Her Mate and Master

1 Naked, she twisted and tugged against the chains holding her captive. King Fluut, the repugnant ruler of the Finn, had hung her on the wall across from his throne in the capital of the stolen planet Zandia. Yes, strapped her to the wall. n***d. She didn’t think it was s****l for him, though. He didn’t look at her body with anything more than disgust. Feeling’s mutual, asshole. The nudity was some kind of degradation game. She’d been a royal i***t coming to Zandia, but her home planet had been like a living, breathing entity, calling to her. After a lifetime of hunger and weakness, of going to sleep at night bone-tired, the promise of strength from Zandia’s crystals had sung to her. That part had, at least been true. Even in her current, dire predicament, tiny bubbles of energy coursed through her body, enlivening parts she scarcely knew existed. The unfortunate side effect was an awakening at the notch between her legs. And the nudity did not help. Her p***y warmed and moistened, clearly disconnected from her brain, which knew this situation was not the least bit sexy. Her clothes may be off, but it sure as hell wasn’t playtime. Why then, did her damn n*****s stiffen every time a new male walked into the room? The males were beastly. Literally. The Finn were a horrid, ugly species. Short, gray-skinned, with grotesque flat noses and vicious-looking teeth. The king was the worst of all, his pointy teeth half-rotten, face wrinkled and sagging. No, her body definitely wasn’t interested in these males. But she did find herself imagining males of other species. Human. Zandian. Not that she’d ever seen a Zandian male. Hell, she hadn’t even known she was Zandian until last solar cycle. A traveler at the bar where she’d served as a slave her entire life had mentioned it in passing, asking how she survived away from the crystals. His words ignited her, like she’d been zapped by the fiercest electrical storm space had ever known. The hair on her head had stood up, blood heated and spun in her veins. She’d run after him, knowing she’d get a beating from her master, Thurn, when she returned, but not caring. “What do you mean?” she’d asked. “What crystals?” The customer, a rough-looking trader, had looked at her like she was the biggest i***t he’d ever seen. “You don’t know about the crystals?” “What. Crystals? Please tell me what you’re talking about.” “You’ve heard of Zandia, right?” His voice dripped with derision. She’d flushed and shaken her head. “You said that’s where I’m from?” “Yes. You’re a Zandian. Zandia is your home planet. The one your species came from? It’s made up of crystal—the crystal used to power laser weaponry. That’s why the Finn invaded and killed off most of your kind. Supposedly, the Zandians used the crystals for energy. They don’t require food or drink, just crystal. Something like that, anyway. That’s why the Finn killed them off.” She’d gaped, trembling with the new knowledge, a million beliefs about her existence crashing around in her head until Thurn arrived and yanked her away with a bruising grip on her upper arm. Take me there, she’d almost begged the stranger, but her good sense prevailed. She couldn’t show her hand to her master. Not until the right opportunity presented itself. And it had. She’d finally had the courage to steal from the till and escape, purchasing passage straight to Zandia. Which she now saw had been as impulsive as it was stupid. Blame it on the crystals, which now had her body afire, l**t pumping through her veins, feeding her like the oxygen. What would a Zandian male look like? Purplish skin like hers? How tall would he stand? What kind of c**k? Stars, was she thinking about c***s? She shifted restlessly against the bonds that held her secure against the wall. The king usually ordered her taken down from the wall and sent to the dungeon for the night. She wasn’t given clothing and was paraded through the entire dungeon for every male in every cell to gawk at, but, thankfully, had a private cell. She couldn’t wait to go there. Not just for the relief of being released from the dreadful position on the wall. But, for the first time in her life, she needed to touch herself. Down there. Desperately. ~.~ I’m coming for you, Talia. Tomis slumped in his seat on the prison ship, attempting to look like nothing more than a two-bit smuggler. A ruffian, who’d made the mistake of attempting to buy Zandian crystal on the black market. His plan—a suicide mission at best—was to get into the Finnian prison below the capital of Zandia before getting himself killed. If he made it that far, he planned to break out with the beautiful Talia, possibly the only female Zandian of breeding age in the galaxy, the daughter of Master Seke, his mentor. The Stornigian sitting across from him stared openly. “You do know what they’ll do with you when you get to Finnian Outland, don’t you?” Finnian Outland. That pissed him off. The planet’s name was Zandia, rightful home to the Zandians, ruled by Prince Zander, son of the dead King Zander. Zandia was his homeland—a crystal encrusted planet of great natural beauty and wealth. He lifted his upper lip in a scowl and played stupid. “What?” “The Finn exterminated your entire species. Systematically. As in, hunted down and killed every single living Zandian they could find. You think they’ll let you live three seconds on their planet?” Their planet. Vecking assholes. He grunted as if he could care less, but a familiar sickness gripped his solar plexus. One part hatred, one part despair. That any species would commit such an atrocious act of g******e made him ill. And he remembered every bit of it. The screaming. The falling buildings. Bloodied bodies. His mother shoving him in a packed airship just before it lifted off. Watching her wave goodbye, fist shoved in her mouth, weeping, just before another bomb obliterated the ground she’d been standing on. Her final act had been to save his life. He’d spent his life to date training for revenge. To make her sacrifice count, take back the planet for his ruler, Prince Zander. But, first, Talia. Now that the Stornigian had called attention to him, the rest of the prison airship members stared, too, curiosity glinting in their eyes. Ten were Finn. One human—probably an escaped slave. Three Stornigians. One of the Finn spoke up. They were short, ugly creatures—round heads, sharp pointy teeth, grayish skin. “You’re Zandian? I didn’t know there were any of you left,” he jeered. “Where’ve you been hiding?” Tomis affected a shrug. “Here and there.” “What are you in for?” another Finn asked. “Illegal trade.” “How’d you live without the crystals?” the first Finn asked. “I thought they were necessary to your survival.” That had been the reason for the Finn exterminating his species. They believed Zandians wouldn’t simply vacate their planet and take refuge elsewhere. Not when their biology required the crystals for charging. When Master Seke had evacuated Prince Zander from the falling palace, he’d had the wisdom to load as many large crystals as they could carry, allowing the small community of refugees to survive these years away from Zandia. He folded his arms across his chest, adopting a veck off posture to let them know he wouldn’t be answering any more questions. The small prison airship bumped to a landing, and heavily armed guards came in to escort them off. He prayed finding Talia wouldn’t be too difficult. By the one true Zandian star, if the Finn motherveckers hurt that female, he would kill every vecking last one of them. But that aggression wouldn’t serve him now. He shoved it down, stowed it for later. For the moment, he needed to play it cool. If Fluut, King of the Finn, believed he was on official Zandian business, he’d be executed immediately, and so would Talia. Sweet Talia. He’d never met the female, but he’d been willing to die for her from the moment he saw her terrified hologram in the transmission from Fluut. I’ll exchange her for your prince. You have one week to deliver. That had been two planet rotations ago. Eight more to go then Talia would be killed. One of the guards jabbed him in the ribs with the butt of his giant laser g*n. Tomis drew the pain in, used it as fuel for his power. Pain is merely sensation, Master Seke used to say during training. Register it. Use the information. Do not give it more weight than it deserves. Talia was Master Seke’s daughter, missing since the Finn invasion of Zandia. Seke had believed her dead until recently, when Rok revealed he’d escaped with two female children. Tomis had been helping Seke search for them ever since. He made himself stumble and swerve, as if weak and off-balance, when the guards shoved him off the prison ship. His clothes were dirty and tattered, boots worn. He’d done everything he could to appear like a nobody. A guard stood at the entryway, scanning their bodies for disease, their barcodes if they had them. He had none. He’d been a free being his entire life. “Who’s this?” the guard demanded when he took in Tomis. “Smuggler. Trying to buy crystal. Thought King Fluut might want him for extra leverage.” The guard’s face stretched into a greasy smile, showing a row of pointy teeth with food bits stuck between them. “Excellent. Take him to the prison for holding.” Yes. Step two of his hare-brained plan had worked. Now he just had to find Talia and escape. When the scan was complete, the guards dragged him roughly forward and down two sets of metal stairs to the dungeons. Exactly where the Zandian plans had shown it to be. He carried no weapons save his fists, but his body had been trained to kill from his first planet rotation after the Zandian g******e. His two aces in the hole were the massive solar flare Seke planned to trigger to take out the Finn’s power tonight and the extensive underground tunnel system below the dungeons that the Finns didn’t seem to know existed. He just hoped Talia was in the dungeons, too. He kept his head down as they trudged past cell after cell, filled with every miserable species of being he could name. Almost all male. No other Zandians. The guard placed his hand on the panel outside a cell and it slid open. Three huge beings looked up as Tomis was thrust forward, into the cell, and the panel slid shut. He flexed his muscles and cracked his neck. If they needed to get the proof of dominance thing over first, he was ready. Hopefully, they’d let him fight them one at a time, but that was probably too much to ask. “No fighting,” the largest one grunted, as if bored. “Or they take away your meals.” Huh. That was unexpected. He sat down on a bench beside the hulking being of a species he couldn’t readily identify. “Meals good, are they?” he asked drily. Zandians required little food so long as they had contact with their crystal, so such a thing didn’t matter to him. The guy snorted. “Not much else to look forward to around here.” Okay, so his cellmates were friendly. Or at least non-threatening. He’d passed his third test. It almost worried him how smoothly things had gone. He’d figured he had a 70-30 chance of dying before he reached this point. “Have you seen any beings like me? A female?” All three of his cellmates shifted. “Oh yeah. We’ve seen her. We’ve seen all of her.” His hands balled into fists and teeth clamped down tight. “What the veck do you mean by that?” “You’ll see her, too. Just wait until suppertime.” His patience snapped, and he lunged forward, wrapping his fist around the male’s bulky throat. “What. In the veck. Are you talking about?” “No fighting,” the guy wheezed, not moving a muscle to stop Tomis. His self-restraint put Tomis to shame, and he released the male. “Just wait. You’ll see,” he repeated. Veck. Tomis sank back to the bench and rubbed his face. He didn’t know what in the hell was going on and couldn’t stand the implication that all the males had seen Talia.