Alien Penetration

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  There was no danger of failing him, apparently, thankfully. Just as her body began to convulse in a second climax, he uttered a choked groan and seized control, thrusting upward into her in shuddering, awkward strokes. She ground down against him, holding herself still until he finally ceased to pump into her and went limp, gasping hoarsely.

  She leaned against her braced arms for a moment and finally sprawled across his chest. For several moments, she simply lay as limply as he was. It dawned on her after a moment, however, that it was an opportunity she hadn’t had before. She nuzzled happily against his chest, placing light kisses where she pleased. He tensed slightly and she heard the movement of his head against the pillows as he looked down at her, but then he merely dropped his head to the pillow again.

  “I do not think I can rise again so quickly.”

  Dimwit!

  She sighed irritably. “I was loving on you, idiot!” she said testily, rolling off of him.

  He caught her before she could scramble off the bed, dragging her back and caging her between his chest and an arm. His lips were curled faintly. “Then I will have more.”

  She gave him a dirty look.

  “Please?”

  She sent him a startled look. His expression was teasing, but it was a peace offering. Still a little miffed, she snuggled against him again anyway, enjoying being held in spite of the battle it had taken to get it.

  Camryn stroked her back for a time, enjoying the way she felt curled against him.

  The impulse to tell her what he was trying to do smote him. He resisted it, unwilling to give her hope when he had settled nothing except in his mind, but finally yielded to it with the reflection that it would please her, he thought, to know that he wanted to do it.

  “If I am successful in my petition to keep you, I will see to it that you have the chance to coddle our babes.”

  She pulled away to look at him.

  “Mind you,” he said sternly, “only when they are babes. They are to be warriors and they must be trained. A poorly trained warrior is a dead man walking. But in that time, you will have other babes to coddle.”

  “And when they’re taken, I won’t see them anymore, will I?”

  He hesitated. “If it’s your wish, you will—in time. I cannot promise that, but we will see.”

  Simone swallowed a little convulsively. It was more than she’d been led to believe she might possibly have. She didn’t want to spoil it, but it was important to her to know. “When they are taught to be warriors, will they also be taught that I’m nothing?

  Of no importance except for breeding and fucking?”

  He was silent for several moments. “Warriors are taught to appreciate those things only a woman can provide.”

  In other words, breeding and sex.

  * * * *

  Camryn knew they were in trouble when he noticed that the smug look of satisfaction had vanished from the faces of the council members. He felt it in his gut even before he’d consciously recognized it for what it was.

  Arrek was nearly foaming at the mouth when he addressed them. “How dare you come before this council as petitioners for anything when you have committed the most criminal of acts?”

  Camryn stiffened, felt the men next to him tense as he had. “What are we charged with?”

  “Do not stand there and try to pretend you have no notion! The breeders have been released, taken without leave, and they have vanished! You have broken into the prisons and hidden them!”

  Camryn’s belly tightened at the charge—he knew what the consequences were and they would not be pleasant—but he felt both relieved that his father had admitted they hadn’t found them and furious that they’d just discovered them missing. “You have taken the best of care of them, I see,” he roared furiously, “when they have been gone from those stinking cells where you placed them for nigh two weeks and you have only just discovered it!

  “You have lied to us! You lied to us when you told us they would be confined to the barracks for a month when you fully intended the entire time to sneak them from the barracks and bury them alive in the prisons that have not been used for the lowest criminal in a hundred years! You lied to us when you assured us that our breeders, and our sons, were receiving adequate care!

  “How dare you stand in judgment on us when you should be charged with cruelty and crimes against the Empire for endangering the lives of our unborn sons!”

  Arrek smiled at him grimly. “You admit to your crime!”

  “I admit to no crime! The only ones who have committed a crime here is the men on the council!”

  The spectators—primarily warriors who stood next in line to breed—began to bellow furiously. It was hard to say whether they were more furious about Arrek’s charges or Camryn’s, but they completely disrupted the proceedings until Arrek and the other council members ordered the guards stationed between them and the accused to throw them out and arrest all of the petitioners.

  Even Camryn couldn’t believe they had the audacity to arrest and charge all of them when they had no way of knowing who had taken part in the release of the breeders.

  He discovered, however, that that was indeed the case. Three hundred warriors were arrested—him, Kael, and Ean among them—and imprisoned to await the council’s decision on punishment.

  Without trial? Without even an attempt to discover who had taken part?

  “He has lost his mind!” Camryn growled to no one in particular.

  “He is in the highest company!” Kael retorted. “I have not seen that any of the other council elders even attempted to oppose him.”

  “It will not take them long to find her,” Ean said uneasily.

  Camryn’s expression hardened. He grasped the bars of the cell door as if he could rip them down and shook them, and then roared in frustration when he couldn’t.

  Moving away from the bars finally, he sprawled on the cot assigned to him. “I am almost more afraid of what will happen if they do not find her. She has little food and no way to get it if we are not there!”

  “Gods! I had not thought of that!” Kael gasped, leaping from his own bunk and moving to the bars Camryn had just left. “We demand legal representation, gods damn it! It is the law, you fucking bastards! You cannot lock us away where we cannot defend ourselves and also deny us representation!”

  The guards at the end of the cell block didn’t even turn around.

  “We should have killed them instead of allowing them to march us into this fucking prison without resistance!”

  Camryn sent him a look. “We would not be facing more charges if we had done that. They do not consider smashing faces and breaking bones not resisting.”

  “Whose side are you on, gods damn it!” Kael snarled.

  “Simone’s. She is the one who will suffer for every mistake that we make. Sit down and think instead of raging over it. We must figure out some way to get her moved so that she will be taken care of and they cannot lock her away again.”

  Kael moved to his own bunk. “I do not see how we can do that from here—not when everyone else has also been locked up.”

  “Only the warriors who have bred,” Ean pointed out. “What of those who came to witness the proceedings who are, or at least were, to be next to breed? They have a stake in this as well as we do.”

  “I do not want them to have a stake in Simone!” Kael snapped. “If we send any of them, how can we trust that they will not simply hide her away for themselves?”

  “I had not thought of that,” Ean admitted. “Gods damn it! Is there no one that could be trusted?”

  “I think we need to worry more now about seeing to it that she’s safe,” Camryn said. “If it only creates a new problem, then we will deal with that when we must.”

  “There is the problem that many are pissed off now that they know that we have had the breeders hidden away for nigh two weeks.”

  “And there are more who are pissed off to discover why we freed them,” Camryn said po
intedly. “They may not support us, but they are no more in favor of risking the health of the breeders than we are.”

  “The question is who to try and how to communicate with them,” Kael said thoughtfully.

  Camryn was wrestling with that very question when the sounds outside the cell finally penetrated his thoughts. He lifted his head, listening.

  “It is just the servers bringing the trays,” Kael said dismissively.

  Camryn got up and moved to the door.

  “I do not see how you can focus on food at the moment!” Ean said irritably.

  Camryn sent him a look but returned his attention to the server he could just glimpse a few cells down. Impatience began to gnaw at him as he watched the man’s slow progress. He bit back the urge to bellow at him, however. He could threaten the bastard if asking did not gain him what he wanted.

  “You,” he said when the man finally wheeled the cart within view, “by what name are you known?”

  The man looked startled and glanced behind him.

  “I am speaking to you, server.”

  “Dasyn,” the man responded finally, “Your Highness.”

  “Do you know of one named Zev?”

  The man frowned. “I know several.”

  “A wormy little bastard,” Camryn said irritably, “about yeah high, skinny, mayhap seventeen annuals?”

  The man looked more confused.

  “He served at the breeder barracks,” Camryn added as it dawned on him that that must have been where Simone had met him.

  “Ah, that Zev.”

  “Can you carry a message to him for me?”

  Dasyn looked surprised and suspicious. “What sort of message?”

  “Tell him his friend needs help—the one he met when he was serving at the breeder barracks—and to come to me.”

  Dasyn looked doubtful. “Are you the one that tried to break him in half?”

  “If I had tried, he would be broken,” Camryn growled. “Tell him and when I am released, I will reward you.”

  “You are not likely to be released any time soon,” Dasyn said. “They mean to hold you here until you have come to your senses—once they have used the lash to help you out with that.”

  “Still, I will be released. I will not forget.”

  Dasyn glanced back at the guard and took a tray, passing it to Camryn. “This is about the breeders, yes?”

  Camryn hesitated. “Yes.”

  “There’s places we can hide them where they won’t be found for a while.”

  Warning bells went off in Camryn’s head but, as he’d pointed out to the others, getting Simone to safety was the priority of the moment. “They are breeding. They will need a physician’s care.”

  “I had figured that,” Dasyn said dryly. “They will be gettin’ round now, carryin’ so many. If they are not moved soon, it will be harder.”

  “Send Zev to me. I will tell him what he needs to know. She will not trust anyone else, and I do not.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Kael growled before the server had even moved beyond earshot.

  “I will be out of my mind if I cannot convince myself she is safe. He is right!

  She is already getting awkward with the babes. She will not be able to run and hide and it worries me that we have been refused representation. They can keep us here indefinitely if they are of a mind to ignore the laws. I am more worried about what Arrek has in mind for them than I am the lower caste.”

  “I still do not like it!”

  “I do not like it either, but Camryn is right. They will at least try to keep her safe.

  If our father gets hold of her again, he will put her back where she was, or mayhap even someplace worse, and hold her there until she has birthed the babes. That cannot be good for her or them. If we cannot protect her, I want to know that someone is trying to,” Ean said tightly.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I have had the most wonderful news!” Arrek said, grinning broadly as he strode across Lielani’s sitting room.

  She settled weakly on her settee, clasping her hands tightly together nervously, but she managed a tremulous smile. “Oh? It will be good to hear wonderful news for a change!”

  He frowned at her, but apparently he was in too good of a mood to be easily distracted from it. He dropped onto the seat beside her. “Our scientists have made a brilliant breakthrough!”

  Lielani stared at him blankly. To her knowledge Arrek had never had any interest in any scientific breakthroughs unless it pertained to weaponry. “They have invented a new weapon?” she asked doubtfully.

  He looked startled for a moment and then chuckled. “In a sense. I had not thought of it that way, but you are right! In a sense it is a weapon. It will bring an end to the disturbances that we have been having to deal with.”

  Oh god! He was going to blow everyone up! It was not enough that his own sons were rotting in that stinking prison? That they had been publicly whipped within an inch of their lives, until their poor backs were a raw, bloody mess, and would never be the same? “It will?” she asked, dismayed.

  He caught her hands beneath his. “This is truly goods news, Lielani! I swear it!

  I know that you have been distressed about Camryn and Kael and Ean being imprisoned, but it cannot be helped. I cannot show favoritism, particularly when they are the leaders of this mess!

  “Our scientists, however, have discovered that they can take the eggs of the alien women and destroy their DNA and replace it with the DNA of our own women! They can then be fertilized and placed within the wombs of our women.”

  Lielani gaped at him in horror. “Us? We are to be used as breeders? Again?”

  “Yes!” he exclaimed. “We will have no need for the half-breeds after all! These will be completely drak! Of course, we will need to keep the human breeders until we can harvest their eggs—and we will have to find those still in hiding—but the scientists have calculated that we should have enough for an entire new generation of draks!

  Everyone will have their son and they will cease to complain and make trouble!”

  Lielani burst into tears. With the best will in the world, she could not contain her distress. She had always wondered what it would feel like when her cracked heart was finally completely shattered, and now she knew. She felt as if she was dying and, at the same time, fearful that she would not.

  She had tried her best to convince herself that Arrek was not a monster, that he was a man disappointed by life and frustrated about his own limitations, but that there was some good in him. She had refused to believe that she had given her heart to a cold blooded monster, but he was. The things he had done to his sons! How could he contemplate destroying their sons on top of what he had already done? His own grandsons? How could he consider destroying helpless women only because they were not drak?

  She wept for Camryn for Kael and for Ean. They would be brokenhearted if they lost their sons. They would be broken men if they lost Simone, inconsolable! She wept for Simone and the other women who had been torn from their homes and the lives they had had to bring hope to her world, and she wept for herself. She could not face bringing more sons into the world and giving them up! She simply could not face it!

  “Have you never loved me at all, Arrek?” she asked him in a small voice.

  He looked shocked. “How could you ask that?” he demanded, gathering her into his arms. “I love you with all my heart, Lielani! It is a gift to you, for our beloved Macedon! Think what this means to our empire! A new generation of pure drak warriors! The finest in the universe! You are not … pleased?”

  Lielani felt a flicker of warning go through her at the question. She struggled to control her emotions, sniffing, but she couldn’t hold back the tears that she’d dammed for so long. “I am weeping with joy!”

  He held her, rocking her gently, expounding on his grand plan until she thought for a little bit that she might throw up. The urge finally usurped the tears, but she was almost sorry for it. He ro
se then and pulled her up with him, leading her into her bedchamber.

  She had not had so much difficulty in trying to please, or pretend to be pleased, since she had first come to the palace and Arrek had railed about having to settle for her when he had wanted another. When he finally left, she went into her bathroom and threw up and then climbed into her shower and stayed there until the water began to run cold.

  Simone, white and shaken, met her when she got out, wrapping a drying cloth around her. “He’s as mad as a hatter,” she muttered.

  Lielani shook her head. “I would almost feel better if I believed that. He is just that callous and coldhearted. I have loved a man who never existed,” she said sorrowfully. “I have made excuses for everything that he ever did, told myself lies, lies, lies!”

  “We can’t let him get away with it! What’s he thinking? My god! You’re too old—I’m sorry! I don’t mean to be insulting.”

  “I am too old!” Lielani agreed angrily. “I am sorry that I am too old, but I know that I am. I do not think that I could endure breeding even one more time and I am certain that my heart could not take another loss! We are all too old! He has no right to expect such a thing when we have already given everything to Macedon!”

  “Let me get you a glass of camry!” Simone said sympathetically when she’d helped Lielani sit down on her bed.

  “Bring the bottle!”

  Simone considered whether she should and finally took it. It wouldn’t hurt Lielani to get dead drunk, all things considered. At least it might help her over the nasty shock.

  Lielani clutched her hand when she returned. “I am afraid for you! Mayhap we should try to contact Zev and send you to hide with the others, after all? I know it was my idea to keep you here, and I thought it would be safe, but now I am not so certain.”

  Simone felt a coldness creep over her. “I want to stay here. He has to let them out eventually! It’s been months!”