A thin line of sweat burns at my eyes.
My eyes. Those glittering, gleaming, diamond eyes. My traitorous eyes.
My heart pounds. Inspector Haratar is already getting suspicious. The clock has started ticking for just how long we can hide what we’ve done.
“It’s been pretty standard since our initial problems,” I lie. “We’ll send over a full report once we collect the new prisoners on Salcus.”
Haratar smiles, and my anxiety lowers. Suddenly, he seems back to normal. I’m confident he still trusts us. He even gave me praise earlier – something that would have once filled me with pride.
Now I feel shame. Inspector Haratar is like a father to me – or as close as one as you can get, in an all-male society that normally breeds through the cryo-chamber cloning process.
Yes – like a father to me. For that reason, he doesn’t expect me to be the one to drive a knife through his guts. It’ll be his own trusted men who’ll tarnish the honor and reputation of Aurelian Law Enforcement.
To add insult to injury, Haratar adds: “Very good. Bring this one home and I can guarantee your promotion.”
He cuts the feed with his characteristic abruptness, and I clench my jaw.
There was once a time in which the promise of a promotion would have been everything I’d wanted. Now, I know I’ll never be allowed to wear the uniform of Law Enforcement again – and we’ll all be arrested if they discover what we’ve done.
But I don’t have the luxury of fear. As the leader of my triad, I can’t let doubt sink into my mind.
I turn to Kitos and Hadrian.
“This changes nothing,” I promise. “We’ll go to Salcus. We’ll find a way to avoid detection while our Reaver is repaired. Then we’ll get the fuck out of here. We’ll go far, far away from the Aurelian Empire – somewhere they’ll never follow us.”
Hadrian and Kitos look up doubtfully. On Old-Earth they had an expression about “the long arm of the law.”
Well, Aurelian Law Enforcement has a very long arm.
I don’t have answers for them right now. I nod towards the hallway, instead.
“I’m going to speak with Allie. She needs to know what the Bond means.”
She needs to know – because now, everything depends on her.
14
Allie
I sit on the huge bed, where a short while ago Hadrian and Kitos roughly mated with me.
It’s enormous – built for the frame of a seven-feet-tall Aurelian warrior – and it swallows me up.
Talking of which – there are now three foreign presences swallowing me up; inside my fucking mind…
…and yet I’ve never felt so alone.
My mind churns as I try to make sense of what just happened.
It all seemed so simple at the time – my plan, I mean.
Step one - seduce the Aurelians. Make them disgrace themselves and force them to set me free. By the laws of their own Empire, they’d have violated such a basic prisoner right that I could no longer be held accountable for even my own former crimes.
It was a foolproof scheme. I’d spent years studying the nuances of Aurelian law just in case this exact situation arose...
This exact situation. Fuck! I never saw this situation coming.
In trying to be free of them, I instead linked myself irrevocably to those three Aurelians.
I reach inside my thoughts and feel the Bond. In my mind. It’s quieter now – but the presence of those three Aurelians still remains there.
It’s ironic. All my life I’ve had an attraction to Aurelians. What woman could say she didn’t?
Physically, their species is utter perfection. They’re so much more than mere human men. They’re something… above us…
…and yet they know it.
But that haughty arrogance… Dammit, that’s one of the things that makes them so alluring. Like so many other human women, I’ve always ached for them…
…but now, my attraction is more than an ache. It’s infinitely more intense – more insistent.
I pull myself up from the bed. My entire body is sore and aching. I can still feel those huge cocks inside of me. I can still feel their seed dribbling down my thighs. My legs shake as I force myself to stand and walk to the side door of the bedroom. I press the button and the door hisses open, rewarding me with access to a shower. I step forward, slumping down onto the floor and wrapping my arms around myself as I try to process this new reality.
“AI, hot water,” I demand, my voice shaking.
The hot water deluges down on me. I snort bitterly. No matter what has changed, nothing can take away the simple pleasure of a hot, relaxing shower – especially when you have muscles as sore as mine are. Beneath the deliciously scalding water I breathe in and out, slowly trying to get my mental bearings.
Everything has changed.
At the same time – nothing has changed.
My situation is the same. I’m still the captive of these three Aurelians. Now I’m just a different sort of captive.
The only thing that’s really changed is that now they won’t be able to take me back to Colossus. Yet, I know they still won’t let me go free, either. Not now they know I’m the human they were destined to spend their lives searching for – their Fated Mate.
I need to learn more about the Bond. Right now, I can feel the three warriors in my mind. They’re in the cockpit right now. Their location is hazy, but I can get a general sense of their proximity to me.
I need to find a way to force them out of my mind so they can’t track me the way I can currently track them – otherwise, any attempt at escape will only be temporary.
Yet there’s a twinge of nervous energy – one that
