentment have built in the last couple of generations because they could no longer ignore the pass they had brought themselves to.

  “I was among the last generation of the drak women capable of bearing young. I was a breeder as you are until I could no longer breed and only then was I given as a concubine—when I was of no more use in providing sons. Arrek … did not treat me well when I was given to the House of Jakaar as concubine. He resented the fact that he did not have a choice. There was one that he had chosen, that he had demanded, but the men who were in power then decided that it was only fair to divide us according to fate. He drew me and I do not believe that he has ever forgiven fate for thwarting him.”

  Pity warred with disbelief even though Akule had told them enough that she’d had some notion of what had transpired with the draks of Macedon. Suspicion also flickered through her mind, wariness. She couldn’t help but wonder why Lielani had gone into such gruesome detail—or why she’d told her anything at all. “So what you’re saying is that Macedon was already ready to explode?”

  Lielani shrugged. “I believe so. It is hard to say for certain. I do not go out in the world much. It is allowed, but … I have never been comfortable doing so, walking among men when I can almost feel their eyes crawling over me.” She shuddered. “It is not polite to stare openly, and yet you cannot walk among them without being aware that you are only one among many of them. It makes one feel more small and insignificant, threatened in a way that is hard to describe.”

  “Actually,” Simone said a little sourly, “I completely understand. It isn’t just being outnumbered so drastically. It’s knowing what they want, knowing that if they suddenly decided to take no one would stop them and nothing could save you.”

  “And yet you and the others did.”

  Simone studied her hands. “We were all scared. I don’t think any of us would’ve been able to get up the nerve to try it, except ….”

  “Yes?” Lielani prompted.

  Simone felt her chin wobble. “I want my babies! I’ve waited so long! I can’t give them up without a fight. I just can’t!”

  Lielani felt her heart lurch. Before she could even attempt to seek composure, she felt her eyes fill with tears that overflowed and ran in scalding rivulets down her cheeks.

  “You cannot change that,” she said mournfully. “That is what they are fighting for—

  their sons. They have some hope of changing things—not much, but some—but you will have to fight them for the right to keep your sons and you will not win. You cannot.”

  Simone felt the will to fight leave her, felt hopelessness consume her. She realized she’d never really thought she could win, but she’d hoped. Lielani had destroyed it with her own pain. If she hadn’t been able to keep her children when she was a drak, what possible chance did they have when they weren’t even draks?

  Lielani drew in a shaky breath and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “The only thing that I have ever truly regretted in this life is that I shunned my babies to protect myself. I refused to look at them, to touch them, to feed them from my breasts because I knew that I would love them and it would break my heart when they took them. I could have had that much and I threw it away because I was weak and selfish. Be wiser that I was. Take what you can. It will not be much, but it will be something.”

  She heaved a shaky breath. “I must go. It would anger them to find me here.”

  Simone stopped her. “You don’t hate me,” she said curiously, wondering if that was because she was just that secure.

  Lielani thought it over. “It is a very odd thing. When I first learned that they had found a place for breeders and they would go and capture them, I felt … threatened and also relieved because I had worried who would give our young men their own sons.

  When I knew that they had been successful and you had come and were carrying a new generation of warriors, I felt the same—afraid, glad, sad, and hopeful. When Camryn, and Kael, and Ean came to me and I knew that they cared for you, I wanted to hate you, but I love them. I had wanted them to have the chance of sons, the chance of a concubine of their own. I am jealous. Beyond that, I am … just confused, but I am relieved, having met you. I was more afraid that you were an evil creature and would bring harm to them than I am, or ever was, that you would take them from me because I finally understand that you cannot.

  “The love they feel for me is mine. What they feel for you is yours. I would rather you and I were allies than enemies. I think, in a very real sense, we both want the same thing.”

  Somehow, Simone doubted that, but since she wasn’t exactly sure of what Lielani wanted, it was hard to say. She could at least agree that it would be better to be allies than enemies, though. Lielani had far more sway, she was certain, with the men than she did—as hard as that was to swallow.

  “You will not tell them I came?” Lielani asked hesitantly.

  “God forbid!” Simone exclaimed. “They’d have a fit about that!”

  Lielani smiled. “You know them well!” She paused again at the door. “I will not turn them away if they come to me for comfort. I never have. It is … expected of me and I am too old now to struggle against our customs. Beyond that, I love them and I would not deny them for that reason alone.”

  Anger flickered through Simone. Jealousy wasn’t a particularly rational emotion, but she knew Lielani had far more reason to feel it toward her than the other way around.

  She was the usurper, not Lielani. If she could be reasonable, then she needed to try to be reasonable herself. Particularly when the plain fact was that neither of them really had a choice.

  Lielani had certainly shaken up her day and given her a great deal of food for thought.

  She’d depressed the hell out of her, too, although she didn’t think that had been the objective. She didn’t know what Lielani’s goal had been, but she didn’t think that was it.

  Or maybe it was. She’d spent most of the time explaining to her that she was trying to fight generations old traditions. That alone was enough to tell her that her situation was hopeless.

  She realized that she’d allowed her hope to deceive her over and over, willfully refused to view the situation as an insurmountable mountain because she simply couldn’t accept that there was no way to win what she wanted.

  Should she simply give up and accept, then? Take Lielani’s advice and bow to them so that they wouldn’t decide that she was completely unfit even to nurture her infants? If she convinced them that they’d completely cowed her, accepted, behaved just as she was expected to behave, they might let her get to know her sons well enough to die a little inside when they were taken.

  Somehow, though, she didn’t think, at this point, that she could convince Arrek and he was truly an enemy.

  Unless …. But could she stomach spreading her legs for him? Even for her babies?

  Lielani hadn’t lied to her about Camryn’s objective, she knew. He and the others had been very frank about that, that their only interest was in seeing to it that she was housed with them so that they had her as their lover. How long would that last? Until she’d had her babies, and then what? Would she be moved to the next household that bred her? It
seemed likely.

  Unless Camryn convinced the council to allow them to keep her as a concubine, but then how would that work? They weren’t allowed to have more than one son.

  Lielani said that she’d bred until she couldn’t be. Akule had told them that was the fate that awaited them. She might not even be told who the fathers of the next batch of babies were. Somehow, she didn’t think that they would consider that any of her business and the only reason she knew this time was because of the circumstances.

  So bowing down to them would give her almost nothing and fighting would mean she’d lose even that—because she couldn’t win.

  And what about her sons? Who would give them sons? Who would they have to give them the modicum of comfort these people allowed themselves? Because it was clear that Lielani served them as more than a ‘thing’ to fuck—or she at least seemed to believe that.

  She wasn’t so certain they loved Lielani. She wondered if they were capable of such a tender emotion when they’d never been taught it.

  That wasn’t strictly true, though, if Lielani hadn’t lied. She had been there. And before her, their nurse mother—who might have been their real mother.

  She lay down with a headache after a while, hoping to sleep it off. Instead, she lay dry eyed when she wanted to cry, and stared at nothing while her mind churned, searching, always searching for a loophole she might crawl through.