Page 44 of Taken to Voraxia
Instead I must face three solars of endless meetings that whither and fry the dwindling patience I have left. A shortening fuse, alight.
I sit in front of Bo’Raku now, surrounded by six of the seven other xub’Rakus, in the war room. Nothing pleasant happens here. And it will not this span.
“This is our Raku’s third meeting with you Bo’Raku, and it becomes no clearer how you exonerate yourself for the crimes perpetuated by yourself and your Bo’Raku before you.” Xa’Raku speaks with authority and force.
Leader of the mineral-rich water planet Thrax, she is also my strongest diplomat. There is no other I would trust to act as my voice while I sit passively, forearms lining the arms of the high-backed seat made of smooth, dry werro root. Watching.
My Raku before me charged in with accusations and rage. It was what made it possible for me to challenge and usurp him at so young an age. The male might have been my sire, but he was too quick, too rash, too angry, too impulsive.
I learned early on that there is much more to gain from watching the ridges of the one seated opposite me at the negotiating table, the swish of their tail and the ticks of their claws, than through shouting and reckoning. Try as they might to hide, but in the throes of a debate, even the most stoic warlord will make a mistake.
Bo’Raku leans forward on his stool, white hair rippling over his chest. I imagine that hair rippling over the skin of my Rakukanna were he to have had his chance to run for her in the Hunt and feel only rage.
“Xa’Raku, there is no crime. These primitives are not fledged Voraxians.”
He is not entirely wrong. This vexes me.But it does not matter. It will not be enough to save him.
Xa’Raku snarls, “The offspring produced by the fertile femalesareVoraxian, as our Rakukanna is.”
“But like savages they discard the babes. There is nothing I could have done to prevent them. The Rakukanna was — is — an exception.” His black eyes flash to mine and his white teeth whistle as deceit passes through them. He has practiced his answers. He is calm. “I had always intended to bring the hybrids here to Voraxia when they became of age. To you, my Raku. But there were none.”
“And the other fertile females? You were content to let them die, along with the younglings they could not sire? You mean to tell us that you did not notice their lessening population?”
“This was never raised as a concern to me by their council of elders. We did not keep records of the females because they are not Voraxian. Thus, there was nothing I could do.”
I cannot bite my tongue any longer. I lift a hand. Xa’Raku settles back in her werro root seat, her own ridges bristling red. I wait for her ridges to settle, for all to settle. The room is eerie in its calm.
In a quiet that contradicts, rather than bellies my rage, I say, “You will tell me how many of these Hunts you have taken part in, Bo’Raku.”
“Five,” he answers.Six would have given him the opportunity to claim my Rakukanna. My Miari… To take from her what is only mine to take.
“Five.” I exhale, “Five times you have felt the humans’ cream.”
Bo’Raku’s ridges flicker white. “My Raku,” he says slowly, a question in his tone.
“You will answer me if you have felt their tight hot cunts, full of cream five times.” I can sense the change in the atmosphere.
This is dangerous talk and utterly indecent coming from their Raku, not least of all because it betrays an intimacy that can only be matched to my Rakukanna. Voraxian females produce no such cream, so there could be no other female that I am speaking of.
I would not dare to divulge this knowledge of the humans to any but my most trusted advisors, and Bo’Raku, already having been through the Hunt. That which makes the humans more desirable makes them more vulnerable.
But I need to unseat him. He is too comfortable in his werro root chair, across the circle from me, nothing but a barren stretch of packed earth between us and nothing keeping me from ripping his white hair from his body in patches of blood and brain matter. Nothing at all.
“Hexa,” he answers finally, “I have felt it.” His ridges flash a breath of purple.
I tamp mine down, locking them so that they are fixed and colorless. “So unlike the Dra’Kesh, and the Voraxians… Capable of withstanding great…pressure.”
“Hexa.” He licks his mouth and I see the purple surface stronger in his ridges, and despise him for it.
“And great pain.”
“Hexa.”
“It is a shame that they bleed from their breeding folds, otherwise, one could mount them for spans.”
Bo’Raku’s face makes the pleasure expression. His ridges are a bright purple now, and an eerie black. “Onecanmount them for hours. The bleeding adds to the cream.” My core freezes, but I compel myself to nod. Even though I say nothing, he continues to speak. “They can be mounted against their will. They have no defenses. It makes them breedable by many species.”
“I had not considered this,” I grit.
