Page 58 of Her Alien Boss

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Arkon

Just when I think the process of mad-sciencing a goddess into being has had enough unintended side effects, along comes another unexpected event. I don’t know how the hell any of that happened, but I do know that the Fematrix is not responding to my cues, and that my human mate is in as precarious a position as she has ever been. I was just trying to keep her safe, and now…

“Drak! What the hell!”

I have stormed off to find the only person capable of dealing with this. I am glad I did not kill him as I wanted to when I first discovered he’d sawed my lover’s brain out of her skull and installed it in the machine.

I didn’t kill him.

But I did make his life very unpleasant.

Drak is in the cage in my bedroom. Not a perfect place for him, rather small, but it is the most humiliating place I could think of to make him stay while I think of somewhere worse for him to be.

I find him sitting on the floor with his back against the bars, apparently unconcerned by his predicament when I burst in.

“Which hell are we referring to?” He asks the question far too calmly for my liking.

“The one where that fucking robot put its fist through the side of our facility and took Evie while I was trying to punish her.”

“Ah,” he says. “Interesting. I wondered if something like this might happen.”

It seems to me that the last few days have consisted of almost nothing but wanting to kill this man while simultaneously reminding myself I need him alive. We all do.

“Something like what?” I ask the question through gritted teeth.

“If it is as you say it is, it would seem that the machine has bonded with her. There are circuits upon circuits inside the goddess, so many that she is effectively a more conscious brain than some, or perhaps most humans.”

“And how do I get the machine to return her?”

“She’ll likely do that in her own time, when she is satisfied that Evie is not in any danger.”

“She was never in any danger from me,” I say. “I was trying to discipline her.”

“Fine line for a creature like the Fematrix to discern,” Drak says, inspecting his fingernails. “I could put in a word for you, I suppose. Perhaps re-engineer a few circuits to make things like this less likely?”

“If you can, then you must.”

“I must do nothing,” he says, glancing at me with a cutting look. “You are asking for a favor, and that favor is not owed to you in the slightest. If I do this, I will want my freedom.”

“You don’t deserve freedom,” I say.

“And arguably, you don’t deserve a human mate. Or any mate. You don’t deserve anything more or less than me. We’ve both been building a weapon capable of mass destruction and trying to, one way or another, stick a human to it. You’re not better than me just because you discovered the fact you like sticking your cocks in her.”

He makes this argument on his knees, his three hands wrapped around three different bars. He looks silly. And he’s partially right.

“You can let me out and give me my freedom, or she can take her chances with the Fematrix and whatever the machine has decided is best for her.”

“You’re telling me the machine wants her back?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I could possibly know, if I could look at the outputs and had access to my office. But I don’t know, because I’m in a fucking crate in your fetid excuse for a bedroom.”

I have no choice. I unlock the cage and let him out. “Don’t do anything to hurt her,” I say.

“Don’t worry,” he replies. “At this stage, I am much more invested in the prospect of hurting you. You, my friend, are becoming incredibly hurtable.”

“Go and help her, or I am going to stuff you inside an even smaller cage,” I growl.