AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t know what that would mean in this context. You are welcome to being free of pain?”
“Weirdo,” she laughs, but in a way that indicates she is pleased with me.
“So dense,” she mutters to herself. I am borderline compelled to remind her that of the two of us, I am the advanced alien. But there is no convincing this human that she is any less than I, and I am beginning to agree. She is strong. She knows how to contain secrets, and to be stoic in the face of pain. She is difficult to handle because she has never for a second considered surrender as an option. This young woman is a fighter and a survivor.
And that is why I get her some candy. I usually reserve this for rewards for good behavior, but in Stella’s case, I find myself wanting to reward her simply for being herself. It feels good to spoil her — and yes, I am aware that I am spoiling her. I am also aware that after one instance of copulation I have become something of a simpering slave to her whims. I promise myself that I will not allow that to interfere with her training. She still needs to be trained. Mate, pet, or simply human companion, she cannot be allowed to behave in an uncontrolled manner.
In another hour, she is sitting up in bed quite happily with wrappers all around her, watching some of the media we have salvaged from human history. Humans like to watch moving talking pictures. They are able to immerse themselves in such narratives, suspending their disbelief, and feeling all the feelings of the characters. It is quite a phenomenon to behold.
“I wish we still made movies,” she says. “But the only entertainment left on the planet is watching people get zapped by security fences, or shot by security forces or… you know, it’s weird, but it’s almost like the word security doesn’t mean anything anymore. These movies, it’s like they come from another planet. A whole different species of people who actually liked each other. Nobody gets stabbed in the street. At all. And it’s all so clean. And the buildings are intact. And….”
She is becoming quite upset as she notes all these little differences from past to present. She has lived in the ruins of a much kinder world her entire life. My brothers and I have often commented how difficult it is to find suitable pets, and that is partly because soft temperaments rarely thrive in a world where survival is a struggle each and every hour of each and every day.
“You are going to a new world,” I tell her. “A world where humans are prized. You have quite a pleasant life ahead of you.”
“As your pet?”
“Yes. In the eyes of the world, that is what you will be. My pet. My owned little beast.”
She emits a low growl. The painkillers may have removed the pain, but they have done little to shift her temper, which has taken a dive. I notice she is much grumpier than she was before the cramps began, even taking into account how wild she was.
“You’re warm.” She scowls up at me. “You’re better than heating pads, because they run out of heat in a couple hours. Don’t make anything weird out of this.”
Don’t make anything weird out of this,I repeat to myself, smirking. As if there is nothing weird about having mated with an alien and become his property. She is a funny little thing, clinging to normality that she herself did her level best to flee from in the first place.
“You know, you’d make a much more pleasant pet if you were just gagged,” I muse aloud. It is enough of a hint for her to fall silent and curl up next to me before falling asleep.
I lie awake for a while, my fingers curling through her hair, running down the back of her neck and scratching lightly at her nape. It is very soothing to pet her, and she seems to find it equally pleasing. Before long she is emitting soft snores and stretching out against me, taking up much more of the bed than anything her size would seem to be able to.
6TESTING THE LIMITS
“It feels as though I have not seen you in a long time.”
It has been several days since I spoke with my brother. I have spent most of that time in bed with Stella, one way or another. Either making love or acting as a large heat source. Both have been surprisingly pleasant for me. Of course, my absence has been noticed. Arkan and I are running this ship together, and if one of us stops showing up for bridge shifts, the other has to pick up the slack. Arkan is not used to covering for me. He is used to me taking care of all the details and showing up for shifts early and staying late and having nothing to do but worry.
“I have been taking care of the wild human.”
“Taking care of her, hmm?”Arkan lifts a brow at me and smirks in a knowing way.“I enjoy taking care of my pet the same way. Are you going to admit you’ve fallen for the charms of a disobedient, mouthy human who is practically your living, breathing antithesis? Or are we going to keep pretending that you are somehow doing the rest of us a favor by not allowing her out of your sight, or your room, for that matter.”
“I am doing you all a favor keeping her out of the way. She’s a feral little thing at the best of times. You would not enjoy her company, of that I am certain.”
“I don’t know about that. I am used to challenging pets.”
“She is not challenging. She is sensitive to her hormones, and there is little we can do about that. For the moment, she is an absolute…”I do not finish the sentence. Terror would be an appropriate word.
“Kahn!”
As we speak of the devil, she comes stomping down the hall wearing a big, soft suit made of a material I fabricated for her. I chose to make it in a pink fabric and it has a slight fuzz to it, as well as a hood, which she always wears up. The effect is to create a scowling face framed with curling hair emerging from the hood. It’s adorable. She looks every inch the animal she is. She’s also clutching her heating pad, which she clings to like a child with a security blanket. Poor thing is suffering in the throes of hormonal torment, and there is little I can do to stop it.
“You’re dressing her up,” Arkan says. “You’re dressing her up like a…”
“Kahn,” she says, ignoring Arkan entirely. “I’m hungry.”
She’s always hungry. I’m surprised she braved the halls, given how afraid of the soldiers she is in general, but she soon addresses that point herself.
“I had to hide from those asshole fucking soldiers you idiots let run around this ship. Don’t you know who they are? They’re…”
“Do you know who they are?” Arkan cuts in with the question.
