Enslaved III:
The Gladiators 
By
Kaitlyn O’Connor 
© copyright by Kaitlyn O’Connor, July 2010 
Cover Art by Alex DeShanks , July 2010 
ISBN 978-1-60394-446-5 
New Concepts Publishing 
Lake Park, GA 31636 
www.newconceptspublishing.com 
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s
imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or
events is merely coincidence.

Chapter One
A flicker of both surprise and uneasiness went through Loren Hess when the driver of the black SUV turned into the parking lot of a local nightclub. She glanced at the backs of the heads of the two men in the front, struggling with the impulse to ask why they’d pulled in. Neither of the two hard faced men had been particularly warm or friendly, though, and she quelled the urge rather than risk a snub. 
They made her nervous, anyway, as if she wasn’t already a bundle of nerves! 
The uneasiness went bone deep. They’d kept her so off kilter since she’d been summoned to the administrator’s office that she’d hardly had a moment to sort her thoughts even if she’d had the tranquility to do it. 
She supposed she couldn’t blame it entirely on them. Guilt and the fear of punishment for her snooping had gotten the ball rolling, so to speak. She’d graduated at the top of her class in engineering and had been thrilled, flattered, and unnerved to be recruited by the government right after graduation. She hadn’t even settled from that wild flight of euphoric triumph when she’d found herself in a top secret installation and discovered she’d been hired to reverse engineer alien technology. 
Well! That had totally blown her mind, but she’d settled in after a few weeks and really focused. She’d focused so intently, in point of fact, that it wasn’t until roughly four years later that she began to have a niggling suspicion that something just wasn’t quite right about the picture. 
She supposed she could put it down to youth, enthusiasm, and plain out naiveté if came to that—not that she was excusing herself by any means! Truthfully, she thought she was embarrassed more than anything else that it had taken her long to become suspicious at all. It wounded her sense of self-worth and confidence in her intelligence once it did dawn on her that something strange—stranger than reverse engineering alien technology—was going on, or maybe something not entirely legal. 
The whole cloak and dagger aspect of the operation kept her on edge, though, and her nose firmly to the grindstone. She’d been afraid, at first, even to allow herself to question anything and she certainly hadn’t had the nerve to openly question anything!
She’d barely seen the light of day since she’d been recruited. It was a rare treat indeed to be allowed to leave the facility and whenever she did, she was monitored at all times to make certain she didn’t divulge any secrets. Phone calls were monitored! 
Not that she got that many or managed to track her parents down to call them and talk very often. It seemed they’d only been waiting to turn her out of the ‘nest’ to resume their field research, which they’d pretty much given up to rear her, taking teaching positions to give her a stable home until she’d gone off to college. 
It wasn’t the tight security that finally made the light come on, though. It was the fact that there seemed to be an endless supply of alien technology that needed to be taken apart and studied plus the fact that she hadn’t seen a single, solitary piece that actually looked like it had been in a crash. No one had actually told her that the devices she was put to work on were from a crash—They didn’t tell her, or anyone else, anything—but the other scientists and engineers on the project seemed to believe that was the origins—a crash. 
Well, when it hit her that she hadn’t seen anything in the entire time she’d been there that looked like it had come from a crash, curiosity about the origins of the electronics had smote her. 
She’d tried to be very casual about it and careful who she talked to, but she’d instantly suspected when she was summoned to the administrator’s office that they’d noticed she was nosey about things that weren’t any of her business. She might not have been except that she hadn’t been in the administrator’s office since she’d arrived over four years earlier, had her canned spiel about security and then been sent along for ‘orientation’, which had also mostly been about security. 
And then there was the fact that she knew she wasn’t supposed to be speculating about anything beyond the materials something was made from, what it did, and how it worked. 
She certainly hadn’t suspected that she’d been summoned to be offered the opportunity to see where the technology came from!
She hardly remembered anything about the discussion after that.
In fact, she couldn’t actually recall that she’d volunteered to go and yet here she sat in the back of a black, non-descript government vehicle … in the parking lot of a popular nightspot of all places. 
“This is as far as we go,” the agent in the front seat said coolly, turning around to look at her. 
Loren gaped at him blankly and then looked around. A frown of confusion drew her brows together as the suspicion immediately assailed her that she’d just been fired. “I’m supposed to get out … here?” 
“You’re to walk down that alley there and wait.”
Loren felt her jaw sag lower as she stared at the dark alley he’d pointed out. 
The suspicion instantly assailed her that she was targeted for termination—and not just from her job. “Uh … that really is a dark alley. You’re sure I’m supposed to wait there?”
His lips flattened. “You expect them to set down in the middle of the parking lot?” he asked sarcastically.
Loren felt her face redden, felt stupid. “Oh.” She laughed nervously and reached down to grab the small travel bag that was all they’d allowed her to take. She’d had a hell of time packing enough for an indeterminate stay on an alien world in the one small bag and the end result was that it was like a black hole—incredibly dense and heavy as hell.
They didn’t offer to help her with her bag so, when she heard the sound of the door locks being deactivated, she grasped the handle of her bag in one hand and the door handle with the other and got out. They drove off while she was still trying to decide if they were sending her into the alley for an execution. 
Fortunately, it occurred to her that they could’ve done that, if that was the plan, at any time along the dark road that led from the secret government facilities. Trying to convince herself that that was completely logical and she didn’t have anything to worry about, she hefted her bag, peered at the darkened alley for a long moment, and finally started toward it, watching nervously for any sign of movement that might indicate it wasn’t as deserted as it looked. Thankfully, it wasn’t as dark as she’d feared. Light spilled in from both ends of the alley and there was enough light to see her way and see anyone if there had been anyone there. 
She stopped about halfway down and looked around uneasily, trying her best to dismiss her fears. She’d been presented with an opportunity few, if any, humans had ever had. She would be examining all sorts of alien technology and learning from it. She should be excited. She should be thrilled to death, not scared to death, but there was no chasing the fear with logic.
Time did that, leaching it away little by little and allowing other thoughts to flicker through her mind that were disturbing in another way entirely. 
Maybe she was supposed to be picked up by another car and taken to another location for the actual pick up? 
That made a lot more sense than the idea of an alien ship swooping from the sky and picking her up behind a nightclub. 
She’d set her bag down because it felt like it was going to pull her shoulder out of socket, but the thought prompted her to pick it up again and start moving along the alley. 
It also occurred to her to wonder if this was some sort of elaborate joke just to make her feel like a complete idiot.
And that, maybe, she actually had been dismissed and they’d just wanted to dump her far enough from the facilities their secrecy would be protected.
Why would they do that, though? Shouldn’t they have threatened her about talking if they were going to fire her? Wouldn’t they have at least said she wasn’t to talk about anything she’d seen or worked on?
But maybe they figured she ought to know nothing had changed in that respect?
She’d moved perhaps two or three yards further along the alley when she abruptly found herself spotlighted. Her heart skipped a beat, the first thought running through her mind that it was a police helicopter.
Even as she glanced up, though, she realized she hadn’t heard the sound of a helicopter. In fact, she hadn’t heard any sound at all beyond the dull thud of the music filtering from the nightclub and the traffic on the street in front of it. 
Her heart couldn’t decide whether to leap into her throat or hit her toes when she saw the huge disk above her like a black shadow against the night sky. It didn’t have the chance to do either. She felt a burning tingle begin on her skin and penetrate all the way through her and then she blacked out. When she came to, she was lying on a cold, hard surface that was perfectly smooth, not rough like the pavement of the parking lot, or warmed by the day. 
She felt like she’d been body slammed. She hurt all over—not badly, but she was achy and heavy. It took an effort to push herself up to look around. As she did, a flicker of movement caught her eye and she whipped her head in that direction. She had just enough time to register the mechanical monster coming toward her and to suck in a sharp breath to scream and something hit her that pitched her toward darkness again.
The second time she regained consciousness she heard the noisy sobs and sniffs of a number of people—women. Confusion flickered through her, but it dredged her upwards from the depths rapidly and she became aware that the hard surface she was lying on was completely different than the one before. 
The room she opened her eyes to was like something from some seamy prison movie. It was dim, but not too dark to see that it was lined with bunks and that there was a woman on almost everyone of the. She lay still for several moments, trying to convince herself that she couldn’t be in a prison, wondering if she’d been given some kind of hallucinogenic drug. 
“Where am I?”
No one responded. It made the sense that she had to be imagining things or that she was in the grips of some kind of nightmare increase. 
It felt too real to be a nightmare, however, and she finally sat up on the bunk. “What is this place?” she demanded more loudly.
“We don’t know. Nobody knows,” a dark haired woman on the bunk across from her answered. “We all woke up here just like you did—I’m guessing you saw that scary looking metal monstrosity and he zapped you, too?”
“But …,” Loren began and then abruptly broke off as sudden doubts swarmed her mind as to the wisdom of offering any sort of information. “I was in the alley behind this club …?”
“We all were.”
Loren turned to the blond who’d spoken, blinking at her and trying to assimilate that. “But … nobody was with me.”
“She didn’t mean we were all standing around just waiting to get scooped up by the fucking aliens, moron!” another woman growled angrily.
“Who’s the moron?” another woman said loudly. “This isn’t a fucking alien ship! I’m telling you, we’ve been taken by sex slavers!”
“That had a … a thing like the one that zapped us?” 
“And tell us how we got in a ship, as long as you’re at it! There’s no such thing as little green men that fly around in UFOs!”
Loren wasn’t about to argue with them on that—actually, any part of it. “You saw an alien?”
“Nobody saw a damned thing—except the light!” another woman snapped. “I’d left the club and was heading to my car and then this light surrounds me and the next thing I know I’m lying on the floor and then that horrible thing came in and zapped me and I woke up here! It was like that for everybody!”
A horrible suspicion arose in Loren’s mind. She tried her best to dismiss it, but it wouldn’t be silenced.
They’d thought of another way to make sure she didn’t tell their dirty little secrets!
And she’d walked right in to the trap like a complete idiot!
“What do they want with us?” another woman wailed. 
Loren covered her face with her hands, struggling with fear, anger, and humiliation that she’d walked into their trap like a … child that had no sense of self-preservation. How could she have anticipated that her own government would do something like this to her, though? 
Well, people that worked for the government. 
Someone settled beside her and slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders. “We’re going to be alright.”
Loren lowered her hands and discovered it was the black woman who’d first spoken to her. “I … don’t think so.”
The woman’s chin wobbled. “We’re alive, aren’t we? If they’d meant anything … awful, we wouldn’t be alive.”
“Well! If you don’t think it’s awful to be sold into the sex slavery market …!” one of the other women snapped angrily. 
“I … uh … I actually think it’s aliens,” Loren said uncomfortably.
“This isn’t a ship,” the black woman said. “We’d feel movement, right? We’d feel the pull of gravity.”
Loren chewed her lip uncomfortably. “Not if we were in space.”
“Well! We’d be floating around then!” one of the other women said, her voice quavering on the edge of hysteria. 
“Not if they had artificial gravity on the ship.”
“We’re trying to figure this out!” the blond said angrily. “Hello? We don’t have things like that!”
“Aliens might!” the black woman who’d befriended Loren said tightly. “Not that I believe that—the part about us having been picked up by aliens, I mean.”
Loren was bone deep scared that it was aliens. If it had just been her, she might’ve been able to dismiss that. There might’ve been some possibility of believing she’d been imprisoned on Earth because she knew too much, but she’d spent the last four years of her life studying alien technology. She knew there was such a thing. 
And she knew she’d guessed right the first time, when she’d been summoned to the administrator’s office it was because they knew she’d been snooping and they had every intention of putting a stop to it before she found out more than they wanted to know.
Such as the fact that they were bartering Earth women for the technology. 
She didn’t want to believe that, but she was almost a hundred percent certain that she really was on an alien ship, imprisoned with a roomful of women. The agents had taken her right to the spot to be picked up. It sure as hell wasn’t a coincidence. 
The terrifying part was that she hadn’t snooped nearly enough—not enough to find out what it was the aliens wanted with Earth women. 
They didn’t have nearly enough time to sit around discussing it and trying to figure it out to Loren’s way of thinking. They’d had just enough time to begin to calm down when an opening appeared in the side of the room where they were held and the metal monstrosity entered. “Please rise and exit the room in an orderly fashion.”
Loren tried not to think the fact that the damned thing spoke English was yet another indication that the government was cooperating with the aliens in the kidnappings, but she’d begun to realize that they were completely ruthless. 
Not surprisingly, no one leapt up to do as they were told. Most of the women simply fell into another fit of hysterics. The rest cowered against the walls, terrified. 
The robot—Loren figured that was what it was although it looked more like a square trashcan with octopus arms—zapped two of the women closest, caught each of them by their ankles and dragged them from the room. Almost everyone else bounded forward immediately and followed the machine out of the cell and into a corridor. 
The emotionless monster pointed out the direction they were supposed to go and continued to drag to the two unconscious women. Another one of the things appeared in the corridor behind them and entered the cell, returning a few moments later with two more unconscious women. The stragglers followed the second robot out. 
As terrified as Loren was, she felt downright nauseous when they’d scampered down the corridor ahead of the robots and met up with a line of women—a long line. The black woman exchanged a look with Loren. 
“There must be several hundred women here,” she whispered. “My god! How could they make off with so many women without anybody noticing?”
Loren was bone deep cold with shock and her jaw was spasming. “They don’t take them from the same place. I heard once that thousands of women go missing every day and many of them are never seen or heard from again.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Sorry,” Loren said apologetically. “It isn’t something I want to think about either.”
“I’m Karen, by the way. Karen Smith.”
“Loren … Hess.”
“This is a hell of a way to end a night of partying,” the brunette just behind Loren muttered.
Loren was on the point of telling them that she hadn’t been when it occurred to her that they would demand an explanation. She considered it a moment and finally decided there was really no point in keeping it to herself. “I wasn’t partying. I was taken there specifically to be picked up.”
“So you know what this is about?” the woman in front of Karen demanded.
“Not … not really,” she said uncomfortably, “but I can guess.”
“We can all guess!” the woman behind her snapped. “We’ve been guessing!”
Loren struggled for a moment with her conscience and her fear that she’d be blamed. “I was an engineer—working for the government. My job was to reverse engineer alien technology for our government.” She paused for several moments. “I began to be suspicious after a while. We thought all of it was from a crash, or maybe several, but every so often we’d get something else and none of it looked like it had been in any sort of crash. So … I started trying to figure out what was going on and ….”
“You ended up here,” Karen said in a shaky voice. “You’re saying this really is aliens and we’re really on an alien ship?”
She hadn’t expected the information to set off a new wave of hysteria, but that was exactly what it did, traveling from her small group all the way down the line of women. 
“What do they want with us?” the woman behind her demanded.
“I don’t know. I didn’t really find out anything … until I got here.”
The woman seemed to think she was lying, or holding back. “Tell me, you bitch!” she screamed.
Before she could grab Loren, she was zapped by the robot behind them. She twitched all over and then collapsed. Loren wasn’t even aware that she’d grabbed Karen fearfully until the robot spoke again. “Please move along in a calm, orderly fashion.”
There was nothing calm or orderly about the procession. There wasn’t one woman in the group, including Loren, who wasn’t hysterical or borderline hysterical, but they were trapped in the corridor between the robots and whatever their fate was and there was nowhere to go but forward. 
Several women tried to make a break and race down the corridor in the opposite direction, but they didn’t make it far before they were jolted unconscious. 
Loren almost envied them. She didn’t really want to find out what awaited them at the other end of the corridor. She saw her fears hadn’t been misplaced when her group finally made it to the door at the end and she discovered they were being processed for shipment. They were all stripped naked, thoroughly examined—more thoroughly than she’d ever been examined before—their bowels and bladder emptied, and then shoved into a pod. She had just enough time to be more thoroughly terrified than she’d ever been in her life when she saw the pod was filling with some sort of fluids and then, mercifully, she lost consciousness. She drifted for what seemed almost like an eternity to her, dreaming at times, vaguely aware of floating at others and then she was as rudely awakened as she’d been knocked out. 
The fluids drained away and she struggled to suck a breath of air in, only to have the fluids, which had filled her lungs, begin to evacuate. She was still coughing and gagging and shivering when the pod tilted and dumped her on the hard, metal floor. A robot appeared beside her, jerked her upright by her hair, clamped something tight around her throat and moved on to the next woman. 
“Get up and move along!”
Loren jerked at the sound of the voice, the first male voice she’d heard that sounded as if it had been uttered from a human throat. She discovered as soon as she managed to focus her vision, however, that he most certainly wasn’t human even if he wasn’t a machine. 
“Move!” he roared when most of the women who’d managed to gain their feet simply stared at him in horror. “The auction is already in progress! If I lose sales because of your laziness, you’ll regret it!”
Loren was still completely and utterly confused about everything except the threat. That was enough to get her on her feet, but she discovered she was chained to a woman both behind and in front of her. When she surged forward, the metal around her neck tightened and nearly sent her into another coughing spasm. It didn’t help that the creature set his damned metal beasts on them to herd from behind when everyone was chained together. Screaming, many of the women tried to run and only succeeded in jerking women around them off their feet. Finally, they managed order of a sort and began moving quickly along the corridor. They met up with another robot after a short run that diverted them down a gangplank. 
Loren was in too much terror and distress to think about her nakedness until they began piling down the gangplank, but they were met with a sight that made the women in the lead come to an abrupt halt and everyone behind slammed into them and ended up in a tangle. 
The lizard man herding them began shouting and screaming and threatening again and they began struggling to disentangle themselves. They were aided by the robots that moved among them, snatching them up by whatever they snagged—hair, a hand or finger, an arm or a leg or a foot. Loren managed to get on her feet without that ‘help’ and helped Karen up. She had the opportunity while they were waiting for the robots and their captor to restore some semblance of order to gawk at her surroundings.
She might have thought they’d disembarked from one ship and into another that was many times bigger except that she could see that there were other ships docked up and down what looked like a broad street, disgorging trade goods. It almost looked more like a huge mall than anything else, except that, where one would’ve expected to see a ceiling there was a network of metal with some sort of transparent material in between that allowed her to stare at stars she’d never seen. She was still gaping when the women around her began to move again—which was when she discovered she wasn’t the only one gaping.
There were alien beings moving along the ‘street’ and in and out of the ships and buildings along it. She’d either been too stunned to really notice that before or she’d simply assumed they were what she was used to seeing, humans, because most of them appeared to be humanoid even if they didn’t look entirely human or looked about as far from it as they could get and still retain a humanoid shape. There were a few that weren’t even humanoid, but she wasn’t certain whether they were actually intelligent beings or lower animals that were being traded. Almost without exception, however, they all stopped to gape as the women were driven past them as if they’d never seen humans before. 
It was the way the aliens were staring at them that finally brought it crashing down upon Loren that she was as naked as the day she was born and most of the aliens seemed to be male. Everyone else seemed to make that connection about the same time Loren did. They crowded into a tight knot that made it that much more difficult to try to walk, trying to cover themselves with their hands. She was almost relieved when they were finally herded into what appeared to be an enormous building near the center of what she realized must be a space station since she hadn’t seen a sign of anything that looked like they might be on a planet, as hard as that was to assimilate. The sense of relief lasted until they’d been driven down the corridor and out the other side and she discovered they were in what looked like a football stadium—except that it was round rather than oblong—and there was no grass on the ‘field’. 
Their captor brought them to a halt and told them to be still and then marched away. Struggling to assimilate what was going on, Loren watched him a little dazedly as he crossed the field to the raised platform in the center and spoke with several men-aliens. He looked pleased when he turned toward them again. 
“Oh … my …fucking … god!” one of the women near Loren gasped.
“It’s a … it’s a slave auction!”
Loren glanced at Karen in horrified disbelief. She would’ve liked to have disputed her comment as pure conjecture, but their captor returned and released several women from the chain and then hauled them to the platform. 
And the bidding began.

Chapter Two
Loren was too shocked to cry. Most of the women were weeping and begging, or cursing and struggling when they were led off to the auction block and screaming hysterically when they were claimed by the highest bidder, but she couldn’t even summon enough emotion to do either. When they came for her, she kept telling herself it just wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. None of it could be. She was going to wake up and discover she was in a mental hospital from a nervous breakdown or that she’d been ‘tripping’ on some hallucinogenic drug.
And yet, the sounds of so many voices and the smells of so many different things were as hard to dismiss as the feel of the field beneath her bare feet and the textural change of the platform as the mounted it. They managed to pierce the cocoon she’d wrapped herself in when her hands were seized and peeled from her protective pose and her arms twisted behind her back to display for the bidders and she happened to catch sight of the huge screens around the arena where the cameras had zoomed in to show her breasts and genitals for everyone to study. If that wasn’t bad enough, chants came from the bidders for a ‘better’ look and they bent her over and pulled the lips of her sex back to satisfy the curiosity of the buyers. Fortunately, that indignity was over before she’d fully grasped what they intended to do. 
She began trembling then as quick thaw set in, but the real horror only hit her when the bidding was concluded and the buyer arrived to pay for her and collect her. 
She was pretty sure he was the most horrible creature in the entire stadium. He was very little taller than she was, and appeared to be bigger around than he was tall—soft rolls that shimmied with each movement he made—and that was the ‘good’ part. His face more strongly resembled a fish of some kind than anything else that came to mind—from the round, bulbous eyes that didn’t seem to have eyelids to the lipless mouth. He had no hair—nothing like she had, at any rate. Something sprouted from the wrinkly flesh that covered his skull, but it looked more like worms than hair. Each ‘strand’ even seemed to move of its own accord as if they were some kind of parasites attached to him rather than part of him. He had nose holes, but no actual nose and when he grinned and displayed the hideous, discolored teeth in his mouth, she thought for a moment that she might faint.
She prayed for it, actually wilted dizzily toward the floor of the auction block, but he merely coiled a beefy arm around her waist and hauled her away. 
The smell! 
She’d smelled pigs that smelled better and the noxious fumes emanating from the creature gave rise to nausea. She thought she might have thrown up if she’d had anything at all in her stomach, but it certainly didn’t bring her closer to a swoon. On the contrary, the smell was like having an ammonia capsule broken beneath her nose. It brought her around and far too conscious. 
“I can walk,” she said through gritted teeth, desperate to put any amount of distance between herself and the disgusting creature that she could. 
“Good. You heavy,” he grunted, dropping her on the ground.
She got to her feet with an effort. “You speak English?” she asked shakily, hope instantly springing to life, though what she hoped for she had no idea.
He trained his bulging eyes on her for a moment and made a sound she finally realized must be laughter. “Speak Unduleze like everyone here. You, too.”
Loren gaped at him, slowly assimilating the ‘broken’ English. It not only dawned on her abruptly that it was completely ridiculous to think he might speak English when they’d been gaped at as if none of the aliens had ever seen a human before, but she realized she wasn’t hearing or speaking English, that there was a faint ‘echo’ of sounds that definitely weren’t English.
“Trader put in brain on trip out. No can sell slave if they not understand how to obey.”
She didn’t know or care how that bastard had made her more saleable! All that mattered was that she could communicate. “There was a mistake,” she said as he grasped her arm and led her across the field.
“No mistake. I pay good credits—too much, but you’ll do.”
Desperation coiled in her belly and her heart thudded dully with a mixture of fear and hopefulness. “I mean, I’m not supposed to be here … at all. See, my government arranged for me to study alien technology so that I could design and build it when I got back to Earth.”
The creature slid a look at her. “They give you to trader?”
Loren blinked at him. “No! They took me to this place and that … that creature kidnapped me!”
“Took to place where trader pick up, you supposed to be here,” the creature said complacently. 
Loren’s jaw dropped. Sickness coiled in her belly, however, along with the realization that that was undeniable. What were the chances, after all, that she’d been picked up by that creature instead of the aliens the government had arranged a pickup with? “But I’m not, damn it!”
“Are now. I buy. You mine.”
“But that’s exactly my point!” she said a little more desperately. “I’m not a slave. I’m an engineer! I’m sure we could get this straightened out if you’d just contact the … uh … the American Embassy,” she ended a little weakly when it hit her that she was so far outside the U. S. that even she thought she sounded like a lunatic. She was so busy trying to reason with him that he’d led her into a corridor very like the one they’d entered on their arrival before she even realized he fully intended to take her with him regardless of her attempts to convince him she wasn’t a slave and she wasn’t for sale.
* * * *
Kael had been too angry to watch when he and Dakaar arrived for the slave auction. It was not the first time that Lecur had summoned him to guard him when he went off to purchase new slaves, but he had not grown accustomed to it anymore than he had grown accustomed to being a slave himself. It still made his belly churn with a simmering rage that he could nothing about, and that was almost worse—the knowledge that he was powerless to do anything about his circumstances and unable to do anything about the enslavement of others. 
He had never killed an opponent on the gladiatorial field. This was not war where the ultimate sacrifice was demanded and lives taken or yielded if necessary. It was fighting purely for the sake of entertaining the creatures who paid Lecur to be entertained by their blood and he refused to do more than subdue his opponent as he would have in any contest of skills. 
There were times, though, when he wanted very badly to choke the life from Lecur and this was one of those times.
He and Dakaar had been left to wait a very long time while newly captured people from many worlds were paraded onto the auction block and sold, however, and he found he could not resist glancing out from the corridor beneath the stands from time to time with impatience to discover if he could how much longer they must wait.
His anger had mounted when a trader had arrived late with even more slaves to offer, but when he had glanced out in annoyance and seen the first of these new offerings, surprise and interest he should not have felt had caught him. He had thought at first that they were children and his fury had threatened to boil over, but when the vids had displayed close images of the creature, he had seen that it was a fully grown woman. More than that, although there seemed very little interest by the buyers in the faces, he had caught a glimpse of the facial features and been stunned to see that these beings were amazing like Hirachi in form, despite their miniature size. He had forgotten his outrage over the sale of flesh then. He had been too busy studying each female that was brought out and noting the things that made them seem Hirachi even while he noticed the things that proved they were still very different. 
Beyond the features of the face and body that were so reminiscent of his own people, the two most marked differences were their diminutive size and the many colors of their skin. True, there were subtle differences in their own coloration. Those who spent more time laboring in the sun were darker and those who spent more time laboring in the sea were paler, but those differences were very faint and hardly noticeable. These tiny beings ranged from being so pale as to appear almost completely white to so dark they achieved the opposite end of the scale and were nearly black and there were many colors in between, from pale pink or red to a very pale yellow similar to their own coloring to many shades of brown. It was the same with their hair, which was almost more fascinating, especially when he discovered that they often had one color on their head and an entirely different color on their genitals. 
He was hardly aware that they stirred him at first, too focused on studying them hungrily for those things about them that reminded him of the home and life he had once known. One came finally that jolted that arousal to the forefront of his mind, however. He noticed the hair first because it was so different from the others—brown where the light did not shine on it, but a fiery red like a blazing sunset where the light touched it and the small triangle that covered her woman’s mound was almost exactly the same. 
It was when the vids displayed a close up view of her form that his cock sprang to attention, however, and that circumstance redirected his mind instantly from mere curious interest in the similarity of the species to his own to hunger for her. The pretty little pointed face he caught a glimpse of sealed his enthrallment. Her eyes were open wide, revealing a color that he had never seen—a pure blue like the sky above his home world.
Want so potent went through him that he lost any ability to think beyond that desperation to possess. He could not pull his gaze away. He could not prevent the flood of thoughts that rushed through his mind as it struggled to conceive a way that he might possess her, completely disregarding the cold, hard fact that he was nothing, now, but a slave and had lost any right to claim a lover, let alone a mate. He felt as he had as a warrior of the Hirachi, as a leader among his people, searching his mind for ways to court the lovely maid and entice her to his pod where he might claim her as his mate and breed his children on her.
Dakaar broke the spell. “She is beautiful,” he murmured hoarsely, clearly so enthralled with her himself that he had no idea he had spoken aloud. 
The comment was enough, however, to instantly redirect Kael’s mind to his rival for the attention of the maid that had caught his eyes and focus aggression as potent as his desire for her on the warrior he had considered almost as a brother from childhood.
Dakaar swallowed audibly, still completely unaware of the possessive fury emanating from Kael. “Lecur has bought her,” he said with a strange mixture of excitement and baffled anger.
The statement sent a wave of cold over Kael, however, bringing him back to reality with a sickening jolt. 
He could not court her to claim her. He could not entice her with his prowess as a lover. He could not best Dakaar to prove his worth as a warrior and a protector and win her admiration.
She was a slave … and she belonged to Lecur … just he did.
He wanted to rage against the fates that he had lived when the aliens had come and taken him instead killing him. He wanted to grab Lecur and tear him limb from limb. 
Instead, he sought to calm the rage that threatened his own existence as much as it did Lecur’s as he watched Lecur bring the tiny creature that had so enthralled him closer and closer. It was some vague notion that he might still achieve his freedom and take the maid that gave him the strength to fight his natural urges. It was pride that made him hide the twin desires for the maid and the desire to kill from his expression to prevent Lecur’s satisfaction in knowing he felt it and could do nothing about it, but it was the little maid herself that chilled those emotions into a frozen wasteland at his core.
She was far smaller even that he had realized, far more beautiful to his eyes … and as far from his reach as if she was still on her own home world. He could not have her. No matter how much it might tear at him to look at her and know he would not touch her, let alone claim her, he could not and it would be far better to kill that want before it consumed him. 
Even so, he could not prevent himself from studying her, as hard as he worked to hide the hunger he felt. He could not help but search her pretty little face for some sign that she felt at least a tiny bit of the same interest in him as he had in her. Could she see past their differences as he had? Or would she see only that his skin was yellow and he towered over her and be afraid?
* * * *
A jolt went through Loren when she discovered they’d left the auction area completely, but it wasn’t entirely for that reason. The aliens she saw standing in the corridor, apparently waiting for the creature, shocked her into silence. 
They were massive on an entirely different scale than the creature who was deluded enough he thought he’d just bought her. They looked as if they must be every bit of seven feet tall—they were certainly a hell of a lot taller than the average six feet she was accustomed to! And whereas her ‘master’ was more like a ball with two arms and two legs, the pair of yellow skinned aliens looked like weightlifters, massively muscular. 
The discovery that they were nearly as naked as she was shattered the comforting cocoon of shock almost as instantaneously as it descended over her. Beyond the leather-looking thing that cupped their genitals and looked like something a male stripper might wear, they were completely exposed—their feet, legs, torso and massive arms ‘blindingly’ bare. In a state of shock that made it almost impossible to assimilate what she was staring at, she gaped without a great deal of comprehension at the massive musculature of the beings, vaguely noting numerous scars at every stage from pale and knotted with age to fresh and angry red against their yellowish skin. They were tattooed, she thought, but the darkened designs on their massive chests didn’t look like anything nature would’ve created.
“Take female and put in harem. I go back and look for another one or two, I tink. You come back din and guard.” He frowned thoughtfully. “No. You send Pin, Uster, Balen, and Mateo. Gods damned pirates try rob me udderwise.”
That comment pierced her shock and Loren turned to stare at the creature in disbelief as he turned and abandoned her. Harem? Her belly knotted with a mixture of fear and revulsion, but she struggled to blank her mind to the implications. He couldn’t possibly think he could …. 
A hand settled on her arm that was big enough it engulfed most of her upper arm. She stared at the hand for a long, blank moment, and then looked up at the owner of the hand, discovering with a fresh jolt of surprise that, despite his size and his coloring, he looked human in the face. His features were sharp and his bone structure angular, but it was a surprisingly handsome face for all that. 
It took her several moments to realize that he was studying her with an equal intensity.
“Come.”
Loren gulped, struggling to call to mind some kind argument to escape the fate that apparently awaited her. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she said in a squeaky voice.
His gaze flickered over her face. She thought she saw a flicker of pity, but she saw something else, as well—interest, sexual interest and it made her mouth go dry and her knees go weak. “You slave as we are. You no choose. Must,” he said in a deep voice that matched the massive scale of the man and sent a shiver down her spine. 
She was too awed and too unnerved to try again. She didn’t try to struggle when he tugged at her arm to get her going. The other one fell into step on her other side and she glanced up at his face finally and discovered that he was looking down at her with interest, as well. Surprise went through her to discover that he was more handsome than the first … actually, handsome in a different way. The first was attractive in a purely male way—his face and features appealing in their strength. The second was still manly, but more ‘pretty’. As absurd as it seemed to think it, even to her, the thought crossed her mind that he was ‘classically’ handsome.
If not for the size of them, and the color of their skin … and the strange little nubs that ran up their arms and the columns of their necks … and the thin, feathery membranes at wrist, elbow and calf that looked like fins—they might almost have passed for humans. They had hair—long and inky black and worn gathered in a tight ‘pony tail’ that fell from the crown of their heads all the way to their shoulder blades—but it looked like her own hair. 
Actually, their eyes weren’t like human eyes either except in shape. 
“Pretty little ting. Your people all little like you?” the second one asked curiously. 
She blinked at him in surprise, finding once again that she had to ‘interpret’, for although the words sounded like English in her ears, his accent was thick and the sentence structure choppy. Her face heated when she realized he’d said she was pretty and then whitened as it dawned on her that he was … flirting. At least, she thought he was, and it was hard to convince herself he wasn’t given the way he was looking at her and the comment together. “I haven’t seen a lot of men as tall as you two,” she said finally, or as massive!
“Look like tiny Hirachi woman … ‘cept dis hair and dis skin.”
Apparently he noticed that she wasn’t especially happy with the comment.
“I like. Is pretty. Different, still pretty.”
He was an attractive male even if he was an alien, but his size unnerved the hell out of her. Not that she thought he was going to get the chance to hump her as he so clearly wanted to when the hideously repulsive creature that had bought her had told them to put her in his harem! And if that had been her only options—him or the fish-man—she would certainly have chosen him! But she didn’t even want to think about what might be lying coiled like a cobra in his loincloth when it seemed likely he was completely proportional!
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have occurred to him that her genitals were also proportional to her size!
In all honesty, she thought his size would’ve unnerved her without that possibility thrown into the mix. He looked big enough and strong enough to break something purely by accident and she didn’t want any part of her body broken or mangled! 
That being the case, she didn’t reciprocate even though it popped into her mind that it would be polite to tell him that she didn’t find him repulsive either—terrifying, but not repulsive. She smiled at him a little weakly instead of thanking him for the compliment. “You’re … Hirachi?” she asked tentatively. “You aren’t from this world, then?”
“Dis no world. Big habitat in space.”
She’d thought it must be a space station and she was still dismayed. If it had at least been on some planet she might have had the option of escaping and running—and probably dying because she had no clue of how to survive, but it was deeply disturbing to think she didn’t have any options. 
“We Hirachi. Captured on Ach, brought here, sold. Master buy to fight. Am Dakaar. Shy one Kael,” he added, pointing to his companion.
Loren transferred her gaze from Dakaar to the ‘shy one’ and discovered that he was giving Dakaar a narrow eyed look. “She is a slave, as we are,” he said tightly. “What are you about? If you want to keep your manhood, you’ll do well to ignore your cock’s interest in the little one. You don’t need it to fight.” 
Dakaar flushed. “The poor little thing is scared to death,” he retorted angrily. “Who does it hurt to try to calm her fears?” 
“Her!” Kael retorted tightly. “She has every reason to be frightened. You aren’t doing her a good turn to allay those fears when she is destined for the master’s harem.”
Dakaar looked as sick as he felt. “Why would he want her for … that?” he demanded, hesitating over the term since it made him feel sicker to think of that creature pawing her. “ It’s clear she’s far more like us, despite her size, than she is his species.”
“He isn’t interested in breeding,” Kael said sourly, “any more than you are.”
“There’s where you’re wrong,” Dakaar growled. “My time is close and I cannot think of much else!”
Kael studied him thoughtfully for a long moment and finally shifted his gaze to the woman. “Gods!” he muttered. “That wily bastard has bought her to tease us. I thought it strange that he sent us to take her back when he claimed he had need of guards!”
Dismay flickered through Dakaar, and then a wild hope that he didn’t dare dwell upon let alone voice. “He couldn’t know we’re nearing our spawning time, could he?”
Kael snorted derisively. “He is no fool. He would’ve discovered what he could about us when he bought us. You may be sure of that.”
“Mayhap …?” 
“Don’t say it! Don’t even think it! She is a pretty little thing, but when have you known Lecur to do anything that was not something for his own comfort or to increase his wealth?” 
“What’s going on?” Loren asked uneasily, unable to follow the conversation since they’d switched to another language. She could tell the ‘shy’ one Dakaar had called Kael was angry, however.
“Not mind him,” Dakaar said tightly. “Has only two moods—angry and foul.”
Despite everything, Loren felt amusement flicker through her even though Kael sent Dakaar a look that should have singed his hair. 
Actually, she thought, maybe it was because he did. There was something so human-like in the exchange that it comforted her, even though it was unnerving to see an expression of anger on a face attached to a fledgling mountain. 
“This … uh … harem,” she said uneasily. “On my world, it’s a place where … uh … sex slaves live. At least, that’s the way my culture looks at it.”
“Is same,” Kael said bluntly.
Loren felt the blood rush from her face. Weakness followed it. Fortunately, Kael had maintained his grip on her. “Oh,” she said faintly, shuddering, trying to block the images that flickered through her mind. 
Glancing around for something to distract her from the horrible mental images, she found it very quickly in the stares of the aliens they passed. She only had one hand she could cover herself with, though, and she sidled a little closer to Kael to try to hide from their lascivious gazes. To her surprise, Dakaar responded by moving closer, his expression hard as he warned the bystanders away and tried to shield her from their gazes with his bulk.
She was still almost relieved when they turned into one of the buildings along the thoroughfare. They climbed several flights of stairs. When they reached what she realized must be the top floor, Kael touched buttons on a security pad and a door slid open. Giving her a slight nudge to get her inside, he released her arm. By the time she’d whipped around, the door had closed again, sealing her in. 
She sank weakly to the floor where she stood, feeling fear and hopelessness seep into every pore. As unnerving as she’d found both Dakaar and Kael, they’d seemed at least a little sympathetic and protective and she’d hoped ….
She wasn’t certain what she’d hoped. That she might fare better with them?
She didn’t know that and the truth was she couldn’t think of any reason at all to suppose that. The creature that had bought her hadn’t seemed cruel. He’d actually seemed pretty jolly, but then again she had no idea what had put him in such a good mood. It could’ve been plans that she wouldn’t like at all. 
The urge to cry assailed her. She struggled with it by force of habit. Her parents hadn’t approved of such an indulgence. If anything happened to make one feel like giving in to their emotions, it was very likely the worst thing to do. Keeping calm allowed some possibility of remedying the situation and giving in to hysterics was no help at all. 
She didn’t see how calm reflection was going to help her get out of her current situation, though, and it was pretty damned hard just to keep her mind off of what she very much feared was going to happen once the fish-man returned. 
She didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that she wasn’t a virgin. The fact that she wasn’t certainly hadn’t seemed to discourage anybody from bidding on her! And she also wasn’t sure it was terribly helpful that she knew exactly what she had to face. Maybe she would’ve been more afraid if she was still a virgin and only had an idea, not experience, but she had no idea what that … thing’s penis might be like. She had to assume he had one and was planning on using it, but could she count on it being anything like she was familiar with?
She didn’t think so and the worse of it was, she kept thinking about those things growing out of its head and picturing a penis that was similar. 
“Oh god!” she muttered at the thought, surging to her feet and looking around a little wildly for any possibility of escaping. In the back of her mind, she knew it was useless. They were on a space station. She couldn’t run far enough or fast enough to keep from being caught and she suspected runaway slaves would be punished. And she didn’t really want to find out how they were punished. Beyond that, the fish-man had mentioned his fears of pirates, which seemed to suggest this was a very bad ‘neighborhood’. She had a bad feeling that the entire station was a hideout for every sort of lowlife imaginable. 
She could be wrong, but it almost seemed that the fact that the place appeared to be primarily populated by males almost insured that likelihood. 
A jolt went through her when she searched the perimeter of the large room for any sign of a window she might be climb out of and spotted a creature very like the fish-man lounging sleepily on something like a daybed at the far end of the room. There were several others that differed very little lounging or seated on pillows around her/it?
It spoke to her when she focused on it, but she didn’t understand the language at all. The round face creased in a look of displeasure when she didn’t response. 
“Speak Unduleze?”
“I guess so,” Loren said doubtfully. 
“What you be? No see ting like you ‘for.”
“Human,” Loren responded uneasily. “From Earth.”
The thing frowned. “No know dat place. Why here?”
There was something about the tone of the question that told Loren it/she wasn’t going to be pleased to discover she was an addition to the harem and the others didn’t look too happy about it either. 
Far be it from her to try to steal the fish-man’s attentions! But could she convince them of that? And would it matter even if she did? He was going to do what he wanted to do and since they couldn’t take out their anger on him, she was going to be the target. 
“I don’t know,” she said unhappily. “I wasn’t told anything.”
The creature got up and undulated toward her. It almost seemed impossible that it could’ve been bigger around than the fish-man, but it was. She—Loren decided it had to be a female even though she was damned if she could tell that it looked more feminine than the fish-man—looked her over with contempt. “Lecur buy at slave market?”
Loren swallowed a little convulsively, wondering if she was about to have a fight on her hands. “Yes.”
“Din know why here!” the creature spat.
“Actually, I was kind of hoping he had something else in mind. My people would buy me back,” she added on inspiration. Not that she thought the bastards that had put her in this position would, but surely her parents could come up with something! “I was stolen.”
The creature grunted. “I stolen. They stolen. You tink I be here I not stolen?”
Loren smiled with an effort. “Well then! We have something in common, don’t we? Neither of us wants to be here.”
“I here first! Am concubine now!”
“Oh! Well … uh … congratulations?”
“You smartass?”
Loren felt tearful all over again, but she knew it wouldn’t do to appear weak, especially when she was out numbered. The others hadn’t gotten up, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t if there was any sign of trouble. “No. You seemed proud of it.”
“Am!” she snapped angrily. “Lecur very rich! Have many gladiators.”
Loren blinked at her, suddenly recalling the scars all over the two men who’d escorted her and Dakaar’s comment about being bought to fight. That was what he’d meant, she thought, horrified.
Abruptly, she realized that what they faced, regularly, was a good bit worse than having to face the stinky fish-man wallowing on her and poking her. They were scarred all over. They hadn’t gotten those from fist fighting!
Of course, there was hell and then there was hell! “The Hirachi that brought me here are gladiators?”
The creature’s eyes narrowed assessingly. “You like dim Hirachi?”
Loren felt a wave of cold wash over her. She thought she managed a credible show of indifference, however. Not that she was particularly interested, but she had a bad feeling that it could be really dangerous, possibly for both her and the men, if ‘fish-man’ Lecur got the idea she was. “I was just curious. One of them said something about fighting. I didn’t realize that was what he meant. Do you get to go to the fights?”
“You like see men try kill each other?”
Loren felt the blood leave her face. Nausea rolled through her. “I don’t know. What sort of fighting do they do?”
“Try kill each other … sometimes to de death. Sometimes not.”
“I’ve … I’ve never seen that kind of fight,” Loren responded, unable to maintain any appearance of interest even though it had seemed to divert the creature. 
The creature shrugged. “Hirachi no do dat. Refuse. Make Lecur angry, very angry. Just beat down till can’t get up no more. He threaten kill dem. Dey no care. Still refuse. But dey good fighters. Bring much men to watch, much money.”
It seemed to her that the female was saying that Lecur was already unhappy with them. She sure as hell didn’t want to add to it!
Fortunately, there were new arrivals before the concubine could interrogate Loren any further. She turned at the sound of the door opening and watched as Lecur and his guards brought in Karen and an alien woman. There was another Hirachi with him and three that looked to be the same species as the alien woman. 
Surprise and uneasiness flickered through Loren when, instead of leaving the two women, he summoned her. Trying to tell herself that this was a good thing—her removal from the harem—Loren moved closer to Karen. They were ushered out and down the stairs again, but they didn’t stop at the ‘ground’ floor. They descended another flight and she discovered a vast ‘basement’ … that was filled with males of several different species, all of them huge and most of them really, really scary looking. 
The worst, she discovered, was yet to come. Beaming, Lecur motioned the gladiators closer and invited them to examine the prizes he’d bought for them. Loren and Karen exchanged a horrified glance but they were completely surrounded within moments. Loren didn’t know about the others, but she was pinched and patted and stroked until she was ready to scream. One of the other women did. She didn’t know if it was Karen or the alien female, but Lecur called a halt and told them they’d had enough time to examine the prizes. 
The gladiators drew back, but with obvious reluctance. Loren was shaking like a leaf in strong wind by that time. 
“Winners de next games get night wid de prizes!” Lecur announced. 
Loren, Karen, and the alien woman looked at each other in absolute horror. All Loren could think, though, was that her mother had always said to be careful what she wished for and that she was very, very sorry that she’d wished so desperately to get out of the harem!

Chapter Three
Loren had never been as excited about clothes before in her life. She was so grateful when she was finally pushed into a cell-like room and given a ‘handkerchief’ to cover herself with she felt like weeping for joy. It barely covered her from shoulder to groin and it looked like it had been made out of tissue paper, and she wasn’t given anything at all to cover her genital area, but it was something!
She was less happy about the accommodations. To be more accurate, she was less happy about the location of her accommodations. Apparently Lecur had decided they would stir the men up a lot more if they were close enough to look at whenever the mood struck them. There were bars for a door, which was somewhat reassuring at least in the sense that the gladiators couldn’t actually get to her, but there was next to no privacy when they only had to walk by to peer in at her.
They didn’t actually walk by. For hours after she was pushed into her little cubicle, they stood at the bars, staring at her so hungrily that she was a nervous wreck within an hour. The only time those at the front left was when the ones that couldn’t get a view punched them and urged them to leave. She very much feared there might have been some serious fights among them if not for Lecur’s parting warning that fighting outside the ring would not be tolerated and anyone caught at it would not take part in the next gladiatorial game. 
She was near tears when the gladiators finally seemed to get their fill of gawking at her and wandered off. There was a latrine and a tiny bowl for water in one corner in the back and she’d been thinking about it longingly for a while before the men finally left. The only privacy offered, however, was a low wall and even as short as she was she couldn’t use the damned thing with anything close to privacy. She supposed she should’ve been grateful for that much. Clearly the entire area had been built to house the gladiators and no one seemed to think men wanted or needed privacy for such things, but she did. 
It was just too … degrading and as demeaning as her entire experience had been since she’d been shanghaied, she thought she just couldn’t handle that one more thing without breaking down. It seemed likely that this would be a very long term situation, at that, and she just couldn’t see ‘holding’ it until everybody fell asleep. She needed to do something to preserve what little remained of her dignity.
Sighing shakily when the men finally wandered off, she began studying her surroundings with an eye toward ‘engineering’ some sort of privacy. She wasn’t a designer, but it wasn’t as if she wasn’t familiar with working with things. Unfortunately, there were no tools. In fact, the room was virtually empty. Beyond the cot, which was actually a fairly large bed, no doubt because it had once belonged to a gladiator or had at least been built for one, and an unadorned and unpadded bench, there was nothing but the toilet, the tiny water fountain/wash bowl … and a shower head she discovered protruding above them. She stared at the shower head thoughtfully for a long time and then down at the blanket she was covering up with. 
She could sacrifice the blanket for privacy to attend her needs, or have something to cover up with. That didn’t especially appeal to her. It was cool in the basement. She was comfortable enough in her tissue toga at the moment, but she didn’t think she’d be able to sleep very comfortably without a blanket. 
She studied the bench for several moments and finally got up to examine it and the low wall. It was certainly tall enough, she decided, to give her a good bit more privacy. The question was, could she lift it and was it too wide to sit on the ledge?
She would’ve felt better if she’d actually had something to measure it with, but she used her hand and lower arm to take the measure and the index on her other hand to mark the measurement and compared it to the wall. 
Iffy, she thought skeptically, but it looked like it might not be too wide to perch on the wall. She thought at first that the damned thing was bolted to the fucking floor, but she finally managed to shove it across the room until it was next to the wall. There was going to be no lifting it dead up. She knew that, but she decided to see if she could lift one end high enough to settle it on the wall.
She was out of breath by the time she managed it, but she did manage it. Panting for breath, she leaned against the wall to rest, glancing toward the door. A jolt went through her when she saw an alien man standing there but recognition dawned in almost the same moment. 
A thrill of pleasure went through her even to see one face that was just a little familiar and she couldn’t help the smile of welcome that lit her face. Kael looked surprised, but he returned the smile tentatively. “What doing?” he asked, nudging his chin toward her project.
Loren felt her face redden with discomfort. “Engineering a higher wall for privacy,” she said ruefully, pushing away from the wall she was propped against and moving a little closer to the door. “I guess they don’t lock any of you in?”
His smile died. “Sometimes. Now, lock out.”
Loren couldn’t decide whether the jolt that went through her was spawned by fear or pleasure, but she finally decided it was a little of both.
“Lock all fighters out. Keep little ting safe … for now.”
Loren felt her color fluctuate. Fear clawed at the back of her mind at the reminder of her predicament and yet she couldn’t deny that she thought it was sweet he’d referred to her as ‘little ting’. Of course, he was as big as a tank. She could’ve been a hell of a lot bigger and still been a ‘little ting’ to him. “My name’s Loren.”
He tried it out on his tongue several times, struggling to pronounce it as she had and finally managed something close—and just garbled enough by his accent to be charming. Dakaar joined him at the door. Kael flicked an annoyed glance at him when Loren smiled at him.
“Little ting alright?”
It warmed her that he seemed concerned. At the same time she felt a shiver run through her at the reminder of what she’d endured earlier. To her horror, she also felt her nipples harden in response and there was no doubt in her mind that both Kael and Dakaar noticed it immediately. Their gazes zoomed in on the peaks tenting her thin shift. Trying to be casual about it, she lifted her hands and rubbed her arms. “It’s a little chilly in here,” she muttered.
It seemed to break their trance. Both of them met her gaze for a long moment and she saw the same hunger in their eyes that she’d seen in the others. It had an entirely different effect on her, however. Instead of being unnerved, she felt warmth flutter through her belly. 
“Pretty little ting is Lau-ren,” Kael said.
“Lau-ren … pretty,” Dakaar murmured. 
She couldn’t decide whether he was saying she was pretty or her name was, but she felt her cheeks flush with pleasure at the compliments from both of them. “Thank you.”
To her horror, she felt tears well in her eyes at the tiny bit of comfort they’d offered. Actually, she amended mentally, the great deal of comfort. They hadn’t been among those who’d crowded around her and handled her and pinched her and she was as grateful for that restraint as she was for the soothing words and compliments even while the disturbing thought arose that maybe they hadn’t been interested enough to feel her up like the others had. She blinked the tears away with an effort and sniffed, afraid if she broke down they’d leave and she needed some sense that she had friends—needed to believe they, at least, wouldn’t hurt her even though they were almost as big and scary looking as the others. “Have you been here long?” she asked hurriedly, trying to find something to keep a conversation going.
Their faces hardened to her dismay.
Dakaar glanced at Kael. 
“No way count time here. No sun. Only darkness all time,” Kael said finally.
“Long time,” Dakaar said. “I count three mayhap four years our world.”
Loren’s dismay deepened and sympathy for them made her chest tight. “Three years!” she echoed. “Fighting?”
Another Hirachi joined the two already at the door. Loren recognized him as the one who’d been with the fish-man when they’d brought Karen and the alien woman. 
“Long time for games. Most no fight that long.”
Loren blinked at him when he spoke. “So you only have to fight for a few years? Then what?”
“Die. Most only one year. Some two. Only Hirachi last three.”
Horror washed over her in a cold tide. “But … the fish-man’s concubine said ….”
Kael’s lip curled up at one corner. He frowned at her quizzically. “Fish-man?”
It occurred to Loren abruptly that she’d noticed something along their arms and legs that looked a lot like fins, but she dismissed it. If they were … some sort of sea people, they couldn’t survive out of water, she reasoned. “Sorry. He just reminds me of a fish—the face. I can’t remember his name.”
He seemed to think that was funny, to her relief. He chuckled and said something in their own tongue to the others. She didn’t know what, but the other two grinned at her. 
The newest arrival noticed her incomplete project. “What do dere?”
Loren felt her face heat. “Not much yet. It’s heavy.”
“Weigh same as you,” he commented, looking amused. “You tink can lift?”
She frowned at him and plunked her hands on her hips. “I got one end up,” she said pointedly.
His eyes gleamed teasingly. “Light end.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “They both weigh the same.”
“What name, pretty ting?” he asked, grinning.
Loren couldn’t help but chuckle. Despite his broken—whatever language—it sounded so much like a pick up line it increased the sense that the Hirachi were human. 
“Name Lau-ren,” Kael said, not sounding the least bit amused. He pushed away from the bars abruptly, turned, and left.
Loren bit her lip, struggling with disappointment. As hard as it was trying to talk, and understand, when none of them seemed to know that much of a common language, she’d enjoyed the little conversation she’d managed with Kael. 
“Name Balen,” the newcomer informed her, promptly taking Kael’s place and blocking her view of his departure. 
She smiled at him tentatively. “You brought Karen.”
He frowned as if thinking that over. “Same you but hair different?”
Loren nodded, moving a little closer. “Is she alright?”
“Scared … same you. No be scared. We Hirachi take care ob little tings.”
It was an unlooked for offer that took her breath away and yet, as big and strong as they appeared to be, the Hirachi were badly outnumbered and beyond that, slaves just as she was. She couldn’t decide how to respond. She wanted to jump at the offer and kiss him all over and thank him, but guilt arose as soon as she thought about it. Taking care of her and Karen might well cost them their lives if what they’d said before was true. Or they might die in the next ‘games’ as so many apparently did. 
He wasn’t likely to believe her if she tried for a polite lie, however. 
“I appreciate your willingness to try to help. Believe me, I do. But ….”
Dakaar interrupted. “Can,” he said grimly, obviously observant enough to realize she had doubts about it. “And will.” 
Loren chewed her lower lip. “If I’m your … uh … woman, you mean?”
Both men looked slightly taken aback. Dakaar frowned. Clearly he hadn’t liked the suggestion that he’d only offered because he wanted to protect the pussy and he felt as torn as she had when Balen had made the offer. “Take care ob little ting because need protect. Too little protect self. Dis is duty ob warrior. Take care ob weak.”
Loren hesitated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.” She struggled with her discomfort for a moment and moved a little closer, trying to ignore the fear churning in her belly. “You wouldn’t …? I mean …. I would be your woman if you wanted me to,” she finally managed to say, feeling her face turn fiery red. “I … uh … I wouldn’t feel right if you risked so much for me and I didn’t … offer … uh … you know … something.”
“You be our woman … yes. Take care,” Balen said. “No. Still take care.”
The two exchanged a look and turned and left. Loren watched them leave, unhappily certain that she’d stuck both feet in her mouth and insulted them mightily. She wasn’t sorry she’d offered even though it would never have occurred to her to make such an offer before. They were right, though. She wasn’t capable of protecting herself and she needed someone to protect her. It still didn’t seem right to expect such a thing, regardless of their ‘honor’, and offer them nothing at all and she didn’t have anything else to offer. 
They’d seemed interested, but maybe she’d just jumped to the wrong conclusion?
For that matter, she didn’t even know if she had sex to offer, she realized abruptly. Lecur had said she was one of the prizes of the winners and she knew what that meant. 
Dismissing it after a few moments, she returned to the bench and struggled to lift the lower end to the wall. She succeeded, but it was a near disaster. She had to strain so hard to lift the thing so high that she was afraid for several moments that she’d torn muscle or damaged her back and the thing damned near went over the wall and landed on the toilet. She had no doubt that it was heavy enough it would have shattered the thing, or crushed it, and creating a real mess, but she managed to balance it. 
She had to go lie down for a few moments to recover before she could even muster the energy to drag the blanket off the bed. Once she’d thrown the blanket over the bench, though, she was almost deliriously happy to discover she had a hiding spot to take care of nature—and showers! 
She was so exhausted from her labors and her ordeal that she pulled her thin shift off and showered on the toilet. She could’ve brushed her teeth at the same time, too, but there was no tooth paste and she wasn’t ready to try the soap. 
The bastard that had kidnapped her had no doubt sold her bag and everything in it—including her toothbrush and her toothpaste!
Anger hit her for the first time when she finished showering, scrubbing off the sticky residue from her stint in the pod on the ship and the soiled feel that remained from when the gladiators had pawed her, only to discover she had nothing to dry off with. It made things worse that the moment she turned the water off she began to feel like she was freezing. 
“Damn it! Damn it to hell!” she growled angrily. After thinking it over for a few moments, she added a few more curses she was familiar with. “Fuck! Shit! God damn it to hell!”
She felt marginally better after she’d expressed her frustration, but she was still fucking wet! Uttering another expletive, she snatched her ‘toga’ down and dried with it. 
She discovered when she pulled the blanket down to wrap up in it that she had an audience. She glared at them and then stalked to the bed and climbed in, turning her back to them. She shouldn’t have been able to fall asleep with eyes boring into her back but the knowledge that all they could do was look—not get to her—added to emotional exhaustion and physical exhaustion was enough to knock her out after the therapeutic effects of her hot shower.
* * * *
Kael glanced at Dakaar and Balen when they returned to the cell the three of them shared. Neither looked any happier than he felt and surprise flickered through him. It had seemed to him that the pretty little maid their master had bought to torment them with appeared to favor them. It was that disappointment and anger that had sent him back to his cell when he had wanted to stay and simply drink his fill of looking at her and listening to the sound of her voice. He would have stayed to indulge his hunger to learn what he could about her if jealousy had not risen to turn his mood so sour that he hadn’t dared to linger for fear it would repel her when now it was only a matter of her being less interested in him than the others because he was not as appealing to a maiden’s eyes or as clever with the gift of charming with his tongue as they were.
If things had been different, he told himself, she would have looked at him with as much admiration or more, for although he was not as well favored in his face as either of the others and knew it, he was the better warrior and she would have seen those qualities that were his assets—his cunning in the fight, his skills, and his strength—and she would have looked upon him in an entirely different way. The urge smote him to question their mood, to discover, if he could, how they had apparently failed to capture her interest, but he quelled it. They would not be able to keep whatever was bothering them to themselves and he would know soon enough without asking.
They settled on their own bunks wordlessly and sat frowning at nothing in particular for a while before Dakaar finally broke the silence. “She is not at all like a Hirachi woman,” he said finally.
Kael sent him a sardonic look. “I saw that for myself. A strong breath of wind would blow her away. She is the tiniest female that I have ever seen.”
Balen considered that. “Lecur’s concubines are no taller—not much anyway.”
“They are far wider, however,” Kael retorted dryly and would have been repulsive to them if they had been as shapely as Loren.
“I did not mean in that way!” Dakaar said irritably. “I have eyes in my head. When the light shines upon it, her hair is … the color of the sunset on Ach. Her skin is like the tokflower and her eyes are like the summer sky. I have never seen any creature with eyes that color. Even the other little female does not have eyes that color. Though I feel obliged to say that Ka-ren is very pretty, she is not beautiful to my eyes as Lau-ren is.”
“I am surprised your eyes have not fallen out of your head when you have stared at her so hard,” Kael said sardonically, though he could have bitten his tongue. It was obvious to him that he resented her interest in his friends above him, even it was not obvious to them—and it would be soon enough if he could not control the urge to lash out at them for his disappointment!
Dakaar studied Kael angrily for a moment and finally shook his head when he saw that it was not true anger that had inspired Kael’s sharp tongue but rather disappointment. He wrestled with the ugly sense of triumph the thought produced, striving for a balance of fairness in the contest that was no true contest when they all knew that there would be no way to win this battle to breed the fair maid their heart’s desired. “She was upset when you left. I saw it in her eyes. You feel that Balen and I have unfair advantage because we are more accustomed to having to sway a maid’s interest with pretty words when you have never had to, but I cannot see that she looks upon either me or Balen with more interest than she does you. None of us will be allowed to breed her, you know, even if we succumb to the fever. We cannot expect more than a welcome as lovers and in that sense, I think you are as welcome to her as we are.”
Kael felt his heart skip several beats, but he refused to rise to the bait. “I have nothing to court her with,” he said tightly. “Not that there is any point to it … in this place.”
“Truthfully, I cannot say that she is nearly as anxious to accept any of us as a lovers as we are to take her as a lover,” Balen said unhappily. “She is frightened … and small wonder when it is as clear as day that she is no warrior woman. A Hirachi woman might be afraid, but she would know that she could defend herself well against any male stupid enough to try to take what was not offered.”
“She is too small and weak to be a warrior of any sort. She could not even lift the bench—not that I needed to see that! She is soft all over,” Dakaar said. “That is what I meant. She does not have the heart of a warrior maid of the Hirachi.”
Kael studied him for a long moment. “Do not try to tell me that you give a damn that she does not! You would mate with her in a moment if you could reach her. Balen would and I would.”
Dakaar flushed. “I did not try to deny it! You misunderstood me, gods damn it! I was trying to say that she is not fierce and she is not strong—in her tiny little body—but she has spirit and strength for all that. She has not cried or screamed as the other two have. She is intelligent. She knows that she has reason to be afraid, but she is very brave. A Hirachi woman would be brave because she would have confidence in her strength and her training. Lau-ren has neither and yet she is still brave. I do not understand it, but I would not have any qualms about passing that strength to my off-spring—if there was any possibility of it—which there is not!”
Balen looked troubled. “I told her that we would protect her and she offered to be our woman. She said that it wouldn’t be right to take and not give something in return. We tried to explain that it was our duty and honor as warriors to protect the weak, but she offered herself.”
Discomfort flickered through Kael at that news, embarrassment that they had all obviously made their desperation to get their hands on her so abundantly clear that she seemed to think that was all that motivated them. He did not like to think that their lust had made them appear less in her eyes than what they were—warriors of the Hirachi, men of honor. As he considered it, however, his resentment that they could not court her properly rose to the forefront of his mind again and it occurred to him that, mayhap, she realized that and had taken it into consideration. “Mayhap she sees the offer as a courtship gift?” he suggested.
“You think that is it?” Balen asked hopefully if somewhat doubtfully. “I would be ashamed to accept if she thought that I had expected it of her in exchange for protecting her. And it seemed to me that that was she thought.” 
Kael felt his belly clench with dismay. He did not like to think that she perceived them in that light—as dishonorable creatures that would take advantage of her frailty. It would bring shame upon them if she offered herself for that reason and not for the only reason acceptable—that she desired them as they did her. Frustration flickered through him. Their awkwardness with the only language they had to use to communicate only exacerbated the situation. They would not know if she truly welcomed any of them until and unless they were given the opportunity to take her as a lover. He shook his head and rose abruptly to pace the room. “It does not matter,” he said harshly. “She is a slave as we are. Even her body is not hers to give and she must know that.”
Dakaar frowned. “You are saying that she did not mean it when she offered to be our lover if we would protect her and her friend?”
Kael paused to stare at him miserably. He was as bad as Balen, wanting to believe that he had seen something he might not have to soothe the sting so that he could take what she offered without shame! “Did she seem sincere?”
Dakaar turned to look at Balen questioningly. 
Balen shrugged. “She smiled at me and she seemed sincere, but I could not help but notice that she seemed afraid to come very close.” He grimaced. “She is so tiny, I suppose it is no surprise that she is afraid of us when we must seem like giant, hulking brutes to her and we are Hirachi warriors, after all, but it is disconcerting to have a maid quake with fear, let me tell you! I have never encountered that before!” 
“She smiled at Dakaar, as well, and I could see that she was glad to see him,” Kael said slowly. “She is afraid because we are not the same and look as strange to her eyes as she does to ours. And she is naturally afraid because she can see that we are much bigger and stronger. She has no reason to trust that we would not hurt her.”
“But we are Hirachi warriors!” Balen said indignantly.
“And she does not know our culture!” Kael retorted angrily. “Hers would not be the same—anymore than any of these others have a culture like ours. When Lecur said that they might examine her, they did not hesitate to touch her when she had not given permission either by look or word that she would allow it. She knows that we desire her. She thinks that we will behave as the others have behaved.”
Dakaar stared at him for a long moment, digesting that, wondering if there was any way that he might convince her that he could and would be as gentle a lover as he would be thoughtful of her pleasure. A thought occurred to him abruptly, however, that was even more unpleasant—in fact, horrifying. They were nearing their spawning and they were as near mindless beasts at that time as made very little difference. They could not control their urges. If they were given access to her then—or managed to get to her without being given access—they would be fortunate if they did not scare her to death. They could not trust that they would have enough control to be gentle for that matter. He had gone through three spawnings himself before his capture and he could not recall anything that he had done with any clarity after the fever had finally left him. 
It would not have mattered if she were a Hirachi woman. They not only knew to expect it when that time came, but they were as fevered to mate as their counterparts—and beyond that strong enough physically to exert some control over their mates. Lau-ren was not Hirachi, no matter how much she reminded him of his own people. They could not even be certain that she would come in to her spawning season at the same time when she was so different! “We cannot say that we will not when we are near the spawning … and I am as certain as I can be that she cannot possibly have any idea of the mating fever that comes upon a Hirachi male at that time. If we warn her, she will only be more afraid of us, and she is trapped. She cannot escape even if she wanted to. I would not worry so much if I believed that she would be safe from me, but I do not think those bars will keep me out once the fever is upon me. I am fair certain I could bend them now and we are far stronger at that time, you know.”
* * * *
Loren woke to the smell of food. She was still tired enough she might have ignored it, but her stomach didn’t. She supposed she must have been fed via tubes while she was in the pod, but her last real meal was a distant memory. Lifting her eyelids, she stared at the wall a few moments and finally turned over to glance toward the door. 
There was a tray of food sitting just inside her cell on the floor, having been slid through the door via a gap at the bottom. Struggling upright with the blanket wound tightly around her was a feat, but she managed it and moved to the tray, hoping the trader had left feeding instructions and she wouldn’t discover the food was as alien as the place she was in. 
Her hopes were dashed when she’d looked the food over, but it smelled appetizing enough she picked it up and moved back to the bed with it. 
Her unconscious hope that the men had had their fill of staring at her were also dashed as she settled to carefully testing the food. She was peripherally aware of the traffic past her cell and the men pressing themselves to the bars to stare at her, but she’d, also unconsciously, made the decision to pretend they weren’t there. She wasn’t certain of just how long she could hold on to her sanity otherwise, because it made it impossible to forget, even for a handful of moments, that one of them—or possibly more—would be allowed to get to her when he finished bashing some other poor soul’s head in. 
Both aspects of her situation were disturbing on a primal level. They were all humanoid, just as she was, and similar to what was familiar to her, and yet too different for her to face the prospect of being fucked by any one of them with anything approaching acceptance, let alone anticipation. She didn’t think if it had been human men she could have viewed it any other way—not when she was being offered up as a prize. 
Human men, she thought, that could do what they did would be dangerously aggressive if they had to fight first to get their hands on a woman—especially when it was clear to her that none of the men had had any chance at all at a woman until the fish-man had bought her and the others. They wouldn’t be lovers. They would be conquerors, determined to take whether she cooperated or not.
She didn’t think the alien men were going to be any different at all in that respect. Their hunger was almost palpable. She wasn’t deluded enough to think she was that appealing to them as an individual. 
None of them saw anything but a hole to fuck when they stared at her through the bars and the bastard that had bought her had fully expected just that reaction. She was the ‘tease’ he was using to build their natural aggressions to a dangerous level so that they would put on a good show for his patrons. 
Unfortunately, as scared and mentally deficient as she was because of that, it hadn’t taken her long to figure out that the only way he could capitalize on it was to keep the game in play. This time when they went out to fight, they would have nothing on their minds beyond winning the chance to try to fuck her to death, but that aggression would be a hell of a crowd pleaser and word would spread. The next time around, fish-man would pull in even more spectators to watch.
He was alien and she knew she was gauging him as if he was human, but she didn’t think she was wrong, unfortunately. She thought his words and actions had already made it clear that he thought very much like a human counterpart would—at least in some respects. His mind might work very differently in some respects, just like his appearance was drastically different, but greed seemed to be a trait that was universal. 
Despite every effort not to think about it, her mind wandered after a time to the Hirachi and her offer. She didn’t know if she was more humiliated that they seemed to have declined her offer or that she’d made it at all. It had seemed like an uncontrollable impulse at the time, but she’d come to realize it really wasn’t. It had been her survival instinct kicking in, her primal understanding of nature. They not only looked like the biggest, strongest, and fiercest of the lot, they’d shown a tendency to protect and her subconscious mind had registered that even though she hadn’t consciously been aware of it.
It had been the most natural thing in the world to offer what she knew they wanted in exchange for the protection she needed, even if she was embarrassed because it was both demeaning to her as an individual and socially unacceptable in her own culture. 
Her parents, she had no doubt, would be horrified if they’d had any way to learn of it, but she realized there was little point in worrying about it. It wasn’t likely they would ever know that their daughter had prostituted herself to survive—or at least offered to—despite the rigid principles they’d tried to instill in her. 
The worst of it was that she didn’t think she would’ve felt the least bit ashamed of it if they’d taken her up on it—if they hadn’t made it clear that they thought the offer was shameful and had been embarrassed for her. 
Hurt and anger, spawned mostly by defensiveness, flickered through her at the reminder. They had to see just by looking at her that she wasn’t capable of defending herself against what she was up against! If the situation had been different, she might have had some chance of using her skills or her wit to overcome her lack of strength and the disadvantage of being about half the size of most of them! She had nothing to work with, though! Nothing! Even if she could figure out a way to escape, there was no place to run to for safety! Not that she could discern, at any rate. 
Surely, if there’d been any sort of lawfulness about the damned place, neither slave auctions nor gladiator fights would’ve been allowed? She was trapped in a den of thieves and murderers! The gladiators probably weren’t any worse than the men that were free to walk around—maybe not even as bad.
It crossed her mind to wonder if there was any chance in hell of getting her hands on one of the ships she’d seen and escaping, but only in a fantasy sense. Getting out when she would have to run the gauntlet of men just panting to get their hands on her and fuck her blind was an insurmountable obstacle as far as she could see. And even if she managed to survive that and get out when she knew the fish-man must have security, there was the space station itself—filled with men. It wasn’t likely a naked female would make it very far—not close enough to a ship to smell freedom.
And then there was the technology of the ships themselves. She didn’t doubt that she could figure out how to fly one, given time, but she wouldn’t get that time. Setting aside every other obstacle, even taking into account that she had some familiarity with some alien technology since she’d spent nearly five years of her life studying it, she didn’t think the odds were in her favor that she would manage to get a ship with technology she already knew and it could take a very long time for her to figure it out if it wasn’t already at least a little familiar. 
Even if she could manage all of that, though, she was an engineer, not an astronomer or a cosmologist! How would she find her way home?
She wouldn’t. As sick as that made her, she knew she could never manage that. It was extremely doubtful that she could manage any of her fantasy scenario of escape, but she also knew that there could be some remote possibility, that she might discover them given time. Finding her way back to Earth just wasn’t possible—unless the fates smiled upon her and she happened to grab a ship with the coordinates already in the computer. 
She thought that was unlikely in the extreme, however, even though the thought made her heart leap with hopefulness briefly. There was no getting around the fact that the aliens hadn’t seemed to recognize them as a species familiar to them, and that seemed to indicate they weren’t in the habit of visiting Earth.
On one level, that was comforting. It meant that, aside from the lizard-man who’d captured her, Earth people were relatively safe, but it also meant she had to try to accept that she was never going back. Whatever happened, she was never going to see home or her parents again.
Those thoughts made her feel like crying but, in the scheme of things, she thought that would probably be the most useless excuse for letting down her guard and making herself vulnerable—more vulnerable than she was already.

Chapter Four
Loren dawdled over her meal, not only because her thoughts were distracting her, but because she was wary of the food and because she hoped the men would tire of staring at her and she could put the tray back near the door for pickup without running the risk of being grabbed and slammed against the bars. Although she made it a point not to look directly at them, however, for fear she’d encourage them, she watched the opening out of the corner of her eye for an opportunity. 
Not that any of them appeared to need any sort of encouragement from her! They didn’t seem nearly as interested in their own food as they were in amusing themselves by staring at the ‘treat’ Lecur had bought them.
Unfortunately, the Hirachi weren’t among those who clustered at her door or shuffled past, craning their necks to get a good look as they did. In point of fact, there wasn’t as much traffic period as there had been the night before. A group of red-skinned aliens elbowed their way to the door and held that position throughout most of her meal, ignoring the attempts of the others to dislodge them. 
“You be my woman, little ting, I take care,” one of them called out to her. It was the tone that snagged her attention. Unlike the ‘offers’ the others—except for the Hirachi—had flung at her, it didn’t sound like a threat. It was said quietly, almost soothingly—for her, not for the entertainment of the others.
Her pulse leapt. Should she consider it, she wondered? She certainly needed someone and the Hirachi hadn’t exactly jumped at her offer. 
It unnerved her so thoroughly when she finally flicked a look at the red-skinned aliens, though, that it wiped the thought completely from her mind. They didn’t just look more savage than the Hirachi, they looked like demons! She didn’t get more than a vague impression of the faces once she’d spied the horns curling on either side of their heads and caught the full impact of sunburn red skin and bodies so massively muscular and ropy they almost looked more as if they’d been peeled of flesh than that their skin was that color.
Feeling her eyes widen with horror, she glanced away quickly. “That’s … That’s … So kind of you to offer,” she managed faintly. “I already told Balen, though ….”
The comment—or her reaction—pissed them off. They pushed away from the bars abruptly and left. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. She needed allies! She wasn’t trying to make enemies.
And the worst of it was she didn’t know that any of the Hirachi would take her up on her offer!
She was still berating herself for her cowardice and lack of judgment when she caught a flash of yellow skin at the door. The Hirachi were the only aliens with that particular color. Relief immediately assailed her. One of them, at least, had come back. She had another chance. Maybe this time she wouldn’t screw it up!
She glanced that way as casually as she could although every muscle in her body had tensed. It made her belly flutter when she saw it was Dakaar. He smiled at her a little tentatively and she felt both better and worse—better than he still seemed inclined to smile at her and worse because she knew she must have really insulted him. “I thought you were angry with me,” she said questioningly.
His smile fell. He frowned and she wondered abruptly if her speech patterns sounded as choppy and hard to understand as theirs did to her. “I no angry. Thought you misunderstand.”
Loren slipped off the bed awkwardly, trying to balance the tray and hold on to her blanket at the same time. Unfortunately, she’d succeeded in getting up without exposing herself before it occurred to her that she’d missed an opportunity to try to seduce him with her feminine charms!
Damn it!
She considered ‘losing’ it when she knelt to set the tray down at the door, but discovered she simply couldn’t bring herself to do anything so blatant. When she straightened, she saw that the others had joined him. “I don’t think I did,” she said a little stiltedly, forcing herself to move a little closer. “You said that you would protect me—because it’s the way of your people to protect the weak. And I said that I would … take care of your needs the best I could.” A blush mounted her cheeks at the lie that trembled on her tongue. “It’s the custom of my people. A man offers what he has to offer and a woman offers what she has in return.”
It wasn’t until she’d voiced it that it occurred to her it wasn’t a lie. Maybe it was a very simplified version of the truth, but it was still true. 
Unfortunately, it had occurred to her after she had that she wasn’t in any position to offer the only thing she had in trade. “I meant it. I still mean it … but ….” She broke off. “Lecur said he would give me to the winner of the games. There’s nothing I can do about that,” she said anxiously, hoping they’d understand and not consider it a breach of promise. 
On impulse, she settled her hand over Dakaar’s where he gripped the bar. It was unfortunate that she noticed when she did that his fingers were webbed. It counteracted the weightless feel of delight just to feel contact with another being, making her belly drop with an unexpected rush. 
“We not same, little ting. It no matter to me. Lau-ren beautiful to my eyes.”
Loren felt her chin wobble, both because he’d noticed she’d frozen and because he was so sweet. She met his gaze with an effort, trying to ignore the flutter of uneasiness in her belly because his eyes looked so strange to her. “I’m not used to seeing … anyone that isn’t the same species as I am,” she said earnestly. “That doesn’t mean you aren’t pleasing to me.”
She held Dakaar’s gaze for a moment and then met Balen’s and finally Kael’s. “You look a lot like my own people.” She smiled faintly. “Except a lot bigger. There’s no point in lying and saying that doesn’t unnerve me, but it’s mostly the size, you know?” She felt her face redden as her mind instantly leapt to the size of their cocks, but then they were discussing fucking! There wasn’t any point in trying to whitewash it in her mind to make it more palatable! “And you’re a lot more handsome than most of the men I know … uh … used to know.”
They all looked pleased but extremely skeptical—especially Kael. 
“We win de game,” Balen said confidently. “None udders are as good as a Hirachi warrior.” He looked uncomfortable as soon as the boast left his mouth. “Mean you no worry. We take care ob little ting. No let udders touch.”
Dakaar pushed a folded blanket through the bars. “Bring you dis.” He pointed to the barrier she’d erected for privacy. “Make more comfortable.”
Loren took the offering automatically, but then she merely stared at it in dismay, knowing he would be doing without a blanket if he gave it to her. It was on the tip of her tongue to refuse it, but she realized as soon as she met his gaze that it would wound him, and probably embarrass him, if she refused it. She smiled with an effort when she looked up at him. “This is so sweet! So thoughtful! It makes me want to cry.”
Dismay flickered across his face. “No happy gift?”
Loren sniffed the urge back and smiled. “It’s a wonderful gift—all the more because I know you’re going to be cold without it!”
Balen shoved something white through the bars. When she looked down, she saw it was a comb, not wonderfully fashioned, but useable. It looked as if it had been made from some animal bone. He had to have made it for himself. He couldn’t have much to work with, which probably meant he’d spent a great deal of time on it—and probably also meant that he was going to do without. Her chest tightened with emotion. She struggled with it, smiling at him gratefully. “I made dis. Make special one for little ting later. Pretty. Work better. Now dis all Balen have. Not good, but make hair pretty.”
“Thank you so much!” Loren gasped, struggling with the urge to kiss him. She’d had to use her fingers to try to get the tangles out of her hair after she’d bathed and she knew it had to be a wreck—especially since it had grown so long! She hadn’t wanted to think about the implication—that she’d been in that pod for months, but there was no other explanation for the fact that her hair was so much longer than it had been. 
Kael shouldered Dakaar out of the way and held up something unrecognizable—at least, she drew a blank. She could see that he’d fashioned it from a piece of his blanket and pieces of his loincloth because there were thin leather ties attached to it and the moment she recognized them, her gaze had flickered to his loincloth.
She took it, studied it without comprehension, and finally looked up and smiled brightly. “Thank you so much! This was so thoughtful!”
His face darkened. “Cover tup,” he said uncomfortably, pointing toward her crotch and then indicating his loincloth. “Udders no stare at pretty ting den, yes?”
Loren felt her face heat but delight filled her. She chuckled, examining the gift far more appreciatively when it dawned on her that it was a loincloth, and then grinned at him. “Nobody gets to look at my tup from now on but you guys!” she said teasingly. 
Their reaction startled her, unnerved her more than a little, but also sent a heated weakness through her. All three of them looked at her with such hunger that it created a chain reaction within her. 
Kael swallowed convulsively. “Touch?”
Loren had no idea whether he was just asking to touch her or if he meant he wanted to explore her ‘tup’, but she barely hesitated a moment. Dropping the blanket, she pressed herself against the bars. She could feel a tremor in his hand when he pressed against the bars on the other side and reached through to run his hand lightly over her back. She strained up on her tiptoes to give him better access, but the difference in their height was almost as frustrating as the bars. She couldn’t get close enough to press her lips to his—or any part of him. 
It occurred to her, though, that now was the time to discover if there was going to be a serious problem holding up her end of their bargain and as unnerving as she found it, she stroked her hand along his belly and cupped his sex. She felt the jolt that went through him when she did, but he pressed himself more tightly into her palm.
Either the damned leather made it feel more massive than she thought it ought to be or she was in serious trouble! She toyed with the idea of slipping her hand inside for a better feel, but discarded it. She didn’t think she could be that bold and it might well prove to be a dangerous tease when he was already shaking with need.
He seemed to realize the futility of the entire business about the same time she did. Lifting the hand he’d been exploring her back with, he smoothed her hair and touched her face. Lau-ren be mine lover?” he asked hoarsely. 
“I don’t know how the hell we’ll manage it through the bars,” Loren muttered in frustration. 
He grinned shakily. “Find way. Promise, be gentle. No hurt little ting.”
With obvious reluctance, he moved away. Dakaar and Balen promptly surged forward, but Dakaar was faster. He strained against the barrier, reaching for her. “I touch, is ok?”
Loren was shaken, a little stunned, and thoroughly confused when they left. It was hard to reconcile the reality of the Hirachi—or at least, Kael, Dakaar, and Balen—with their fierce appearance and frightening strength and size. They’d been so needy they’d been shaking with it and they’d still managed to restrain themselves enough to keep from bruising her. In point of fact, none of the three had done much more than stroke their hands over her back and along her sides. None of them had touched her breasts or her sex. 
She hated to admit it, but she wasn’t exactly happy that they hadn’t. She’d been aroused enough by Kael’s touch, and touching him, that she’d wanted a little more petting even before Dakaar and Balen had stroked her all over.
She couldn’t decide if they hadn’t tried anything more because they didn’t think they could handle the tease of not being able to do more than touch, or if it hadn’t crossed their minds to take that much liberty. One thing she was no longer in any doubt of, though, was that she found them desirable, regardless of the fact that they still seemed so alien to her she was as unnerved as she was excited by their touch. 
She didn’t think, though, that she was going to regret the offer she’d made. She still had to surmount the cocks they were swinging—and she was more than a little uneasy about that. She’d suspected before she’d inspected them that they had to be huge considering the size of the men and it had still been a shock. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself that it was pure imagination, that they couldn’t possibly be as big as they felt, she had only to cup the hand she’d ‘measured’ them with to see that the girth alone was going to be a serious challenge. If that wasn’t bad enough, she’d measured at least three palm widths in length—not that she intended to worry about that! That part was their problem! She was sure she could stretch to take on the girth. She’d been designed to have babies, after all. She couldn’t do a damned thing about the depth. They were just going to have to accept the limitations of fucking a human when they’d been ‘designed’ for their own women!
Their women must be nearly as tall as they were to handle anything that long, she realized abruptly. She hadn’t really considered anything beyond how she felt about the situation, and she at least had enough experience with men to know they weren’t all that particular when they were horny—most of them weren’t. It occurred to her abruptly, though, to wonder just how attractive she really was to them. 
She’d never been a sun worshipper and she’d hardly seen the light of day after she’d gone to work at the facility. Her skin was really pale—fish belly white. That couldn’t appeal to them! It didn’t even appeal to her. Her hair was dark, but it was brown, not even close to black like theirs was besides having the hideous copper highlights—and she figured it must be a racial trait since all three of them had the same inky black hair—and she must look like a pigmy to them. 
All of them had said she was pretty, but did they really think so? Or were they just saying so to make her feel good? Or had it just been so damned long since they’d seen a female of any description that that was all it took to be pretty to them? She’d never really thought she was pretty, but men had seemed to think she was. Dating had never been a problem for her—Not that she’d gotten a lot of that in lately! In fact, not at all since she’d gone in the ‘hole’ as everybody called it. Fraternizing with co-workers was frowned upon. Everyone was supposed to be serious and focused, not thinking about fucking. And they weren’t allowed to get out much. 
Depression settled over her. She’d had one on again off again relationship in high school that hadn’t lasted through her senior year, but then there’d never been any talk about staying together once they graduated. She hadn’t wanted anything else to come of it herself since she’d already had plans for college. Sad to say, she hadn’t had but one ‘sort of’ serious relationship in her entire life and that one had gone in the toilet as soon her boyfriend had found out she was considering taking the government job that had been offered. It had been nothing but an excuse, she knew. He’d been giving off signals long before that that he was ready to move on—probably already had and just didn’t have the balls to tell her. 
She shook the thoughts off. It didn’t matter. None of it did anymore. That was another life and it might as well have happened to somebody else. The only thing that mattered now was the slim hope that she might eventually at least find a way to escape the life she was looking at now, and surviving in the meantime. The Hirachi were interested enough to want to protect her and that was the important thing. She was just glad that she found them attractive enough it wouldn’t be a hardship. 
Well, scaling the monolith might be a little rough, but at least they seemed to be capable of gentleness and they were thoughtful enough to assure her they’d be careful of her—not that that necessarily meant they would when it got right down to it. She did have some experience with men and knew that the minute their dick got hard their mind went on sabbatical! But she thought they seemed sincere and that they would try not to break her in half.
She was just going to have to focus on making them really happy and hope they didn’t lose interest—or if they did, that she could find other protectors that were equally formidable. She didn’t think she was going survive long in captivity without protectors.
* * * *
Lecur hadn’t bothered to lay down any rules for her, or the other women either, she supposed, but he remedied that shortly after her incarceration. She was sitting in the middle of her bed swaddled in her blanket when he suddenly appeared at the door of her cage in a rage. Unlocking it, he stalked (waddled) across the room, snatched the blanket from her, threw it on the floor, and stomped it. “Stupid dyrk! You tink I pay good money have you … cover everyting up? You here make fighters horny, gods damn it! Dey fight better get to fuck woman after!”
Loren gaped at him in stunned surprise. He’d seemed almost amiable when he’d bought her, but then again, she’d realized at the time that she had no idea what might’ve put him in a good humor. She supposed that answered that!
“I was cold,” she muttered uneasily. “I won’t do it again.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. Swiveling around, he studied the privacy tent she’d made for herself and Loren felt a mixture of anger and anxiety surge through her. “You show dem what dey get or I come back and take dat! Understand?”
Loren nodded shakily, relieved at the reprieve. When he’d slammed out again, she stared at the bars, struggling to calm herself. Thankfully, he hadn’t seemed to notice the loincloth Kael had made for her!
She debated whether or not to take it off and finally decided not to. She’d told Kael that she’d wear it to cover up ‘his’ tup and she would, by damn! If the bastard wanted it, he was going to have to take it!
She didn’t know if the gladiators had narced on her and knew what Lecur had come down for or if they’d just overheard the entire tirade, but as soon as Lecur disappeared, they began to parade past her door again. Sighing, she ignored them the best she could and focused on combing the tangles from her hair with the comb Balen had given her. 
Kael had been right. There was no real way to count the passing time and she found that distressing in itself. They were brought food twice a day, but she suspected that there was no dependable schedule to it, no way to use it to actually keep time. Throughout the ‘day’ artificial lights produced a stingy amount of light that was more like an overcast day than a day of sunshine and then there was the sleep period where the lights were shut off, leaving them in an inky, cave-like darkness.
Apparently the bastard didn’t see any point in warning anybody either. She’d been on the toilet when the lights went out during the first sleep period and she’d had to feel her way to the damned bed. The only thing the fish-man didn’t seem to be stingy with was the food, but she was sure that was only because he wanted to keep his fighters bulked up. They left the ‘dungeon’, as she’d begun to think of the place, shortly after the first feeding and returned shortly before the second, sweaty and often bloody from training.
She shuddered to think what they’d look like after an actual ‘game’. 
She had no idea when the next games might be held. She could hear the men talking among themselves, but they tended to segregate themselves by species and they spoke their native language unless they wanted to communicate with someone who didn’t speak it.
Her second day, counted according to the sleep period, was marked by Lecur’s arrival with a different sort of collar than the one the trader’s robot had put on her. Naturally, she didn’t have any idea that that was what was about to happen when he told her to get up and present her back to him. Not that she could’ve done a damned thing about it, but she didn’t think she would’ve obeyed quite as quickly. 
Despite her effort to preserve her scalp by lifting her hair out of the way, he managed to pluck enough hairs taking the collar off that her eyes stung and filled with tears, blinding her. She didn’t know he was simply replacing the damned thing with his own until she felt the cold metal settle heavily around her throat. She grabbed at it instinctively when she felt a choking sensation but he’d already fastened it by then.
She spent most of that day focused on fighting off panic and trying to breathe. It wasn’t that the collar was too tight to allow her to swallow or to breathe properly. It was the weight of it that gave her the sensation of choking but fortunately she’d pretty much grown accustomed to that by her third day. 
She hated it with a passion, but she managed to put it out of her mind for stretches of time. She was still focused enough on it, however, that when the Hirachi arrived that evening she was ready to risk angering them by demanding to know what they knew about them even though she’d already seen that they were very touchy on the subject of their enslavement.
Even so, she almost dismissed it when Kael had pulled her close to cuddle her. It was so comforting that she hated to spoil it—especially with Kael. She didn’t know why him in particular unless it was because he was prone to be far more taciturn than the other two and seemed inclined to hold far more back than he allowed her to see. 
She felt a need to know about the collar, though. The purpose of the first had been to control her to get her to auction, she knew, and she supposed it was left either because nobody bothered to take it off or, more likely, as a symbol of slavery since she’d noticed right off that all the slaves seemed to wear them. 
She sensed there was significance beyond the symbolism, though, and finally leaned away from Kael enough to actually study the one he wore for the first time. He stiffened when she touched it and she met his gaze. “Why do they put these on?”
His lips tightened and he allowed his hands to drop to his sides. “We are slaves,” he said tightly.
Loren frowned at him, but his face was completely closed and she saw he didn’t mean to discuss it. She glanced at Dakaar and Balen and saw that they were as angry as Kael, although she was pretty sure they weren’t actually angry with her. “It’s just … so that anybody will know if they look that we’re slaves, then?”
“It is for control,” Dakaar said flatly.
Confusion flickered through her. “It doesn’t have a loop for a chain. How do they use it for control?”
“Blow head off wid it,” Balen said succinctly.
Loren recoiled in horror, lifting her hand toward her own and then halting before she touched it. She glanced from Balen to Dakaar and then Kael. “Really? I mean, you know this? Or they said that?”
“Old gladiator told. He see it.”
Loren felt nausea well in her throat. She swallowed sickly. “It’s an electronic device, then. Does it track, too? Or is it just set to alert them if you move beyond range?”
They frowned at her, but this time with less anger than curiosity—and even a little suspicion. “You know ‘bout deez tings?” Kael asked harshly.
She could see immediately that they thought she had some familiarity with slavery and they didn’t think highly of her for it. She shook her head. “On my world, they have something sort of like this that they use to keep pets—dogs and cats—from wandering away from home. If they get beyond a certain range, it … uh … stings, nothing harmful to them, just enough to scare them, but they only work if you train the pet. If they get very far away, it doesn’t do anything at all and once they learn that they don’t pay it any attention.”
They still looked skeptical and anger surged through her. “It’s a barbaric practice! It wasn’t uncommon for people to enslave their enemies to use them for labor in ancient times, but that was hundreds of years ago! We don’t do it now!” She hesitated as it occurred to her that the sex slave trade was still alive and well established, but she damned well wasn’t going to say anything about that when she could see she’d be tarnished with the same brush in their eyes. “Mostly I suspected something because I’m an engineer—was—well, I still am. I just don’t have a career anymore. Could I … look at one a little more closely? I couldn’t really examine the one Lecur put on me. I can’t see it.”
The three men exchanged questioning looks, but Kael finally bent down and lifted his chin. She didn’t actually want to touch it after what they’d told her, but she’d realized immediately that she couldn’t simply ignore it. If it was true about the collars, there would never be any hope of escape if she couldn’t figure out how to disable it or remove it. “I imagine there’s some sort of sensor that goes off if it’s removed while it’s hot,” she murmured to herself as she studied the apparently smooth surface for any sign of a crack that would indicate where the workings were housed. “If I could get one open and study it ….”
“Blow up if try remove,” Kael said.
Nervous already, the comment made Loren jump and snatch her fingers back. She studied his face for a long moment and then looked at the collar again, studying the faint line she’d finally discovered that she knew much be one edge of the cover. She straightened finally, considering what he’d told her. “I guess that’s that, then,” she said dismissively since she didn’t especially like the suspicion in their eyes. 
Kael’s eyes were piercing. “You engin-eer. Tink can … break?”
Loren felt her color fluctuate. She shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “I was just curious. There isn’t a lot around here to occupy the time.”
She knew he didn’t believe her just from the look in his eyes but, to her relief, he allowed the subject to drop and they left shortly afterwards. 
* * * *
Adrenaline was pumping through Kael when he returned to his own cubicle and his mind was working as fast as his heart was pumping. Ignoring Dakaar and Balen, he paced the small cell, struggling with the ideas churning in his mind and finally settled on his bed when he realized his agitation might be noted and reported if anyone saw him. Dakaar studied him for a while and finally got up and sat down on Kael’s bed without permission. 
“Do you think she actually knows anything about the collars?” he asked quietly.
Kael looked at him sharply but frowned and shook his head. “I do not know the word—engin—eer, but I am guessing she knows machines and she thinks if she can study how it works that she can stop it from working.”
Balen moved closer, settling on his other side. “What are you thinking?”
Again, Kael shook his head. “It would dangerous … for her. Even if we could get our hands on one, we could not chance it being caught in her possession. I do not see how we could make it work.”
“Make what work?” Balen hissed impatiently.
Kael’s lips tightened. “If it could be done, then we would be one step closer to freedom—only one—but I do not see how—not now.”
Dakaar and Balen both stared at each other before turning to look at Kael again. “We could not pass through the space station even without the collars without being instantly recognized. We are the champions. They will know us.”
“Where would we go?” Balen pointed out.
Kael turned to look at him. “If I am right and she understands machines, she might be able to understand how their ships work.”
Excitement lit Dakaar’s and Balen’s faces for several moments before their faces fell. Dakaar frowned. “She would not know where our world is, would she?”
Kael shook his head. “I do not know. I do not think so else we would have seen her people before. Their machines might, but we would have no way to know which would know the way and which would not. I do not think I care where it might take me so long as I have my freedom and I am away from this place.
“Go—before anyone notices that we are discussing something we do not want overheard. I will think on it and see if I can find a way to do this thing.”

Chapter Five
After a week and a half, Loren had almost begun to look forward to the gladiator games, even though she was as uneasy about it as she was anxious as soon as she saw how banged up they all were when they came back from practicing. She couldn’t help but worry about the Hirachi, but their practice period was the only time she had complete privacy and didn’t have to endure being stared at as if she was a freak.
It progressed beyond simply being stared at after that first day, however. They didn’t like being ignored and some of them seemed to take it as a personal affront rather than the attempt to protect herself that it was. Some of them would stand at the bars and try to coax her closer. Others would tell her what they planned to do when they got her—which gave her the shivers and nightmares besides that. She couldn’t decide whether they were trying to scare her, or if they had some twisted idea that she was going to find it a turn on. 
The Hirachi never came until everyone else had finally tired of taunting her or trying to coax her close enough to grab her. 
The first couple of times they’d come, she’d just been pleasantly surprised to see faces she recognized, especially since they didn’t behave like the others. After the day they’d brought her gifts, she’d discovered she looked forward to their visits with an eagerness that belied her determination to convince herself she was merely doing what was necessary to survive. She hadn’t just been comforted by their touch, though, or grown accustomed enough that she wasn’t afraid of them anymore, she enjoyed it. She looked forward to their visits because it was the only contact she had, and she was starting to get pretty damned desperately horny herself, if it came to that. 
That was surprising on several levels. Foremost was the fact that the horniness itself was a new experience for her. She’d enjoyed sex. She’d always thought she had a healthy interest in it, but it wasn’t something that crossed her mind when she wasn’t in a relationship. She hadn’t had any real trouble focusing on her work at the facility, despite the lack of male companionship. She hadn’t had any trouble recognizing it for what it was, for all that. She was just surprised and not particularly pleased that she felt it.
The fact that she felt it for them was also a little disturbing. She’d been glad that she found them attractive enough that she didn’t absolutely dread having to hold up her end of the bargain, but she hadn’t expected to find herself looking forward to it with so much enthusiasm and she wasn’t happy with the thought that she might be forming any sort of attachment. They were sweet. They were handsome and they clearly knew how to please a woman, but she couldn’t afford to become emotional about it. She’d laid to rest her qualms over the agreement when she’d accepted it as a matter of survival, but she couldn’t afford to dismiss the ultimate objective—freedom. She had to keep her wits about her and search diligently for any opportunity that might present itself and, if it did, she had to seize the chance. She didn’t want to be divided in her heart and mind if she got the chance to escape.
Beyond that, she didn’t know how or why she’d gotten horny. It couldn’t be just the fact that she hadn’t had sex in forever. Otherwise, she would’ve been suffering from the drought long before she met them and they hadn’t even tried to heat things up. She felt their need in the way they touched her and their labored breaths, but not one of the three had done more than pull her as close as they could get and strum their hands over her back, or her hair, or caress her face. As unaccustomed as she was to taking the initiative, as contrary to her nature as it was, it was all she could do not to grab their hands and put them where she wanted them or try to climb up them and get close enough for a kiss. 
She’d begun to spend more and more of her time trying to think up some way to entice them to do more without having to actually ask. She’d never actually had to do anything like that, though. The options she’d had before were fighting her boyfriends off or letting them have their way. She tried to imagine doing or saying some of the things she’d read in books or seen in movies, but she didn’t think she could carry any of that off. 
It wasn’t until she finally gave up on the idea altogether that it simply happened. She’d dashed to her shower to primp for them when she’d decided it should be about time for them to arrive and had just shut the shower off when she heard them. In her rush to get out before they gave up and left, she’d used one end of her blanket/wall to pat herself as dry as she could, grabbed her toga and pulled it on, and then dashed out, still damp and dripping and feeling about as unsexy as she could possibly be.
Apparently, they didn’t agree. They all looked like they’d been turned to stone when she arrived at the bars breathless, with her hair hanging in strings and dripping all over her, and her paper thin toga sticking to her. Their arms were too thick to get more than their forearms between the bars and yet Kael had still managed to grab her and drag her so tightly against the bars that visions of having permanent imprints of the bars danced her head—for a few moments, anyway. 
He pulled her clean off her feet, wedged his face between the bars, trapped hers by palming the back of her head, and planted his mouth solidly over hers. The blaze of heat that went through her seemed to melt the bars that separated them. She completely lost awareness of them at any rate. She’d tried to imagine what kissing him would feel like. The thought had warmed her and it still fell far short of reality. The feel of his mouth alone was enough to give her heart palpitations. The invasion of his tongue made her feel faint. A thrill of pleasure raced along her nerve endings as she absorbed the feel of it against her own, tasted him, dragged his scent deeply into her lungs. 
She clutched at him awkwardly, trying to get closer, to get more. She banged her ankle bones on the bars as she tried to shove her legs between the bars and loop them around his waist. The pain jarred her from her euphoria and apparently jolted him back to reality. He broke the kiss, to her vast disappointment and set her on her feet again. Before she could complain, he dropped to his knees and pulled her close again, covering one breast with his mouth. 
Not through the damned toga, she thought as she watched his mouth approach! The moment she felt his mouth, though, she realized just how sheer the material was. Fire scorched through her as if nothing at all separated them and created a furnace in her belly that made the muscles dance frantically as if they were trying to grip something. Her eyes rolled back into her head. 
She came around enough when he finally let go to consider the size of their audience and discovered to her relief that Dakaar and Balen had formed a shield with their bulk. Relieved of that worry, she managed to focus completely when Kael caught her other breast in his mouth and sucked it. Her legs began to shake so badly she thought her knees would’ve buckled if he hadn’t been gripping her so tightly. They did buckle when he slipped one hand down over her ass and found her cleft. Fortunately, she’d had the presence of mind to grip the bars frantically and he still had a firm grip around her upper back. 
The finger he was stroking her cleft with was driving her up the wall. He kept missing the spot she desperately wanted him to find. He seemed to realize that, shifting his attention from her buttocks to her mound. She had to clench her teeth to keep from moaning out loud when he found her clit. Then he passed it and found the mouth of her sex, pushing one long, thick finger inside of her. 
She was torn between the urge to ride the finger to happy town and the equal urge to demand he go back to the clit. She didn’t get the chance at either. He seemed to come to himself. Easing his finger out of her, he gripped her tightly for a long moment, pressing his forehead against the bars, and finally looked up at her, his dark brows forming a tent of distress above the bridge of his nose. “Not dis way, shimone,” he said hoarsely. “Tomorrow, I fight and den I come for you.”
She stared at him dizzily when he got to his feet, trying to come to grips with the fact that he wasn’t going to bring her off, too focused on her discomfort for many moments to register what he’d said. She tried to grab his hand as he withdrew, but he’d already stepped away before her sluggish motor-functions reacted to her brain’s command. 
Dakaar pulled her close, rubbing his hands over her soothingly. They didn’t soothe her, though. The frantic tempo of her heart had abruptly ceased to be about desire and changed to anxiety. “You won’t … be fighting each other, will you?”
He hesitated fractionally. “Nay. Most times dey put us in different contest. Kael best wid de kinsu. I fight wid bolo and Balen wid plue.”
She didn’t have a clue of what any of those things were or even if he was talking about the other fighters rather than weapons, but his hesitancy worried her. Lecur’s concubine had said they refused to kill in the games, but that didn’t mean the others were similarly inclined. In fact, she was very afraid that Lecur had managed to use her and the other two women to build their natural aggression to fever pitch and the ‘games’ would turn into a slaughter. 
Abruptly, she was far more worried about them than she was herself. She clutched Dakaar a little more tightly, struggling to think of something to say. “Fight really, really hard,” she said finally, “and watch yourself.”
He pulled away slightly to look down at her in surprise. Abruptly, he grinned. “You like Hirachi woman,” he murmured approvingly. Lifting his hands to cup her face, he drew her close and kissed her. She hadn’t expected it, but she lifted her lips readily when she realized his intent, more focused on her anxieties at that moment than chasing desire. He sent her into a tailspin regardless, resurrecting the fire Kael’s announcement had banked. She was shaking by the time he broke the kiss, almost felt more needy than she had before because of the anxiety building in her that something would happen to them.
She wanted to cling to Dakaar when he stepped back, but she tamped the urge and turned to Balen. He’d just pulled her close and begun to stroke her when the lights abruptly went out. They both stiffened. “Are you going to be able to find your way back?” Loren whispered.
“Aye.” She heard a quizzical smile in his voice. “You no see?” 
“I can’t see anything.”
He hesitated a moment and stroked his hands down her length, grasping the edge of her shift and drawing it up. She lifted her arms for him so that he could pull it off. She heard him move and realized he’d gotten down his knees as Kael had a moment before she felt his lips brushed one nipple. They were still sensitive and it took no more than a tug of his mouth to set her on fire all over again. He stroked his hand over her belly and parted the lips of her sex with his hand. When he would’ve bypassed her clit as Kael had, however, she caught his wrist and guided his finger to it, rubbing his fingertip against the tiny bud. He caught the motion very quickly and teased it until she was panting for breath. As he moved to her other breast, he slipped his hand further along her cleft and pushed a finger inside of her, rubbing her clit with the heel of his hand as he sawed his finger back and forth along her channel. 
She’d begun to anticipate her climax when he released her nipple from captivity and removed his hand. She made a sound of protest and then sucked in a sharp breath as he found the nub with his tongue. She struggled with the urge to moan in pleasure, gripping his head as he gripped her buttocks in both his hands to hold her for his teasing tongue. She couldn’t remember ever feeling anything as glorious in her life. She hit her zenith within moments, gasping as the sharp convulsions rippled through her. It seemed to make the climax all the more powerful that she was forced by circumstances and the lack of privacy to try to hold it inside. It was all she could do to remain on her feet once the spasms finally ceased. 
She reached for him when he stood, though, blindly searching her way to his loincloth and hooking her fingers in the waist. “Let me do that for you,” she whispered. 
He removed her fingers, pulling her close, stroking her back soothingly. “I wait, shimone. Tomorrow, I please mine lover more.”
Loren swallowed with an effort, far less happy about coming when he wouldn’t let her please him in return, feeling a terrible fear assail her that something would happen to him and she would never get the chance. “Please? I want to.”
He cupped her face and guided her upward to meet her mouth in a hungry kiss that rivaled Dakaar’s. “Fight first,” he said huskily when he broke the kiss. He didn’t release her. He seemed to hesitate over something that was bothering him. “Know is not polite to ask, but need know, shimone. No can risk spawning young in dis place. When is de spawning time for you?”
Loren stared blankly at the dark shadow where she thought his face was. “What?”
“No can give baby,” he said a little impatiently. “Need know.”
A jolt went through her as that sank in. He was worried about getting her pregnant? “You can’t get me pregnant,” she said, but it was more horror at the thought and a denial of any possibility whatsoever than a statement she knew to be a fact.
He seemed satisfied, however. He kissed her again, briefly, and released her. Disappointed and anxious when he left, she stood at the bars for several moments, listening to his tread as he walked away. The doubts that she’d entertained that he could see in the dark as he claimed vanished. There was no hesitation, no stumbling. His tread was as sure as if the place didn’t look like the inside of a cave. Finally, she turned and made her way blindly to her own bed, bending at the waist and waving her arms in search of the bed. She found it with her shin and fell in.
She didn’t realize until she had that she’d left her toga where Balen had dropped it. After a brief debate over whether to get up and search for it, she pulled her blanket up instead. Curling on her side, she closed her eyes since she couldn’t see anyway. Her body was still sparking and tingling from her climax and yet, as drained she’d felt immediately afterward, the sense of satisfaction had disappeared with his refusal to allow her to give him release. 
As unhappy as it made her to think he just hadn’t been interested, it made her more unhappy when she finally recalled that men, earth men, seemed to think it weakened them to have sex before any sort of challenge. Maybe it did and maybe it didn’t, but it certainly wasn’t any comfort to think they might be concerned that a release the night before the games would weaken them and put them in danger.
She dwelt over that for a while but eventually her mind made its way back around to the bizarre conversation they’d had about pregnancy. Uneasiness flitted through her as it occurred to her to wonder if he knew something she didn’t. They’d made it clear they’d never encountered another human, though. They couldn’t possibly know whether or not their biology was close enough to cross breed! 
She would’ve felt a hell of a lot better, though, if she hadn’t abruptly remembered that her damned birth control pills were in her damned suitcase and she didn’t know where in the hell that was!
Spawning was a damned strange way of referring to it, now that she thought about it. Fish spawned—on Earth—and she was as sure as she could be that they were mammals just like she was—except it was unnerving to recall that they had webbed fingers and growths that looked suspiciously like fins. She shook the thought off. They were mammals. She was positive of it. They just looked too human not to be close—but close didn’t always get ‘it’ done. 
Anyway, why would they talk about spawning when they’d very bluntly discussed her being a lover? 
They were aliens, she reminded herself. Maybe they had times when they could fuck and not worry about it? And other times when they were actually fertile? 
It seemed to her that that must be what he was talking about.
It was a damned shame that that immediately made her begin to wonder exactly where she was in her cycle. Not that she believed for a moment that having sex with them could create that kind of nightmarish disaster! But it was worrisome, if for no other reason than the fact that she had no pads for the occasion. 
That realization upset her so much that it completely diverted her from everything else. What in the hell was she going to do when she had her period?
* * * *
Balen was so pleased with himself when he got to the cell he shared with Dakaar and Kael that he damned near started a riot. More accurately, he supposed wryly, it was because they could smell her scent on him. Both of them turned to look at him as he came in, did a double take and sat up on their bunks abruptly, clearly furious.
It made him angry. “I am not stupid! I do not want to lose the fight on the morrow. I did not spill my seed! I only pleasured her.”
Kael surged off of his bunk angrily. Dakaar was not far behind him. 
“If you did no more than pleasure her, why do you smell like sex?” Kael growled.
“Because I pleasured her with mouth.”
Kael and Dakaar both went slack faced.
“Her pleasure center is not inside as it is with our women!” he said somewhat complacently. “She showed me where it was and when I took into my mouth, she came.”
“Where?” Dakaar demanded.
“It is a little nub of flesh just at the base of her woman’s mound, between the love petals.” 
Kael frowned. “You are making that up! Why would it be there?”
Balen shrugged. “I do not know and she did not say. She offered to give me pleasure the same way, but I was near to losing my seed when she came. I did not think I could hold it if she put her mouth on me.”
Kael and Dakaar exchanged a speaking look and returned to their bunks. “I have her scent,” Balen said somewhat irritably. “I pleasured her first.”
“You will have my fist down your throat if you do not shut the fuck up,” Kael snarled.
“Then I suppose I will not tell you what else I asked her.”
Dakaar did not have Kael’s patience. “What?”
“I asked when her spawning season was and she assured me that we could not get her with child.”
“Was that before or after she punched you in the face for being so rude as to ask such a thing?” Kael asked dryly.
“She was on the other side of the bars,” Balen said pointedly. “She could not reach if she had tried for I was prepared to duck or leap back, but she did not try. She is not like our women. She did look horrified, but I think that is because she is as determined not to spawn a child in captivity as we are—which is a very good thing! She cannot be close or she would not be able to think that rationally.”
“Well,” Dakaar said a little unhappily, “I suppose it is a good thing that we are not in sync in our reproductive cycles … now.”
“Only in the sense that we need not worry over a child,” Kael said tightly. “She is not likely to be happy when we go into spawning fever if she is not.”
“We have not gone into the fever since we have been here,” Balen pointed out. “Mayhap we will not when there are none of our women around?”
Kael sent him a sardonic look. “You do not believe that. I felt it in my blood before I saw Lau-ren! I cannot say that it is because of her when I knew before that I was nearing my time, but my blood hardly cools since she came. Unfortunately, I do not see that we can do anything beyond hoping the fates protect her from us and the spawning comes upon us when we cannot get to her. There is no stopping it or controlling it. If it comes upon us and we can get to her and she can be bred, we will have far more to worry about than our own fate. We will have a youngling to worry about and a mate in far more danger because of it.”
“She said that we could not get her pregnant,” Balen said uneasily.
“But does she know that that is true? Or was it only that she was as appalled as we are at the thought of giving birth to a child here?” Kael prodded grimly. “She did not tell you when her time was?”
Balen stared at him a long moment and finally shook his head. “She would have said if she was near her time, though. She would have sensed it as we do, would she not?”
“I do not know. We do not know because she is not Hirachi! We do not know how different she may be from us in ways that we cannot see!”

Chapter Six
Loren didn’t believe the sleep period could possibly have been as long as it usually was. When the lights came on, the glare against her eyelids dredged her from so deep a sleep that her eyelids felt like sandpaper when she blinked them against her burning eyes and when she struggled from the bed to use the toilet, she staggered and wove as if she was drunk. 
She considered for a few moments when she’d relieved herself if she actually wanted to get out of bed, bathe, and dress and decided she didn’t. Bathing off in the little basin, she headed back to the bed, slinging her hands to dry them along the way. She had nearly reached the bed again when the activity in the basement around her finally managed to penetrate the fog sufficiently to lift it and allow curiosity in. 
Pausing when she’d plopped down on the bed, she stared with burning eyes toward the bars at the door of her cell, listening and trying to figure out what was going on. The men were preparing to go out to practice, she decided finally, and fell back against the mattress, pulling the blanket up over her head to block out the light. She drifted for a while, like a feather on a current of air, falling toward sleep for a few moments and then rising up again. 
Some memory nagged at her, made it impossible to completely relax and go back to sleep. She tried to grasp it a while and then tried to ignore it. Finally, the clanging of metal against metal jarred it loose. The gladiator games!
Her eyes popped open and watered from the burn. Blinking the tears back, she dragged the blanket down and sat up, staring at the bars for a moment. Dismay filled her when she heard the distinctive sounds growing dimmer. They were leaving! And she hadn’t even had a chance to see Kael or Dakaar or Balen! Scrambling out of the bed, she rushed to the bars and strained for a glimpse of them. They were taller than most of the other gladiators and their hair and skin tones distinctive, but she knew there were other Hirachis among the gladiators and she wasn’t sure the one’s she glimpsed were them. 
“Be careful!” she called out to them, unable to tamp the impulse. They glanced back, but then so did most of the men behind them. Uttering a squeak of dismay, Loren leapt behind the wall to hide her nakedness and leaned out to wave frantically. Disappointed to see they’d already turned around again, her shoulders slumped. 
They were going out now? At this ungodly hour?
As soon as the thought crossed her mind she realized how absurd it was. She didn’t have a fucking clue of what time it was beyond the fact that she didn’t feel as if she’d had enough sleep. She didn’t even know if Lecur kept their sleep hours the same as those of the other people on the space station. 
Not that it mattered except that she hadn’t been expecting it and she was distraught that she hadn’t gotten a chance to see them and speak with them again. 
She might never get another chance, she realized abruptly. 
She pushed the thought away with revulsion. She couldn’t think like that. She couldn’t allow herself to consider it. She’d be a basket case before they got back—And she assured herself they would come back. Ok, so all the men had been carrying the most hideously wicked looking weapons she’d ever seen in her life, but Balen had said that they’d been fighting for years now and they’d survived this long!
She didn’t know why she felt like the bad luck that was going to get them killed, but she couldn’t completely dismiss the thought that something was going to happen to them just because she desperately wanted them to be alright. 
Struggling with her disappointment and anxiety, she leaned down to pick up the toga she’d discarded the night before and trudged toward the shower. There was no way that she could go back to sleep—now!—and she didn’t know anything to do but to wait. 
She didn’t even have any idea how long they might be fighting! Nobody had told her that. 
She’d finally had to resort to the damned soap to clean her teeth. There was nothing else to use and, since she was trying to convince herself that she was primping for them and they would come back victors, she focused on a thorough scrubbing from her hair to her toenails. She’d just managed to rinse the soap from her hair and was rubbing it from her eyes when a hand grasped her arm and yanked her out of the shower. She uttered a scream and skidded when she landed, slamming into the fish-man. He shoved her away and she fell back against the stone privacy wall. 
“Come!” he said, turning and moving as quickly as his bulk would allow toward the door. 
“But …! I’m still soapy!”
He halted and turned to look at her angrily. “Now!” he bellowed, pointing imperiously toward the open door of her cell. 
Fear sent her racing to obey although she was thoroughly confused and stopped as soon as she was outside, wondering which way to go. 
Lecur pointed again. “De games will start! Move stupid dyrk!”
Still confused, but more angry at the insult—and she knew it was when he’d prefaced it with ‘stupid’—Loren started down the corridor the men had left by. 
“Wait dere!” he snapped when she reached the door.
She stopped, watching as he moved off in another direction through the maze of cells. In a few moments, she heard him bellowing again and realized he must be collecting Karen and the alien woman. She saw she was right. In a few moments, he came lumbering along the corridor with Karen and the other woman, both as naked as she was, stumbling along in front of him. 
Loren’s heart leapt when she saw Karen. It was the first time she had seen her since they’d been locked in the basement. Karen’s face lit when she saw her. “What’s happening?”
“No flap lips! Move along! We go now!”
Karen and Loren exchanged a look, but they hurried through the door when he opened it and climbed the stairs up to the main floor of Lecur’s house. The thoroughfare, to Loren’s relief, was virtually deserted. Trying to convince herself that was only because it was so ‘early’ and not because everyone was at the stadium, Loren moved with the other two women as quickly as she could. 
“He’s taking us to the games,” Loren whispered after a moment.
Karen flicked a horrified look at her. “Oh god!”
“Stupid dyrk!” the alien woman muttered.
Lecur had already called Loren that twice and she glanced at the alien woman sharply only to discover that her gaze was narrowed on Lecur.
She glanced back instinctively at that and saw that Lecur’s face had turned an even more unlovely shade than usual. 
“I gibe you to losers!” he snarled, gritting his horrible teeth at them.
Karen and Loren exchanged a wide eyed look and turned to look pityingly at the alien woman. She looked pale, but defiant. “You tell lie to you fighters den! Say I go to winner! Next time maybe dey doan fight!”
“For god’s sake!” Loren hissed. “Quit antagonizing him!”
“I gib you to dem, den I gib you to losers!”
“Still lie. What point win if dey get me anyway?” the alien woman muttered.
Either she was a damned fool, or she had the biggest balls of anybody Loren had ever met in her life! He had nearly fifty fighters! If half of them piled on her there wasn’t going to be anything left but a greasy spot!
She exchanged a speaking look with Karen and decided to keep her mouth shut. She’d tried to reason with the woman. If she was determined to bait Lecur until he killed her, or let the fighters kill her, she didn’t see that she could do anything to help her. 
They accessed the stadium, as far as Loren could tell, via the same corridor she’d been escorted through by Kael and Dakaar. Nothing else was even vaguely the same, however. She could hear the roar of hundreds, maybe thousands of voices almost from the moment they entered and by the time they reached the other end the noise was nearly deafening. 
She saw why when they exited the corridor and came out on the field. The fighters were already taking up their positions to begin. Lecur gave them all a shove when they halted abruptly, sending them stumbling out onto the field with the gladiators. The crowd roared louder with enthusiasm, drawing the attention of the fights. 
Unable to resist, Loren scanned the field anxiously for Kael, Dakaar, and Balen. She spotted Balen first because he was matched off with another fighter fairly close to that end of the field. Shock made his face go blank for a handful of seconds and then his face contorted with rage.
Loren’s heart skipped several beats even though she was certain the rage wasn’t trained on her. She didn’t spot Kael or Dakaar until Lecur had herded her and the others to a position roughly midway down the field and off to one side. They were still far enough from her that she couldn’t tell anything about their expressions, but both of them were rigid with tension and she thought they were at least as furious as Balen had been. 
There was a cage waiting for them, she saw when she looked away. When Lecur had locked them in, he turned and lifted his hands as if he’d won some sort of victory, grinning widely as he played to the crowd. 
Dropping his arms after a moment, he turned and rounded the cage where he’d locked them and disappeared into another corridor. He emerged a few moments later and waddled down an aisle along the front of the seating area and then climbed the steps to the top where his harem awaited him in a private box. He’d barely reached it when a horn blew that was loud enough to be heard over the roar of the crowd.
Loren jumped all over. Karen shrieked and grabbed her, digging her fingernails into her. The sound of meaty and metallic crashes distracted both of them, and they whipped around to stare with wide eyes at the field. For many moments, Loren was so frozen at the sight that it didn’t even occur to her to look for any of the men. When it did, she wished she hadn’t. Kael, she discovered, was wielding what looked to be a sword about as long as she was tall. His lips were drawn back in a feral snarl and he was hacking as his opponent almost as if he was swinging a hammer instead. His opponent, who was perhaps a half a head shorter but about twice as massive, was fighting a defensive position, thankfully, and seemed to be more focused on fending off Kael’s blows than getting in any himself. Terror turned her knees to water and she would’ve sank to the ground if Karen hadn’t been holding her in a death grip. Unable to tear her gaze from the sight, she squeezed her eyes shut. 
Karen was screeching ‘oh god!’ in her ear like a broken record. 
Opening her eyes again, she tried to peel Karen loose. “Cut it out!” she yelled finally. “You’re squeezing me to death!”
Karen looked liked she’d slapped her and she was immediately sorry. It was Karen who’d been kind enough to try to comfort her when they’d first been taken and she liked her and wanted to offer comfort in return, but her grip was painful. “It’s alright! Just not so tight, ok?”
Karen’s chin wobbled. She nodded a little jerkily. 
Looping her arm around Karen, she turned to look for the other woman and discovered she’d retreated as far from the fight as she could and was huddled in a tight ball against the bars. Pity welled in her. “Come on, Karen. Let’s go sit with her, ok?”
Karen nodded jerkily, but Loren could see she was so frightened she had no idea what she was agreeing to. Disentangling herself from the other woman, she led her over to the corner. The alien woman looked up at them with such a look of incomprehension that Loren felt bad all over again. They’d all been separated and none of them had been able to offer comfort to one another, but at least she’d known Karen was there, known there was another woman from her world close by. “Is it alright if we sit with you?”
The woman stared at her blankly a moment and finally nodded jerkily. Loren settled beside the alien woman. Karen settled on her other side, staring at the alien woman warily. “I’m Loren,” she said, smiling with an effort and holding out her hand, “and this Karen. We’re both from Earth.”
The alien woman stared at her hand blankly and then met her gaze. “Shara. Am from Mizukera.” She frowned. “Same world, different color?”
Loren glanced at Karen and saw she was frowning. “Every damned where I go,” she muttered.
“I don’t think she meant it like that, Karen,” Loren said. “She’s just curious. It must not be very common when everybody notices.” She shrugged and turned to Shara. “Yes. Same world, different colors. There was an old religious song I remember from a little girl—red and yellow, black and white, we are all precious in his sight ….”
Shara’s eyes widened. “Red and yellow, too—yellow like Hirachi?”
“Actually,” Karen said absently, staring with wide eyes at the fighting on the field, “they sort combined the red and yellow. They say now that they’re the same.”
“And the brown with the white,” Loren agreed. “My mother said they used to count the brown skinned people separately.” She glanced at Shara and saw the confusion in her expression. “Three different races, I guess, but lots of different colors because we’ve sort mixed things up a lot.”
“You mix now wid Hirachi?”
Loren felt her face heat. “Uh … Actually, I really doubt that would happen. We aren’t from the same world and we’re different.”
“Humph!” Karen snorted. “Never underestimate a man! I was on birth control pills when I got pregnant the first damned time! You know what the bastards told me? Well, ma’am, they’re 98% effective. You’re just lucky enough to fall in the 2%!”
“You’ve got children?” Loren gasped in dismay. “Oh god! You poor thing!”
Shara sniffed. “I hab man—back on Mizukera. Did,” she added sadly. “Now I be one deez ting’s woman!” She shuddered. “Maybe not. Make ugly ting mad. Now say he let all fuck me.”
Loren didn’t know what to say. She was afraid Shara was right. “He’s a tightwad. He paid a lot of money for you. Surely he wouldn’t let them … uh …. He’ll want to protect his investment, don’t you think?”
Shara didn’t look like she believed that and Loren could see she was terrified despite her defiance earlier and her determination to try to be brave about it. 
They’d all been so focused on the fight and the effort to divert their minds from it that none of them realized they’d provoked Lecur simply by huddling in the corner until Loren felt something hard slam down against her shoulder. Pain exploded in her before her mind could even fully process the attack. She screamed at the sudden pain, lurching away from it. Karen and Shara instantly sprang to their feet, but Loren didn’t know which way to go to avoid the attack. She was hit twice more before she could evade it as she ducked and tired to scramble out of range with no clear idea of which way to run. 
“Stupid dyrks! Get off ass!”
Loren clutched at the pain in her shoulder as she managed to get to her feet out of range of the long, thin rod Lecur had hit her with and turned to stare at him with a mixture of panic and confusion. 
“Stand at front!” he bellowed, beating the rod against the bars furiously when he realized they were out of reach and then waddling quickly around the cage to try to get to them when they didn’t immediately rush to the front but instead cowered on the other side. 
Loren had figured out what he was demanding in that length of time, but he was so furious she was afraid he’d hit her again even if she complied. Either Karen and Shara also thought so, or they were just too panicked with the threat of attack on top of the stress they were already under to grasp what he wanted. They raced around and around the cage trying to stay ahead of him, dragging Loren with them. 
It didn’t take him long to tire of chasing them around the cage. He moved to the door and began to fumble with the key. Realizing his intent instantly, Loren, Karen, and Shara raced to the back of the cage to cower and watch him. Loren screamed again when he wrenched the door open and surged inside, whipping her head around for some avenue of escape. Karen and Shara were shrieking ear splittingly, as well. 
The three of them scrambled to run in different directions all at the same time in the small enclosure, slamming into each other and the bars as Lecur swung the rod wildly, clearly uncaring of where he hit them as long as he did. 
Abruptly, a series of bellows loud enough they made Loren’s ears ring erupted. The sound seemed to come from every direction and for a fragment of time, it froze all four of the occupants of the cage. Loren turned with the others to seek the source and felt a paralyzing wave of terror rush through her. Half the men on the field were down on the ground, rolling around and clutching their heads. The Hirachi, their faces contorted by rage, were mowing down the men still standing and racing directly toward them. 
In what almost seemed like slow motion, Loren saw Shara and Karen launch themselves toward the door Lecur had left open. Lecur’s arm had fallen to his side. His fish mouth was gaping and his eyes looked like they might pop from his head. Unable to think, Loren charged after Karen and Shara. The three of them collided with Lecur from three different directions. He staggered and flopped down and they leapt over him and kept going. 
The bellow sounded again and this time Loren realized it was the Hirachi. The cage shook wildly and began to fall apart. One piece narrowly missed her as she leapt through the open door and charged off after Karen and Shara. 
Karen, in the lead, was racing directly toward the dark opening of the corridor they’d followed when they’d arrived. The thunder of feet on the hard surface that the field was made of was enough to galvanize Loren to add on more speed and she began to close the gap between herself and Karen and Shara. Shara, whose legs were longer than hers or Karen’s, passed Karen and disappeared into the shadows of the corridor. 
Unable to resist, Loren threw a look behind her as she reached the opening. The field was a churning mass of fighting men. The crowd in the stands were on their feet, all shouting so deafeningly it flickered through Loren’s mind to wonder if the noise would crack the protective shield around the space station. The sight of nearly a dozen Hirachi racing across the field directly toward her, picking the other gladiators up as if they were weightless and tossing them to one side or the other or slamming them to the ground with fists or arms swung like maces, was enough to get her going again despite her breathlessness. Shara and Karen, she discovered, were nearly half way down the corridor by the time she entered. Karen had gained on Shara and passed her. 
She didn’t know where they were going, but she didn’t want to be left with the thundering horde of Hirachi bearing down on her. Struggling for breath, she pounded after them. She’d nearly made it to the other end when something slammed into her back hard enough it would have sent her flying forward if an arm hadn’t hooked around her waist at the same time. She would’ve screamed if she could’ve gotten enough air into her lungs to manage it. 
A wave of yellow skinned savages rolled past her. Shara and Karen both caught a glimpse of the tide and screamed hysterically, scrambling to run faster. It didn’t do either of them any good. The wave swept over them and they were both snagged. Karen went into cat-attack mode, snarling, screaming, her arms moving in a blur as she clawed and snapped at the Hirachi that had grabbed her. 
Loren caught a glimpse of a familiar face as she was swept up and turned, but it didn’t register in her brain that it was Kael until her belly slammed down hard enough on his shoulder to knock the breath from her. She caught a glimpse of Dakaar’s face, twisted with fury and determination only a few yards behind her. Balen slammed an elbow into the side of his head even as recognition hit her. She gaped at them as they turned on one another, roaring furiously and pounding at each other with their fists. 
* * * *
Kael knew he was in trouble even as he reached the field and moved into position opposite the gladiator that had been chosen to fight him in the first match. He was accustomed to the rush of adrenaline before a battle, from both before he had been captured and the many times he had found himself on the gladiatorial field. The determination to best his opponent was not new either. 
The rage he could feel building was. He had only felt that when some male stood between him and the woman he wanted in the time of the spawning. He struggled with it, knowing if it caught him firmly in its grip that there would be little skill involved in the contest. His primal instincts would take over if the fever claimed him. The adrenaline pumping through his veins would surge to such levels as to double his strength and half his cognitive abilities. In point of fact, when he was fully in the grip of the fever, only one single thing possessed his mind—the determination to remove anything between him and the female he had chosen to breed. 
He fought it, struggled to focus on the task ahead of him, repeating over and over in his mind that he must subdue his opponent and the next three and he would win the place he coveted. He would be allowed to take Lau-ren as his lover. 
His control slipped several notches when he saw Lecur parade her into the coliseum and lock her into a cage and for several moments the rage threatened to completely overset his efforts to control the fever. He was almost relieved when he heard the horn announcing that the first contest was to begin, telling himself that the contest would help him focus and work off some of the aggression building inside him toward explosion.
Uttering a snarl of rage, he launched his attack furiously.
He thought, later, that he might have been right, that that expenditure might have been enough to prevent him from losing control completely … if Lecur had had more sense than to attack his woman. Lau-ren’s scream of pain went through him like a knife, however, and the moment he discovered what had caused it, his instinct to protect ripped away the last his control, allowing the fever to consume him. A red haze filled his mind and, abruptly, every male that stood between him and Lau-ren was a rival who might prevent him from spawning. His primal urges took over then. He responded to the overwhelming odds he saw against him by summoning the one weapon he had been at pains to hide—his ability to project a sonar blast strong enough to shatter stone. Sucking in a deep breath, he pitched the sound waves across the field. Men screamed, falling to the ground and holding their heads or bellies where the sound wave had slammed into them. 
It wasn’t until he’d uttered another bellow of challenge and destruction that he realized, dimly, that the other Hirachi had erupted into spawning fever at almost the same instant. They weren’t brothers at the moment, however. They were rivals and they were standing between him and the woman he meant to breed if he had to slaughter every man that stood between him and her. Determined to reach her first and seed her, he charged across the field, pausing only when he met an obstacle and engaging any potential rival in a brief battle to overcome the rival before he leapt onward. He’d almost reached the cage where he’d last seen Lau-ren when he realized she’d fled. 
Pausing to suck in a breath, he whipped his head around in search of his target and spied her racing away. A savage satisfaction filled him. She was testing him! She would only allow him to breed on her if he proved he was stronger and faster than any other. 
And Balen, he discovered, was far closer than he was!
Zeroing in on Balen, he bellowed a challenge that carried with it the sonar wave. It caught him, slamming him into the ground. Surging into a run, Kael threw his weapon to the ground to rid himself of any impediment that might prevent him from catching his rival. He succeeded in closing the distance while Balen was struggling to get to his feet. Racing down the field at a tangent, he managed to reach the entrance to the corridor close enough behind Balen to launch himself at him. The tackle took them both to the ground, but Kael had been prepared. Before they’d even struck the ground, he’d slammed his fists into Balen’s ribs, knocking the breath from him. He grabbed his scalp lock and used it to pry Balen’s head back and slam his face into the ground twice and then bounded away. 
Dakaar flew past him even as he landed on his feet. Launching himself into a run again, he slammed his arm and shoulder into Dakaar as he came even with him, diverting him enough that Dakaar’s momentum took him into the wall before he could right himself. Triumph sang in his blood when he spied Lau-ren only a few yards in front of him. Summoning ever ounce of speed he could, he closed the distance, catching her on the run by hooking an arm around her as his momentum carried him past her. 
Her weight was a surprise and one he hadn’t calculated. He’d expected a solid impact. Instead, she was so light he almost batted her away instead of catching her. Thrown off balance, dismay stabbed at him as he struggled to compensate. He barely managed to retain his grip on her, but he didn’t dare slow down when he knew Dakaar and Balen were probably both right on his heels. Whipping her around, he slung her over his shoulder and kept going, his eyes searching for some place to enjoy his triumph, to seed her before the others could catch up to him and try to take her. 
Confusion flickered through him when he’d whipped his head around in search and the familiar/unfamiliar space station filled his vision instead of the terrain he’d expected to find, the pod he was searching for. The screams of the women caught by the others redirected his attention however and he saw the warrior that had captured Ka-ren as he slammed into a door not far ahead of him, shattering it and leaping inside.
An image of his cell filled his mind and he raced after them. It wasn’t his pod, but it was close enough!
* * * *
Between the sheer, mindless terror that had driven her into flight, the exhaustion from exerting herself almost beyond what her heart could take, and the blow that temporarily paralyzed her lungs, knocking the breath she’d been struggling for from her, Loren blacked out. When she swam toward consciousness again, it was to discover she was jouncing up and down on something hard enough it forced each attempt to suck a breath in out again in a grunt. Darkness still crowded her vision, but a flicker of recognition went through her when she managed to lift her head high enough to look around. 
The tight band across her thighs vanished abruptly and the pressure shifted to the spot between her shoulder blades and her ass. She felt herself falling and sucked in a sharp breath, her heart slamming painfully against her ribcage. Even as she stopped moving, jarred by the impact with a surface that was hard and yet yielding, Kael’s face swam into view. She had a split second to register that and then felt the pressure of his mouth as it opened over hers.
A shockwave traveled through her. Rolling on its heels was heat as her mind assimilated the familiar taste and scent that filled her mouth and her lungs and reacted by flooding her blood stream with an intoxicating brew of natural, pleasurable drugs. An image of Kael filled her mind as she sank beneath the tide and felt the feverish play of his hands over her and the weight of his body settle on her. 
“Mine,” he muttered drunkenly as he broke from her lips and pushed himself downward to suckle feverishly at first one breast and then the other, sending mind bending drugs through her on electric currents that seemed to sear a path from her breasts to her sex and set it on fire. Moisture flooded her channel in response. The muscles quaked frantically for possession. 
She had no clue of what his jerky movements were until she felt his loincloth fall away. Before her mind had fully grasped what it was, he coiled around her and she felt a ball of flesh pressing against her cleft in the region of her sex. He tightened his hold on her, trying to impale her on the blunt object and it slipped to the mouth of her sex and found purchase in the yielding flesh. 
Her heart began a frantic tattoo that was eight tenths anticipation and two tenths sheer panic as she assimilated the size of it and his intent. He grunted with effort, heaving against her mindlessly until he managed to wedge the head of his cock into the mouth of her sex. By that time her focus had shifted to eight tenths panic and two tenths stupidity as the pressure built to a burn and chased pleasure to the background. She sucked in a breath to protest, but he pounded it from her in inelegant grunts as he pursued his grim determination to sheathe the monster inside of her. 
She was too panicked to realize he’d succeeded until she felt the blunt head butt painfully against her womb. He seemed to realize he’d gone as deep as he could at the same moment, however. Shuddering with pleasure, he arched his hips to withdraw and drove into her again, immediately setting a frenzied pace that banished the burn and the nearly unbearable tension and replaced it with electric jolts of pleasure. Her inner muscles rippled around the thick shaft, stroking the length lovingly as his flesh stroked hers from the mouth of her sex to her womb. 
Her body leapt into a sheer, rapid climb toward climax without hesitation, racing toward the goal so fast she couldn’t catch her breath. Pleasure exploded inside her like an atom bomb, white hot waves of ecstasy blasting through her and melting muscle and bone. His cock bucked inside her and began bathing her channel with his scalding seed, lifting her upward several more notches before the convulsions of her climax reached maximum expansion and began to collapse.
He drove deeper as his body expelled the last of his seed, uttering a choked sound, his grip tightening convulsively. There was something about the sound, though, that seemed out of place, a strain and tension that pierced the euphoria that had enveloped her. She managed to pry one eyelid up high enough to look up at him and discovered Balen had him in a headlock. His teeth gritted, his lips drawn back in a feral snarl, he was slowly but surely bending Kael upwards so that his back bowed. 
Loren felt her jaw go slack with a mixture of confusion and disbelief.
Abruptly, Kael let go of her and locked his arms around Balen’s head. Kael tumbled off of the bed with Balen, almost carrying her with him since his body was still engaged with hers. She sat up to gape at them as they slugged at each other and glanced around. She had a split second to register the fact that they were in the basement and there were men crowded at the door and then Dakaar blocked her view as he surged toward her, his face set purposefully. 
Her eyes widened. Before her mind could interpret his intent, he grabbed her shoulders and bore her down on the mattress, covering her mouth in a feverish kiss even as he settled over her. Still excruciatingly sensitive from Kael’s feverish coupling, she might have protested if his assault hadn’t been so frantic that she barely had time to register the onslaught to her senses in one place before he’d moved to the next. 
He explored her mouth and then breasts and every patch of skin from her throat to her belly and surged over her, plugging his cock into the mouth of her sex and heaving to plow inside of her before she could even catch her breath. Her own moisture and Kael’s deposit worked in his favor. Before Loren even knew what was happening, he was pounding into her feverishly. Dread flickered through her, but she didn’t have a chance to decide whether she could climax again so soon or if she wanted to. The heated friction of his cock reignited the freshly extinguished fire in her belly and whipped it into a conflagration. 
As impossible as she would’ve thought it, he drove her to the summit faster than Kael had. The muscles along her channel began quaking within moments, lifted her to full charge and exploded around and through her so hard it forced keen cries from her throat. She heard roars of fury from Kael and Balen that seemed almost louder echoes of Dakaar’s growl of triumph as his semen erupted from his cock. 
The sound jerked her head automatically in that direction even though she was too mindless to actually register the images her eyes recorded until much later. Kael and Balen had apparently discovered an audience outside their cell, however, and turned their fury from each other to the ‘threat’. The echo of their roars hadn’t died when the gladiators scattered in a panic, mowing Lecur down and stomping him as they stampeded away in every direction. 
Dakaar whipped his head around at the same time, drawn by the apparent threat. He surged into her a couple more times to eject the last of his seed and lifted away from her to meet Kael as he whirled and stalked toward him. He didn’t have time to launch himself from the bed however. Kael’s fist caught him solidly in the face and pitched him into the wall. He rebounded, scrambled over her and leapt at Kael, stepping on her leg in the process. 
Loren was in the grips of shock, however, and barely registered the weight before it was gone. Balen stared at Kael and Dakaar as they grappled for dominance and then zeroed in on her. The instinct for flight jerked Loren from the bed the instant she realized he had her in sights, but she was so weak from climaxing twice in such quick succession that her body didn’t even seem like it was attached to her mind. She’d barely managed to scramble out of the bed before he caught her.
Dismay filled her as she went down beneath him and felt his cock pounding against the bruised flesh around the mouth of her sex, but he’d thoroughly pinned her by that time and pried his way inside of her by sheer dent of determination. It was as wild a ride as the first two and ended almost as explosively and as quickly. 
Dazed, Loren couldn’t figure out why Balen kept pumping even after he’d managed to spill his seed until she finally pried her eyelids up and discovered Lecur was standing over him, pounding on his back with the rod he’d beat her with.
Kael seized it abruptly mid swing and bent it into a loop. “You touch Lau-ren wid dis ting again, I shove it up your ass!” he growled threateningly through his teeth. 
For several moments, it almost seemed that threat hung in the air, freezing everyone within the cell and then a transformation seemed to take place. The fury on Kael’s face slowly faded and, just as slowly, he relaxed his grip on the rod. Balen lifted away from her, stared down at her with an expression she found impossible to interpret, and then got off of her. The shock on Lecur’s face gave way to wary anger and Dakaar released the man he was holding by the neck. 
Lecur turned toward her and narrowed his eyes at her as if she was to blame for everything that had happened. “Get up, you stupid dyrk! Go to your cell!”
Fear erupted inside of her. She glanced at the Hirachi and then struggled to get up. Lecur didn’t wait. He grabbed her by one arm and hauled her to her feet. Kael, Dakaar, and Balen tensed all over and for several unnerving moments, she thought they would attack Lecur. Apparently Lecur thought so, too. He wrapped a meaty arm around her throat and dragged her out the door with surprising speed for him, slamming the door, made of thick bars as her cell door was, and locking it with a shaking hand. 
She caught a glimpse of Kael’s face as he rushed to the door, gripped the bars in white knuckled fists, and watched Lecur haul her away. “Don’t …!” she gasped, begging him not to do more for fear of what might happen to him.
To her relief, Lecur merely shoved her into her cell and locked the door. He stared at her through the bars a moment and finally limped away, the first she realized he’d been injured. 
Her knees wobbled and threatened to give out under her. Turning away, she staggered to her bed and collapsed weakly into it, too stunned for a very long time even to think.

Chapter Seven
Loren had never seen the place where the men honed their fighting skills—the practice field. She supposed it shouldn’t have come as any great surprise to discover that Lecur simply used the coliseum, but it did. 
Then again, she wasn’t in any state of mind to have any particular interest in the discovery. Everyone who was able to get up and walk after the riot had been ordered to the coliseum to witness the punishment of the slaves who’d ‘caused the riot’—the Hirachi.
Loren felt like she was going to throw up when she saw them chained to posts in the field. 
She was surprised she, Karen, and Shara weren’t chained with them since Lecur had very vocally blamed them for the entire disaster. 
And it had been a disaster. There was no getting around that. What would ordinarily have been a daylong event of contests as one round after another was fought and the winners moved to the next challenger, had become a rout before the first contest was concluded. 
Actually, to be more precise, the first contest had ended abruptly and erupted into a melee as the Hirachi, as Lecur put it, went berserk. Even Lecur, who’d raged and ranted and stomped furiously around the basement, glaring at everyone through the cell bars and threatening them, hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the fact that less than a dozen Hirachi had waded through and mown down the other forty odd seasoned gladiators as if they were children. 
It hadn’t, clearly, appeased him that there hadn’t been any demands for refunds due to the shortened fighting exhibition. The patrons had been too bowled over by the awesome destructive powers of the Hirachi to do more than gawk at the massacre unfolding before their very eyes until it had apparently dawned on them that they might be next to feel the wrath of the Hirachi. They’d stampeded out of the coliseum then, creating even more havoc. 
According to Lecur in one his rants, at least a dozen patrons had been trampled to death.
She supposed Lecur might have been appeased about the money if not for the fact that nearly a quarter of the gladiators had been so badly injured that they would never fight again. None of them had walked away from the field uninjured—except the Hirachi themselves—and even those who’d managed to get back to Lecur’s dungeon on their own steam were injured enough Lecur wasn’t going to be able to put on another exhibition for at least a month. 
Lecur had been trampled himself, besides having the cage collapse on top of him, and he was still hobbling around with great effort. 
The slimy fucking bastard!
Loren was sorry he’d lived through it, although she shuddered to think what might’ve happened to the Hirachi if he had died. Probably worse than what was about to happen.
She thought he might have been inclined to put them to death anyway if not for the fact that he’d lost so many gladiators.
He was terrified of the Hirachi now regardless of his attempts to hide it and despite the control collars they still wore that ultimately put their lives in his hands.
Apparently, though, he didn’t actually control them. 
Loren felt certain that he would have used the collars to contain the riot if he’d been able to. Of course, he’d been in shock. They all had, but he’d also been in fear of his life and she thought that would’ve ‘reminded’ him and he would’ve used it if he could have.
That could only mean that the devise that controlled the collars must be in his private quarters, Loren was sure, although she didn’t know what she could do with the knowledge. 
Lecur drew her from her thoughts by announcing the punishment—twenty lashes each. Loren’s belly clenched when she saw that the men sent to meat it out were carrying thin metal rods like the one Lecur had used on her. It was thin enough and flexible enough to cut like a green switch from a tree, and yet made of some sort of metal like steel. It wasn’t likely to break.
She almost felt like she could feel every blow herself. There was dead silence in the coliseum except for the twang of the rods as they cut the air and the thuds as they were lain against the bare Hirachi backs with all the force the wielder could muster. Bile climbed into her throat. She clenched her hands together, curling her fingers into claws. 
The distance would’ve been far too much for her to see the faces of the men and identify them except for the fact that Lecur had seen to it that the witnesses could see the faces of the men on the same huge screens that had displayed her when she’d been sold. They endured in teeth gritted silence, their faces taut in their efforts to prevent any show of the pain she knew they had to be feeling.
It was worse because she knew from firsthand experience what the rod felt like. There were still red welts on her back where Lecur had hit her and, except for the first, he hadn’t managed to land a solid blow after that. 
The men were chained and couldn’t avoid the blows or even yield with them because of the posts. She swallowed convulsively against the sickness and felt tears well in her eyes when blood began to ooze from the cuts the rods tore across the backs. She couldn’t stand it anymore! She couldn’t! “Stop!” she said hoarsely. “Stop!”
Karen, seated beside her, grabbed her when she would’ve jumped to her feet, clamping a hand over her mouth. “Sit still, damn it!”
Loren clawed her hand away. “They’re going to kill them!” she gasped wildly.
“For god’s sake think, Loren! You don’t know what Lecur will do to them if he realizes it matters to you! He didn’t mind using you to get to them. He won’t mind using them to control you!”
Loren stared at her blankly as that slowly sank in. Struggling for breath, she squeezed her eyes closed to shut out the sight she couldn’t bear. The image had been burned into her mind, though, and she couldn’t shake it. 
Surprise flickered through her when Karen gathered her in her arms and hugged her, but she clung to her, comforted as much by the discovery that Karen was fighting her own tears as she was by the offer. She didn’t think she would’ve wanted the embrace if Karen hadn’t been as upset as she was. 
Shara leaned against her back, curling her arms around her waist in commiseration and Loren felt her own sorrow and need for comfort. 
She supposed, a little wildly, that the three of them were purely insane to be weeping over the very men who’d scared all of them half to death not two days earlier and fucked them until they still couldn’t walk without limping. She wasn’t certain her hip joints or her poor abused pussy was ever going to be the same again, but she not only knew none of them had wanted or intended to hurt her, there was no dismissing the fact that they’d still managed to give her pleasure regardless of how roughly they’d taken their own.
She felt weak with relief when the beatings finally stopped and the Hirachi were released from the poles. A couple of them swayed dizzily and staggered slightly and then regained their balance. Holding themselves proudly erect, they stalked past Lecur as if he wasn’t there. 
Kael was in the lead. As Loren stared at him she realized abruptly that she hadn’t done him justice in her mind—any of them. As attractive as she’d found them, she’d still labeled them in her mind as alien savages—because of the tattoos, she supposed, because they’d looked so ‘right’ in the loincloths that she’d assumed that they must be a backwards race—maybe even because of the difficulty they had expressing themselves.
They really were magnificent warriors, though, more like kings than mere men. What a stupid, bigoted, asshole she’d been not to see from the first that they were superior in absolutely every way to anything she’d ever encountered before! She’d never thought of herself before as having any sort of arrogance or bigotry, and certainly not as anyone suffering from a superiority complex! And yet she’d ‘steeled’ herself to ‘let’ them touch her! 
She thought for several moments that she was going to burst into tears of pure shame when she’d only just mastered the urge inspired by pity for their pain!
She managed to refrain as the realization sank into her that they expected her to be as brave and strong as they were. She remembered the way Dakaar had looked at her when she’d told him fight hard and told her she was like a Hirachi woman. She’d been mildly insulted at the time even though she’d realized he considered it a compliment. She realized abruptly, though, that they couldn’t have anything but contempt for a weakling, not as noble and strong as they were! She knew they would still try to protect her and shield her from harm because that was their way, but she wouldn’t have their admiration and she desperately wanted that. 
She wanted to rush to them and try to soothe the pain so bad when they were returned to the basement dungeon that the taste of copper filled her mouth but, naturally, she wasn’t allowed to. She caught no more than a glimpse of them as she was prodded past their cell and down the corridor to her own. 
It was the fear that they’d hear her and know it was her that was weeping that kept the tears locked in her chest when she dropped onto her bed, but without the freedom to give vent to her emotions it was a long, long time before the painful tightness finally eased. 
* * * *
For nearly a week everyone, including Loren, felt as if their fate was hanging by a thread. She didn’t think it was her imagination either. Every day, Lecur made his way to the basement and studied his slaves assessingly and she knew he was trying to decide which of his slaves to keep and which to replace or, in her and the other women’s case, to simply dispose of. She was terrified every time he got to her cell and stood at the bars studying her that he would decide that it hadn’t been a good idea to purchase the women to excite the men’s aggressions and decide to sell them off to one of the many brothels on the space station.
That wouldn’t have occurred to her except that Lecur was either prone to thinking out loud or he’d made sure she knew that fate was a strong possibility for her. The men that were assessed as being too damaged to fight again were removed about mid-week. No one had any idea of what he did with them, but they speculated that they’d been sold as laborers. Loren didn’t know how likely that was, but she hoped that was the case. The alternative didn’t bear thinking on.
Lecur decided about half of the gladiators were ready to start working out again toward the end of the week. To Loren’s vast relief, the Hirachi were among them. None of the men, including Kael, Dakaar, and Balen, had been near her cell and she’d had no idea how they were faring after the beating until then. Right or wrong, she thought that must mean that they were recovered enough to fight again. 
Apparently Lecur was in a far better mood once he’d watched the men at practice. He informed them that if they continued to improve and were doing well enough to put on another fighting exhibition in three weeks time, they would all be allowed a chance to fuck the women. 
Dismay didn’t begin to describe how Loren felt about it and she thought Karen and Shara probably shared her sentiments. Selling them to the brothel would hardly have been worse … might not even have been as bad. She didn’t doubt that his motives were twofold—to encourage the men to fight harder and to punish the Hirachi, but she was far more afraid than she had been when she’d been facing the prospect of ‘servicing’ the winners. At least then she’d known the winners would boil down to only a handful and they’d be divided between three women. Fifty odd fighters—for Lecur had already brought in some of the replacements—divided by three were still very bad odds, especially considering the size and aggression of the ‘men’ he was talking about. To make matters worse, she had a bad feeling he wasn’t talking about any sort of rotation plan. She thought he fully intended to simply pitch her, Karen, and Shara to the men and let them do what they would. 
It magnified her desperation to escape tenfold. Unfortunately, the fear wasn’t enough to produce a way to do it. Lecur had tightened security since the riot. He’d kept all of the men locked in their cells since then for most of the day and she suspected that also meant that he’d tightened security regarding his living quarters. 
After he’d made that announcement, he relented to a degree, allowing most of the fighters to roam the basement as they pleased as he had before—except for the Hirachi. She knew that had to be the case, because although the other men began to wander to her cell to stare at her through the bars again, neither Kael, Dakaar, or Balen came.
And they would have, she told herself, if they could. She knew they would. She refused to give the niggling doubts in her mind a chance to take root and grow.
Despite that, when she finally looked up one evening and saw them, the doubts she thought she’d dismissed swarmed to the forefront of her mind and she eyed them warily for several moments before she got up and moved closer. They studied her piercingly and she wasn’t quite sure why. 
She saw Kael’s Adam’s apple work as he swallowed. “I hurt you, shimone?”
Not unless one counted the fact that her pussy had felt like someone had beat her there and the little tears that had added to the soreness! Truthfully, though, she’d had sex rough enough to leave her feeling bruised and create little tears before and she certainly didn’t think any of them had intentionally hurt her. Still, the question resurrected the incident pretty forcefully and it was also true that they’d nearly scared her to death and she wasn’t at all sure she entirely trusted them anymore. She could see worry in eyes, though, and she couldn’t add to that after what they’d endured. 
Maybe it was their own fault, but she still felt guilty about it if no other reason than the fact that she’d allowed them to tease themselves. 
“No,” she said finally. 
“Make afraid,” he said and that time it wasn’t a question. He could see the uneasiness in her eyes. 
She chewed her lower lip. Was she really afraid of them now? There was no getting around the fact that the incident had scared the piss out of her, but they hadn’t hurt for all that—not beyond the rough sex. They’d seem pretty set on hurting anybody that got in their way, but not her. Would they have hurt her, though, if she hadn’t been too stunned to fight? 
She shook the thought off and closed the distance between them. Relief flickered in Kael’s eyes as he reached for her and dragged her closer. “Sorry I hurt, Lau-ren. Not mean to,” he murmured gruffly against her hair. 
“Was de spawning,” Dakaar said. “Fever gone now.”
Loren eased away from Kael and glanced at him when he spoke, meeting his gaze for a long moment and then Kael’s and Balen’s. They were done, she thought in dismay? That wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am was all she was going to get? 
Not that it hadn’t been good—in fact it had been pretty fantastic sex—but that was all?
“You don’t want to be my lovers anymore?” she asked in dismay.
Hunger blazed in Kael’s eyes. “Still welcome?”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes.”
He dragged her upwards for a kiss, but it was woefully brief, especially when it had been so long! She was about to protest when he set her on her feet again but even as she looked up at him, he glanced around and then grasped the bars in front of his face. She saw the muscles in his hands, forearms and upper arms bulge, saw a faint tremor run through them—and then the bars buckled beneath the pressure, bending!
Her jaw dropped. Grasping her around the waist, he lifted her again. That time he managed a far more satisfying connection. Her shock crumbled to dust almost as instantaneously as the heat inside her roared to life. She shoved her arms between the bars and curled them around his neck, holding him, enjoying the play of his tongue along hers, luxuriating in his taste and scent. Unfortunately, she still couldn’t coil her legs around him because she could only get her legs through the bars up to the knees. He shifted his hold to her buttocks and then one arm to free a hand for exploration. 
Loren’s mind leapt from the kiss to an even more satisfying connection as he massaged her breasts and stroked her belly and cleft but reality intruded. There was no way they could have sex through the damned bars—not unless he took them down! It was unnerving enough that he’d bent them to reach her to kiss her, though. Considering the rage Lecur had been in, she didn’t want him to show up and discover Kael had the strength to bend the bars! He would freak then!
When he broke the kiss and gnawed a path down her throat to her breasts, her flesh pebbled, her nipples hardened, her mind began a feverish search for some way to finish what they’d started. Unfortunately, the only position she could think of that even might have some potential was doggy and she was pretty sure the length of his thighs compared to hers would make that a lot more difficult with him than it had been with her last boyfriend. 
Maybe if she stood up and bent over?
He began shaking. She couldn’t decide if it was the strain of holding her or arousal, but it made her heart beat faster. “We could try it though the bars,” she whispered.
He paused, lifting his head to look at her for a long moment. Releasing a shaky breath, he pulled her close and began stroking her back soothingly. She knew even as he leaned away enough to find her lips again that he wasn’t going to try it and her heart sank with disappointment. 
He didn’t release her when he’d finally set her on her feet. He seemed to be wrestling with something. “I bring a collar, you tink you can break?” he asked after a moment.
The question swept all thoughts of sex from her mind instantly. She gripped his hand. “It’s too dangerous! Especially after ….”
His expression tightened. “Too dangerous stay now,” he said. “See in Lecur’s eyes.” He shook his head. “No let udders touch, little ting, mine shimone. Promised. Dis only way. Must go soon.”
Loren licked her lips and glanced at Dakaar and Balen. “I won’t know until I open it,” she said in a low voice. “Maybe, but I can’t be certain.” She hesitated. “Lecur has the control somewhere in his quarters. I know he must. If he carried it with him, he would’ve used it that day.”
Kael studied her for a long moment and finally nodded. “I tink ‘bout dat. Maybe better, maybe not. You tink, we get you out, you can make machine go?”
Loren felt like weeping with hopelessness. “I don’t know! I studied some alien technology, and I think I might be able to figure it out, but I can’t promise. I can try. That’s all I could do.”
He nodded again. “We get out, you try very hard,” he said, smiling faintly. “Not free long udderwise.”
Fear and hope collided inside of her. “I don’t know if I could find my way home even if I can get it to fly,” she confessed. “My people don’t have ships like these. We can’t fly from one solar system to another—or to another galaxy—I don’t even know where we are.”
He pulled her close and stroked her hair soothingly. “Any place better dan here—no place better.” He released an irritated breath. “We stay you no want to go.”
Loren felt like crying then. She knew how much he hated being a slave and yet he was willing to stay if she was afraid to go? 
She didn’t want to die adrift in space, but was she really any better off here? Could she survive what Lecur had planned for her? She wasn’t sure she could and she was pretty sure she didn’t want to find out. Even if she did survive, there was no telling what she would have to face next.
And she would be with them, at least. “What about Karen and Shara and the other Hirachi? Are we all going to try it together?”
His eyes lit. “If dey want come, yes, shimone. We bring dem, too. I find a way.”
Loren was so on edge after they left that she could hardly be still. She paced for a while, trying to think what they might be able to do to gain her enough time to figure out how to control a ship, but she realized very quickly that that wasn’t something she knew how to plan, especially when she didn’t know when or if or how Kael might manage an escape. Sneaking away certainly seemed to her to be the best thing, but she had a bad feeling that would be next to impossible. The Hirachi were just too big to go unnoticed. 
She lay down when the lights went out, but she lay awake for hours trying to recall everything she could about the pieces she’d worked on for the government, most specifically those she’d known had to be parts of a space craft. 
She would’ve felt a lot better if she’d had any idea what race had produced the technology, or races, and if there were any representatives in the space station since that would’ve made her chances a lot better. Unfortunately, she didn’t and since she’d never seen anything but various parts, she didn’t think she could recognize one of their crafts either. 
* * * *
Almost a week passed before Kael appeared one night with a collar. Loren had wavered between hope that he would manage to get one and fear for the same reason, because she wasn’t convinced by any means that he could manage it without getting caught. 
She almost fainted when he’d glanced around carefully to make certain they weren’t being observed and removed the thing from his loincloth. She’d actually thought when he began fishing that he meant to give her a thrill. She wasn’t disappointed when she saw the collar but she was damned if she could see how he’d managed to hide it when his cock and balls already filled the thing to capacity. She bit her lip when he reached down to rub them unconsciously after he’d passed it through the bars to her. 
“This tiny crack here is the cover, I’m sure,” she said, having studied it from end to end. Turning it, she studied the catch itself. Despite the feeble light, she saw at once that she’d been right about that part anyway. The wires were almost hair like, but she could see they formed a circuit once the collar was fastened. “See these here? These wires form a circuit.” She looked up at the men unhappily. “I wish I’d been wrong, but that’s what it looks like. We aren’t going to be able to get them off without deactivating the collars themselves or whatever he uses to control them.”
She frowned when she’d returned her attention to the cover, trying to wedge her nail in it to pry it open. She gave up after a few tries and turned to study her cell, searching it for anything that might be thin enough to lever the cover off and still strong enough to do the job. “I’m going to need something to take the cover off before I even look at it,” she said apologetically. “I can’t find anything that makes it release. We’ll need something anyway to work on them if I do figure out how to deactivate them.”
Kael held out his hand. 
“You should just leave it with me.”
He shook his head. “Too dangerous. Give.”
Releasing a huff of breath, Loren placed it in his palm. Instead of pushing it back into his loincloth, however, he studied the collar frowningly, rubbing is fingers along the metal it was made of. He flicked a look at her. “No work now, yes?”
Loren frowned at him, confused. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“Blow up?”
Her heart clenched. She bit her lip. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure it has to be fastened to complete the circuit.”
“No know, though?”
“I’m almost positive! That’s as close as I can get without looking at it.”
He nodded. “You go. Stand behind wall.”
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea to try to break it, or even bend it,” she cautioned. “It might destroy the works. They’d have to be tiny to fit in this thing to start with and if it’s broken, I might not be able to tell anything about it.”
He nodded. “Go.”
Anger flickered through her. If he broke it the risk of getting another was going to be higher, but she could see there was no reasoning with him! Stalking across the cell, she got behind the wall even though she didn’t see that it was at all necessary. When she leaned out to take a peek to see how he was doing, she discovered he seemed to be … blowing on it. If that wasn’t totally bizarre, she could see the metal changing color … as if it was heating up! It warped and the cover popped off. 
He glanced in her direction and frowned. “No good get dere den stick head out!” he said angrily.
Loren glared back at him. “You don’t honestly think I would’ve let you manhandle it if I thought it would blow up?”
He looked disconcerted, but he held the open collar out to her. She took it, but she was far more interested at the moment in how he’d managed what he had. “What did you do?”
His lips tightened. “Use ….” He paused. “Sound.”
“I didn’t ….” Loren broke off and grabbed his arm, lifting it to study the fin-like growths on his wrist and elbow. It dawned on her abruptly that they weren’t fin-like. They were fins. She met his gaze. “You’re sea people. You live in the sea.”
His gaze flickered over her face. “Matter, shimone?”
She felt her heart turn over at the look in his eyes. Lifting his hand to cheek, she rubbed her face against it. “I didn’t mean it that way … honestly. It’s just … On my world there are … uh … animals that live in the sea that can do things with sound.” She was relieved when he didn’t seem to take that badly. “The thing is,” she added with rising excitement, “it’s something very like that that controls these things! What kind of things can you do with the sounds?”
He shrugged. “Make hot, make fire.”
Dakaar struck his chest with his fist. “Make like punch.”
“Kill tings,” Balen said.
Loren gaped at him, struggling not to look as horrified as she felt, but then she’d heard dolphins could produce sound waves powerful enough to kill small fish. They used it to catch food. 
That was probably what he’d meant, she told herself.
Dakaar and Kael both glared at him. 
“It’s ok,” she said dismissively, turning her attention at last to studying the works of the collar. To her relief, she discovered it was actually a pretty simple device. There was a tiny circuit chip in it that controlled everything—including the charge. “I think this is the explosive charge.” She pointed to it with her pinky, taking care not to touch it and then looked up at them. “How accurately can you direct the sound waves?”
Again Kael shrugged. “Close, very much—far away, not so much.”
Loren nodded. “The machine that Lecur has directs a beam—like the sound you can make—probably all over this area. Actually, it’s probably all over the building, like a shield. Once the circuit is completed by fastening the collar, it can’t be broken as long as the ‘shield’ is up without setting off the explosive charge. I think, if you could destroy this chip, that it would break the circuit without blowing up. I don’t know of any way to test it, though, except to activate it.” Frustration filled her. “If I had tools, I could remove the charge and test it. Otherwise, I can’t tell for sure one way or the other.”
Kael frowned. “Is enough charge blow head off?”
Loren stared at it skeptically. “Explosives aren’t my field, but I’m going to guess, based on what you’ve heard and the fact that it’s there at all, that it would majorly fuck you up if it went off, even if it didn’t kill you. I don’t think it would be there if it wouldn’t.”
Kael nodded, frowning thoughtfully. “Explode under water?”
She considered it. “I don’t honestly know. I don’t see why it wouldn’t, though. The cover obviously fits tightly enough to keep water out.”
“Make less noise, though, yes?”
Loren blinked at him. “No! I know what you’re thinking, but it’s too dangerous, Kael! When it blows up, it’ll blow this metal up and shrapnel will fly in every direction!”
Kael snatched it from her. “Try not blow up.”
“Oh god! Don’t put it there!” she gasped when he shoved it into his loincloth again.
She saw his eyes were gleaming with amusement when she looked up at him. “No blow off nice ting.” He shrugged and nudged his head at his companions. “Dakaar and Balen still hab one. Me I hab tongue.” He waved it at her. 
She couldn’t help but smile. “That isn’t funny! I like that nice thing!”
He grinned at her. “I like, too. ‘Specially like put in Lau-ren’s tup.”
Loren wanted him to put it in her tup, too! Her smile faded. “Just be careful.”
She watched them leave in dismay, wondering if she should’ve tried to talk him out of trying anything at all, wishing she hadn’t been so caught up in the possibility that he had a ‘built in’ tool to disable the damned things that she’d actually considered what it meant if he tried it and it didn’t work.
She was too on edge to sleep, fearing any moment that an explosion would rip through the basement. Finally exhaustion got the better of her, though, and she dropped off. The anxiety returned the moment she woke up, but she knew she was just going to have to contain herself to discover if they’d successfully tried it or decided it was too dangerous to attempt. 
She looked at them expectantly when they arrived at her cell door the following night. They grinned at her. Loren flew to the door in excitement. “It worked?” she asked in an excited whisper. 
“Yes. Work. No blow anyting off.”
“Thank god! I couldn’t sleep last night for worrying about it.” She paused to calm her racing heart. “We’re going to have to try one that’s already been activated to be sure.”
“Am sure,” Kael responded. “Break Dakaar’s and Balen’s. Dakaar break mine.”
Loren gaped at him in horror. “Oh my god! You didn’t!”
The three men exchanged a look of surprise. “Did,” Dakaar assured her. “Still have head.”
“I would have had nightmares if I’d known you were going to do that!” Loren said crossly. 
Kael’s brows. “Good ting no know, yes?”
She glared at him. “No it isn’t!” she hissed at him. “If it hadn’t worked, you’d be dead!”
He caught her and dragged her against the bars, bending down to try to nuzzle her through the bars. “Shimone be sad?”
She popped his shoulder angrily. “Of course I’d be sad,” she said tightly and then abruptly felt close to tears. “I don’t want anything to happen to you!”
Amusement flickered in his eyes, but he sobered quickly. “No want anyting happen to mine shimone, either,” he said. “Need do dis ting. No udder way.”
He was right and she knew it. Despite everything that had happened to her, though, she wasn’t accustomed to life or death situations. It was hard to accept that they had to risk death just have a chance at life—because this certainly wasn’t life. She nodded, straining to reach him to soothe the sting from her slap with a kiss. He looked bemused, but didn’t ask her how she thought a kiss would take the sting away. 
“What next?” she asked him. 
“More kisses first,” he murmured.
As much as she enjoyed kissing them, it was a huge disappointment that that was all she could get. She was tempted to suggest oral sex, but she wasn’t certain she could bring them all off without making it look suspicious that they lingered so long and they couldn’t afford to arouse any kind of suspicions. 
She moved back to Kael when she’d made the rounds, looking up at him expectantly. He shook his head at her. “Next part harder. Take time.”
Which they were running out of if they were going to escape before Lecur turned the other gladiators loose on her and the other two women. Sighing when she realized she was just going to have to give him time to work out a plan, she let it go. 
There was one thing about their wild orgy that had been bothering her, though. She hadn’t broached it before because of the trust issue that had arisen from the incident and also because she hadn’t wanted to risk insulting them or making them feel bad. She had been left with doubts that disturbed her, though, and it wasn’t something she wanted to find out later. “There was something I wanted to ask. After the … uh … games last time. Dakaar suggested …. Well, he said it was the spawning, that the fever was gone. What is the spawning exactly?”
The three men glanced at one another questioningly. “Make baby,” Kael responded finally, studying her a little warily.
Loren blinked at him. “You think you made a baby?” 
Balen answered. “We know it no you time. You no be ‘fraid if had fever, too.”
She stared at him blankly for a moment before that sank in. “You’re saying you and your women go into this … spawning fever at the same time?”
That time they stared at her blankly. They exchanged puzzled and vaguely uneasy looks. 
“How often does this happen?” she asked worriedly.
They frowned. “Three … four years,” Balen said. 
That was the part that was really worrying her. She’d known they must be talking about their mating cycle and she had to say the ‘fever’ was pretty damned unnerving, but she wasn’t especially happy about the implications that sex wasn’t going to be in the picture except then. And it didn’t actually make sense that they’d want to be her lover if that was the cycle, unless they had a completely different meaning for the word. “But … you have lovers … uh … sex between spawning?”
“Yes. No babies den.”
Indignation welled in her as she digested that. “Let me get this straight—you’re saying you can have sex any time and not get pregnant—your women—except during the spawning? Oh! That is just so unfair! Why couldn’t we have evolved like that?”
All three of them turned so pale it startled her. 
“How often you spawn?” Kael asked a little hoarsely.
Loren considered correcting him and telling him they didn’t ‘spawn’ or at least didn’t call it that, but dismissed it. It was what they were familiar with. She sighed. “Pretty much any time we don’t use birth control and have sex unless we’re lucky.”
They’d begun to look a little sick by the time she finished. 
“Truth?” Dakaar asked, disbelief evident in his voice.
Loren lifted her brows. “Why would I lie?” she asked a little indignantly. 
Kael touched her cheek, bringing her attention back to him. “How often, shimone?”
“Every twenty eight days … almost like clockwork.” She frowned, feeling a strange little quiver race through her. “Now that you mention it my period’s late.”
“What dis birth control?” Kael asked hoarsely. “You use?”
That time Loren felt distinctly uneasy. She studied his expression. Admit she hadn’t been on birth control since she’d been taken? Or tell them she was absolutely certain that she wouldn’t get pregnant having sex with them because they were aliens? 
Maybe it would be better to just lie and say she was on birth control, she thought unhappily? It was bound to insult them and maybe hurt their feelings if she told him the latter and they looked like they just might be pissed off if she told them the former. 
She smiled at Kael a little weakly. “We have to use it to keep from having babies except when we want to have them. Of course I have birth control pills! No responsible adult would consider having sex without the pill!”
He didn’t look convinced. None of them did and they didn’t look happy. Not but what she could see their point. It wasn’t as if she wanted to get pregnant when she was treated like a caged animal! She hadn’t actually given any thought to when, or even if, she would have a family, but having sex didn’t put her the mood to brood! 
She was counting on the fact that they were different preventing conception, because she didn’t have any damned thing else to rely on and she didn’t have any options, either! 
Kael cupped her face and forced her to look at him. “Dis important, shimone. Say truth! You in fertile time? Or no?”
“You mean now?” she hedged.
His lips tightened. “When we fuck, gods damn it!”
She glared at him, hurt that he’d referred to it as fucking, although she supposed it was absurd to think it was anything else. “I don’t know, damn it! It’s not like I could’ve fought you off—any of you—anyway!”
He stared at her for a long moment and finally turned and left. Dakaar and Balen looked as upset about the information as Kael had, for that matter.
Loren stared at their retreating backs unhappily, wondering why their reaction to the possibility that she might have conceived made her so unhappy. 

Chapter Eight
Dakaar was angry. A good deal of it was fear because Lau-ren had been evasive about whether or not she might be breeding and worry that she was and would be even more vulnerable because of it, but there was also a sense of betrayal that he could not shake—or precisely pinpoint for that matter. As they reached their cell again, he pinned Balen with an accusing look. “You said there was no danger that we might spawn on her!” he growled.
Balen’s lips tightened. “I told you what she said to me, gods damn it! Do you think I would not have been worried if I had thought otherwise?” 
“It would not have made any difference one way or another,” Kael said pointedly. “I do not recall much of anything from the spawning, but there could not have been much to deter us or we would not have caught her. I do recall that I did mate her.”
Dakaar glared at him. “I also recall that part! She did not try to fight, gods damn it. I know it would have been ineffectual if she had, and mayhap I would not have been able to stop myself anyway, but I also know that I would recall if she had tried to prevent it!”
Kael studied him angrily. The truth was that that was bothering him, as well. “She ran.”
“They always run!” Dakaar snapped. “How else can they weed out the less desirable to them? It is one thing to accept a lover that you know lacks those qualities most desirable in offspring and another entirely to allow them to breed!”
“What are you saying then?” Kael demanded angrily. “That it is her fault if she is breeding? We can clear our conscience that she may be in even more danger than we believed because of something that we did? That we have not endangered a child because of our actions?”
“She did not believe that it would be an issue because she does see past the differences between us,” Balen said, keeping his voice carefully neutral. “We are the undesirable lovers to her … except that she was not concerned that we might catch her because it is more than that. She does not think that we are capable of breeding on her. I should have known then that that was what she meant—mayhap I did and I did not want to believe it—because I wanted her and I wanted to believe that she felt the same and not that she was only willing because she thought she must barter for protection.” 
Dakaar exchanged a glance with Kael. He could see in his eyes that Kael knew that that was the truth just as he did and he finally realized why he had felt the sense of betrayal. It was because, even now, Lau-ren was only certain that they had not bred on her because she looked upon them only as creatures from another world, perhaps even inferior creatures. She did not see any of the ways that they were the same, only the differences.
“We do not know that ourselves,” Kael said finally, “but we must assume that one of us has bred on her and plan accordingly. I do not like that we have no more to offer a mate than we did before—beyond the possibility of freedom—but it is not within our power to change that. We can nothing but our best to protect her and the child she might be carrying, take her from this place where neither she nor the child will have any chance at all of surviving, and hope that we can find a place where there will be a future for her and the child—if she is carrying one. 
“I will not say that it does not matter to me that she does not feel as I had hoped and begun to believe. It does. But it does not change the way I feel about her and it also does not mean that it is not possible that she could feel for me as I would like, only that I have not won her heart as I had hoped and that I must try harder to win her. Mayhap her instincts are better than ours and she is right and if that is the case, then it is the way that it was meant to be. It grieves me to think so. I would like to think there might be a chance to have a child with her to bond us more closely, or mayhap to bond us at all if nothing else would, but it is still better to have something than to have nothing. She is a willing lover whatever her motives.”
Dakaar swallowed a little convulsively. “I agree to an extent. I do not think that I ever had a choice in the way that I feel about her. From the moment I saw her …. But as you say, what is meant to be is. What if her instincts are wrong, though? What if we have bred upon her? If she does not accept us, will she also refuse to accept our child? Will she only look upon it as some alien thing that she must tolerate? Or mayhap will not tolerate?”
Kael stared at him a little sickly and finally scrubbed his hands over his face dispiritedly. “We cannot do anything about that and I cannot think about that now … and there is no point in worrying about a future until and unless we can provide one. First, we must think of a way to take her from this place and do our utmost to carry it out. Then will be the time to worry about other things, not now.
“We do not have time to worry about such distractions. I am as certain as I can be that Lecur never makes idle threats—and his decision was intended as one, not a promise. He will give her to the others to punish us and her and he does not care what happens to her. In fact, I would not put it past him to urge them to do their worst or to give her first to those he knows will be cruel and rough with her. He is furious with her and the other women because he miscalculated and it cost him, and he did not expect that. 
“It is … regrettable that we were in no state, and not prepared, to make use of the situation. There was enough mayhem that we might have won our freedom then—if not for the collars. Unfortunately, Lecur is wary now and I am not certain that we could instigate another riot like that and make use of it. 
“I am thinking that it is still our best hope of achieving what we must, though.”
Dakaar frowned. “I see your point. I do not see that we could do it, though, without including all of the gladiators in the plot and there are too many I do not trust—and they will not be willing to try it if we do not destroy their collars.”
“That is the part that I have not worked out,” Kael admitted. “I think there is also the risk that if we deactivate the collars Lecur’s machine might detect that, but I do not see an alternative. It is too risky to try to do it all at once. If we are in a great rush, we cannot be as careful and could end up killing those we meant to free.” He shook his head. “Those we do not trust will trust us no better. They might not allow us to try and might not trust that it was done even so and it is critical that we create a diversion. Our chances of success will be far lower if there is not enough of a stir to distract them from what we are doing. 
“If Lau-ren were more confident that she could control their machines, I would not worry so much, but we will need to buy her the time to figure it out … and we cannot even determine how much time that will take.”
“Mayhap it would be better,” Balen said thoughtfully, “to simply wait until it is dark and slip away? I had not realized it before, but Lau-ren is blind in the dark and it is possible that the others are also, or at least cannot see as well as we can.”
Kael stared at him in surprise for a moment and then turned that news over in his mind. Finally, he shook his head. “We cannot know that that is the case. We do not even know if the entire space station is dark at the same time or if it is only Lecur who turns all of the lights out because he is a cheap bastard or because it is what he is accustomed to.” 
“I could sneak out and test it,” Balen offered. 
“If you were caught, there would be no surprise and worse, they would then be even more alert and it might prevent any other attempt. I confess, I had thought of that and I like that better. There would be less danger to Lau-ren if that was possible, but I think we must be prepared to create a diversionary riot if that does not work. It is … unfortunate that we cannot wait until the next games to execute the plan. There are always far more ships at that time.”
Dakaar shrugged. “There are always some here, however. I agree that I would like to have more choices, but there will be choices regardless. And it is not as if we will be able to tell which would be the better to choose.”
“I am not incompetent,” Balen growled. “I can reconnoiter without being caught!”
Kael met his gaze for a long moment. “Then that will be your task … but you must still wait until we have all that we can in place and are as prepared as we can be.”
* * * *
When Loren finally managed to divert her mind from her anxiety about the reaction of the men to the possibility that they might have gotten her pregnant, it focused firmly on the fact that she hadn’t had a period since she’d come out of the pod. The problem was that she had no idea of how long she’d been in the pod or how it might affect her. Stress could throw her cycle off. It rarely did, but it had happened before in the past and she thought that might account for it.
If that was the case, though, then her body should be preparing and while that was a comfort in a way, it also brought her to the problem she’d been worried about—no pads and nowhere to get them!
She was going to have to whittle at the blanket Dakaar had give her, she thought unhappily. It was almost as bad to think she’d have to use something that unreliable and unsanitary as it was to think she’d have to wash the damned things and reuse them unless she wanted to rip up the entire damned blanket! That wasn’t going to change even if they escaped—unless she was dead … or pregnant.
My god! It sucked being a woman sometimes! Men never had to worry about anything like that, she thought angrily! That was why the bastards could joke about it! 
Truthfully, she doubted it would bother them even if they had to put up with them. Not too many of them seemed to mind nasty. In point of fact, she’d been around a few who seemed to have the idiotic idea that it was ‘manly’ somehow to be as disgusting as they could possibly be.
Thank god the Hirachi weren’t crude and disgusting like that! It would’ve been hell trying to ignore it … especially when she’d made it a point to avoid crude, disgusting men! 
Not that any of that helped her situation. She didn’t like being crude and disgusting herself and she couldn’t help it in this barbaric place! At the very least, she didn’t see any way she could avoid confessing she was on the rag—literally! It might not have been quite so bad if it was something they were used to, but she had a feeling they weren’t!
Who would’ve thought some people would be lucky enough to have built-in birth control—and could still enjoy sex in between times! How fucking unfair was that? She thought, though, that she had to conclude they cycled in three to four year increments if they were only fertile during the spawning time—which meant they couldn’t have periods. That was even more unfair to her mind! 
Especially now!
She was going to be on the damned rag, she realized in disgust, just about the time they finally might have a chance to actually have sex, damn it to hell!
If she hadn’t been so focused on her dilemma and her frustration because of it, she might have interpreted the stilted behavior of the men the next time they visited in an entirely different way. She was hypersensitive about it, however, and she immediately leapt to the conclusion that that was what seemed to have radically changed their perception of her. 
“Must break Lau-ren’s collar,” Kael announced as soon as he’d checked the corridor carefully to make certain no one else was close enough to hear. “Wait till dark.”
Loren stared at him in dismay. “Don’t you think it would be better to do it when you can see better?”
His lips tightened. “Am Hirachi, no hooman. Can see,” he responded tightly.
Loren blinked at him in dismay. Anger quickly followed. “Well you don’t have to be so damned nasty about it! I can’t help it if I can’t see a fucking thing in the dark! We don’t have to!”
“We need,” Dakaar said coldly. “Sea people. Dark down dere.”
Loren stared at him in surprise and more than a little confusion. They’d never seemed touchy about the fact that they were different before. “I figured that out. Remember?”
“Yes. Remember,” Balen growled. “Tell me no worry, den tell us spawn all de time … after we spawn!”
Loren folded her arms across her chest. “So that’s it! A million, million miles from Earth—probably—and men are still men, right? A woman gets knocked up it’s all her damned fault?”
“What is ‘knocked up’?” Kael demanded sharply.
“Pregnant,” Loren retorted baldly, then added just in case they weren’t familiar with that term, “breeding.”
He paled. “Lau-ren pregnant?”
“No, I’m not pregnant!” she snapped. “I don’t know why in the hell men think they’re so god damned good all they have to do is stick their dick in and spit and ‘behold’ they’ve done it! Maybe your seed didn’t recognize my egg! Ever think about that?”
“No tink. You did,” Kael said angrily. “Mayhap we right an’ you wrong? Lau-ren tink about dat?”
Loren felt the sudden urge to cry because it was true and she knew they weren’t going to believe her if she lied and said it wasn’t. She’d thought she’d hid her prejudice well. Obviously, she hadn’t. It was almost worse that she still believed they couldn’t possibly get her pregnant even though she’d come to realize that she’d completely misjudged them—because she’d come to realize she didn’t want it to be true. “Go away!” she said angrily because she couldn’t think of a defense. “And don’t come back, because I’m not going any damned where with any of you!”
“Dis not reasonable!” Kael said angrily when she’d stalked away from the door and flopped down on her bed, glaring at the far wall and ignoring them. 
She was tempted to simply ignore him altogether, but she wanted to fight. “I’m a woman! I don’t have to be reasonable! I can be just as damned unreasonable as I want to be, god damn it! And who says it isn’t reasonable anyway? Maybe I think I’ll be better off here!”
“Lau-ren die here!” Kael said harshly. “Die sooner keep yelling!”
“I don’t care!” she said childishly, and it was the truth, at that moment anyway.
“I care,” Kael growled.
“I also,” Dakaar and Balen said almost at the same time.
Loren felt her chin wobble with incipient tears. “No, you don’t!” she snapped. “You just want to take the pussy along!”
“Might be baby,” Dakaar said coaxingly.
Loren whipped her head around and narrowed her eyes at him. “You asshole!” she growled. “I knew it had to be something like that!” Surging up from the bed, she looked for something to throw at them and discovered the cell was virtually bare of potential missiles. She snatched the comb up that Balen had given her and threw it at the bars and then stalked to the shower area and jerked the blanket down, balled it up, and pitched it at them, and then took her loincloth off and hurled that. 
The first two objects hit the bars and fell on the floor. She managed to hit Kael square in the face with the loincloth, though. It stunned her almost as much as it did him, but it didn’t take either of them more than a moment to recover. Kael glared at her thunderously. She glared back at him, confident he couldn’t get to her no matter how pissed off he was.
“I come back when dark,” he said through his teeth. “An’ I break dat ting if have to take door down!”
“Assholes!” she flung at them angrily when they turned and stalked off. Not one of the stupid brutes had even tried to convince her he cared anything at all about her! 
Because they didn’t!
Flinging herself down on the bed, she gave vent to all the tears she’d been storing up since she’d been taken. She did her best to muffle the wrenching sobs because she didn’t want them to know she cared when they didn’t, but she couldn’t control the sobs once she let go. They tore at her chest and throat painfully and the tears seemed endless. No matter how many times she tried to calm herself and sniff them back, they started all over again the moment she thought about how completely mistaken she’d been about them! The bastards! All this time she’d thought they were so sweet because they really cared about her and it was nothing more than sucking up to get their hands on the damned pussy! 
That just went to show how absolutely stupid women were to ever think differently! Men never thought you were anything but a walking pussy with an annoying woman attached! And they were all the same, where ever you went! They were just as bad as her ex-boyfriend, she thought angrily. He’d just hung around until he could secure another source before he dumped her!
She never actually managed to get her emotions under control. She wept until she’d completely exhausted herself and passed out, snuffling for breath because she’d cried until her nose was stopped up. She came to when a hand settled over her face that cut off what little air she managed to suck in through her mouth. Fear of suffocation instantly became her entire focus and she began clawing frantically and the hand, fighting for air. Despite her panic, her efforts to free her mouth were futile. 
Darkness danced in her mind and her arms grew weaker and heavier until she lost any ability to fight at all. Fortunately, when her arms dropped limply the hand was removed—jerked away actually.
“You’re smothering her!” Kael growled. 
“You said to cover her mouth so she couldn’t scream!” Dakaar said angrily.
“You covered her whole face! How did you expect her to breathe! Through your pores?”
“Shit! I didn’t realize ….”
Kael shook his head. “She’s alright. We need to get done.” Pushing her head back, he carefully measured the circumference and found the spot. Doubt flickered through him—not that it hadn’t every time he’d done it, but Lau-ren’s collar was smaller and he wasn’t as certain as he wanted to be. After a moment, he decided he had to risk removing the cover to be sure. “Cover her throat so I don’t burn her.”
Dakaar settled his hands on either side of the collar, carefully covering the delicate skin. He couldn’t help but worry that the sound was traveling through the metal, though, when his hands began to burn and then worry that the collar itself might strangle her when it began to twist from the heat. To his relief, the cover popped free just about the time the pain became nearly intolerable. It took no more than a moment, then, to destroy the tiny chip and the collar, fortunately, was still soft enough from the heat that they managed to straighten if enough they hoped it wouldn’t be noticeable that they’d tampered with it. 
Neither of them were in any particular hurry to leave once they’d accomplished their goal. It was the first time they’d had any chance to touch her without the bars between them—at least when they were in any frame of mind to be fully aware of it. 
“Balen will wonder what is taking so long,” Dakaar said reluctantly. 
Kael didn’t glanced up at him. “I know.” He released a pent up breath and straightened. “It does not matter anyway. She rejected the gifts. She has rejected us.”
Dakaar nodded. “She will not go with us willingly now.”
Kael’s jaw tightened. “Then she will go unwillingly! I will not leave her here whatever she says!” 
“I hope Lecur will not notice the door,” Dakaar said uneasily when they’d fixed it back. 
“I hope so, as well. He is greedy and he is vindictive when he does not get his way, but I have never noticed that he is either blind or stupid,” Kael said tightly. “I would not have risked it if I had believed that Lau-ren would be reasonable.”
“She was angry,” Dakaar said when they’d returned their own cell.
“You think?” Kael retorted sardonically.
Dakaar’s lips tightened. “I am only saying that anger is not the same thing as not desiring!”
“Not even when it is as clear as day that she cannot see past our differences?” Balen asked tightly.
Dakaar shrugged. “Tira rejected me twice and took me back twice. She was angry. I do not know why when it was us who had a right to be!”
Kael frowned at him in confusion. “Tira?”
Dakaar uttered an angry huff. “Lau-ren! I know why Tira was angry …. At least, I think I know.”
“Why?” Balen demanded.
Dakaar flushed. “She said that I was not an attentive lover.”
Balen gaped at him, dumbfounded. “Well, if that was true, why would she take you back?”
Dakaar shrugged. “Because she thought I had improved?”
“Twice?”
“It was for something else the second time,” Dakaar muttered.
“What was it the second time?”
Dakaar glared at him. “That is beside the point! That was Tira. I was talking about Lau-ren!”
Kael studied him thoughtfully. “I have not been rejected before. Do you think it was because of something that we did? Or something that we did not do?”
Dakaar and Balen both glared at him. “Then you are overdue your taste of it!” Balen said irritably. “You might have experienced it yourself if you were not always so quick to move on that you did not give them time to reject you!”
Kael’s lips tightened. “Mayhap it does not take me as long to figure out that I am not satisfied with the arrangement?”
“Mayhap you thought it better to leave before you were pitched out?” Balen countered sourly.
“And mayhap it was because you knew you always had your choice?” Dakaar retorted.
“You are still angry about Tira? You have had how many lovers since?” Kael demanded. “Anyway, she tossed you out of her pod so often, how was I to know that you were still in favor? It is not as if she refused you after that!”
“No, but I was second, and I damned well get tired of being second!”
“You were first before I came!” Kael reminded him.
“At least you were not third!” Balen snapped angrily. 
Kael and Dakaar both turned to stare at him for a long moment, exchanged a speaking glance, and decided to abandon that discussion. “So,” Kael said after a long moment, “you think she is only angry?”
“Mayhap she did not even know that she was dismissing us? Her customs cannot be the same as ours … do you think?”
Kael considered it. “She seemed pretty set on spurning us,” he said doubtfully. “Not that I am greatly surprised, all things considered. I cannot think we acquitted ourselves very well as lovers while the fever was upon us and there has not been an opportunity since to prove to her that we could do better.”
“We should have taken the time while we there tonight,” Dakaar said in disgust.
Balen and Kael both stared at him in outrage, but for different reasons. “You think we would have proven any gods damned thing if we had pounced on her for five seconds and bounded off again? I cannot see that that would do anything more than prove we were piss poor lovers who could not hold their seed long enough to give pleasure!” Kael snarled.
“It passes all bounds that you even considered it!” Balen growled. “I should have known that that was why I was left to stand watch!”
Dakaar’s lips tightened. “I did not even think of it until we were there!” he said indignantly.
“And you had subdued her by nearly smothering her,” Kael added dryly. “You should not have thought about it then!”
“He hurt her?” Balen demanded in outrage.
“He was not as careful as he should have been,” Kael returned. “I will beat him senseless for it the next time we are on the field. We cannot do anything about it now else it will over set all of our plans.”
“Well, I will also beat him senseless!” Balen growled.
“I am first. I am still pod chief!” Kael reminded him.
* * * *
Kael had composed himself to mentally review his plans and search for anything that he might have missed when he finally lay back to rest. Instead, he found his mind wandering from Lau-ren to the conversation between him and Dakaar and Balen. 
It annoyed him that Dakaar had brought up their rivalry over Tira after so many years, confused him, as well. Neither of them had been much more than younglings at the time and both of them had moved on long since. At least, he had thought so. He had also thought that they had settled that issue long ago, though.
He dismissed it after a few moments. He thought, always had, that it hadn’t been Tira that had mattered so much to Dakaar as the wound to his manhood and there was nothing he could do now or then to soothe such a wound when it had been Tira who had inflicted it. And to do her justice, she had also been young and wild … and as thoughtless then as they had been, focused far more on enjoying their new status as adults who could, and did, flit from one lover to the next than trying to form a more permanent bond. 
Their comments about that rankled. He didn’t suppose it would have if there had not been at least some truth to it. Or maybe it would have anyway since he would have resented an unjust accusation as much or more? His resentment stemmed from the fact that that had only been true of him when he was young and reckless, however. The young maidens were far more prone to spurn their lovers and run them off than the more mature maids and he had figured he might as well move on as soon as he saw the weather had changed—that and the fact that he did not particularly care to be rejected. Then again, he had not seen the sense of hanging around once he knew, or at least suspected, what was coming. 
As for having his choice among the maidens—he supposed he had—later, after he had become a warrior of note and pod leader—not when they were younglings, certainly! He supposed Dakaar’s memory was faulty when it came to those times that Dakaar had claimed a maiden he had had his eye on! 
He had been no more inclined to change lovers in those days after he had matured than they had. It was true that when the sex cooled and the arguments heated he still tended to consider his welcome worn out and left, but he had spent far more time with no lover at all of late years than either Dakaar or Balen—because he had come to realize that there were none that suited him—none that he would consider sharing a pod with for any great length of time. 
There were troubles enough for him to deal with. He wanted peace when he retired to his pod and he had not found one willing to allow him any peace. 
He did not particularly blame the women. From the time the sheloni had begun to raid their world for slaves, their lives had changed forever. If there had been more children and a chance to nurture them, the women would have been happier, but the threat of a raid hung over them at all times. Most, like him, had decided to ignore their mating instincts and did not spawn, for they knew the chances were great that they would be snatched or their child would and either way the odds were not in their favor that they would be able to nurture their child to adulthood.
Mostly, the sheloni took the adults and left the young to die, however, and he was not willing to risk that anymore than he wanted to see a child of his taken into slavery. 
He shuttled those thoughts aside and tried to focus once more on the plan of escape, but he discovered that he could not put Lau-ren from his mind. Mayhap he had been right along. There was no future for any of them—not now—but he discovered that he could not completely dismiss the hope that Lau-ren had brought him that there was. He did not want to look back. Nothing but misery and sorrow lay there. The future held some promise … if Dakaar was right and Lau-ren was only angry about something and Balen was wrong and she could and did see that they were worthy of fathering children on her. 
And if they could find a place where they could live free and nurture their young.

Chapter Nine
Loren didn’t feel one whit better when she woke up. In point of fact, she couldn’t remember any time when she’d felt worse except rare occasions when she’d been half dead with a cold or the flu. She felt like pure hell. Her head was splitting. Her eyes felt gritty and her eyelids were so swollen they almost felt like they were abrading her eyes every time she blinked. She didn’t feel much better when she’d showered, but the heat on her face from the water had eased some of the pain behind her eyes and she was clear headed enough to realize she’d screwed up royally the night before when she’d decided to pitch a bitch.
Struggling with the urge to flop on the bed and pitch another one, she stared at the pile of ‘gifts’ at the bars and finally trudged over to retrieve them. Her chin wobbled threateningly when she’d picked them up and recalled the look on their faces when she’d hurled their gifts at them. Sucking in a sustaining breath, she retreated to the bed and sat down, wondering what had possessed her to throw such a fit. 
She was pretty sure she’d never behaved quite that badly before in her entire life. Her parents would’ve been shocked, horrified, and deeply distressed by such a display of ungovernable temper.
She remembered abruptly that she’d thought they were cold and unfeeling when she’d been in her teens—actually ever since then. It dawned on her, though, why they’d tried so hard to train her to exert control over her emotions when they threatened to take control of her.
Because she did and said things that were really, really stupid when she let her emotions control her instead of the other way around! She had a bad feeling that they were right and IQ points started dropping dramatically the moment she gave in to urges instead of using her brain.
She closed her eyes, seeking calm, breathing slow, deep breaths and letting them out just as slowly. The urge to cry retreated. 
Since all it took was thinking about the argument and the way they’d looked at her to make her feel like crying all over again, she focused on trying to convince herself it really didn’t matter and she really didn’t care. Their accusations had been unjust and unwarranted! She’d had every right to be angry when they seemed to be accusing her of ‘entrapping’ them by getting her pregnant, she thought indignantly!
The thought brought her mind instantly to that very subject and she glanced at the wall where she’d been scratching marks to try to keep track of her imprisonment. She had no idea why she’d done it—it was depressing—but she’d felt a need to know. 
It also brought to mind the ‘nightmare’ she’d had and she lifted a hand to her collar. Her chest felt like it would cave in when she felt the slight twist in it that told her the incident hadn’t been the nightmare she’d tried to convince herself it was. Kael had honored his ‘promise’. Glancing immediately toward the door, she moved close enough to examine it for any sign of what they’d done. Relieved when she didn’t see anything to incriminate them and possibly get them killed, she returned to the bed and sank weakly on it, struggling with guilt and fear as she accepted that her temper tantrum had put them in danger—because they were determined to protect her no matter how stupid she behaved! 
It didn’t bear thinking on what might have happened to them if they’d been caught at it!
She couldn’t even gather up any indignation over the fact that one of them had nearly smothered her. Undoubtedly, they’d been unnerved by the necessity. None of them had ever been careless with her and she didn’t think it was deliberate.
Although, she supposed, if she’d been in their place and had to risk getting caught to do ‘the right thing’ she might’ve felt like strangling the idiot that had forced her to risk her neck.
She pushed the unnerving incident from her mind after a few moments and glanced at the wall again. When it finally occurred to her that her ‘I don’t want to know’ attitude wasn’t going to change the facts, she moved to the wall and counted the scratches, and then recounted them. 
A wave of shock went through her despite the fact that she’d almost managed to convince herself that she was scaring herself for nothing. It was weird that she almost felt like she’d been imprisoned a hundred years and it was still a hell of a shock to see it had been thirty two days. 
By the time she’d counted the scratches several more times, she was beginning to feel panic clawing at the back of her mind. Searching for a ray of hope, she collected her ‘privacy’ blanket and went to the toilet to examine herself. No blood. No period. She considered it for a moment and finally ran a finger up her passage and pulled it out to examine it. Nothing.
Ok, don’t panic, she told herself! Thirty two days … really that was only a few days off. She was probably just stressed out and she’d start the next day or the next. The trip on the ship had probably completely fucked her cycle up and her body just hadn’t kick-started everything up again … yet. She was sure it would. This sort of thing just took time.
Apparently a lot of time. She’d damned near rubbed her pussy raw trying to find some sign of menstrual blood after a few days of searching frantically for it. Slowly but insidiously, her search for some excuse to explain that horrific circumstance other than the obvious one petered out.
She was pregnant.
She felt like squalling her eyes out—not because she was, but because she knew the guys were going to be even more pissed off with her.
Not that they weren’t already. They hadn’t been near her since she’d gone psycho on them. 
She resented their defection part of the time and told herself she didn’t care part of the time, but most of the time, she was just totally depressed about it. 
One little tiny psycho event and they acted like she was a leper!
Well, she decided, she wasn’t going to try to coax them back!
Mostly because they didn’t give her the damned chance. 
The spineless bastards! 
If she hadn’t been so focused on her fears about being pregnant and her misery about being abandoned she might have noticed she was in trouble before it was really dire. As it happened, though, when she heard the door being unlocked, her mind had leapt instantly to the guys and her heart had leapt with so much completely irrational hope that she’d simply stared blankly at Lecur when he pushed the door open. 
She hadn’t even fully assimilated her danger when the gladiators began to pour in behind Lecur until she was surrounded and felt their hands all over her. She screamed then, in pure terror, launching a futile counterattack made more ineffectual by the fact that she was already surrounded and had lost the battle before she started. 
The only effect clawing and slapping at them had was to encourage two of them to hold her down for the third man and there was no attempt to be the least bit gentle. She felt like they were going to dislocate every joint in her body. “Kael!” she screamed desperately when they finally managed to pin her completely and the man looming over her began struggling to get his loincloth off.
Lecur snickered, the first she realized he’d stayed to watch. “Kael in lockup wid Dakaar and Balen. No good call for dem.”
* * * *
Kael knew that they had run out of time the moment Lecur closed their cell door and locked it. It was not the locking of the door in itself. He had heard other doors clang shut and the scrape of a key being turned and knew that, for some reason, Lecur had decided to lock down the gladiator quarters. 
His first thought was that Lecur had realized that they had destroyed the collars of more than half of the slaves and he sent Dakaar and Balen a look that cautioned them to wait until they knew for certain what the situation was. 
It was not until he saw the smug on Lecur’s face that he began to have an inkling of what he was really up.
And the discovery that not all of the gladiators had been confined.
He still could not fully accept that Lecur had made good on his threat, however, until Lau-ren began to scream and he saw gladiators racing down the corridor toward her cell.
Her first shrill scream was all it took to break his determination to hold and wait for the best time to implement their plan. Breaking out of his cell was not any part of the plan, but the scream that shot adrenaline pumping through his blood and sent a cold wave over his flesh wiped the plan from his mind instantly. 
Surging to his feet, he sucked in a lungful of air and uttered a roar to release the most powerful sound waves that he was capable of. Dakaar and Balen had leapt up, as well, and blasted the door as he had. The bars vibrated. The walls holding the door began to crumble and abruptly the entire door, broken at its weakest point, shot out of the wall and slammed into the wall on the other side of the corridor. Kael, Dakaar, and Balen surged toward the opening they had made and out before the bars could fall. A veritable wall of gladiators, they discovered, were clogging the corridor between them and Lau-ren’s cell. 
The red haze of battle instantly closed over Kael’s mind. Uttering a bellow of rage, he seized the nearest, lifted him over his head and threw him. Without waiting to see where he landed, he seized the next, plowing a path right down the middle of the men that stood between him and the one he meant to tear limb from limb. 
His battle cries echoed throughout the basement, uttered by nearly a dozen throats as the Hirachi burst from their cells and clashed with the other gladiators. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor shook from the bellows and from the bodies slamming into them. Dust rained from the ceiling and the walls as the cheap plaster shattered and crumbled. The men who could, scattered. Those who were trapped, fought and died where they stood. 
Kael was climbing over bodies by the time he reached the open door of Lau-ren’s cell. He did not see Lau-ren, but he saw the three men pinning her down. The bellow uttered then carried the burn of microwaves. They screamed and fell away from her as their flesh began to burn, rolling around on the floor. He lifted the first he came to and hurled him toward the far wall, narrowly missing Lecur, who was plastered against it in terror, his bulbous eyes nearly bulging from their sockets. 
Kael hesitated for the first time, torn between the need to see about Lau-ren and the desire to pound his fists into Lecur until there was nothing left but bloody pulp. Discovering Dakaar and Balen had surged into the room behind him, he turned away from Lecur and went to Lau-ren. She seemed dazed, but when she saw him, she burst into tears and reached for him. When he’d gathered her close against his chest and risen, he turned to survey the threat and discovered there was no opposition to his escape. Dakaar was pounding on Lecur and Balen had seized one of the men who’d attacked Lau-ren and was slamming him against the wall, over and over, even though Kael could see the man was either unconscious or dead. 
“Weapons!” he bellowed. 
A huge piece of the ceiling dropped and slammed against the floor at his yell, drawing his attention, finally, to the building around them. “Out! Now! The building is collapsing!” Without waiting to see if they’d heard the shouted warning, he leapt toward the door of Lau-ren’s cell and moved as fast as he could toward the exit. The corridor was so littered with bodies of dead and injured and unconscious that he could barely find a solid place to plant his feet and he finally merely bounded from body to body until he landed on the floor beyond them.
Gladiators were fleeing up the stairs when he reached them, among them the other Hirachi. He joined them, pushing his way through the throng until he reached the upper floor and then racing down the corridor. 
There was a crowd gathered outside Lecur’s house and more men piling out of the nearest buildings armed with laser pistols and rifles. Assessing the threat, Kael shifted Lau-ren across one shoulder and bellowed for a weapon. Dakaar and Balen, he discovered, were close behind him. Dakaar tossed him his kinsu. Carrying their gladiatorial shields, Dakaar and Balen, armed with their weapons of choice, the bolo and the plue, raced to catch up. “Guard Lau-ren! We’ll take point.”
Ordinarily, the shields would’ve been completely ineffectual against the lasers, but the men carrying them had been forced to use the inhibitors to prevent damage to the outer walls of the space station. Some of the blasts still managed to pierce the shields, but far more struck them and deflected and there were no inhibitors on the lung power of the Hirachi. The moment they realized they were completely outnumbered, they began whittling down the opposition by sonic blasts that shattered windows and walls and lifted men clean off their feet and pitched them away as if they were nothing more than paper dolls. 
The gladiators who’d escaped had formed a wedge they were driving steadily along the thoroughfare toward the ships at dock. They’d had to fight every step of the way, however, and Kael had begun to think they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers when an alarm went up. One man screamed and then another until there were dozens shouting the warning. “The dome’s collapsing!”
Men broke off fighting and whirled to run. The gladiators cut them down and raced over them, unimpeded finally, but with the certain knowledge that they were going to be trapped in the collapsing space station if they didn’t get into one of the crafts quickly. 
Kael discarded any notion of choosing among them, racing toward the closest. Even as his foot settled on the gangplank of the first he came to, however, he spied the trader two vessels over fighting his way up his own gangplank. “That one!” he bellowed, leaping off the gangplank and battling his way through the mindless mob racing to get to safety. 
The trader had made it inside and was already trying to retract the gangplank when they reached it. It moved sluggishly, weighed down by those still standing on it. Gathering himself, Kael leapt up onto the gangplank and raced toward the door that was closing, shoving his sword into the swiftly closing aperture. Dakaar and Balen arrived as he was struggling to get leverage to pry the door open again. Grasping the edge, they began prying at the door, straining every muscle in their efforts to pull it wider.
The trader began screaming obscenities at them in a half a dozen tongues. “You’ll break it and breach the hull, you stupid bastards!”
“Open it!” Kael bellowed.
Unfortunately, he was still caught in the grips of battle fever. The sonar blast he projected picked the trader up and sent him flying across the bay and slammed him into the wall. He slid down it and lay unmoving on the floor.
“Fuck!” Kael bellowed. 
“Let me down!” Loren screamed. “I can get in and open it.”
Kael hesitated as it flickered through his mind that she might well seize the opportunity to rid herself of them permanently, but he only hesitated a moment. Grasping her waist, he hauled her from his shoulder and settled her on her feet. She sent him a look he could not quite interpret as she wedged herself into the narrow opening and then she disappeared. “Give me a second!”
“We only have one!” Dakaar bellowed. “The top of the station is cracking!”
Realizing Dakaar had spoken in their own tongue, Kael was about to repeat his warning in Unduleze when the door began to open wider. He charged inside the moment it was wide enough. Dakaar and Balen leapt in behind him and the remainder of the Hirachi poured in behind them, carrying Ka-ren and Shara. Kael hesitated when he saw three of the other gladiators struggling up the plank and then held the door for them. 
“I close!” he told Lau-ren. “Go! Make de machine go!”
Nodding jerkily, she glanced around the bay. “Oh god! I don’t even know where the damned control room is!”
Spying the trader, she raced to him and dropped to her knees. “The control room! Where is it!”
He opened his eyes and stared at her blankly.
She grabbed the front of his suit and jerked him upright. “Tell me, you stupid bastard or we’re all dead!” she screamed at him. 
His head wobbled. Blood gurgled in his throat when he tried to speak and he began coughing, spattering her with tiny droplets of blood. He lifted his arm and pointed, however. “Lift there. Top level.”
Releasing him, she leapt to her feet and raced across the bay, nearly skidding past the lift. Thankfully, the door opened the moment she touched the control panel and she leapt inside. After searching the interior control frantically for a moment, she finally simply pressed the button at the top. The doors closed and then promptly opened again. She gaped at the bay and then looked at the panel again. That time she pressed the bottom button. The lift shot up at a dizzying speed that almost made her knees buckle when it stopped. The door opened and she staggered off, glancing wildly around. 
She was on the bridge. She knew it was, but it was filled with electronics and panic threatened to overwhelm her. She didn’t know what might happen when the space station imploded, but she didn’t want to be anywhere near it!
After surveying everything within sight, she began jogging through the control room, scanning and dismissing each console she passed until she spied one that had a seat in front of it. Breathing a sigh of relief, she rushed to it and plopped down in the chair, scanning the controls and trying to focus. Panic was riding her, however, and she couldn’t calm herself enough to tell if anything looked even vaguely familiar or not. Finally, in desperation, she began touching first once button and then another. The computer spoke—thankfully in Unduleze! “Bay door opening.”
“No! Close the bay door!”
“Bay door closing.”
A yawning hole of panic threatened to open up and swallow her whole. “Help me out here, damn it!”
“Does not compute.”
“Start engines!”
“Initiating start sequence.”
The relief that went through her threatened to rip the tenuous hold she had on her composure from her grasp. Loren dragged in a calming breath, fighting for her life and everyone else’s by trying to force her shocked mind into functioning, searching her memory for anything at all that she might have picked up about space ships—anytime, anywhere. Finally recalling that she’d watched several televised launches and they always performed a systems check, she told the computer to perform a systems check. She thought she would be eternally grateful that that had occurred to her. The computer immediately began reeling off various systems and their status. 
“Artificial gravity off.”
“Wait! Activate artificial gravity!”
“Affirmative. Artificial gravity on.”
The computer went back to the systems check. 
“Alert! Cargo door open.”
“Close cargo door.”
“There is a crate in the cargo door.”
Loren leapt out of her seat, whipped around the chair, and plowed into Kael. For a split second, she couldn’t even figure out what she’d hit. She’d been so gripped by panic she hadn’t realized he’d followed her up. 
“There’s something blocking the cargo door! It won’t close until somebody moves it!”
“Where?”
“Directions to the cargo hold, computer!” Loren demanded and then glanced at Kael. “Where’s everybody else?”
“Still down in bottom ship.”
“Wait! Computer, open all communications channels!”
“Ship wide com links open.”
She glanced around for a microphone. “Where’s the bridge com?”
When the computer had directed her to it, she leaned closer. Kael settled a hand on her shoulder and leaned down, issuing the directions in his own language. 
“Tell them to let us know the moment they get it moved!”
Nodding, Kael repeated the message.
“Engine status?”
“Engines at full.”
“Continue the systems check.”
It unnerved her that she didn’t know what half of the systems were or what they were for. She struggled to close her mind to possible disaster scenarios arising from that ignorance and focus on figuring out what the damned computer was telling her. Abruptly, a solution popped into her mind. “Computer—prepare all systems for launch!”
“Checking and resetting all systems. Cargo door closing.”
The computer had barely made the announcement when she heard Karen screaming that the crate had been moved.
“Tell everybody to brace themselves. We’re about to move the ship out of dock.”
“Preparing to move the ship out of dock,” the computer responded.
Loren ground her teeth when the computer responded to her comment to Kael. “You’ve prepped all systems? Everything locked down and closed? We’re prepared to launch?”
“Affirmative.”
“Can we get an external visual of the space station?”
“Affirmative.”
A holographic display appeared in front of the console and she nearly passed out when she saw the view. The space station was already crumpling in upon itself. “Go!”
“Awaiting confirmation from space station central flight control.”
“You aren’t going to get it! The space station is about to implode! Go, god damn it!”
“Firing docking engines.”
Loren slumped weakly in her seat for a moment before she recalled that Kael was standing behind her. Leaping up, she threw herself at him, clinging to him tightly. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life! Are you alright?” she asked abruptly as it occurred to her that she had no idea whether he’d come through the battle unscathed or not. 
He caught her waist between his hands and lifted her up. She coiled her arms and legs around him when he had. “Am fine. Lau-ren?” he asked, searching her face.
She shook her head, closing her eyes to try to block out the images that immediately pelted her. She didn’t want to think about the horror of those moments when Lecur had opened her door to the men standing outside. Thankfully, much of it was a blur anyway, but too much was all too clear in her mind and didn’t bear thinking on—the terror of knowing what they intended, the pain when they’d slammed her down on the hard floor and wrenched her arms and legs into position for their assault, the weight of them, their smell …. “I’m ok.” She burrowed her face against his neck, however, and promptly burst into tears, tightening her arms frantically around his neck. 
“The ship is clear of the dock,” the computer announced.
The announcement jolted Loren back to the present, reminding her that she wasn’t safe yet and no one else was either. Sniffing, she pulled away from Kael reluctantly and struggled for composure when all she wanted was to wrap herself up in him and believe nothing could touch her as long as he held her. “Engines full ahead.”
“No flight plans have been logged.”
She should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy! Sighing, Loren wiggled until Kael set her down again and stared at the image on the screen, trying to sort her thoughts and think of something logical for the computer to perform. “Just put some distance between us and the space station.”
“Distance required?”
It didn’t take as much effort that time. “Calculate distance required to avoid collision with space station debris and move beyond that.”
“Affirmative.”
Loren swayed toward Kael as the ship accelerated. It surprised her when she hadn’t felt it before, when she’d first been taken, but then she recalled that she’d been unconscious. She looked at him. “Maybe we should sit down?”
He glanced around and finally dropped into the pilot’s seat and pulled her onto his lap. Sighing with relief, Loren snuggled tightly against him, trying to warm herself as it finally filtered into her mind that she was freezing. “I need to try to figure out a course,” she murmured against Kael’s chest, but she didn’t move. He felt so warm and solid and safe she couldn’t bring herself to move. She was exhausted from trying to hold herself together long enough to survive. All she wanted was to shed the responsibility and enjoy a minor nervous breakdown. That thought produced a potential prospect to dump the responsibility on to. “How’s the trader?”
“Dead.”
Loren’s heart clenched painfully, images she didn’t want to think about flickering through her mind. Despite what he’d done to her—to all of them—she felt a rise of nausea at the memory of shaking him and badgering him when he was dying. She leaned away from Kael and stared at him in dismay, fighting the urge to cry all over again. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed with an effort. “I guess I’ll have to figure it out by myself then,” she murmured neutrally, trying to stave off a fresh wave of panic at the realization that she didn’t even have anyone to consult let alone to shoulder all of the responsibility for getting them to safety.
“Safe distance from collapsing space station achieved,” the computer announced. “Flight course required.”
It was a crying shame that computers had their limitations, Loren thought. How wonderful it would’ve been if she could’ve simply said ‘take me home’ and it had done it, like a genie granting wishes! For a few moments, she indulged the fantasy, and then, like a building collapsing on her, it hit her that her home wasn’t Kael’s home. 
She struggled to picture going home anyway, but happy images didn’t fill her mind. All she could think was how everyone would panic when they saw the aliens and it wasn’t much of a leap from there to imagine what they’d do to the aliens. 
And that was assuming she managed to land the damned ship without getting shot down!
Reluctance formed a hard knot in her belly—reluctance to give up the fantasy of returning to Earth and everything familiar and dear to her—and an equal opposing reluctance to let go of Kael and Dakaar and Bain, to take them to their own home and tell them goodbye. She hadn’t spent any time at all considering what she would do if they managed to escape, and yet she realized as soon as the thought crossed her mind that that wasn’t true.
She’d imagined being with Kael and Dakaar and Balen. She hadn’t imagined anything in particular, hadn’t tried to erect a fantasy world where they were all together or any sort of future. She’d simply accepted that she would be with them.
Anguish filled her so abruptly, she felt like she drowning in it. She could remember telling herself that she couldn’t afford to become emotionally attached to them, that she was going home, whatever it took, and she didn’t want any regrets. 
She was going to have regrets, she realized mournfully, whatever she decided. She would miss home, her parents, everything about Earth if she decided to stay with them and if she decided against it she knew abruptly that she would deeply, deeply regret that. She didn’t know when she’d gone from feeling as if their protection was in the nature of a business transaction between them to feeling like she might just die if they vanished from her life, but even considering it opened a bottomless chasm inside of her that she couldn’t bear to face.
Kael cupped a hand along her cheek and pushed her face up for his inspection. His gaze traveled over her face and then he met her gaze. “No want lose mine shimone, Lau-ren,” he said hoarsely. “Tell why angry. Make better. Swear.”
It needed only that! She felt her chin wobble and struggled to swallow against a knot the size of her fist that rose in her throat. “Nothing,” she wailed. 
He stared at her in baffled frustration. “You no tell me, no can make right.”
How could she explain that he’d made her ashamed of herself? That she’d been angry at the reflection of herself in his eyes? Because she’d begun to admire them so highly and she’d wanted them to look at her as they always had, as if she was the most wonderful thing they’d ever seen! It had hurt to see she’d hurt them and hurt worse to see condemnation in their eyes and anger when she’d never seen it aimed at her before. She’d been angry because she was terribly afraid she’d thrown away something she could never get back, destroyed something more precious to her than she’d realized only because she couldn’t open her mind and heart and really see them for what they were. “I don’t know if it can be made right,” she managed to say finally.
“Can!” he said firmly, almost angrily. “I make right. No can talk dis talk good, shimone, but no stupid!” he said, his voice filled with frustration.
She sniffed. She had to make it right! He couldn’t! She had to make him understand, all of them, somehow, that she knew how very lucky she was that she’d found them.
She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry when the lift doors opened and she heard the sounds of the others arriving. It saved her from struggling to explain something so complex she knew it would defeat her—especially at the moment when she was still so shaken her wits were scattered, but it also deprived her of a chance she might not get again. She looked at Kael mournfully, begging him to give her a chance.
He leaned down and brushed his lips along hers. “Talk later?”
She nodded, sniffing again, but the offer lightened the tightness in her chest just a little. Reluctantly, she got off his lap to meet the others as they arrived.
Dakaar and Balen were leading the group. Her heart surged with thankfulness when she’d scanned them for wounds and didn’t see anything threatening—a multitude of developing bruises and some burns and scratches, but nothing missing or maimed. After a brief hesitation, she rushed to embrace Dakaar in a tight hug and then pulled away and hugged Balen. 
“Oh my god! This looks like something out of a sci-fi movie!”
Loren pulled away from Balen and searched for the owner of the voice. “Karen! Oh thank god!”
Karen met her halfway. They hugged each other and wept and laughed a little hysterically before they pulled away from one another. 
“We made it!” Karen exclaimed shakily. “Where are we?”
Loren’s smile fell. “Right now? The ship moved out of range of the debris field of the space station. Thankfully, everybody else was too focused on getting the hell out of Dodge to pay us any attention.” She swallowed a little convulsively. She hadn’t wanted to even think about the possibility of having a space battle on her hands, but horrific images had flickered through her mind regardless.
Karen sobered so quickly it might have been comical if Loren wasn’t too shaky herself to really notice. “Who’s flying the ship?”
“Lau-ren,” Kael volunteered.
Karen whipped a look at him and then stared at Loren in wide eyed horror, looking as if she might burst into tears any moment. “Oh … my … god! We are so fucked!” 
Loren clamped a hand over her mouth and gave her a warning look. “Thankfully the computer is set up in Unduleze and that’s the language the trader implanted, or whatever, in us. I just wish I’d realized before I got up here that it would only be a matter of communicating with the computer. I might not have been so scared.” She considered that. “Not as scared.”
“Trader dead,” Dakaar announced flatly.
Loren glanced at him and then looked around at the faces of everyone who’d managed to make it on board. They all looked like they’d been through hell and back, bore the signs of their battle to break free of Lecur’s prison and the fight they’d waged every step of the way to get to the ship. They were spattered and streaked with blood and the white powder that had rained down on them from the crumbling walls, their hair wild, battered, bruised, cut and burned, and pale and shaken from their ordeal besides that. She counted seven more Hirachi, none of whom she’d actually met, and three aliens she knew were gladiators that definitely weren’t Hirachi.
Like all of the other aliens that had inhabited Lecur’s privately owned hell, they were humanoid, but although their features were similar to humans—and the Hirachi—they would never be mistaken for a human. It was the ‘demon’ aliens that had totally freaked her out! 
Actually, she didn’t know if it was the same ones or not. She hadn’t looked at them closely enough to recognize them, but it was definitely she same species!
They were tall, but closer to a very tall human in height than the Hirachi—with almost freakishly broad shoulders and barrel chests that tapered to narrow hips, their musculature so pronounced it looked ropy beneath their rough looking, sunburn red skin. They had black horns that sprouted from their temples and curled like ram’s horns, forming a frame for their pointy ears. 
The Hirachi had nothing on them for scary looking!
Shara was clinging to one of the Hirachi. She, too, was humanoid and yet distinctly alien with her bluish-green skin and hair, snub nose, and cat-like eyes. 
Loren turned and glanced at Karen and then looked at Kael helplessly.
He studied her for a long moment and lifted his head to focus on the others, switching to his native language. “We need to secure the ship—search it from top to bottom to see what is here that might be useful—food, water, bedding, clothes—medicines. We’ll divide into groups to cover everything more quickly and take it one level at the time, starting at the one just below this.” He returned his attention to Lau-ren. “Womans stay here. Safe here.”

Chapter Ten
Loren gaped at Kael in dismay. In the back of her mind, she knew he was right—and not just about her being safer. She needed to stay near the ship’s controls, but all of her sense of safety was wrapped up in Kael at the moment and, like a child that only felt brave when their parent was holding their hand, she didn’t want to let him out of her sight. She couldn’t tell him that, though! He expected her to be brave and strong—like the Hirachi women! But she wasn’t! She was a weakling and a coward. Bracing herself to pretend that wasn’t true to keep from diminishing herself further in his eyes, she cast around for an excuse to stick to him as if she’d been plastered to him. “But …I’m freezing in this … thing! I thought I’d go with you—just to find something to put on!”
Kael surveyed her and she bit her lip, realizing abruptly that nobody had anything on to speak of. The men were wearing nothing but the loincloths that covered their genitals and Karen and Shara were both dressed in the tissue togas just like her own—which was hanging off of them in tatters from their own assaults.
“Alright, we’ll stay here and try to figure out how to set a course … uh … somewhere.”
“Stay here now. Settle where when figure everyting out.” Kael turned and looked at Dakaar and Balen. “Dakaar stay. Guard ….” He glanced at Karen and Shara and left it at that. “Udders, we go down. Next level split, search, come back to liff. Go down next level.”
They’d already reached the lift when a thought abruptly struck Loren. “Hey! I had my suitcase with me when I got here. If you see it …?”
She could tell from the look on his face that Kael didn’t have a clue of what she was talking about. “It’s brown … uh … fake leather. Looks about like your loincloth thingy.” She drew the size and shape with her hands in the air. 
Kael sent her a skeptical look, but he nodded.
Karen was studying her speculatively when she turned to her again. “You want to tell me how you got here with a suitcase?”
Loren immediately felt embarrassment flood her at the memory. “Long story,” she muttered dismissively.
Karen waved her hands to encompass the ship. “I have a bad feeling we’re going to have a lot of time on our hands.”
None of them needed a reminder that they were a long ways from being out of the woods and her lips tightened. “I told you pretty much the whole story when we first taken,” she reminded her.
“Except about the suitcase.”
Loren felt her face reddening. She uttered a huff of irritation. “They told me they were sending me to study alien technology—with the aliens. I didn’t actually volunteer, but I was scared to say no and …. You know everything else,” she said tightly, unable to meet Karen’s gaze.
“No long story,” Shara commented. 
Loren blinked at her. “It’s a figure …. Never mind!” 
“So … you volunteered?” Karen pursued.
“I told you I didn’t!” Loren said irritably. “They tricked me. Stupid I know, but I was too focused on being relieved that they didn’t, apparently, mean to snuff me to keep me quiet. I didn’t know what they were doing, or trading, to get the technology. I didn’t even suspect what they were doing. I just suspected that they were trading for it.”
She glanced toward Dakaar, who’d taken up a position near the door of the lift. “We’ve got a problem.”
Karen’s lips tightened. “We have a lot of problems.”
“The one I’m referring to is the fact that we have four different species on this ship and I’m assuming all from different worlds.” She looked at Shara questioningly. 
“Only one from Mizukera,” Shara confirmed. “My mans from Ach.”
Loren blinked at her, recalling Shara had told them she’d had a man on her home world. It didn’t seem like the time to question the shift in her allegiance, however. She exchanged a long look with Karen. Karen chewed her lip, abruptly looking distraught at the question in Loren’s eyes. “We have to decide now?”
Loren shook her head. “The truth is that I don’t know if we can find our way back to Earth—or any of the worlds anyone here is from, but we need to decide where we’re going. I’m assuming, since the trader was at the space station so long, that he was there to refuel and restock, but I don’t know that and we can’t ask him now. We might be lucky just to get to a livable planet.”
“Why don’t we just figure out where we can go … if we can do that much?” Karen suggested. “Kael said we’d settle where we were going later.”
“I don’t have a clue of how to navigate space,” Loren admitted, following Karen to the console. 
Karen frowned. “This is the trader’s ship, right?”
“Unless he was running into somebody else’s ship when we caught him.”
“Don’t even go there! Let’s assume it is. The computer would have recorded the places he stopped, right?”
“I think we can assume that.” She hesitated. “We were in those pods a long time, Karen. I don’t know how long, but my hair was a lot longer when I came out than when I went in. There might not be enough fuel or food to get back even if you’re right and the computer has that in its memory, and you probably are if this is the trader’s ship.” She couldn’t quite interpret what was going through Karen’s mind from her expression.
“We couldn’t take the Hirachi … any of the aliens back to Earth anyway. You know that. I know that. Everyone would totally freak out and there’s no telling what might happen.”
“I know,” Loren agreed.
“No go my world,” Shara said. “My people no like aliens. Dey freak, too.”
Loren nodded, but it helped her feelings a little to know humans weren’t the only ones that would be totally hostile to the prospect of being ‘invaded’ by another species. “Computer, pull up a map showing the route the ship has taken over the past six months.”
“Calculate six months according to what star system?”
Loren glanced at Karen in dismay. “Try star date,” Karen suggested.
“That wouldn’t be any help!” Loren snapped. “We aren’t on the damned Enterprise! I don’t know anything about time in space!”
“Computer,” Karen said, “pull up a map showing the last six ports where this ship docked.”
“Great idea!” Loren exclaimed, looking up the display hopefully. Her smile fell as she stared at the line that zigzagged across a field of pure black with tiny specks of light. 
“Well fuck!” Karen muttered, expressing her own sentiments.
She chewed her lower lip, thinking. “Computer, give us a close up of the last port this ship stopped at before it reached the space station.” She narrowed her eyes when the computer produced the image, studying it carefully. “Does that look familiar to either of you?”
Karen and Shara both moved closer and studied it. “Holy shit! It’s got three suns! Look! There’s two here in the middle and this one way out here.”
“Are you serious?” Loren demanded, squinting at the image. “This is a star system, computer?” 
“Affirmative. System HM412.”
“That’s fucking helpful!” Karen muttered.
Loren glanced toward Dakaar. “Does Ach have three suns?”
He stared at her as if she was delusional. “Hab two.”
“What about the red skinned guys? You know anything about where they’re from?”
He shook his head.
“Computer, show us the systems in reverse—one by one—slowly. Starting at the space station, go back to each port in reverse order of stops.”
The next system that flashed on the screen had only one sun, but even though Loren’s heart leapt with excitement, she saw immediately that the single star was a red star. “Not the right color for our star,” she murmured in disappointment.
“Not enough planets either. I don’t see but four.”
Loren rubbed her arms. “Computer—what’s the temperature in here?”
Frustration filled her when the computer gave her a measurement she didn’t understand. “Can you scan me, computer, and tell me what my temperature is?”
“Affirmative. Scanning. Fifty four degrees telsa.”
“What’s the temperature of the ship?”
“Varying.”
“This level, then.”
Twenty three degrees telsa.”
“No wonder I’m freezing to death,” Karen muttered under her breath.
“Can you bring the heat up on this level to thirty?”
“Affirmative. I calculate that this will consume 2% of the fuel within one quadrant.”
“I guess lizard-man was saving on the light bill,” Karen said.
“Acknowledged,” Loren responded. “Bring it up for now.”
“Engine consumption at 20%.”
“Oh my fucking god!” Loren exclaimed. “I forgot I left the engines at full! Computer, can we stay where we are if the engines are shut down?”
“Negative. Five degree by one hundred eighteen degree drift anticipated.”
“Just take the engines down low enough to compensate for the drift.”
“What did it mean by that?” Karen asked uneasily. 
“I don’t really know except moving—and I’d rather stay put until we have something settled … and that’s what Kael said to do.” 
They reviewed every map the computer produced showing the last six stops and then kept going until Loren finally decided it was an exercise in futility. It seemed to her the trader must have stopped at every single planet that had any higher life forms and the worst of it was, she didn’t know if all of them did. He could’ve stopped at any number of places just to pick up food and/or water, or to pick up ‘things’ like he had her and the other women. They might discover this particular ship was very unwelcome in a lot of places. “I think we’ve pretty well proven that we aren’t going to figure out where anybody’s home is,” Loren said tiredly. 
In spite of the despair that thought produced, Loren was so exhausted from the emotional upheaval of their escape that she finally curled up in a ball in the chair and dozed off. The hand that settled on her shoulder woke her with a terrified jolt. She’d already sucked in a sharp breath to scream when her mind finally assimilated that it was Kael leaning over her. She leapt at him, curling her arms tightly around his neck. 
Instead of trying to pry her lose, he gathered her against his chest. “We find place rest,” he murmured, striding through the control room toward the lift.
Relieved, Loren relaxed fractionally and snuggled closer. The chill as soon as they left the control deck began to invade her. She was shivering by the time the lift stopped and Kael got off and far more alert than she wanted to be. She kept her eyes clenched tightly together, though, determined to retreat into sleep again. 
She felt a moment of panic when Kael settled her on a surprisingly soft surface and pealed her arms loose, but he climbed onto the bed beside her and pulled her against the solid warmth of his body again. The bed felt icy, but Kael was generating enough heat that it began to warm very quickly. The moment she reached a level of comfort that allowed for it, she dropped into darkness again. 
She roused toward the surface of consciousness some time later when Kael moved away from her. Still too deeply asleep to manage more than a complaining noise, she shifted over to the spot he’d left warm and began drifting again. He roused her up again when he returned to the bed and slid in beside her but as soon as he’d coiled his big, blanket warm body around hers she dropped into the abyss again. 
Warmth of a different kind filtered through her when she woke the next time. She was still wrapped up in him. She rubbed her face against his chest appreciatively and then kissed the depression between his male breasts. “Don’t be angry with me anymore,” she said cajoling. “I didn’t mean it when I threw your gift at you. I was just … upset.”
He stiffened for a few moments and began to stroke her back. “Mean you take back?” Dakaar asked huskily. 
Loren’s eyes popped wide open. Fortunately, he was holding her too tightly to allow her to give away the fact that she’d thought she was talking to Kael. 
Not that she hadn’t intended to apologize to Dakaar and Balen, as well, but it was highly disconcerting to think she was talking to Kael and discover it was Dakaar—especially when it meant that she wasn’t any closer to mending her fences with him than she had been the night before. 
Thank god she’d just said ‘gift’ instead of naming it!
It was unfortunate that it occurred to her just then that trying to apologize before she’d told them she was ninety-nine percent certain that she was pregnant was going to negate any benefits of apologizing. They were bound to think, once she did tell them, that she’d been devious, that she’d wormed her way back into their graces without telling them because she’d expected them to refuse to take her back otherwise.
She considered that for several moments and finally realized that she needed to know that they wanted her back just as badly as they might think they needed absolute honesty. If she told them first and they took her back, how would she ever know whether they’d done it because they were so damned noble or because they actually cared?
Of course, the alternative sucked. They might be so pissed off, either way, that they dumped her. They hadn’t wanted to get her pregnant. They’d said it was because they were slaves and it had sounded completely reasonable, but although she knew they’d been telling the truth as far as it went, that didn’t necessarily rule out that they hadn’t wanted to get her pregnant at all.
In fact, although her personal experience wasn’t vast, she’d gotten the distinct impression that most men were prone to get really pissed off if their fuck buddy turned up pregnant. 
She wasn’t just going to be miserably unhappy if that happened. She was going to be in serious trouble. This situation went way beyond single parenthood back in the good old USA on mother Earth. She’d had a damned good income before she’d become a sex slave. Now she didn’t have anything … and she couldn’t go back to Earth if she was pregnant. She might not be able to anyway, but she certainly couldn’t if she was. The baby might look just like her and it might not. 
She supposed there was some possibility that they might find a world she liked where her skills in designing ‘alien technology’ might be worth money, but it was daunting prospect, a hell of a lot scarier than just moving to another country when you couldn’t speak their language.
Dakaar dredged her from her dark thoughts by slipping the hand he’d been lightly caressing her back with along her cleft. He’d been inching ever closer to the glory hole for several minutes. She supposed her lack of a negative reaction had encouraged him. 
She decided she didn’t want to discourage him and reciprocated with a little petting of her own. At least, she’d intended to. The slight move brought unpleasant memories back with a vengeance. She sucked in a sharp breath from the twinge of pain, mostly from surprise, but Dakaar heard it and leaned away to investigate. 
His face went completely slack with surprise for a split second and then darkened with rage she hadn’t seen on his face before. He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tipped her head up. His gaze moved over her face for several moments and then he shifted further away and lifted her arm. She winced. She couldn’t help it. Her wrist, elbow, and shoulder felt as if the joints had been twisted—which they had, when she was trying to fight the men off. 
He released her arm and sat up, pushing her garment up to look at her and then scanning her legs. Loren sat up to see what he was looking at and discovered she was black and blue all over from the attack. Dakaar found a row of small round bruises on her upper thigh and very lightly matched the tips of his finger to them. 
Loren met his gaze warily when he finally looked up at her again.
“Dey do dis?” he demanded, his voice tight with rage. 
Loren blinked at him. 
“Dem mens?”
Loren nodded uneasily, trying to decide if he was just angry because she’d been hurt or if he was angry because she’d been raped—angry with her. “I tried to fight them off.”
His lips tightened. Abruptly, he swung his legs off the bed and sat up on the edge, staring at the floor between his legs. Loren studied him a moment and finally sat up and touched his back lightly. “Dakaar?”
He shook his head and surged to his feet. “No can. Am angry.”
She gaped at him in dismay when he stalked across the room toward the door, jumping all over when he slammed his fist into the wall so hard in made a round, fist-shaped dent. Relieved when he kept going, Loren settled back, still trying to decide if he was angry with her about it or just angry.
Her throat closed as it slowly dawned on her that she had a lot worse problem than she’d realized. She’d been pregnant before the rape, but they were never going to believe that now.
The bastard hadn’t even had the chance to finish and now she was going to be blamed because he’d tried and none of them were going to believe the baby was theirs!
* * * *
Loren was too miserable to notice everybody else was until Karen broke down and cried all over her. 
They’d all met up in the control room for the bad news and the worse news. When the men had gone through the ship the day before to make certain there was no lurking threat and to gather whatever supplies they could, they’d discovered that the trader had had time to fully stock the ship while he was in port—but he’d only stocked supplies for himself since he only traveled with a robotic crew. The worse news was that the food he no doubt considered delicious wasn’t something any of them were going to be able to eat without forcing it down. 
The men had very carefully gone through the supplies and determined that they had enough to sustain everyone on board for a maximum of three months if they only ate one meal a day—half that if they ate two. 
The ‘good’ news was that there were people stowed in the pods on the third level that had obviously been destined for the slave market. They were being fed intravenously and, if worse came to worse, they could unplug the poor bastards and take their food. 
That being the case, Loren had told the computer to simply retrace the trader’s route backwards. None of them knew whether the ship could make it to the next port before they all starved because none of them understood the time frame the computer quoted to get to the port, but since the computer had also supplied them with the wonderful news that it was the closest they realized they didn’t have any choice. They had to go there and hope they could trade for food or hunt for food if that failed. 
Then the men had disappeared and left the bridge to the women.
Loren couldn’t help but notice that not only would Dakaar not look directly at her, but neither Kael nor Balen would either. That made it unanimous and although her first reaction was anger that Dakaar had gone straight to the others and told them, she realized he hadn’t had to. She didn’t have anything to wear to hide the damned bruises and she’d managed to get enough of a look at her reflection to know her face looked almost worse than the rest of her body. 
“They hate me!” Karen wailed when she finally managed to catch her breath.
“Hates me, too,” Shara said, sniffing.
It occurred to Loren that she ought to try to think of something to say to offer solace, but she couldn’t think of a damned thing. 
“And the worst of it is, I’m pregnant!” Karen cried.
“An’ I not!” Shara seconded her.
Karen blinked her tears back and stared at the other woman. “How could that possibly be worse than being pregnant?” she snapped indignantly.
Shara sent her a resentful look. “’Cause I want baby and no have!”
Karen’s chin wobbled. “They’re going to think it isn’t theirs because I didn’t tell them and those bastards raped me and now they’ll think it belongs to the bastards that raped me!”
Loren’s wobbled. She sniffed. “Me, too. Not that they weren’t already angry with me! And that’s why I didn’t tell them and now I can’t.”
Karen blinked at her. “Don’t you think they’ll notice? I mean, eventually?”
“Thanks a lot for helping my feelings!” Loren snapped. 
Karen stared at her for a long moment and burst into tears again. “Everybody blames me for everything!”
Guilt smote Loren. She reached for Karen after a few moments and hugged her and let her cry all over her a little longer. 
“What are we going to do?” she asked after a bit.
“We can’t go home even if we could find home!” Loren wailed, abruptly bursting into tears herself. 
When they’d finally calmed down and begun trying to mop up, Karen glanced at Loren curiously. “Why were they angry before?”
Loren felt like bursting into tears all over again. “Because I told them I couldn’t get pregnant. I thought I couldn’t.”
Karen frowned. “Then you did tell them.”
“No,” Loren said, sniffing. “I’d forgotten all about it. I asked them what the spawning was all about and … I was just so surprised. And then they asked me how often we spawned and I told them we could pregnant any time.”
Karen stared at her. “Uh oh.”
Loren sniffed, nodding, but then resentment flickered through her. “How was I supposed to know they could? Get me pregnant, I mean.”
Karen looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t think so either, but I didn’t stick my foot in my mouth.”
“Well! Thanks a hell of a lot!” Loren snapped indignantly.
“Why no?” Shara asked curiously. “Gots dicks. Nice dicks.”
Karen and Loren shared a look. 
“Ok,” Loren said, “so that’s very succinctly put, but I get the idea. I guess you’re right. I should have thought they were so much like us there might be a chance but isn’t as if it was something I wanted to worry about under the circumstances … or something I could do anything about.”
“So … stop feeling guilty,” Karen said. “It was a misunderstanding. You can explain it.”
Loren looked at her unhappily. “That should go over well,” she said sourly. “Sorry! You’re an alien. It never occurred to me you could get me pregnant!”
“Well, don’t say it like that, stoopid!” Karen said irritably.
“I don’t know any way to say that and not sound like a bigot!”
Karen lifted her brows at her, but she apparently decided they had enough race issues to deal with at the moment. Sighing, she thought it over. “I’ve got it! Lie! Tell them you desperately wanted their baby and you lied so they’d get you pregnant!”
“That isn’t going to fix it! They were angry because they didn’t want me to get pregnant and they thought I’d lied and gotten pregnant … or just lied and might have gotten pregnant.”
“Because of the spawning?”
Loren nodded.
“Well!” Karen said indignantly. “It isn’t as if you could’ve fought them off! Believe me, I tried ….” She stopped, looked uncomfortable and blushed. “At least I did at first, because I wasn’t sure what they had in mind.”
“They know you did! And they know I didn’t.”
“I did also,” Shara put in helpfully.
Loren looked at her irritably. “Fight? Or not fight?”
“Fight. Scary mens.”
Loren covered her face with her hands. “Could I possibly have screwed up any worse?”
“I don’t know. That seems like a pretty thorough fuck up,” Karen said helpfully.
Loren dropped her hands and glared at her.
Karen smiled faintly. “You don’t have any sense of humor. Anybody ever tell you that?”
“I don’t feel like laughing. I feel like crying.”
“Well, don’t do that anymore. Right now you’re red, white, and black and blue.”
Loren’s mouth curled downward. “In other words, I look like shit—besides everything else.”
Karen studied her for several moments. “Do you know you’re pregnant? I mean positively?”
Loren was about to inform her that she did know, positively, but it occurred to her that she actually didn’t. “I’m way past starting.”
“You’ve never been late before?”
“Not like this.”
Karen shrugged. “Ever been kidnapped by aliens before, packed in a pod, and shipped across the known universe?”
Loren smiled faintly. “This is my first time.”
“Well! There you go. All this breast beating might be for nothing.”
For a handful of seconds, Loren felt her spirits lift. Then they plummeted again. “I was actually starting to get used to the idea,” she muttered. “I mean, kind of, sort of starting to like it … in an unhealthy, self-destructive kind of way—because I’m totally fucked if I am!”
Karen and Shara exchanged a look and Karen surged to her feet. “I think what we all need to do is find something to take our minds off of our problems. Let’s go explore the ship.”
Loren got up from the floor when Shara did and then glanced at the control console doubtfully. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to leave the bridge? I mean … what if something happens?”
“This thing has a fantastic computer!” Karen said dismissively. “Computer—we’re going to explore the ship. If there’s any problem, please locate us in the ship and alert us.”
“Affirmative.”
“Voila!” Karen said triumphantly. “Let’s see if we can find something to cheer us up. I honestly think the guys just didn’t want to find us any clothes. Those creepy machines took mine when I got here. If the trader made a habit of that, and we know he did, there must be all kinds of things. We’ll go shopping! That always lifts my spirits!” She halted uneasily when they reached the lift. “Uh … what did they do about the creepy robots?”
Loren frowned at her thoughtfully. “They didn’t say anything. I guess they didn’t see them.”
Karen uttered an angry snort. “I expect he put them in storage after he used them to get us over to the slave auction. The guys said there were people in pods somewhere on the ship. I don’t guess he needs the robot bullies until he lets them out again.” She paused when the three of them got on the lift, her finger hovering over the control panel. “Bottom to top? Or top to bottom?”
“Let’s just start at the next level down. I don’t want to get too far from the bridge. It still makes me uneasy.”
“Good thought!” Karen pressed the button. 
They heard meaty thuds and grunts as soon as the door opened and the three of them exchanged wide-eyed looks of alarm. 
“Fight,” Shara said in a low, uneasy voice.
“But about what?” Karen muttered.
“I don’t think we should get off here,” Loren whispered uneasily, but Karen was already heading off the lift. She followed her, grabbing her arm. “I’m serious. I think this is a really bad idea. Let’s just leave.”
Karen looked at her irritably. “Don’t you want to know why they’re fighting?”
“No,” Shara and Loren both answered at the same time.
Karen gave them both an irritated look. “Well, I do! I like to know if I’m in trouble before it comes looking for me.”
Put that way, Loren and Shara decided she might be right. The three of them tiptoed along the corridor, pausing to listen every few minutes as they tracked the fight by sound. They finally found them in what looked like it might have been a gathering area before that was used for storage now. Enormous crates had been pushed back to make a clearing in the center. The moment they peered around the edges of the open door, however, they saw the three red-skinned aliens, their hands on their hips, their feet planted in a wide-legged stance that made it clear they were itching to join the fray. 
Loren couldn’t actually see much more than flying arms and legs. She could see that there were six men paired off, though, and clearly trying to pound each other to death. All of them were already bloody from flying fists—either theirs or their opponent’s. She finally managed to catch a glimpse of two of the men fighting closest to door. She sucked in a sharp breath when she recognized Kael.
He heard it. His head whipped her in direction just about the time his opponent slung a meaty fist at him. The blow caught him on the jaw and sent him reeling backwards. Loren clapped a hand to her mouth. Karen and Shara both whipped their heads to glare at her. 
Unfortunately, so did the three red aliens. The tallest of the three, waved an arm at them in a shooing motion. “Go!”
Karen and Shara took flight. Loren gaped at him as he headed toward her, too paralyzed to move. 
His expression twisted with anger. “You go!” he growled. “No watch!”
Sucking in another gasp, her paralysis vanishing when he kept coming, Loren whirled away from the door as he neared her and nearly fell over Karen and Shara, who’d only retreated far enough to be beyond the alien’s view. 
Karen let out a yelp of fright when she threw a frightened look back and saw the alien, and tried to claw her way through Loren. Shara took to her heels and vanished. Buffeted by Karen’s retreat, Loren stumbled against the wall of the corridor. 
“Dey work de shame. You go!” the alien said again.
Loren blinked at him in incomprehension, but she wasn’t about to argue with him. The only reason she hadn’t already retreated was because Karen had spun her around and disoriented her. The moment she realized the ‘demon’ alien was in front of her, she whirled and took off in the other direction. It would probably have worked better if she’d been able to resist the urge to look back and make sure he wasn’t on her heels. Fortunately, she didn’t manage to get up to full steam before she slammed into the wall on the other side and bounced off. 
The alien pounced on her before she could scramble to her feet. Grasping her arms and hauling up, he looked her over. “Hurt?”
Loren blinked at him, but if he was offering she certainly didn’t want any. “No! No, thank you!”
His eyes gleamed with a mixture of amusement and irritation. “Hurt self?”
She felt heat rise to her face. “Oh! No. I’m fine.”
“Hit hard. Knot here.” He lifted a hand to her forehead and she sucked in a sharp breath when he lightly touched the goose egg. She didn’t even remember hitting her head! 
“Hit ass, too. Want rub make better?”
Loren felt her jaw go slack with surprise. She met his amused, appreciative gaze and realized abruptly that he was flirting with her—she thought. Her vision seemed to sharpen on his face for the first time when her mind had processed that and she really looked at him. 
His face, like his other physical characteristics, were far more alien than the Hirachi, and yet it wasn’t a fright mask—far from it. As strange as his individual features were, she discovered with a jolt of surprise that his face as a whole was attractive—hard, angular and very masculine but appealing. It intrigued her and she met his gaze again. “What did you mean?” she asked hesitantly.
He frowned, but it was as if he was scanning his mind to collect the memory, not angry. 
“About the shame?” she prompted.
His expression tightened with anger. She thought it was directed at her for several moments and her pulse jumped up several notches. 
“No honor, dem mens,” he growled. “Hurt little tings. Take what no give. Hirachi shame, no protect when gib word. Shame dere honor. Angry.”
Loren had already felt indignation surge through her, because she’d thought he was saying the Hirachi had no honor—and she knew better than that! The indignation scattered into confusion, though, when he’d finished and she realized he’d been talking about the assaults on her and the others. 
Daeman studied Lau-ren’s features hungrily, wondering absently why it held so much appeal when she looked nothing like his own people, but he supposed it was the exotic look of her that did appeal to him. 
He supposed, wryly, that it could be argued that any female would considering how long it had been since he’d seen one—let alone had the opportunity to get so close to one—and he had tried to convince himself of that. He hadn’t succeeded, though. The other two were pretty enough he would have been very happy to have had a chance with either if he had not seen Lau-ren. Once he had, though, all he had been able to think about was her. The thought of touching her had created such a fever in his mind that he had scarcely been able to sleep for thinking of it and he found that he could not resist the opportunity to touch her now to see if her skin was as soft and smooth as it looked. 
Loren was so deep in thought she didn’t notice he’d lifted his hand to lightly stroke her bruised cheek until she felt his touch. She thought she would’ve retreated if she had. A jolt still went through her. He dropped his hand to his side. “No be scared ob Daeman. I no hurt.” His expression tightened again as he met her wide, unnerved gaze. “You go now.”
Loren nodded jerkily and backed away and then turned and fled down the corridor in the direction Karen and Shara had disappeared. She nearly ran into the wall again when she cast a look back and discovered he was still in the corridor, watching her. 
Karen grabbed her wrist and jerked her around the corner. Her own eyes were as wide as saucers. “What happened?” she gasped.
“I nearly knocked myself out running into the wall,” Loren confessed, abruptly feeling the embarrassment she’d been too stunned to feel before and covering her face. “Oh! I am so mortified! I’m sure it was all he could do to keep from laughing!”
“What he do?” Shara asked breathlessly.
“He helped me up and asked me if I’d hurt myself,” Loren muttered, testing the knot on her head carefully. “Does this look as huge as it feels?”
Karen blinked at her. “It matches the rest of your face now,” she said distractedly. “What else did he say?”
Loren’s lips tightened. “Beat it. Go away. I think I’ve lost interest in exploring. I’m going back to the bridge.” When she’d peered around the corner and discovered Daeman had propped a shoulder against the doorframe and was still staring in her direction, she jerked her head back. “He’s still watching,” she mouthed. 
Karen and Shara stared at her wide eyed for a moment and then peered around the corner themselves. They jumped back. “You’re right!” Karen mouthed at Loren. “Let’s go this way.”
“But the lift is the other way!” Loren hissed at her.
Karen stopped. “Are you sure?”
“We lost,” Shara stated the obvious. “No pay attention.”
“I’m sure it’s that way,” Loren said a little uncertainly. 
“I’m going this way anyway,” Karen said firmly. “The corridors have to intersect somewhere, right?”
Loren and Shara both looked at her doubtfully, but they shrugged and followed her. 
They hadn’t gone far when Karen slowed until she was walking beside Loren. She glanced at her a couple of times, apparently trying to decide how to broach the subject uppermost in her mind. “It seemed to me that you talked with the demon guy a lot longer than it would’ve taken to ask if you were hurt,” she prodded.
Loren sent her a vaguely indignant look. “What are you suggesting?”
Surprise flickered in her eyes. “I wasn’t suggesting anything! I was just wondering if he told you anything.”
“Oh.” Loren wrestled with whether or not to repeat it and finally dismissed her qualms. It wasn’t as if Karen and Shara weren’t going to notice. “He said they felt shamed because they’d promised to protect us and failed … and that was why they were fighting.” She shrugged. “I guess they needed to work off their anger. Dakaar was really, really angry when he noticed the bruises.” Her chin wobbled. “I know he figured it out because he found fingerprints on my thighs.”
Karen stared at her, her mind obviously working that over. “Men!” she snapped irritably after several moments. “If we blamed them, I could see why they might feel bad about it, but I certainly didn’t! I’ve never been more happy to see anybody in my life! It wasn’t as if they could help it that they were locked in!” She considered it. “In fact, I don’t know how they managed to get out and get to me as quickly as they did.”
“I certainly didn’t complain!” Loren said. “I’m like you. I don’t see how they could’ve gotten there any sooner than they did. I didn’t figure out what was happening myself until those guys grabbed me—not that there would’ve been anything I could’ve done about it anyway. They were right behind Lecur when he unlocked the door and let them in. There was no place to run.” 
“Feel tings not always reasonable. No just men,” Shara offered. 
Loren glanced at her unhappily. “I don’t think they’re going to work it out, although I suppose it might help some to have an outlet. If they’re ashamed of their performance, though, they aren’t going to want to hang around any of us, you know, not when they’re reminded every time they look at us.”
“That is so unfair! That’s almost as unreasonable as blaming us for getting assaulted.”
Loren sighed. “I suppose any time anything bad happens that you can’t accept you always think there must have been something you could’ve done to prevent it. Maybe, in the back of their minds, they think the same thing about what happened to us? That we could’ve prevented it if we’d tried harder?”
Karen released a huff of breath that was part anger and part resignation. “I guess this means we won’t be getting any dick—not for a while anyway.”
Loren bit her lip to refrain from smiling.
“Not that I’m not glad in a way. I’m still sore as hell, but I think some good loving would go a long way toward helping me put that horrible episode behind me. I need some cuddling at least … even if they’re afraid sticking their dick in would … like taint it or something.”
Loren’s amusement vanished. “Yes, well I hadn’t even figured out how to try to smooth over the last upset. I’m beginning to think it’s hopeless to think we could work anything out.”
“You can’t think that way! I mean unless you just want to give up?”
“I don’t want to. I just don’t know what to do,” Loren said. 
Karen hesitated. “You seemed … a little touchy about the conversation you had with the demon guy.”
Loren glanced at her irritably. “I know this going to sound weird,” she said finally, “but I think he might’ve been trying to flirt with me.”
Karen gaped at her. “Are you serious?”
“I probably just imagined it.”
“Well, what made you imagine it?”
“I don’t know. I guess the way he looked at me and … he invaded my space … just seemed a little too close, and … it was just a feeling, I guess.” She frowned, struggled a moment and finally shrugged. “Actually, I had the feeling he was the one that offered to protect me before if I’d be his woman—not that I’m sure! I know it was one of them, but it scared the shit out of me and I didn’t really look, if you know what I mean.”
“You usually don’t get that feeling unless they are,” Karen said dryly. “How did you feel about it?”
Loren frowned. “I think I was just mostly surprised and really unnerved. He actually doesn’t seem at all like I thought he was, though.” She paused. “He’s actually kind of attractive—in a really alien way, if you know what I mean. The first thing that popped in my mind, though, was that maybe he thought, or knew, that Kael and Dakaar and Balen didn’t want me anymore and he could move in.” 

Chapter Eleven
If it had occurred to her that there might be a problem with following Karen’s advice, Loren never would have. Although she hadn’t been convinced that the corridor they’d taken had to lead around eventually as Karen had been, though, she’d figured they would see a com unit at some point and be able to ask for directions. That wasn’t the case, unfortunately. They walked until they were nearly exhausted and finally sat down to rest and consider the situation. 
“I was sure the lift must be this way,” Karen said irritably.
“I told you it wasn’t,” Loren reminded her.
Karen glared at her. “Well! Why did you follow me?”
Loren shrugged. “I figured we’d be able to ask the computer to tell us how to get back if we got lost.”
“Why didn’t you? I know we passed at least a couple.”
“I didn’t know we were lost then!” Loren snapped. “And I figured there’d be more.”
Karen fell silent, thinking about it. “You know, I think I remember seeing one at that last intersection. Let’s go back that way and look.”
Shara stared up at her accusingly when she stood. “I stay here. Tired.”
Karen frowned at her.
“I’m with her,” Loren seconded. “I’m tired. Let’s rest a little bit before we try anything else.”
“Well, I’m hungry,” Karen objected. “It must be about time to eat.”
“That isn’t going to tempt me to get up from here,” Loren muttered. “It’s disgusting.”
Karen sat back down sullenly. 
Loren had just decided she’d rested enough to tackle renewing their search for the lift when she looked up and saw a group of the men heading toward them. Kael was in the lead and he looked like a thundercloud.
She surged to her feet guiltily, wondering if there was a problem on the bridge or if they were just in a foul mood because they’d been pounding on each other and then discovered all of the women had disappeared. 
Kael searched her piercingly, as if he was looking for some kind of injury. “Why here? Why no go back to control?”
Loren chewed her inner lip. “We were exploring.”
The men with him—Dakaar, Daeman, and one of Karen’s men, Jarr, looked around the corridor skeptically. Loren glared at them, uncertain whether they’d taken her literally or they were trying to be sarcastic. “Not here, here,” she said testily. “We were exploring this level and we got tired so we decided to rest before heading back.”
“We’re ready to go back now, though,” Karen offered. “We’ll just go with you guys.”
“I, too,” Shara said decisively, surging to her feet.
Kael gave Loren a look, but he and the rest of the group merely turned and headed back. Loren sent Shara and Karen a speaking look. Karen shrugged and mouthed something at her, but she couldn’t interpret the mouth movements. 
To their surprise, the men led them back to the large room where they’d been ‘sparring’ earlier. There were a couple of tables now where the floor had been cleared and they’d rounded up a combination of actual chairs and some containers approximately the right height to use as seats and placed them around the tables. 
The ‘plates’ were also a combination of actual plates and varying sized and shaped containers. 
A wave of nausea washed over Loren as the smell of the food wafted past her nostrils. Contrary thing that it was, her belly took that moment to let out a roar that would’ve made a mountain lion proud. Everyone looked around. Loren studied the ceiling. 
“We wait for udder search parties,” Kael announced, just enough dryness in his voice to make it clear he hadn’t believed the story Loren had told for a moment. Loren’s lips tightened, but she decided not to take the bait. After looking around for a place to perch, she finally settled on one of the makeshift ‘chairs’. 
“Great!” Karen said under her breath. “If they weren’t convinced before that we’re about as useful as a miniature lapdog, I’m sure they are now.”
Loren glanced at her irritably. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t crossed her mind, but she was damned if she was useless! “Everybody can’t be good at everything,” she muttered.
“Dey can,” Shara said with her usual candor. “Are.”
“I can do things!” Loren informed her, gesturing around at the ship.
“I don’t want to be mean but the computer’s running the ship,” Karen pointed out, then added hurriedly when Loren glared at her. “Not that anybody else could run it without a computer! It’s just too big and complex.”
“I’ll have you to know my parents saw to it that I had a very well rounded education! And we went on a little dig every summer, so I know a lot about camping besides.”
Karen looked at her with interest. “A dig?”
“They’re archeologists—mostly they taught while I was growing up, but after I left home they stopped teaching and went back to field work.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t become an archeologist.”
Loren shrugged. “I just didn’t love grubbing in the dirt like they did—I mean, when I was a kid I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I was always way more interested in machines.”
“I was a teacher back in the old days,” Karen said glumly. “I don’t suppose that’s going to be very useful.”
“It will be if you’re pregnant and we don’t get back home.”
Karen brightened immediately. “I hadn’t thought about that!” She frowned. “I’m not sure how pertinent it’s going to be. I taught kindergarten.” 
“Hey! The first years are the most important!” Loren said, nudging her.
“I healer,” Shara offered. 
Karen and Loren both stared at her. Loren didn’t know what was going through Karen’s mind, but ‘witch doctor’ popped into hers. She smiled with an effort. “Great! That’s definitely useful.”
The ‘udder search parties’ arrived shortly after that, thankfully, and she didn’t have to struggle to find out whether Shara just chanted and waved burning embers around or if she was actually a woman of science. Everyone moved to the tables, picked a spot and began relaying the food that someone had prepared around the table. Shara and Karen had gotten up and moved to sit near ‘their’ men, and Kael had sat on one side of Loren and Dakaar the other. Balen had glared at both of them but taken the seat to Dakaar’s right. 
Daeman parked directly in front of Loren.
She tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed, but she was keenly aware of the fact that most of his attention was on her rather than the platter making its way around the table. She forgot all about him, however, when the platter arrived. Kael very carefully took a portion and handed the platter to her. She stared it for several moments, trying to convince herself that it couldn’t possibly taste as bad as it looked and finally put a small portion on her plate and handed the container to Dakaar. Dakaar stared at the portion she’d taken and dipped a second helping and put it on her plate before he got his own. 
Loren tried to look appreciative, but it hadn’t been consideration for everyone else that had prompted her to pass on anything but a very small portion. She was as conscious of the food shortage as everyone else and would’ve been careful regardless, but she also didn’t see any point in taking food she very much doubted she could choke down to save her life.
And it was a matter of life or death, she reminded herself. She had to eat something or she would starve to death. 
Fortunately, water seemed to be in fairly abundant supply and they’d found various containers to hold the drink. Picking it up when the men on either side of her dug in and began to clean their plates as if the mess was odorless and tasteless at the worst, or scrumptious at the best. She slid a glance at Karen as the platter reached her.
Karen turned a strange shade she’d never seen on a black woman. It was sort of a greenish gray and no more flattering than the color she felt she was—green. Swallowing convulsively a couple of times, she scooped up a small portion and put it on her own plate. As Dakaar had done, the Hirachi beside her examined it and added to it.
Karen sent him a weak smile and then looked at her plate like she thought it might jump out and bite her.
Loren returned her attention to her own food. After staring at it in revulsion for several moments, she became aware that Kael, Dakaar, and even Daeman kept glancing at her and finally took a pinch with her fingers as they were doing. Her stomach rebelled the moment she put in her mouth. She held her breath, chewed a couple of times and then grabbed her water and tried to wash it down. It was a battle for several moments as to whether she could keep it down or not, but it finally settled like a rock in her stomach. 
Breathing a sigh of relief, she girded herself for another battle with her stomach. By the time she’d emptied her water vessel, she’d managed to choke down five or six small bites, her belly was sloshing with all the water, and she knew absolutely that one more bite was going to be her downfall. 
Breathing shallowly, she sat back, trying not to look at the plate in front of her. 
“No eat?”
Loren glanced at Kael and clamped a hand to her belly. “I’m full. You eat the rest.”
He frowned, flicking a glance at the plate and then her empty water container. “Full water. No eat nothing.”
“Oh but I did. I just don’t eat much. You’re sure you don’t want the rest?”
He looked her over assessingly. “Need eat more, shimone.”
“I can’t. I really couldn’t take another ….” She stopped abruptly as a warning wave of nausea hit her, swallowing convulsively several times as a cold sweat popped from her pores. Clamping a hand to her mouth, she looked around wildly for some place to puke where she wouldn’t distress everyone else or humiliate herself. “Excuse me,” she muttered behind her hand, leaping to her feet and racing for the door as fast she could run. 
She heard the scrape of another chair, but she didn’t realize Karen was right on her heels until she blundered past her and led the way. Hoping against hope that Karen knew where a bathroom was and she could hold it that long, Loren raced her to the next room off the corridor.
It was really unfortunate that it seemed to be a storage room. Karen puked in the middle of the floor and that was enough to rip the shred of control Loren still had away from her. She puked right beside her. When she’d finally stopped heaving, she looked around a little weakly for a relatively clean place to collapse. 
That was when she discovered they had an audience. “Go away!” she growled at the green men in the doorway.
Kael looked like he couldn’t decide whether to retreat or not.
“I swear to god I’m going to throw something if you don’t leave!”
He disappeared with the others and Loren slumped on a small crate, trying to gather enough strength to drag herself from the room before the stench sent her into another vomiting spasm. When Karen finally managed to stop heaving, she looked around and staggered toward the door. 
Loren pushed herself up and followed her, closing the door behind her. 
The men, she discovered, hadn’t retreated far. Deciding to ignore them, she braced her back against the wall of the corridor and slid down it, huddling in a tight ball. Karen collapsed beside her.
“I thought it was a bathroom,” Loren said weakly. 
“We don’t need that room anymore anyway,” Karen said a sickly.
Loren sighed. “Actually, I have a bad feeling that’s the pantry.”
“Well fuck!” Karen said angrily. “That’s a hell of a place for it! I can’t face cleaning that up right now. It’s going to have to wait.” Lifting her head, she looked at the men loitering in the corridor. “If you’re all going to just stand there any damned way, at least tell us where a damned bathroom is!”
They stared at her blankly and Loren could see that didn’t compute. “Facilities? Shower?”
Comprehension hit. They all turned and pointed in the other direction.
Releasing an irritated huff, Loren struggled to her feet and trudged down the hall. As luck would have it, the damned facilities were on the other side of the fucking ‘dining’ hall!
“You have got the worse sense of direction of anybody I’ve ever known!” Loren snapped irritably when she and Karen had made it inside and turned on the showers. “I don’t know why I keep following you! Two choices! Two! And you picked the wrong one!”
Karen glared at her a moment and then snickered. “Because you’re a dumbass! I got us lost earlier.”
Loren frowned, but she couldn’t help but chuckle after considering it a moment. “At least we know which way to run next time,” she said ruefully.
The water wasn’t hot. It didn’t get better than lukewarm. Deciding that still beat the hell out of freezing cold, Loren got in and bathed off. Luckily, she’d managed to empty her stomach without getting it all over her toga! There was only one thing in the room that looked like it might be for drying, though, and it smelled like it had been used—a lot. 
After another search, she discovered the thing she’d thought was a tiny closet was actually something like a hand blow dryer, except for all over. Shivering, Karen climbed in with her. Her goosebumps had goosebumps by the time she got out again, but she was mostly dry and clean enough it was with great reluctance and revulsion that she put on the clothes she’d discarded. 
The men, to Loren’s irritation, were still loitering outside when they came out again. “Where’s the bed?” Loren asked weakly.
“Need eat,” Kael said grimly.
Loren threw a hand up in a ‘stop’ motion. “Don’t talk to me about food. I can’t handle it right now. I need to lie down.”
He scooped her up into his arms. She would’ve protested if a wave of dizziness followed by a fresh wave of nausea hadn’t swept over her when the movement disoriented her. Instead, she dropped her head weakly against his shoulder and fought to recover her sense of equilibrium as he strode down the corridor with her. 
Thankfully, the cabin where she’d spent the night wasn’t far. She curled into a tight ball on her side when he settled her carefully on the mattress, shivering and searching blindly for the blanket. Kael pulled it up over her shoulders. “Lau-ren sick?”
She thought that over and for the first time saw the situation from his perspective. She’d just puked up a meal and they damned well didn’t have any to spare when they didn’t know how long it might be before they could get anything else. Beyond that, one of them had cooked and she was going to insult whoever had if she informed him that it was the most god awful disgusting mess she’d ever tried to eat. 
On the other hand, telling him she actually was sick also wasn’t a good idea. It was bound to alarm him at the very least when the closest they had to a doctor onboard was their healer, Shara. 
Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell him it was something she’d eaten before the meal when she hadn’t had anything since the last meal she’d eaten in Lecur’s dungeon. 
“No,” she said finally. “I think it was just that I haven’t eaten in a while and the lizard-man’s food is … uh … not what I’m used to.”
“Must eat,” he growled.
“Yes, I know. Not right now, though. I’m tired. Just save it for me. I’ll eat later.”
“Shimone … know must eat.”
“I don’t feel like puking again right now!” she said testily. “At least give me time to recover from the last bout!”
“More empty stomach, no easier,” he said tightly.
She knew he was right. If it had been emptiness that added to her lack of tolerance, getting more empty wasn’t going to help. “Just leave my food on the table,” she said tiredly. “I’ll go back in a little while and try to eat it.”
To her relief, he finally got up and left. 
Loren couldn’t say she actually got used to the food. She sure as hell didn’t develop a liking for it, but she managed by dent of sheer determination to nibble at her portion off and on throughout the day by washing it down with plenty of water and never pushing herself to eat more than a bite or two at the time. It was still hellish trying to force it down. She was sorry if it made guys feel bad, and she could see it did, but it was the best she could manage and there was no way in hell to hide her revulsion from them when they were determined to watch her like a hawk. 
Not that they did anything else! As she’d feared, they seemed inclined to give her a wide berth most of the time. They were stilted and distant, which was hard to take when they’d always been so warm and attentive before. If she hadn’t been so miserable about her battle with the food, she thought she would have been obsessing over their defection, but the problem with the food overshadowed pretty much everything else.
She was nauseated most of the time, but she managed to convince herself for a while that it was just the food. By the time she managed to emerge sufficiently from her abject misery to notice anything besides that, however, she discovered they’d been in space at least three weeks--Earth time—as nearly as she could calculate, because it was the only time she knew how to keep and her internal clock helped her with that. Nothing she could do after that to convince herself that she wasn’t pregnant worked. She’d had plenty of time to adjust. Missing one period might be explained away. Missing two was pregnancy—or something horrible.
She actually didn’t think she would’ve emerged enough to notice then except that Kael brought it to her attention. They’d all gathered on the bridge because the computer had announced that they were entering the solar system where the first port on their route lay. After looking her over assessingly, he’d caught her forearm between his thumb and forefinger, lifted it and shook it at her accusingly. 
“Bone no flesh,” he said angrily. “Dis happen no eat! No try hard enough!”
Loren stared at her arm in surprise, stunned to see how slender it was. “Oh my god! Karen! I have lost so much weight! Would you look! Do I look thinner? Can you tell?”
Karen looked her over, her gaze settling significantly on Loren’s rounded belly for a handful of seconds before she transferred her attention back to her face. She grinned. “Girl friend! You are looking like a twig! How about me?” She preened.
Loren’s eyes widened—mostly at the rounded belly she displayed when she turned to profile it, although there was no getting around the fact that Karen had dropped a good bit of weight. She looked down at her own belly and then looked at Karen again. Finally, she forced a smile. “Skinny! I bet you could get in a three!”
Karen perked up. “Seriously? I never thought I’d be able to get my fat ass in a three!”
“I am dead serious, girl friend! You are so skinny!”
They were still grinning happily when they turned around to glance at the monitor again and discovered all of the men were looking at them with a mixture of disapproval and complete bafflement. Even Shara looked confused, although she at least seemed to want to be excited about whatever Loren and Karen were excited about. Loren shared a look with Karen and they decided to drop the subject.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t dismiss her new awareness of her belly as easily. Karen had seemed convinced she was pregnant, and she should certainly know. She’d said she’d had children. Loren hadn’t wanted to ask her about it when she knew it must be painful for Karen to think about let alone discuss, but if she was right, then it seemed indisputable that she was also pregnant when her belly looked every bit as big as Karen’s. 
She certainly couldn’t continue to put it down to pre-menstrual bloating after she’d had time to consider the length of time that had passed. Lifting a hand as it finally settled inarguably in her mind that she was carrying a baby, she settled it lightly over her rounded belly, wondering what it looked like, whether it was a boy or a girl—whether it Kael’s, or Dakaar’s or Balen’s. 
That thought brought her back to the present with a jolt and she flicked a glance at Kael.
He was staring at her hand, but he met her gaze when she looked at him. She knew, just from the look in his eyes that he knew exactly what was running through her mind. Feeling the blood fluctuate in her face, she made a pretense of smoothing her clothing. “I wish to hell we could’ve found some clothes somewhere,” she said to no one in particular. 
Thankfully, Karen came to her rescue. “We’ve only searched through about half the ship,” she reminded her. “I think we should go to the bottom and start up. Considering the number of people that bastard hauled off, there has to be something he hadn’t managed to sell!”
“I was hopeful, too—still am, but it doesn’t look like there’s going to be enough time to find anything before we reach port.”
Almost as if the computer had decided to join the conversation, it announced that they were on approach and had been hailed by the port authorities. Loren felt her pulse leap. “Let’s hear it.”
The language wasn’t anything she’d ever heard before and she glanced around at the others. “Do you know what he’s saying?”
She could see right off that none of the others understood the language either. 
“Can you translate that, computer?”
“It is a request for identification of this ship. I responded.”
Relief flickered through her. “What did they say?”
“The ship is denied access to the port.”
Dismay filled her. “You’re saying they won’t let us land?”
“Affirmative.”
“There’s no telling what that snake did the last time he was in port!” Karen snapped angrily. “Probably stole something! What are we going to do now?”
“Tell we trade for ship,” Kael said sharply. “No old trader. Tell we hab trade tings.”
Nodding shakily, Loren relayed the message and added that they were in dire need of food supplies.
Kael spoke to the computer in his own language. Loren didn’t have a clue of what he’d said and the computer apparently didn’t either. 
“This language is not in my data banks.”
His face twisted with frustration. “No should tell dat. Make trade only if dey tink good deal for dem.”
Loren winced. “Did you already relay the message I gave you, computer?”
“Affirmative. The response is that they will fire upon this vessel if it does not turn off.”
“Oh my god!” Karen exclaimed. “They’re going to blow us to pieces!”
That time when Kael burst into speech Loren was pretty sure that he was cursing. The other men began to talk agitatedly, as well.
“Can find udder place land on dis planet?”
“Is there any way we can land on the planet without going through the port?”
“Negative. The Poliz have issued their final warning.”
“Go back,” Kael said explosively. Turning abruptly, he stalked from the bridge. 
“Computer, turn the ship around and set a course for the next port,” Loren said unhappily, wondering if they were going to get chased away from every port.
“Don’t tell me there isn’t anywhere in this whole damned solar system that we can’t land this ship!” Karen snapped angrily when the men had all left the bridge behind Kael.
“You did not request a landing site on another planet. My data indicates that it would be possible to land on the sixth planet. Shall I initiate the landing sequence?” the computer responded.
Karen and Loren looked at each other with wide eyed excitement. 
“You’re saying there is a place to land?” Loren gasped hopefully.
“Affirmative. Your instructions?”
Doubt abruptly assailed Loren. “The port authority on that planet will let us land?”
“There is no port authority on the sixth planet.”
The two women exchanged a questioning look. “Inhabitants that might object?” Karen asked.
“There are no inhabitants on the sixth planet.”
“Is there any breathable air? Plants? Animals?”
“Negative. The ice is thick enough to support a landing, however.”
Loren rolled her eyes. “We need food, damn it, computer! What’s the closest planet that would have food and water—and breathable air for us—that wouldn’t have a port authority to run us off?”
“Checking data.”
Loren felt another rise of hopefulness. 
“PKL4 in the Mater034 system.”
“This is a planet that would support the life-forms aboard this ship? I mean me and the others like or similar to me?” Loren asked cautiously.
“Affirmative. Petenz traded with the life-forms there and took on supplies as needed.”
“But they couldn’t blow up the ship?” Karen added.
“Negative. They have no advanced weaponry capable of penetrating the shields.”
“Let’s go there, then,” Loren said decisively. “Set that course, computer, and kick it in the ass.”
“’Kick it in the ass’ does not compute.”
“Fastest, safest speed,” Karen put in.
“Affirmative. Plotting course. Course corrected. Initializing hyper-drive.”
“How long …? Never mind.” Loren glanced at Karen and shrugged. “I sure wish I understood how this damned thing calculates time. It would be nice to know if we’ll still be alive by the time we get there.”
“It isn’t like the food would get better—or more plentiful,” Karen said fatalistically. “I guess we’ll just have to hope for the best.” She considered the situation. “Computer—when we get there, find a landing place that isn’t too close to where these life-forms live.”
“Distance required from population centers?”
“Well hell!” Karen muttered.
“We aren’t going there to trade. Just find a place to set the ship down two or three days walk from the population center. That should give the guys time to find food, don’t you think?” she added, turning to Karen.
Karen shrugged. “Damned if I know. I don’t know anything about hunting.”
“Well, we could always move the ship, I guess. Computer—twenty units of measurement according to the size of the planet.”
“You think that’ll be enough?” Karen asked doubtfully. “The computer could interpret that as inches.”
Loren focused on trying to think of another way to indicate what they wanted and felt a surge of excitement. “One full day’s distance from the population center according to the planet’s rotation.”
“Affirmative. Checking data. Landing site located.”
* * * *
Dakaar’s mind was churning with conflict when he followed Kael to the room they’d come to think of as the gathering room. It would’ve been hard to say what emotion took precedence. He was as filled with frustrated anger as Kael was that they could not land and as worried about Lau-ren. And yet he felt an odd sort of detachment, as well, almost as if he was moving through a dream and nothing was real.
Lau-ren was breeding. Despite her denials that it was possible, mayhap even to herself, he had seen the very moment that she had realized that she had a babe in her belly. He had seen it in her face and in the way she touched her belly. It was a gesture he was familiar with—that odd sort of way women had of acknowledging that they carried life within them, as if it was a source of awe to them. 
He realized after a few moments that he was awed himself and that that was why he felt the strange sense almost of detachment—as if someone had knocked him senseless. That feeling intensified as it dawned on him that it might be his child there. He did not recall the mating with great clarity, but he could recall that he had been infuriated that Kael had reached her first and staked him claim and he could recall that he had seized the opportunity to plant his own seed directly after.
Kael had been before him, though, he thought with a surge of dissatisfaction. His seed would have had a head start—and Balen had been directly after. No doubt their seed had been racing to capture the prize just as the three of them had, and yet he knew from prior experience that there was never any guessing with these things. He had broken free in the last spawning cycle before he had left Ach and managed to couple with one of the women of their village, and she had not borne fruit. 
He had been relieved at the time. He would not have agreed to being restrained in the first place if he had not agreed with the others that they should not breed at all until and unless they could be certain that they could protect their mate and their offspring. 
He might not have bred on Lau-ren—but it was the possibility that he had that made him dizzy with both fear and excitement at the same time.
Kael jerked him from his internal focus by slamming his fist against the wall in frustration. 
“I could not protect my lover and I cannot feed my lover! I am worthless to her! She was right to spurn me!” he growled furiously. “She will starve. She is starving before my very eyes and I cannot do anything to stop it!”
The reminder demolished the brief sense of hopefulness he’d felt, replacing it with his own anger and frustration. He had been trying very hard to put the assault on Lau-ren from his mind because it was useless to allow it to tear at his gut when he could nothing to change it—useless beyond lingering as a lesson and reminder to him that a failure to act quickly enough was a complete failure. 
“She forgave us,” he said, more because he needed to believe it than to reassure Kael. “She told me that she had not meant to spurn me and my gift, that she was only upset. She would not have said that if she blamed us for … not protecting her as we should have.”
Kael stopped pacing abruptly and turned to look at him. He could not help but notice the hopefulness in Kael’s eyes or the doubt and shame that followed. “I cannot forgive myself,” he muttered after a long moment. “I cannot even redeem myself in my own eyes or hers! If I had not chosen unwisely, we would not be in this mess! My only thought when I saw the trader was that he would have knowledge of Lau-ren’s world! I have doomed her … doomed all of us!”
Balen’s own anger boiled over. “You have no more right to condemn yourself than we do!” he growled. “She took me as her lover, also!”
Briefly, amusement flickered in Kael’s eyes. “I will gladly share the shame and disgrace if you demand a piece of it!”
Balen wasn’t amused. “I have a piece of it whether you wish to share or not, gods damn it! She took me as her lover, as well. I am not less welcome to her! No less responsible for her welfare! And I followed you instead of making my own decision. I still do not see that the decision to take this ship was faulty. There was not one who had docked there who was not a thief or a murderer! I cannot think that any of the ships would have been welcome and some far less! For the pirates attack and kill to take when the traders merely cheat and steal! Nor do I think the situation regarding the food would have been greatly different which ever machine we took! Only the pirates have larger crews and would have had more food and there was no way to determine which of the machines belonged to the pirates and which to the traders! Beyond that, the people of the space station were already piling onto the ships to save themselves. We could be worse off. We might have piled on board and discovered more refugees.” 
Kael’s anger had settled to a simmer by the time Balen had finished. He scrubbed his hands over his face, struggling to relinquish the hold his frustration had on him. “You are saying that I should not feel ashamed and unmanned by my ineffectual efforts to take care of Lau-ren?”
Balen blew out an irritated breath. “I am not saying that. You cannot help that you feel that way anymore than I can. But I am not going to continue to flay myself for it if Lau-ren is willing to forgive me. She is not just in need of more food. She needs the comfort of a lover as much as I do and to refuse to do that only to continue punish ourselves for our failure also punishes her.”
Kael and Dakaar exchanged a long look. Kael frowned, but thoughtfully. “I had not considered it in that light,” he admitted finally. “In all honesty, I am not certain that you are seeing it clearly yourself. Mayhap you wish to believe that because you want to?”
Anger churned in Balen. “I do want to believe that, but that does not mean that I am wrong. We have made her feel shame for something that she could not help. I have seen it in her eyes. I did not realize that she had told Dakaar that she had not meant to spurn us. If I had, I would have realized before that she did not have that look in her eyes because we had failed her but because we had rejected, in her eyes, the offer to take us back! All this time, I have thought that it was accusation for our failure that I saw in her eyes and it was hurt that we did not offer what we could have and should have.”
Dakaar squirmed inwardly when both Balen and Kael looked at him accusingly. Abruptly, he remembered the hurt in Lau-ren’s eyes when he had found the bruises on her and he knew that Balen was right. She had wanted him to hold her and give her comfort. He should have done that, he thought. He could have given her comfort and shown her that she was not less in his eyes. Instead, he had given in to his anger and allowed it to swallow him. “I did not think of that way!” he said angrily. 
Kael nodded. “You are so right that I feel like throwing up,” he muttered. “This is what comes of being too self-centered to be a good lover! Instead of focusing on what I could do to offer her comfort, I have focused completely on my own failings and, in doing that, have failed her even more.” He grimaced. “She has shown poor judgment in accepting me.”
“Continue to berate yourself if you believe that will make you feel any better,” Balen said tightly. “I believe that I will go and see if I can find something to make peace with her and enjoy what I can while I can. There has been nothing for me to take any pleasure in since I was captured but my Lau-ren. If we are to die on this gods forsaken machine, I want whatever there is to be had.”
Dakaar and Kael exchanged a long look and followed Balen out. They met up with Lau-ren and Ka-ren and Shara before they had gone far and stopped abruptly at the excitement the women exuded. 
“We’ve done it! We’ve done it!” all three women chanted excitedly.
Discomfort twisted in Kael’s gut when Lau-ren stopped abruptly and he saw that she had meant to rush to him. “Done what?” he said after a moment.
Loren dismissed her discomfort and grinned at the men happily. “I feel like a total idiot that I didn’t think of it before—and I should have. I mean, I despised that lizard-bastard myself. I should’ve considered that he might not be especially welcome to anybody else! Anyway, Karen and I were talking about the food situation and I finally thought to ask the computer if there was some place that we could get food and water without the possibility that they would shoot at us—and the computer plotted a course to this new place!”
Kael felt far more pleasure in Lau-ren’s excitement than her announcement, but he felt a surge of wary hopefulness, as well. “The machine believes that there is food in this place?”
Some of her excitement waned. “To hunt. You can hunt, right?”
Kael glanced at the others ruefully. “She does not have much faith in us, does she?”
Balen glared at him. “You are surprised when we have given her no reason to have faith?” He switched to the language she understood. “Yes. We hunt. Dere is food, we kill it an’ feed our shimone. No be bones no more.”
Loren chuckled, hesitated and then surged toward him. Balen felt his heart swell with thankfulness as he gathered her against him, trying to ignore her frailty and the fact that she felt more insubstantial than before. 
“I’m sorry. I should have thought of it before,” she muttered. “But at least we have some hope now, right?”
He squeezed her more tightly. “It was not your place to provide, shimone. It is our place.”
Loren pushed away enough to look at him questioningly when he reverted to his native language. “I guess … you don’t like me skinny, huh?”
Balen felt his chest tighten. “No like Lau-ren ….” He paused, searching for the word. “Be hungry,” he finished when he couldn’t think of the word he wanted, “an’ me no can help.”

Chapter Twelve
Disgust twisted in Daeman’s gut when he discovered that the Hirachis’ new search of the ship was a desperate hunt for courting gifts—disgust and anger aimed at himself. It had felt too much like a betrayal of Kael, though, to pursue the hunger he felt for Lau-ren when he had had the chance and now he regretted that he had allowed that sense of guilt to sway him. Now he saw that it would not have been the betrayal he had thought—not in their eyes. 
Truthfully, their customs baffled him. When he had realized that they were knowingly and willingly sharing their lover, he had thought that they were far stranger than he had before. It was one thing to suspect your lover had another, and something else entirely to know it and still count them as friends. 
He supposed he could see it in a way. Actually, when he had emerged from his fascination in her enough to actually notice, it had been painfully clear that the circumstances prevented anything else unless they were all willing to stand back and watch only three with lovers or they spent the majority of their time trying to beat the competition senseless. And it was certainly far better to have a drink at the trough than only to thirst for a drink. It was the fact that it was not practicality that inspired them that thoroughly baffled him. Clearly, it was their way, for he had never seen more than passing resentment between Lau-ren’s lovers when they had been struggling to establish which of them she held in highest regard. That seemed the only competition that they were willing to pursue, each of them trying to prove they were more worthy of her regard rather than trying to eliminate competition altogether.
He would have understood it better, he thought, if he could not see that they did not see her merely as a handy receptacle for their lust, if they had had no interest in her beyond having a woman to fuck. That he could understand completely. He had been in that position himself many times, but that was not an affair of the heart. It was an affair of the dick, and an interest in nothing more than slaking his needs. 
They all thought of her as their woman, though, in the way a man only felt about a mate—except that they did not call her mate or even seem intent upon forming a mate bond. 
Wryly, he admitted that it was not altogether his loyalty to Kael for saving him that had held him back. She was afraid of him. He was damned if he could figure out why. He did not see that he was any uglier than the others. The women on his world had not seemed to think he was ugly, at any rate. 
But there was no ignoring the wide eyed, frozen look of fear that entered her eyes when she discovered that he was close by or that he was watching her. 
If he had not been certain that she would scream and run if he tried to woo her, he thought he would have tried—and the hell with the guilt. He would have been willing to live with the burden if he could have coaxed her into his bed. 
He would have been willing to ignore the fact that she had the babe of one of the Hirachi in her belly, even though that realization alone had angered him so much when he had first realized it that he had wanted to challenge her Hirachi lovers and beat them unconscious. What the stupid bastards had been thinking to breed on her when they must know it would only make her more vulnerable was beyond him! He would certainly not have risked her life to breed upon her! 
He thought about the gift that he had found and hidden with some notion that he might try to woo her with it, and then had discarded the idea as unlikely and treacherous to Kael besides. 
He did not see why he could not give it to her, he thought in sudden anger. Mayhap she would still not allow him to court her, but he would not know unless he tried and, at the very least, it would make her happy. 
Abandoning the Hirachi to their search, he strode purposefully back to the lift and up to the level where he had hidden the thing that he had found for Lau-ren, trying to decide if there was any chance that he might separate her from the other women so that he could give it to her and mayhap coax her into talking to him at least. If it was his appearance that frightened her, he reasoned, then she was not going to grow accustomed to it if he could not find the balls to try to draw her out. 
He thought it must be his appearance and not him in particular. He had certainly not done anything to frighten her.
He frowned at the thought, feeling uneasiness flicker through him. 
He had not been able to resist going to her cell to stare at her and he had hungered for her. He had a very bad feeling that she would’ve noticed that—if she had noticed him at all—but he had not said anything to frighten her. He had not tried to grab her. He had not taken liberties he should not have whenever he had seen the opportunity.
Shaking his unaccustomed doubts, he retrieved the gift that he’d found to try to pique Lau-ren’s interest and went in search of her. He was not surprised to find her in the control room with the other two women, but he was vastly disappointed. She was not as shy and nervous when they were with her, but he thought it less likely that she would give him any encouragement.
Dismissing his pique over it, he carried the strange container to her. “Found dis, Lau-ren. Tought it de ting you want.”
Loren stared in disbelief at the suitcase for a moment before it sank in that it really was her missing suitcase. Uttering a shriek of excitement, she bounded out of her chair and raced to Daeman to look at it more closely. “My suitcase! You found my suitcase!” She’d flung herself against him to hug him impulsively before she even thought about it. Self-consciousness sank in almost the instant she felt the pressure of the embrace, felt his arms close around her instinctively. 
Embarrassed, she pulled away, throwing an uncomfortable glance at his face. “Sorry!” She grinned down at the bag. “I’m just so excited!”
Karen and Shara had surged forward, she discovered, looking as excited as she was. “Open it!” Karen exclaimed, clapping her hands in impatience. “Let us see! Let us see!”
Laughing at their enthusiasm, Loren dropped to her knees and opened the bag. Karen gasped ecstatically. “Clothes,” she said reverently. “Real clothes!”
Possessiveness seized Loren for a handful of moments. She struggled with it, wrestled it down. It was hers, but the only reason she had it was because the bastards that had betrayed both of them had let her pack to allow her the illusion that she had a choice. As much as she wanted to grab everything and growl and refuse to share, none of them would have survived as long as they had if they hadn’t willingly shared the little they had. “It’s almost like Christmas,” she said happily. “It’s been so long I hardly even remember what I packed.”
She glanced from her treasure trove to Daeman. It warmed her to see that he was grinning as happily as they were, warmed her to know that he’d been looking for it. Tamping her uneasiness as she had her possessiveness, she got up and moved to him. “Thank you so much! I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see it.”
He chuckled huskily. “No need. See.”
She felt her face heat, but she smiled at him. “That obvious, huh?”
He lifted a hand and lightly traced her smile. “Like dis,” he said gruffly.
Loren swallowed with an effort. Try though she might to dismiss it, she felt his attraction to her and an echo of it within herself. “I’m so happy I could kiss you!”
His eyes gleamed. “Could. I let you.”
Loren chuckled and went up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Alarm flickered through her when she felt his arms close around her tightly, jerking her closer, felt his fingers tangle in her hair to entrap her even as he turned his head to thwart her attempt at a tame kiss on his cheek. There was so much hunger in the feel of his mouth as it covered hers that she was torn for several moments between alarm and intrigue. There was no denying the pleasurable heat that scorched her as her senses captured his essence, though. 
Her heart was thundering in her chest frantically when he lifted his head and met her gaze. For several moments, he held her and then, almost reluctantly, he let her go. Loren licked her lips, tasting him on them, struggling with the heat he’d brought to life and complete confusion at feeling it. 
“Panties and bras!” Karen shrieked excitedly. 
Relieved at the distraction, Loren glanced down at her and chuckled with embarrassment. “Stop waving them around!”
Karen grinned. “It doesn’t bother Daeman, does it?” she asked, meeting his gaze.
He lifted his brows at the articles she was waving at him. “What dis?”
Karen sent Loren a wicked look and held the bra and panties up to herself.
Daeman studied them for a moment and looked at Loren. “Like better dis way,” he said, gesturing to the ragged toga. “No cober pretty tings.”
Loren felt her face turn redder. “Well! Maybe I prefer to have my ‘pretty things’ covered up?” She returned her attention to Shara and Karen. “OK! I get first dibs! It’s my suitcase.”
Karen looked up at her hopefully. “You’re going to share?”
“Of course I am—I just want to grab my favorites.”
Karen watched Loren sort the contents into three piles with a mixture of excitement and envy every time something went into someone else’s pile. She spied something in the bottom, however, that broke her efforts to resist grabbing and snatched it up. “Birth control pills,” she gasped in awe.
Loren looked at the package wryly. “Great! I could’ve used those a while back,” she muttered.
Karen met her gaze. “You aren’t happy?”
Loren swallowed with an effort. “It’s hard to be happy about it when they clearly aren’t,” she said unevenly. Her chin wobbled. “They don’t like me anymore. If I’d had the birth control then, they still would.”
Discomfort wafted through Daeman and anger along with it both because her feelings toward the Hirachi were obvious and because the stupid bastards had made her feel as if she and the baby were unwanted. He wrestled for several moments between the urge to try to sooth her hurt and a reluctance to weaken his own chances with her by doing so. Finally, her need for reassurance trumped his selfishness, however. “Dem dumbasses tear ship apart. Look for courting gifts. Want baby. Worry ‘bout Lau-ren.”
Lau-ren sniffed, looking at him so hopefully that he felt his heart sink, realized that he’d lied to himself. He wanted far more than a chance to get her in his bed. He wanted her … and he did not have a hope in hell of having her, never had. She loved the Hirachi.
“Really?” she asked doubtfully.
He forced a smile he didn’t feel. “Truth, Lau-ren. No cry. Dem dumbasses figure dis out. You see.”
She smiled at him a little tremulously. “They aren’t dumbasses.”
He sent her a skeptical look. “Are. Lau-ren mine, I no miss chance to touch and kiss for stupid ting.”
Loren discovered that Karen was staring at her wide eyed when Daeman left. “He’s sweet on you!”
Loren felt her face redden. “No, he isn’t! He’s just … sweet.”
Karen grinned at her. “Maybe, but I got the definite impression he was letting you know he wouldn’t let grass grow under his feet if the others were too stupid to appreciate you.”
Loren cleared her throat. “Don’t make something romantic out of it,” she said irritably. “The poor man’s just horny. He’d light out like a flash if there was an unattached female around here.”
“Well, I’m not going to argue about the first part. I haven’t seen a boner like that in a while!”
“Me neider,” Shara said unhappily.
“Karen!” Loren gasped, horrified. “Did he really?”
Karen laughed heartily. “You are interested! I knew it!”
Loren swallowed convulsively. “I’m horny, damn it!” She shrugged. “And he’s a really good kisser.”
“Me also,” Shara said glumly.
“I guess nobody’s getting it,” Karen muttered, her amusement vanishing. 
* * * *
Kael was so focused on kicking himself for his blindness that it was sheer dumb luck that he found the very thing that would bring a smile to Lau-ren’s face. He froze, staring at it hard for a moment to be certain it was what he’d thought and then lifted his gaze to survey the others. None of them had noticed his discovery and after a few moments, they wandered from view.
Bending, he retrieved the strange looking hair comb and examined it carefully for flaws. It was certainly not new, but it did not look worn and it was the most unique grooming comb that he had ever seen. It would’ve been far better to make something especially for her, and he would, but she would be pleased with this to groom her beautiful hair. 
Turning away, he headed back to the lift and took it up to the control room, eager to give his shimone the gift he had found for her. To his consternation, she was not in the room—none of the women were. 
After considering it a moment, he decided to check to see if the women had gone to the gathering room for some reason and headed back to the lift. That room was also empty, however, and uneasiness began to gather inside of him. He debated whether to begin to search for her in earnest, but decided that he would check the cabin where she had sleeping first and the bathing room. 
He was disappointed that she was not in the bathing room. He had begun to have some very pleasant thoughts about finding her there. Leaving again, he headed to the cabin to see if she had gone to take a nap. 
He jolted to a halt, however, when he reached the cabin and went in. Lau-ren was there, but she was not sleeping. She whirled with a gasp of surprise when he entered, clutching something to her chest. 
“Oh! You startled me!” She paused studying him. “Did you need to talk to me about something?”
He was studying the brown box on the bed, trying to recall why it seemed familiar when he knew he had not seen it before. At the question, he looked at her, though. 
She stared at him guiltily. He knew that look. He just could not decide why she would feel guilty.
Loren smiled at Kael uneasily. “Daeman found my bag.”
Kael felt as if someone had abruptly punched him in the stomach. “Daeman?” he repeated, glancing from Lau-ren to the ‘bag’ that did not look like a bag to him, and then back again. 
“The … uh … I don’t know what race they are. The red skinned gladiator?”
Fury surged through him like a tidal wave. “Know Daeman. Why …?” He broke off. He knew why Daeman had brought her the bag.
And she had accepted the gift. 
“I will kill that bastard!” he growled. Throwing down the paltry gift that he had found that he had thought would be a very good gift until he had seen what Daeman had given her, he turned on his heel to stalk from the room, intent upon finding Daeman. Lau-ren flew at him from behind, throwing her arms around his waist. He halted, stared down at her arms, and then peeled them lose.
“Kael! Wait!” Loren said, dancing in front of him when he set her aside. 
He halted when she blocked his path, glaring down at her furiously. “Move!” he growled.
She jumped all over when he bellowed at her, but she didn’t move. “Why are you angry?” she demanded plaintively. “Just tell me that!”
He grasped her waist and lifted her up, intending to set her aside. The moment he lifted her up, however, the lifted her legs and dug her heels into his waist and grasped his shoulders. “Don’t! Don’t ruin it, Kael! Please?”
He hesitated. “Take him, shimone?”
“Oh Kael! I want you. Don’t leave. At least don’t leave angry.”
Anger and confusion collided in his expression. “Why take his gift?”
Loren released a huff of irritation. “Because it was my damned bag! I had it when I was taken! Daeman found it and brought it to me. I don’t understand why you’d be angry about it!”
Kael swallowed convulsively, recalling abruptly that he had slung the gift he had brought her down in anger instead of giving it to her. He pulled her tightly against his chest, shifting one hand to cup her head. “Make me crazy, Lau-ren,” he muttered, nuzzling her face in search of her lips. 
A thrill went through Loren. “Good! You make me crazy, too,” she murmured, tilting her face to meet his lips. A harder thrill went through her when he captured her lips beneath his and his essence invaded her, sent a rolling wave of heated delight along every nerve ending. She’d missed his kisses more than anything she thought, and it took no more that the feel of his mouth on hers, the taste of him, his touch, to resurrect the desire she’d felt for him the first time he’d kissed her, the heady excitement and anticipation. Her heart began to race with the building exhilaration. Heat blossomed between them as he made love to her mouth with his tongue, creating a cloud of their mingled scents and sending Loren into a dizzying lethargy. 
He turned, carrying her back to the bed and sprawling on it with her, clearing away the things she’d strewn across the bed as he nestled in it with her and found her mouth again, stroking a shaking over her as he explored her flesh. His eagerness made her own surge higher and she moved restlessly against him, stroking her hands over him to fill her palms and fingertips with the feel of his smooth skin and the tensile strength of the muscles beneath. 
He broke from her lips. Sucking in a harsh breath, he rode the column of her throat downward with his lips to the valley between her breasts. He kissed her there, stroking the patch of skin above her heart with his tongue and then nipping at the swell of her breasts on either side while he searched her bra for the opening. He’d just grasped one strap and shoved it from her shoulder when she finally managed to find the clasp and release it. 
“No like dis ting,” he muttered as he brushed the thin fabric from her breasts and massaged them. 
Loren smiled, lifting her eyelids to watch his face as he cupped her breast and teased the tip with his long fingers. “I won’t wear it again,” she murmured.
He smiled as he lowered his lips to capture the bud. “Wear. I take off.”
She couldn’t think of a response—or much of anything—once he’d caught her nipple between his lips and curled his tongue around it. A blitz of heat traveled through, arrowing through her belly and directly to her warming core, heating it so that it wept for him. 
She pulled at him, urging him to come inside of her, but he resisted the lure, teasing the nipple he held captive with his tongue and the suction of his mouth until she was gasping for breath. And when she’d reached fever pitch, he burned a trail with heated kisses from the peak of that breast to the other until she was so feverish with need she’d begun to thrash restlessly beneath his touch. 
Lifting his head finally, he studied her face from beneath hooded lids and moved upward again to recapture her mouth, slipping a hand along the center of her torso to her belly and then cupping her sex. She spread her legs to give him easier access as he stroked her cleft, moaning into his mouth when he found her clit and teased it with the tip of his finger. 
He broke the kiss, studying her face intently as he teased it mercilessly. “Kael!” she gasped after a few moments when she thought she couldn’t stand the torture anymore. “Come inside me—now!”
She felt his jerky movements as he tugged his loincloth off. He tossed it aside, shifting even as he did so into the cradle of her thighs and she felt his cock glide along the slick surface of her cleft. She looked up at him as he probed the mouth of her sex and found him looking down at her, curling his large frame around her to watch her face as he surged against her. 
He waged a tug of war against her resistant flesh. The mouth yielded finally to swallow the head, but she felt herself slipping up the bed when he thrust again. Shifting his hold on her, he locked his arms tightly around her and thrust again, conquering her channel by agonizing degrees that made them both breathless with anticipation. She closed her eyes tightly as he filled her and she could feel his thick flesh inching deeper, stretching her flesh until she’d sheathed him.
He paused panting for breath and withdrew almost as slowly as he’d claimed her. Sparks of pleasure rippled through her and she lifted eagerly the moment he’d withdrawn to feel him enter again. He reclaimed her molten core more swiftly with the next thrust, retreating and delving deeply with a cadence that lifted her higher and higher until she felt her climax looming. She closed her eyes tightly, tried to close her mind to it, wanting nothing more than to feel the movement of flesh inside of her, but the moment she sealed herself in darkness her body leapt forward, trying to grasp the ecstasy that beckoned. 
She gasped, found herself straining to reach culmination when only moments before she’d been struggling to hold it off, and felt herself reach the precipice. For several heart stopping moments she seemed to teeter on the edge and then she fell over, sucking in a sharp gasp and arching against him as her climax caught her and rapture blossomed and spread outward. 
He began to thrust in earnest then, riding her climax to his own, shuddering and releasing harsh, choked grunts as his body yielded up his seed. Warmth filled her at the knowledge that he’d found pleasure in her. Lifting her arms with an effort, she draped them around him, stroking his back soothingly as he shuddered in the aftermath and struggled to catch his breath. 
He eased away from her finally, withdrawing his flesh from hers, and settled beside her, bringing her close to his chest. She rubbed her face against his hard pecs, listening to the reassuring beat of his heart as it slowed to its normal rhythm, basking in the delight of his arms. 
* * * *
For a time as Kael lay with Lau-ren pressed snugly against him, his entire focus was on her and the euphoria he was floating in in the aftermath of his release. When it finally drifted through his mind, though, that it was the first time he had actually gotten to hold his lover in the aftermath of their coupling, was in fact the only time he had coupled with her beyond the time of the spawning, his mind began to drift to less pleasant things. 
He had not considered when he had been so distraught to discover that he had not prevented harm from coming to her how it must look from her viewpoint. He had been too consumed with guilt and rage each time he looked at her and saw how battered she was to think straight, to think past his own anger and frustration that he had let it happen by failing to act quickly enough. He had not been able to push from his mind the terrible thought that, if he had been any slower, she might be dead now. 
That thought had tormented him the most, the images his mind produced when he saw the bruises all over her, for those looked bad enough it took no great leap to imagine worse. Rage and frustration always followed, for there was no way, now, to avenge the attack. 
He supposed, in a sense, they had when they rescued her, and yet he had not been thinking about revenge at the time—except toward Lecur—and because he had not, there was very little satisfaction to be had from it. He could not feel purged of his rage that they would use their superior size and strength to take what had not been willingly offered, without any regard for the damage they were doing. That outraged him on so many levels it made him sick.
In truth, he had not had a very high opinion of many of the gladiators before the attack, however well they acquitted themselves in battle, but he was appalled that they were far worse even than he imagined. Fighting skills were not the sum total of the measure of a man. Strength certainly was not when it was primarily a gift of birth. Honor and integrity were the true measure of a man and any who were willing to prey upon those weaker than themselves were animals—not men.
Those thoughts brought him to Daeman and as soon as his mind turned upon that path, his satisfaction waned and the first threads of anger began to wind themselves through his mind. The Deisen in general and Daeman in particular ranked among the very few other gladiators not Hirachi that he had respected and trusted—at least to the extent that he had been willing to include them in his plan of escape. After his own people, he had gone first to the Deisen to destroy their collars, because he had come to see that, despite their physical differences, the Deisen were very much like the Hirachi in their strong sense of honor and fairness. There were as many differences in their way of looking upon things and their customs, he suspected, as there were similarities, but, as warriors, they had earned his respect. 
If he had not trusted them, he would not have allowed them access to the ship.
He looked down at Lau-ren and saw that she was sleeping. The urge to stay and enjoy simply looking at her and feeling her warm against him was strong. To stay and slowly awaken her and couple with her again was stronger. 
The urge to confront Daeman was stronger still, however. It had been as clear as day that Lau-ren had no understanding at all of their customs. A woman of his culture would never accept a gift of any kind from a man she was not willing to welcome in any other way. It was the gift itself. They all struggled to make or find a gift worthy of the object of their desires, something to show that they would be a thoughtful lover. It did not matter how rich or cunningly made the gift was. What mattered was whether or not the lover had thought it worth his time and effort to discover what would please her the most, what she liked or what she needed most. 
Lau-ren might well believe that Daeman had gone to such extraordinary lengths to find the very thing she had told them she wanted most merely out of kindness. She might believe that he had merely found it and remembered that she had wanted it.
He knew better. He had searched for it himself many times. Even that first day, when he had been more focused upon insuring that there was no threat aboard the vast machine with them and finding what they all needed to survive it had been at the front of his mind and he had looked. He knew without asking that Dakaar and Balen had also looked. 
They had not found it because Daeman had found it first and had hidden it so that he could give it to her himself. He had not done that only to be obliging! He had been searching for a way to find favor with her.
It was not his place to tell his lover who she could bestow her favors upon and who she could not. Her body and spirit were her own. He was well aware of that and he did not feel particularly threatened by Daeman in the sense that he feared the Deisen might oust him from his place, although those thoughts had run high in his mind when he had first discovered what Daeman had done. Despite the rage he had first felt, though, he knew he either earned his place in her heart and mind or he did not, that no one else could take Lau-ren’s regard from him. Only he had the power to keep it or lose it—and allowing jealousy to rule his mind and make him behave badly was the surest way to lose her. 
Lau-ren did not seem to understand that she had encouraged Daeman to believe she would accept him, however, and in that sense his actions became a deception, an attempt to take advantage of her generosity of spirit and her kind heart. He had no intention of allowing that. It was his place to protect her—from any potential threat—and he would know whether Daeman presented one or not. 
If he did not understand and respect that Lau-ren was giving far more than the use of her body as a handy receptacle to ease himself on and dump his seed, then the bastard would not touch her if he had to break him in half and stuff him in the garbage dump himself! Easing from the bed to keep from waking her, he bent down to retrieve his loincloth and strode from the room purposefully. 
He met up with Dakaar and Balen in the corridor outside. Both men looked at him with a mixture of hopefulness and resentment that he had beat them back to Lau-ren. His face tightened. He could certainly sympathize with their need when he had felt desperate himself, but they were not going to retain her favor if they put their own needs before hers. “She is sleeping. She is weak from so little food and the baby she carries,” he said tightly. “Keep that in mind.”
Dakaar and Balen both glared at him indignantly. 
“I know how to treat my lover,” Dakaar said coldly.
“It is easy for you to say,” Balen pointed out, “when you have just come from her arms!”
“True and true. I am only reminding you and pointing out that you might receive a warmer welcome if you give her a little time to rest. Disturb her if you are so determined to make asses of yourselves!”
“Where are you going?” Dakaar asked when he had digested that.
“Daeman was before all of us,” Kael growled angrily. “I will see what his intentions are.”
Dakaar and Balen exchanged a look of outrage and disbelief and hurried after him. 
“He is courting our woman?” Dakaar demanded angrily.
“She is only yours if she says that she is yours,” Kael reminded him.
“She did say that!” Dakaar retorted angrily. “If I had not allowed my anger to rule me ….”
“But you did,” Balen said pointedly.
Dakaar turned to glare at him. “What is this about the Deisen?”
“He waited until we were occupied trying to find gifts for her to apologize for our thoughtlessness and gave her the box that she had been wanting.”
“The brown box that looks the same as the loincloths and is this big?” Dakaar demanded, making the shape and size with his hands as Lau-ren had.
“That box—which was filled with many things.”
“Why?” Balen demanded suspiciously.
Kael sent him a sardonic look. “I will beat the answer out of him and then we will know.”

Chapter Thirteen
Daeman was not pleased at the intrusion when he had gone to great lengths to find solitude to wrestle with the thoughts creating such havoc within him. That it was the very men responsible to a great extent for the chaos made their presence in the cargo bay where he had retreated all the more unwelcome and anger surged through him even before he noticed the tension in them and their expressions of anger. 
That in itself created more conflict, however, when he did notice their aggression. Hope surged through him at once that Lau-ren had indicated in some way that she returned his interest and then died when he realized that it was most likely only the gift itself that had enraged them. His anger intensified at that thought, churned higher by the reflection that they considered him unworthy of her interest simply by virtue of being Deisen, rather than Hirachi.
They would not have questioned his right to court her if he had been Hirachi!
He surged to his feet at that thought, angry enough to challenge all three at once, although a calmer mind would not have given him any assurance that he had a chance of triumphing over those odds. In truth, he might have entertained doubts that he could best any of the three alone. He certainly would not have been so lost to all reason as to think he could best them all.
Indignation was piled upon the unpleasant certainty that they stood between him and the woman that he wanted, however, and topping that was the hope of avenging that frustration and purging the unfamiliar sense of defeat churning in his belly. He assumed a wide legged stance for battle, feeling a fierce satisfaction that they were unarmed as he was. It would be a battle with fists that would allow him to expend his own anger and aggression.
Dakaar and Balen slowed when they saw Daeman take up a fighting stance. As angry as they both were at what Kael had told them, he had announced his intentions first and they moved to a position to take part as spectators only. If Daeman felt up to challenging them when Kael was done with him, then they would have their chance to fight him.
Dakaar seriously doubted that he would and, even if he did, it was not likely that he would be in any condition to make it a fair fight. He would just have to be satisfied, he decided, with Kael being Lau-ren’s champion—unless Daeman was stupid enough to challenge him himself. 
Hope surged in him briefly, but he had not noticed that Daeman was stupid and it died almost as quickly as it had arisen.
Balen’s thoughts were much the same, but he decided that he would merely wait for Daeman to recover and then challenge him. However it turned out, and he had little doubt that Kael would emerge the victor, he would not be satisfied until he had confronted Daeman himself.
Kael narrowed his eyes assessingly when he halted in front of Daeman instead of launching a blow to his face as he was more than half inclined to. It would be deeply satisfying to simply pound on him until he couldn’t get up, but it would not give him the answers he sought. Fortunately, the Deisen had learned the Hirachi language and there was some hope that they might come to an understanding. “Why did you give Lau-ren a gift?”
Daeman’s face tightened. “Because I wished to,” he growled.
Kael’s lips compressed with his own anger. “That is not the answer to the question I asked.”
“You have brought a great deal of company to ask your questions,” Daeman said sarcastically.
Kael lifted his brows. “You impugn the honor of the Hirachi. Is this because you have none yourself?”
Daeman’s fury nearly blinded him at that. “You believe the Hirachi are the sole possessors of any sense of honor? Is that what this is about? You think I soil Lau-ren only by wanting her when I am not Hirachi?”
“Do you?”
Daeman lost his reason then. Uttering a bellow of rage, he clenched his hands into fists and threw his weight into the punch he swung at Kael’s taunting face. His rage cost him as anger was inclined to do. Kael blocked the punch easily and retaliated with one of his own that sent Daeman staggering back several feet before he regained his balance. He was too enraged to feel more than the impact of the blow, however, and his failure to punch through Kael’s defense only added frustration. 
He surged forward again and for many moments they stood toe to toe, trading hammering blows with one another to the face and torso, blocking some and deflecting others with their meaty forearms. They fell back from one another after a few minutes to catch their breath for another round.
By that time, Daeman had expended much of his rage and some modicum of reason had reasserted itself, however. 
“Was I right, Deisen? I will not allow you to soil her with your touch if you think only to take advantage of her!”
“By what right do you question me, Hirachi!” Deisen bellowed, furious all over again. “It is her decision!”
“She is my shimone! That gives me the right and honor of protecting her! I would take it if she had not given me that honor! She cannot defend her honor herself and I will allow no one to use her weakness against her! You are right that she alone has the right to choose, but I will see to it that she does choose!”
As angry as it made Daeman to have that accusation tossed at him, the last gave him pause. He straightened, eyeing Kael assessingly. “You are saying that the choice is hers?”
“It is always the woman’s choice whether to give herself or not. It is hers to give!”
Daeman studied him curiously. “Then I do not understand.”
Kael narrowed his eyes. “I believe you do, Deisen. I believe that you know that she is gentle of nature and generous of heart. The question is, is your intent to take advantage? Or do you mean to give, as well?”
“I gave her a gift.”
“Aye, you did, but do you believe that you have bought something with it as those others on the space station believed? You cannot buy her respect and admiration or her affection. You must earn it! And she will not sell anything else to you! She believed it a gift of generosity. You have made her believe that you are offering as much or more than you are asking for. Is that the case or not, Deisen?”
Daeman felt his face heat. He would almost have preferred to beat Kael unconscious or be beaten down himself to admitting to another warrior that he was captivated by a woman, weak where she was concerned. Truthfully, he had not entirely settled how he felt in his own mind. “I want her,” he growled finally. “That is enough.”
“That is not enough! If you only want to fuck, then you will do without or you will find a woman who can allow it without being wounded when you abandon her for another that catches your fancy!”
“The three of you share her!” he said angrily. 
“You are wrong and you are more stupid than I thought!” Kael bellowed. “She cares for us—each of us! This is not a gift that is diminished or divided by numbers. She would care no more for me if she did not give to them. She cares no less because she also cares for them. What is mine is mine and for me alone! The only thing that we share is the time she gives us and that, too, is her gift, her decision. She is very careful to be just.
“You are even more wrong if you are so blinded by greed that you believe that there is some way that you can have her entirely to yourself. That will never happen. She is carrying a child now. When it comes, she will care for it, give to her child whatever time it needs—and it will have needs greater than yours—mine, or theirs. 
“If you try to make her chose, if you demand more than she is willing or has to give ….” He stopped shaking his head in disgust. “You will lose anything that you might gain if you cannot accept that you cannot own her. She is not a thing that you can possess, mindless and without a heart. That will always be divided between those she cares for.”
Daeman studied him uncomfortably, realizing that it was the truth, however unpalatable it was or contrary to the way he had always thought of mating. He had not found the woman that he wanted for his own before he was captured, but he had been searching. He had considered that when he found her, though, she would belong only to him. He did not believe, even though he felt, deep down, that Kael was right, that he could settle for that. 
He did not want to share her! He wanted her to himself. It would tear his heart out each time she welcomed one of the others into her bed. He would imagine her giving to them what was his.
Even if that was not true. 
It was eating him alive now, though. 
Kael had lain with her or he would not know anything about the gift he had given Lau-ren. For several moments, rage threatened to overcome reason again, but it was the very fact that it did, that he felt sick with jealousy, that he realized that was not going to go away if he tried to turn his back on her. 
“I am not like you,” he said tightly. “I want all of her for myself!”
Some of the tension left Kael, although he was still braced to fight if necessary. He grimaced. “You are not as different as you think,” he said dryly. “It is not easy for us to allow reason to rule us and ignore our own instincts to try to eliminate any and all competition. We make it work because we have a common goal—to protect her—and the alternative is less palatable. You will not find a welcome from any of us, but we are bound by our honor and affection to defend her right to choose anyone she considers worthy … so long as we are certain that you are worthy and will not hurt her.”
Daeman swallowed with an effort. “I would not hurt her,” he said tightly. “I was as angry as you were that the others had!”
Kael studied him for a long moment and finally nodded. “I am satisfied.”
Daeman did not think he was particularly satisfied, but he did not challenge Kael again. He turned to look at Dakaar and Balen. Both gave him a long, hard look, seemed to wrestle with themselves and finally appeared to dismiss him as any threat. That realization thoroughly pissed Daeman off, but he thought, wryly, that he had enough aches and pains to satisfy him for the moment.
He was still angry enough when they left that he had no desire for company. He settled again, wrestling with his conflicting thoughts and urges. It would be better if he could simply put her from his mind, he knew, but could he? There were other women in the pods. They could not be released—might remain there forever if they could not find a way to feed them. They certainly could not release them when they could not adequately feed themselves.
Still, there was some chance that they might find a place to live as free men even if they did not find their way home. There were no Deisen women among them that he had seen, but there were Hirachi women and there were others like Lau-ren and Ka-ren. Mayhap he would find another who called to him to mate? Or mayhap the Hirachi would?
He tried for a while to convince himself that it was not only possible. It was likely. In his heart of hearts, though, he knew better. He had not found a woman before Lau-ren that had instantly made him think ‘mate’. How likely was it, given that indisputable fact, that he would find another that would put her from his mind?
He would settle for another, he decided. He would find a woman who would share herself only with him, and he would take her as his mate. That was the most important thing, wasn’t it? That he would not have to share? It was not as important that she blinded him to any desire for another as it was that she was blinded to a desire for anyone else.
He was not entirely satisfied with that, but he realized that he simply was not going to be entirely satisfied. There was no point in belaboring something that was not within his power to change. He had already had to accept that Lau-ren cared for the Hirachi. He had not wanted to, but he had seen in her eyes that she did. If he could recover from that blow, then he could recover his heart and find another woman—and he would, by the gods!
* * * *
Loren woke with a sense of well being that she hadn’t felt in a long time. Stretching luxuriously, she rolled closer to the warm form next to hers and stroked her hand over his big, hard body appreciatively. Disconcerted when her searching hand encountered a loincloth, she tipped her head to look up at Kael and discovered it was Dakaar watching her with a mixture of desire and wariness. 
He lifted a hand and settled it along her cheek and shoulder. “You say take back,” he reminded her huskily. 
She had, but she’d long since decided that he’d declined the offer—not that she intended to rescind the offer! It was disconcerting, to say the very least, to fall asleep in Kael’s arms and wake up in Dakaar’s, though, and she wasn’t certain she especially appreciated that. In fact, she knew damned well she didn’t.
“Brought ting special for you,” he added, apparently noticing that she was more than just a little disconcerted. 
“I know. I felt it,” she retorted dryly.
He grinned a little sheepishly. “Udder ting, shimone!”
Appeased that he wasn’t quite as certain of his welcome as she’d first thought, she relaxed. “Why don’t you show me the ‘ting’ I already found first?” she suggested teasingly.
His eyes gleamed with a surge of hunger that was unmistakable. “I show you dat ting, you play wid?”
Loren sent him a look of promise. “Oh, I will,” she murmured huskily, still half teasing but feeling warmth already begin to flow through her like warm molasses at the look in his eyes. “I’ll stroke it and kiss it and suck on it, if you like.”
He swallowed convulsively a couple of times. His hand drifted from her cheek to her belly. “Like dat.” He pushed his fingers between her legs and traced her cleft to her sex. “Like better you put here.”
She leaned close enough to nibble on his chest and throat. “You’re sure you don’t want me to suck it?”
He dragged in a difficult, shaky breath. “Long time, shimone,” he said hoarsely. “Him spit and fall dead you do dat. No do you no good.” 
Loren burst out laughing. She met his gaze. “I think I might be able to resuscitate him if he does.”
“Resus …? How do dat?” he asked, clearly confused about the word.
Loren nibbled at his chin. “Suck on him some more,” she murmured, her voice shaky with the effort to keep from chuckling again. “I think he might rise from the dead with a little love.” 
He palmed the side of her face again. “Keep talking suck, shimone, him spit and we neider hab no fun,” he growled, planting his mouth firmly over hers and kissing her so fiercely her toes curled and her sex began quaking in demand. 
She fed on the desperation in his touch, felt an answering echo surge to life so that she wanted to bypass any further foreplay and get straight down to the business of mounting the throbbing shaft she’d discovered. He resisted every effort she made to accomplish her goal. Although he made no attempt to stop her when she tugged at the ties of his loincloth until she’d unveiled the monolith, he merely straightened, carrying it out of her reach every time she managed to grab hold of it. 
“Dakaar,” she gritted out finally. “You said you wanted to put it inside me.”
He released the nipple he’d been torturing reluctantly and muttered as he sought the twin, “Do. Pleasure you first.”
“Pleasure me with it,” she demanded.
“No can hold dat long.”
“I’m going to come without you if you don’t put it in,” she threatened.
He jerked his head up to study her face. Apparently, he decided to take her word for it. He surged over her, pushing her thighs wide and planting the thick knob of flesh against the mouth of her sex. She’d only been half serious about the threat, but she discovered she was a lot closer than she’d realized. She began to come as soon as he’d managed to root a path along her channel deep enough to reach the nerve bundle of her g-spot. 
Uttering a sharp gasp that was part surprise, part ecstasy, she bucked against him. A hard shudder went through him as the muscles along her channel began convulsing around his flesh. Grunting as if he’d had the breath knocked from him, he surged deeper the moment her grip on him loosened. His hips jerked, almost as if of their own accord. He sucked in a harsh breath and drove deeply again, withdrawing almost at once and plunging again and again to pump his seed into her. 
As swift as the ride was, it was deeply satisfying and left Loren weak in the aftermath of her release. 
Still quaking with the occasional tremor from his own release, Dakaar uttered a deep groan. “Tol’ too long,” he muttered against the mattress. 
“Mmm,” Loren murmured. “It felt good, though.”
He lifted his head and studied her cautiously. “Gib pleasure, shimone?”
She opened her eyes to study his worried face and caught it between her palms, dragging him closer for a kiss. “I told you I was ready to come.”
He scanned her face and finally relaxed. Shifting off of her, he gathered her close. “Do better next time. Promise.”
Loren smiled against his chest. “I don’t know if I can handle better. That was pretty intense.”
“Make come twice,” he threatened.
Loren decided not to respond to that. She knew he couldn’t, but she didn’t mind him trying.
He showed her he could.
* * * *
If the sound emanating from the gathering room was any indication, Loren thought as she and Dakaar approached, everyone was in a far better mood than they had been since they’d begun the trip. She felt her own spirits, already high, surge upward a notch, felt a heady sense of anticipation thread her veins. For the first time since she’d been offered the ‘exciting’ job by the government, she felt as if she was looking at future that held infinite promise. Even the thought of having the face lizard-man food for a while longer wasn’t enough to deflate her mood. 
Kael’s face was. 
He turned as she neared the table with Dakaar to give her a welcoming smile. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw his face, so fast that Dakaar, who’d been following only a step behind her with one hand riding possessively along her waist, nearly ran her down. He caught her as she was jostled forward, righting her, but Loren hardly noticed. As soon it pierced her shock that the lumps on his face were from fists, her gaze shifted to Daeman. Almost as if he felt her gaze, he lifted his head and looked straight at her, flicked a glance at Dakaar, and then returned his attention to the plate in front of him.
It was enough, however, for Loren to see that his face looked as bad or worse than Kael’s. Dismay descended over her like a black cloud. They’d fought and it was her fault! If she’d had any sense at all she would’ve told Kael she’d found the damn suitcase herself!
Or she would’ve hidden it!
He’d caught her by surprise, though, when she was trying on the clothes she hadn’t seen in so long—or ever thought to see again—that it had felt like she’d gone shopping and returned with all sorts of exciting new things. She hadn’t had time to reverse engines when she’d seen that Kael was suspicious. Truthfully, it hadn’t occurred to her that it would make him angry at all!
The swift descent from glory to purgatory left her feeling disoriented as she took her place between Dakaar and Kael. She had a feeling everybody at the table knew about the fight and knew why it had happened and she felt too guilty about causing dissention in their little group to look around.
Kael leaned around her to talk to Dakaar in their own language. She thought at first that he was recounting the fight, but then Dakaar grinned and sent her a look that was part appreciative and part disapproving. [“You no tell find place hunt!” he said chidingly.]
Loren had already opened her mouth to tell him she’d been preoccupied when she caught a glance of the other people at the table. She closed her mouth again, feeling her face heat. 
Dakaar chuckled, tapping the bottom of her chin. He leaned closer. “Tink dey know why late.”
Loren met Balen’s gaze when Dakaar leaned back. His eyes were warm. “We talk after eat?”
Disconcerted, she flicked a look at Dakaar, turning redder at the look on his face. “Wait see if puke,” Dakaar advised him.
She glared at him, but she realized he was joking—at her expense, of course. She shrugged. “I’m getting better at holding it down—There won’t be any bouncing involved in our chat, will there?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at Balen innocently.
He laughed out loud, drawing the attention of half the table.
Rolling her eyes, she glanced at Kael speculatively, but decided not to open that can of worms. Hopefully, they’d settled the dispute. It seemed like a bad idea, if that was a possibility, to bring it up. 
Dakaar leaned close. “Him no pretty now. Lumps. Daeman rearrange.”
Kael sent him a deadly look and grimaced. “Hard talk. Deisen’s face no pretty neider.”
Loren cleared her throat and reached for the platter as Kael passed it to her. The food looked about as appetizing as ever—which was to say it didn’t. The guys took turns cooking. After she and Karen had puked all over the pantry, they’d apparently decided not to risk letting them cook it. She certainly hadn’t argued. As disgusting as it looked, and was, cooked, she didn’t want to know what it looked like before.
“Kael’s face is always pretty,” she murmured, sliding a glance at him. “Even with lumps.”
He sent her a smoldering look that would’ve been far more effective without the lumps.
“Bad eyes,” Dakaar said. “Kael not pretty without lumps.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Loren said tartly.
“An’ Lau-ren have bad eyes,” Balen agreed.
The comment brought to mind the night he’d brought her off with his mouth and she squirmed a little in her seat. “My eyes work just fine for what I need to see. I can feel the rest—and that can be fun.”
Daeman got up abruptly and stalked from the room. Her attention caught by his sudden departure, Loren gaped at him in dismay. He didn’t look at her, however, and she returned her attention to her plate, wondering if they’d been talking loud enough he’d overheard the conversation. 
She flicked a glance at the other two men Kael had referred to as Deisen and saw that neither one of them looked particularly happy. That was when she realized that most of the ‘happy sounds’ were coming from the Hirachi and the women.
Apparently, they’d made it pretty obvious that they were chirping like songbirds because they’d all gotten laid—or had the prospect of it. 
Guilt smote her. Not that she didn’t think they had a right to a little happiness, but it seemed inconsiderate to rub it in the faces of the other men. 
Karen seemed to think so, too. She caught the eye of one of the Deisen and smiled at him. 
Frowning, Loren glanced at Karen’s ‘men’, more than half expecting a fight to erupt. To her surprise, although they followed the look, and they didn’t look especially happy about it, none of them took exception. 
Well, she thought, Karen was something else if she was thinking about adding a Deisen to her collection. She already had four Hirachi! 
When she finally glanced around the table again, she saw that Shara seemed equally fascinated with the other Deisen. Shaking her head, she focused on the battle between her stomach and the food. She didn’t push it. She never did because her stomach simply rebelled and chucked it if she tried to force it. Her stomach had shrunk so much, in any case, that it didn’t take much to feel full. 
As she’d more than half feared, she wasn’t feeling jaunty enough to anticipate her ‘talk’ with Balen. He seemed grimly determined, however, and she decided she could at least try for his sake. 
Not that it was her fault that they’d avoided her so long! 
Well, she mentally amended, maybe it hadn’t been altogether their fault. No doubt she’d been sick regularly enough that they wouldn’t have approached her even if they had gotten over being angry about the assault. 
Of course, she suspected her pregnancy had a lot to do with being sick, but she couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t have been sick anyway. She was so looking forward to setting down on whatever planet the computer took them to! She thought they ought to be able to find something that was at least sort of familiar to her. After all, she reasoned, they were all different and still really similar in a lot of ways. 
Something cow-like or chicken-like would be really welcome! Even if it didn’t taste the same, maybe it would be similar enough she could pretend it was.
Balen surprised and pleased her with his thoughtfulness. He seemed perfectly content to curl up with her on the bed and simply cuddle after he’d given her the gift he’d found for her. He actually seemed more focused on talking about the new planet. 
“Feel good get off dis machine, feel wind on face—see ting besides stars and walls.”
Loren sighed blissfully, enjoying the slow, massaging glide of his hands. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine what it might look like. “There must be green things like on Earth,” she murmured. “Sad to say, I never really saw that much greenery when I was on Earth. It’s weird that I could miss it so much.”
“Why no see green?”
She shrugged. “There isn’t a lot in the cities—some, but not like the countryside. And I spent most of the last four years on Earth underground in a secret government facility.” She sighed. “It was in the middle of a desert anyway, so there wasn’t much green to see.”
She shifted to look at his face, wondering if it would bother him to talk about his own world, and finally asked him. 
His expression tightened.
“It’s alright. We don’t have to talk about it,” she said quickly.
He shook his head. “Remember bad tings. Was good, too.” He fell silent, thinking. Finally, he lifted his hand. “Land roll to sea. High land behind dat. Mountains. Sky an’ sea like Lau-ren’s eyes.”
Loren closed her eyes, trying to imagine it. “You didn’t live in the sea?”
When he didn’t answer, she opened her eyes again. His expression made her hurt. “Yes. Much time. Need air breathe, though. The sheloni know dis. Find de pods … de village. Blow up. Catch Hirachi when must come up to breathe. No can fight dere. No can run or hide. We move away from de sea, build new village. Make look like de mountains. Still no good.”
She supposed from that that the people that had captured him were the sheloni. She hadn’t heard the name before. She wondered how they’d ended up at the space station, if the sheloni were like the trader and simply went around stealing people from their lives and selling them into slavery. 
It passed comprehension that there was so much technology so far advanced from anything familiar to her, and yet so much barbarism. But she supposed they considered the Hirachi beneath them and fair game. 
She lifted a hand to his hard cheek and stroked it lightly. He met her gaze and the unfocused look left his eyes. His gaze flickered over her face. “Was angry and very sad. Find Lau-ren, dis go away.”
Loren felt the sudden urge to cry. Instead, she lifted up and pressed her lips to his. “I’m glad you found me, too.”
It was strange, but the moment she said it, she realized just how very true it was. She hadn’t thought, even once before, that the road she’d been thrust so unwillingly upon had led her to the Hirachi and that she would’ve missed that one worthwhile thing if none of it had happened. It put everything else into perspective as never before. She smiled faintly. “Maybe we were meant to find each other?”
“I tink dis, too,” he murmured, following her as she leaned away and covering her mouth in a heated kiss. 
She dismissed her qualms about her stomach, enjoying the rise of heat, and found she needn’t have worried. He made love to her slowly and carefully, with infinite patience belied by the tremors of need she felt in him and he carried her to glory. 

Chapter Fourteen
Loren, Karen, and Shara were near a state of hysterical excitement as they stared at the view of the planet below them via the ship’s monitor. Loren didn’t think she would’ve been quite as wrought up over it if it hadn’t come as such a surprise. It had taken them weeks to reach the first world where they’d been chased off. It hadn’t taken much more to reach the target planet the computer had told them about.
Of course, she hadn’t told the computer before to ‘put the pedal to the metal’, and, unfortunately, the hyper drives had ate up a good bit of the fuel. 
She dismissed that anxiety for the moment. She didn’t think they would’ve survived much longer in space on the rations they had. All of them were far too thin. As much as she enjoyed being thinner herself, she hadn’t enjoyed it long before she’d dropped enough weight that she’d begun to be seriously alarmed because of the baby. 
She thought the men were almost as excited as they were, though, naturally, being men, they seemed to think jumping up and down and squealing with excitement like a bunch of cheerleaders just wasn’t manly. 
The trip down to the landing point the computer had chosen was long enough that it had worn a good bit of the edge off of Loren’s excitement. She was still ready to race everyone else to the lift and head down to the bay as soon as the computer announced that they had landed. 
She had to turn around and race back to the console to tell the computer to cut the engines and prepare to open the bay doors. The first group had already headed down by the time she reached the lift again, and she looked at her men apologetically as waited impatiently for the lift to return. 
“No look like dat,” Kael said. “We see together.”
Relieved, Loren smiled more brightly. “Ooooh! I can’t wait!”
Even Daeman, whom she discovered to her surprise had waited to go with their group, looked more light hearted than he had for a while. She smiled at him tentatively, wondering if he was still angry with her about the fight he’d had with Kael because of her big mouth. 
He stared at her for a long moment and finally smiled back.
It wasn’t much of a smile, but it made her feel better. She’d had the distinct feeling that he’d gone out of his way to avoid her ever since.
Not that she was surprised. It couldn’t have been very pleasant to be forced to fight over something he shouldn’t have had to defend. She still didn’t really understand why Kael had gotten so angry about it. He didn’t get angry like that when either Dakaar or Balen did far more than that … in front of him!
Maybe it was because they were all Hirachi and Daeman wasn’t?
Not that that actually made any sense to her. She’d always thought it was a territorial thing with guys and if that was the case, shouldn’t they feel the same way about each other?
Maybe it was a … race thing? They didn’t seem to have any problem with him otherwise.
She dismissed it when the door to the lift opened, surging inside.
There was something about being in such a tight enclosed space, she discovered, that made her more aware of the size of the men towering over her than she’d been in a very long time. She looked up at Kael and Dakaar, who were standing on either side of her. 
Dakaar grinned at her and patted the top of her head. “Little ting.”
She supposed, wryly, the close quarters had made them notice it more, too. “Pole,” she retorted without heat.
“What pole?” he asked, still grinning.
“Tall and skinny.”
His brows rose. He looked down to examine himself. “No skinny.”
Loren’s amusement died as she studied him. He was much thinner, regardless of the dispute. She just hoped they could find food before they all got weaker. 
The smells of the new world assaulted her as soon as the lift door opened. The air felt thick with the wealth of aromas—not all of them entirely pleasant. They discovered when they’d left the lift that the rest their group was standing at the top of the gangplank, surveying the new world.
That thought sent a shiver through her that was part excitement and part trepidation. There was no telling what it would be like, what sort of animals must roam this world, but the view she had as she neared the open bay doors was more than a little scary. Before them lay a wild tangle of growth that had clearly never seen the hand of any being born of a civilization. She was actually stunned that the computer had found a location that was relatively flat to land.
As she stepped through the opening, she heard a sound she hadn’t heard in years … the crash of ocean waves on a shore line. She glanced up at the Hirachi sharply and saw the sheer joy in their eyes to hear it.
“Sea,” Kael said, his voice harsh with a yearning she’d never heard before.
Loren felt her throat close and she looked at the others. She knew they were sea people and yet she hadn’t realized exactly what that meant until that moment. 
The sea was their true home. 
She’d always loved the sea—from the shore. 
Maybe they liked the view of the land from the sea, but it emphasized the differences between them as never before. 
“Hunt first. Go to sea later,” Kael said after a long moment.
He turned to Dakaar. “We need tools to clear a wide area and make a camp.”
Nodding, Dakaar turned and called to three other men and disappeared into the ship again. 
“Where are they going?”
“Get tings cut dis,” he said, waving a hand toward the jungle before them. “Make camp. Den we hunt.”
Loren looked at Karen. This was where they should’ve stepped up. ‘Oh no! We can make camp!’ She inched a little closer to Karen. “Have you ever been camping before?”
“In an RV,” Karen said dryly. “This doesn’t look like the KOA.”
Loren smiled at Kael a little uncertainly. “What can we do to help?”
The approval in his eyes, she decided, was worth it even if she had to do battle with creepy things. “We cut. Women’s make pile for burn.”
“How are we going to start a fire?” Karen asked blankly.
“The guys can do it.”
Karen lifted her brows, but she didn’t question it. “I’m wondering if it’s really such a good idea. There’s an awful lot to burn,” she said uneasily. 
“I think they know what they’re doing. I hope so, anyway.”
Dakaar and the men who’d gone with him reappeared a short time later, carrying blades of some kind. Apparently, they’d discovered them among the trader’s goods because they looked like they worked surprisingly well once the men started swinging them. 
Tired of standing, she sat down on the gangplank when Karen and Shara did, watching in fascination as the men formed a line and laid waste to the brush.
“My god they are beautiful men,” Karen said dreamily. 
Loren was mesmerized by the play of muscles herself. “What?” she asked vaguely.
“Nice,” Shara agreed. 
It wasn’t until the men paused and looked back to gauge how much they’d cleared that it dawned on Loren that she’d told Kael they would help. Nudging Karen and Shara, she got up and moved down the gangplank. 
There were things crawling along the cut brush they discovered very quickly. Karen managed to grab one with the first branch she picked up and let out a shriek when it wiggled in her hand that echoed for miles Loren was sure. The men swung around instantly, lifting their blades. After watching Karen dance in a wild circle for several moments, slinging her hands frantically, two of her men crossed the clearing they’d made and searched the ground for whatever it was that had distressed her. 
“Bug!” she squealed, pointing. 
Kadar beheaded it and sent Karen a look that was a mixture of amused tolerance and irritation. “No scream. Scare beasts.”
Karen looked at him indignantly. “But … it bit me!”
Frowning, he took her hand and examined it. “Bite where?”
Karen stared hard at her hand for a long moment. “I thought it bit me,” she muttered.
He patted her head and pointed to the gangplank. “Sit dere. No scream!” he added chidingly. “Scare away food.”
Karen released a huff of irritation when Kadar and Gaden left. “Some bugs are poisonous,” she said defensively. “How are we supposed to know whether these are or not?”
Loren studied the ground uneasily. “I guess we’ll just have to be careful they don’t get the chance to bite … or sting.”
“Do you think there might be snakes?” 
Loren blinked at her. “Will you stop it!” she finally said crossly. “This creeps me out already. You want them to think we’re useless?”
They’d already started a pile when Kael strode back to them. Catching Loren’s shoulders, he turned her and pointed to the outer edge of the clearing they’d made. “Put dere. No set machine on fire.”
“Oh.” Loren studied the pile at the foot of the gangplank and then looked across the clearing at the spot Kael had indicated. “Won’t the fire scare away the animals?”
He nodded, giving her an approving look. “Yes. Keep beasts out ob camp when dark.”
He pointed to the sun that was sinking toward the tops of the trees in the distance.
“Oh hell no!” Karen said when he’d left. “If they think for one second that I’m sleeping out here, they have another thought coming!”
“Me neider,” Shara agreed. 
Loren glanced at them unhappily. “Surely they won’t expect us to?”
“It sounded to me like that was what he was suggesting,” Karen said tightly. “There’s no bed. There’s no bathroom. There are bugs everywhere! My black ass is going to be barricaded in that cabin in the ship come dark! I’ll tell you that!”
Loren couldn’t help but grin at her. “My white ass will be, too.”
“An’ my blue ass!”
They grinned at each other and then turned to survey the clearing again, the smiles dying. “Ok,” Loren said, girding herself. “Let’s do this.”
They high-stepped across the clearing to the spot Kael had pointed out, trying to touch down as little as possible. Loren was breathless by the time they arrived and she found a spot to place her feet. 
The men, they discovered, had paused in their work to watch them.
Deciding to ignore the grins, Loren bent over to grab a branch and tossed it. It actually took a pretty good while to clear the area directly around them since they examined each piece of foliage and each branch for wild life before they picked it up, but Loren was more enthusiastic when she saw clear ground. It made it easier to see the crawling things scurrying in every direction, but that wasn’t altogether a bad thing since it also made it easier to dodge them. 
Discovering after a little bit that it was growing darker, Loren decided to focus on clearing a path from the burn pile to the ship to make for an easier retreat when the time came. She discovered when she stopped to stretch the kinks out of her back that nearly half the men had disappeared. Uneasiness immediately assailed her. A search beyond the clearing finally gave her a glimpse of a couple of the men moving away from the ship and the clearing.
Discovering that Balen was standing at the edge, watching the men leaving, she called out to him. “Where are they going?”
He whipped around and looked at her and then shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“Uh oh,” Karen muttered as he started toward them. “You’re in for it now girl! Screaming is a no-no. You’ll scare the animals.”
“I didn’t scream,” Loren said indignantly.
“No talk loud, neider!” Balen said irritably. He looked them all over. “Go in machine, now. Dark soon.”
“How are the guys going to find their way back?” Loren asked uneasily.
“See fire.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice!” Karen said with relief, tossing the last branch she’d picked up in the direction of the pile and picking her way carefully toward the gangplank. 
“Oh god! Yuck! I think I stepped on something!” Loren gasped when they were nearly at the foot of the gangplank. Making a moue of distaste, she lifted her foot and examined it.
“I think it was just an oozy bush,” Karen said. “It’s green.”
“Ok, I’m going to pretend that’s what it was.” She was still shuddering when they got to the lift. 
Karen punched the number of the level when they’d gotten on. “Well! This was thrilling!”
“I think I might not where my heels tomorrow,” Loren said thoughtfully. “I wish to hell I’d packed something besides fucking heels! What was I thinking?”
“You were thinking you were going to impress a bunch of aliens,” Karen said, grinning wryly. “And look! We have!”
“We didn’t do that bad,” Loren said defensively. “We got a lot done.”
Karen and Shara exchanged a look, but they didn’t argue. 
“I guess you aren’t used to this either?” Loren asked Shara.
“No. My world much rocks. No see ….” She waved her hands. “Dis.”
“Jungle. There is no way I’d call that a forest!” Loren said. “Would you?”
Karen shook her head. “When I think of forest, I think of … a park, you know? I wonder how long we’ll have to stay here,” she mused when they got off on the level where their quarters were.
Loren released a gusty sigh. “I guess that depends on how far away we scared the animals.”
“Humph!” Karen snorted. “As if this thing wouldn’t have sent them scurrying in every direction! What do they think they’re going to do, anyway? Sneak up on them?”
“I don’t know. They call in hunting. I guess they hunt until they find something.”
“I think we might as well resign ourselves to more of the lizard-man’s grubs,” Karen said glumly.
“Don’t say that! I’ve been trying really hard not to think that way when I have to eat the damned things!” Loren snapped.
“The entire bay is going to be working alive with bugs by tomorrow. Mark my words! That’s probably going to be dinner for the next leg of the trip. They left with machetes! What are they going to get with those? They don’t even have guns!”
They came back with a beast so huge it took four of them to carry it. It was the most horrible thing Loren had ever seen in her life and that was before they started hacking it up and pulling the guts out. 
The men had been gone so long that she’d been too worried to wait inside any longer and had crept down to the bay to see if there was any sign of them. Fortunately, all of the men had swarmed around the thing to help hack it up and she couldn’t see all that well, even though they’d dropped the carcass near the huge fire Balen had built. 
She debated with herself and finally settled on the edge of the bay floor with her feet on the gangplank, listening to the men. She didn’t doubt those who’d killed the thing were recounting their hunt even though she couldn’t understand a word of it, and she smiled faintly, wishing abruptly that she could understand them. 
The language they used to communicate with didn’t belong to any of them. It suddenly seemed important that she make an attempt to learn their language when one of them had fathered her baby. She dropped her hand to her belly after a bit, feeling a faint flutter. At first, she was inclined to dismiss it as a muscle twitch, but when she felt it again it was on the other side. A smile blossomed slowly as it dawned on her that it was the baby.
She could feel the baby moving!
A sense of awe filled her. She hadn’t really thought in terms of having a baby growing inside of her. She’d thought about being pregnant. She’d noticed that the slight puffiness had given way to a new roundness, but she still hadn’t thought about it in terms of a new life, a new person. 
She was still waiting breathlessly for the next movement when the men finally turned and started toward the gangplank, carrying chunks of raw meat on their shoulders. 
Kael paused at the foot, looking up at her. She grinned at him, searching for Dakaar and Balen. “I felt it move.”
Kael’s eyes sharpened on her face for a moment and then drifted to where her hand cupped her belly. Grinning abruptly, he threw a comment over his shoulder at Dakaar and Balen. She surged to her feet when they strode up the gangplank, beaming at them. “It’s moving. It’s alright.” She felt her chin wobble precariously when she said it. She hadn’t even realized how fearful she was that it might not be until she discovered it was alright. 
Kael lifted a hand toward her face, stopped abruptly to examine it and dropped it to his side again. “Celebrate,” he said shakily. “Big feast.”
Loren chuckled as she looked up at the ‘roast’ he was carrying. “Very big feast!”
She surged toward him abruptly, uncaring that he was bloody all over from cutting up their kill. She needed contact. He made a tsking sound when she put her arms around him, but he slipped an arm around her shoulders and planted a kiss on her forehead. 
“Now mess!” he said chidingly. “Like me.”
Loren grinned at him. “Looks like dinner will take a while. We can share the shower.”
* * * *
Loren thought for sure that she was going to starve to death before the food was done. The aroma was enough to have her stomach growling long before it was served. Kael and Dakaar and Balen managed to distract her in the shower for a little while—and in the bed a while after that, but as pleasurable as that was, they’d still managed to exhaust that avenue of entertainment long before the food was done. 
No one was disappointed that they had nothing to go with it, either, once it was served. It tasted as heavenly as it smelled and everyone very cheerfully gorged until they couldn’t eat another bite and then staggered to their beds and collapsed, trying to breathe. 
The men began cooking what remained over a huge spit in the clearing the following morning. Only four remained near the ship, however, to stand guard and to tend the cooking meat. All of the others had disappeared by the time Loren and the other women made it outside. 
“The men are certainly in their element,” Karen remarked after a while.
Loren glanced at her. They were sitting in the bay once more, this time because it afforded shade. “I’m enthusiastic about the hunting myself,” she said dryly. “I am soooo grateful to have something to eat for a change that’s actually good.”
“Me also,” Shara agreed. “Now baby get fat. Grow big and strong.”
Karen and Loren turned to stare at her uncomprehendingly for a long moment. It hit them both at the same time and they sucked in an excited breath. “You’re pregnant?” they chorused.
Shara grinned and then tried to look serious. “Work bery hard, my mans.” 
Loren digested that for a moment and started laughing. 
“They work hard alright,” Karen said dryly. “I’m about worn to the bone.”
“Duh,” Loren retorted. “Four Hirachi? And I saw you fluttering your eyes at that Deisen!”
Karen shrugged and grinned at her. “He’s cute and he’s lonely.”
Loren frowned. “It doesn’t … bother the Hirachi?”
“They said he was a good guy. I figured that meant they wouldn’t object. Not that they like it, mind you, but they don’t dislike it enough to say anything.”
Loren’s mind flickered to Daeman and, unconsciously, she glanced toward him. He’d stayed to help guard and tend the meat and had retreated to the shade of a tree. She looked away again quickly when she discovered he was staring in their direction. 
“He watches you all the time,” Karen said. 
Karen felt color surge into her cheeks. She thought about playing dumb and discarded the idea. “I think he’s still pissed off because Kael tried to beat his head in for getting my bag for me.”
“Wrong!” Karen said. “They had a fight because Kael thought he was just angling for pussy.”
Loren threw her a shocked look, but she couldn’t help but laugh. “How do you know?”
Karen sent her a look. “We do other things besides fuck.”
“No!” Loren exclaimed in mock disbelief.
Karen grinned and shot her a bird. 
“They told you that?” she asked curiously.
She nodded. “I asked them if they would be mad with me if I accepted Jalen—because I’m crazy about them and I wasn’t about to jeopardize that even though I think Jalen’s cute and sexy and I felt bad because he didn’t have a woman! They said the Deisen were honorable men or Kael wouldn’t have let them on the ship.” 
Loren frowned. “Why would Kael have fought him then? I’ve never understood that.”
“Like I said ….”
Loren thought that over and sighed. “I guess that answers that, huh?”
“I guess. I’m not sure I understand the Hirachi mind, you know? I figured all along that that was all it was with any of them—men being men. Not that I felt like complaining. That was one scary place to end up—at Lecur’s. As scary as the Hirachi seemed to me at the time, they also seemed as different from the others as night to day. When they told me I didn’t have to worry that they’d take care of me, I would have promised them anything! Did, actually. 
“I don’t feel like it’s … a business deal, though—never did. They’ve always made me feel good about being with them, as if I really matter to them. Of course, they scared the pure piss out of me when they went into that spawning thing! That was wild, but I came through it unscathed—not like it was when that bastard turned the others loose! It was almost like they wanted to hurt us.”
Loren shuddered. She’d done her best to blank her mind to that particular memory, but she had to agree with Karen. It had been almost as if they wanted to hurt them, as if they wanted to punish them more than they wanted sex. “I think a lot of that was Lecur’s fault for taunting them—except they saw it as us taunting them. I know it really pissed them off when they would come to stare at me and I wouldn’t look at them. I was afraid to look at them, you know? But I guess it seemed different to them.” She hesitated. “I love them. I know it’s crazy to even talk about loving three men at the same time, but I do.”
“No crazier that talking about loving four,” Karen said dryly. “But they’re easy to love and hard not to.”
Loren dragged in a pained breath. “I guess I’ll stay where ever they decide to stay. I can’t say that I’m that crazy about this place, but if they want to stay ….”
Karen sighed. “I think I could actually hate this place, but I don’t think I could leave them. Anyway, we burned up so much fuel getting here there’s no telling whether we could ever get home or not—and that would mean giving them up. I may be doomed to misery.”
Loren smiled faintly. “I don’t think anything could be as miserable as living without them.” She shrugged. “We’ve got the ship. It has all the comforts of home.”
“Right!” Karen said dryly. “Keep telling yourself that.”
Loren chuckled. “Some of the comforts of home, anyway. I think I could get used to this … if that’s what they want.”
“Truthfully? As creepy as this place is, there’s air to breathe and food. I’m not sure that I want to give it up on a chance of finding better anyway. I mean, if I thought we could find a more civilized place, that would be nice, but we have the trader legacy hanging over us and I have a bad feeling nobody welcomed the bastard—except bastards that were as bad as he was.”
“There is that.” Loren sighed. “I think I’m going to try to at least make peace with Daeman. It was my fault he got in the fight with Kael.”
Getting to her feet, she went down the gangplank carefully and began to pick her way with equal care across the clearing. She could feel Daeman’s watchful gaze on her the entire way. His expression wasn’t welcoming when she finally halted a short distance away and her discomfort increased. “I wanted to apologize,” she said a little stiltedly. “I know it was my fault … the fight between you and Kael. I honestly didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”
His gaze flickered over her face, but she couldn’t see that he looked any less forbidding than before. 
She chewed her lower lip uncomfortably. “I’d like it if we could friends.”
He shook his head slowly. “Have friends. Better Lau-ren stay away.”
Loren stared at him as that slowly sank in. Struggling with the hurt that followed it, she sucked in a shaky breath. “Oh. Alright.” She chewed her lip. “I’ll just go then. I am sorry, though.”
Turning on her heel, she made her way back to the ship as quickly as she could. 
“What happened?” Karen asked, searching her face as she came up the gangplank.
“Nothing. I just apologized. I think I’m going to go up and take a nap,” she said, moving quickly past Karen and Shara and heading across the bay to the lift. Hearing footsteps behind her, she began moving a little faster, fully expecting Karen to demand that she wait. Instead, as she sped up, the person behind her did. 
She was nearly running when she reached the lift and darted inside. Relief flooded her when the door began to close at her frantic pounding on the key. Daeman leapt inside even as they closed, however, grabbing her shoulders and pressing her back against the wall.
She gaped up at him in stunned surprise, feeling her heart leap convulsively in her chest. The fear never had a chance to reach conscious thought, however. He tangled one hand in her hair and dragged her head back. “Want more, Lau-ren,” he growled as he covered her surprise slackened mouth.
A shockwave went through her, deadening her to all sensation. When it rushed back, it was like a tidal wave. She was abruptly inundated with sensations so intense and broad in scope that it was almost as mind numbing as the shock. She almost felt as if she could feel every muscle and sinew in his body as he pressed tightly against her, the heat and texture of his skin. His mouth seared hers with his heat and flooded her with his taste. His breath filled her with an intoxicating stimulant that made her feel weak and dizzy and heavy all at the same time. 
He broke off the assault almost as abruptly as he’d begun it, breathing as heavily as if he’d run the distance to catch up to her. “Want eber-ting, Lau-ren. No come to me again. Stay away … or I take.”
Loren staggered slightly when he stepped back, releasing her, and managed to right herself. She stared at him wide eyed for a long moment, trying to swallow past the hard knot in her throat, and then turned blindly away from him and fled the moment the door opened. 
She hadn’t actually thought she needed a nap when she’d run away from Daeman. She’d just wanted to be alone. She felt like crying and, as much as she liked Karen, she was always determined to pick at everything. Karen would’ve seen immediately that she was on the verge of tears and she would’ve been determined to keep prodding until she had the answers she wanted. 
She still felt like she was going to fall apart as she raced to her quarters, but Daeman had completely scattered her wits and it was predominantly fear that drove her in her search for a refuge. She was panting for breath until she felt almost nauseated by the dryness of her throat by the time she’d shut herself into the room and scrambled onto the bed. For a while, she merely stared at the door, more than half expecting Daeman to follow her, her mind empty of any kind of higher thought. 
As time ticked past and he didn’t, she began to slowly relax and her brain, released from its frozen state, allowed higher thought to pour through her mind in a torrent that was almost as debilitating as the lack of anything at all. Part of her mind replayed what he’d said over and over, trying to interpret and reinterpret his words as it struggled first to figure out what he’d said and then what he’d meant and if there’d been any indication in tone to imply a different meaning entirely. Part of her mind was struggling to reconcile his actions with his words and part of it was completely absorbed in an internal search for an understanding of her own reaction.
She’d felt threatened. That was what had sent her scurrying for cover, but in what way?
There’d been barely leashed violence in him—in the tension she’d felt in him, in his expression, and in his touch, even in the way he’d kissed her. That was what had alerted her flight instincts, not anything he’d said or done, but the emotions she sensed churning beneath the surface.
Why?
Everything inside of her was screaming that she’d had a taste of passion that rivaled the Hirachis when they were in the grip of their spawning fever—except he’d been controlling it—barely, but still far more aware of what he was doing than they had been. 
He wanted her, but he didn’t want to desire her and he’d warned her off—stay away from the fire if you don’t want to get burned.
“Wow,” she murmured, torn between intrigue and sheer terror. She’d never inspired that kind of passion in anybody before. She frowned, thinking about it, and decided she was pretty sure she hadn’t ever inspired anything even close to that explosively volatile. 
The desire she sensed in Kael and Dakaar and Balen was hot, exciting, and it set her on fire, but she’d never felt as if she would unleash something dark and dangerous if she responded—not even when they’d been in the grips of the spawning fever. They’d been completely single minded and grimly determined to accomplish their goal but she hadn’t felt as if it might … consume them and her with it.
She swallowed convulsively, feeling heat rise in her and realized abruptly that it had when he’d kissed her, explosively, and that that had been part of the fear—the realization that she was way out of her league and had no idea how to control it. 
That was it, she decided finally, vaguely disappointed, but certain she was right. He must be in his own spawning mode and for whatever reason, probably because of the extremely limited possibilities, he’d targeted her. She just needed to steer clear of him until he found a new target or the need passed. 
She felt far less afraid when she’d figured it out and less hurt by his violent rejection of her offer of friendship. He’d just been warning her off, she decided, because he knew he had little control. 
The sensible thing to do was to heed the warning and not do anything that might overset his tenuous control. 
She discovered that was easier said than done. It had seemed that they were a very large group when they’d been trying to ration food to stay alive on the ship. Once they landed and set out to remedy the food shortage situation, the work load immediately turned that perspective on its head. There weren’t nearly enough of them or nearly enough hours in the day to accomplish everything they wanted and needed to do. 
There was some discussion over whether or not they should try to depod some of the captives on the ship to help, but none of them were certain they could do so without danger to the person inside. Karen and Loren both testified to the fact that the new releases were going to be traumatized and weak from their ordeal and more of a burden until and unless they recovered than a help and more people didn’t just mean more help. It also meant more people to provide for. Since they were currently in no more danger—in fact far less—than they’d been before they were stuck in the pods as far as any of them could see, they finally decided to leave them until their situation improved enough to actually help them when they released them.
Despite every effort to ignore the implications, Loren couldn’t resist trying to gauge the reaction of the only two unattached, and critically horny, men in their group. Adrin had ignored Shara’s timid invitation. Jalen was almost as touchy as both Adrin and Daeman, for that matter, and clearly not appeased about getting pity sex from Karen. 
It was ironic that they seemed far more territorial like the men she was familiar with than the Hirachi were and looked less like them. She thought, though, that it was a combination of that grim determination to ‘own’ whatever woman they stuck their dick in and a blow to their pride to accept pity sex that made them determined to shun any efforts to soothe those needs. 
For all that, none of the three seemed any more inclined to release the ‘pod people’ than the Hirachi were. She would’ve thought, since it seemed a good many of them were women that they would’ve objected strenuously. They needed somewhere to put their dicks besides their hands!
Then again, they were men and ‘manly’ men at that, she thought dryly. No doubt, to them, women were a burden even when they were obliging enough to spread their legs on command—or too weak to keep them crossed. 
Even her own father—and she’d always thought of him as a good man—seemed to have that male attitude toward her and her mother, that they were actually pretty much useless and in the way—besides costing money for support! She’d always felt a bone deep resentment about that attitude. Her and her mother pulled their own weight. It wasn’t her mother’s fault that her income was so much lower. It was the society they lived in that still paid wages according to whether one was swinging a dick or not. 
As good as her income was when she’d worked for the government, the men they’d hired had been hired for more and they hadn’t even done as well in school as she had. 
It was all just pure speculation, of course, and might be total bigotry on her part, but she’d certainly had plenty of reasons to believe sexual inequality was pretty much universal. 
She was still acutely aware that the Deisen didn’t even have sexual release to ease the general misery of their existence—not that both Karen and Shara weren’t just as aware of it. The difference was that they’d offered to ease their suffering and when the Deisen spurned the offer, they didn’t seem to have any further qualms about it. She almost felt as if they went out of their way to rub their noses in it, although she was willing to give them the benefit of doubt. They were both happy with their men and enjoyed flirting playfully with them. Maybe it wasn’t a deliberate slap to the Deisen for spurning them but rather a case of simply ignoring them?
Regardless, she was too aware of them to feel comfortable expressing her affection for Kael, Dakaar, and Balen in front of them. She didn’t think she would have been comfortable anyway. There were some things, to her mind, that should be private and that included everything of an intimate nature. That being the case, she refrained from doing or saying anything too suggestive around the others, especially when they were in a close group where it might be more noticeable. She felt perfectly within her rights, though, to share a special smile or look, hold hands, or share an occasional light embrace. 
Even that much made her feel vaguely uncomfortable, though, when she turned away and discovered that one or another of the Deisen, and sometimes all three, were watching her.
She thought, at first, that she was being hypersensitive about the whole thing after her encounter with Daeman, but, try though she might, she couldn’t catch them staring a hole through Karen or Shara. It made her uneasy enough that she went out of her way to stay as far from all of them as she could, Daeman in particular, and as close to the Hirachi as she could when they were in camp. 
They spent the majority of their time either out hunting, however, or in the sea. They hadn’t been camping but a handful of days when the Hirachi had found their way to the ocean and they’d worn a path to it very quickly. They always brought back the harvest of the sea when they returned, and she knew that was because it was the food most familiar to them. She also knew, though, that the sea called to them in a way that she was never going to understand. Maybe it was worse for them because they’d been kept from it so long, but she didn’t think that was ever really going to change. 

Chapter Fifteen
They’d been camping a week, determined by new world time, which was thankfully gauged the same way as the time she’d understood before—by the planet’s rotation and sunrise and sunset—when Loren decided her time could best be spent focusing on what she knew. They had an abundance of food thanks to the efforts of the hunters and even a very nice variety because the Hirachi not only brought seafood back from the sea, but also edible plants. She missed the foods she was familiar with, though, and so did Karen. They all needed protein, but that wasn’t a balanced diet and she, Karen, and Shara were pregnant, which made it all the more important to get what they needed to have healthy babies.
She’d found a portable scanner that she was certain would help her determine the nutritional elements in the plants that surrounded them in such abundance. All she needed to do to make use of it was to ‘teach’ it English so that she could actually read the damned thing. It took her most of two days to figure out how to integrate it with the ship’s computer. Once she had, she settled to teaching the computer English so that it could reprogram the scanner. Fortunately, the computer already had some English in its data banks because of the trade agreement between the lizard-man and her government. He’d also done a fairly in-depth survey on the planet Earth itself, no doubt to analyze what might be valuable as trade goods. 
Unfortunately, he’d been far more interested in the minerals and ores than anything else, but there was a fair amount of data on the plant life, which at least gave her a place to start. She started by having the computer summon images, naming those she recognized and having the computer relay the breakdown of its components to the scanner. Since she was also worried about them accidentally poisoning themselves, she also indicated everything she knew to be poisonous or toxic to humans and had the computer input that, as well. 
It was tedious and time consuming, but she knew it would be invaluable to them in the long term if she succeeded. Karen and Shara wandered in and out from time to time, stood watching and listening for a while, and then left again to look for something more entertaining to occupy their time. 
After a few days, she’d grown so accustomed to their habit of wandering in and out and staring at the screen that she tuned them out. It wasn’t until she decided to take a break and get up to stretch that she discovered Daeman had come to stand behind her to watch—not Karen or Shara. 
Startled when she got up and encountered him, she stared at him for a long moment and flicked an uneasy glance toward the door to the lift at the far end of the control room. It looked as if it was miles away and her uneasiness had increased to all out fear by the time she met Daeman’s gaze again.
His expression twisted. “No be afraid, Lau-ren. No hurt. Swear.”
Loren’s throat had gone paper dry. “I’m not,” she lied shakily, flicking another frantic look around in the hope that Karen and Shara might be somewhere in the control room.
There was frustration in his eyes when she met his gaze again. “Try to stay away. No good. No help. No make … pain go away.”
Loren’s frozen mind went wild with speculation at that. She blinked at him while her mind tried to tabulate an answer, licking her lips uneasily when it failed to produce anything at all helpful. “You should talk to Karen—or even Shara about that,” she babbled nervously. “They offered to … uh … help Jalen and Adrin out with … uh … their problem.”
His expression twisted with both pain and anger. “No want. Want Lau-ren only.”
He was seriously in need of releasing some of that male aggression, Loren thought nervously. “Ok then!” she said shakily, reaching blindly for the buttons along the front her blouse and trying to unfasten them with fingers that felt numb and completely uncooperative. “We can do that.” 
He pulled her hand away.
“You want to skip that part?” No foreplay, she thought, performing an internal wet test. She was bone dry from nerves. This was going to be uncomfortable.
He settled a hand heavily along the back of her neck and drew her close. To her surprise he merely pressed his forehead to hers. “Sorry make afraid, Lau-ren. So sorry,” he said raggedly. She heard him swallow. “I no take … no hurt. Kiss. If you no want me to touch den, I no touch.” 
Dragging in a shaky breath, Loren tipped her face up, offering her lips. She’d expected a punishing kiss much like before. Instead, he very carefully fit his lips to hers and sucked at them coaxingly. The panic receded. A tentative warmth invaded her. When it seemed he would withdraw, she offered more, following the retreat of his mouth. His opened his mouth over hers then, tested the seam where her lips met and then delved inside the moist cavern when she parted her lips for him. His tongue rubbed along hers in intimate caress. She absorbed the taste of him and everything inside of her unfurled, awakened, instantly reacting to the pleasure. 
He withdrew, lifting his lips from hers and easing away to study her face. Evidently, he saw what he was looking for. He tilted his head and covered her mouth again. This time he made no attempt to hold his desire in check, however. It began as a bold possession and progressed swiftly to a conquest of her senses. She was so drunk and weak when he withdrew the second time that it was all she could do to keep her knees locked and stay on her feet. 
He steadied her and reached for the buttons of her blouse, holding her gaze as he undressed her. When he had, he yanked at the ties of his loincloth and released it.
The movement instantly snagged her gaze and she looked down at him, her gaze riveting on the thick shaft jutting toward her. The size and thickness was both daunting and arousing, but the nubs all over it unnerved her. 
He caught her waist and lifted her to sit on the console behind her, pushing her thighs wide with his hips as he moved closer, breaking her intent stare by removing his cock from her view. She could feel it against her cleft, though, could feel the hard little nubs along his shaft rubbing the tender skin and generating waves of pleasurable anticipation.
He nudged her face up with his thumb and sought her lips again, kissing her with a fierce hunger that robbed her of any thread of sanity. Thoroughly intoxicated by the heat searing her and fogging her mind, she couldn’t command herself to do more than clutch him tightly to keep from falling as he lifted his mouth from hers and gnawed a trail down her throat to her breasts. 
There was no longer a lack of moisture within her channel. By the third kiss, she felt like she was dripping wet, could feel her moisture coating his flesh as his movements brushed his cock along her cleft. By the time he’d thoroughly explored her breasts, she was so desperate for penetration that she thought she might slide off her precarious perch. 
He pulled her closer as he straightened again, settling one arm around her shoulders and one hand on her buttocks to pull her to him and then reaching between them to align his cock with her opening. Sensation exploded within her channel the moment he breached it and shot her toward climax. She gasped, arching against him and allowing her head to fall back weakly. He curled around her, sucking at her throat as he fought his way past the muscles convulsing in climax and sheathed himself deeply. 
She felt wiped out from the force of the climax before he even began to move rhythmically inside of her and yet within moments she was climbing toward another. Panting for breath, she clutched at his shoulders, digging her fingers into his flesh frantically as she soared upward on another high. She hit her second climax the moment she felt the jerk of his cock inside of her, boosted higher by the heated bath of his semen against her womb, and then went into melt down. 
She was too weak even to think of protesting when he scooped her up, turned, and strode toward the lift. It flickered through her mind that she had no idea where he was taking her and that neither of them were wearing a stitch of clothing, but it was all she could do to try to cling to him. He found a bed. The scent on the sheets matched his and told her fogged mind where she was—in a general way.
He sprawled against her, rubbing his body along hers, exploring her as hungrily with his mouth and hands as if he hadn’t come only a matter of moments before and carried her through two shattering culminations. He summoned the heat inside her as if she wasn’t still weak from the first two. 
That time when he brought her to a second climax in a row, she hit her limit and crashed. She was vaguely aware of him curling around her as she drifted toward the peaceful bliss that was the ultimate reward for release and then she lost even that much awareness.
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or not to discover when she woke that Daeman had left her. The dilemma of being stark naked in his bed was enough to wipe every other thought from her mind, however—that and the reflection that Daeman had left her clothing littered around the control console. 
Bounding from the bed, she glanced around a little wildly for something to cover up with and saw that the only thing available was Daeman’s bedclothes. She was tempted to take them anyway, but she realized almost immediately that she would be carrying away ‘evidence’ and discarded the idea, buoyed by the realization that she would either have to bring them back or he would come for them. Easing the door of his quarters open, she glanced both ways along the corridor. Seeing it was clear, she darted from his room and sprinted down the hall to her own. 
Her legs felt like cooked spaghetti by the time she was inside, and the urge to sit down and recover a few moments was strong. She ignored the weakness, scrambling to find something to put on. There weren’t a lot of choices since she’d divided her belongings and she hadn’t had enough room in the suitcase to start with to pack much. Grabbing a long, loose t-shirt she used for a nightgown, she jerked that over her head and dashed out of her room to the lift, waiting impatiently for it to arrive. 
Luck was with her—she hoped. No one was in the control room and it didn’t look as if anyone had discovered her clothes. She’d already slipped into her panties before she realized she hadn’t bathed or even mopped off. She could smell Daeman’s scent all over her and she smelled like sex besides!
After a brief hesitation, she finished dressing and abandoned the control room again to bathe. She ran out of luck when she reached the facilities. Balen, still damp from his own shower, was coming out. He grabbed her before she could escape and dragged her up against his length, nuzzling his face against her hair and dragging in a deep breath.
She cringed inwardly and sent him a guilty/wary look when he eased away from her to study her face. She could see anger flicker in his eyes, but he merely lifted a hand and lightly caressed her cheek. “Take bath wid me?”
He’d already taken a shower. That much was clear, but she wasn’t about to say no when she thought it was an olive branch. There was no doubt in her mind, unfortunately, that she wreaked of sex and Daeman. If she could smell it on herself, he certainly could.
She didn’t tumble to the fact that Balen was bent on scrubbing Daeman’s scent off and replacing it with his own until he waltzed her against one wall and then lifted her up and braced her between his body and the wall. Dismay flickered through her. She hadn’t recovered from having sex with Daeman. She was still as weak as water and she’d come so many times she’d lost count. She didn’t think she had it in her to generate enough warmth for Balen to make his possession easier, let alone to come.
He was dead set on making her come, however. He kissed and caressed her until she was shaking all over before he even attempted penetration. By the time he’d managed to mount her on his cock she’d already come once and was skyrocketing toward a second climax. 
Thankfully, that seemed to satisfy him. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfied if he’d had any clue of how many times Daeman had succeeded in making her come, but she sure as fuck wasn’t going to tell him! 
It was all she could do to stand on her own two feet when he set her down. He seemed to notice she was having a little trouble with her legs and gallantly swept her up and carried her to her room … planting her on the bed and fucking her until she was nearly comatose. 
Not almost comatose—was! 
She didn’t know if Balen had narced on her or she just had that half-fucked-to-death glow about her when they all came together for the evening meal, but Kael and Dakaar were almost bristling at one another before the meal was over. Kael hauled her out of her own seat and across his lap for a mind-blowing kiss almost before she’d finished eating and then carried her off to her bed, intent, apparently, on finishing her off. 
She was so exhausted, she could barely even unglue her eyelids the following morning when Kael left and Dakaar strode in, refreshed and ready to give her a morning boost. When he finally left, she staggered to her door and locked it and then back to her bed to sprawl out and pass out. 
She thought she might have slept through the entire day if her stomach hadn’t awakened her demanding sustenance. Karen looked her over assessingly and grinned like a Cheshire cat when she hobbled into the gathering room in search of food. “I was wondering why I hadn’t seen you since early yesterday,” she purred, wicked laughter dancing in her eyes.
“Don’t even start, Karen!” Loren said crossly. “I think they’ve set out to fuck me to death! Everything on me is sore, especially … uh … you know.”
Karen batted her eyelashes and pretended confusion. “Head?”
Loren glared at her and collapsed weakly into a chair. “Other end.”
Karen snickered. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t know if I want to,” Loren muttered. “It doesn’t leave a lot of time for anything else—like breathing! I’m so dehydrated!”
Karen burst out laughing, but she got up and went to fetch Loren a container of water. “Your eyeballs ought to be floating, girl friend.”
“That might be why I’m having so trouble focusing my eyes,” Loren retorted with her first flicker of amusement. 
“Daeman looked well pleased with himself yesterday when he reappeared. Don’t know where he disappeared to, but he sure did look happy when he came back.”
Loren felt her face redden. 
“I guess that’s why his ‘brothers’ took him off in the jungle and beat the shit out of him.”
Loren snapped a quick look at her. “What?”
Karen shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’m thinking that might be why neither me nor Shara could tempt Jalen and Adrin with our offers of TLC. They already had their eyes on the doe they were planning on rutting.”
Loren stared at her in disbelief. “You’re making that up just to scare the piss out of me! That isn’t funny!”
Karen shrugged. “Truthfully, I noticed right off that the Deisen had tunnel vision and their crosshairs were on you. I didn’t mention it because I could see you were already unnerved just because you noticed Daeman’s interest.”
“My god!” Loren gasped. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous? You have four wonderful Hirachi falling all over themselves to make you happy and you’re jealous?”
Karen glared at her for a moment and then reddened. “Not really ….”
“Well you shouldn’t be! I feel badly for them that they don’t have anyone and, honestly, worry, too, because it’s bound to create problems. Men only seem to get more aggressive and more dangerous when their semen backs up into their brains and the Deisen are already a lot more aggressive and territorial than the Hirachi are. 
“I gave in to Daeman mostly because he scared the pure hell out of me, but clearly it did more harm than good if what you say is true.”
She felt uncomfortable as soon as she said it. It was only the truth insofar as her initial reaction, though. He’d totally bowled her over. She didn’t know whether to attribute it totally to his prowess as a lover or if she’d felt so swept away by his lovemaking because she cared more about him that she wanted to admit, even to herself, but she figured that was her problem and her business.
Karen let out an irritated huff. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I honestly only offered Jalen sex because I thought we needed to diffuse the situation before we had serious trouble on our hands.” She seemed to wrestle with herself. “I enjoyed it thoroughly, though, and I can’t help it that I think he’s cute and sexy and tempting—even if I already have, like you said, the Hirachi.” 
Loren drained her water and got up to renew the search for food. “I think it’s way too dangerous to play with the demon-looking aliens, Karen. Have at it if you’re determined to, but don’t come crying to me when you discover Jalen will expect you to be his woman exclusively and denounce the Hirachi—because he will. They have a completely different way of looking at this than the Hirachi do. I doubt they’d be willing to share if they didn’t give a damn about you. It’s not that I think they aren’t worthy of love. Kael respects them and I respect his judgment. They’re only seeing half the picture, though. They respect the Deisen because they’re men of honor and they’re good fighters and hunters. I appreciate that, too. I think they’re good men and they’re very worthy of love and I think they need it just as much as everybody else does. 
“But I love Kael and Dakaar and Balen. I know that if I searched a million years that I would never find anyone better or more worthy of love. I’m not going to turn my back on them because of some kind of misguided idea that Daeman—or any of the others—might need me more. I would give to him willingly if I believed he would be satisfied with what I could give him, but he wouldn’t be—he never would be. Even if I was stupid enough to give up my lovers for him, he would always think about it and it would always bother him and there would never be any chance for happiness or harmony.”
She was upset enough she’d lost all interest in food by the time she’d finished, but she left Karen and went to find something to eat anyway. She was weak from hunger and she was very much afraid that her men were going to be focused on convincing her of their devotion for a while. 
She wasn’t especially happy when she discovered she was right. Daeman, either because he’d never been interested in more than assuaging his needs, or because of the fight with the other Deisen, or because of the hostility and grim determination of her men, went back to staring at her hungrily from a distance. And, since Karen had made her aware of it, Loren also discovered that Karen hadn’t been exaggerating—Jalen and Adrin also kept her in sight at every opportunity until she began to feel like a lamb tied to a stake outside of a cage full of lions. 
Kael, Dakaar, and Balen were on their metal and not only kept close watch on the lions, they seemed determined to convince her and the lions that she was taken and well fucked. She didn’t need the lions. 
Jalen, Adrin, and Daeman began to spend almost as much time trying to pound each other into the dirt as they did hunting and they spent ‘rest’ time glaring daggers at Kael, Dakaar, and Balen—who went out of their way to provoke them either by molesting her right under their noses or simply smirking at them complacently.
Loren was beginning to wonder just how long she could hold out and when the big bang was going to hit when something completely unexpected happened.
* * * *
As tired as she was, Loren had gotten into the habit of going down to the bay to sit on the edge of the gangplank and watch the men return from their hunt. She would’ve gone tonight in any case since she had news to tell them that she thought would please them as much as it did her.
She’d finally completed her scanner and she, Karen, and Shara had gone out to search for edible plants to round out their meals. It had been something of a trial, for all that, but Karen and Shara were busy inside preparing their first natural harvest to go with their meal that night so she thought it was worth it.
She hoped it was. The roots they’d gathered had scanned as having a very similar composition to a potato, but the taste would be the real test.
The Deisen, who’d taken to hunting on their own, had returned earlier than the Hirachi and had insisted on accompanying them to guard them. Loren certainly wasn’t against it. The jungle unnerved her even during the day, but all three of them had been so focused on helping her that both Karen and Shara had been more than a little miffed and it had begun to look like the Deisen would begin to fight among themselves.
It had been enough to encourage her to end the search as soon as she decided they’d gathered enough for one meal. There didn’t seem much point in gathering more, anyway, until they knew whether or not the roots would be palatable. 
She always worried when the men left anyway and watching for their safe return so that she knew the moment they were back and safe meant that she could stop worrying. Besides, she enjoyed watching them. They always seemed happiest when they’d spent the day in the sea, but either way she got to watch them together and it was comforting to her to see the bond between them—all of the Hirachi, not just her Hirachi. They depended on one another and she felt that the tight bond between them meant that they would watch each other’s back. 
She could almost picture them as group of ordinary Earth men when they were laughing and joking with one another, a group of good buddies gathered around a bonfire to swap tales about their hunting experience. 
As she watched them make short work of the beast they’d brought in, however, she saw all of them abruptly tense, as if they caught some sound she’d missed, or a scent. Her heart thudded with sudden uneasiness as they came slowly to their feet and turned to survey the jungle beyond the dancing light of the fire. 
Unconsciously, she imitated their sudden alertness, getting to her feet and scanning the dark shadows. She’d just spotted something moving in the shadows when the Deisen landed on the gangplank in front of her like three cats springing a trap for their prey. She jumped, sucking in a sharp breath. 
“Go inside, Lau-ren,” Daeman said in a low growl.
Loren took a step back. “What is it?” she whispered shakily.
“No know. Some ting big. Or many tings. Go!”
She retreated a few more steps but she wasn’t about to let Kael and Dakaar and Balen out of her sight. “They’re still out there—Kael and the others,” she objected.
Jalen and Adrin turned to look at her. 
“You stay, we protect. You go, we help dem,” Adrin said tightly. 
She debated a moment more and turned and fled toward the lift. She could get the computer to use the exterior sensors to bring up a display, she decided, although she had no idea how it was going to help them for her to watch. 
* * * *
Kael studied the moving shadows hard, waiting for the moment when they reached a point where his vision could pierce the darkness and identify what sort of men were approaching their camp. They were using little stealth, which meant they had either underestimated the Hirachi, or they were poor at stealth, or they their intention was not to attack.
He discarded the last two. They had no friends on this world and no people that lived on it would be unaccustomed to moving through the jungle with stealth.
He flicked a glance at Dakaar. “Lau-ren?” he asked quietly.
Dakaar spared a glance toward the ship. “Inside. The Deisen are guarding the ramp.”
“Balen—go close the bay door—from the inside. She will need a warrior to protect her if this goes badly.”
Balen had already begun to turn away to follow the order. At that, he hesitated, flicking a glance from Kael to Dakaar and then to the jungle. Finally, he merely nodded and began to drop back slowly. Whoever was watching was bound to notice anyway when he had the disadvantage of being well lit from the firelight, but he hoped to avoid touching off an attack before he could reach the door. He might need time to figure out how to close it. 
“Can you see them?” Daeman asked when he reached the gangplank. 
“Not yet, but they are coming directly toward us.”
“We will guard the ramp.”
Balen met his gaze. “Kael has ordered the door shut in case we are overrun.”
Daeman stared at him for a long moment and finally nodded. Glancing at Jalen and Adrin, he motioned for them to advance and the three of them moved slowly down the ramp toward the Hirachi. 
Some of his tension ebbed as Kael finally caught sight of the man in the lead of the band moving toward them. Confusion rose in its place. Unless his eyes betrayed him, the leader, at least, was Hirachi. He flicked a questioning look at Dakaar and discovered that he was still staring hard at the men approaching. 
“Hirachi,” he murmured finally. “I cannot make out the tattoo the leader wears.”
Kael narrowed his eyes. “Trilanka.”
Dakaar glanced around at the others in their group as they began to murmur to one another. 
He could relate to their confusion, Kael thought wryly. There were many clans of Hirachi on Ach, but they had not warred with one another since before the sheloni had begun to prey upon them. They had managed to maintain a shaky peace for nearly a generation before the sheloni had come. The aliens had so decimated their populace that many of the clans had united not only to fight a common foe, but to survive. 
He would not have questioned, before, whether the band approaching them had peaceful intent or not, but times had changed and the Hirachi had never been prone to welcome strangers into the midst who came by dark. 
“That is close enough!” he said abruptly, tensing in anticipation that the warning itself would be enough to precipitate the attack—if that was their intention.
The leader halted, however, signaling to the men behind him to stop. “We apologize for approaching the camp after dark, but we have been three days walking here from our village. Will you welcome us when we have traveled far to welcome you to our world?”
Kael frowned, considering. He sensed that Dakaar was watching him, waiting for some signal.
“How many do you bring to welcome us?”
There was amusement in the stranger’s voice. “You are Hirachi. How many do you count?” 
“I count twelve—including you, tall one. Come. We have made a kill and you are welcome to share it with us.”
The leader stepped from the jungle and into the light of the fire. 
Kael studied him assessingly. “Your village is three days from here? Or it took you three days to find us by the fires?”
The leader indicated the machine with a nudge of his chin. “We saw the air ship when it came down. Our village is three days from here.”
That explained a lot and Kael relaxed. “You did not come in welcome,” he said flatly.
“Nay, we came to see what the trader was up to,” the stranger responded easily. “He was told that he was no longer welcome if he brought slaves to sell. I see his air ship, but I do not see that slimy bastard.”
“You will not—not in this lifetime.”
The stranger nodded. “He has found his reward for the choices he made. That is always good, but my woman will be disappointed that we can no longer look forward to the trade goods that he brought.” He grimaced. “I am disappointed, also. We had been gathering a load of jasumi to trade for more machines to help with our harvest.” He stepped closer and offered the traditional Hirachi greeting. “I am Khan.”
The men who’d accompanied him filed into the clearing and settled their packs to unload them of the food they’d brought with them to contribute to the meal as Khan and Kael settled to talk. 
When Kael was finally satisfied that his trust in the strangers was not misplaced, he sent Dakaar to ask the women if they would like to join them in feasting with the Hirachi clan that had arrived.
He had a bad moment when Dakaar returned with Lau-ren, Ka-ren, and Shara. Khan’s eyes settled immediately on Lau-ren and there was appreciation in them that Kael did not care for. “You are from the same world that my woman is from,” he murmured, smiling. “Miranda will be joyous.”
Loren frowned in confusion and glanced at Kael questioningly. 
“She cannot speak our tongue,” Kael said. 
Khan’s brows rose. Amusement flickered in his eyes. “She is your woman, yes? How do you communicate if she cannot speak our language?”
Kael grinned abruptly, slipping an arm around Lau-ren’s waist and dragging her down onto his lap. “With great difficulty,” he said ruefully. “She was given the language spoken on the space station where we were imprisoned and we learned a little during our stay.”
“You seem to communicate well enough,” Khan said, chuckling. He looked at Loren with friendly interest and spoke to her in English. “My woman is from your world.”
Loren stared at him blankly for several moments before it sank in that he’d spoken English and what he’d told her. “She’s from Earth?”
He nodded. “Where all the most beautiful women come from,” he said gallantly.
Loren felt her face heat, but she chuckled. “I don’t imagine the Hirachi women would appreciate that.”
He glanced around and then spread his hands. “They are not here to take exception.”
Loren’s amusement died. “Actually, there are some here. They’re in the pods. We were nearly starving by the time we got here. There wasn’t enough food to share and, well, we’ve only been here about a week. We didn’t want to awaken any of them until we knew there’d be enough food to go around.”
Khan nodded. “A wise decision.” He returned his attention to Kael. “You have not said what it is that you have to trade.”
Kael shrugged. “We have not really assessed what is in the ship. We searched it, of course, when we took it, looking for things that we would need ourselves and to make certain we had the ship to ourselves.” He hesitated. “I don’t suppose you will be surprised to learn that the trader was still very active in moving slaves. There are people on the second level from at least four different worlds, I believe, including many of our own people. They are in some sort of strange machine, but they are being fed—which was more than we could do for them.”
“How many?” Khan asked grimly.
“There are more containers empty than filled. We counted a hundred seventeen. A quarter are women—some Hirachi, some Earth women, some Deisen—some like the blue woman. The rest are males—from the same worlds where the women were taken.” 
Khan nodded. “You were wise to leave them,” he said wryly. “We have had a bountiful harvest but it will not feed so many. Nor can we house them.” He paused. “Miranda will not be happy, but we must be practical.”
“Mayhap it will be best not to tell her,” Kael said, amused. 
Khan snorted. “You may be certain that she will worm it out of the women.”
Kael transferred his attention to Lau-ren, pulling her against his chest and stroking her hair. “We had not planned to stay. We came for food because our women were starving. I do not know that Lau-ren will want to stay.”
Khan studied the two of them for a long moment. “I think you will find that your Lau-ren will stay where ever is best for the babe she carries … and I am certain there is no better place than this. Bring her to our village. She will see how well the Hirachi can provide for their women and you will not have to try to coax her. Our women are content.”

Chapter Sixteen
Loren was torn between uneasiness and excitement as she spied the first sign of the village Khan had told them about and was leading them to. She’d had her doubts when they’d set out and she hadn’t been particularly happy about the trek through the jungle itself or the two nights they’d spent camping along the way, but she hadn’t wanted to be left behind.
Karen had flatly refused to leave the ship. Kael had agreed that it was wise of her and generous to give up the trip in order to guard the ship. She thought it had been mostly for the sake of the men, who’d been disappointed, but Karen had decided to consider it a compliment and had talked Shara in staying, as well.
Kael had drawn the line then. Six men would stay to guard, the rest would accompany them. That ultimatum had made Loren a little uneasy, made her wonder if he really trusted Khan and his men after all, but it hadn’t taken long to realize that he had demanded the escort for the return trip—which they would making without Khan and his men. 
She’d cautioned herself not to expect too much. The world was a primitive one and, from what she’d learned, the Hirachi had been enslaved here and left pretty much to their own devices after the slave masters had been defeated. They were smart and they were strong, but there was only so much one could do without tools. 
She was still eager to see what they’d accomplished. They all looked well and well fed, and that said a lot for their resourcefulness. 
The fields stunned her. She hadn’t even realized they’d left the jungle behind at first. It wasn’t until she saw the even rows that told her the plants were cultivated that she realized the abundant growth was due entirely to Khan’s clan. The men of her own group were clearly as impressed as she was. They immediately began discussing the crops, she supposed.
They were all speaking Hirachi—even the Deisen. 
She sighed. It was her own fault. It should have occurred to her long since that she needed to learn their language. They’d spent weeks in space with very little to do beyond think about the one meal they could expect.
Of course, she’d spent most of that time puking her guts out because of the hideous food! She should still have made the attempt to learn at least a little, though, she thought irritably.
She was drawn from her thoughts by a sound she hadn’t heard in what seemed like forever—the giggling laughter and shrieks of excitement of children. Her heart leapt at the sound and she lifted her head to search for a sign of them.
She finally spied the children—playing in a vast open field before an edifice that looked like something some early civilization on Earth might have built—except it didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen in her life, in pictures or otherwise. It explained the strange looking spire she’d glimpsed as they left the jungle, though. She saw several more from the front that she hadn’t noticed when she’d glimpsed it through the trees. 
Several women were seated in the shade of the trees, watching the children play while they worked at something in the baskets on their laps. They looked up when they saw the group approaching and scattered their baskets in every direction as they leapt to their feet and raced toward them in greeting. The woman in the lead flung herself into Khan’s waiting arms, laughing and babbling questions—in English!
Loren didn’t think she’d ever heard a sweeter sound. It brought an unexpected knot of emotion to her throat. She looked up at Kael and smiled when he settled an arm across her shoulders and then Balen when he moved closer and caught her hand in his. 
Khan disentangled himself after a moment and turned to them. “We’re brought new friends back,” he murmured to his woman. 
Her eyes widened as they settled on Loren. “Oh my god! You’re from Earth?”
Loren nodded. “My name’s Loren. Loren Hess … and these are my men, Kael, Balen and Dakaar.”
The other women who’d rushed to greet their returning warriors surged around her excitedly, pelting her with questions about ‘back home’. 
Loren was stunned. Khan had told her that his woman was from Earth. She hadn’t expected to see so many! 
They spent three days with Khan’s clan. As impressed as Loren was with the ‘pod’ they were given to stay in as guests in paled in comparison when she got the full tour of the ‘village’ the following day. She was far more inclined to think of the place as ‘rustic’ than primitive after that. There were none of the electronic gadgets that she was accustomed to seeing, but it didn’t lack comfort. 
One of Miranda’s men, Teron, was a physician. He examined her and the baby and told her that he would be there to assist if she felt the need when her time came. It relieved a little knot of fear she hadn’t wanted to think about let alone acknowledge, and then she was shown the ‘birthing pool’ where all the children she’d seen scampering around the village had been born. 
She was somewhat dubious about that, but Miranda informed her that it was the best way to birth a child. 
Karen and Shara were mightily put out when they returned to the ship with all the news about everything they’d seen and immediately wanted to make the trip themselves. Kael wasn’t inclined to approve but finally relented—with the provision that they make it a trip to trade for things they needed. 
The day before they were to leave, a large group of men arrived from the village with the offer to help them build their own pods if they had decided to stay. An offer was also extended to the women to live in their village until they gave birth. 
Loren was eager to go until she realized that the men would be staying to work. She decided to stay until she was closer to her time. Neither Karen nor Shara seemed particularly happy with her decision since they felt like they should stay if Loren did and Karen tried her best to talk Loren into going. 
“It’s three days walk to the village!” Loren finally snapped. “The men will be here working. If I went there’s no telling how often I’d see them! I’m not going so you can stop pestering me!”
“That’s going to be a long damned walk to get to the doctor if you go into labor here!” Karen said tightly.
Fear immediately assailed Loren since Karen had pinpointed the one thing she was most frightened about. “I’ll go when I’m closer,” she said stubbornly. “I won’t need a doctor until then. I’m nearly a third of the way through now and I haven’t seen a doctor before. I think I’ll be fine.”
“You’re closer to half,” Karen pointed out. “You told me you’d felt the baby move.”
“So half! I’ve still got months to go and I’m not going to be sitting over there with my men here, damn it!”
Karen decided to go anyway, explaining that she was concerned about the baby. Her men, naturally enough, were so unsettled by that that they were all too willing to cart her to the village.
They left her there and returned to work on the foundations in progress. Two weeks later, Karen returned, escorted by Teron and three other Hirachi men. Karen didn’t look particularly happy. The men who’d escorted her looked far more happy once they’d handed her over to her men. 
She was exhausted from the trek. Loren shook her head at her. “I could’ve told you you weren’t going to be happy in the village with your men here.”
Karen pouted. “I thought I could convince them to stay with me, but they have a fire up their asses to build us a village!”
Loren struggled to suppress the urge to smile. “Of course they do! You’re having their baby. They want to have a place for their family!”
That seemed to appease her somewhat. “Really, it isn’t any more comfortable than the ship.”
“It is nice, though. I’ll be so excited when they get the foundation done and start on the walls! They are the most amazing engineers! I never dreamed they were so talented! Of course, I already thought they were amazing anyway.”
Karen studied her assessingly. “You said you were an engineer.”
“I am—mechanical and aeronautical. I got the mechanical degree first and then decided I wanted to get into aeronautics. This isn’t my area.”
“Yes … but … mechanical means you design machines, right?”
“Yes,” Loren said cautiously. 
“So maybe you can take some of those mechanical monsters apart and make us … like a go cart or something?”
Loren frowned, turning the suggestion over in her mind. 
“It’s really not that far to the village,” Karen said coaxingly. “It just takes a long time to walk that far and we’re pregnant. It’s going to be a lot harder if we say here till our last month before we make that trip.”
Loren considered that a little doubtfully. “So you’re actually talking about something that could transport a lot of people.”
“Or stuff. We’ll be trading with the other village.”
“I guess that would be pretty useful. I’ll give it some thought.” She grimaced. “I’d have to figure out the electronics.”
* * * *
“What do?”
Loren dragged her attention from her project plans and glanced at the owner of the voice and then did a double take when she discovered it was Daeman. She stared at him for a long moment and then smiled abruptly. “That was English!”
He smiled back a little sheepishly and crouched down next to her. “Try learn. Know Hirachi.”
Loren grimaced. “Well! You’re doing better than I am. I didn’t even learn Unduleze. The lizard-man put it in my head.” She studied his face. “You have your eye on one of the pod ladies from Earth?” she asked teasingly.
He hesitated. “Yes. Give heart to one.”
Loren felt her chest tighten uncomfortably, but she ignored it. “You don’t even know her yet! She must be beautiful.”
“Is. Most beautiful ting I ever see.”
Loren dragged in a difficult breath and forced a smile. “I’m happy for you, Daeman. I know you’ve been unhappy.”
His face darkened. “Understand now. Always will be unhappy widout her.” He frowned. “Hard, but I learn de Hirachi way.”
Loren frowned at him in confusion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand that. Why would you want to learn the Hirachi way? You’re … a wonderful man, Daeman, just the way you are. If you think she won’t accept that, then she just doesn’t deserve you.” She hesitated. “Kael said there were Deisen women among the pod people. Don’t you think you’d be happier with a woman who understands your ways?”
His face tightened. She saw frustration flicker in his eyes. “Already gave heart, Lau-ren. Gave to you. Asking you take me as lover.”
Loren was too stunned to think of a reply. 
He lifted a hand and touched her face. “See love in your eyes for udders. Know already give heart.” He paused and she heard him swallow. “Love you, Lau-ren. I make dis enough. No fight wid Kael and Dakaar and Balen. Swear on honor. Dey first in heart, I know.”
Loren felt her eyes fill with tears. “That doesn’t mean I can’t love you, too.” Shifting up onto her knees, she slipped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face against his. “There’s a very special place in my heart that I saved just for you.”
* * * *
Loren had special incentive to complete her cart project. As soon she realized that the men were working frantically to complete the central part of the structure before the babies were born, she began working more feverishly on completing the transport. She wanted to have her baby in their own village if it was at all possible. Shara, she finally discovered, was a mid-wife and herbalist—experienced. She thought as long as Teron had confidence that Shara could help her with the birth there was no reason to dash over to the other village.
Especially if she got the transport working. If worse came to worse and any sort of problems arose, they could send for Teron. 
She wasn’t nearly as confident when she actually went into labor. Apparently her men weren’t either. They’d hated her transport on sight and none of them had wanted to try it. The moment she had her first contraction, however, Kael, Dakaar, and Balen ran a foot race to reach it first. Kael won, hopping into the front to start it, and Dakaar and Balen piled in the back.
Loren gaped at the three of them as they disappeared over the first hill. 
“I wonder how long it’s going to take them to figure out they left you here,” Karen said dryly.
“Stop it!” Loren said irritably. “They went to get Teron ….” She frowned. “At least, I hope so.”
“Take long time first,” Shara said calmly. “Dey figure it out. We go inside now, ok?”
Daeman dragged his attention from the rapidly diminishing cart and turned to look at Loren uneasily. Tossing down the tool he’d been using to work the cement-like material they were using to build the pods, he strode quickly across the clearing and scooped Lau-ren up into his arms. “Dumbasses,” he muttered.
Loren sent him a reproachful look. “They’re just excited.”
Daeman decided not to comment on that. He was glad he had not. By the time he had carried Lau-ren inside and settled her beside the birthing pool, his heart was beating unpleasantly fast and he had begun to feel lightheaded. Both sensations increased when he discovered that Lau-ren had no intention of allowing him to escape. She caught his hand when he would have straightened and fled. “Stay with me?”
He swallowed convulsively several times and looked at the other women hopefully. In his village the women would never have allowed a man to be present at a birthing.
Instead of coming to his rescue, however, they told him to wait so that he could get into the pool to support her once she was ready. He ground his teeth, promising himself that he would choke the life out of the Hirachi when they returned, regardless of his vow to Lau-ren. He settled behind her to support her in a reclining position once they’d undressed her, however, lightly massaging her mounded belly for her. 
Shara instructed her to draw her knees up and then knelt between her feet, examining her. Brushing Daeman’s hands from her belly next, she settled her own hands on either side of Lau-ren’s belly for what seemed a very long time to Daeman and began to make him uneasy. 
More uneasy than he had been.
She frowned.
Daeman tensed.
“Tink maybe baby in hurry.”
“What mean?” Daeman demanded hoarsely, fearing he knew the answer.
“What do you mean?”
“We see,” Shara said, getting to her feet. “I go make tea.”
Loren studied her uneasily when she left. Shara had told her that the tea would help to soothe the pain that she would have as her labor progressed. She’d analyzed it with the scanner, however, and she couldn’t see that the herb Shara had picked had any properties that would act as a pain reliever. It made her more uneasy, however, because Shara had told her she could only give it to her when she had made enough progress to warrant it.
She hadn’t really felt any kind of pain when she’d felt her first few contractions—nothing that she’d associated with labor, at any rate. She’d thought it was the baby moving and then she’d thought it was a muscle cramp. Almost from the moment it had finally sank in that it was labor contractions, however, she’d had an ache that had been steadily growing worse. 
She nuzzled her face against Daeman’s arm. “Thank you for staying with me.”
Daeman felt his throat tighten. He had not wanted to. He did not want to now. He wanted to be far away so that he could not hear her cries of pain. He did not tell her that, though. He lifted one of the hands he had been stroking her belly with and stroked her cheek, bending his head to kiss the top of her head. “I here for you … always.”
“You are,” Loren said, smiling. “Your English is getting really good.”
“I work bery hard. Soon no sound like dumbass.”
Loren chuckled. “I knew I shouldn’t have taught you all the ‘bad’ words first! You don’t sound like a dumbass now. I think it’s cute.”
“Deisen warrior … no cute,” he muttered. “Handsome.”
Loren turned her head to look up at him, grinning. She lifted a hand to his cheek. “Yes, you are. Very handsome … but that has nothing to do with ‘cute’ … at least not the way I used it.” She thought it over. “Charming.”
His eyes gleamed. Bending closer, he kissed her. He was just warming to his theme when Loren felt a particularly hard contraction. She broke away, sucking in a gasp. Daeman was staring at her in consternation when she opened her eyes again. He flicked an anxious look toward the door Shara had gone out. “Where dat bitch?”
“Daeman!”
His lips tightened. “Gone long enough hunt herbs den brew tea!”
“She hasn’t been gone that long,” Loren disputed, glancing around for Karen to confirm it. She discovered that Karen had a strange look on her face. She’d curled her arms around her own belly. “Karen?”
Karen’s head popped up and she looked at Loren wide eyed. “I think mine’s coming, too.” She paused as a puddle began to form between her legs. “Uh oh.”
“Piss self?” Daeman asked, clearly disapproving.
Karen glared at him. “My water broke, stupid!” she snarled at him.
Daeman glared back at her until that finally registered. It wiped the expression off his face as it sank in that he was trapped in the room with two women in labor. He whipped his head toward the door. “Shara! Get ass here, bitch!” he bellowed.
“She’s going to slip poison in your drink if you don’t stop calling her a bitch.”
“She no know what bitch is.”
“Yes, she does,” Karen corrected him. “I told her.”
Daeman glared at her, discovered she was in the process of removing her clothes and decided to look for reinforcements. “I go find Ka-ren’s mans!”
Loren caught herself on her elbows when he leapt up abruptly and strode toward the door with the air of someone in full flight.
“He won’t be back,” Karen said. 
Daeman jolted to a halt at the door and flicked a resentful look at her. “I come back den, Lau-ren,” he said tightly.
Loren sent Karen a reproachful look. “Mean. You know he wanted to escape.”
“I know … but the other three dumbasses are about half way to the village by now.”
Loren wanted to argue with Karen’s assessment of her men, but she discarded it. They weren’t dumbasses and Karen knew it. She thought it was cute that they’d panicked. They were always so cool headed! 
It occurred to her after a moment to wonder what Karen was thinking now that she was about to have her baby. Karen had told her that she had children. She’d never asked her about them, knowing it would be painful for Karen to talk about. “You ok?”
Karen nodded. “It isn’t my first time.”
Loren’s chest tightened with sympathy. “I know. You told me.”
Karen looked at her oddly. “I thought you’d forgotten.”
“I figured you would talk about it if you wanted to.”
Karen thought that over. “I do tend to speak my mind,” she said wryly. She frowned at her belly thoughtfully, rubbing it. “I was really young when I had the girls. I guess I wasn’t a very good mother.” She shrugged. “I left them with my mother a lot when they were really little, just so I could go out and have fun. I guess it was sort of pay back that they got so wild when they hit their teens. They did the same thing I did—got pregnant too young. I miss them something awful, but the truth is they didn’t seem to really want me butting in to their lives. And I know they have mom. And I can’t do anything to change that. I’m going to try really hard not to make the same mistakes with this one … this family.”
Loren felt so badly for her she felt like crying. She missed her parents, but she couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to know she’d left children and there was no way to get to them. Karen was probably right in a way. She certainly hadn’t wanted her parents interfering with her decisions about her life, but they’d still been there if she’d needed them and Karen couldn’t do that for her girls. It wasn’t going to help either of them to dwell on negative things, though. “Well, I don’t guess there’s going to be any chance to go bar hoping,” she said teasingly.
Karen laughed, sniffing. “They’ve got music at the other village, though. We could throw a party. They do every once in a while—special occasions, you know.”
“We’ll have to have a big party when the guys finish the pods,” Loren agreed, smiling. “And who knows? We might still make a trip to Earth, at least to visit. We used a lot of fuel getting here, but we might be able to find a source to replace what we used and the ship has obviously been there many times. The course should be in the data banks.”
* * * *
When Daeman had located Ka-ren’s men and told them that the baby was coming, he went to stare down the path that they had cut between the two villages for any sign that Kael and the others might be on their way back. He did not want Lau-ren to want comfort and have no one, but he did not want to go back in a very bad way. It had been bad enough to begin with, but he could see that her pain was growing and now Ka-ren would be howling in pain also before very long. 
After a brief debate, he turned and studied the area for some place that would allow him to see further and finally focused on the building itself. They had only just begun work upon the pods that would house their families, but the central community area was completed. Four tall ventilation shafts, two on each end, rose to a height that put the openings above the surrounding trees. Lau-ren had said that it was a brilliant design. It would keep the temperature inside almost constant at a comfortable temperature year round—like the central heating and cooling units they used on her world.
Girding himself, he strode to the building and began to climb up. He was breathing heavily by the time he reached the top of the nearest spire, but he felt triumphant. Turning, he stared hard in the direction of the other village, hoping to see some sign that they were returning—with or without Teron. He could not see them and frustration and dismay filled him. They had abandoned him to stay with Lau-ren, the inconsiderate bastards!
He was about to climb down again when it occurred to him that his voice would carry very far, mayhap further than his eyes could see. Shrugging inwardly, he sucked in a deep breath to bellow as loudly as he could. “Lau-ren is having the baby!”
He didn’t feel particularly hopeful that that would inspire them to rush back even if they heard him, but at least it was something!
Lau-ren looked far more distressed when he returned than she had when he had left and he felt his belly cramp. He halted just inside the door, wondering if she would notice if he retreated again.
She unclenched her eyes and looked at him before he could escape. “Daeman!” she gasped, holding out a hand to him.
His belly executed a flip and something tightened around his throat, as if a hand had seized it in a vice. Swallowing with an effort, he moved toward her and sat down as he had before—behind her where he could see nothing but the mound of her belly. Shara had been examining Ka-ren, but she moved to Lau-ren as he gathered her against him again.
She nodded and held out the tea for Lau-ren to drink a little. “Baby coming. We get in pool now.”
Daeman looked at the calm bitch with a mixture of outrage and fear. 
“Oh no! They’re not back yet. We have to wait!”
Daeman agreed completely. He nodded jerkily. “Wait for father.”
“Baby no wait. He come when he ready.”
“You think it’s a boy?” Loren asked hopefully.
Shara shrugged. “We know soon.”
How she could be so calm about it passed all belief, Daeman thought angrily. He got up, however, and cast a yearning glance toward the door and then climbed into the pool. When Shara had joined them, she instructed him with a mixture of language and hand motions to hold Lau-ren as he had before except he must reach around her and support her legs. 
He thought he was doing well enough until he spotted a light cloud of blood. A wave of dizziness swept over him and he glanced at Shara sharply to see if he could tell from her expression if that was a bad thing or expected. 
She smiled. “Almost see top of head! Come very soon now!”
“Gods!” Daeman muttered, glancing toward the door again. To his relief, Kael rushed in. Directly behind him were Teron and Dakaar and Balen. Balen stopped at the door and stared at the group in the pool and then retreated.
Craven bastard, Daeman thought. 
Kael and Dakaar dropped into the pool and wrestled briefly over possession of Lau-ren. As relieved as he was, Daeman felt a flicker of both regret and resentment as he yielded her to them and climbed out of the pool. Despite his earlier desire to escape, however, he did not retreat far. He had been with her through most of her labor. He decided he would stay so that she would know he was with her throughout. 
Kael and Dakaar finally settled their silent battle and Kael shifted her to hold her as Daeman had been. Dakaar took her hand, kneading it a little frantically. 
Teron had gotten into the pool and moved first to Lau-ren. When he had checked her, he patted Shara’s shoulder. “She is doing well.”
Kael and Dakaar glared at him as he moved away to check on Ka-ren. “Her baby is crowning, also,” he announced. “They are racing, these two!”
Neither Kael nor Dakaar looked amused or pleased about the announcement. In point of fact, Ka-ren’s men did not look particularly happy either, especially when Ka-ren began to throw more volume into her cries. 
Teron moved back to see Lau-ren’s progress, but he merely stood and watched Shara until he was apparently satisfied and then he moved back to Ka-ren.
As unsettling as it was to watch Lau-ren struggle, Daeman focused on her again. Kael and Dakaar, he saw, seemed to have won their battle with their panic. 
“Big baby,” Shara announced, planting her hands on her hips to consider the problem. “Very big.” She looked at Dakaar. “Put hands here on belly. Next time grow hard, you help her, yes?”
Dakaar looked a little sick, but he nodded jerkily and placed his hands on Lau-ren’s belly. Lau-ren began to pant with effort. 
“Now!” Shara said. “Gentle push down.”
Lau-ren strained until her voice reached a high note that bordered on a scream.
“Good! See head now! One more, Lau-ren!”
She frowned after a moment. “Next one.”
Kael held his breath, beginning to feel the panic from before clawing its way to the surface again when Shara thought the baby would come and it didn’t. He felt weak all over when saw a small shape appear between her legs and tiny arms and legs flailing the water as the baby swam instinctively toward the surface. Its face broke the water and it sucked in a breath of air and let out a wail of distress.
Loren chuckled weakly with relief, reaching for the baby as Shara caught it beneath its arms to support it and looked it over carefully. She grinned at Loren abruptly. “Big strong boy! Good lungs!”
She held the baby out to Dakaar. “You gibe Lau-ren.”
Dakaar caught the baby and stared it for a long moment, searching for any clue that it might be his. Torn between the desire to know and the reluctance to find out it was not his, he hesitated and finally lifted the baby to sniff its scent. The baby sniffled, squinted its eyes, and let out a wail. Disappointment tightened around his throat. He turned and settled the baby in Lau-ren’s arms. “No mine,” he said, trying to sound neutral.
Loren glanced at him sharply. “We don’t know that yet.”
He nodded and looked at Kael. 
Kael looked at the baby skeptically, trying to accept, and finally shifted Lau-ren in his arms so that he could nuzzle his face against the baby’s. The baby tested his scent and opened his eyes a sliver, batting at his cheek. Kael grinned broadly. “Mine.”
“You two are weird,” Loren said a little irritably. “He’s mine and that makes him ours!”
“Next one mine!” Dakaar said, grim determination in his eyes as he challenged Kael.
“Don’t talk to me about ‘next’, damn it!” Loren said tiredly. “I just had this one.”
Dakaar looked disconcerted for a moment. He leaned down and nuzzled her face. “Next one mine?”
Loren relented, kissing his hard cheek. “Talk to me about it in about a year.”
Dakaar looked surprised but pleased and then a little doubtful. “You spawn in year?”
Loren bit her lip. Either he hadn’t believed her when she’d told him that they were fertile once a month every month, or he’d forgotten. “Yep. I’ll be ready for another spawning in a year. We’ll tie Kael up,” she added, sending him a teasing look. 
“I spawn,” he said, studying the baby with pride. “Next year, I no need.”
When they finally helped her and the baby out of the pool, it was Daeman waiting with the blankets to wrap them both up. Loren smiled at him happily. “He’s beautiful isn’t he?”
He studied the baby a little doubtfully. “Mine be pretty.”
Loren ignored the insult to her beautiful baby and smiled at him, lifting a hand to pull him down for a kiss. “He will be … just like his daddy. The ladies are all going to faint when they see all of my beautiful boys!”
She noticed Balen, looking a little pale and shaken, standing behind Daeman when he straightened and smiled at him, holding out her hand in invitation. “This is wonderful! All the people I love the most in the entire universe together,” she said happily.
A new baby wail caught their attention and they all glanced over toward Karen. Noticing their interest, one of her men looked at them. “Mine!” he said with a shaky grin. “Is girl!”
Loren repressed a smile. He looked as shaky as crack addict! She sure was glad her men were so tough and cool under pressure!
The End.