Chapter 7
Kiera
Whatever it was the one called Loren wanted to do, it seemed to be going poorly. Or not working at all.
Dragged forward to stand beside him before the Council, Kiera felt unrelenting tremors tearing through her gut. Her mouth went dry and her hands became wet. She wanted to sink to her knees and cry for mercy but the sight of Diane doing just that stopped her.
That's not what's going to happen to you. You know what he said.
Breeding. She was going to be bred. To him? With that thought, the pheromones tried to kick up again and she fought against a wave of lust as inappropriate as any she'd ever experienced.
It would be preferable to death. But only just.
He let Kate and Will go. He let them take everything with them. Just like that her throat was full of tears. For her father, her family.
Whatever it takes to keep them safe.
But why this?
"What is this?"
The disgust of the council member with food on his shirt was enough to snap Kiera back to her senses. What is this? They were the "this" in a sentence, the un-human, un-Earth creatures. They were – vile. Vermin. She’d never let him touch her. Never.
But looking at him again, he was beautiful.
Not as tall as some of them, definitely not as tall as the giant who stood behind the ring of desks pushed together to form some kind of judge’s chamber or whatever look they were going for.
Seriously, all they had to do was stand and let those fangs snap down and anyone would pee themselves.
Instead, she stared into his face, letting her own hatred show.
The council leader was unimpressed. He glanced at her and returned his attention to Loren.
"Breeding stock," Loren said, his voice as cold as the leader's. Kiera felt a tremor.
Hold on to what went on before. You're not wrong. He's just –
Acting?
She'd never been so afraid. Or so angry. Breeding stock!
In short, unemotional sentences, the one called Loren described the capture of their happy pirate raiding party, not that they'd been happy, but at least they'd been doing something … and whistling past the graveyard.
That thought from hours earlier now seemed incredibly na?ve.
"Fine. Have her taken to the crèche."
The asshole was already looking past her, on to the next order of business.
As casually as he might take care of some banking transaction.
Kiera sucked in her breath, ready to tell the son of a bitch what she thought of him and all the asshole invaders, that they couldn't conquer Earth, whatever they thought, Humans would rise up again and when they did –
When they did, she wanted her family alive to celebrate with her.
Seemed she could be controlled.
Loren didn't take her arm. He didn't step aside for the next order of business to present itself.
"Was there more?" The giant looked irritated. "I will see to it that your second and the other – ah, I see, your brother – get commendations. Is there – "
Loren nodded and the leader simply stopped bothering to talk.
"Not the crèche. I want her for my own." He swallowed hard and drew himself up taller, though he still was just slightly shorter than the others around him. From what she could see, he was every bit as ferocious and dangerous.
And beautiful. Face it, she thought, even when the invaders weren't turning on the charm – or pheromones – they were hard to resist.
Except for the evil and the deadly and the arrogant and the –
She hadn't expected to have to smother a laugh here of all places.
The leader didn't sit, but he steepled his fingers in the way of all bureaucrats across the universe, she guessed.
"Why should we grant this? It was your brother, I understand, who was, along with your second, instrumental in bringing in the killers."
"Yes, it was."
They didn't squirm like humans. Called out on something like that, they simply presented their case. She thought humans could learn from that. The instant someone looked disapproving of Kiera she'd always had the tendency to want to apologize and then get out of there until they forgot.
"Then why should you be rewarded? I believe you were even subject to disciplinary action within the last moon turn."
Kiera mentally made note of that. Maybe Loren was a loose cannon or a weak link in the chain of killers. Maybe she could use him somehow. Maybe – but he was going on again.
"I may be far from the throne – "
It must have been an old argument, like Kate's repeated attempts to convince their parents to let her get a dog. The council leader seemed to sigh. "You are."
Loren drew himself up, standing more proudly. "And yet, I am a Vampyren prince." He watched the council leader, clearly expecting something.
Tilting her head, Kiera watched as the leader slowly and grudgingly inclined his head in acknowledgement. "That is not, however, sufficient to grant you your request. Do you have further argument?" His tone was dismissive. He was preparing to end their audience with the council.
"I left a mate at home," Loren said plainly.
Kiera was surprised by a small twist there. Sympathy? Jealousy? Either meant she should get her head examined. If it were only a good time to be contemplating therapy.
"I see." The leader considered. Something about his voice sounded old to Kiera, though he looked no different than the other invaders.
Give away that secret to Hollywood and the rest of the world, and they wouldn't have to be invaders – Earth would welcome them with open arms.
"Were you prepared to breed?"
Something about the way Loren hesitated made Kiera apprehensive. Heart pounding, she waited for his answer.
When it came, she didn't think it was what he had wanted to say.
"No. We were not. She had service to fulfill."
"Then she goes to the crèche. You may be one of the ones to breed her.
If you so choose." The leader had already looked away again and this time when he looked back, there was nothing in his face that Kiera could understand.
He was alien, dark, swarthy, with full beard and those weirdly gold eyes, beautiful as the others but somehow all the more malignant.
"Go, now." His voice was utterly cold and all the more frightening for its alien lack of emotion.
"Before I have her for dinner."
He was the one to lead her out. She now understood from what the council had said that his name was Loren Vassilynt and apparently he had some kind of pull with the council, enough, anyway that they listened to him and didn't send him packing the minute he asked for something other than whatever the party line was.
That information wasn't anywhere near enough to keep her from trembling with fear.
All her life she'd longed for it to be over when it came to things that were terrifying.
Raised by active, vocal parents, older than her brother by two years and her sister by seven, she was fairly confident anyway, but faced the normal terrors of life: Like book reports and her first and only track meet where she learned that loving to run didn't equate at all with having people cheering and jeering at her as she did so.
Those events, though, standing in front of a class to speak or running in front of a crowd when what she wanted to do was run away from them, those had taught her that for Kiera, the time before something she dreaded wasn't useful.
She wasn't someone who could put things off or, rather, she could, if she had the ability, but there was no comfort in it: She spent the entire time dreading what was to come.
Only now, the only thing left to her was dread. Dread of the crèche. Dread of actually being touched by Loren Vassilynt, whether or not he was using pheromones to pave the way.
Whether or not she found him lust-worthy without pheromones.
And dread of whatever Vampyren might come to her in the crèche. She doubted that once she was marked as potential for child-bearing that he'd be able to simply claim her and leave her to collect later.
What the council had just done was make her into a breeding whore. Available, possibly, for whoever came first. She'd be well treated by Vampyren standards once she was pregnant – well fed, cared for medically, allowed to exercise or possibly forced to.
But she hadn't even been thinking of having a child yet.
She was scared of the idea. Scared of the idea of being dumped into what had to be a horrifyingly competitive and vicious mass of females all of whom found themselves in the same horrible place: Her worth had just been determined by her ability, potentially, to get pregnant and carry an alien child to term.
Her body had just become the thing that protected the lives of her mother, father, sister and brother and possibly her best friends.
That was her worth in this new world, and though she might be headed for a crèche, she was, to some extent, going there as Loren Vassilynt’s, because she thought she understood he had some kind of rank and privilege above the others.
Basically, she'd just been bought by a Vampyren prince.