You love Rysethk.
Rysethk loves you.
I do nothing, unable to understand what he’s doing. He is watching himself as he maneuvers his cock at the entrance of my pussy, and it seems more like he’s contemplating the act than trying to arouse himself or me.
He growls, his demeanor changing course yet again. His eyes shift to mine.
“Tell me, Anya Mann, human: do you believe in the fates?”
For a brief moment, I feel like laughing. ‘Fates’ are something I almost certainly don’tbelieve in, and I would have loved to add that I also didn’t believe in anything these Kerz believed in. Like marrying captive women traded in a business deal, or breeding ceremonies, or barbaric murder.
But something flickers in my mind, a flash of understanding. Even if I don’t know what he was talking about, Idoknow—at least I think I know—that Rysethk loves me.
If it was true that Rysethk loved me?
I think over Zethki’s words:My cousin has come to me with a prophecy from the seer that I can’t ignore… tell me, Anya Mann, human: do you believe in the fates?
After another look at him, a few moments passing as he strokes my pussy with his cock but still does not enter me, I consider the far-flung, hopeful chance that perhaps this is all part of a plan of Rysethk’s.
Blindly, I leap.
“Almost everyone in the universe believes in some version of… fate,” I say, hoping that the tremor in my voice goes unnoticed. I search his face for his reaction, my heart soaring with hope.
Even if I’m not entirely sure what my hope is for. It’s just a feeling.
Zethki looks down at my face, and his expression changes yet again. “The seer told my cousin that the passing of the Cryte comet brings thekrythof death to Kerz warriors.” He dropped a hand to my abdomen, palming my womb, staring at it emptily and obsessively at once, like a madman. “Do you believe such a thing?”
“Are you going to kill me?” I whisper, panic rising in my throat. I cross my arms protectively over my breasts, moving them down, gently nudging his hand away from my womb.
Zethki moves for my hands, staring, letting a single finger trace a line from my womb to my pussy, pressing on my clit delicately, sending a shudder through me. It’s pleasurable, but terrifying as well. My heart is pounding in my ears. This Kerz is unpredictable, a madman, I can see that much clearly.
He laughs abruptly and sucks air between his teeth, a hiss in reverse. It is a terrifying few seconds as I watch him, his claw so close to my womb, my entrails, my pussy.
“Kill you?” he says, manic again, smiling. “No. I don’t want to kill you, little human.” His eyes light up with his malevolence again, briefly, and he moves his hand to my hip and squeezes it, my whole buttock grasped in his enormous grip. I feel his razor-sharp claws against my skin, and a fresh wave of terrifying confusion courses through me. “I want tomatewith you. I want to breed you, again and again. But…” He sighs loudly and looks up at the ceiling. “The fates should not be tested. If the seer is right, and I bring thekrythof death to your womb, then you will be barren.”
I start to exhale a sigh of relief, cut short by Zethki moving his hand, all claws bared, toward my pussy. “And so I will have to amuse myself in other ways.”
He lies down alongside my body and watches my face with voyeuristic interest as he slips first one, then a second, and finally a third finger inside me. He grins when my eyes open wide and fear grips me—I can feel the sharp points of his claws at the end of his fingertips. He isn’t slicing my flesh, but I have no idea how that’s possible, and the threat of such an injury makes my entire body stiffen with tension.
I can see that this pleases Zethki, which makes sense given everything I’ve seen of him. He smiles again, enjoying himself. “So afraid,” he murmurs, nuzzling my ear. “But I won’t harm you, little human, if you please me and obey me.”
I try to signal to him that I am happy to comply, but I’m unable to speak or even make a sound—unless he wants me to scream. That much, I think I can manage.
“Relax now,” Zethki breathes into my ear. “You can only please me if you come for me.”
I close my eyes, because he isn’t watching me anymore, and try to relax. I know that I need to obey, and for a few moments the terror is impossible to push away.
I think of Rysethk, of my dreamlike half-memories, of my blood-written note, and of this peculiar and sudden ‘prophecy.’ The facts all align for me, and I am overcome by an unfamiliar feeling: I have faith in something, something outside of myself and bigger than me. I have faith that Rysethk loves me, and that I just have to survive long enough for him to bring all the threads of this plan that I don’t have all the information about—for whatever reason—together.
I relax, and think of Rysethk, and Zethki’s fingers lose their fearsome power. The fear even becomes exhilarating. I mewl and hold myself still even though I feel a throb of longing, a desire to help him bring me to climax by wiggling. I have no choice but to stay still and let him have his way pleasuring me.
I think of Rysethk again, and inside me pleasure blooms and explodes. I bite my lip and force myself to open my eyes for Zethki, to let him believe that it is him—and not the thought of Rysethk—that has driven me wild.
My pleasure seems to travel through him somehow, lighting up hiskryth, making him growl ferociously and pull me tightly to him.
Shaking a little, unsure of what I’m doing, I move my hand to his cock. Thekryththat forks and wraps around him is hot and pulsing, and when I grasp it, his entire body shudders. Looking into his eyes, I can tell that he’s being consumed by something from the inside. I don’t know if it’s desire, or anger, or frustration—I only know that it seems familiar, and in the contours of its familiarity I sense that it isn’t dangerous to me, but it is more powerful than anything human I have ever seen.
He comes after I stroke him only a few times, and I feel his hot seed between my legs, running over my thigh.
