Stolen: Brides of the Kindred 25 Read online

  In turn, V’rex made her exotic dishes from both his home world and from other planets he had visited. But the ones Penny liked best were the ones his mother had made him—comfort food that seemed to bring back warm feelings from his limited childhood, before he’d been cast out on the streets.

  The different flavors brought back many memories for both of them and it became part of their nightly “dinner game” as Penny named it, to tell the story they most associated with the food they had created. Which was how she learned what had really happened to his mother and why V’rex hated the Kindred.

  It was after he shared a sweet and savory dish called goslin stew that his mother used to make for him that the truth came out.

  “It’s delicious,” Penny told him truthfully, after trying the dish. “So tell me the story.”

  V’rex had sighed.

  “My mother used to make it for me,” he told her. “It’s a traditional dish from her part of Rageron, the Beast Kindred home world. But she could only make it when my father wasn’t expected home for dinner because he hated it.”

  “Hated it?” Penny had taken another bite and frowned at him. “Why would he hate it? It’s so tangy and fresh tasting!” It reminded her a little of Tom Yum soup from her favorite Thai restaurant.

  V’rex’s face grew dark, as it always did when he spoke of his father.

  “He hated it because she loved it. Because it reminded her of the home he stole her from.”

  “He…kidnapped her?” Penny remembered Kat and Commander Sylvan saying as much when they had first warned her against the big Hybrid but she couldn’t help wondering if it was really true.

  V’rex nodded.

  “Kidnapped her, raped and defiled her,” he said shortly. “He got her pregnant with me, which was why her kin wouldn’t take her back.”

  “They wouldn’t? How awful!” Penny exclaimed. “Why not?”

  “A female Beast Kindred is extremely rare,” V’rex explained. “So rare they have a special place in the Kindred religion—the worship of the Goddess. So when one of them is defiled in some way, it’s almost as though the Goddess herself has been defiled. The Beast Kindred—at least the ones from my mother’s home tribe—don’t like to think about that. So when they finally found her and saw that my father had made her pregnant, they just left her there and went back to Rageron without her.” His face twisted. “That’s why I hate the fuckers and I fuck with their ships every chance I get!”

  “That’s terrible!” Penny’s heart went out to the big Hybrid. Now she understood why he had become a pirate who preyed on his own kind. Though he claimed his Kindred heritage over his Kru’ell One half, he still felt no kinship with the people he felt had abandoned him and his mother, before he was even born.

  “She lived a terrible life,” V’rex said, still speaking of his mother, with a faraway look in his pale gold eyes. “My father would be kind for a while—for months on end sometimes. But then he would erupt into fits of rage over tiny, minor things and beat her mercilessly. It was like once his temper was triggered, he couldn’t control himself. That was how he—”

  He stopped abruptly, drawing aimless patterns in his bowl of stew.

  “He what?” Penny urged softly. She didn’t want to cause the big Hybrid pain, but she got the very strong sense that he needed to talk about this—that he needed to get it off his chest.

  “He beat her to death,” V’rex said at last, still looking at his stew. “I was only seven cycles at the time but I saw it all. I even tried to stop him, but I was too small.” He shook his head. “Too fucking small to save her.”

  “Oh, V’rex…” Penny didn’t know what to say. Her heart was aching for him. She wanted to go to him and put her arms around his neck, to comfort him any way she could but the big Hybrid was wound so tightly she didn’t know if he would welcome her comfort or not.

  “He dropped me off at the edge of the city the next day,” he went on in a toneless, emotionless voice. “He told me I and my mother had ‘served our purpose’ and he had no need of me anymore. Then he left me there, crying for her, wanting to die myself. I almost did,” he added, still looking at his stew, rather than Penny as he talked. “Several times. Until I was taken in by a gang of kids around my age who taught me how to pick pockets and beg. After that, I was okay but I never really stopped missing her…”

  Penny couldn’t stand it anymore. Her heart was breaking for the big Hybrid and this awful tale from his childhood made her want to cry.

  Getting out of her chair, she came around the table and put her arms around his neck.

  V’rex looked up from his stew, clearly surprised.

  “Hey, little girl—why are you crying?” He cupped her cheek and brushed a thumb gently over her cheek, wiping away a tear.

  “How can I help it?” Penny sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “When you tell me…what you just told me. Oh, V’rex—I’m so, so sorry!”

  “It’s all right, baby. It was a long time ago,” he assured her. But he put his arms around Penny and held her tight and though he didn’t cry himself, she felt sure the old pain was very close to the surface. She pressed his face against her breasts and stroked her fingers through his long black hair and tried to give him comfort as best she could, though she didn’t know how well she was succeeding…

  Of course, not every night they spent together was fraught with such emotion. Most of the dinner stories they shared were lighthearted and funny. V’rex had a dry sense of humor and often left her laughing helplessly with his tales of the ‘jobs’ he’d pulled and the antics he had gotten up to. It made Penny glad to see that despite the tragedy in his past, the big Hybrid seemed to be an optimist.

  After dinner, things got more steamy, especially when their Mandatory Breeding hour came around. They had pretend sex in every possible position and it never failed to make Penny so hot she often wished they were doing it for real.

  But then she would remind herself of the consequences of unprotected sex with the big Kindred and the reasons they had to get out of the Compound. Still, it was getting harder to hold back her heart from the big Hybrid, especially considering what happened once the Watchers were convinced they were doing their duty and the red light over their bed went off.

  It was then that V’rex insisted on examining her pussy again, and giving her a long, leisurely tongue-bath during which he made Penny come multiple times. He seemed to love going down on her and Penny certainly couldn’t complain. After all, the big Hybrid was fulfilling her wildest fantasies and doing it with a skill she wouldn’t have believed was possible.

  Right before bed they had a shower—which was necessary since V’rex’s seed usually got all over her in some way or another. The big Hybrid insisted on bathing her himself, soaping her up with his big hands and often giving her yet another orgasm as he washed and stroked her.

  After that, Penny felt exhausted and by the time V’rex had dried her off, she was almost falling asleep on her feet. He often carried her to bed and tucked the two of them in snugly. Penny would snuggle up to him, her naked breasts pressing against his chest and her bare pussy rubbing against his muscular thigh. His slow, steady heartbeat and the rumble of his deep voice saying, “Good night, sweetheart,” was the last thing she heard before drifting off to sleep every night.

  And then they woke up and did it all again.

  Despite the continued tension about a Public Breeding which might take place at any time, Penny found herself feeling more and more contented. Life was good with the big Hybrid and as long as they lived in the Compound together, being with him wasn’t actually her choice. They had been shoved into a relationship which, strangely, was turning out to be the best one of her life—though she didn’t actually admit that to herself.

  Of course they were still working on their escape plan, but the “Glorious Leader” still hadn’t visited the greenhouse for an inspection. In fact, no one had seen him for a while and the rumor was he was sick with some kind of cold or
flu in the “big house” and was recuperating.

  As the days—and then the weeks—went by, Penny began to cherish the hope that maybe the stranger cult leader who looked so exactly like Colonel Sanders wasn’t just sick—maybe he was dying. Maybe he would just slip away, which ought to make escaping the Compound much easier. Without him, maybe the NeverBreeders would lose their sense of purpose and the breeders would get over their brainwashing?

  But even if they didn’t escape, were things really so bad? Every morning she woke up with V’rex and every night she went to sleep in his arms. That wouldn’t be possible if they got away. They would have to split up—go their separate ways. Penny had a job to do and though she understood now why V’rex hated the Kindred, she still worked for them, which would make continuing the relationship they had now severely impractical, if not completely impossible.

  Or maybe he wouldn’t want me at all, Penny told herself. She was still convinced that the ubiquitous Spice that was piped through the air in the Compound was responsible for the profound attraction V’rex had developed to her. If they got out of here, he would probably lose all interest in her, which would hurt—a lot. Whereas as long as they stayed here, his desire for her remained strong—which was really nice and extremely flattering.

  So maybe things weren’t so bad, after all.

  That was what Penny was thinking one day, about a month into her time at the Compound, when suddenly everything went straight to the Seven Hells…

  Sixty-Five

  They had just finished breakfast when the red light came on over the tiny table in the breakfast nook and a cold, androgynous voice spoke Penny’s name.

  “Penelope, Forever Mate of V’rex,” it said. “You are wanted for testing.”

  “Huh?” Penny looked up at the light, one hand on her rapidly beating heart. Across the table from her, V’rex was staring at it too, a baleful gleam in his pale gold eyes.

  “Please report to the Breeding and Conception Center before your work shift,” the voice continued. “You are wanted for testing.”

  “What…what kind of testing?” Penny faltered.

  But the voice didn’t speak again. The red light went off as abruptly as it had come on, leaving her with no more information and a cold lump of fear in the pit of her stomach.

  “Fucking bastards!” V’rex ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t want you to go,” he said to Penny.

  “What choice do I have?” she protested. “Anyway, they probably just want to check my womb and see…” She swallowed hard. “See if I’m pregnant.”

  Which of course she wasn’t, which was bound to cause trouble if it was found out.

  I should have expected this, Penny told herself as she rose slowly to begin clearing the breakfast dishes. Shurla had told her just a day before that all the breeding she and Skrug had been doing had paid off.

  “I’m pregnant!” she’d told Penny excitedly when she’d come to get her ration of bread for the day. “Soon I’ll finally be contributing to the Glorious Cause!” The light of brainwashed fanaticism had been shining in her eyes as she spoke—a look Penny simply couldn’t understand. How could anyone be excited about giving up their own child to become one of the sexless orange NeverBreeders?

  But she had only smiled and congratulated her former friend as she handed Shurla her bread.

  It should have occurred to her, Penny thought now, that if Shurla had been examined and found pregnant, she herself couldn’t be far behind. They were, after all, from the same group and all of them had been with their “Forever Mates” for almost a month now. It was only logical that she was being called in for a womb exam.

  “I don’t think you should go,” V’rex repeated. “What happens when they find out you’re not pregnant?”

  “They won’t…won’t recycle me right away,” Penny protested, hoping she was right. “I mean, from what Claudette has told me, they give you at least three chances before it comes to that. And anyway, maybe she can help me,” she added, brightening a little bit. “She told me once there’s a way to skew the test results so it looks like you’ve been pregnant but lost the pregnancy very early. That proves you’re fertile and just had a complication, you know?”

  “I just don’t like it.” V’rex was up from the table, pacing and running a hand through his hair, as was his habit when he was worried. “I don’t like you going into that place where I can’t get to you to help you if things go wrong!”

  “Things won’t go wrong,” Penny tried to reassure him. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we’ve been telling ourselves all this time,” V’rex growled, frowning at her. “We’ve gotten fucking complacent, little girl—even happy—in this fucked-up place!”

  “Happy?” Penny said uncertainly, though she supposed that was what she’d been thinking herself, right before the cold voice had spoken to her and ordered her to come for testing.

  “Fuck yeah—happier than I’ve ever been,” V’rex said roughly. “I’ve finally found the female I want to Claim. And even though I can’t Claim you here, I can at least have you near. I can wake up beside you every morning and lick your sweet pussy every night. I can hold you in my arms while we sleep. I was willing to give up my freedom for that—and your freedom too. And now look at where our fucking complacency has gotten us. Trapped.”

  “We’re not trapped,” Penny protested, keeping an eye on the red light. Thankfully, it was still dark. “We’re just waiting,” she reminded V’rex. “Waiting for the right opportunity to get away.”

  “Well, I don’t think we should wait much longer,” V’rex growled. “This is a wakeup call, sweetheart. We need to get our heads back in the game and get ready to run.”

  “Okay.” Penny went to him and put her hands on his arms, trying to soothe him. “It’s all right,” she told him firmly. “Everything is going to be all right—you’ll see. Claudette will help me through this first womb testing and by the time my second one rolls around, you and I will be gone.”

  She kept her voice low, for his ears only, and her eyes locked with his. The last thing she needed was for him to be freaking out right now since she was already freaking out internally herself.

  “Well…” He blew out a breath and shook his head. The look on his face was worried and unhappy. “I still don’t like it.”

  “You don’t have to like it,” Penny told him calmly. “I don’t like it either. But we’re going to get through it—together.”

  V’rex grabbed her unexpectedly and pulled her into a tight embrace. His big body seemed to surround hers with warmth and strength, as though he was trying to convey some kind of protection to her with his hug.

  “Be safe, little girl,” he rumbled in her ear. “Be safe and come back to me.”

  “You heard the voice—I won’t even miss much work. And I’ll see you tonight,” Penny promised him. “At dinner, honest I will.”

  “You’d better.” V’rex pushed her out to arm’s length, keeping his big hands on her shoulders and pinning her with his eyes. “Because if you don’t, I’m gonna come looking for you and the Goddess help anybody who gets in my fucking way.”

  Sixty-Six

  It’ll be all right. Claudette can help me—I’m sure she can, Penny thought to herself as she walked, with a pounding heart, through the metal and glass doors of the Breeding and Conception center for the first time since right before her Unification Ceremony.

  But though she looked for her friend, she didn’t see Claudette anywhere. In fact, she didn’t see any familiar faces—not even Mother Toone.

  Well, they’re probably both taking care of a new batch of breeders, Penny thought. But then she remembered they couldn’t be because there had been no new batch of breeders since her own group had been brought to the Compound. So what were her friend and her old NeverBreeder attendant doing? Where were they?

  “State your purpose,” a NeverBreeder guard in a silver jumpsuit said, coming towards her.

>   “I…I was ordered here for testing this morning. I think by the Watchers,” Penny told him. “My name is Penelope, Forever Mate to V’rex,” she added for clarification.

  The NeverBreeder guard consulted a clipboard and nodded.

  “You are expected, breeder. Follow me to the exam room.”

  He led Penny back to the same exam room she remembered—the one she’d been examined in every day during her stay in the dorms—and told her to strip.

  This is the same place that poor girl was dragged away for recycling on our first day when they discovered she was infertile! whispered a little voice in her head. Oh God, what if they stick that glowing wand in me and decide I’m infertile too? What if they decide to recycle me and I never see V’rex again? What if—

  “Ah, there you are, breeder Penelope.” A NeverBreeder doctor that Penny recognized came into the exam room. “And I see you’re all ready for your womb exam. Very good. Now please lay on the table and part your legs for me.”

  As she climbed onto the chilly metal table and spread her legs, Penny shivered with a mixture of cold and fear. What was going to happen to her?

  The doctor ran the glowing wand over her breasts and nodded at the results.

  “Your breast health is very good. Are you producing nectar?”

  “Plenty of it,” Penny assured him, thinking of how much of the sticky-sweet stuff V’rex drew from her nipples every morning and every night. She wondered if she ever got out of here if the effects of the Mother’s Milk would fade. Or would she be stuck producing nectar and needing male fluids or healing to keep her pussy from swelling and becoming sensitive for the rest of her life?

  If that was the case, what would she do? She and V’rex were parting ways after they managed to escape. Where else would she find a man who was willing to suck the nectar out of her breasts and wanted to either make love with her or go down on her every single night? Where—