5. Caught

5 CAUGHT

W rath

Days have passed, and though I do not want to panic the human, I am starting to worry about things like oxygen and water. The supply area is well stocked, but even the well-est of stocks drops to zero eventually.

Allie has kept herself busy by cleaning. The fact that we are in a dirt hole in the ground does not stop her. The fact that there is no water to spare for these endeavors also does not stop her. She makes do with brushing the dusty dirt from one corner of the floor to the other. I think at this point it is pretty much a compulsion on her part. She does not feel good about herself unless she is being useful in some way. I suppose that can be a positive trait, but in my little human, it is more like an obsession.

"Rest," I tell her. "You are wasting energy that you will need to escape with when the time is right."

"They're coming for us, aren't they? Of course they are. They wouldn't leave us down here, buried under thousands of tonnes of rock, would they?" She asks the question with wide eyes and fast breaths. She is worried. More than worried. She is panicking. She is not old enough yet to know that there are worse things than being trapped underground.

The world begins to rumble. Little cascades of dust start to fall from the ceiling.

Worse things… like being rescued by the wrong rescuer.

"People are coming for us!" A broad smile flashes over Allie's face. "We're going to be saved! Oh my god. I was really starting to worry, but now I feel as though it's all going to be okay."

I do not share her optimism, but there is little point in telling her that.

The machinery being used to get to us is large and specialized. It is of a design made to penetrate deep underground, and it was made for the purpose of rooting me and my kind out. This is not a rescue mission. This is an arrest.

The wall opens, solid earth turning to powder beneath the drill. Allie is so excited to be freed that she runs toward the big churning blade. I grab her and pull her back out of the way as the machine powers down.

"Careful," I tell her. "No matter what happens from here on out, remember you are mine."

"I am?" She looks at me with surprise.

"Did I not mention that?"

"I mean, not as such… no?"

"Well," I say. "You are."

"WRATH!"

A broad, tall saurian with fiery scales and long dark hair flowing from his handsome head strides into our little sanctuary with a broad, smug, satisfied grin.

"Didn't think I'd catch you like this," he says.

"You've ‘caught' me plenty of times, Alpha Thorn," I say, using his title like an epithet. "This won't be any different from them."

"A little different," Thorn says, his gaze dropping from me to the human clinging to me. I think she might be afraid of him. I suspect she knows exactly who he is. The human women have made everything about Grave City their business.

"This time, the city is under attack from a crazed human captain," Thorn says. "I'm of the opinion we need to tackle this together. She's already done damage to the primal skeleton."

A llie

So this is Alpha Thorn. The saurian who started this when he took captain Sullivan and made her his own. These creatures cannot simply fuck someone and let them go. They get attached with a capital A. Hearing Wrath call me his own made me feel a whole host of things, from incredibly wanted to incredibly trapped. He's never going to let me go, just like Thorn is never going to let Sullivan go.

The machine starts up again, this time in reverse. Wrath grips me again, as if he's afraid I'm going to run into the sharp blades. He doesn't have much confidence in my ability to preserve my own life.

Light and fresh air flow down the very large tunnel, restoring not only oxygen, but hope. I want to run up into the sunlight, and I do, pulling away from Wrath and rushing up the tunnel.

"Allie! Come back!" Wrath shouts after me, but I am gone. At first I'm not really trying to escape, but halfway up, I start to think hell, why not escape? As much as I liked sleeping with Wrath, I can't afford to become a possession the way all the others have. That's been their mistake this entire time.

I'm fast. They don't expect that. I got fit cleaning the ship. There's a lot of it, and I try to do it all as quickly as possible. I wasn't fighting fit the same way the others were, but I know how to skedaddle.

Wrath is huge and powerful, but he's not as fast as me. How could he be? Getting damn near a tonne of muscle uphill at speed is much harder than getting a couple hundred pounds up it.

"Catch that human!" Thorn calls out behind me.

I emerge out of the tunnel and find myself completely surrounded by saurians. They're obviously not here for me. They've come to catch Wrath. They are all armed with weapons that look very unpleasant and highly dangerous. There's your usual guns and such, but there's also some kind of trident being held by one of them. They look ready to take him dead or alive, and some of them seem to strongly prefer the dead option.

They look at me, and a couple of them dive toward me as if to catch me. I yelp with fear and dive around them. I don't know how I do it, but I am filled with adrenaline and maybe that's what gives me the reflexes of a gazelle. Either way, I break through their line, and that's when the chaos really ensues.

They want Wrath, but Thorn told them to catch me. So now they're really split, and as I continue my dash for freedom, what was an impenetrable wall of soldiers or guards now becomes a loose collection of armed saurians all looking in different directions.

Wrath could easily escape if he wanted to.

Instead, he crests the tunnel and steps into the sunlight and begins laughing his ass off as I am chased around the outdoors by a small pack of Alpha Thorn's men. I'm not entirely sure where to go, so instead of picking a direction I find myself zipping around in various directions. It's a panicked shenanigan, and it is causing chaos.

FWOMP!

That is the sound of massive leathery wings opening wide in order to stop the motion of a massive flying saurian who plucks me from the ground like a running rabbit.

"Stop squirming," he says. "I don't want to drop you."

The ground is so far away almost immediately, that the threat of being dropped is pretty much a threat to kill me. I know he said he didn't want to drop me, but the very mention of it is enough because of the implication.

From this position in the air, I can see the damage Lettie's barrage has done to the city. She's made a crater where Wrath's secret hideout used to be, and taken out all the roads and buildings in the process. It is absolutely shocking to see. We have never, ever done anything like that before. Not even when Sullivan was in her most unhinged era.

"Oh my… what the… why?!" I hear myself exclaiming to the rushing wind as we circle back down to Alpha Thorn's little corner of captivity. Wrath is quite unconcerned, standing in the midst of the armed men.

I am returned to him by the winged saurian. As I touch down and turn around to see who the hell just did that to me, my eyes widen. It's another one of the saurians who has been discussed more times than I can count on the Mare . This is Raine's captor, the winged purple sex god with the huge…

They've all got huge…

"Naughty," Wrath growls in my ear as he wraps a possessive hand around my waist. "Though I do appreciate the distraction. If I had been inclined to escape, it would have been very useful."

He spanks my bottom once, twice, three times in quick succession. My blanket-dress does not offer much in the way of coverage, and I am keenly aware that I am being punished in front of several very handsome, very dominant saurians.

"You do not run away from me," Wrath lectures me. "You do as I say with your whole body, not just that tight little cunt I like to fuck."

I let out a moan, and then feel absolutely ashamed for having done so. I like the way he speaks to me. I like the way he handles me. I should be humiliated, but instead I feel so cared for. Wrath lets me know with every breath and every word that I am his, and his alone.

"You must like her a great deal," Thorn grins. "That was nothing more than a series of little pats."

"I could show you how to discipline a human female properly," Avel rumbles. "They can take quite a number of marks on their flesh before breaking."

"Save that for your mate," Wrath says. "What are we doing now? Standing in the open waiting for another barrage?"

"I suggest we go to the bunker," Thorn says. "I've had all the humans stowed there in order to protect them. We will be safe there, no matter what they send our way."

"Not necessarily," I mutter as Wrath puts me down next to him, one hand on my shoulder as he speaks with Thorn. I have a flash of feeling like a child being left out of a conversation I should very much be a part of. Just because they're bigger, taller, and more scaled doesn't mean they understand everything.

I know what weapons the Mare has, and they're more than enough to flatten this city. Lettie has actually been somewhat restrained so far. Insane, but restrained.

I am ignored, of course.

It doesn't matter what I do because nothing I do matters. I may as well be a stray pet to these saurians. They don't take us seriously, even as Lettie levels city blocks in the effort to be recognized as a threat.

A sensation not unlike pure rage flows through me. Like Lettie, I am tired of being ignored.

I haul back with my foot and I kick Alpha Thorn in the shin. It makes absolutely no impression on him at all. I wish I was wearing boots.

"What was that for?" Thorn lifts a terribly handsome brow to me.

"Give us Sullivan back so we can leave this stupid planet! That's why Lettie has the bombs, because you've taken every sane and decent member of our crew! We need Sullivan back. We need Raine back. We need everyone back on the Mare so we can leave ."

Thorn chuckles, as if I've said something sweet and cute and adorable.

"I see you like them feisty, Wrath," he says.

"I like them smart, talented, and able to read a room," he says.

That's quite a string of compliments. They make me feel very slightly better.

"We all need to get out of the open," Thorn says. "From what I understand, you are the main target of this assault, Wrath."

"I might be the lightning rod for this female, but she is furious at all of us, I am sure. Humans have a general dislike for being captured and forced to serve as mates."

"Not that I've noticed," Thorn says. "My mate loves every minute of her captivity."

I kick him again. Harder this time. Hard enough to hurt my own toes. It does nothing. It's actually less satisfying than it was the first time, because it doesn't have the shock factor of being new. I wish I were a more dangerous animal. I wish I had sharp teeth and fangs. I wish I could rip this smug, handsome, privileged asshole apart.

"That's enough of that," Thorn says mildly.

"You better let Sullivan go. We need her."

"Do you realize how many of your crew have come and said that very same thing? Sullivan enjoys her captivity with me. She is recovering from a lifetime of cruelty and reckless acts. She is safe with me in a way she would never be safe left to her own devices."

"And Raine? Does Raine enjoy being kept in some kind of sky hovel and turned into a public sex…"

"Calm down, Cinderella."

I stiffen as I hear Raine's voice. She's here. Of course she is. And of course I just said the sky sex thing in front of her. She steps out of a vehicle, where she must have been waiting like a dog left in a grocery store parking lot . I heard that ancient earth phrase a long time ago, and it leaps to mind now.

I've lived in fear of her for as long as I can remember. Not because she's cruel, but because she's an incredibly intimidating person. Tall, raven hair, piercing eyes, and a resting bitch face that verges on a resting murder face. She walks, no, stalks toward me, and I feel that old fear rising with a new sensation — disgust. She's on their side. How could she possibly be on their side?

"My name's not Cinderella."

"Isn't it? That's what we all call you."

Maybe there's something in the saurian air that makes you braver. Maybe it's some kind of chemical compound. I don't know what it is, because I would never have talked back to Raine in the past.

"It's not my name," I repeat. "My name is Allie."

"No, it isn't," Raine laughs. "Allie Katt is what Sullivan called you when you came aboard. It was never your name. Don't you remember where we found you?"

I stare at her as a memory hole opens up inside me.

I don't remember.

But I suddenly remember that I don't remember. That's worse. So much worse.

And then I start to actually remember.

Wrath

Something in my mate's face changes. I see horror in her. A deep existential sort of realization. The kind of terror that makes me want to protect her. But there's no external threat, because it is coming from inside her. I know when someone is broken. Most of those who find their way to me are.

I think I am about to get the answer to the question I asked her when I first had her disrobed in front of me, when I first explored her body. I think I am about to discover the hard edge I sensed but could not see.

"Don't worry. Don't worry," I murmur to her.

"I don't remember."

"Remembering is not easy and often overrated. We forget most of our lives, if not all of them. Just be here with me now. Don't worry about what you've forgotten."

"We need to get to a secure location, and we need to do it fast. That lunatic on the ship will open fire again at any moment."

I pick my mate up, and we all travel to Thorn's secure location.