AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After a moment’s consideration, Vorian nodded. Considering what he told me so far, this was a guy who could empathize with having a shitty dad.
While my heart ticked out time in beat after hard beat, Vorian dropped his hand, the warmth of his strangely hard, alarmingly velvety skin leaving mine. I swallowed down a whimper of protest and turned to look back out over the jungle instead, not wanting to try my luck with begging quite yet.
I’d never seen anything like it—trees so thick, colors so bright. I wondered if it was like in the movies about alien planets, where things lit in the dark, glistening like the marks etched onto Vorian’s skin.
Slowly, I took a deep, shaky breath. At least there seemed to be plenty of oxygen out here. Hopefully nothing else. No subtle poisons sucked deep into my lungs that these aliens didn’t realize affected us differently.
“So, y’all, like, want babies, right? But you’re saying it’s just a donation, just for embryos in those tube things. Y’all aren’t gonna hurt anybody?”
I watched Vorian from the edge of my vision, saw how his jaw flexed. We might have different definitions of what “hurt” was, and while I’d rather not have one of these huge guys verbally abuse me, I was a lot more concerned with how big they were, how much muscle they had, and what it’d look like if they turned those enormous, hands into fists they used on us. I mean, hell, Vorian was more than a head taller than me and must’ve had my entire body weight just in muscle. Maybe more.
“I mean, physically,” I clarified. “No torture or dissections? You’re not gonna kill us or rape us or—I don’t know. I don’t want to die out here alone.”
Seriously, Vorian frowned. His head swept back and forth in a slow shake. His long, silky hair fell over his monstrous shoulder. “There is no need to cut your bodies. In a fight, we wound, but there is no honor in fighting one who cannot defend themself. We have science and healers if we wish to learn of your anatomy, but we already know much.”
I shuddered, not liking the idea of having to fight anyone here.
Vorian stepped closer. The center of his chest pressed against my shoulder on his every inhale. “And there are laws. Crux is not allowed to bring harm to you, to force you into any acts that are not necessary for the continuation of the Thorzi race.”
The way he said it didn’t make me feel a lot better, but I guessed it was all the same. I didn’t have any way to carry a baby, so there was nothing he could do to my downstairs that’d be considered necessary, right?
Didn’t make me feel great about the girls though—Ree and Genevieve and Monica and the others.
I glanced up at him again. And really, what more could these guys do to us? I mean, torture us forever. Rape us. Make us have kids we didn’t want and weren’t prepared for.
But so far, in the handful of minutes I’d known him, Vorian had been kind. And, well, humans could be every bit as dangerous as anyone else. Honestly, he was one of the better people I’d met lately, human or not.
And, damn it, I was lonely. Terrified. Had been for way longer than the fourteen days I’d been on that ship. At least since leaving Earth, all the humans around me were in the same shit situation, not varying degrees of shit dependent on a thousand different privileges and disadvantages.
All the stiffness went out of my limbs with a sigh, and I tipped forward. My forehead hit Vorian’s sturdy chest, and he made a soft sound, almost like he was surprised. I didn’t care—it was just nice to be close to somebody.
“Listen, I don’t mind... I mean, y’all can take all the donations you want from me, okay? I’ll cooperate. I just—I just don’t want it to hurt.” I shut my eyes, ignoring the sting that came from overwhelm and—and from holding onto hope long enough to be ripped off the surface of my whole fucking planet and shown a bunch of aliens I wouldn’t even have believed existed a month ago.
I was so fucking tired. There was nothing left I could control, and fine, I could hand control over to the aliens in exchange for safety. For food and care and, well, people had made worse deals than that.
Vorian’s arms came around me slowly, unsurely, but finally, they settled in a soft squeeze that gave me the sense that I was being sheltered completely. I’d always liked tall guys, and Vorian was a cut above the rest.
“No one will hurt you, Beau,” he swore.
Damn, I really wanted to believe him.
CHAPTER6
VORIAN
Qualifying for entry into the tournament was easy enough. Defeating a few average Thorzi warriors in hand-to-hand combat was simple. Most attained the requisite three marks of Lyr, and then they stopped.
Why continue, after all?
Even for full-blooded Thorzi, exposing one’s skin to Lyr for long enough to gain a new mark was time consuming, painful, and very occasionally, fatal. Risking one’s life again and again was unnecessary, so they didn’t do it.
They had never lived their lives watched by Crux. They had been coddled and happy, treated well for the great feat of being born Thorzi. Being blue.
Even Kaelum, in his spoiled softness, better understood what it was to be a warrior than most Thorzi. To have to fight every day to prove you still deserved to keep the things you had earned. The difference was that Kaelum was King Xyren’s son.
No, he wasn’t spoiled because he was a prince. It was so much worse than that.
His parents loved him.
