7. Sharing is Caring

Breath, sweet breath.

Life, sweet life.

I am surprised when I wake up no longer attached to a sacrificial pillar. I thought I was most certainly dead. I thought Emrys had drained me to the very last drop. But my eyes open and I draw breath, and I live in a way I never imagined I would again.

I have been washed. I have been clad in soft clothes. I have been tucked up snugly, and I am being held in the arms of the creature I was certain would destroy me.

Emrys looks down at me as I look at him in complete confusion.

"Why am I still here? Is there more you want?"

"The intention was never to kill you. The point was for you to sacrifice yourself. You did that. You surrendered yourself to me. You gave your blood. You took my seed. You lost your dignity and your ego. You gave up every little bit of yourself. You no longer know why you live…"

"I've never known why I live," I say. "Why do I feel so good?"

Emrys smiles. "You do feel good, don't you? You feel lighter, stronger, healthier?"

Yes. All those things. I feel the way I remember feeling only when I was very young, but I feel them more deeply and more intensely than before.

"What did you do to me?"

"I rewarded you," he says. "You have earned it."

"How did you reward me?"

He smiles enigmatically and declines to reply. I know there's no way he is going to actually tell me what he did. Whatever happened took place when I was insensate. I am grateful to be alive, and I am even more grateful to feel good.

I stretch and squirm in his arms, feeling a kind of settled warmth. He holds me close, strokes my hair, and makes me feel petted and cosseted. The fear I experienced when I first met him, the desperate running from him, it all culminated here.

"That's a good girl," he praises me. "You have proven to be quite the surprise, little one. What started as a scam has turned out to be an excellent investment. It almost makes me curious. What happened to your name, human? What twisted and broke you? What turned you from a generally useless little lump of meat into this scheming creature good only for sacrifice?"

"My king…" Aristo appears. He seems to be allowed to wander in and out of Emrys' most intimate areas without permission.

Then again, I have spent the last few days chained to a plinth and being ravaged for anybody to see. Privacy is not in abundance among the valkers.

"Yes?"

"There is a creature claiming he has legal jurisdiction over the queen."

"That will be the Sheriff," Emrys says. "I sent him off on a side quest, but you can let him in. We can't keep him at bay forever."

I let out a sigh knowing that this, too, was inevitable. There is no escaping fate, or the numahn Sheriff.

"He wants to kill me," I remind Emrys.

"I wanted to kill you too," he reminds me. "He might change his mind."

He is not going to change his mind.

At any other time, I would be terrified, but I think Emrys might have drunk away my fear. I lie in Emrys' sheltering arms and I peek out between the thick strands of his hair as the most terrible creature I have ever known is allowed into our presence.

Sheriff comes striding into what I suppose must be some bedroom cum meeting chamber. Valker interior design is hard to make out when so much of it is really oriented around fuckable surfaces.

"Well, hello," he says in that casual drawl that might make you think he wasn't such a bad guy if you knew absolutely nothing about him at all. "There you are, Emily."

I cringe as he uses the name the numahns gave me. Emrys was right. I am without a name, because I will always reject any imposed upon me.

"Emily? That is your name?" Emrys snorts. "That will not do. We cannot be Emrys and Emily. It's almost cute. That's completely unacceptable. You'll have to choose another."

"I've been choosing another for as long as I can remember. Emily is not my name. He is the last person who would ever have the right to name me."

"I am getting the strong sense you two know one another," Emrys says.

"He is the one who did it," I tell my king. "He is the one who made me what I am."

"Ungrateful brat!" Sheriff laughs. "I am the one who saved your life."

"You didn't save me from anything. You saved me to use me. You're sick."

I am finally getting to say things I wished I had said many years ago. I am not afraid. There is nothing and nobody who can possibly get me while I'm here in Emrys' arms. Not even the great Sheriff.

"You've had your use of her," Sheriff says. "I agreed to give you enough time to complete your homecoming ritual, and I did that. Now it is time to surrender her. We had an agreement."

"I don't know that we did," Emrys says. He sits up in bed and gestures for Aristo to hand him a rod of hard-pressed bloodweed. The servant does as his king demands and provides a light. Red smoke curls into the air between us. I am still lying on the bed, protected by Emrys. He has one languid arm draped over my waist in a casual gesture which belies his readiness to do great harm. Anticipation, even.

I notice that Sheriff is not wearing any weapons. Aristo and the other valkers would never allow that. He is standing here with only the weight of his largely self-proclaimed authority to protect him. It is arrogance, and I hope Emrys makes him suffer for it.

Sheriff is a horror I sought to escape over and over again. Now he stands before me in his shiny space-junk uniform, looking at me with judgement I was never going to escape, and making me realize I should never have spent so long running. What I should have done was gotten stronger and made allies.

Sheriff can't touch me now, not even this close. He'll never touch me again.

"So am I to understand," Emrys purrs, his voice even between deeper inhalations of smoke. "You raised this human from an infant?"

"I took that creature into my home," Sheriff says. "She repaid me with disobedience and criminality."

"You took her in after her own family was killed."

"Yes."

"By you."

"By fighting with my unit."

"So you destroyed her world, killed her family, kidnapped her as an infant, and you have the temerity to be offended when she grows up to be anything other than grateful?" Emrys lets out a dry, rasping laugh. "You are deeply delusional, aren't you, so-called Sheriff."

I am grinning so hard it feels like my face might split open. Emrys is not going to give me up. I know that. He doesn't have to say it. There's no promise he needs to make. I can feel it in the marrow of my fucking bones that I will never be betrayed by him.

"You do not understand," Sheriff says.

"That's what people say when they want to do something terrible, or when they are defending something plainly awful," Emrys replies. "They appeal to some kind of ephemeral sense that exists outside the obvious, as if the one they were talking to would surely understand their evil if only they knew some extra little fact that makes their depravity acceptable. My kind slaughters the innocent regularly. But we do not have the nerve to expect their gratitude in response. And we certainly do not raise the young of our prey only to turn on them."

"She committed crime after crime," Sheriff says. "She brought shame to our family. She needs to face justice. She killed someone in the course of fleeing. She is dangerous, Emrys. She is not a safe creature to have around."

"That is fortunate," Emrys says, snugging me close. "I do not want a safe creature. I cannot imagine anything more tedious. You can abandon your hunt here, Sheriff. It is over. She is mine."

"I can't allow that. I will not be forgiven until I return with her head, or until it is taken before the hall of justice."

Emrys runs his fingertips down the nape of my neck, over my shoulders, and down my spine in a soothing gesture. He senses the tension in me and moves immediately to defuse it. So much of what Emrys communicates is done without words. If only Sheriff was smart enough to read the room. There is danger here, but it is not coming from me.

"Surrender your need for revenge, Sheriff. Go back to your world or don't. I don't care. I can tell you that if you continue to have even the thought of so much as harming the smallest hair on the least important part of her body, you will be destroyed in the most creative and cruel way I can come up with. In fact, it will not be my ideas alone that you will suffer. I will open the floor to the court, and they will each have their turn with you."

In some credit to his bravery, Sheriff manages not to shudder at the threat, which is given with deliciously malevolent tones that make it very clear Emrys would enjoy his destruction.

"Justice will not be intimidated," Sheriff says.

"You're an incredibly stupid creature, aren't you," Emrys says. He is not angry. There is not even judgement in his tone. There's just a straight up incredulous note in his voice, as if he cannot believe the number of warnings he is giving, and how many of them Sheriff is blowing through.

"If you will not allow me to take her, then I will have to perform a rogue form of justice. It is not my preference, but I cannot risk losing this chance. It may be my last."

He draws a weapon that he must have hidden down the back of his pants, probably in the crack of his ass.

"ARGGHGH!"

Before Emrys can react, a scream in the semi-distance draws everybody's attention. It's the sort of blood-curdling cry of desperation and fear that can only come from one source. The screaming gets closer very swiftly and parts of it come through the door. The other parts of what come through the door also come through Sheriff.

Atlas appears in a flurry of blades and fury.

He is so large he takes out much of the doorway as he comes through, chunks of rock and plaster flying along with spurts of blue blood as he cuts through various parts of Sheriff.

I watch as the man who saved me, then hunted me throughout the universe, is blended in an open air blender. Bits of him fly everywhere as he becomes little more than a hot spray and a wet aftermath.

Am I horrified?

I would have been before Emrys and his sacrifice. Now I am something else. Something that concerns me deeply.

I am hungry.

I reach for a handful of Sheriff. I don't know what I'm getting. Something meaty and bloody. Who knows what part of him it is. I stuff it into my mouth with the same instinct a baby shoves any given object into its face. My instincts demand it.

"Easy… easy…"

Emrys does the same thing dog owners do when their puppy gets into something it shouldn't, pushing his fingers into my mouth and popping out what turns out to be a hunk of shattered bone.

In the aftermath of the quickest resolution to the longest episode of lethal trouble in my life, Aristo comes rushing in while Emrys does his best to stop me from consuming more bits of ex-dad. I am so fiercely hungry. There's something about the smell of blood that is driving me absolutely wild.

Aristo enters the room far too late to help, but just in time to look appalled and horrified at the scene he finds. For a valker to be concerned at the sight of blood and gore is quite a rarity, given their penchant for rampant destruction and wanton cruelty. Perhaps he's not actually surprised. Maybe he's shocked at the scythkin's artistry.

"I'm sorry, my liege. We attempted to stop the scythkin, but there is no meaningful way to do so. He's very… sharp."

"It's alright. He did us all a favor," Emrys says.

"Sorry," Atlas says. Blood drips from the tips of his spikes and blades. "I heard what he was saying, and I may have somewhat lost control."

"Not at all, friend. You've saved us all a great deal of… no, human girl. No. You're not ready to eat raw flesh as yet. It will give you the worst stomachache of your life."

Emrys once again deprives me of what I've decided is food, firmly pulling me away from the bulk of the carcass which I had managed to drag toward me while everyone else was talking. I want to eat. I want to devour big, thick chunks of freshly killed meat. I want to eat the cruelty of the numahn who raised me and betrayed me. It would nourish me. I would have revenge. I would be free of all the pain and torment he put me through all the years I ran from him. All the desperate things I did to avoid him. If I eat him, it will be like they never happened.

"Stop it this instant!" Emrys' tone goes cold as he starts to lose patience with my disobedience. "I have told you, you are not ready."

"I want to eat him!"

"And you will. You will consume him once he has been properly cooked, and not a moment before."

The thought of cooked flesh makes my stomach turn. I don't want to eat meat the way I used to, the juicy, soft fibers turned to tough bits I'll have to chew. I want to drink and swallow in easy chunks.

"It's not fair!"

"Don't be petulant," Emrys lectures me. "Behave yourself and thank Atlas for not only providing your first proper meal, but for solving the problem of the Sheriff."

I tear my gaze away from the pieces of person and look at Atlas. The last time we saw one another, I was a sweet little thing in a frilly gown. Now I am a half-naked wretch in a blood frenzy.

The scythkin stands in his most monstrous form before me, while behind me a beast of pure evil holds me still, but I am perhaps the worst creature left alive in this space. I am hunger incarnate. I am nothing but need. My appetite is even more intense now, both for flesh and for… flesh. That's all I want now. It feels like it is the only thing I am capable of wanting.

"Say thank you," Emrys prompts me again.

My muscles bunch and gather for a swift moment before I throw myself off the bed and into the arms of the scythkin who saved me. Fortunately for me, Atlas's reflexes are faster than I am. He manages to retract the many blades that would have skewered me and catch me in powerful, hard arms, holding me close.

"You ran away, naughty girl," he lectures me gently as I lap the blood of my father from his chest, licking the smooth carapace clean with eagerness. "I was worried about you."

"No need to worry about me," I say. "I always land on my feet."

"Is this what you call landing on your feet? Look at you. Look what has happened to you, my sweet little human."

"Hardly human anymore. She is a little monster," Emrys chuckles. "She's changed."

"Into your kind? That's not possible," Atlas replies, eminently reasonable.

"No," Emrys says. "It's not. It's more accurate to say that she has been infected. She has new appetites. She will be ravenous, I'm afraid, prone to outbursts and uncontrollable behavior."

"So, much as she was before?"

"Well, to a certain degree."

I am hungry. I have been hungry. But now that I feel the powerful body of the scythkin against me, the hard lines of his chest and abdomen rippling against me I am aroused. Intensely, deeply so.

The scythkin is my savior. He has eliminated the creature who raised me to hunt. He is also fucking hot. I look into his merciless, ultra-alien gaze, seeing nothing remotely human in it. I am glad for that. I do not want to see any tenderness in a mate's eyes. I want to see what I see: complete alien possession.

"I have very much missed you," he says.

"Even though I'm not the same as I was the last time you saw me?"

"You are exactly the same," he says, gripping my rear with big, strong hands. "You are the human I bought, the human I tried to protect. You are the human I have followed across the universe to claim. And you are mine."

He nuzzles me with his alien features, and I feel the angular lines of his powerful jaw against mine. His fingers flex against my cheeks, squeezing and flexing, grinding me against his crotch. I feel a swelling against my sex. I am barely clad, and he is not wearing anything at all. His cock is kept away behind some kind of alien plating, but I do not think it will stay there for long. He wants me, and I want him.

Emrys is still here, but he does not seem to mind. I glance over my shoulder for a brief moment to see what he is doing. He looks at me with a slight smirk on his lips, just a hint of fang showing. I don't think he minds at all. I think he likes seeing me like this, wanton, wayward, losing control.

"Take me."

I murmur the words against Atlas' cheek, grinding myself against him in wanton desperation. He's freed me. I know he wants to keep me captive, but he has done me a greater service than any other living creature on this planet or off it.

Atlas does not ask Emrys for permission to have me. Atlas does not say another word at all. He rumbles deeply and a part of him that has remained hidden from me and from most of the universe emerges at the apex of his thighs.

He is broad and thick, he is shaped like a rod, but not like a cock. A cock is too simple an appendage to be compared to his mating appendage. I feel it flex and move against me, seeking my entrance. Was there fabric between him and me? It is not there for long. It disintegrates under the pressure of his little myriad of spikes.

He could hurt me. He probably will hurt me.

Gone is the gentleman who called me young lady, and who tucked me up in a sweet, feminine bed. The monster is here, and he wants me. Even Emrys has the sense not to come between us.

"Careful with her…" Emrys murmurs, though not in a tone that suggests he is worried that Atlas will not be careful with me. He says it in a tone that makes me feel as though he's almost looking forward to it.

I am drenched with arousal as the scythkin takes me.

"I said, careful!" Emrys roars as I cry out in pain. Maybe he is proud of me as his dark little creation. Maybe he wants to protect me from my other, more terrible mate.

"She doesn't need me to be careful," Atlas grunts. "She needs me to be dominant."

Caught in a sexual whirlwind between two apex predators, I squirm and writhe, Atlas's cock becoming the fulcrum around which I spin. He remains stern with me, rough with me. He continues to push my changed flesh to take him, holding me in mid-air and fucking me with the urgency of a male who must claim his female mate at all and any costs.

Being taken by Atlas feels very different than being taken by Emrys. When Emrys is inside me, I feel as though I am being erased in some way, subsumed into his existence, not needing my own. When Atlas fucks me, I feel more human than I have ever felt before. I feel a carnal kind of power that is not diminished in the slightest by the fact that he is giving my pussy a firm and even punishing fucking directly after saving my life, while I am still covered in the blood spray of my greatest enemy.

Scythkins know how to handle humans instinctively, I think. There is some deep connection to our species, almost as if we're the same thing while being entirely different. I feel his cock getting thicker and thicker inside me as his pleasure intensifies. My blood thirst and hunger has not abated, but it is being channeled into the primal activity of being fucked long and hard like an animal.

Atlas treated me like a dress-up doll last time we met. This time he is using me like a fuck doll. My naked, sanguine-smeared body responds to his thrusting and his carnal dominion with true pleasure of the kind that ripples through my flesh, starting at my clit and in my pussy and running out to my fingers and toes.

Emrys is watching me be fucked, still smoking his bloodweed. His concern is no longer present, as it is quite obvious I am capable of taking this pounding. Looking into his deep red eyes, I see a smirk appear on his handsome lips as he watches me be taken. There is so much approval in his gaze, so much desire, so much perfect satisfaction.

I know I am a spectacle. I have been nothing but a spectacle since he first fucked me, but this is a more intimate kind of show. This is a show for him.

Atlas lifts me up a little. Instead of letting me dangle from his cock, he pulls me up with my back against his torso and lifts me up and down the length of his all-too-alien cock, the hard plating of his rod slicked by my human wetness.

He grunts and he growls, he reaches around and he strums my exposed clit with the pads of his fingers until I cry out as I lose the battle against this forced orgasm.

"Fuck! Fuck… FUCK!"

When Atlas is done with me, when his seed is draining slowly from my aching, well-used pussy, I lie in an overly fed haze and I listen to my owners discuss me and my fate. Once again, the topic of sharing comes up. It seems to be an unavoidable conclusion to our tale.

"I will share her with you, scythkin, because she is too much for any one male. Two of our original number have fallen in her pursuit. You have proven your claim to her by acting in her defense. Plus, you might be one of very few creatures in the universe actually capable of handling her."

"Remember, there is a third," Atlas says.

"A third?"

"The barbarian. Kronos."

"He probably lost interest."

"I doubt it. He is a good guy, and good guys do not lose interest. They show up at the very moment the desperate heroine needs them the most, and they save her."

"But you've already done that," Emrys points out. "He's narratively redundant. You're the good guy. I'm the bad guy. The damsel has been saved from her distress."

"I still intend to keep her safe in my simulation."

"Her mind won't fit your simulation anymore, scythkin. She's not a normal human being. She's what her kind would call a vampire, or a cannibal. Or both. She will prey on humans as numahns preyed on her. She will be a most efficient killer of men. If you cannot accept that, I am telling you now, you would be better off leaving her to me. I know what she is. I know how she needs to be treated."

Atlas gives me a rather sad look. "You may be right. She is a monstrous little thing."

"You're a monstrous big thing," I snipe back, rather offended. "Just because I'm not some little doll to keep inside your simulation, that's it?"

"Aw, you've hurt her feelings," Emrys smirks. "Don't worry, my human beast. You will be well taken care of."

"There will be others for the simulation," Atlas says. "You will remain outside it, safely in the realm of the valker king you have given your soul to."

"He more took it than I gave it," I pout. "Does this mean you're giving up your claim to me?"

"Of course not. This means you will be my dangerous little mate."

At first, I did not like the idea of horrifying a scythkin. The notion made my stomach turn. If I am to horrify the universe's most dangerous and vicious creature, then I must be the most terrifying creature in all of creation. But now I am starting to consider that it might not be the worst thing to be feared.

"Am I the worst?"

"The worst?" Atlas smiles an incredibly sharp smile, an alien smile with more sharp bits in it than stars in the sky. "Little girl, you are far from the worst. You couldn't be the worst if you tried, and I do believe you may have tried."

"She eliminated the spy," Emrys adds.

"Did you?"

"He betrayed me. He was working for Sheriff. So I made him walk out of an airlock."

"Merciless," Atlas says.

"I don't want to be merciless, but they made me. I want to be normal."

"Unfortunately, that is no longer possible," Emrys says. "You are never going to be normal. But you will be very well used and owned and you will become every bit the little monster the universe made you to be."

"She needs to hunt," Emrys explains to Atlas. "If she does not hunt, she will be absolutely uncontrollable. But that does not mean she cannot be tamed."

"She will be tamed," Atlas says firmly. "And I will expect her to be dressed properly. I am an old-fashioned man, when I am a man at all, and I want my mate to look the part."

"A 1950's housewife who consumes the flesh of her enemies?"

"Yes. Exactly."

"Indeed."