Natural Beauty

by Meraki P. Lyhne

  Natural Beauty

  The Cubi: Book 5

  By

  Meraki P. Lyhne

  Indhold

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Author Bio

  Natural Beauty

  1. edition

  Copyright © 2018 Meraki P. Lyhne

  ISBN 13: 978-87-997289-9-2

  Cover design by Jay Aheer

  www.simplydefinedart.com

  Edited by Laura McNellis

  www.alternativedits.com

  Find more about the author

  www.merakiplyhne.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles and reviews. For information, please contact the author.

  This book is a work of fiction.

  That means I made shit up. All of it.

  Chapter One

  The dose tore through his body, making him hypersensitive to every touch, but no one touched him. He felt abandoned and quivered, crying out in frustration.

  Finally, a hand landed on his shoulder. Someone shook him, and he cried out in fear when he met blue eyes.

  “Alex!”

  Alex jumped awake and shied away from Elias, but the voice finally registered. It was a woman’s. He looked up, finding his mother looking at him, concerned.

  She perched on the edge of the bed. “Did you have another nightmare?”

  Alex noticed he’d woken up with a boner, and his body wouldn’t stop shaking as he rubbed his face to rid himself of the dream.

  “Yeah,” he croaked.

  “You have to talk to someone. If you don’t want to tell me or your dad what happened to you in all these years, then at least talk to a shrink.”

  “No.” He’d never reveal the existence of the Cubi race, and he definitely wouldn’t tell some Freudian philosopher who’d just turn everything on its head and give him a diagnosis about sexual deviance for being able to make up a story about having been kidnapped by sex demons and fucked thoroughly for five years.

  Arriving with an arm in a cast had earned him enough pity that his parents hadn’t pushed for an explanation, but they hadn’t stopped asking questions. They worried. Of course they did, they were his parents. They wanted to help him, yet they didn’t even have the basic understanding of what he’d been through, and he already knew his dad’s opinion on a man having sex with another man. Didn’t matter that Alex had been drugged while screaming for a fat cock.

  He hadn’t even wanted to leave the house since he’d returned home. He hadn’t even gone to the store with his parents to buy him new clothes. They’d kept two sets of his just to be able to keep up hope, but the rest had been given to goodwill along with most of his possessions. He’d returned home just shy of being declared dead, so at least he didn’t have to go through the bureaucratic hassle of being written back into the system of the living.

  As of now, the worst had been his dad grumbling about how he’d been reckless enough to get a tattoo that couldn’t be covered by a t-shirt. Alex hadn’t explained that he hadn’t chosen it because it would be opening a can of worms he couldn’t and wouldn’t explain.

  “Do you want a glass of water?”

  Alex nodded, trying for a smile. His mother left, and Alex lifted his covers to look at his traitorous member. He then looked at the clock radio in his old room. It was only three in the morning.

  Alex woke up again around eight feeling drained and disappointed. He could hear his parents talking in the kitchen, so he got up and finished his business in the bathroom, quickly. By the time he made it to the kitchen, they’d just sat down with breakfast and the newspaper.

  His father looked up and nodded a good morning, then returned his attention to the newspaper. Alex helped himself to coffee and a slice of fresh bread. The scent reminded him of Jenny baking in the big kitchen of Daniel’s palace apartment. How could he feel homesick when sitting at home with his parents? He’d wanted to get out of the House of Dahlidin since the Cubi people had caught him, and even though he’d become somewhat okay with his life there, back then, he’d always dreamed about coming home. Now he was, and he didn’t feel at home at all.

  “Alex, I want you to come out with me today,” his dad announced.

  Dread spread through Alex, and he tried to suppress it, conscious that it was a ridiculous feeling. “Why?”

  “Because you need to man up and get a grip on your life.”

  Alex glanced at his mother, but she looked more like she wanted to tuck him away in a drawer full of cotton so he’d never get hurt again. He also knew it would be pointless to discuss his dad’s announcement any further.

  “Yes, sir.” Alex focused on eating his breakfast and waited for a section of the newspaper. His dad finally folded one up and put it on the table, and Alex waited to see if his mother took it. She didn’t, so he did. He hadn’t followed anything since he’d been back, and him watching the news at night with his parents was mostly Alex trying to discern whether any of it had to do with the Cubi. As the weeks went by and the nightmares and tremors got worse, Alex thought about the Cubi more and more. Now that his dad wanted him to join the human world and get a nine to five, Alex wasn’t so sure he should have said yes to returning to the human society.

  After the military had moved in on the Great House of Dahlidin, the Cubi had gathered all the breeders in an attempt to keep them out of harm’s way. Finally, the Cubi began dividing them into smaller and smaller groups, and Alex ended up in a group that was asked whether they wanted to stay or leave since the House was running low on provisions. One thing all the breeders in Alex’s group had had in common was a collar of a high ranking Cubus.

  His group had been led through the forest by six armed Cubi. It had taken days, and the humans had fed the ones they could. But no one fed on Alex because of his arm. Once in some town, a Lady had handed him a bus ticket, a sandwich, and fifty bucks before she’d hugged him and wished him good luck.

  They had cared.

  A few days after he returned home, the dreams began coupled with violent tremors. It was like withdrawal. He’d wake up close to rapture, having dreamed of being dosed and fucked silly. Sometimes, he woke up screaming from reliving the torments at the hands of Elias. Other times, he’d leave one room in his parent’s house and stop short when the room he expected to enter wasn’t the one he did. It was like his mind had stayed with the Cubi, and he almost felt disappointed when he didn’t walk into the salon at the palace apartment but into his parent’s living room.

  He didn’t even know what had happened to the Great House or the Cubi people.

  It was just human news about a lot of things he hadn’t followed, and he felt he stood on the sideline of society and tried to jump onto a wagon that sped by too fast. Then a full-page ad caught his attention. The most beautiful woman he’d seen since the Great Hous
e, adorned a full page, and the photographer was none other than Heimli. The ad was for a new collection of clothing called Beaudon. Don? That was the ending of a Cubi male name.

  His heart quickened, and he read the ad to find something he could google.

  “Do you want more?”

  Alex looked up, finding his mom apparently talking to him. “No, thank you, Mom.”

  “I must say, wherever you’ve been the past years, you’ve become very polite,” Alex’s dad said, sitting back with a weighing glance turned on him. “Maybe you should work with customer service.” His dad stood and pushed the chair in, pausing. “I can make a call for you if you’d like.”

  Alex didn’t get the time to respond because his dad nodded his that’s final nod and left them to clear the table. Alex stood, filled his hands, and carried it to the kitchen.

  “You know he loves you, right?” Alex’s mother asked while packing away the cheese. “That he just wants what’s best for you.”

  “Yeah, I do. I just don’t feel ready.”

  “Ready, son?”

  Alex turned to find his dad in the door to the kitchen with the car keys in his hand. “Yeah, let me just get my stuff.”

  Alex suppressed the sigh until he made it to his room. He grabbed his wallet, shoved it into his back pocket, and followed his dad out the door. He wondered where they were going.

  Two hours later, Alex was back in the car, and he regretted even getting up that morning. His dad was smiling proudly and droning on about how good it would be for Alex to get to work. That he should be happy he got a job in that economy. That all the great ones had started at the bottom, and that Alex would soon feel like a real man because he could earn his own money.

  Filling shelves at the store and other ad hock work. That’s what his week would consist of. Dammit. What was it that held him back from rejoining society? It wasn’t that stocking shelves was beneath him or anything, but he couldn’t get his head around the boss’ way of talking to the employees. Other than his first six months in the stables, Alex hadn’t been talked to like that by anyone. And not even in the stables. Yeah, it had been bad for a while, and some of the Cubi, like Elias, were not pleasant to be around, but most were friendly.

  He couldn’t understand why he kept trying to compare the two societies. He’d hated it there at times, longing for freedom, and now he had it, all he’d yearned for was nothing like he either remembered or had chosen to focus on during his captivity.

  Was it just that he’d gotten used to being with the Cubi? Would rejoining the human society be a matter of time, too? He hoped so.

  “Thank you for helping me find a job, Dad.”

  “You’re welcome, son. You’ll see. Everything’s going to be alright now.”

  They passed the library, and Alex got an idea. “Wait, Dad, can you drop me off at the library? I’ll walk home, but I need to…study a bit. You know, catch up on…inventory and stuff.” Yeah, that sounded convincing.

  Never the less, his dad smiled and turned the car around. “Dinner’s at six.”

  “Yes, sir.” Alex left the car and watched his dad drive off before he went into the library and found a vacant computer. His search was not one he wanted to leave on his parent’s browser history, and he hadn’t worked enough with computers to know how to delete it. He just knew how to do simple internet searches, and he needed to know what had seeped out regarding the Cubi people. Leaving such a huge structure had to have caused some kind of ripples.

  It took him at least seven tries before the browser stopped asking him if he meant something else—all being suggestions for books, fantasies, a band, and something that definitely didn’t have to do with the Great House of Dahlidin.

  He found a site that had forums about everything from Roswell to lizard people in the royal family of England, and the moon landing being a hoax. Oh, great, the first lead was on a conspiracy site. But the description of red eyes fit. So did the description of drinking a liquid before going all horny.

  Others joined in on the thread, and it quickly turned to some depraved communal fantasy that everybody was trying to play off as bad and evil, but with the details so generously described, it definitely was just fantasies that they could air under the pretense of having researched it and being against it. Only the one description had been anything close to home, and the writer stopped posting once it turned into a fantasy.

  Alex focused on the wording of that one text and tried to search for it. It brought him to a blog where the person had gathered material about possible Incubi and Succubi taking over the world. Alex shook his head as he read on because other than the description of how a dose worked, the guy was going off the deep end. Some of the photos he’d taken of men and women wearing glasses weren’t staggeringly beautiful enough to be Cubi, but a few were.

  At five thirty, Alex had found three sites with material he deemed close but far off. He’d have to come back to follow the blogs. He could do that after work.

  Chapter Two

  Seldon stood by the window, naked and thoroughly fucked by a Guard Lord. A smile spread on his face when remembering that this was how it had all started. Well, with the exception that he’d been hungry back then, and now he was stuffed to a point where he needed daily Royal or Guard Lord doses to not relapse into the Cubi cold. He wasn’t all better, but he would be, soon.

  But he’d stood like he did now and looked out the window of the Great House of Dahlidin when House Lord Caledon had knocked and declared him the lucky winner of the task of raising an Untouchable.

  Now it was the House of Nol-Beaudon he looked out from. The scenery had changed a lot since, too. The compound was no longer just a myriad of halls inside a mountain in the middle of a national forest. Now it was a myriad of halls inside a mountain, but the entrance was through a huge palace-like building. That part was finished. The myriad of hallways weren’t, only parts of it. The view from the Royal Quarters showed a park with mountains and lakes and waterfalls and wildflowers as far as the eye could reach. Seldon would love for that view to be his for the next few hundred years.

  “Hi.”

  Seldon half-turned, finding Caledon fully dressed and watching him.

  That was another thing that had changed. Seldon was loved now. He smiled at Caledon, and the Lord came over and put his arms around Seldon from behind and leaned his chin on Seldon’s shoulder.

  “What’s on your mind?” Caledon asked and planted a kiss on his shoulder.

  “This was how it started. Me, naked by the window.”

  Caledon apparently didn’t make the connection, but it wasn’t important. Caledon probably had a different marker in his mind.

  “Daniel. When did it all start for you?”

  “Oh, you naked was the day you got him. I remember the view.” Caledon slapped Seldon’s ass playfully. “And I still love it.”

  Seldon chuckled.

  Caledon looked out on the seemingly endless beauty outside. “When did it start for me? It’s like a little montage in my head, but I knew there was something special about him the morning after his empowerment. Instead of being shy about the first feeding and trying to postpone it, he lured me with his dimples.”

  “He doesn’t have dimples.”

  Caledon grinned. “His ass does, and that smile when he said that…”

  “Oh, yeah, and you’re a sucker for dimples.”

  “And broad shoulders.”

  Seldon half-turned, grinning. “Glad to hear I have something on him.”

  “Oh, you do.” Caledon poked Seldon to turn back to stare out the window so he could put his arms around him again and lean his head on Seldon’s shoulder.

  Seldon was happy. Really happy. And nervous as hell, but Caledon offered a moment’s peace of mind, holding him.

  “Since I’ll be all healthy again after the Cubi cold soon, Daniel will be crowned, right?”

  “Yes.” Caledon chuckled.

  “What are chuckling at?”

  �
��That Royal dose fest.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Seldon mumbled. That had been insane. It had also been the first time in almost eighty years that Seldon had fucked a woman. And he’d fucked six that night, two of them being Queens. One green-eyed in a sea of purple and gold. Now his eyes looked half freaky because the iris had almost taken on full purple yet the rest of the eyeball was still green. Not the best color combo in the world. It was never complimenting colors, and Seldon wondered if nature had made it so to spot the change easier.

  What was usually a changing process measured out over five to ten years by various levels dosing a Cubus, the Royals had cut down to a week by feeding Seldon one to…Seldon had no idea how many doses he’d gotten daily to shake the cold and the remnants of the rape. Alone with Elakdon, Seldon would be dosed at a minimum of four times a day. The old King was sadistic like that, but he was fun to feed and feed from. He definitely wasn’t a selfish Incubus.

  At the Royal fuck fest, Seldon had been dosed non-stop for forty-eight hours, and the past few days since, he’d been dosed at least once by a Royal, once by a Guard Lord, and a few times by Caledon and Daniel.

  For Seldon, the past weeks had consisted of sleeping and recuperating after the captivity, the rape, and the Cubi cold. He never wanted to spend that long in a hospital again.

  Daniel and Caledon had been busy, though. Seldon had followed from home getting updates on a tablet. The Grand Council and all the Royals had been gathered for up to twelve hours a day to set everything in motion, and the Grand Lords and Ladies were now District Lords and Ladies. House Lords and Ladies worked directly under their old Grand Lords and Ladies with the exception of Ashdon who’d been fired on gray paper. He was now just a Lord who could prove himself and become a House Lord. The Lord’s eyes had glowed brightly since the announcement.

  Heimli’s twelve Minglers appeared on TV or in magazines daily, some more than others, but he’d managed to propel two into the constant spotlight. They expected one to crash and burn, the quick risers always did, while they expected a few of the others to keep rising at a steady pace to take the top at some point. Seldon had even seen Rosadin on TV. He hoped he’d soon have all three of his cubs home with him for a while again.