3. The Saurian, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Lettie

I hear sounds of him leaving, but not through the big metal door with the bar across it. He did not move it. Instead, I hear faint squeaking. More like the sound of a wooden door being opened. Has to be the wardrobe. Must be a way out through there.

I hear it close, quietly. He's trying to hide the way he's exiting, but I don't need my eyes to observe. And it's going to take more than a few bits of rope to keep me bound. I like rope. I like it a lot. It's a little bit of a hobby of mine, actually. Not so much the tying, but the escaping.

When he was tying me, I held my elbows apart. He wrapped it somewhat tight, but he didn't want to hurt me, and he didn't know how much tension to put on the rope. All I do now is slide my forearms back together in a prayer position and there's enough slack in the rope to start wriggling my hands back and forth until I can pull the first loop up and over my hands. Then another. Then another. Then the entire coil just unrolls itself. From there, I yank the blindfold off and untie my feet. I'm free, to a certain extent. And I'm not all that far from being properly free. All I have to do is get my clothes back and sneak out.

First things first. There's the safe, which he told me not to go near, but it has my suit in it. I have to get that back. With that back, I can do almost anything. Shan did warn me it would be dangerous to try to open the safe, but it's also pretty fucking dangerous sitting in the saurian criminal underground mostly naked, so I reckon I'll be taking that risk.

The fact that I'm even getting the opportunity to try is a testament to how underestimated I am. He must think I'm so pathetic to be contained with a bit of limp rope and a blindfold. I must seem like the most hapless, helpless little creature he's ever encountered.

And as for the wardrobe escape path, that's so unoriginal as to be damn near cliché. You couldn't write this stuff. I wonder if he knows how obvious it is? He probably doesn't care. Shan doesn't seem like the type to be interested in things like opinions.

I get up, pull my boots on, and decide to check the wardrobe before I get started on the safe. I didn't hear him disarming any traps, which makes me assume it is safer than the, well, safe. Wearing t-shirt, underwear, and boots, I cross over to the wardrobe, running my hands over it to see if it hums or ticks or does anything else that might indicate some kind of trap that's going to take bits of me off if I activate it. I sense nothing.

When I risk opening the doors, I find that they swing for me easily, though they're a bit heavier than I would expect them to be. The wardrobe has some clothing in it, undershirts and things of that nature. Everything is built to saurian scale, like you'd expect.

It does not take me long to find the switch that makes the back panel open. It's not particularly well hidden. Just looks like a nail sticking out of the back of the piece of furniture. I reach up and jiggle it a little, feeling the way the mechanism must release behind it as it clicks and whirrs just a little. It's all so simple. I pause before I actually open the secret door. I'm not dressed, after all. I need my suit.

That is going to be more dangerous. I can already tell that the safe does have security measures. There're ports on the front that look to me like flamethrowers, and that's just for starters. It's a box of potential death, so I'll be careful.

I have to assume that the safe is going to be dangerous if I put the wrong combo in. Fortunately for me, I was listening and watching when he opened it the first time. Thirteen clicks to the right, two to the left, and then another five to the right again. I know the directions, because I watched the way his arm flexed as he manipulated the door. Observation is the better part of survival.

This is going to be a risk, but it's one I have to take. Without the suit, I'm nothing more than meat on legs in a world full of hungry predators.

I scuttle over to the safe and put in what I think is the correct combination before there's a chance to get nervous and second guess myself. There's a satisfying clunk as the door disengages. I stand as far back as I can, and swing it open slowly in case there's some kind of incendiary charge or some…

BOOM!

There's now a dent in the wall opposite the safe, a burnished hole the size of my chest.

He was right about it being dangerous, I guess. An incendiary charge big enough to rip me into pieces just went off. My ears are still ringing from the sound of it, and the acrid smell of what has to be old-fashioned gunpowder pervades my every breath. This room has no ventilation, and explosions are dirty.

Fortunately, my suit is made of better stuff than the explosive. I snatch it out of what remains of the blasted open safe, kick my boots off, and drag it on quickly. Putting the suit on is not like getting dressed. It is like pulling on my skin again. I feel so much better. I feel as though I am whole again.

I don't check the rest of the safe's contents. There could be more traps and tricks, and I don't want to end up missing a bit of a limb because I got too curious. What's mine is mine, and what's his is his.

Feeling myself again, I go back to the wardrobe, shut the door behind me, and pull the nail to open the secret back. A tunnel opens up in front of me, quite a spacious one. It looks meticulously maintained, which doesn't surprise me. All of Shan's things I've encountered so far are very simple, lack adornment, and are very well taken care of. I can see about ten feet in front of me, and then it curves to the left. Anything could be back there. Anyone could be back there. But as far as I am concerned, there's only one thing to do:

Follow the tunnel.

It seems to be empty.

I can't hear any footsteps besides my own as I move, and I can barely hear mine, so I know I will hear anyone, or anything else that happens to come. I know how to be quiet. I know how to stay unseen. The tunnel is lit here and there with dim LED type lights, electrical embeds which for all I know contain sensors. If we were on the Mare, there wouldn't be a single step I could take that wouldn't get me detected if I were just to walk past the lights. We have surveillance on every inch of the ship. We have pressure-weighted sensors. We have sound sensors. We have detectors that can sense when light flickers with the passing of a body. We have cameras. We have everything, mostly because you can't stop the tech girls from iterating their gadgets and technologies and testing them wherever they can. That's why we know so much about this city and its citizens. Because there are women floating above who take a possessive interest in seeing and knowing everything. Gossip is elevated into an art form and a science on the Mare.

I miss the ship already.

I miss the crew.

I cannot wait to get the captains and transport them back to the ship so we can get the hell off this backward planet.

I keep going down the tunnel, following the curves. In spite of the fact I don't think there's any surveillance here, I stick to the shadows, keeping my movements slow and crouching down. If there are sensors, and if they are designed to detect saurians, there's some chance of them not registering me as anything of note.

The more I think about it, the less I think this passage is probably monitored. Shan's demeanor when he left suggested he didn't want anybody to know what he was doing. I think this is his private, secret pathway. I am sure he would be absolutely horrified if he knew I had breached it. Angry, even. He does not seem like the sort of saurian you want to be around when he is angry.

Hopefully I won't run into him again. Hopefully, this tunnel exits out into a populated area, and hopefully, I can make my way to a rendezvous area. I know the Mare will be looking for me, though they're probably shaken as hell after everything they just barely escaped. It's not often our cloaking devices fail. It's even less often we just barely dodge enemy fire while in orbit.

Suddenly, the quality of light in the tunnel changes. There's a murmuring of voices in the distance. I am getting closer to some someones. I get a little closer, moving even more carefully now. Worst case scenario, I get caught and taken back to that little underground cell for some kind of saurian reckoning.

"Don't fuck this up, Charlotte," I tell myself. "Don't fuck this up. Not like the other times."

I don't like to think about the other times. I am good at what I do, but that doesn't mean I have never failed. A little voice tells me that I always fail when it matters. I'm good, but I'm not good enough.

Many years ago, when I was very, very small…

I'm beneath a long, broad table that acts as the gathering spot for my family and our friends. I am small, and it is large. The room I'm in is familiar. There is the fire burning in the grate, and the floor has been licked clean by the tongues of our six dogs. The tablecloth was embroidered by my mother's mother, and one day I will spread it out on this very table myself. But for now, I am small.

It is loud in here. That's not unusual either. My father's friends are loud. They drink and they smoke and they say things to one another that make each other roar, sometimes in indignation and rage, but more often with laughter. My mother's thick legs are often clad in comforting beige stockings and her favorite kitchen shoes, the ones without heels but with red and yellow flowers painted on them. They're cracked a little at the toes where her feet flex. Like everything else, they are well-worn and comfortable.

If I look down at my own feet, I have leather shoes that are very similar. I tried to paint mine too, but I only had chalk, so the flowers I tried to adorn myself with are smeared, and there are pink and orange marks on the floor where I've been kneeling. Hiding.

Red sauce splatters on the floor. Great red arcs of it.

My mother spills from time to time, but not that much. That's too much. That's a glut of sauce, and it is too red. Too thin in viscosity. It does not smell of tomatoes and rosemary. It smells of iron and copper.

Heavy meat is hitting the floor. Bloodied meat. Meat with clothes on. Meat belonging to people we knew. Friends.

"Traitors will be executed." An orderly, stern voice cuts through the chaos, through the loud bangs that precede the bright bursts of red staining my mother's floor. "This colony is built on order and on sacrifice."

"This colony is built on tyranny!" I hear my father's voice. It sounds raspy and there is a rattle in his throat, but there's no fear in his tone. He always said he wasn't afraid of the soldiers from Galactic Prime. He said they didn't own us the way they thought they did.

"You're nothing but animals," the voice replies. I don't know who it belongs to, but he has long, shiny boots that rise up past his knee. That's all I can see. Black boots shining. He steps carefully around the pools of red. He doesn't want to get his feet dirty with the mess he's making. My mother is not going to be happy about this. I know she mopped the floor earlier today. She told me to be careful not to get it muddy because all their friends were coming over for a very special conversation.

But I wasn't good.

I went outside and I played in the mud. There was mud everywhere. It rains so much now the crops won't grow because their roots get flooded. A lot of people are hungry, but my mother and my father don't allow that in their house. They feed their friends. They take care of people. They take care of me too. Not many people have children anymore, but they made me, and they love me.

"Charlotte Eloise Fullman!"

That's what my mother says to me when I've done something bad.

She said it earlier today when she found her floor covered in footprints from me and the dogs, and then she said I better make myself scarce else I'd feel her rattan broom across my legs. I've been under the table since then, more or less. It's warm here, near the fire. I like to sleep here sometimes. Even have a little pillow.

My pillow has the red on it.

They've been taking my father's friends out, but they've left my mother and my father here in the kitchen. I can see her feet near the stove. I want to crawl out and wrap my arms around her legs and have her tell me everything is going to be okay, but I'm too scared to move. The mess is going to put her in a very bad mood. I'll wait until she has it cleaned up, then I'll come out. Until then, I'll stay quiet, and I'll try very hard not to get any of the wet red on me.

It's getting harder. Little rivulets of the stuff are starting to run through the cracks and crevices between the brick that makes up the floor. It is making its way toward me on all sides. I don't dare shift. I don't want the man with the shiny boots to notice me.

"We're free men and women, that's who we are," my father says. "And no amount of your colonial brutality is going to change that. It doesn't matter what you do here, you won't take our freedom."

"Your freedom doesn't exist, and it never has." The man with the shiny boots is not talking with anger. His tone is quite flat, as if he is just speaking some kind of truth that my father and his friends don't know about. "Your freedom is the same freedom any animal has. The freedom to be hunted, and the freedom to be killed. You'll experience the full breadth of your freedom today, old man."

"Please, spare him," my mother says. I almost don't recognize her voice, because she sounds scared in a way I've never heard her sound scared before. My mother usually says things like "Have you washed your hands?" and "Go brush your teeth," and sometimes, my favorite thing, "Are you hungry?"

She doesn't beg for the life of her husband. She doesn't get scared of anybody. She is the mistress of her domestic domain, and there is mess on her floor.

"Women should be quiet," the man with the boots says. "Women should know their place. You were made to serve man, and man was made to serve the Galactic Prime. That is the natural order of things."

There is a loud bang, and I hear my mother wail.

There is more red, but this time the red flows with little pieces of white flecked bone and squishy gray stuff. It all comes closer to me, a growing river of pieces and parts, things nobody should ever see. I know what it is, but I tell myself it is not what I think. I tell myself this is just another messy party. I tell myself it is all going to be okay, even as my mother's wail cuts through my consciousness in a way I will never be able to forget. Her scream becomes part of me. Lives at the core of me. Makes me who I am.

I won't mess up again.

I won't.

Echoes of the past follow me into the future as I creep forward, coming closer and closer.

"They have a human. I have a human."

I pause as I hear voices. The one who just said they have a human sounds like Shan. He has a very particular tone to his voice, a sort of careful elocution and simultaneous roughness. He looks like he should be stupid, but I don't think he is. I sense a double cross, even at a distance. I hear a difference in his tone.

"She's lucky you found her. We're lucky you found her. We need to keep these humans under our control."

"They keep leaving that ship. The one I've got is looking for the ones you and Thorn have," Shan says.

My eyes widen. He's talking to the big purple flying one. He's led me right to the very saurian I needed to find. This is perfect. If I can hang back and somehow avoid being seen by Shan and follow Avel, I'll be led right to Captain Raine, and then to Captain Sullivan.

"Bring her to us," Avel says.

"I can't do that. Wrath is already suspicious. He wants me to mate her. He wants me to breed her."

There's a pause. "Why?"

"He's sick. She's half my size. I'd destroy her if I tried. I think it's a test."

"Why would he be testing you? Don't worry about the human. It's been proven twice they're more than capable of mating with our species. I've some personal experience in the matter."

I know very well that he has had experience. I've seen his experience in high definition. If he is the alien I think he is, then he has proven beyond anybody's doubt that saurians can mate with humans. Raine seemed to be enjoying herself very much for the split-second I allowed myself to watch her writhe in an aerial embrace, impaled on his cock in an unseemly fashion.

"What if she doesn't want to be mated?"

"That's a different problem," Avel says. "But I don't think it will be the problem you imagine. The human females we've encountered so far become very sexually willing, voracious even, when properly dominated. What is her name?"

"I don't know."

I clap my hand over my mouth to stifle my offended gasp. I just told him my name not ten minutes ago. He didn't listen to me. I suppose he told me he didn't care at the time, but still, how rude. Now I come to think about it, everybody I have encountered on this planet so far has been unspeakably rude.

It's obvious to me now that Shan has a lot on his plate. He's clearly double-crossing Wrath in some way, and he's clearly linked to the alpha. This is good information for me to have, and it's intelligence the Mare doesn't have yet either. I file it away mentally for safekeeping, and a time when it might come in useful.

"Mating her should probably start with knowing her name. They all have one."

"Maybe." There's a shuffling sound as he moves back toward the passage. "I don't want to leave her alone for too long. She's terrified. Timid. Absolutely hopeless."

Well, that's insulting. It is also inevitable, I suppose. You can't be underestimated without also being thought very little of. The way he's speaking, I can tell he doesn't want to ravage me. He probably thinks I am a very strange, fleshy little creature. Attraction between species is a very rare thing. Most aliens, even sentient ones, never mate outside their kind. The bits don't usually fit, and even if they do, the chemistry isn't compatible, or the mating styles don't mesh.

But we've already seen evidence that saurians and humans can fuck. Raine fucked the one that flew. We all saw the footage, even though we knew we shouldn't watch. It was hot. He was so powerful. He rippled with every thrust, his scales moving with his muscles. That footage was only a few seconds long, but it is absolutely seared into my mind.

But I am not like Raine, or Sullivan. I am not tall and captivating. I do not draw every eye when I enter a room. Most of the time when I enter a room, nobody notices. I used to be proud of that. Suddenly, I'm not. Suddenly I wish I was a bolder, more beautiful woman. I wish I had a more incandescent personality.

"I would be afraid if I were her too. She is in the hands of the planet's most notorious criminal. Wrath."

"She's not in Wrath's hands. She's in mine."

There's a note of possession in Shan's voice that almost makes me think maybe he does like me after all.

"Stay in touch," Avel says. "And do mate her. It will be good for the both of you,"

They talk about me being ravaged and defiled in such a casual way. I don't have independent existence in their minds. I'm something to take and to have. I'm a creature to be claimed.

We know this is how saurians consider humans, but it still feels strange to hear myself being talked about in that way. Strange and disturbing. I spent so many years learning to become human, and now it seems as though I am going back to being a thing.

I look down at my feet, and for the briefest of seconds, I see pink and orange shoes, and a river of red flowing toward me. I blink, and it's all gone, back to dirt.

The brief lapse in concentration is all it takes for me to fail to realize that Shan is coming toward me. I don't remember hearing him say goodbye to Avel. I don't remember anything at all for that precious couple of seconds.

"GIRL!"

He shouts the word at me, and I freeze as I see him suddenly coming toward me, massive green and gold frame damn near naked from the waist up, rippling scaled muscles and spikes, and an expression of confused annoyance as he lays those dark eyes on me.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!" The word comes out of me in a panicked series of curses. I turn and I run, even though there's no point. His legs are almost twice as long as mine. He overhauls me easily, grabbing me by the back of the suit, and swinging me up off the ground. The back of this thing is getting ragged from the number of times his claws have rent through the back of it, but I know it will hold strong enough that it won't give way and give me another chance at escape.

Shan gives me a little shake.

"What are you doing, and how did you get that suit back?"

"I got it out of the safe."

"How!?" He sounds astonished. "That's not possible."

"Of course it is. I did it."

I don't mean to sound rude or curt in my response, it's just that it's a very simple matter. If I have the suit, it's because getting it was possible. I know that these saurians think very highly of themselves, but you'd think they'd be capable of basic leaps of logic like that.

He snarls, a sound that goes right through the core of me.

"I don't want attitude, human."

I shrug, which doesn't help the situation at all. I don't know what to say, so I'm left with physical gesture.

"I said, I don't want attitude. When you speak to me, you call me sir, and you keep a respectful tone."

I liked him better when he was stern and taciturn, and barely said anything to me. This new lecturing iteration of what seems to me to be a very military type saurian does not gel well with me. I might be a quiet, mousy pirate, but I am still a pirate. And pirates don't hold with law and order and calling people sir.

"Do you understand?" He twists me around in his grip and gives me a hard, dark stare, his eyes narrowed in a way that does not bode well for me.

I say nothing. I don't want to open my mouth. I know that no matter what I do, there's going to be a problem.

"What's going on out there, Shan?"

Shan grabs me again and drags me into the presence of the saurian he was speaking to before. I was right. It is Avel.

I see a massive purple creature with big wings closed behind his shoulders. My eyes widen as I recognize him. I have seen this saurian so many times before, both in footage and in the confines of my mind. He is much, much bigger than I realized. When you see a saurian on camera, they seem large, but between the two of them, I am absolutely dwarfed.

"You have Captain Raine. I'd like her back," I say, my voice strained with the effort of trying to be polite.

The saurian stares at me. "How do you know that?"

"Because I saw you fucking her on the roof of that house made of bones." I blurt the answer way too bluntly, then clap my hands over my mouth in pure horror at what I just said.

A burst of pain explodes across my ass. It feels like something just detonated against the seat of my pants, which is wild because I am still wearing my suit and I shouldn't feel anything through it. Shan just spanked me so fucking hard I don't think I would be able to take it if it weren't for military grade impact protection.

"I told you to speak with respect!" Shan lectures me harshly. "This is Enforcer Avel. He is one of the highest ranking saurians in Grave City. You will speak only when spoken to, and when you do speak, you will speak with respect."

"I wish you'd stop speaking," I mutter under my breath. I'm being much sassier than I was before. Maybe that's because I'm acting up in front of Avel. Maybe it's because unpleasant memories have resulted in unpleasant feelings. Or maybe I'm just getting braver as I get used to being captive. Who knows.

In spite of the fact that I mumbled, Shan hears me.

"You little…"

He growls the words, and I know he is going to smack me again. This time, however, I am finally ready. I don't have to fear his punishment because I have my suit.

BANG!

My smoke grenade goes off in a flash of light, followed by thick plumes of smoke. They're purple. A personal touch. Most go for a simple white, or maybe an ominous black, but I like the extra disorienting effect of a color nobody expected.

I attempt to dash past Avel. That seems like the way out. The only way out. But I don't get more than a few steps before I'm grabbed again.

"How!?" I exclaim in annoyance.

The saurians are coughing and spluttering, understandably. I have the mask filter from my suit pulled up over my nose and mouth, so I am immune to the effects of my own smoke in the meantime.

It takes several minutes for the dust to settle. I am held the entire time in the most embarrassing grip, yanked hard against Shan's chest, one of his arms around my midsection, the other up and around between my thighs. As soon as the charge dissipates, I feel those hands rip the suit from me. This time he is not careful. This time he snaps the zip and pulls the whole thing off over my boots in a yanking motion that is not at all pleasant.

He shoves it over to Avel.

"Take this, please. If she is able to take it from my safe, I don't want it in my possession. Also, we should keep it out of Wrath's grip if it all possible too."

Avel takes the suit, regarding me with a grave expression.

"She's going to be a handful. Perhaps you should surrender her to my custody now."

"Can't. Wrath is going to want to see her well fucked, and that's no less than she deserves. I need to get her back where she belongs. I need to get myself back as well. It's time I followed through on a few things."

I can hear the shift in his tone, and I know it does not bode well for me. He used to feel sorry for me. Now he's going to fuck me as punishment. I start quivering from the inside out, the tightness in my chest and belly transferring to my pussy. I am clenching on an alien cock that is not yet inside me but will be. I can hear the promise of my ravaging in every word he says.

I am about to be dragged away in shame to be punished for making Shan look less than perfectly competent in front of Avel. I am guessing Shan always has everything perfectly under control. And I know he's clearly living a dangerous double life. He must be stressed as hell. I can only imagine what Wrath would do to him if he knew this little conversation was happening.

Shan's problems aside, I still have one chance to make an appeal to Avel. Maybe he's more reasonable. I know he holds rank in the saurian hierarchy.

"Please, Enforcer Avel, we need Captain Raine back. We need her back now. It's a mess up on the ship. There's roller-skates everywhere."

"Roller-skates?"

"They're where you put wheels on your shoes. But it's not just the skates. It's the general chaos. Nobody knows what they're doing, and everybody is doing whatever they want, and none of us can go anywhere. We need our captains back, please, if you're done with them. There's only so many times you can ravage them… right?" I let my words sort of fade out around the part where I'm referencing the wild sex we witnessed some of.

The big purple alien, Avel, looks at me with what I'd best call a sort of bemused indulgence. "We have no intention of returning your captains. However, you are all free to surrender to our custody."

"I don't think we all want to be ravaged by wild saurians, so…"

Again, I say what some would call the quiet part, out loud.

"Human!" Shan snaps what he seems to think I am called.

"I already told you. My name is Lettie," I say. "Just so you can stop yelling my species at me. Feels rude."

I see Avel smirk. Shan does not look even a little bit amused. Shan looks big and green and severe. I feel the kind of tremor I am only used to feeling when I've really annoyed a captain — which is rare, because I'm not the sort of person who usually really annoys people. I tend to try to do my job to the best of my ability and keep everybody in charge happy. Being a reluctant captive is not easy. It puts me at odds with authority, and I'm not used to that.

"Disrespectful little warmblooded beast," he says. "You will learn."

"I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I'm just trying to get my captains back so we can all escape and live happily ever after." I turn back to Avel. "If you could let them know that I was looking for them, that might help."

"Help in what way, Lettie?" There's a certain indulgence in Avel's tone. At least he has some humor about the whole thing. A lot more than Shan does, that's for sure.

"Well, they might escape."

"Obviously that would not please us."

"Really? Why? You've got to be getting bored. A pirate captain being kept in a room is just a bored woman, isn't it?"

Avel looks over my head. "She's adorable."

"She's disobedient," Shan growls.

"They're all disobedient. That is how humans are. These ones especially. It is a ship full of ruthless, shameless criminals orbiting the planet, looking for trouble."

They're talking about me like I'm not here, which is interesting. You never know how your actions are perceived by your captors. Sounds to me like we're a point of interest they haven't had before. It also seems as though Avel is very attached to Raine. That's bad news for me. Even worse than what Shan is about to do to me.

"I'm not ruthless," I argue. "I'm just trying to get the captains back so we can leave and live…"

"Yes," Shan interrupts. "Happily ever after."

Shan

I am astounded by this human. Firstly, I have no idea how she managed to retrieve her suit. That was inside my safe, and my safe is probably the most lethal thing to attempt to break into in the entire underworld. She should be lying in charred pieces on the floor of my room right now. The fact that she is unscathed entirely is as befuddling as it is impressive.

She's just so small and so soft and so round, and the way she speaks with those impudent pink lips that draw my gaze. I can't stop looking at her. She is delicate. She is eminently breakable. I have an urge to absolutely destroy her, and a simultaneous desire to protect her. I do not enjoy this confusion.

Fortunately, Avel seems amused by the human. What was her name? Lettie.

It's a cute little sound, for a cute little human.

No,I lecture myself internally. Do not think of her as cute. She is not adorable. She is a tool to be used. She is a prop in this thing. Do not soften. Do not become attached.

"I need to get back," I tell Avel. "I do not want to be missed."

"Of course," Avel says. "We will rendezvous again."

I pick the human up under my arm and carry her back down the passage. She squirms against me in her underclothes, and I feel the warmth of her body against mine with every wriggling motion. Humans are quite literally hot. My mind drifts to what it might feel like to be inside one, to have my cock bathed in the furnace of her need. The alpha and the enforcer both seem very carnally attached to their humans, so I have to imagine it feels good.

She says nothing, which is fortunate because I do not want to hear a word out of her at the moment. I need to think. Everything was going very well with Wrath until her appearance in the undergrowth. I curse my impulses and instincts, both of which joined forces to make me reflexively catch her. She is going to be trouble, and I am going to have to handle it.

When I finally return to my quarters, I can't help but notice the fact that my room looks like a bomb went off in it. That's largely because it did. The safe's detonation mechanism activated when she opened the door. I still don't know exactly how she did that. The door is hanging ajar, and there are scorch marks going all the way across the floor to the other side of the room, where the wall itself has been dented by the now shattered projectile.

"How did you do that?"

She looks a little proud of herself, and truth be told, I feel a little bit of pride in her. If she is to be my human, it is good that she is an intelligent one.

"I opened it, and then there was a small, tasteful explosion. Some kind of shell projectile, I guess."

"It would have cut you in two and shredded the remains."

"I didn't stand in front of the safe. I'm not stupid."

No. She's not. But even intelligent creatures can be seriously harmed because their arrogance makes them think that they understand things they do not understand.

"You did not know how many traps were set inside the safe," I say. "You got lucky today, that is all."

She gives one of her little shrugs. "I have a history of getting lucky. At some point, it's got to be more than that."

I do not want to get into a discussion with her about her reckless behavior, and how it might or might not be differentiated from luck. Things are simple where I am concerned.

"Safe cracking aside, you've destroyed my property, you've disobeyed me, and you've made a scene in front of the enforcer. I have known you for less than an hour, Lettie. And you have rebelled against every single order I've given you."

"I'm a captive! I'm supposed to rebel, and sneak, and escape." Her cheeks puff out a little with her indignation. She really is quite a sweet looking thing in some respects. Her smaller stature and the shape of her face and neck make her voice higher and softer than any saurian tones. Even when she is trying to sound aggressive, she simply ends up sounding cute.

"You're a captive. You're supposed to bend to the will of your master," I correct her. I don't usually talk this much, but the human has a way of drawing speech out of me. There is a necessity to communicate with her in a way that isn't necessary with most saurians.

"I don't think I'm very good at bending to wills."

"You came down to the surface to attempt to get one of the female captains back?"

"Yes."

"Because you want them to come up and give orders?"

"Well, yes."

She does not seem to understand what she wants — what she craves.

"You want to be told what to do. You want to be put in your place and kept in it."

"Mostly I want everybody else in their place," she says, quite without guile. She keeps arguing with me, but I don't get the sense she understands that answering me back is wrong. I don't think these humans are trained in any proper behavior. From what I have heard and observed, the females coming down from the ship hiding in our skies are universally wild. I am impressed that any captain managed to keep order of any kind at any time.

"You've lost the privilege of clothing," I tell her. "If you had left the suit where I told you to leave it, I would have allowed you the luxury of your undergarments. But you decided to steal it from my safe, and now you will be kept nude."

Her eyes widen, and her face turns a bright red hue. It seems to be a sign of embarrassment. Interesting, given she is not yet stripped. Even the anticipation of such treatment seems to frighten and concern her.

"Please don't do that. You won't like what you see."

"It is not a matter of liking what I see. It is a matter of punishing you in a way that fits the crime. Take those clothes off, Lettie."

I notice the way she swallows when I say her name. I think she likes it.

Lettie has already complicated matters for me greatly. I was beginning to blend in among Wrath's crew. I had been taken into his inner circle, having proved myself. Now I have the responsibility of this human, and it needs to seem as though I am intent on ravaging her and breeding her. All of Wrath's warriors carry out his will without question. In his world, loyalty is the most important quality. I am loyal, though not to the cruel criminal mind who seeks to use this human and others like her as pawns in his master plan.

Lettie's disobedience might very well play into the deception, however. She deserves to be punished. She deserves to be stripped and thrashed and then claimed. And I want to fuck her. I want to fuck her as much as I have ever wanted to fuck anybody.

She undresses reluctantly and slowly, drawing out the torture for herself. Every little motion she makes reveals a little more skin. First she takes off the shirt, which reveals a full, lovely belly and two swelling breasts kept just barely contained inside a bra against which they strain. Both the bra and panties are pink, which is a very cute color on her. I intend to make quite a bit of her pink very soon.

"The under, undergarments as well," I prompt.

She hesitates, dithering as to whether or not she is going to take off the bra or the panties first. Which part of her anatomy is the most shameful to expose, I wonder? It seems that there's a battle going on inside her, a battle that her bra loses. She removes it one strap at a time, and finally I see the glory of human mammaries on display. They are quite generous and round and tipped with light pink nipples. I know humans are made to feed their young, but I did not understand how very appealing their mammaries are in an aesthetic sense.

"The rest of it," I prompt.

The panties are shoved down quickly. I see very little more of her body when they are gone, because there is a thick pelt of dark curling hair covering anything that might be of interest to me. I will inspect her thoroughly in due course. For now, I am enjoying watching her suffer the embarrassment of exposure. It is no less than she deserves.

Lettie cringes in front of me, her hands covering her body as best they can as she contends with the horror of being nude. She has a modest temperament, which I do find quite appealing. My tastes tend to the conservative, I suppose. They also tend to the twisted, and knowing that she finds it shameful to bare herself for me convinces me that this is a right and proper course of action.

"Please don't look at me. I'm too…"

"Too what, human?"

"Too…."

She says something else, but I miss the word because it is swallowed in a whisper.

"Too what?"

"Fat,"she mumbles, the word barely audible.

Now that I have heard her, I find it barely makes any more sense than it did before.

"Too fat?"

"Yes," she whimpers, stubbing her booted toe at the floor. "I'm fat."

Lettie

He is staring at me in confusion, as if I just said my hair was too brown, or my eyes were too… well, brown, I guess.

"So?"

"So… it's not. It's…" It's very hard to explain things I don't like about myself to this alien male who clearly does not share my cultural references or have any understanding of why I'd be sensitive about my body.

"Move your hands. I want to see all of you properly displayed. If you will not show me what I now own, I will tie you down spread open, and it will be a much more painful, shameful experience."

I don't want to make that threat manifest, so I reluctantly move my hands. One finger at a time, my body comes into view of his void black eyes. I glance at his face briefly, but I don't want to see his expression. I don't want to know what his judgement is.

"There," I say as my hands move down to my sides and lose the last elements that protected me from the humiliation of my nakedness.

"You are soft."

"You mean fat." If I say it first, he won't have the chance to.

"You keep saying that word as though it means something bad."

He starts to walk around, looking at me. Seeing every inch of me, and then… touching me.

I feel his hand splayed across my naked ass. I have always felt too big, but he makes me feel small. He is huge. He is built as though nature wanted him to do nothing but fight and gore his enemies. I was made to avoid predators and survive hard times. That's fortunate, because this is a hard time.

I know there's nothing wrong with my body type, it's just that it's always women like Sullivan and Raine who seem to get all the attention. I can't say I'm missing out on any attention right now though. I have Shan's full, intense attention.

"You are beautiful," he says. "Far more so than I dared imagine any human could be. I thought…"

"What?"

"I thought I would find any female without scales unsightly, but your skin is quite perfect."

At first I think he's just trying to make me feel better. Then I consider the fact that Shan doesn't seem like the type to make anybody feel better. His tone is one of fascination and wonder as he draws his fingers slowly across my skin, tracing the line of my hip, and then the curve of my belly, then up, to my breasts. I suck in a breath as my nipples harden at the touch of his powerful, green scaled hands. He cups and holds them, squeezing lightly. A moan escapes me as a bolt of excitement races down between my legs, igniting the nerves in my clit.

He is inspecting me with his gaze and with his hands. Judging by the expression on his alien face, which has so many similarities to a human one, I feel as though he is finding me very pleasing indeed. I am astonished to please him in this way.

"You are very appealing," he intones, saying the words as if handing down some kind of sentence. I have been judged, but not found wanting. He leans down, putting his lips very close to my ear.

"I have some bad news for you," he rumbles. "You are very ravagable, and you are in a lot of trouble."

"Because I have nice skin?" I squeak the question.

"Because you broke into my safe and nearly exploded yourself, along with the rest of my room."

"Oh. That."

"Yes," he growls. "That."

For a moment, he seems to be as he was when I first met him, that taciturn saurian who barely said a word to me. But I am already seeing other sides to him. He is passionate, and he is sexually intense, and he makes me feel like the sexiest creature on the planet when he touches me. His hands are still on me, one cupping my ass, the other tracing light patterns across my lower belly with the tips of his fingers. He is trying to get me to feel sorry, but I don't feel sorry at all. I feel a rare excitement pulsing through me as the fingers on my stomach dip lower between my thighs, and the flat of his palm presses warmly against the lower curve of my stomach.

"You are a bad girl, Lettie," he says. "But I am going to make sure you are good for me."

He sits down on his only slightly charred bed, and I feel the scales on his thighs press against the soft skin of my legs as he pins me over his lap. These saurians are built on a much bigger scale than humans, and that means neither my fingers nor my toes touch the ground when he has me over his knee. My ass is perched up high over his leg, my hips and belly following the hard curve of his thigh. I have not felt this connected or this vulnerable in a long time. When he speaks he does so with a formality that belies the filthy threat of his words.

"Your behavior today was disgraceful. You are going to be punished and you are going to be bred. Do you understand?"

"Yes?" Isqueak the word as a question, little thrills rushing through me as Irealize he is not asking for my permission. He is only asking if Iknow the meaning of his words.

My response doesn"t seem to please him, because he starts smacking my ass with sharp strokes that make my flesh sting.

"I am going to train you to obedience. Because ofyour rebellion, Iamgoing to make you sore, and Iam going to mate you. You are going to be a vessel for my seed.Sometimes that will be pleasurable for you. But today, you are going to learn that you are mine, and thatyou have earned a good, long, disciplinary session on my dick."

Those words make me flush with heat and excitement. Of course I should not want to be ravaged by an alien I barely know — but I have seen Captain Raine do it, and I have to assume Captain Sullivan has also been bent over for the alpha who captured her. Getting captured and having one's pussy fucked is starting to be a rite of passage on this planet. I can feel a little trickle of need escaping my interior, just a small indication of the excitement and heat that is pulsing through my pussy.

He does just as he promises, spanking me with swift, stinging strokes that I know must only use a fraction of his power but sting me terribly.

"You are in a very dangerous situation," he lectures. "You do not need to also become the dangerous situation."

I can feel him rising against me, his alien mating rod very human in that respect. I have heard of all kinds of alien cocks, but these saurians have a very similar mechanism of breeding to humans. They have a thick, stiff rod of flesh that penetrates and delivers their genetic material into the body of the human… I mean, my body. I mean, oh fuck.

I know he is going to mate with me. More than that, I know he is going to breed me. I have no choice in the matter. I have been caught, and this is what happens when a fertile human female is captured by a virile alien male. We are fucked.

He stops spanking me, which is a small and tender mercy, picks me up, and lays me down on my back on the bed. I could get up. I could run. But I don't. I lie there as he stands towering over me, those dark eyes set in emerald scales staring down at me with an expression of dark, dominant possession, as he rids himself of the last physical barriers between us.

"Oh my…"

Shan is magnificent naked. He is tall, and he is broad, and his shoulders bear those great bone spikes that could be used for offense or defense, but which make him look incredibly alien. He has a powerful torso, muscled in the way males who regularly perform rough action are. His legs are thick, strong, and scaled. His arms flex as he looks down at me, and I see those green and gold scales catching the light in that casual display of power. The main event, the part of him I can't keep my eyes from even when I attempt to modestly avoid looking at it, is the incredibly large cock rising like a monolith from the apex of his thighs. His cock is huge, a great green and gold rod with a wedge-shaped head and flare that is faintly human in nature, the same way all of him is faintly human, yet entirely alien. He throbs with desire for me, a thick column of alien flesh destined to stretch me open.

"Come here and kiss it," he says. "Put your impudent human mouth on it and show me how sorry you are for your disobedience."

I have never let any man put his thing in my mouth before, but I rise up onto my hands and knees on Shan's orders. I want to taste him. I want to know what his alien rod feels like in the second, or perhaps third most sensitive orifice in my body.

He is girthy enough that it is an effort to engulf him with my mouth, but the second the underside of his cock meets my tongue, I feel hunger rise in me. I can taste his desire in the preliminary emissions that are smeared over the sensitive buds of my tongue. He tastes very male, very strong, but not at all unpleasant.

"Good," he growls as I lap at his cock. "You are capable of some obedience. Keep tasting me, Lettie."

I do as I am told, but I can tell that this is not satisfying for him. His cock is getting harder and throbbing more intensely by the moment. My lips and tongue cannot give him what he really craves. It cannot give me what I really crave either.

I feel his hand run through my hair, curl in the locks, and pull my head back. Looking down at me with a hungry stare, he gives another order.

"Lie back and spread your legs for me," he growls. "Let me see what is mine."

I do as I am told, my ass stinging as I open my legs. I can't deny him, because on some deep, primal level, I don't want to. I want to know what it is like to be claimed by an alien. My body is reacting to the sight, smell, touch, and sound of him as though it has known him for a hundred lifetimes. He is a terrifying alien stranger to my mind, but to my instincts, he is a powerful mate who handles me like I weigh nothing and who makes me feel very, very small; very, very naughty; and very, very safe.

Shan inspects me with that dark gaze, and I feel a blush rushing through me even as little trickles of arousal escape my increasingly flowering sex. I know I am getting swollen and open. I know he can see that and, judging by the way he just took a deep breath, smell me.

"You are my mate," he tells me. "And after this, you will know it."

He covers my body with his, and I understand in this moment just how very much smaller I am, and how very vulnerable I am. He rests his weight on one hand and uses his other hand to direct my chin so I meet his eyes as the length of his cock slides down the length of my lips. I can feel his scaling and the heat of his cock as it presses against me with his impossibly wide girth. There is no way I am made to take him, and there is no way he is not going to take me.

There is a cosmic and biological inevitability to this moment that neither one of us can resist. Shan must fuck me, and I must be fucked. That does not make it any easier as the head of his alien cock finds the opening of my body, the head unerringly sliding forward to part my lips. We both feel it as the very tip of his cock meets the internal heat of my body for the first time. He pauses, the arch of his powerful body becoming rigid.

"You feel…" He draws in a breath. There is no word. There is absolutely nothing he can say to describe the feeling we are both sharing. A bolt of connection is passing between us. I feel it in my sex and in my spine, rushing into my mind.

He relaxes and sinks further down. I let out a thin wail as his cock enters me for the first time, spearing inside me and spreading me open. I feel inch after inch of him claiming my most sensitive and intimate space. I feel my insides becoming his territory.

He snarls and growls in deep tones that rumble through me. I feel his arousal through my flesh, through his cock, going deep inside me.

I am being fucked.

I am being mated.

I am being bred.

Having claimed me, having slid his cock as deep inside me as it can go, Shan rolls to the side and pulls me atop him, removing the risk that he might crush me beneath his massive form.

I bite back a moan of excitement that I feel guilty for feeling. I should be hating every moment of this interaction. What he's doing to me is wrong. It's twisted. It is so fucking hot I can hardly stand it.

I feel myself stretching for him, whimpers escaping my lips with every stroke. I am being fucked by an alien. My pussy is stretching around his thick, scaled cock. It's wrong. And it's perfect.

Both of his hands are in my hair, his long fingers crossing over one another because each of his hands could palm my skull with a single grip. He pulls me down atop him and he uses me like he owns me.

"Fuck. Yes. Take this cock," he grunts with every other stroke.

I have no choice but to take him. He has already taken me. My body no longer feels like my own. I am a sheath for his sword and the eventual receptacle of his seed.

Because he is going to impregnate me.

This is not just a fucking.

This is a breeding.

Shan

The human is mine. Not the way my other belongings are mine. She is mine in the way my hand is mine and my eyes are mine. She is a part of me. She is as mine as anything could ever be. I hold her atop me and I roll my hips to push as much of my cock inside her as I can. I do not want to hurt her, but I do want to be as inside her as I can be.

Fucking is hot. Sex feels good. But this is more than that. This is belonging and bonding. This is what it feels like to find one's true mate. I know that as surely as I know anything. I fuck her passionately, with as much love as I have in my body. I palm her hot ass. She deserved that spanking, and so much more, but I had to be inside her.

My hands press her hips down against mine as my cock surges deep and my seed starts to flow. She wails and trembles, her tender little human pleasure bud stimulated hard by the grinding of my scaled pubic bone against her flesh.

"You're going to come for me," I growl at her. "You are going to come for me, and you are going to take my seed. You are going to be mine. Forever."

She responds with moaning and writhing, and I feel her interior gripping me tightly with all-too-human desperation. She is beyond speech. She is beyond all sense. She is wriggling her wet human cunt all over my cock, her body begging for my seed in a yowling, desperate wordless plea.

Who am I to deny her what we both so desperately need?

I unleash my seed inside her sex. I feel my essence flowing up from my body and pouring into her, and I drag her down on my cock to ensure that it goes as deep as it possibly can. I hear her scream with pleasure as this happens, her orgasm forcing contractions of her pussy and me deeper inside her still. Her body is draining me of all I have, taking the sparks and seeds of life into her fertile interior.

She is mated.

And she is mine.