Chapter 18

Rikash was woken from his sleep by his comm. His mate still slept heavily against his chest, her hand on his chest, and her leg over his. He crooned a little to keep her that way. She had earned her rest. He had been pleasantly surprised by her behaviour and her responses to copulating with him. He could feel the scratches she had managed to score down his back, an impressive feat considering her lack of claws, and, for the first time, she had participated in scent marking him, something that he had found incredibly arousing. He grew hard at the memory. Hopefully whatever had necessitated the comm, could be quickly resolved, so that he could seek relief by taking his sleeping mate again. "What?" He answered the comm, keeping his voice toned low, though he did not hide his irritation. "Apologies, Arken." Nadyr s voice was also toned low, though he had no mate, so his second was trying not to be overheard by someone nearby, which brought Rikash to alert immediately. "What is it, Nadyr?" "The Darfur has landed. Verika was amongst the passengers." Rikash grimaced. And there went any opportunity to bury himself back in his mate. "Understood." He eased himself out from under his mate, and picked her up, carrying her into the den, and sliding her under the covers of the mating platform, crooning gently as he did so. He contemplated cleansing as his mate had been rather thorough with her efforts to reciprocate the scent marking, but there was an appeal to rubbing Verika s nose, quite literally, in his having taken a mate after her refusal to fulfill the role. He dressed and paused. He was pleased with his mate, and he ought to reward her behaviour, especially as he may not return before she woke to reinforce that she had pleased him in order to encourage her to continue to do so. He had time, he decided, and took the elevator down to the hoard, bringing back one of the dresses and laying it over the foot of the bed. That would be sufficient. She knew that he had removed her clothing because of her misbehaviour with the lead. The return of one dress would communicate to her that she had pleased him and encourage her to continue to do so in order to earn back the others. Pleased with the solution, he returned to the elevator and took it down to the ground floor. The foyer was stacked with crates of supplies, as the occupants of the tower prepared to relocate. Verika s arrival would complicate matters, he thought grimly, as he strode out onto the street, the smell of the corpses hitting him in a warm wave of rotting flesh. He had planned to leave his mate in the domicile whilst he led the next attack, and relocate her once the new site was secured, but he could not trust that Verika would not dispose of the girl in his absence. If his mate had been pregnant, it would have been another matter, the dominant female would not have dared to attack a kit carrying mate, but his mate was not pregnant. Which was irritating. The best the medic could offer as explanation was that the girl was underweight, the result of the deprivations the humans had experienced after their initial attack and then her time in the holding pens for the mate markets. He had suggested that Rikash increase the frequency and quantity that he fed her, and her cycle should resume in time. Time. Rikash snarled. He had wanted to be the first to sire a kit, but already a handful of matings had supplanted his aspirations. No matter. Rikash had been the first to complete the mate bond and was still the only one to have inspired his mate to mate claim him. Furthermore, he wore her claw marks in his back, evidence that the Arken dominant was superior at rutting his mate. But if he didn t sire a child soon, his men would wonder if his seed was weak. Should he take another mate? Kill this one in order to sever the Bond, and take another who was in better condition and ready to conceive? Or just rut with another human? Keep his mate for the pleasure of the established Bond, and use another for breeding? There was no appeal to either option. He was beginning to make headway with his mate, bending her to his will, and training her to behave appropriately, and he didn t want to begin again just as she was sating his dominance nicely with her submission. And rutting without the Bond, when the option of rutting with the Bond was easily accessible, was like rutting with a simulacrum when there was a warm body available. Which brought him back to Verika. Dominant to dominant, they could not Bond, neither would enjoy a permanent arrangement as their dominant needs would be unmet by each other, and Verika would never consent to bear him young, but she had political connections that were valuable to him. Her mother was the Loren dominant, and Verika would inherit the title when her mother surrendered it, as Rikash had inherited his. Though he had taken his ahead of his father s wishes, he amended with a baring of teeth. Verika would not follow the same path, the maternal bond intact and strong. But having Verika in his pocket, would be advantageous for his larger plans to reclaim the power that the Loren and female dominants had been stripping from male dominants drugged by suppressant use into complacency. He approached the open area that they were utilizing for the space-to-surface transports because of its size and proximity to the central-city base-camp. The humans obsession with covering the soil with concrete annoyed him in general as it would take considerable work to expose the soil again, but for this one purpose, it was useful, providing the transport vessels with a landing platform. The soldiers unloading the vehicles saluted him as he passed, and he lifted his chin in acknowledgement. The building that was being used to process new civilian arrivals and to track the supplies brought down from the carrier ships was an ugly construction, squat and wide, functional, practical, but with absolutely no aesthetic value. Nonetheless, they had to work with what was available, and its size and placement made it useful. Its interior was crowded with the disembarked passengers, but the press of bodies parted before him as they scented him. And his mate, he thought smugly, and their combined come. Nadyr stood guard outside a smaller room within the building. "Arken, the Loren-apparent has been offered refreshment, and has been content to wait your arrival." "Good." Rikash opened the door and stepped into the little room. It had a desk pressed against windows that showed the view out of the room but allowed no eyes to penetrate within, and a couch against the far wall, on which Verika lounged. "Verika." "Rikash," she purred it, and then her nose wrinkled with distaste and her tone changed. "You reek of come." "Hmm," he waited to see what she would do. "I had thought it a ploy," she rose to standing flicking her hair out behind her and snarling. "To get me to come out to this barbarian planet that you insisted on taking. That in coming here, we would settle our dispute, and continue from where we were before you began this ridiculous endeavour." "Mmm." He had not intended it as a ploy, but he would not admit as such, as it had been effective. "Why would you do such a thing?" She flexed her muscles, and corded her neck, bulking her form and displaying her strength to him. "We were negotiating an agreement." "You declined," he was irked enough to respond. "You declined to submit." She hissed through her teeth. "It was unreasonable of you to expect submission. I am dominant. I do not submit. We are more than our instincts, we have evolved, we are civilized. We do not let instincts rule us. We are more." "A contradiction," he pointed out. "To take pride in being dominant, but to claim that the instincts that define our dominant natures make us less." She tossed her hair. "You have spent too much time studying history and philosophy, your mind has become confused." She was trying to pace around him, but he had retained his position with the door at his back. "My mind has become clear," he snarled viciously and tensed his muscles to make them stand out against his skin, filling his chest with air to increase his size. "If any other person dared to imply that my mind was anything other than sound, I would tear out their heart and eat it. Be careful, Verika. We have long been friends and lovers, but that does not mean my tolerance for your insults is infinite." The two dominants eyed each other off, and the female resumed her pacing. "You are stalking me, Verika," he glowered. "An instinct, you will note. One that you are indulging in." She spat. "You took a mate," it was an accusation. "And have come to me with the stink of her come all over you." "Yes," he bared his teeth showing off the sharpness of his canine and incisors. "I took a mate who can fulfill my needs." "Needs that have been satisfied by suppressants and simulacrums for generations." "And look where that has gotten us," he pointed out. "There have been no female submissives born since the introduction of suppressants and simulacrums." He sneered the words. "Dominant male suicide rates are at record highs and our penal colonies are full. The rape of submissive males is almost commonplace, as dominant males take any submissive available rather than none. Something needed to be done. And I, Arken dominant, have done it." "If the dominant males were taking their suppressants and using the available simulacrums, as they are meant to-" "Do you take suppressants?" He snarled it at her. "They are not necessary for females." "No," he glared at her. "Because you have harems full of submissive males only too happy to fill your needs." "The suppressants work. They worked for the generations before you came into power, Rikash." "When females take suppressants too, I will go back to taking mine." "It is your vanity and pride that has you following this mad path. The stink of male hormones in this city is rank," Her pacing formed an ever tightening half circle around him, compressing until she stood, her height bringing them almost eye to eye. She inhaled from his shoulder to brow and made a sound of disgust in the back of her throat. "I imagine you all have been beating your chests and roaring about how masculine you are." He growled low in his voice. "I warn you again, be careful, Verika." She evaluated him. "The situation is not un-salvageable," she decided. "We just need to think our way through it, Rikash," she leaned in towards him again and inhaled. "Your mate has not conceived. Snap her neck and discard her. Fill the ships holds with plunder, including a selection of the females of this planet. We will create a harem on the home world, for the dominant males who feel the need to indulge in their instincts. "The males will return to their suppressants, but with access to the harem, like the female dominants. They will find their needs sufficiently met," she activated her comm device and began to enter the details of her thoughts into a document. "You will be the Arken who created a submissive harem for his people. "We will formalize our co-regency once I inherit, and you may have your own private harem, as I have," she paused, and looked at him. "I am capable of being reasonable regarding your desires." "I have created a Bond," he told her. "I am the first dominant male in generations to have done so." He saw something flicker in her eyes, and her pupils pinned. "An overrated, outdated instinct. I do not why you have developed the obsession you have about attaining it." "That is because you have never experienced it," his lip curled in superiority. "If you had, you would not wonder." "Pfft," she placed her hands on his chest, edging into seduction. "Snap her neck and put her out of her misery," she worked the closure at the front of his top open, and then heaved a sigh as she came upon the dried crust of come on his skin. "What the actual f-k, Rikash?" "Scent marking," he regarded her through narrowed eyes, amused. "Following instinct. The origin of the stink of my mate s come that you find so offensive." "You have really led your dominants into the abysses of behaviour, haven t you?" She opened the top further, her intention behind doing so moving from seduction into horrified fascination. "Scent marking, mate marks and bonds. What next? Will you be secluding your mate in a den?" "I have." Her eyebrows raised. "They are a submissive species to tolerate that." "Hmm." He did not feel the need to disclose his mate s attempt to bypass the lead, nor that he was using a collar and lead in order to force her seclusion. "I will not order my men back onto suppressants, nor will we abandon our ventures on this planet. I will, however, counter offer you, Verika. "We will formalize our connection, and rule together, as we have previously discussed. But, as you intend to keep your harem, I will keep my mate. You will not bear me young, but she will. You will not submit, but she will." She lifted her chin in order to glower down her nose. "My mother would not agree to those terms." "Those are my terms. Take them or leave them," he turned and left the room, closing the door behind him. Nadyr stepped to his side. "See that she is escorted to suitable accommodation and attended, but do not allow her free roam of the city, do not allow her communication with our men, or the colonists, and do not allow her near the building where I am denning my mate. Do not disclose that location to her." "Yes, Arken." Rikash strode back through the streets strung with rotting corpses towards his domicile, snarling to himself. Suppressants and simulacrums, evolution and civilization, had been the catch cry of the female dominants since the invention of the medication that sedated dominant males out of the urge to pursue gratification for the urges their very nature demanded they sate. Like his males, he did not want to live his life sedated. He had challenged his father, who had been content to continue to support the mandatory medication of dominant males, taking the title of Arken for himself, and for his men, so that he could free them from being unnaturally drugged. He could not understand why, with the evidence of his success literally on his body, and with his reasonable counteroffer, Verika would continue to promote her mother s agenda to return the dominant males to suppressants. As he stood in the elevator, he gripped himself around the sensitive ring of the gland that would lock him into his mate, stroking to stimulate and gratify himself. He would take his mate hard enough that she would bite him again, he decided. He would continue to seed her until a kit took in her womb. He would indulge in her and the Bond as nature intended him to do, as was his right as a dominant male. He kicked something heavy as he stepped into his domicile, and his eyes dropped to the carpet, puzzled, and then his guts twisted as he spotted the lead lying on the ground instead of adhered to the wall as it should be. He turned and looked at the space it had occupied as if to deny what his eyes told him to be true. Had it malfunctioned? Could the leads even malfunction? He had never heard of it happening. How long had it been on the ground? Had it just happened? Where was his mate? He felt his heart race and heard his own snarls as if they came from someone else as he threw himself across the living space, tracking her scent into the bedroom. He threw back the covers, and almost broke when he found her there, looking surprised and alarmed by the rude awakening and the sight of him snarling down at her like a feral beast. He tore her dress from her, and freed himself from his trousers, thrusting into her brutally, almost choking on his snarls, driven to the edge of madness by his need to take, to reaffirm his possession of and claim to her. He felt her hands in his hair, pulling his head back, and her mouth and teeth against his throat as she wrapped herself around him. He lifted them both so that his legs were folded beneath him, not content with his weight on her, wanting gravity to drag her down on him as he thrust to the full extent of his strength into her. Her teeth closed on his bottom lip, drawing blood. He roared, holding her down as he drove himself into her, and felt the bite of her nails across the wounds she had already left on his back as she made them bleed anew. Her legs held her tightly to him, her ankles crossed behind his back, and her cries were as savage as his as she ground her hips down on him, as if she wanted more of him than he was already giving her. The Bond was the red of blood, the black of sin, the purple of lust, swirling in a rage between them. His vision went white as he came, or she did, he could no longer differentiate, the sensation overwhelming him. As he lay, his face in the curve of her neck, breathing in her scent, his c-k buried and bound in her by his gland, he realized that he had been entirely panicked by the idea that she would not be in the den, on the mating platform. That he had been terrified that she had left him, and that he might not be able to find her again, or that he would find her damaged or dead. This was more than his dominant nature, he thought with shock. More than his pride and position. She had become his.