by Mel Teshco
When they stepped back Maddox looped his hands behind her nape and tugged her down, his mouth covering hers in a much more tender kiss, his tongue sweeping across her lips before he released her. “Ose mau’et leiu.”
“I love you too,” she said. And meant it.
Impossible though it seemed, she loved all three of these men, felt a deep bond with them that made her believe they really were connected somehow. Soul mates.
The crowd dispersed. Judging by their tight expressions and obvious erections, many would be finding some place of their own to fuck one another. She could scarcely blame them. They had witnessed a sexual feast, a woman thoroughly fucked by each of their kings.
She lay back, panting, sated and boneless.
She could scarcely believe she’d been pleasured by three men…three kings. Could scarcely believe how right it had felt.
Her mum and dad would have been apoplectic. Mum and Dad?
She disengaged from Maddox and rolled onto her side, squeezing her eyes shut at the sudden memory that took place years earlier than any other recollection…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The dog handlers released the excited bloodhounds. As the dogs took off, baying at the scent of a stag, she had to steady her gray gelding, settle him with soft hands and a quiet, reassuring murmur.
Her mother trotted up beside her in her fur-lined jacket and cream jodhpurs. The crow’s feet that framed her beautiful chocolate-dark eyes deepened as she smiled. “Are you ready, darling? Ready to make your first kill?”
She hid her revulsion. Yes, she loved the adrenaline of the chase, being as one with her mount as they sailed over hedgerows and rock fences. What she hated was cornering a magnificent stag and firing an arrow into its hide—often half a dozen arrows—before the beast took its last breath.
She lifted her chin, swallowing back objection. This was a coming-of-age tradition, she needed to do this. “Yes, Mother. Yes, I’m ready.”
Her father cantered up on his huge stallion, the horse frothing at the mouth, his eyes wild as her father’s hard hands pulled relentlessly on the bit. She looked away, feeling sorry for his mount. Her dad thought creatures were akin to machines, without feeling and created for his own use.
“Your quarry awaits!” his voice boomed. His cheeks were ruddy with gleeful anticipation. “What are you waiting for?”
Ignoring her mother’s perceptive stare, she jerked a nod. Pressing her heels to her gelding’s flanks, she leaned forward and gave him his head…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Lillian, my love. Are you okay?” Maddox asked gently from behind her.
She swallowed a hysterical shout of laughter. “I doubt I’ve ever been better.”
He nodded. “Then it is time for your husbands to dress you.”
She watched as Dar retrieved the bag and opened it wide. This time she couldn’t suppress an inane giggle. “A wedding dress now, after everyone has gone?”
Ezra nodded. “Only your lovers get to see you in your wedding finery.”
How odd. And yet she could see their point. She wanted to feel and look like a princess for her lovers and no one else. A princess? She was a queen now. Wife to three kings.
Dar studied her. “Carèche custom states that we now all four sleep on our nuptial platform and bond this night, wholly restrained from the pleasures of the flesh.”
She nodded. Her aching body could well do with the break, no matter how much and how often she physically craved her men. Tonight, she’d satisfy her emotional cravings.
The next thing she knew all three men were pulling a dress over her head. Only this wedding dress was nothing like a human creation of froth and lace. This one was made from their shield material that sparkled under the sunlight, glittering with a rainbow of tiny jewels that dazzled brighter than any dresses she’d ever seen on the Oscars Red Carpet.
Oscars! Odd, the memories that sparked in her head at the most inopportune moments.
Dar, Ezra and Maddox began pulling out their alien wedding clothes—formfitting, snowy-white pants and shirts—and quickly dressed. Next thing she knew they had joined her on the rock and huddled on the caltronian fur. Dar and Ezra lay on either side of her, taking her in their arms. Maddox lay horizontal to them, tugging her upward a little so that her head rested on his torso.
And as the moon began to sink behind the mountains, a cold she could almost touch settling all around them, she realized she’d never felt warmer, safer, with her three men surrounding her.
Chapter Eight
She stood before the gilded mirror, aware she looked like someone straight out of a fairy tale. Her upbraided hair was beaded with gems, her fitted lacy wedding dress and its five-yard train, something little girls only dreamed about.
Only this was no fairy tale, this was real life—in all its suffering.
Her normally sun-kissed face was alabaster white, her hands shaky, her lips drawn tight. There was something dead in her stare, the spark within all but snuffed out.
Would anyone notice? She doubted it very much. Two countries would be united by her sacrifice. Two countries that, for centuries had been at war, now would be at peace.
“Queen Margaret Lisbeth Chantelle Belgrave,” she said aloud, frowning.
The name tasted like ashes in her mouth.
Even as a princess her parents had taken steps to ensure her independence and relative freedom. This marriage would take away all of that. It might well elevate her from princess to queen, but without question it would also take her from carefree to desolate.
A shadow of her former self…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
She jerked awake, jackknifing into a sitting position. Ezra’s and Dar’s possessive arms fell away, all three men simultaneously alert and vigilant as she heaved in the crisp air.
A calloused hand touched her shoulder. Maddox. She brushed him away, wanting only to be left alone with her tangled thoughts. I’m royalty. I’ve always been royalty. I was a queen once already. Queen Margaret.
She closed her eyes and dropped her head onto upraised knees, remembering too much now, even as some things remained just out of reach.
She thought back to the human king she’d married. He’d been a domineering, overbearing asshole, growing ever resentful of the fact that she’d not succumbed, had not become the submissive wife he’d hoped she’d be.
In the end, marrying him had all been for nothing.
Under his rule, both their countries had begun to suffer. He had been an oppressive dictator, a power-hungry, pigheaded and arrogant tyrant of a king.
On the brink of yet another war, she’d fled the country with her parents in their private jet. When they’d stopped to refuel, she’d had to say a tearful farewell to them as they’d continued on to Africa, she to Australia. Their separation ensured they’d be that much harder for her husband to track down.
A jagged ache in her temples that felt like a mule had kicked her in the head, left her sobbing fretfully.
“She is remembering.”
Ezra’s sentence was a harsh voice of foreboding that barely penetrated the kaleidoscopic flurry of her mind. Her memories were rushing back one after the other, too fast to grasp hold of, too frightening to take in. Only, this time she had no choice.
“No!” She shook her head in denial. “Please, no.” Like it or not, everything in her past was now free to explore, readily accessible and undeniable…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Margaret stood under the shower, leaving the water on long after the last traces of black, semi-permanent hair dye had washed down the drain.
So far she’d managed to keep her identity secret. She’d trapped her long hair beneath baseball caps, hidden her eyes and a good portion of her face behind large sunglasses. She’d dressed in baggy clothes and stayed makeup free.
In some ways she’d never been happier. She was free to do what she wanted, when she wanted. But her freedom had come at a price. Though she longed to see her parents, to make sure they w
ere healthy and happy, she couldn’t.
Her face twisted with grief. Of course they weren’t okay—she didn’t need to see them to know that. Their country was at war, their people dying beneath the hands of a new king.
She turned off the hostel’s shower tap with a savage twist. The noise receded, and as she stepped out of the shower to towel herself dry, the news on the old television in her tiny lounge room could easily be heard.
“Alien spacecraft have been recorded in major cities around the world, but celebration of the aliens’ arrival has quickly been replaced by quiet horror. In these same cities, people are dying. Many hospitals have been overrun and are ferrying patients to other hospitals to cope with the influx. But the spread of this new, apparent virus is now considered unstoppable…”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Lillian, talk to us.” Dar’s voice was husky with emotion.
She gulped in air, horrified and sickened to her core. She stared ahead, seeing nothing but the death she’d left behind. “Murderers,” she breathed. She forced herself to turn around, to look at Dar, Ezra and Maddox. She saw only the strangers she’d married. Her belly twisted with revulsion. “It was you. Your ships. You came and brought the virus. You killed my people.”
The horrifying images of what she’d seen came back with a vengeance. She gagged, springing off their allegedly sacred rock and sprawling onto the ground.
“Lillian!” all three called out, but their concern was like a barbed whip, lashing open freshly healed wounds.
She twisted to face toward them, seething with anger and bitter disgust. “Don’t pretend to care now. It tears me up inside that I trusted—married!—three men who deceived me, who killed my own kind!” She laughed but it edged into hysteria. “What a fool I was to have believed you all loved me.”
She jerked to her feet and spun away.
“Wait,” Dar rasped.
Hot tears coursing down her face, she screamed hoarsely, “Leave me the hell alone!” She swiped at her wet cheeks, wishing she could as easily erase the pain that spread like toxin through her veins.
“Give her some time alone,” she heard Ezra say harshly.
The very suggestion caused pain to tear through her body. The hardened alien had no idea what she wanted. No idea at all.
None of them did.
Eyes streaming tears, her body heaving with gut-wrenching sobs, she clambered blindly up the side of a gully with sharp, jutting rocks and thorny weeds.
She barely noticed her hands were bleeding, her muscles burning. All the pain was on the inside. She stumbled. Her shin cracked against a pointed rock. She cried out, collapsing to the ground.
For just one moment she stared sightlessly into the sky. Then tucking into a fetal position, she hunkered on her side and wept like a baby, her emotions laid bare as she remembered…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
An empty soda can clattered across the street in a sudden gust of wind that lifted her dusty hair from her shoulders, easing the feverish heat that had settled over her skin like a permanent guest.
She staggered down the street in a horrified haze, like an automaton, a human shell whose emotions had died days—weeks?—ago.
Time had ceased to matter, no longer registered in her mind. As far as she was aware, there was no one alive in this country, possibly the entire planet. She’d watched people—strangers—fall dead around her, the virus having no preference for the young or elderly, the sick or the healthy.
She’d learned to accept that, when a person dropped to the ground, their lips blue and their skin an off-yellow color, they weren’t going to get up again. Not ever.
A fire blazed a few blocks away, one of the many that had broken out with people unable to turn off heaters, gas stoves and any other number of appliances. Smoke permanently hazed the air, choking her lungs.
Crows cawed and shrieked over a decaying body to her right, picking over the vile stench of rotting flesh that attracted a heavy swarm of flies to the remains of the once-vital human being.
No dogs. Her grip on the gun she’d eventually procured from a police station, loosened fractionally.
She very rarely entered a building. Not anymore. Doing so meant confronting even more bodies and the stench of the decaying people who had locked themselves inside their homes, desperate to evade an airborne death.
But she’d needed a gun to arm herself against the once-domestic dogs that were turning feral, the starving animals running in packs and developing a taste for human flesh.
She stilled, senses sparked into high alert by the distinct, shrill whine of alien aircraft hurtling through the sky toward her.
Fear gave her leaden legs sudden strength. She broke into a sprint and leaped over a white picket fence. The front door to an old townhouse opened easily as she fumbled to turn the doorknob. She slammed the door shut behind her and pressed herself against the frame, her chest heaving and her breathing too loud.
The house reeked. Corpses were rotting somewhere inside. She bit back the reflex to gag as the alien craft grew louder overhead.
She squeezed her eyes shut, her heart hammering, her belly roiling with dread and terror. “Shit.”
The aliens had found her.
She swiped a droplet of sweat from her brow, ignoring the dizziness assailing her. She could faint another day. Right now she had to get out of there before they found her. The alien bastards were searching, no doubt looking for any remaining survivors.
She had to lose herself in the bush, or die trying…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The sun was bright on her back, sweat sticky beneath her gown by the time she roused herself from her stupor of grief and recollections and pushed onto her feet.
Little wonder she hadn’t wanted to remember. Doing so was like reliving a nightmare that never ended, a past she could scarcely comprehend as being real.
She swallowed, forcing herself to switch off her memories. The present was more than enough to deal with for now.
She studied the terrain. She’d never had the greatest sense of direction, but she guessed she was at the opposite end of the mountain. It wasn’t as wild, as thickly treed this side.
Her heart suddenly thudded as she made out a trail, faint but still visible. It looked as though it had once been used as an SUV track.
She followed the barely discernable trail. The aliens—that’s all she could bear to call them—had spoken of other women survivors. Renate was probably even now looking for his supposed life mate.
Bastards! The aliens undoubtedly took advantage of their victims, their hostages, encouraging them to fall in love with them. Her lip curled. She had been the perfect candidate for Stockholm syndrome.
She pushed forward, trying not to think about her own stupidity, even as she was glad to focus on something other than the reason behind the demise of the human race. “We’re not extinct yet,” she muttered savagely. “Not by a long shot.”
She stilled momentarily. A hand dropped to curl over her belly. She could be carrying the seed of any one of those bastards right now.
So why wasn’t she filled with horror, with disgust?
She couldn’t answer that. Didn’t even want to think upon the spark of hope at the very idea.
The track continued for miles before she spied an old house half hidden in the trees, an SUV parked at its side.
She stilled, uncertainty and excitement warring within. She chewed on her inner cheek. She might well find a rotting corpse inside. But she had little choice but to investigate. At the very least she needed water. And with any luck she’d find some food, too.
The door pushed open with a creaking sound. She stepped inside, wrinkling her nose. Musty dampness pervaded the interior, but nothing dead tainted the air.
Checking the combined kitchen-living room then the one bedroom with its bathroom en suite, she let out a heavy, relieved sigh. Definitely no decaying body.
She returned to the kitchen. A corrugated tank outside on higher ground meant
water ran freely from the kitchen tap. She chugged down what felt like a couple of liters before she did a search of the pantry.
Cans of tomato soup, baked beans and some packets of out-of-date noodles sat alongside a carton of eggs that would no doubt be rotten, flour with weevils, salt and pepper.
There was no refrigerator, and no power to run it anyway. Her stomach rumbling, she found a saucepan to dump in the contents of a can of baked beans. Flicking on the gas stove, it took only minutes to heat her breakfast and then pile it into a chipped bowl and chow down.
In the wardrobe she discovered men’s shirts and pants. All were size small. Peeling out of her dress, she hung it in the wardrobe, somehow unable to leave such an exquisite dress abandoned and scrunched on the floor.
She took a cold shower, paying extra attention to washing away the fluids between her thighs before she finally dried herself with a coarse towel. She pulled on a black-and-purple flannel shirt and a pair of jeans, which she had to roll up at the cuff.
A quick look on the dresser and the kitchen bench revealed no car keys for the SUV outside. But she guessed there was little need to take them out of the ignition in this remote area.
Her spine abruptly tingled, her senses whirling with her trans-alien hypersensitivity. Dar, Ezra and Maddox were near.
She had to move, and quickly.
Closing the door behind her, she loped over to the SUV and jerked open its door. She froze. A chilling scream sounded—hers. But she was unable to move, unable to unlock her stare from the partly decomposed body slumped over the steering wheel in the driver’s seat.
The bright red and gold sash over one shoulder marked the dead man as one of her husband’s soldiers. The garish colors looked obscene against the decomposing body.
The king had tracked her down! She would have been captured and forced back to his country—disgraced, shamed and reviled.
Hands clasped her from behind. She screamed louder, aware that her alien men had come running at her screams of terror, but unable to stop the all-encompassing horror that radiated outward.
Ezra spun her around. One of his hands arced toward her, slapping her face with just enough force to jolt her back to reason.
