That’s a pure woman – a woman you’d be proud to call your Mate.
But, she’s a woman who hates us.
“I’ll see what I can find.” I turn my eyes to my battle-brothers. “Otho, why don’t you send out the drones? Brennan, we’ll also need to rent a shuttle. We can’t pilot our Reaver around the city without bringing eyes on us. Find us a shuttle that’s at least twenty years old – running T-32 security systems, so I can hack and delete the location tracking history when we’re done with it.”
Brennan nods. Otho is checking the readout on his comms.
“I’ll set up drones at a fake location,” he explains, tapping away at the wrist-unit. “If Mr. Carani tracks them down, thinking they’re us, we’ll see what kind of men he sends to kill us.”
I take a deep breath, my chest rising. With actions decided, I feel confident now. My mind is working again–and my plan is a good one.
Mr. Carani may find out about the shuttle we rent, and he may even find the fake location our drones will mislead him to follow. In that case, we’ll see if he’s cooperating with us, in exchange for his daughter’s safety – or if he’s going to attack with brute force.
As I’ve been plotting, Brennan has been looking out the huge windows at the city down below. It’s as if he’s searching in the smoggy gloomy for a place where we can hide. The dark city below could swallow you up whole.
Then, with a sigh, Brennan sits down wearily at the table.
I know what’s on his mind, even without feeling it through the Bond we share. Brennan had to be in the bedroom alone with her – and if I’d been in his situation, I don’t know if I could have maintained control of myself.
But kidnapping is one thing. Taking a woman by force is another.
That’s the truest evil that can be committed – the greatest act of savagery. No matter how much I might ache for Carani’s beautiful daughter, I will not succumb to the Old Ways – when Aurelians acted as if humans belonged to our species; and we kept women as nothing more than slaves to our desires.
There’s a reason they call them the ‘old’ ways. Sometimes, old things need to die.
I swallow hard, my cock surging at the thought of that gorgeous girl in the bedroom next door. I imagine her on her knees, looking up at me with pure lust filling those big, beautiful eyes.
Brennan nods, and the movement snaps me from my lustful imaginings.
“Yes. Go get supplies, Lazar. Otho – send out the drones. We need to find a location we can slip in and out of unnoticed. Then, we’ll open communications with Mr. Carani.”
Otho and I began grabbing our stuff. Brennan continues talking:
“Make sure you get enough food. I don’t know how much human women eat.” He paused. “Bloody Hell, what do they wear? It seems women on every planet have their own different style.”
“That’s why I prefer to keep them naked,” Otho grunts, securing his keycard, credentials, and drone gear. I ignore him.
“The only human women I’ve interacted with are the ones in the harems,” I growl, remembering visiting more venerable Aurelians on our home world of Colossus, and seeing the dozens or sometimes hundreds of human women they accumulate. “They all seemed to love dresses and the color pink. That’s all I fucking know about them.”
Some Aurelian Warriors our age are already amassing their own harems – a tradition of our species. After one hundred years of service to the Empire have been completed, every surviving warrior is granted huge holdings and wealth; and most use it to attract scores of human females to volunteer and join their harems.
In amassing these communities of women, these Aurelians hope to increase their chances of finding the one – their Fated Mate.
But it is a strategy that failed for a thousand years – which is why Otho, Brennan and I have not followed the same path.
Even after our hundred years of fighting, killing, and conquering in service to our Empire, we’ve still never settled down to grow our own harem. There’s a wanderlust to us three – one that wasn’t quelled by the millions of lightyears we traversed during our years of service.
There’s something else to it, too… Amassing a harem of our own seems trite, and cruel.
Humans live just a fraction of the lifespan of Aurelians, so an Aurelian who forges an emotional connection with a human curses themselves.
They’ll be forced to watch that human grow old and die. Only a Fated Mate, when the Bond is forged, can live as long as her Bonded triad. All other humans wither and die in decades, when we stay young and vibrant for centuries.
To spare ourselves from that grim reality, my Triad and I have spurned the notion of amassing a harem, and have never been with the same woman for longer than a few weeks.
But, as a result, none of us truly knows what goes on in a human woman’s head.
My mind is clear now, and I shove aside the frivolity of human fashion as I walk to our private elevator. It will take me down to the ground floor, where I know a walk in this city will do me well.
But, as I pass the bedroom door, I catch her scent.
My body tenses. I force myself to keep walking forward – despite every instinct urging me to burst through the bedroom door and claim Carani’s daughter.
She’s a virgin. That alone would drive me wild with lust – her unclaimed, untouched innocence is just aching to be claimed, and the thought of doing so overwhelms me like a drug…
But there’s more to it than that.
I’m drawn to her. I’m drawn to Carani’s daughter like a doomed starship circling
