Page 4 of Taken to Voraxia
Gasps and screams ravage the mob and those that haven’t fled already, surge backwards, trying to create more distance between themselves and the alien barbarian. Mathilda and the Antikythera Council shout now for calm, but at a distance. My thoughts whirl. Another wave of pain-bordering-on-pleasure-bordering-on-pain guts me.
Someone — it could only be Svera — manages to get her hands around my waist. I feel her pull, but she’s so much smaller than I am. I can feel her trembling under my weight.
A command is barked in a masculine baritone from only paces away now. Over the chaos, Svera shouts, “He says to move out of the way!”
People scramble to follow the command issued, but as Svera drags me one way, I’m pushed another and I can’t seem to move anymore on my own. I’m anchored to the spot, rooted there like a tree, doubled over. Svera calls my name but the crowd shifts between us, shoving us apart. She’s gone like sand scattered in a ferocious wind, my name on her tongue.
I collapse forward with the awareness that I’m completely on my own but that I am notalone.I can feel his hearts beat. More than one of them. I can taste his skin. I can hear his breath. Spices I can’t name. The pattering of water on smooth stones. A blessed coolness.
I look up, straight into Raku’s eyes. Bleak and lonely, they are all black without the whites or the irises and are nothing short of furious to see me.
And stranger still is the fact that I recognize those eyes, as if from another lifetime, and all I can think as the pain of a fresh fear drags me to my knees iswhere have you been?
2
Raku
I had not wanted to join this pointless expedition, but I needed to understand why so much power was being supplied to this particular moon on the outskirts of Cxrian — a moon so small and insignificant that it was not even given a name.
Furthermore, something wasn’t right. What in the seven suns has compelled Bo’Raku and his Bo’Raku before him to travel with a contingent of Dra’Kesh elite to this feral umkempt moon each and every rotation? As Bo’Raku of his planet, an exploratory expedition is beneath him.
Liesure, he’d said. Sport, he’d said when I pressed. Hunting the creatures that live on this forgotten moon in the old practices of the Dra’Kesh, he’d admitted when I pressed harder.
He did not mention that thesebeingswere sentient. He did not mention that there werefemalesamong them.Beautiful females with shocking features like the one kneeling on the dark sands before me now, face supine and lovely.
She bears some Dra’Kesh marks — her flawless carmine skin, her high, slanted eyes, her long, lean limbs and her slender tail, dragging aimlessly through a docile wind.
However, the large part of her markings are utterly alien to me — her soft brown hair, a color and texture I have never before seen, her multicolored eyes, her ridgeless brows, her soft, curved chin.Hybrid.The answer floats through my thoughts, demanding questions.
How is this possible? For how long have Dra’Kesh been breeding with these aliens without my knowledge or the knowledge of the Raku who came before? What species are these aliens that seem to practice the same breeding Hunt practiced by the ancient Dra’Kesh?
And how is it possible that my Xanaxana might call for one of them with the force of a star in supernova, universes unborn?
I exhale. Thoughts of treachery, lies, deception and deceit are too easily forgotten. By the pounding of my twin hearts and the dischord of my mind, I am overwhelmed.She is my Xiveri mate. The one I never searched for because I assumed I would be among the unlucky, never to be found.
I have spent nine long rotations without hope of finding my Xiveri mate, relegating myself to the idea that I would simply force a union with a worthy female to breed and ensure my line — it is not uncommon that a Raku does not find his Rakukanna. That two Xiveri mates do not find one another. The galaxy is vast, and the planets within my quadrant, immense.
But here she is. Squinting up at me against the suns, the scent of jujji berries and ranxcera weeping from her skin. She is close now. Close enough to touch. To take. To devour endlessly.
Her mouth parts and I catch a flash of pink. My Xanaxana rumbles loudly in my chest and my stiff xora jerks behind the leathers I wear.Consumate. Breed.The thoughts hit me harder than an ion round.
I grit my teeth, force my hand not to shake as raw masculine desire pulses through me. But I need to touch, to prove to myself that my eyes do not deceive me. That I have not sunk so deeply into the pits of madness to be hallucinating my Xiveri mate here.
Cautiously, as if attempting to stroke the outer edge of a bubble, I bend down and touch her hair.
Xok, it is soft.Even softer than it looks. A symphony of color, calling it brown would not do it justice. This color is not one we have in Voraxia. And her skin…it smells like the spices produced by the spindly Tevra trees near my Drakanna’s home. Before I went to train, it was the place I loved the most.
This female…there is no doubt in my mind that she was created for me, and me alone. She is my prize. Worthy of a Raku. So why is it then that I sense that something is wrong…
Disturbed by her lack of ridges, I cannot guess at her emotions. I cannot read her face. But when I inhale deeper, none of that matters. Because twisting with the breeze, I can taste the notes of her arousal. Grain and sugar, fruit, malt, and something sweeter, something just for me and it is so concentrated now, the scent alone threatens to destabilize me.
I glance down the length of her body, wanting nothing more than to toss her onto her hands and knees, spread her red thighs apart and claim her with one thrust — as is my right. I grit my teeth. Sweat breaks out between my shoulder blades and winds its way over my hardened plates and down my spine. My my resolve is a thread, worn thin and it takes a will I did not know I possessed to overcome such a conflict.
I pull my fingers free of her curls and gently, very gently, cradle her cheek.I have never felt skin like this. Like the outside of a petal.My thoughts are chaos, but around me, the world is still. I understand nothing. I understand everything. The fabric of the universe.
“I am honored to stand before you,” I tell her gruffly, dropping to one knee.
Her chin trembles and she jerks away from my touch. “What do you want with me?”
