Chapter 2 #7
I would never have asked such a silly question on Earth.
Down there, I knew I wasn’t safe. But the threats were different.
I could predict what terrible things humans would do to me.
I knew what directions their betrayals would come from.
This is a whole new universe of potentially terrible things, and it is sending my nervous system into overdrive.
“Deep breaths,” Kronos says.
“I am breathing. Don’t worry about it.” My tone is dismissive enough to draw a raised brow from the various assembled sex-obsessed aliens.
“She’s grumpy,” Boss says.
“She’s had a big day. We should put her to bed,” Kronos says.
“What bed?” Boss asks.
“No bed,” Sharp says. “Pets sleep in crates. We don’t want her escaping, or leaving the room or getting into electronics, or anything else that humans do when you leave them alone for five minutes. Trust me. I have pet sit before. Humans are chaotic and they will break everything if you let them.”
I take this opportunity to look at Boss and Kronos like I don’t know what he’s talking about, like I have never done anything wrong in my life, and like I am so small and so fucked and so bred.
“She’s suffered enough,” Boss says. “She can sleep with me.”
Sharp gives me an I know what you’re up to look.
I give him an and there’s nothing you can do about it look right back.
Boss takes me back to his bedroom. These guys seem to each have a very large room to themselves.
There’s a bed that is built into the wall, and some storage that is similarly constructed.
Other than that, there’s not really anything in the room.
I don’t know what I expected in terms of personalization. Something, I guess?
“Are you not allowed to stick stuff up on the walls?”
“I don’t have a lot of things,” Boss says. “I come from a planet where we live on wild grazing with very little shelter at all.”
“But you’re spacefaring?”
“We get off the planet when we are taken off the planet,” he says. Sounds a little mysterious, if I am to be honest.
“Taken as in… someone comes and brings a taxi? Or taken as in…”
He sighs, and then answers.
“Taken as in rounded up for slaughter. Your species is not the only sentient one in the universe being used for food by others. The food chain gets messy once multiple talking species are in it.”
There’s a heavy moment after those words leave his mouth. Rounded up is a very loaded term. I can imagine what that must be like. I can imagine how much evil is going on in the universe at all times and in all places.
“I am sorry that happened to you,” I say, meaning it. “That’s fucked up.”
“How did you get here?” He asks the question with a curiosity I find endearing. The others haven’t asked me that yet. The scene in the bar was too stressful and intense for any getting-to-know-you nonsense.
“My boss sent assassins to kill me because I knew too much about the interstellar slave trade.”
I didn’t think I’d bond with Boss. I thought he was too big of a creature, too blunt and too brash and just too… masculine. But he’s had a hard time and I think I can relate.
“You’re good at getting out of danger,” he says. “You’re brave. But you’re a little reckless.”
It’s interesting having him assess my character. He’s not wrong.
“I didn’t used to be reckless,” I say. “But then the world got worse and being reckless was the only way to survive. I realized nobody was really playing by the rules, and that the people who were responsible for making them and enforcing them were following them least of all. They’re selling us even though they’re not supposed to.
And that’s the least of it. They’re lying to us as well.
They’re screwing us at every turn. They took the world from us, and they made us retreat to islands in the fucking sky.
It’s fucked. So… I did what I had to do. ”
Boss nods. “I understand what you mean. When the harvesters came to our world, I was taken. I was carted to the slaughterhouse with my herd when I was but a teenager. One by one we were fed into the tight halls that smelled of blood and death. Fear was thick in the air.”
I listen, holding my breath.
“They were shooting us in the head with guns designed to deploy the same bolt over and over. One by one we watched each other fall, be hooked and dragged away. The gun that killed my father was destined to kill me.”
“What did you do?”
“When the Harvester put the gun to my head, I pulled it from his hand, twisted it, and fired it into his chest. Then the others got the horns.”
I feel tears pricking my eyes imagining such a scenario. The horror really does reach me on a visceral level. I can imagine a young Boss roaming free on alien plains, then being taken and facing the worst fate possible along with everyone he knows and loves.
“I killed every Harvester I encountered in the plant. Once the other warriors saw that we did not have to simply submit to death simply because it had been organized, they broke free as well. Now the same plant that used to be designed to kill us is the base from which we run our military operations. I have never been back to the Prairie Lands, and I never will. I travel the universe, routing out Harvesters whenever I find them.”
“I understand. And I’ll help you.”
“You will not,” he says roughly. “You will stay far from Harvesters. They are terrible alien creatures who destroy everything they encounter. They would turn you into fresh raw meat treats. They would slice you thin and smoke you and package your flesh in little plastic packets, then ship them around their stores where you would be sold to anybody who consumes meat products. You are a delicacy.”
“Are there any here? On the station? Will there be any at the auction?”
Boss picks me up, strips me, and puts me in bed, all without ever actually putting me down until he finally settles me under the covers.
“You need rest,” he says. “You have had a big, exposed day. You have been given three alien cocks, and bred deeply and very hotly.”
He looks at me and lowers his head, his eyes narrowing slightly with the memory of desire. “I enjoyed you very, very much.”
I want to resist rest, but the truth is I am exhausted. The stress of a long interstellar journey, followed by the adventure of being railed and claimed by three big aliens who think they own me, means my eyelids are feeling incredibly heavy…
I don’t remember falling asleep, but I am suddenly aware that I am waking up.
“Where am I?”
I ask the question because I’ve never known where I am when I wake up. I ask it practically every morning, mostly as a joke to myself. This time, I’m not making the joke only to myself.
“You’re in my bed,” a big wall of mythical muscle rumbles behind me.
I roll over backward and look up at him. His big head and his massive soulful brown eyes and his incredibly large horns with the sharp tips.
“Wow,” I breathe. “You’re amazing.”
“And you’re adorable,” he says, tapping my nose lightly with one big, thick finger.
There’s a chime at the door, then it slides open to reveal Kronos.
“You can’t keep her all for yourself,” he says.
Boss rumbles with laughter. “She’s been asleep the whole time. She just woke up.”
“You’re telling me she slept for ten hours?”
“She slept for ten hours,” he says.
“You’re telling me you didn’t mate her?”
“I didn’t mate her,” Boss says.
“I made her breakfast in the galley,” Kronos says. “She needs to eat. Come and eat, pet.”
I am quite hungry, actually, so I slide out of bed. If these massive aliens want to wait on me hand and foot, who am I to say no?
“She’s naked!” Kronos exclaims.
“Her clothes were filthy,” Boss said. “I took them off her.”
“She needs to wear something,” Kronos says.
He strips off his shirt and beckons me toward his big, muscle-rippling body.
I go like a moth to a flame. When I move, I notice that my pussy is aching.
It doesn’t feel bad. It just feels intense.
I have never had sex like that before. And I have never woken up this way, instantly in demand by multiple hot and horny males.
This is probably some kind of trauma response to all the drama of the attempted murder and the traveling across the galaxy and then the next attempted murder and then the public sex and then the abduction that ends in breakfast?
Kronos pulls the shirt over my head, snugs it down over my arms and torso, where it falls like a dress to my knees, and picks me up in one arm.
“I don’t need to walk?”
“You don’t need to do anything, pet,” he says.
Oh, I could get used to this. Being carried around, cosseted, cared for? Yes, please.
He carries me into a small kitchen that nonetheless has everything he needs to make something that smells like…
“I’ve made one of the most popular human dishes,” he says, sitting me down in front of a steaming hot plate of food.
He’s made chicken fried rice, which is so good and so easy on the stomach I’m actually thrilled. This might be one of the nicest things anybody has done for me. Even when I had my fancy apartment, I had to cook for myself most of the time because the idea of dating made me want to dry heave.
“How did you know to do this?”
He slides a tablet across to me. There’s a book on it with a title page that says: How to Cook for Humans.
“I’ve been reading this since last night. Then I went to the market. There’s a lot of human food in at the moment because of the auction.”
I eat my breakfast. It’s absolutely delicious.
The chicken seems extra chicken-y. There’s a good bet it doesn’t come from a bird.
Chicken in the floating cities does not come from chickens either.
It comes from the chicken factory where it is assembled from pressed insect parts and plant protein—just like real chickens used to be, allegedly.
“Thank you for making this for me. It’s so good. It’s been so long since I had food made. Like, forever.”
“You didn’t have a mate on Earth?”