Chapter 27
Trove
His mate was so brave. So strong. How she managed to tell her story and keep her gaze on him he couldn’t imagine. His eyes were locked on the wall, unable to glance her way. Even his upper eye couldn’t look at her as it usually wanted to do.
He could barely see her starting to walk away, and he knew she was giving him space, giving him time, and he appreciated her for it. He adored how thoughtful she was. How she wasn’t going to force him to talk.
Maybe that was why he could unlock his tongue. Maybe the desire to bring her back, to not be away from her, was what finally dragged the words from him. But it still somehow sounded like someone else speaking when he said-
“No one ever heard me scream.”
Chee stopped halfway across the room and turned back. His guts twisted up, and he was nauseated in the wake of the confession.
But his mate was strong and brave enough to talk to him. Surely, he could do the same for her. He could give her the same thing she gave him.
It wasn’t easy though. His tongue may have unlocked, but it was still heavy, his guts still churning and rioting, his blood freezing in his veins.
He didn’t understand. Talking was so easy.
So, why did it take so much effort to gather his rushing thoughts together into something comprehensible?
Into something that explained a past that haunted his nightmares to this day?
“It was my aunt,” he finally managed to say, building from her story.
From her strength. “I don’t remember when it started.
I just know I was young. Too young. She used me like I was a toy, and it didn’t matter if my body was too immature to respond like a grown male’s.
That wasn’t the point. She didn’t need my cock to get what she wanted from me.
And it didn’t matter if I screamed, if I cried, if I begged her to stop, because it was her… and it was my mother.”
He felt Chee’s gaze. He felt a hard weight in his chest, like a stone where his heart should be. He didn’t know if he’d say it was getting easier to keep talking, but it wasn’t as hard to find the words. They were just there, rushing up like sickness, burning and sticky in his throat.
“The male who sired me was not my mother’s mate.
By my people’s beliefs, that meant he wasn’t actually my father.
He didn’t have any part in raising me. Our culture demands he give my mother monetary support for me only until she finds her mate, who would then take over as my father.
I never met the male. I don’t care to either.
But that meant I was raised by my mother and aunt alone.
It was just the three of us in that house. In that place. In that…”
His voice broke and he clenched his jaw and eyes shut tight. It was weird how they were fighting to emerge and struggling to come together at the same time.
He heard Chee move, and for a moment he thought she was coming towards him. Maybe to offer him comfort. To touch him…
His skin chilled at the thought. He was going to be sick.
But no. He heard her weight sink back onto the side of the bed. She had gone back to her spot. She was waiting. Listening. She wasn’t touching him.
She wouldn’t touch him.
“They locked me in the basement below our house. It’s fairly common to not send younglings to community schooling on Turv, so no one questioned me never leaving.
If they even knew about me. The door to the basement was always locked.
But even if it wasn’t, they kept all the exits locked and the widows barred so if I managed to get out, I couldn’t escape. ”
He’d tried. The first time he managed to slip from the basement he’d been so relieved, so hopeful. Just to find his way blocked by those sealed windows. He wasn’t ready for that barrier. He didn’t know how to get past them. And then they caught him and dragged him right back into the basement.
“To the rest of the world, my mother and aunt were highly respected females. They were good at their jobs. They were called brave and strong and proud – all desirable traits for my people. They didn’t waste their time chasing pleasures or willing their time away.
No, they were always hard-working and serious.
“But at home, in our basement, they kept me as… as a pet,” he chuckled.
Not because it was funny, not because he was amused, but because he was struggling.
Because his mind was so completely destroyed from what happened, the reactions were all messed up.
“They trained me from a young age to be the one who tended to their pleasure. They made me a sex toy for them to use. My cock wouldn’t work yet, but that wasn’t what they wanted.
They wanted my tongue. They wanted my fingers.
They wanted me to be a little machine that existed for nothing but their ecstasy, to use and throw away at their convenience. ”
He held up his hand, looking at his clawless fingers.
At the scars that marked the beds. “I got my scars shortly after adolescence. For my people, when we’re young, our claws are more like yours.
Soft and thin. When we get our adult hormones, however, they harden and sharpen and become weapons.
And when I hit that age, my fingers could suddenly be a threat to them.
To their most delicate parts. So they removed them.
They held me down. They ripped them out. And no one heard me scream.”
He still remembered the pain of it. The agony.
Their mockery, telling him to stop complaining.
To just take it. And that he should be proud.
He’d be able to service them better once the claws were gone.
He didn’t need them anyway. A weak, useless male like him was never going to fight.
He was never going to need to struggle. They were taking care of him, because he was so weak and useless, so the claws were just a hindrance to his purpose.
The day he had been de-clawed broke something in him.
Before that, some part of him had actually been trying to please his aunt and mother.
Had been trying to do what they wanted. If he made them happy, if he did as they said, then he was good, right?
He was doing the right thing, wasn’t he?
That’s what they said. He had to be better at giving them pleasure, because that was his only purpose.
But then they’d ripped out his claws. They’d let the skin harden and scar. They’d mocked him for being so weak and useless. And he was confused, because he’d done everything they said. He’d been whatever they wanted.
“I think I started plotting my escape then,” he said, lowering his hand down, back to staring up at the bright ceiling.
“I didn’t know what I’d do. I was so weak.
I was so useless. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t survive without them.
That’s what they told me so many times, over and over again, that I didn’t have a choice but to believe it.
“But they didn’t leave me in the darkness, alone, at all times.
I earned prizes when I was good too. When I did a very good job, they’d get me things as well.
Treats and toys. I asked for things I could build with.
Toys to occupy my time. Innocent things.
Simple things. Harmless things. I did my very best to make them come until their eyes crossed and they melted in my hands so they’d buy me the things I wanted.
They weaponized sex against me. And I did the same thing to them.
“It took a lot of practice, a lot of trial and error, years to build that first pistol. To gather all the things I needed to make it without them noticing. And I was such a good sex toy that entire time, I became a whore so devoted to them, they’d never think to question my actions.
“The night I killed them, my aunt was using me.
Or rather, at that point, I was using her.
I used my mouth and fingers to melt her.
To make her weak and useless. And when she was recovering, when she was lost in her sexual high, I shot her in the chest. In the head.
I beat her with my pistol until she stopped bleeding, until she stopped moving.
“When I went upstairs, the windows were still blocked, but I didn’t care about escaping. Honestly, leaving that house alive was not the plan. I started the fire fully intending on it consuming all three of us. If I died by my own choice, then that was as good as escaping. It was victory for me.
“Mother was used to the screaming. She didn’t even hear it anymore.
She was so focused on readying for work, on being the upstanding female the world saw, she didn’t notice anything was wrong until I was behind her.
She died quicker than my aunt. A shame, really.
I wanted her to suffer more. My aunt was crueler, but I hated my mother more.
For allowing it. For encouraging it. For everything she had made me into.
I wish I could see them die a hundred times.
I still don’t think it would be enough. But it would be a start. ”
It was so hard to start talking. It was so hard to keep talking. But now the difficulty was accompanied with a strange, driving force. Like a pressure was forcing them out through his throat. And while it hurt to let them out, he couldn’t hold them back.
“I didn’t try to escape the burning house.
The front room collapsed, and I could just suddenly see the bright green sky.
It called me out. I don’t think I’d seen it in years at that point.
It hurt my eyes. It burned my skin. Maybe that was the fire, actually, now that I think about it, but it felt like the fresh air pushing the smoke away was like razors.