Page 57 of Taken to Kor
It’s cute to see him excited. Heck, they’re all excited. Every few moments, a new voice fires into my token asking me about some random thing the baby might need or that I might like. No matter my reply, the pirates always get me the thing. Even the things that crawl and have stingers and that Rhork will undoubtedly punch them in the face for, and that we have to return or rehome.
As such, I can focus on buying things for the new humans we’re about to wake from their long sleeps, instead of the new hybrid Niahhorru-humans I’m hopefully going to bring into the world calmly and peacefully.
I slow, twisting the beautiful silver bangle Rhork gifted me so many solars ago, after I told him about the human concept of husband and wife. I’d told him that there was an exchange of rings and he’d shown up a few solars later with this bracelet. I hadn’t had the heart to tell him that the rings were worn on fingers and, instead, bought him a bracelet at the reaver markets the next solar just like it. I grin at the memory.
Meanwhile, all of the Eshmiri reavers descend on me all at once. It’s like the damned creatures have a sixth sense for this stuff. They know where I’m going to stop and have their disc readers out even before I know that they’re carrying the items I need.
Scratch that. Do I ever reallyneedwhat they’re offering me? Centare. But want? Ontte. And I’ve got Rhork’s magic silver disc to make it happen.
Negotiating with other species while pregnant has its advantages, too. Seems likeeverybodyin the whole dang cosmos is nicer to pregnant ladies. The Egama, in particular, get real flustered every time I get close. And I do get close. But only when Rhork’s bad and I feel like making him jealous, or when I feel like instigating a fight. I like fighting, but Rhork says I’m not allowed to fist fight anyone in these final days. He says if I want to fight, I’ve got to blast them.
I frown at the thought, realizing it’s been way too many solars since I blasted anybody. “Humph.”
“Which color do you like?”
“We have pink and green and blue.”
“Or white!” Another one shouts, thrusting a swatch of fabric into my face and stroking my cheek with it.
“Wow,” I answer, “it is soft.” I slide my hand over my belly as a baby does a little dance. Nerves mount. I’m only fourteen days away from delivery and I’m oscillating between nervous wreck about to poop myself and the proudest mama in the known cosmos. I…I never thought I’d ever be pregnant. It isn’t that I always wanted to be…it’s that I thought I never would be.
I was trapped in a box, in love with an alien I never thought I’d meet and I was sure, if I did ever meet him, wouldn’t look twice at me.
And now he calls me hiswifeand tells me he loves me and I’m pregnant by him.
With six babies.
HOLY SHROVING SHIT!
“I…um…” There’s that um again. I shrug my shoulders down my back and use both hands to hold my belly up. “I’ll take this one,” I tell them and they immediately all start giggling and packaging up three times the quantity I asked for.
I reach into my pocket to retrieve my chip, but a hand slides over mine, holding my palm against the curve of my stomach. My butt cheeks clench. My toes flex in their rubbery covering. My ears perk back. My mind goes blank, thoughts scattering wide.
Because the hand that gently cups mine is familiar. It’s the same dark brown shade as mine.
“You chose incorrectly, Deena. You should have gone with blue. It matches your eyes.”
Mathilda’s voice catches me off guard and for a moment, I imagine that every solar I’ve spent out from underneath her thumb was one I dreamt up. Cold sweat comes to cover me. I feel like a child watching her raise her palm and then bring it down against my cheek. All I did was ask her about my mother, where she was. Then she hit me. I guess that was the better option for her. What was the alternative? Admitting that she killed her own daughter in order to be able to sell hybrid babies to the monster that enslaved us? Admitting that she’s a monster just like him? That even though she’s human, she’s formed from the same carbon that Pogar is, and is just as rotten as Balesilha, too?
I inhale with a start. My toes wiggle in my shoes. My hand flexes for the lightning stick hanging off of the belt around my hips. My ears perk forward and capture the high trill of the Eshmiri giggling. It sounds like giggling, but I can hear them through my translator shouting curses and insults at the woman standing behind me.
My grandmother.
My captor.
My nemesis.
She thinks she can intimidate me. Scratch that.Shethinks she can intimidateme?I’m a motherfucking pirate. Hear me roar.
“Rhork,” I say it out loud, but there’s a sudden pressure against my back just above my ass, right at belly-level, that makes me hold my tongue.
“Not another word or the mutants growing in your belly will meet the same end as your mother, by the same hand, too.”
I inhale, then exhale. I meet the Eshmiri’s gaze and he’s watching me with an expression I find quite strange. He’s frowning. I’ve never seen an Eshmiri frown before. I try to communicate with him through gaze alone, but he’s easily distracted by another customer. Shroving Eshmiri.
He waddles off, the crowd in front of me disperses, and I’m left staring into the darkness of the Eshmiri tent behind him. There, two eyes watch me. Even though I can’t make out the shadow-covered face they belong to, I can see that those white eyes have neither pupil nor iris. Creepy. Creepier still, a surge of black smoke crosses them, followed by blots of what looks like red, before the face retreats back into the shadows without ever allowing me to fully glimpse the Eshmiri it belongs to. At least, it must be an Eshmiri, though I’ve never seen a reaver with eyes quite like that.
“Hi there, grandma,” I say, tension threading my tone, but no fear. It surprises me.
