The Khyma: Taken Part One (Women of Dor Nye Book 4)

by Poppy Rhys

  He knew this, because he once got too close to a stove when he was a pup.

  He tried to do as she asked, listen to her. He responded when she asked what his name was. Twice. He told her the dam that birthed him called him Kyran.

  Why did she want to know? Did she know his dam? He had not seen her since he was taken away and trained.

  His features were not good enough to be a stud. His spots were white, not pink. His ears were not tall enough, and he was shorter than what was desirable for his breed, but his body was strong, so he was trained as a protector.

  Only studs were allowed to touch dams, and only studs got touched by dams.

  Again, why was she touching him?

  He wasn’t a stud. She wasn’t his breed.

  It wasn’t allowed.

  He flinched again when a sharp object slid into his arm.

  “Shhh,” she soothed. “I’m afraid of needles too. It’ll be over in a jiff.”

  What did that mean?

  Her incessant rubbing was more disconcerting than the tube filling with his blood.

  Why did they want his blood? Was he sick?

  Were they going to put him down?

  His heart raced at the thought.

  What did he do wrong?

  His eyes searched her face, but she didn’t look like she was angry.

  He didn’t smell anger. Wouldn’t she be angry if she was putting him down?

  He couldn’t risk asking. If he asked, she might become angry, and then have a reason to put him down if she wasn’t already.

  A trickle of uncertainty made him rethink what he smelled. Her body gave up such a complex scent, he couldn’t be sure if he was reading her correctly.

  All of these beings did. He’d never been around beings that exuded all of their thoughts and intentions into their scent that they freely emitted.

  Why did they not mask their intentions, their smell?

  Could he be sure he wasn’t mistaken of what she was thinking? He hadn’t spent enough time with her yet to accurately distinguish her scent signals without error.

  What if these beings emitted so many scents simultaneously to confuse others?

  A new chill ran down his spine.

  They were even more deceptive than his Brev’an. He would have to be careful to behave properly. Very careful.

  When the male finished, he left his side, but she didn’t. She continued to rub him.

  He kept staring at her face, waiting to figure out why. Any sign, any facial expression, or body movement to signal what was going on.

  When her hand reached up to trace his ear, he stilled his body from shying away.

  All of his senses rose, the hair along his spine standing on end as his uncertainty shot to new heights.

  His ear twitched. Her finger tickled.

  “His ears are really soft,” she told the male. “Like they have velvet on them.”

  Her fingers stroked up the curve of his ear to its sensitive point, and suddenly a new sensation zipped through his body.

  He didn’t know what was going on.

  He felt his blood rushing. Every scent became sharper, more pungent.

  Especially hers.

  He already memorized her core scent, the one underneath her numerous, changing signals. He had to. If she was lost, he could find her within a certain range. If she was afraid, he would know.

  He already tasted her fear once, when she fell into that male.

  She wouldn’t have to command him to fight for her, because he would know.

  It made him a good protector. That was his job, his entire purpose.

  When his rushing blood began pooling between his legs, he trembled, looking down into his lap.

  Only studs were allowed to use that.

  Why was it doing that? He wasn’t a stud!

  Panic flooded his body when he looked back up at her. She saw it too. Saw the fabric over his thigh changing shape, stretching over it.

  She stopped touching him.

  A silent breath escaped him at his immense relief.

  He felt his blood draining back into his body, his pants relaxing over his thigh once again.

  She cleared her throat, taking a step away from him as her cheeks turned pink. Pink like a well-bred dam.

  That was strange. She was not a dam.

  He was satisfied she was talking to the male again and not touching him.

  Now, his body felt weak.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “So?” she prodded the doctor, rubbing at her warm cheeks. “What are they?”

  “They’re not really one species,” Jonah scowled at the various strands and sequences and geometric shapes depicted on the glass screen that made no sense to her. “They’re chimeras.”

  “What?”

  “This blood sample contains multiple genetic markers,” he said in awe, sliding his fingers over the glass as he zoomed in, zoomed out, switched screens, and read data.

  It was like looking at some fancy puzzle slash math equation for Willa.

  “What does that mean? They’re lab experiments?”

  Khyma… Chimera… Maybe that’s where their name derived from.

  “In short,” he nodded. “Look at this. There’s Fiomi, Yarian, Drandan, and even minute traces of human DNA, but predominately Waesa. That’s who they most resemble, except the lack of a full body pelt.”

  “So if they’re mostly Waesa, why can’t we understand them? They have a registered language.”

  “Because they aren’t speaking the Waesa tongue,” he glanced back at the males, puzzled. “It’s like they’ve developed their own language.”

  “They understand English though.” Her gaze flickered back to White Freckles who was watching her, barely moving. It was eerie how still they could all be; like shallow breathing, fiery statues. “Otherwise I don’t think they would be able to understand what I tell them to do.”

  “Not necessarily,” he pulled up a species data on the screen. “This is the Waesa. Look at their ears, their teeth, their feet.”

  The males shared those features with the Waesa.

  “Waesa have an uncanny ability to read body language, and their olfactory receptors are phenomenal.”

  “Sooo, they have a good sense of smell.”

  “More than good,” he regarded the males. “They could track you for days, and pinpoint you within a twenty-kilometer range. That’s with bad weather conditions.”

  Willa folded her arms over her chest, her fingers rubbing along her elbow. She was beginning to feel a little self-conscious. What did she smell like to them? She’d been through Tor’s crowd of customers, most with questionable hygiene, and then broke a sweat running to the transport, and everything in between.

  Just then, she had the overwhelming urge to give her armpit a sniff because she couldn’t remember if she’d put on deodorizer that morning.

  At least she’d been somewhat down the right path when she thought they were trying to read her silent commands while on the bridge. It was still disconcerting, their unblinking stares.

  “How do we communicate with them?” she asked. “I mean, with words. Can we get them to speak English?”

  “It’s possible. Anyone can be taught,” he shrugged a shoulder, pulling out three syringes from a drawer. “I’m going to inject them with nanotech that will help learn their language over time, and then we can give your implant an update from the main systems.”

  Once more she accompanied Jonah to the males, this time keeping her hands to herself.

  “Just keep them talking,” Jonah went on. “If they’re not talking, the nanotech isn’t learning.”

  “Gotchya.”

  ****

  Willa grunted, shifted left and barely avoided Tosh’s fist as it grazed the skin of her ear.

  She raised her left arm, blocking the next hit and quickly shoved the open palm of her right hand upward against Tosh’s chin.

  They separated.

  “I told you,” Tosh said as
they circled each other in the training room after they discussed the tech choking incident. “You should’ve gone with the Nish beasts.”

  “Somehow being gnawed to death seems less appealing than being shadowed by three hostile maniacs,” she grinned, tightening her ponytail before picking up one of the blunt, silicone practice daggers.

  “So you admit they’re hostile.”

  She quickly shoved the dagger toward Tosh’s belly, to which her best friend expertly blocked and gripped her wrist.

  In a matter of seconds, Tosh’s faux dagger jabbed into her abdomen, slid across the crease of her elbow, and slashed multiple times up her arm before the blonde pulled her wrist and ended the move by stabbing her in the ribs.

  “Maybe not hostile,” Willa grinned as she practiced the same move on Tosh. “They’re just a little over protective. But that’s what I wanted, remember? The Wenden won’t know what hit him.”

  Once she found out where the Wenden lived, that is.

  “Where are they, anyway?” Tosh asked once they put down the daggers and Willa stood behind her, pretending to be her attacker so she could work on her elbow strike.

  They’d been training since they were both fifteen, preparing for the day when they would finally convince their parents to let them work the business. It was one less thing their parents could use against them. They weren’t helpless females in space.

  It took ten years for them to agree, but that mattered little, because they were here now. And ever since their first day on Pearly, they’d had a blast, despite the hiccups along the way.

  “In my apartment. I don’t think they liked that I left them there.”

  “Probably for the best,” Tosh planted her elbow into the side of Willa’s face. “Killian’s head looked like it was gonna implode.”

  They laughed.

  ****

  He sat there upon the cushioned seating staring at the animal that stared back at him, its long tail curling and twitching at the end.

  It hadn’t moved since she left. She spoke to it in a strange voice, and the animal spoke back with a series of mrrrs and mows and chest vibrations.

  He wondered what it said to her.

  “Why are we not with our keeper?” Sem asked Nohr.

  Nohr, the eldest and biggest of them all, looked around the living space they’d been placed in. “Maybe it is a test.”

  “A test?” Sem’s voice tremored. He didn’t like not knowing. None of them did. “What are we to do? I do not want to be punished.”

  “Calm yourself,” Nohr told him sternly.

  The authority in his voice instantly made them both feel slightly more comfortable. Nohr had been a protector longer than both of them had.

  More experience.

  “Our keeper told us to stay,” he went on, nodding his head once as if he’d made a decision. “That is what we will do, until she returns, and tells us otherwise.”

  “What if she does not return?” Sem asked, that anxiety showing up in his voice again and setting Kyran’s nerves on edge. He couldn’t help it. “We will be trapped in here.”

  “She will return,” Nohr reassured.

  But how did he know for sure?

  “She makes me nervous,” Sem scratched at his chest. “Why do we have to wear these clothes? They make my skin itch.”

  Seeing him scratch made Kyran begin to scratch too.

  Nohr eventually began scratching, and then he growled when he realized this.

  “Stop it, both of you.”

  They did. But the itchy sensations didn’t.

  Kyran rolled his shoulders, trying to scratch his back with the fabric instead of his hands.

  It didn’t work.

  The urge to scratch was all he could think about.

  Silence stretched on. His skin tickled in every possible spot.

  Itching, scratching, it was suddenly becoming the only thing in the world that mattered.

  His fingers twitched.

  His nostrils flared as he resisted.

  A new tickle along the back of his thigh started, begging him to scratch there too.

  His scalp tingled with the urge to itch.

  Kyran looked at Sem, who looked back at him, his lips quivering as he, too, tried to resist.

  And then he exhaled roughly, both of his hands digging into his skin and scratching.

  Sem broke in nearly the same instant.

  They both sat there, scratching to their hearts content and nothing had ever felt so good.

  When he looked over at Nohr, he too was scratching, a grim look upon his face.

  “Why would our keeper do this to us?” Sem whined, removing his shirt and raking his fingers over his shoulders. “It is torture.”

  “I think she is devious,” Kyran agreed. “Even our Brev’an would not do this to us.”

  He pulled off his shirt too, welcoming a small measure of relief.

  Soon he and Sem were standing, discarding their pants as well.

  Nohr grumbled, but he eventually followed suit. “We will be punished, I just know it,” he shook his head.

  They all sat back down, no one scratching anymore, and it was the first time Kyran felt somewhat comfortable since boarding the ship.

  “They scare me,” said Sem. He always talked too much. “Did you see what our keeper’s companion did to Brev’an?”

  They all shivered, thinking about their keeper’s companion stabbing a knife into his leg.

  No one had stood up to their Brev’an before.

  “Why did she touch Kyran?” he asked Nohr. “It is forbidden. Does that not scare you?”

  It did scare him. He didn’t know why she’d done it.

  Nohr and Sem both looked at him then.

  “I don’t know either,” he said a little defensively.

  Nohr and Sem had defects too, for their breed. They’d been pulled from their own dams just like he’d been, and put through training. Sometimes they were sold individually, but most of the time they were sold in packs of two to five.

  He’d only been with Nohr and Sem for a few years, as he was part of another pack before them. His previous keepers sent him and one other back, as they downsized and didn’t need five of them anymore.

  It was hard, adjusting to a new pack, but he liked Nohr and Sem. They became his brothers. They survived together through rigorous retraining, and temporary keepers. Together, they’d never had a permanent keeper like they did now.

  At least, he thought it was permanent. Where would they go if she didn’t want them anymore?

  They didn’t know how to find their way back to Brev’an on their own.

  “We should be with her,” Sem sighed. “What good are we sitting here?”

  The strange animal stretched, chirped, and they all went silent, going back to staring blankly at the thing.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Music blared all around her, multicolored strobe lights going haywire over the crowd of swaying, sweaty bodies. She and Tosh weaved their way in and out of bouncing people until they reached the bar.

  Pearly was docked at the massive space station orbiting planet Holsh. It was their last drop off before they planned to head home for the scheduled break. Once they finished arranging pickup for their customer, they wanted to blow off a little steam.

  Willa knew Dussy’s Hole, the actual name of the club, was frequented by less savory characters that might have information she wanted. The bartender was bound to know a little something.

  “Two winking blues please,” she held up her fingers. “No eyeballs, thank you.”

  “That’s the best part!” the jiggly pink and green bartender said. His head was large, balloon-like, and a short trunk for a nose hung over his flappy lips. His arms, tipped with suction cup fingers, began moving as he made their drinks.

  “You must see plenty of people come through here,” she yelled over the loud music. Immediately, the bartender’s goat-like eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  “You have no tact,” Tosh
said lowly.

  “I prefer to think of it as getting right to the meat and potatoes.”

  “It’s a bar,” he said flatly. “I see plenty of people.”

  Tosh rolled her eyes, picking up her crystal blue drink.

  “Hey babe,” a large purple male purred to her right. He had muscles upon muscles that resembled a laundry sack full of meat. “Why don’t you ask me a few questions? I’d gladly answer them all, and then some.”

  Willa’s top lip curled as Tosh snorted into her glass. She chose to ignore him, turning her attention back to the bartender.

  “I need to find the Wenden,” she said bluntly. Yeah, there was a whole species of Wenden, but there was one in particular that was well known. Judging by the shift in the bartender’s expression, he knew which one she was talking about.

  “I don’t know who ‘The Wenden’ is,” he lied.

  Why did they always lie? Wouldn’t it just be easier to tell the truth?

  “I just need the coordinates,” she sipped the salty sweet cocktail. “That’s it.”

  He snorted, turning his head to the side as his trunk shivered and blew a wad of snot onto the ground behind the bar.

  She shared a glance with her friend, both disgusted. People walked back there!

  “That’ll be thirty credits for the drinks.”

  “Highway robbery,” Tosh frowned.

  “How much for you to give up the coords?” she leaned her elbows on the sleek black bar that reflected the many strobing lights. “A hundred? Two hundred?”

  “Thirty credits for the drinks,” he said tightly.

  A large hand slid up her bare thigh, stopping at the frayed cuff of her white shorts and then squeezing. She looked down, her gaze traveling up the arm of the unnaturally muscled alien.

  He winked and grinned, his yellow teeth glinting in the light of the bar.

  Willa peeled his hand off her. “That’s rude.”

  “Three hundred?” she turned her attention back to the bartender. “A thousand?”

  The hand returned. The bartender was frustrating her, as she was this close to finding the Wenden and getting back her property. All that stood in the way was his greed, and the asshole beside her.