Battle Queen: Red Ruler Series (Book 1) Page 7

  Before I hardly knew what I was doing, I ran my thumb along her brow. “Rest, my Stars,” I whispered soothingly. Welo’s head tipped forward into my touch and she sighed deeply. I couldn’t, didn’t, want to read too much into her sleepy expression. On instinct I looked up, and found Merooth’s hooded eyes watching me.

  “Stay,” he purred softly.

  “You know I can’t,” I sighed softly.

  “Hs’tar...”

  Whatever else Merooth was going to say was lost to the wind as I made a hasty exit back downstairs to Welo’s office. Picking up my clothes I dressed quickly and headed out the door for my own office one floor down.

  ********

  I leaned back on the heavy stone door. My office was similar to Welo’s with its large stone desk but my large window stood opposite my desk, not behind it. I had enough of a target painted on my back that I wouldn’t invite opportunity by also having a window there.

  Every wall was lined with hidden doorways and panels. Each led to a different sensitive location and or held stacks and stacks of various weaponry. Mel felt I was being a bit excessive, even obsessive, but if worse came to worse my office would be an easily defensible staging area. I breathed in the familiarity of metal and cold stone but each breath was laced with Welo’s intoxicating scent.

  Her pheromones, her sweat, her saliva, and the honey from her cunt permeated my skin and clothing. I groaned feeling my cock bulge and twist behind its protective slit. I pushed away from the door and paced to the window. Nightfall was well underway and the city sparkled with lights in a rainbow of colours.

  I smiled. Welo had demanded we have a beautiful city planned out, personally designing and coordinating how things would look. The cost had been astronomical at the time. She convinced me and the others that it was a needed investment. We had to ‘reinvest in ourselves’, she had said. When word of mouth traveled that this former shit hole of a slave planet had been made into a jewel, profits from tourism had skyrocketed. Tourists! To this backwater hell hole! I laughed to myself.

  At the time, I had told her that if we used anymore colours that spectators would rename her the ‘Rainbow Warrior’. She had laughed and smiled at me. It was the first real smile I had seen on her face in the hellish year since she led us to freedom. She excitedly explained that where she was from that was the name of the locally loved sports team. She had giggled saying she wouldn’t mind the comparison at all since the origin of the name came from a legend told by her people.

  I looked up at the stars above, watching the arrival and departure of various ships. Things had become strained between us after that first year. I had to show my men that I wasn’t once again a slave, but this time to Welo, as I had been with our former leader. Sylean culture was so far past broken that we didn’t know how to function as decent civilised beings.

  Slavery, rape, destruction, and death was all we had ever known. Not even our own people were spared from it. Some had heard stories of Sylea being respected but the tales of it were buried so far in the past that no one really believed them. What mattered now was that Syleans were feared and despised. We didn’t hesitate to cross any boundaries, and burned past any limitations. We were a well and truly fallen civilisation.

  “Merooth, mate.”

  I hissed low in my throat, knowing he would just enter on his own and not wait for my permission. The door slid open behind me. “I’m not in the mood for one of your lectures, Merooth.” My irritation was met only with silence. I shook my head knowing I just needed to get this over with. Whatever Merooth had to say would only be a repeat of what he always said with regards to Welo.

  I turned and stopped in my tracks. He leaned casually against my office door. Naked as the day he was born. My breath caught in my throat. Syleans had no sexual or gender preference. Or at least none that I ever knew of. Asserting your will over others made rape a cornerstone of Sylean survival. How could you grow to know what you liked or didn’t like if it was always a struggle to fend off what others could simply take from your flesh for themselves?

  Merooth hated wearing clothing beyond a simple loincloth, he said it felt unnatural to be covered by clothes he did not earn himself. In that respect, we were in agreement. As the old leader’s second in command I had the most durable pants out of everyone, and only the old leader had a shirt and pants. Most Sylean slave masters only added fancy jewels or bloody trinkets to their torso belts, never even bothering with a shirt covering.

  “You left us. Again,” Merooth’s soft purr held no judgement, only sadness.

  “You know she hates it when she’s vulnerable around me,” I wasn’t in the mood for another back and forth over Welo.

  Merooth pushed off the door and prowled forward. The slabs of muscle over muscle shifted and bunched under his soft pelt. His cock bounced hard and heavy as he moved on silent feet. My own cock pushed against the thin slit that held it back, eager for Merooth’s approach.

  “I am angry with both of you,” his furious words shook me from my lust filled stupor. I pushed up from the window sill but he used his broader body to push up against my chest and hold me where I stood. He pressed his forehead to mine. He nuzzled his nose against my own, licking his lips. “I can taste you both on my tongue,” he tore off my shirt from my upper body, kissing me hard and deep.

  The taste of Merooth and Welo exploded in my mouth and I moaned. I curled my fingers in his short hair and pulled tightly making him gasp. I seized my opportunity and invaded his mouth with my tongue, sucking and licking all that I could from them both into my soul. Merooth twisted his head away from my mouth and began kissing and licking down my throat and chest. His claws raked my back, making fresh wounds besides those created by Welo.

  He ripped my pants open and dipped his fingers into my protective slit. I shouted in pain and pleasure. He coaxed out my cock and played with the tip as I tried to wrap it around his fist. I reached down and tried to grasp his own cock but he batted my hand away, biting down on my chest and lapping away at the blood.

  Merooth fisted his barbed cock and carefully wound my own around his in a spiral. The pain of the barbs on my sensitive flesh were instantly soothed by the aphrodisiac that they leaked. I trembled from the wave of euphoria that always came when his barbs pierced my flesh. Taking in deep shuddering breaths I tried to collect my scattered thoughts.

  “This,” Merooth’s large hand covered our combined cocks. He tightened his grip making the barbs dig deeper and his natural aphrodisiac surge through my blood stream. I cried out and bucked my hips in time with his as he stroked us tightly. “This, our mate, taught us.”

  I trembled and whimpered into his mouth as he kissed me slower and deeper. Merooth poured his devotion for us both in every stroke of his tongue and glide of his lips. He kept up his slow and steady pace, no matter how hard I gripped the back of his neck. I knew I had to be drawing blood because I could smell it in the air.

  “She-She is your mate,” I stammered between kisses, “She does not want me, Merooth.”

  “You say she does not want you. She says you do not want her,” he scoffed and increased his pace.

  “Fuck! Merooth—“ My cry cut off on a gasp as his grip tightened and his stroked our cocks at a furious pace.

  “You both are too sensitive, too stubborn,” he growled, “This. We. We, should be inside her right now like this. Surrounded only by the bliss of her love for us.”

  “She doesn’t—“

  “Enough!” He shouted. He slammed his mouth on mine forcing me to swallow back the lies I know I told myself everyday. He stroked us harder and harder until on a scream we came all over each other. Our harsh panting filled the silence of the room. Our cocks slipped slowly apart.

  Completely unconcerned about the stickiness covering his hand Merooth held my face and kissed me lovingly. He smiled mischievously and smeared our combined cum across my cheek and mouth, then lapped at my lips. I wrapped my arms around him not giving a shit about the mess.


  “She won’t ever make the first move, Hs’tar,” he sighed, “She’s so afraid of pressuring you into loving her, or taking away your choices that she’s stepped back.” He frowned, huffing out a breath. “She can’t see that she’s stepped back so far, it’s made you question whether she loves you at all.” Merooth covered my mouth with his hand before I could speak, and looked into my eyes. “She’s not afraid to be vulnerable around you, Hs’tar. She’s afraid that when you care for her it is out of guilt or obligation, and not love.” I lifted my eyebrows exaggeratedly and waited so see if he would let me speak. He seemed to pause and ponder his options so I narrowed my eyes and scowled dramatically. He laughed and kissed the back of his fingers covering my mouth before pulling away.

  “What do you want me to say, Merooth?” I asked because I was seriously out of ideas. “She has barely allowed me to touch her in a year, and only when her heat was so desperate that she needed us both.” I knew I spoke with bitterness on my tongue but I couldn’t shake the hurt of his words.

  “You have not given much reason for her to want your touch, Hs’tar,” he rebuked.

  “That is not fair!” I yelled. “I have only ever wanted her, since I had the choice to want someone and they want me. She’s the one who went to Bibi first!”

  “Do you even know why she spent so many nights with Bibi,” Merooth shouted right back.

  “Who wouldn’t want night after night with a Pxylar female,” I scoffed. I had never expected monogamy from Welo, her people took multiple mates and my people just took people whether they were willing or no.

  “So you’re too afraid to ask, is that it?”

  “Fuck you, Merooth! Maybe I don’t want to hear how when she was in need, it wasn’t me that she came for,” I let the festering hurt spew from my mouth. I shoved past Merooth but he caught my arm and spun me around to face him.

  “And where were you, exactly,” it was a rhetorical question but he continued on before I could make a sarcastic remark, “You were trying to solidify your position as a true leader here among your men because they couldn’t comprehend that you weren’t just another second in command. Again.”

  I pushed him back but it was like trying to move a mountain. He only grunted and leaned into my hands on his chest. “I did what I had to do to keep us on equal ground and maintain their respect until they could see with their own eyes what Welo kept trying to tell them.”

  “And I understood that,” he gripped my forearms and pulled me closer to him, “But Welo? All she saw was you pulling away. It made her question everything. My reassurances of your choice to be her mate weren’t enough because it kept coming from my mouth and not yours!”

  “Then she should have—“

  “Should have what exactly?” He challenged. “She should have demanded more of your time or for you to reassure her? Undermining your position further?” I pulled my arms from his grasp and ran my hands along my scalp. Sitting on the edge of my desk, I stared at the floor. “Just so you know she went to Bibi, because Bibi needed her.”

  I snorted and shook my head. “Of course, everyone wants and needs the Battle Queen,” I didn’t bother hiding the toxic jealousy in my words.

  “Bibi was severely damaged when she was sold to us,” Merooth’s soft and broken voice was not the rebuke I was expecting. I glanced up and saw the pain and sadness in his eyes. “She would only respond to whoever was the strongest. She was a bait prize for fighters from the central worlds.” My heart squeezed in shame and pain. Merooth had been a bait prize to wealthy owners. His size had made him look ferocious but his people weren’t fighters at all. The People were long range hunters, creatures of quiet and stealth. They were made for stalking and tracking.

  When Merooth inevitably lost a match he could never have won he was given either as a prize or a placating gesture by the old leader. Whichever paid extra to vent their anger or celebrate their win could have him for the night to do with as they pleased.

  “Bibi was so thoroughly broken that Welo had to retrain her to eat, shit, piss, and even fuck on her own,” Merooth shook his head and lowered his gaze, “Even now, Welo only goes to Bibi’s bed when Bibi asks. And Welo does it because she wants to encourage Bibi to take the chance at asserting what she wants or doesn’t want.”

  “I’m sorry,” I stepped up and pulled Merooth’s head onto my shoulder. Slowly I stroked his hair back as he wrapped his thick arms around me. I breathed in his calming scent, “I just don’t know what to do at this point, neither one of us expected monogamy but a small part of me hoped there would be at least some loyalty.” Merooth kissed my neck and leaned back.

  “Freedom is new for all of us. Having choices is new,” he palmed the back of my neck and massaged the tight muscles there until I sighed away the tension. “You both talk to me, but neither of you talk to each other. All I’m asking is that next time, you talk with her. She wants you to push, she wants to know you’re with her for her. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “And if it’s not enough?”

  “Oh, my stubborn mates,” he huffed in frustration, “you two will make my pelt as grey as the mountain passes with hardheadedness.” I laughed and he kissed me one more time before slipping from my embrace. My shirt was ripped and on the floor, my pants were half hanging off my ass, and my chest had a bloody welt above my hearts. Merooth had ripped me wide open. The real question was what was I going to do about it.

  Welo

  “You’re disappointing me, slave.”

  My muscles tensed up and thrummed with terror. No, please not disappointment. I can handle his anger, his rage, but not his disappointment. Not again. The thoughts raced through my head and I felt myself drowning in fear. Fear of the unknown. Anger meant a beating. Rage meant a beating while being gang raped by the guards. But disappointment? I didn’t know what that meant. Would he bolt sharp blades to the bones in my forearm again? No, he ripped those out. Would he put the razor collar on me again and make me dance for him? No, it slit my neck and I almost died last time.

  I racked my brain. My Slave Master wouldn’t respond to fear or meekness. I had seen what he had done to the other women in the prize pen. One was a stinking bloody pile of meat not five feet from me. She had been given as a prize to the wealthy owner who’s fighter had beat me today. I didn’t even know her name. I opened my one eye that wasn’t swollen shut and saw her. Or rather, what little of her long blond hair that was still attached to parts of her caved in skull remained.

  I could fight. She couldn’t. This both reduced her worth but increased her value to our Master. She was nothing more than the holes that could be penetrated for a price. I focused my eye and saw half her skull was caved in around her eye socket. I guess the holes she had weren’t enough, they wanted new ones to fuck. I choked back the vomit that wanted to work its way up. That vomit was the only food I’d been allowed in a day, if I puked it up I’d be forced to lick it up from the floor and eat it again so as not to lose the calories.

  Across the meat pile I saw Mel. Her hair was long and tangled. Matted with someone’s blood, maybe her own. She didn’t dare to move or even breathe deeply. Her eyes, though. Her eyes drilled into my own. I think the blond was the last from our original prize pen. If they came for someone next, it would be her.

  Shaking and soaked in my own blood, piss, and shit I slowly rose to my feet. I had won four matches and lost the last two. My value and my worth were high because I had made it so. But that could easily slip out of my grasp if I let my terror and pain rule me.

  “If you trained me, instead of breaking me, I would win more matches! I would make you more money,” I ended on a hiss of pain and rage. I channelled my first time in the arena and while I knew there were worse things than death I had to prove to our Master that I was an investment to be cultivated and not a novelty to be exploited.

  Our Master hissed out a laugh.

  “Why not both?”

  “FUCK!” I sprang up from the bed, ripping sheets off of
me, pushing backwards until my back slammed against cool stone. “He’s dead. I survived. He’s dead. I survived.” I shook violently but repeated the mantra until I was merely trembling from the nightmare.

  The old leader’s disappointment had taken me to new heights of horror and pain. I had wanted him to see me as an investment and so he did. That’s when he began his gene splicing. Pulling and ripping me a part on every level. My skin was the first to go. I had loved the beautiful brown of my Hawaiian skin, it was a perfect mix of my mother’s lighter skin and my father’s darker.

  No, that wasn’t enough. The old leader wanted me to shine and gleam in glory. He worked endlessly to give my skin a softness that made me look like a vulnerable human, but he made sure it was nearly impregnable to cuts and stabs. Sun kissed was what I used to describe myself now. My skin was somewhere between gold and bronze, like the two metals had been infused into the skin cells itself. The old leader loved the aquatic fights he put me in because I glimmered and glowed as I was splashed with water and blood.

  I snorted and pulled my knees up to my chest, placing my face against my thighs. All I had to do was watch my skin boil, peel, crack, and slough off my raw muscles again and again to achieve it. Looking up I saw the red giant just above the horizon. With two suns our nights were usually short, but it depended on where we were in the yearly rotation.

  I kicked off the bed and threw the sheets back on. “I need a fucking shower,” I grumbled. I buried the hurt of waking alone again right under my irritation that I couldn’t even remember how I had gotten from the office to the bed last night. Of course, the still sticky cum between my thighs, ass cheeks, and breasts did give me a clue.

  The hidden door to my left slid silently open at my approach. A giant curved bathing pool filled half the space. Its edges abutted the open archways making it look like the water poured out of them. Vines with a wide rainbow of colourful and pungent flowers climbed up the archways and ceiling. A natural pergola formed from the wall opposite of the bathing pool. Steam wisped up from the pool but I wasn’t in the mood. I didn’t need relaxation, I needed a wake up.