by Viki Storm
There is no calculation on my part. I lunge at him, grabbing his arm and twisting it behind his back. He shrieks like a maiden who sees a big black pedipalpoid in her bed when she pulls back the covers. I swing up my other arm and in one quick motion, the collar is around Ingzan’s neck.
I let him go, knowing that for a few seconds at least, he will not be a threat. Indeed, when I let him go, he does not attack; he merely claws at the collar, trying to pry it off, as if he will be the only one the collar isn’t strong enough to hold.
I get the control switch from my waist-pouch and set it to hold. The collar freezes in place, locked into its geographic coordinates and solid as a rock.
That’s when Ingzan starts to panic.
While I would love to watch him thrash and scream, I take Aren’s hand and whisk her out of the captain’s room. I hear voices and boots—both excited and frantic—coming fast. I pull her into an empty room and wait. When the first wave of warriors goes into the captain’s room, I take one tentative look into the hallway and then drag her along with me. She keeps pace, despite having such smaller legs and no boots, and I am once again impressed. She is not like a typical female.
No one is guarding the escape pods, but I didn’t think there would be. Admiral Superior Zuro hasn’t sounded the alarm yet. When he does, I doubt that the lads will remember the emergency protocol. They are undisciplined and ill-trained. They have no business on a raiding party. They were put on this ship by Noxu, to be the playthings for his son Ingzan. A real live regiment of fighters to command.
We tuck into the small chamber and seal the door behind us. It’s cold in here and Aren begins to shiver. This cold metal floor on her bare feet must send a sick icicle of pain through each leg. The escape pod will be warmer. I activate the engine and tell her to get inside. She climbs in carefully and looks at me, waiting for me to follow her.
“I have to go to the cockpit,” I tell her. “I need to reroute their coordinates. And I need to disable the tracking on the escape pod.”
“I can’t fly this thing by myself,” she says.
“You don’t have to,” I say. I lean in and program the coordinates for Zalaryx. The auto-pilot will take her directly to the fortress. “If I don’t come back, push this button,” I point to show her. “It will fly you to my home planet. Demand to be taken to the High King Xalax. Tell him you have a message from Droka. Tell him about the planned raid on the protein farm.”
“Droka?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. “That is my true name.”
“Droka,” she says again and it is a pure joy to hear my name on her lips. Every molecule in my body is screaming out for me to stay with her and protect her, but I cannot. I have to go to the cockpit. If I don’t scramble the ship’s coordinates, we’ll have no chance of escape. This is the best way I can protect her and I know it—but leaving her alone causes me physical pain. A stabbing in my stomach, not unlike the hot stitch that develops from prolonged running.
I close the door behind me, vowing that I will hear her say my name again.
My finger hovers above the steel gray button, but I can’t bring myself to press it. If I don’t come back, he says, press the button. A hundred thoughts go through my head, but one keeps pulsing over and over, hot and sickly like an infected tooth.
If I go now, I’ll never see him again.
And that’s enough to stay my hand.
I don’t want to make this voyage alone. I know nothing of piloting these ships—of navigation, or mechanics. I don’t want to land on the Zalaryn home planet alone. Would those barbarians really listen to a Marked female screaming that she has a message for the High King? Not likely.
Those are valid concerns—real problems I would have to face if I push the button and trust to the autopilot, plus whatever stores of luck I have left. But somehow they seem dim, unimportant.
The thing my brain won’t stop repeating is much more real: If I go now, I’ll never see him again.
Because I do want to see him again. I didn’t realize it until the captain had control of my leash, but when I am with Kroda-Droka, or whatever his name is, I feel safe. It’s like I have my own personal body guard—the fiercest, most ruthless barbarian on my side.
I fear that it’s more than that. More than the selfish desire to have a body guard. I just want to see him again. Simple as that.
Except it’s not simple at all.
He took me captive—pulled me from my home and kept me in chains. The only reason I should want to see him again is to stick a knife into his eye.
I can’t even think about this right now. I need to get out of here. It’s only a matter of time until a group of those bastards think to check the escape pods and come charging in here with their weapons raised.
I twitch my finger, trying to make it move.
But I can’t.
The door to the escape chamber bursts open and I jump in my seat. I’m so startled, I almost push the button anyway—sure that Ingzan and his crew have come to punish me for trying to escape. Relief floods into me when I see that it is Droka, looking every inch the noble warrior. I always sensed that he was different from the rest of the crew, and now I can see it plainly.
He holds his head high, his shoulders poised, and he has the fire of righteousness burning in his eyes. Did I think him to be a barbarian? Maybe the others on the ship, but not Droka. He looks absolutely regal.
“Now,” he says when he enters the pod. I’m stunned for a moment, then he takes my hand and together we press the button.
The escape pod whines into life, and there’s a sound like a knot of wood popping in the fireplace, and then we’re gone—subsumed by the blackness.
He doesn’t let go of my hand and I don’t want him to. I realize that it’s trembling slightly.
“Holy hell,” I say. This all feels like some weird dream, but I know that it’s all too real. As I look at him, his chest starts to flush a deep purple—so dark it’s almost the color of the unholy blackness that surrounds us.
“I was trying to protect you,” he says. But his eyes are avid, almost manic with hunger.
“I know,” I say. It makes sense. He knew that the crew of warriors would ravage me unless he claimed me as his property. Hell, they almost did anyway.
He is still holding my hand, but he tightens his grip and pulls me against his chest. I am straddling his lap and am aware that my sex is spread open, the thin tunic barely covering it up.
He puts his mouth to my ear and whispers: “But you are still mine.” His voice is a low growl, and it does something funny to me. My stomach flips at the sound of his voice in my ear, his breath hot against my neck. There is nothing but heat inside me, my core burning with desire. It happens all at once—a wave of raw and powerful lust consuming my body and my mind.
He tears away the oversized tunic, leaving me bare and pressed against him. He grabs my breasts and squeezes, dipping his head down to suck on one nipple. He draws it into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it until it’s a hard peak of nerves. His other hand brushes lightly against my other nipple. I’ve never felt anything like this before. I’ve been cloistered on Yrdat and never even dreamed I’d kiss a man, let alone do anything like this.
Then again, he’s not a man. He’s an alien. A Zalaryn. The type of creature my parents sacrificed so much to keep me hidden from.
And you repay them by letting him undress you and put his hands all over you.
But for once, I’m able to banish that guilty thought. It isn’t my fault that my DNA is compatible with Zalaryns’. It wasn’t my decision to sell everything and go off-planet. I had no choice to go into hiding on Yrdat, to be orphaned and stranded on a dying planet.
I’ve only made one real decision in my entire life: jumping out of the closet and into the arms of Droka.
And I can’t say that I regret it very much.
His mouth leaves my breast and I realize that I’m panting like a dog. He looks down, his gaze fixing bet
ween my legs. They’re spread, my lips open and inviting his touch. I realize I want him to touch me. I don’t care about the barcode tattoo on my shoulder, or the fact that I’ve been Marked, or any of that. I just came very close to suffering a fate worse than death on that spaceship, and I know now what a crime it would be to die without experiencing this sort of passion with someone that I have come to care about.
He takes my head in his hands and kisses me. I’m not sure what to do, as I’ve only ever kissed my pet goat—and that was right before I had to slaughter it for food. His lips are chapped and his tongue is covered with nodes. He devours me like he’s half-starved and can’t control himself. His hands are on my waist, his fingers playing with the hair between my legs. My clit is swollen and throbbing, an urgency there that I never knew could exist.
He’s hard under his breeches, and I can see his erection straining tight against them. I walk my fingers to the leather thong that ties them around his waist and undo the knot. He lets out a throaty growl when I do it, sending a low tremor of desire through me. He walks his fingers down lower and finds my clit. He strokes it slowly, lightly, barely touching it. I gasp into his mouth, a little cry escaping my lips. He breaks our kiss and looks me in the eye. I feel no shame, no embarrassment, despite the fact that he’s stroking me between my spread lips.
“Does this feel good?” he says. His eyes are so intense, I feel like he really does own me—but instead of frightening me, it fills me with a calm contentment. It would be nice to be owned by someone like him, I think.
“Yes,” I say. He’s touching me a little faster now, and I can’t help grinding my hips into his hand. I’m very wet, and have coated his fingers so they glide over my clit with slippery ease.
His other hand goes back to my breast and finds my pert nipple waiting to be played with. This is too much. I feel like I’m going to lose my mind.
“Come for me,” he says, and puts his mouth on mine again. I start to push my hips against his hand faster and faster, until I’m practically bouncing on top of him. My breasts are heaving and I can’t help moaning loudly as I feel my orgasm building deep within my core.
I obey him, and with an uncontrollable shudder, I begin to spasm and shake as I’m wracked with wave after wave of pleasure. I expect it to wane, but it continues as he strokes me. His entire hand is slippery and I push myself against it, unable to help myself.
As the feeling finally subsides, he lifts me up for a brief moment while he takes down his breeches and frees his cock. I am astounded how big it is. I shouldn’t be, since he is tall and massively muscular—but it just looks too wide to fit inside me.
He sets me down and I’m prepared for him to lower me onto his erection—for that big thing to pierce through and take my virginity. But he doesn’t. And I know why.
I am Marked. My virginity is not mine to give, nor his to take.
I sit on his lap and he positions his cock between my lips, rubbing it against my clit.
“I can’t,” he says. “As much as I want you, you can never be mine.” The pain in his voice is unmistakable.
“I’m yours for right now,” I say. I don’t really understand anything about his society, or what will happen to me once I get there—but for right now we’re in this pod together, and I want to feel him inside of me. It’s nothing I’ve ever felt before, and nothing I can really understand. There’s just a deep desire—instinct, really—to accept him inside of me.
I wiggle down onto the floor of the pod and kneel between his legs. There’s not a lot of room to maneuver, but I manage. I take his erection in my hand and put the tip to my mouth. I must open wide to take it, but once I do, I start to suck on it and he groans in appreciation. He guides my hand over his shaft and pumps up and down. I can’t fit that much of it in my mouth, but I try to get as much inside as I can. I’m overcome with the desire for more of him—to take all of his length inside me, though I know I can’t.
It doesn’t take long for him to start to breathe heavily and tense his legs. He gently holds the back of my head as he groans, and his orgasm ripples through his body. My mouth fills up and I swallow—that same instinctual wanting to have part of him inside me.
He pulls me up to my feet and I curl up in his lap again. The heat of his skin is so comforting. I feel the closest to happy that I have in a long time.
I’m yours for right now, is what I told him, and that’s true. Even though my collar is gone, up here in this pod he owns me.
It’s just what comes next that I’m unsure about.
I look out into space and the vast nothingness chills me to the bones. It’s a big black pool of nothing. Absolutely nothing. The absence—the blank void—unsettles me so much. Our galaxy is still just a pinprick in the distance, a faint spot in a sea of blackness. So much of space is just… nothing.
The distance between the galaxies is quite staggering. If not for the qizo minerals, we wouldn’t be able to cover such distances. When you look in the sky and see so many stars, you forget that they’re your local stars in your local galaxy. But once you’re outside that galaxy, there’s nothing.
Nothing that stretches for forever. In some empty sections of the universe, you could travel for ten million years at the speed of light and not see anything. Nothing. If you’ve never been off-planet, it’s hard to understand. Ten million years at the speed of light? Surely you’d run into something.
But no, you wouldn’t.
It’s not like that everywhere in the universe. The distance between Yrdat and Zalaryx, for example, is a relatively short 2.5 million light-years away—the distance light travels in 2.5 million years. Meaning, if you were limited to traveling at the speed of light (as many primitive societies are) it would take you two-and-a-half million years to get there. With the qizo minerals, we’re not constrained to such slow paces and can get back to Zalaryx in a few days.
“I don’t like it,” Aren says.
“What?” I ask, but that’s a dumb question.
What does she have to like? Being Marked as breeding property of the Zalaryn race? Hiding out on a desolate planet for her entire adult life? Being captured by a raiding party?
“The blackness,” she says. “It’s more black than black. It’s more empty than empty. More nothing than nothing.”
“It’s the void,” I say. “And no one likes it, but only a fool fails to respect it.”
“How fast are we going?” she asks. “It doesn’t feel like we’re moving at all.”
“That’s because there’s nothing to look at,” I say. “The cabin of the pod is pressurized and the gravity is stabilized, so you can’t detect acceleration or deceleration. The only other way to sense movement is by your vision. If your eye sees something pass by while your body is still, it interprets that as the sensation of movement. But if we don’t pass anything, you don’t feel like you’re moving. When we approach the Zalaryn galaxy, we’ll begin to see stars again. When we enter the galaxy, the stars will zip by us so fast it’ll cause deep inner-ear imbalances. I’ll have to lower the window coverings to prevent vertigo.”
“Why don’t you lower the window coverings now,” she says. “It’s eerie.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t,” I say. “It does you good to stare into the void. It’s where all life came from, and where all life returns. It’s vast and larger than anything we can imagine. In the universe there is much more nothingness than somethingness. Including us. We’re beyond insignificant. But yet…” I can’t think of how to explain it. “But yet we aren’t. Just the fact that we exist in this sea of blackness is amazing. Even though we are less than nothing—we are somehow more than it too.”
“I thought that Yrdat was ‘nothing,’” she says. “I had no idea.”
“That’s why we stare into the void when we travel,” I tell her. She has put her clothing back on, but she’s next to me still, her body pressed against mine. I fight the urge to put my arms around her. I don’t wish for her to feel like my captive—
like she still wears my collar around her neck.
Even though I feel like a louse for doing so, I concentrate and try to sense her feelings. It’s easy to sense the big ones, like fear and panic—but if I focus and open my mouth, and let the air pass over my tongue, my sensory pads can usually pick up something.
Earlier, I could sense her arousal not just as the wetness between her legs, but as a radiating glow emanating off of her body.
It’s the reaction that bonded mates have to each other. Arousal being the physical symptom of a deeper, truer bond.
I know I feel it—that she’s my bonded mate. I feel the urge to bond with her so strongly, like the gravitational pull of a planet once a ship descends for landing. The need to exchange genetic material—to deposit my seed deep inside her. It’s like the need to breathe after being underwater for too long. The strain of holding it in, the pain of denying my body what it truly needs.
A lesser male would have taken her. Broken one of the most sacred laws of our race. Ruined her virtue and any chance she has of being auctioned to a decent male who could provide a comfortable life for her.
Or perhaps I am the lesser male, for ignoring the mate the universe has given me. In this vast expanse of nothing—the millions of light-years of emptiness—the fates send me to Yrdat, the planet on which my bonded mate is hiding. What sort of fool denies the will of the universe? What blustering idiot says that they know better than fate?
The comm-panel buzzes loudly, stirring us both. I wonder what Aren is thinking about. I can only gather the feel of her thoughts, which are frantic and disordered—no surprise, as mine are too.
I sit up and lean forward, feeling the place on my side where Aren was cuddled against. It’s cold, missing something. I don’t need to check the transmission log to see the location of the sender. It’s Xalax. No one else knows we are here.
“Fifty neus,” I say. “And fifty nights.”
“Fifty-one,” he says, “to you and yours. Ingzan’s ship has not followed you?”
