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“I brought you here to entertain me and avoid taking a couple of my mother’s handpicked sluts,” he breathed. “Part of that job—a critical part—is giving me an heir. I can fuck anyone on this ship a hundred times over and find one that’ll take eventually. That’s what some colonies do. Did you know that? But there’s a problem, you see. Do you know what that is, Kaia?”
She shook her head, just a little, but it was enough. She tried to look away, but the part of him that lurked now just beneath the surface wouldn’t let her. It captured her eyes across the distance between them as easily as if he’d plucked them from her head and held them fixed in his fingers.
“Can’t have a bunch of goddamn women addicted to exorin running around the colony. Some, maybe. A few. But fuck if I’m gonna support them the rest of my life. SoColossalcommanders need sacrificial lambs, you see? Someone to take it. Someone to get fucked and give us an heir. That's you now, Kaia.” He paused to appreciate the pulse drumming visibly in her throat. “So that’s what you’ll do. But don’t worry. You’ll like it. When the cravings take hold, you’ll even need it. It won’t be love, but you won’t know the difference and I won’t care because I’ll have my hole and my heir.”
Orion straightened, taking a breath that his imagination infused with salty ocean air to bring himself back down. The itch in his spine subsided by the time he opened his eyes and looked back down at her. “Now stay still for the doctor and let him check if your womb’s working or if I need to send you back to where you came from.”
He’d told her not to worry about it before—that this was a technicality, and that of course nobody expected anyone on this ship to be some magically fertile freak of nature.
But there had to bepotential. There had to besomething. If she were barren, all of Orion’s plans would come crashing down and he’d be forced to take his mother’s picks, after all.
Maybe that wouldn’t even be so bad… He’d have a neat excuse to abandon this little project he stumbled into with no ill standing. After all, it wasn’t his fault if his wife-to-be simply couldn’t bear children to continue the colony legacy. Was his rebellion worth all this fucking hassle?
“Ovaries seem in place, and the uterine tests come back clean. Hormone levels aren’t where they should be, but that’s just malnutrition and dehydration. When was the last time you menstruated?” Doc wasn’t looking at his subject as he spoke, eyes distant as he scanned something in his NS vision.
“I… umm… I don’t know. A few years ago,” she said quietly.
“Uh-huh.” With that, he directed the scanner drone away and slid the ultrasound wand back into its sheath by the side of the table. He slipped his rubber gloves off with two quick snaps, tossing them into a dispenser by his side. “I’d say you’ve got as much potential to conceive as anyone here, so long as you get your weight up and resume your menstrual cycle.”
Kaia’s pinched brow smoothed. Her shoulders loosened as she tilted her head back on the table.
She’s relieved.
Orion realized only then that part of him was expecting her to want an out too. An excuse to run. But she wanted this after all. She wantedhim. Because of course she did—who fucking wouldn’t? Orion chastised himself for even doubting it, letting himself get wound up over her defiance. She was just fucking with him the entire time.
He grabbed her hand on the table, squeezing hard enough to hurt. But her cold little fingers squeezed back. And the smile she gave him was nervous, but real, just barely crinkling the corners of her eyes.
“Just the Neurosync left now.” Doc turned away to prepare the injection.
Kaia ripped her hand from Orion’s grasp, wide eyes darting to the doctor’s hands. “What?”
“The NS. Don’t worry, it’ll be painless,” Doc muttered, reaching under the counter to pull out a vial of threads suspended in gelatinous liquid.
But Kaia was already scrambling off the bed, edging to the door. “No. No Neurosync.”
“I assure you this is quite standard. Colony newborns have it from their first day. It will simply assist with vision overlays and subvocalization comms, as well as emotive links.” The doctor’s little factoids appeared to only be disturbing Kaia all the more.
The glimpse of relief Orion had gotten before dissipated at the prospect of yet another complication.
Great. Another thing that’s going to be a fucking battle.
Bitches weren’t supposed to be this much effort.
He grabbed her arm and dragged her back to the table. She must have been struggling as he shoved her back onto it and slammed her down with his palm against her chest, but he barely noticed.
“Just sedate her and do it.” Orion looked at the doctor, ignoring the string of expletive-laden protests from the writhing thing below him.
The doctor paled. “We can’t perform the implantation with the subject sedated or… resistant. Her brain will be at high risk of rejection.”
“Then you’ll try it again!” Orion boomed, wrangling Kaia’s kicking legs with his other hand.
“Impossible. Rejection destroys the frontal lobe. The subject is likely to end up permanently comatose.”
Orion stared at him for a moment, then down at Kaia, whose heartbeat slammed fast through her sternum against his palm. She clutched his arm with both hands, nails digging crescents into his skin hard enough to draw blood.
He released her with a snarl, letting Kaia clamber off the table and hug her arms to her chest, shaking.
Orion sighed, rubbing at the corners of his eyes. He’d overdone it. God fucking damn it. Of course she was scared. Neurosync implants were only common on colonies—to outsiders, the things probably looked like worms burrowing into their brains. It wasn’t even her objection to the NS that set him off, but her defiance.
