Chapter 6 Dom
SIX
DOM
I want to rest because Law-rah told me to, but Nevare’s mind surfing keeps drowning me in images. He's not aware he psychically wanders while he sleeps, and Arik appears to be sleeping deeply, so I’m the only one affected.
I try to ignore it as Nevare sweeps over Arture, a big blank whose thoughts we've never been able to read—almost as if he doesn't have one—to Gara, whose busy brain quietens down with relief watching Arra-bellah. We automatically skirt around our leader’s mind.
Even in sleep, a Parthiastock obeys orders for a leader's right to privacy.
But then Nevare touches on a consciousness and halts there, accidentally hooked on a snag. There’s no waking thoughts in my wave brother, so he's not seeing anything himself, but the wants, wishes, and imaginings pelt me all the same.
A list. Structured. Efficient. Familiar, similar to the way Arik arranges Nevare's thought patterns.
Nevare’s findings, bright and spiky, brushes against my mind like static. Words and concepts flow across to me: “Getting involved with him: pros and cons.”
Law-rah. I press my mental self closer to Nevare and her thoughts sharpen, coming into focus.
“Cons, first: many. I'm swamped with the inquest, my friends know him, and I keep my worlds separate. Always have.”
Who is this ‘he’ she refers to? Whoever it is, he's lucky to have caught a female’s attention like this.
“Pros: he needs help. I took away his coping mechanism, so it's up to me to help him replace it. Con: I don't understand much about healing, especially trauma, so I'd need to be careful.”
Blue-grey spikes from her brainwaves spear through me, sharp enough I flinch as if they pierce my skin. She’s experiencing mental distress.
I try to reach out, to take it from her, when she breathes through them to continue: “Pros: I’ll be careful.
Another pro, there's nothing much to do on the inquest except go over my notes. Again. But cons, I can’t be distracted, and I can't play around with someone if they don't think they have a choice.
But I'm already talking to Nicole about that.”
These thoughts chase each other, a negative for every positive, half defiant, half hopeless.
Then a new ‘con’ forms, slowly.
“Maybe he won't like it when I take charge in bed. None of them have.”
Charge in bed? What's that?
“Pros: I can help him see whether he likes it.”
I lean in as the words swirl and shimmer, less akin to a list now, more like a mood, a pulse. A rhythm. She's sliding into a space between waking and dreaming, an opening into her private thoughts.
I halt at the threshold. I haven't been invited, so I shouldn't be here. Yet I can't look away. The transgression lies heavily on me, holding me contained like betrillium shackles, immobile as I watch.
One of us kneels in the machine shed. Arms behind his back, not bound, but held there by sheer will, trembling.
Sweat slips between the fine seams of his scales, tracing the curve of his shoulders.
He's nearly naked, just a narrow scrap of fabric low on his hips.
The image is so clear it steals my breath: a perfect imprint of vulnerability and restraint.
She was thinking of one of us?
The figure lifts his head. His eyes—my eyes—glow violet in the dim light.
It’s me.
She's imagining me like this.
“Are you struggling, darling?” Law-rah’s voice glides in, soft as woven gauze, intimate as breath against scales. She's not visible, but I feel her. We move closer, inside her mind, watching from her eyes. I see myself shiver beneath her gaze, my scales hot despite the cool shadows of the shed.
“Yes, Law-rah,” my mirrored self whispers.
Sweat clings to my neck, slips lower. I’ve seen myself punished before, through Arik’s eyes, sometimes Nevare’s, but never like this.
They never lingered on how strong I look in surrender.
How my chest heaves with breath I can't catch.
How the moisture slides between interlocked scales, making everything look… softer.
But Law-rah sees it.
“You look beautiful,” she murmurs.
The words strike like the veralash. My muscles unlock. My chest lifts, then lowers, slow and steady, like her voice is a command my body can't refuse.
Say that again. Say it in real life. Please.
She reaches out with pale hand, trembling slightly. “Do you want me to touch you?”
My double’s voice trembles. “Y… yes, Law-rah. I want this.”
I want this? I would never say that to a female even when it’s true, it’s too demanding. But… if she wants me to, can I find the courage to do it?
“Then don’t resist,” she says, tone silk-wrapped betrillium. “Soften your scales. Let yourself feel.”
My reflection obeys. The tension in my shoulders flows out. My back arches, not in pain, not in fear, but in something else. Giving himself over to her.
“This is for you,” she whispers. “Not punishment. Not control for control’s sake. This is so you’ll know what it’s like to be wanted. To be pleasured.”
The touch finally comes, light, curious. My scales prickle, aching to feel what he’s feeling. What would it be like? No pain. Only her caress. Warm. Real.
An ache builds, not from her, but from inside me. Pressing and urgent, a sudden hunger, as if I’ve been starved of vital nutrients. My body strains for more, and I don’t know what to do with the need. It rises like heat under my skin, clawing upward.
I’ve never felt anything like this. I’ve endured pain, I’ve survived silence, but this… this pleasure that coils so tightly, it becomes agony.
This is new.
And I don’t know how to process it.
Her hands slide possessively to the small scrap of cloth draped from a thin red rope around his hips. “What do you have for me?” she coos, pulling the fabric aside gently.
Instead of my protective carapace, this figure’s reproductive organs hang free, a long thin spear with a bulbous tip and two orbs tight to his flesh. They aren't even scaled, but they are a bright purple, and singular.
My stomach twists with shame. Is this what Law-rah expects of me? I won’t meet her requirement, I have too many and I'm too big. I have a cock as well as my crinis, the latter being twice the size of this shaft if I gathered all the tendrils together.
The vision looms over the singular cock of Law-rah's imagined version of me, and then up at his face.
He's still trying to hide his arousal and shame, glancing down at her and then away, struggling to pull himself away from her invading touch.
But his cock betrays him, pointing up and getting bigger as his arousal grows.
What would she make of my real cock, let alone my crinis? I can feel the strain on my carapace as both my real organs swell, the intense pressure echoing the pain I see in my double’s eyes.
Bared and humiliated, stripped until there's nothing left to hide the true me. I'm open, naked, alone.
Not alone. Law-rah’s hands appear again, patting and stroking his cock, tugging it to his bitten-off cries. I want this to be real, I need what she's doing to him, and I can't look away as she teases his organs into weeping.
But instead of pointing out his shame, Law-rah seems delighted. “Come for me,” she purrs.
“N… no!” The Parthiastock on the beam protests.
“Give the female what she wants,” I bark at him. Whatever the order, he needs to do it, but also, I want him to do it.
I want to give Law-rah what she wants.
The whole image tilts, shattering into shards. “What was that?” Law-rah's voice echoes as she speaks what she's thinking, but her final thoughts come jagged and frantic. ‘What if someone finds out my kink? What if they think I’m broken?’
The vision splinters, lost, and Nevare's attention wanders.
“No!” I sit up, panting, shaking the foreign shame away. I want to shake Nevare awake and get back to Law-rah's imagination, see what she would do next. What did she want me to do? I need to know, so I can please her!
Her earlier thoughts, before she panicked, lingers like heat against my skin, fragile and forbidden. She fears someone seeing her, ashamed, yet all I feel is a fierce rush of wanting.
And wetness at my crotch.
I open my pants to check on my throbbing carapace, the segments straining to hold my anatomy within the protective casing. White fluid presses from inside, and I slit my eyes and try to calm down. Not again.
“Drok na,” Arture hisses, scuffling away from our sleeping pile. “Get that stuff out of here before it leaks.”
Pulling my coverings up, I roll to my feet.
Leaking emissions is deeply shameful. I'm the only one out of my wave brothers who does this, and it causes any surface to get slick and slippery as if it were some kind of oil.
It smells pleasant to me, filling the air with a rich scent like an intoxicating jungle on a new, exotic planet, but it offends my wave brothers and shipmates.
I make the trip to the lake knowing I’ll get no more sleep tonight. This planet has short cycles anyway, but I force my body onward. I am determined to adapt to the new pattern of our exile, even if it means incurring greater and greater strain.
My feet crunch on the gravel and then pad silently into the long grass on the well-worn path up and over the hill to the lake.
Out here, under a sky studded with stars I don’t recognize, and breath curling in the early morning cold, I’m separated and alone.
Nevare and Arik are always there in my mind, of course, but when they’re asleep and I’m away from their physical presence, I’m free.
Free to imagine all the ways I can fail them.
I kneel at the water’s edge, sluicing my flooded carapace with the icy lakewater. But just as the shock clears my head, Arik’s voice pushes through the bond: ‘Dom. Ilia says Nevare must scout the local area psychically. He wants it done now.’
The words strike like a blade between my plates. Not Nevare. Not again. My pulse thrums hot, rage and fear burning. I drag the pain into myself, flexing my claws. If I tear through my palms, the sting will ground me, pull me back from the edge.
Law-rah’s command threads through me. My reliance on pain for relief is forbidden. I can’t disobey. I freeze, caught between instinct and obedience, the need to hurt myself dammed up inside. The pressure churns, looking for another outlet.
And then—another pressure altogether.
Thoughts of the tiny human. Law-rah wants to see me today, during her refueling hour. Parthiastocks obey females without question, but something more dangerous flickers beneath that obedience: the desire for her to use me as she did in her imagination.
The thought surges through me, and my cock bursts from my carapace, writhing as white oil slicks across the dark water.
I snarl at myself, dragging in the cold, lowering my body temperature, willing it to go dormant again.
I can’t let thoughts like this unbalance me.
I have no right to dream beyond my purpose.
If I were like Ilia, or, better, a True Born son, I could pour myself into one female and orbit her without shame.
But I’m not. I am Parthiastock. Divided by design.
If I give myself wholly to her, I fail Nevare. And I can’t fail Nevare.
My hands stir the rainbow shimmer on the lake’s surface, bitter shame twisting inside me. No female would mate with a Parthiastock, not when our focus is always divided with our duties.
Ilia’s order presses through Arik, adding to my burden. Nevare’s fragile mind always in balance, the pain I can’t use, the obedience I can’t escape.
And the forbidden craving for a female I can never have.
Every obligation stacks, heavier, until I can barely breathe beneath them.
I prepare to stabilize Nevare, shoving my dangerous urges down deep. This selfish yearning for something that isn’t mine must be removed. Giving into it could destabilize me and harm the ones I’m sworn to protect.
Law-rah said I could refuse her with no consequences. But she doesn’t understand what I am. I’m not built to disobey a female, especially not her. When the time comes, I already know.
Everything inside me will scream yes.