by Regine Abel
He pulled my arms down and let his smoldering gaze roam over me.
“So beautiful…” he whispered to himself.
Leaning forward, he kissed my right breast, his tongue teasing the little nub. I pressed my chest to his face, throwing my head back with a sigh of pleasure. My fingers combed through his hair, holding him to me. It cascaded over my hands in the silkiest of caresses, making me long to bury my face in it.
A choked cry escaped me as he lifted me in his arms. On instinct, my legs wrapped around his waist. He carried me to bed and laid me down. His palms found their way to my breasts again. He fondled them for a moment before caressing his way down my quivering stomach to the waist of my slip. Fingers hooked on the sides, he slid it off me, his lips following in the wake of his hands.
Lying naked on the bed, my body shivered with fear, excitement, and pleasure. Eryon straightened, towering before me next to the bed. His eyes, burning with desire, never strayed from mine as he slowly, deliberately removed his long robe. My mouth watered staring at his beautiful, lean, and toned body. An elegant, swirling tattoo reminiscent of the one on his forehead adorned his flawless, dark skin on the right side of his chest and shoulder.
Eryon removed his undergarment and straightened to let me see him. Unable to resist, my eyes dropped to his crotch. My throat tightened with a sliver of apprehension. He wasn’t scary massive like what I had glimpsed from some of the Guldan crewmembers, but he wasn’t small either. His shaft, long and fully erect, slightly curved towards his flat belly. I licked my lips and tried to swallow, but failed.
“Move up the bed, Sareema.”
Without thinking, I complied, his commanding tone making moisture pool between my legs. I crawled backwards to the center of the surprisingly soft bed, covered with pristine white sheets. Eryon followed, grabbing my ankle with his hand. He brushed his lips against the outer side of my calf, along the straight-line patterns of the Veredian markings that ran the length of my legs on each side. Pleasure exploded in my womb and my nipples hardened almost painfully.
Inch by inch, his mouth blazed a sensual trail from my ankle up to my hip. Lifting his head, he gazed at me with blatant lust. My chest constricted and another shiver ran down my spine. Over the years on board the Revenant, I’d had my fair share of covetous stares from the crew. They’d repulsed me with their lewd and salacious undertones. But Eryon’s light-gray eyes contained none of that. Beneath the sexual hunger, they shone with respect, tenderness, and wonder.
I had never felt so desirable.
Hooking his arms behind my knees, he spread my legs open and position himself between them. Embarrassed to be so exposed, with his face hovering near my crotch, I tried to close my legs. He stopped me and latched his mouth onto by burning core.
I shouted out in pleasure as he leisurely tasted, licked and devoured me. My inner walls clenched when he inserted two fingers into my opening. A searing flame began to build deep within me as Eryon’s expert tongue teased my little nub and his fingers slipped in and out of me, exploring me, stretching me. Beads of sweat trickled down with a tingling sensation as my skin burned with an exquisite fever.
The blinding orgasm that struck me came out of nowhere.
My entire body seized, back arching off the bed, and my moans of pleasure turned into a guttural cry. Eryon didn’t stop his ministrations until I finished riding out the last tremors of bliss. Shuddering spasms still coursed through me as Eryon crawled up and settled between my legs, his chest covering mine.
Goddess almighty!
I’d been curious about my own body before, but I’d never experienced such sensory overload. Sharing your quarters with your mother and younger sisters wasn’t conducive to self-exploration.
I could definitely get used to this.
Eryon’s eyes had darkened and his plush lips glistened with my essence. Leaning down, he captured my mouth, his tongue demanding entrance, while my pounding heart still hammered in my ears. The tart taste of my own arousal lingered on his breath, and my cheeks heated at the thought of returning the favor.
Breaking the kiss, Eryon looked at me with stormy eyes.
“And now, I take you, my mate,” he said with that amazingly breathy voice of his. “Do you consent?”
Unable to speak, I held his gaze and nodded. The tenderness on his face moved me deeply as he pushed into me. My walls clenched all around him, denying him entry at first. I expected pain but merely experienced pressure and a slight discomfort thanks to his slow, careful possession of my body. Once fully sheathed, he moved within me at a gentle pace, covering my face and neck with fluttering kisses, whispering soft Korlethean words in my ear. Then he gradually picked up speed, taking me harder, deeper—making us one. I no longer knew where he started and where I ended. My world narrowed down to his burning skin against mine, the softness of his lips, the possessiveness of his hands, the hypnotic whisper of his voice in my ear, and the steely length of him deep within me.
I came undone shouting his name, my nails digging into his back, my head rolling from side to side. My inner walls clenched around him, squeezing him. He seemed to swell even more, making me feel incredibly full. Then he threw his head back, screaming his own release and filling me with his seed.
He collapsed on top me, breathing heavily, his dark skin sleek with a thin coat of perspiration. Propping himself on his forearms so as not to squish me, he rested his forehead against mine. Our breaths mingled as our eyes locked.
His heart pounding against mine. We remained thus as our pulses slowly settled down, but still beating in sync. Eryon lifted his head, his beautiful midnight blue hair falling like a silky curtain around us. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, the intercom from the control panel beeped followed by the synthetic voice again.
“You have thirty minutes remaining to submit your blood samples. Please proceed immediately.”
Whatever Eryon had planned on saying was replaced by a creatively colorful list of expletives that made me burst out laughing.
* * *
Over the following three weeks, Eryon and I grew closer. As my shyness and clumsiness faded, I learned how to please him too as I had shamelessly only taken without making any real attempts at giving back that first time. We seized every opportunity to talk and get to know each other better despite the little time granted to us.
The guards only brought the males to us twice a day for a couple of hours before leading them back to their holding cells. I spent the rest of the time with my Sisters, learning about my Veredian heritage and history. It also thrilled me to spend time with females my own age and to play with the children.
The time of my departure came too soon. As much as I missed my mother, I didn’t want to leave Eryon or the Sisters. Life in the compound wasn’t perfect, but the guards had even stricter restrictions about touching their captives than on the Revenant where even the flimsiest excuse could suffice for the guards to abuse the slaves.
I wouldn’t go into heat again for another four months when my next season began. Eryon said the Sisters usually returned to the same male every season. I only prayed the Goddess that remained true for us. Assuming I hadn’t already conceived, in which case I wouldn’t see him for a much longer time.
My last time with Eryon was bitter sweet. I held back my tears as the guards led him away with the other males. Three hours later, Piruk picked me up for our flight back to the Revenant.
CHAPTER 4
Eryon
I paced the holding cell anxiously, waiting for my last Korlethean brothers to arrive before we would be taken to the females. Four excruciating months without my mate, forced to breed with other females. And still, I didn’t even know if she would be brought here. The thought that she might be given to another male made my blood boil. My fingers throbbed with the need to unsheathe my claws, but the damn bracelets restrained them.
Trying to calm down, I kept reminding myself that nothing justified them straying from the protocol. They would bring he
r back to me, especially knowing we were soulmates, which increased the chances the child would survive the Veredians’ curse of high still-births.
But what if she was already pregnant?
Dread and elation warred within me. Nothing could please me more than for us to have many offspring. However, that also meant not seeing her for the duration of the pregnancy and then another year until she was done nursing.
That will kill me.
As I sat there brooding over things I couldn’t control, the locking mechanisms of the cell disengaged and the door opened. Three more Korletheans walked in, among them, a familiar face I hadn’t seen in years.
“Xevius!” I exclaimed.
His head snapped towards me, his surprised expression giving way to a beaming smile as his eyes lightened with recognition.
“Eryon!” he said.
We marched up to each other and embraced with brotherly affection.
What the hell was he doing here?
Xevius and I had grown up together on Korlethea. Although we weren’t best friends, he ranked high in my inner circle. Smart, funny and no-nonsense, the handsome fiend and I might have grown even closer had he not chosen a career in the intelligence service. Xevius was one of our secret service’s top operatives—translate that as our most effective assassin.
Xevius wouldn’t have gotten captured unless he’d wanted to be.
I wondered about his target’s identity. The Quorum—our governing body—wouldn’t throw its best agent into slavery unless some serious threat loomed over the Empire. Releasing him from my embrace, I took a step back and gave him an assessing look.
Xevius had grown from a ridiculously pretty boy into a stunning male. When he turned sixteen, the intelligence service noticed him due to his looks and athletic prowess. We used to call him Golden Boy as a friendly tease because of his honey-colored skin, light blondish-brown hair and deceptively soft amber eyes. With his high cheekbones and plump pouty lips, only the strong set of his jaw saved him from being labeled pretty instead of handsome.
“Pretty as ever, you little shit,” I said.
“Always,” Xevius said, a smug smirk on his lips. “And I see you still haven’t cleaned that foul mouth of yours.”
Kilian snorted. “That’s a lost cause.”
I glared at him with pretend anger. Kilian winked back at me.
“Asshole,” I muttered.
The fourteen other males in the room chuckled. Correction, thirteen others. Febus merely smiled, although it didn’t reach his eyes.
Most of the same males from Sevina’s first season were present. This meant our seeds hadn’t taken root last time; a common occurrence. Since the natural disaster that all but wiped out their world, the Veredians struggled to conceive and carry offspring to term. Artificial insemination failed one hundred percent of the time, hence our current predicament. The addition of three new males implied new females had reached their sexual maturity or entered their season. Occasionally, it meant a pairing had failed to procreate for too many cycles so a partner swap would take place in the hope of getting things back on track.
Febus’ stare never left Xevius as he and I sat on one of the benches. I frowned at Febus, wondering what he wanted. Xevius noticed my distraction and followed my gaze. He tilted his head to the side and raised an eyebrow.
“Something wrong, brother?” Xevius asked.
Febus nodded. “Actually, yes. What is a royal assassin doing in a breeding compound? What possible target could the Quorum send you after, here? And what do you expect from us in order to accomplish your task?”
All eyes turned to Xevius, a heavy silence descending over the room.
Face devoid of any emotion, Xevius leaned back against the wall, crossed his legs, and clasped his hands on his lap.
“I’m here to kill one of the females,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact.
“Who?” Kilian asked.
Xevius shrugged. “Don’t know her name, only her face.”
“But why?” I asked, confused. “These females are innocent victims, as much as we are. How can she possibly threaten the Empire? Most of them have never even set foot off this rock, and in some case never will!”
Xevius’ jaw tightened and his shoulders tensed.
“I know that all too well, brother,” he snarled. “Do you think I relish the idea of snuffing the life out of a female? She’s not even the cause, but merely the catalyst.”
“How?” Kilian asked.
“She will conceive this cycle. The child cannot be allowed to live. The mother must die before the end of this season. Afterwards, it will be too late.”
“But why kill the mother? Wait until the child is born and kill it. What’s wrong with the child anyways?” Febus asked.
Xevius shook his head. “The mother will be taken away, making it impossible to get to the child thereafter. So it needs to be now. And there’s nothing wrong with the child. She will be a perfect little girl. The problem is what she will do. The Fates have confirmed her conception this cycle, and the Oracles have foreseen that if she’s allowed to live, she will set in motion a series of events that will turn this world upside down.”
“To use one of Eryon’s expressions, this world is already fucked up,” Febus intervened.
“And it will get even more fucked up once that child grows to womanhood and starts birthing Titans.”
The air rushed out of me while the room filled with gasps and shouts of disbelief.
“We’ve eradicated the Titans,” Kilian hissed. “Our people came to the brink of extinction trying to destroy that mess we created in the first place.”
“Hence this child must never come to be,” Xevius said in a tone that brooked no argument. “If she’s allowed to birth a Titan, other Veredians will start birthing them as well. It cannot be allowed.”
For over a millennium, the Korletheans had dominated the known galaxy. Our wisdom, psi powers and technological advance had pushed us to seek further knowledge. Our thirst for understanding soon turned into arrogance and pride. We no longer saw lesser species as sentient beings with a right to self-determination, but merely as tools to further our own intellectual growth. We shamelessly experimented on the most advanced species on each planet we encountered, derailing them from their natural evolution by inserting our own DNA into their gene pool.
Over the centuries, many of those species developed psionic abilities in one form or another. Veredians and Sarenians possessed the most potent powers. A Korlethean faction began inserting those alien traits back into our own gene pool to expand our spectrum of abilities. From generation to generation, those traits mutated. Harmless at first, those with mutant genes started displaying the fiercely territorial behavior of the Frespians, the berserker strength of the Braxians, the ruthless predatory instinct of the Sarenians, the speed and venoms of the Xelixians, and the expanded spectrum of new psi abilities from the Veredians.
They became a super race within Korlethea, labelling themselves Titans and they were intent on dominating us, the lesser original breed. At first, we controlled them with relative ease since they were mostly isolated due to their territorial nature. That all changed with the birth of Loreas, their alpha, who led them with an iron fist. The bloody war that ensued brought Korlethea to its knees. After our victory—if we could call it that—we scoured the universe to eradicate any surviving Titans.
To prevent their rebirth, our scientists devised a toxin meant to kill, numb or silence the Korlethean genes within all the races we had tampered with over the centuries. That desperate move created another series of tragedies for each of the affected species. If not for our meddling, the radioactive fallout from the solar flare that decimated Veredia wouldn’t have been so virulent. Their males died because of the chemical reaction between the radiation and the toxin we had secretly introduced into their systems. Their females couldn’t birth males anymore for that same reason. This was but one of many shameful secrets the Empire kept close to its che
st.
“The guards will slaughter you if you harm one of the females,” I said, still struggling to come to terms with this revelation.
Xevius shrugged. “They won’t if they think it’s an accident. She will go to sleep and never wake up.”
Febus perked up. “How? You have poison with you?”
I hated the overly eager sound of his voice. Febus struggled the most with this nightmare. He would gladly try to end his life if he could, despite knowing death wouldn’t claim him in captivity. The Fates had seen it.
“Within me. Dormant. Dalyria will activate it and bodily fluids will transfer it to her. It won’t leave any trace and she will not suffer.”
“And you?” I asked.
“It doesn’t affect the host.”
The beep of the locking system put an end to our conversation. We followed our guards down the hallway. My mind kept replaying Xevius’s words, an intense sense of unease settling in the pit of my stomach. I hated the thought of an innocent female getting killed, but worst, I feared who the target might be.
Xevius said the female would be taken away at the end of this cycle. Last time, besides Sevina, only one other female had been flown out of the fortress at the end of the season. It didn’t mean that it could only be between the two of them. From time to time, other females left the compound, either called to serve on one of Gruuk’s ships or because a new master had bought them for their unique ability. Knowing Sevina figured among that potential list already constituted one chance too many.
For the first time in four months, I hoped she wouldn’t be here.
As soon as the reinforced doors slid open, the familiar tingle of our mating bond tickled my nape. My heart soared at the call of my mate, while my stomach sank with an increasing sense of dread.
We marched in. My eyes devoured Sevina for a brief moment before seeking, down the line, the other female who had been flown off last time.
She wasn’t there.
Xevius’ long golden hair brushed against my shoulder as he walked ahead of me towards the females. Our Korlethean brethren stood back, giving him the lead, watching with grim intensity as he claimed his target. I knew before his steps even slowed down that he was after my mate. Sevina’s eyes widened when he stopped before her. Lips parted in shock, her head jerked towards me, fear and confusion etched on her beautiful face.
