Chapter 6
SIX
Whitten
In Akoma, we all had our specialties. Bastian was a good fighter; Lynix a great tracker. Eleric was our healer. As for me, I was in charge of tech. I developed our security and the trackers we all had stitched under the skin on the back of our necks. Most of my time was spent in a dark room with screens and monitors. I reported the news of the galaxy to our brothers.
But there was one bit of news I’d been keeping close to my chest. It had happened before we’d been born, and further details had been sketchy and unsubstantiated. But one fact was true—the Drixonian population had been severely decimated centuries ago. All the females, and most of the elder males had been killed in a virus unleashed on Planet Corin by one of their enemies.
Our father hadn’t known as he’d been abducted while on a mission back when the Drixonian population on Corin had been thriving. They were a largely matriarchal society—everyday policies were all decided by the females, and the males were conscripted into the military where they performed constant defense of the planet from invaders.
When no other species had been able to defeat the Drixonians in battle, they resorted to the one enemy the military couldn’t fight—a faceless virus. The remaining Drixonian males who lived—most of them young, and some chits just born—were transported to the nearby sister planet of Torin to work for the Uldani. And all I knew from there was that a massive war broke out between the Drixonians and the Uldani—the enemies who’d unleashed the virus. The Drixonians had defeated the Uldani, and after that news became sparse. I didn’t know how many Drixonians survived, or where they lived now.
I hadn’t wanted my father to know the fate of his society—he’d been so proud of how he’d lived on Corin, and the only reason we hadn’t traveled there was that we hadn’t had the spacecraft, and because he’d been worried about how well we’d be accepted. I couldn’t tell him the fate of his home planet, and now the lie had stretched and stretched until today.
I had thought we could live peacefully on Planet Kew. Queen had sometimes posited that my brothers and I could be sterile because of our genetics. But when Bastian came home with loks—everything changed. Fatas had chosen for us. We had another chance at creating Drixonian offspring, and I felt I owed it to the dying Drixonian population to procreate. But not like this. Not when our chits would be sold to the highest bidder or raised with a master.
But I didn’t say this out loud to Lorna. I couldn’t. I had never spoken the words, and I worried how she’d handle the news.
“So what can we do?” She knelt with her hands on her thighs, and her breasts hidden from my view—thankfully—with a band of cloth she’d tied around them. She also had another bit of cloth tied around her waist that mostly covered her cunt.
I had nothing, and my cock remained painfully hard and leaking. My balls throbbed. But the manic haze of the rut had subsided. While I still sought relief, I could think clearly. I could hold myself back. For how long? I wasn’t sure. Because I didn’t doubt the Xaberians would be back, and I knew they’d do everything in their power to force us into a mating. But once that happened, we’d have lost, and I refused to flecking lose.
“We have to resist.” But I wasn’t confident. If they threatened to hurt her, I would be powerless.
As if summoned by our words, a door in the corridor banged open. Lorna sucked in a breath and her gaze darted to me. I steeled myself and beckoned her closer. “Come.”
As footsteps sounded outside, she leaned forward. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Quick.”
She closed the distance between us with a few halting steps in a low crouch. When she reached my side, I held my breath as her trembling fingers curled into the fur of my arm. Her breath blew over me, and I could smell her fear. It made my protective instincts rise, so that by the time a Dayloes appeared outside the bars of our cell, my lips were peeled back and a steady growl rumbled from my chest with every exhale.
The Dayloes huffed out a breath. “You denied your rut?”
I didn’t answer. My hard, unspent cock was enough to answer. Lorna’s shaking increased, and her breath whistled between her teeth.
And my attention was on the guard’s controller on his hip. Both times that the guards had opened our cells, I’d either been unconscious or not able to view the opening mechanism. But now I could see the controller, and the small, nearly undetectable lump on the outside of the bars.
“Morquet wants them bought to him.” The guard called down the hall to someone out of her view. I knew that name. He was a high-ranking Xaberian. Maybe the highest. I hadn’t been able to get a good read on the hierarchy of the Xaberians yet. It was what I’d been working on before I left Akoma. “Get?—”
Pounding footsteps cut off whatever he was going to say before a voice shouted, the tone edged with panic. “We have a problem with some participants of the Project. All hands needed.”
The guard swore before turning a glare on us. “You have some more time to get it done. You’ll only make things worse for yourselves. You think this is hard? Wait until you face Morquet.” With a snarl, he turned and marched off down the hall. A door slammed, and we were alone once again.
But I was done waiting in this flecking cell. With a pat on Lorna’s arm, I slid toward my discarded pants and slashed at a hidden pocket along the waistband. A small cylinder slid out onto my paw pads, and I exhaled with relief.
“What’s that?” Lorna asked as she stood. Her patchwork clothes remained on her body, but my pants were no longer usable. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need them.
“It’s my mock-lock.” I held it up and pressed a button along the side. A red light appeared. I strode over to the slight bump in the welded bars of the cage where I’d seen the guard stand. “It’ll copy the signal needed to work this electronic lock. Hopefully. And if it works, the doors will open.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Are you serious? Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
“I didn’t know where the lock was located. But I watched the guard as he was about to open the cell.”
I held the mock-lock against the sensor on the bars. The red light flashed, then went dark. “Fleck,” I muttered as I banged it against my palm. I gave Lorna a look of chagrin. “It’s still in the testing phase.”
She only blinked at me, and I willed my mock-lock to work. After the red light appeared again, I once again touched it the sensor. This time, the red light began to flash. I held my breath, begging Fatas for this to work. The flashing went on. And on. And just when I was about to give up, the mock-lock vibrated, and the light flashed green. An audible click came from the bars, and two of them unlocked from the top bracket along the ceiling and slid down into the floor. The cell was open.
“Oh my God,” Lorna squealed, and covered her mouth with her hands. Her eyes were impossibly wide above her fingers. “Did that…did that just happen?”
I looked at my mock-lock with affection. “It happened.”
Lorna reached out and snatched the mock-lock before shoving it under her chest wrap between her breasts. She patted the fabric. “I’ll keep it safe here. Who knows when we’ll need it again?”
I had no pockets. Nothing but my fur. My only protection and means to fight were my teeth, claws, and my Drixonian machets—black blades that emerged from my forearms and down my back. They were sharp and deadly, and I suspected the Xaberians coveted them. If they could find a way to blend the Drixonian genetics with their own… I shuddered to think at what they’d create. While the Xaberians were large, and their whip-like tentacles deadly, they were slow and lacked the proper skills needed to engage in a proper battle. They relied on weapons, which only took them so far in a ground war. The main problem was their population wasn’t large enough to sustain many casualties. Which apparently was where we came in.
But I had no time to dwell on the Xaberians plans. That would come later, when I had the resources to analyze what they were doing down here in their bunker. I had to get my mate to safety.
I grabbed her hand and tugged her out of the cell. The corridor was lit by a torch, and I grabbed it out of the wall as I crept down the hallway. We walked past several cells, but all of them were empty. Some had remnants of past prisoners inside, and one smelled particularly terrible. Behind me, Lorna gagged and tripped. I was reminded she walked on bare feet. That would be the first remedy—she needed shoes. Better clothing. Food.
Fleck, I was so failing her right now.
At the end of the hallway was a door that had one window at the top, and with the torch held low, I peered through the dirty pane. I couldn’t make out much outside—only another corridor. But the good news was that it didn’t seem like anyone was out there. Whatever emergency had called the guards away was our best chance at survival.
I pushed down on the lever of the door, and when it opened with a soft click, I felt a surge of energy roar through my body. I had a taste of freedom. Nothing was stopping me now.
Lorna
I ran behind Whitten, my hand clutched in his massive paw. His tail brushed my knees as we made our way down a narrow, dirty hallway. I got flashbacks to when I had first arrived here. The showers. The clothes. And that godawful arena of carnage. I shuddered just thinking about it.
Whitten darted us around a turn, and then we banked a sharp left. The hallway widened. Closed doors lined the hallway, and I expected at any minute for some aliens to rush out of one with guns blazing.
Somewhere underground, I could hear muffled shouts. Commotion.
A scream.
Heart thundering. I dug my heels into the dirt, and Whitten nearly yanked my arm out of the socket as he hadn’t realized I’d stopped. His paw dropped my hand as he whirled around. “What?”
All I could picture was the blonde warrior’s face. Her concerned blue eyes. Her arm muscles flexing as she chopped the flying beetled in half. And her voice, pleading, on the edge of hysteria, “ Please, stay alive. ”
“We have to find them,” I whispered.
Whitten glanced around as another scream came, followed by deep-voiced shouts. “Who?”
“The women,” I blinked rapidly, my mission coming into full vision now. “We can’t leave them here. You didn’t see the arena, Whitten. You don’t know?—”
“I know enough,” he spoke through gritted teeth. “Enough to know I cannot save them.”
My body jolted. Bile rose in my throat, and suddenly Whitten’s purple gaze didn’t seem so attractive anymore. Horror and disgust gripped me. “What did you say?”
His paws curled. Claws protracted. Muscles tensed. “We cannot save them, mate. I have no weapons against an army of Dayloes and Xaberians. You are vulnerable. You don’t have clothes, and you have no flecking shoes. What do you think we’re going to do?”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew he made sense. But my heart couldn’t accept it. Although we women had been forbidden to talk, we’d formed silent connections. And that blonde…she’d saved my life. Now I was just going to leave her here?
The noise in the distance had faded. Only a few deep-voiced commands could be heard now. No more screaming. I clasped my hands together in front of my chest as I felt tears prick my eyes. When had I cried last? “Please, can we at least wait and see if they are okay? I can’t move on knowing they are suffering. Why do I get to be the one rescued? What did I do to deserve this?” Tears wet my cheeks. Dripped off my chin.
A door slammed somewhere nearby, and Whitten’s body jerked as if he’d been shot. His nostrils flared. “We don’t have time.”
“We need to find?—”
“ We don’t have time! ” he shouted with fangs bared. “ She is all , but you, my mate, will always be my priority above all else, even my own life. I cannot save all of them, but I can save you.”
No, no . He was grabbing me now, tugging me forward with so much strength that I had no choice but to walk or be dragged. But I protested, babbling and pulling, the sobs louder now as my vision blurred with tears and images of that woman, the blonde, in the hands of these evil aliens?—
Laser fire pinged off the wall over our head, and I screamed.
“Fleck,” Whitten barked a moment before two armored aliens raced down the hallway toward us. Whitten hauled me over his shoulder and took off on a sprint down a hallway to our right. It curved around, and I grew dizzy and disoriented before Whitten came to a jerking halt with another spitting curse.
He placed me on the ground, and I swiped at my eyes to find we were once again in a small room like the one we’d been in when we’d been sucked underground. But like last time, there was no lever. No way to get the hell out.
Whitten whirled around and as the black blades emerged from his fur along his forearms and down his back, he seemed to swell, taking up more space than he had before.
And just in time, because a moment later, two Dayloes crashed inside. But Whitten was on them because they could even fire their laser guns. He slashed with his machets and raked them with his claws until they were bleeding, jerking tatters on the ground. In the distance, we could hear more shouts. We’d be surrounded again soon, and I couldn’t go through what we’d been through before. I couldn’t watch Whitten go down again. I couldn’t guard his unconscious body.
We had to get to the surface of this planet. I crawled over to the bodies of the guards. They weren’t much but bloody strips of flesh and armor. But a slashed belt lay near a lone hand. I grabbed a laser gun and shoved it into the makeshift bikini I’d made of my clothes, and then picked up each of the gadgets one by one. When Whitten realized what I was doing, he knelt at my side, but his paws were slick with blood, and he couldn’t seem to calm the shaking adrenaline in his body.
I picked up a particularly odd tool that was shaped like an egg and wet with blood. It slipped through my fingers, and I let it roll away. It probably wasn’t anything important anyway.
I bent down to pick up another tool when the ground beneath us lurched. I whirled around to find the egg had settled in a nondescript indent on the floor. “What—?” I began, but I didn’t finish my sentence as the floor beneath us launched us upward with the force of a roller coaster.
I closed my eyes and folded my arms over my head in protection. Whitten cradled me to his chest until the ascent slowed, and light shone from behind my closed eyelids. I opened them to find the sun shining. A breeze blew over my skin and ruffled my hair.
“We did it,” I whispered. But there was no time to celebrate. The ground rumbled below us, and Whitten jumped to the side just in time as the ground caved in again. “There’ll be more coming,” he said as he once again hauled me over his shoulder. “We need to move.”
So much had happened in the last five minutes, and as we ran away from the spongey ground and the underground bunker of horrors, I still couldn’t think of much else but the women we’d left behind.
Surrounding the spongey plain, which seemed to stretch for miles, was a ring of dense forestry. We didn’t seem to have risen at the same place we’d dropped, but we were still close enough to the edge—and Whitten was fast enough—that we were under the cover of trees before a dozen Dayloes rose up from the ground. They spread out quickly but didn’t seem to know where we’d gone.
Whitten bobbed and weaved among the thick tree trunks. At one point, he reached down and snatched a sack off the ground and slung it over his shoulder. It was worn and lumpy, and I got the impression it was his that he’d left on the surface.
He ran even as the armored aliens shouted to each other in the distance. But for such a large being, he raced on silent footsteps like a real wolf. Even his gait was long and loping unlike any other bipedal species I’d ever seen.
Maybe an hour passed. Maybe more, maybe less. My stomach hurt where his shoulder dug into it, but I gritted my teeth and held on. Just when I didn’t think I could take it anymore, he slowed to a halt and dropped me onto my feet. I staggered a moment, and he steadied me with clear lavender eyes. “All right, mate?”
I nodded, because my mouth was too dry to talk.
Whitten huffed out a loud exhale before turning to a large bush and shoving it aside. I realized it had been uprooted in the past but left in place to give it the illusion of a planted bush. Beneath it, something shiny caught my eye, before the branches gave way to reveal a massive vehicle-like object with a seat and handlebars.
I gaped at it. The vehicle had no wheels, just two large round disks on the bottom that sat parallel on the ground. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how this thing worked. As Whitten pulled a pair of pants and boots out of a side saddle bag and tugged them on, I touched the handlebars. Scratches marred the surface, and the soft grips had prick indents from Whitten claws. Some of the stitching in the seat had come undone. This was clearly a beloved piece of property, which was evidenced when Whitten ran his hand over the dented body. “Wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” he said under his breath before turning to me. “I’ll get proper clothes for you, but right now we have to get out of here before the guards find us.”
“Okay.” I eyed the vehicle. “On this?”
He straddled the vehicle and sat on the seat, just like a driver would a motorcycle. With a firm grip on my hips, he seated me in front of him. “Hold on here.” He gestured to the handlebars in between his grips.
I was still unsure how this was going to go, but I nodded and held on. “Got it.”
“Let’s go,” he growled in my ear with a victorious ring. He flipped a switch on the bike, and the entire thing rumbled to life, the sound cutting through the silence of the forest. A few winged creatures took flight, and I saw the back of a cat-sized creature dart out of the abandoned bush and take off.
And then I understood how this thing worked. Those disks on the bottom of the bike released powerful jets of air, lifting the bike into the air so that it hovered about five feet off the ground. And then we were off, racing through the air, dodging branches and weaving between tree trunks at a rate that seemed absolutely illegal. A couple of times, I swore we were going to crash, but Whitten maneuvered the bike like it was an extension of himself. Any moment, I thought we’d be stopped by an armored alien, but Whitten’s bike was too fast. Before I knew it, we were speeding out of the dense forest and over a dirt road.
Dust flew up around us, and I coughed. My throat ached. My entire body was sore. My feet were raw. But yet I held on as Whitten drove us with a single-minded focus away from our prison.
We rode until my head bobbed on my shoulders. I might have dozed off, because a few times, I awoke with a jolt and Whitten’s one arm clasped around my waist, so I didn’t tip off the bike.
The air grew cooler even as the sun beat on. I longed for the sunset. The last one I’d seen had been on Earth. I’d learned on this planet, the sun shone for something like thirty days, and then the dark set in for another thirty days. The sun had only set once on this planet, but we’d been inside a domed city, locked in cells without windows which we didn’t leave the entire time it had been dark.
I’d heard rumors about the dark here, something about creatures that existed inside of it, but the stories seemed ridiculous. Fantastical. I assumed we couldn’t be in the dark because it was too cold.
The terrain changed from a swampy habitat to lush vegetation that blew in the breeze. Goosebumps erupted on my skin, and I sank back into the heat of Whitten’s fur. I groaned as the muscles in my butt protested. I’d been sitting too long. I was pretty sure I had a leg cramp, and my stomach was threatening to eat itself.
As we roared over a hill and settled into a valley with a clear spring about twenty yards wide, Whitten slowed the bike. We came to a rest along the riverbank, and I tumbled off the bike before waiting for Whitten.
I landed on the soft, cool grass and gave it a kiss. “I missed you.”
The stream beckoned to me. The water ran over the rock bed in a rhythmic trickle. I didn’t even think. With a whoop, I shot to my feet and raced toward the stream.