“So you’re giving up?”
That should make me feel good. If I can talk them into letting me go because I’m so annoying, that’s kind of the best escape. It means they won’t come after me again. It means I’ve won?
Winning should feel better than this sick sense of sadness and guilt.
“Are you going to…”
“I will deal with you,” he growls. “Later, when I am less angry.”
I nod and walk away. I guess that went pretty well. I shouldn’t really care what he thinks about me. He’s my captor. I’m his captive. I’m not really here to please him. I’m here to escape.
So why do I have this feeling of guilt and angst around disappointing him? Seems kind of mad really. I need to get my head straight. No matter what happened in the past, I have to live with the future. I have to decide if I like these aliens or not.Maybe I just have to admit to myself that I do like them, and they all clearly seem to like me. Even Kronos.
Later that evening, the worst thing that has happened yet, happens. I have been spanked, fucked, zapped into instant orgasm over and over, but I was not prepared for my three mates to sit me down for an earnest conversation.
“There’s tension,” Sharp says. “And I want to address it. We worked long and hard to find our pet again, but we cannot go on like this. We cannot keep her against her will, and we can’t function with constant rebellion. For this to work, we have to all decide we are in agreement as to our roles.” He looks at me quite seriously. “We can punish you from time to time, pet. But we cannot constantly watch you, unless you want to live your life in a cage.”
“It was always going to end this way,” Kronos says, gloomily fatalistic. “We never really had her under control.”
“We could go to an inhabited planet,” Sharp suggests. “Somewhere safe that has no major predators, no human sellers, and a peaceful culture. Somewhere we can work out our relationship between ourselves.”
“It won’t be peaceful with us there for long,” Boss points out. “We’re restless. All of us. All four of us,” he adds more pointedly.
“I want you to tell me what happened in the days before I disappeared,” I say. “I want to know why you’re saying this was never going to work.”
“You were obsessed with saving humans from alien fates. It was our fault. We used to do a lot of human rescues where we could. When we met you, we decided to keep you and breed with you,” Sharp explains. “You were similar enough in temperament to us that we all felt drawn to you, and that your genes would provide our offspring with necessary strength. But you became obsessed with freeing humans from their owners. It was very dangerous. We tried to stop you, but you always found a way to get into trouble.”
“Sounds like me. Story checks out. Continue.”
“That’s it. You disappeared,” he says. “We thought you had been captured while trying to save other humans and gotten yourself taken away. You were not easy to trace.”
I think about that.
The idea of women being dragged off the planet and given to aliens who fuck them or eat them or what the fuck ever still horrifies me. I was prepared to lose my life for it when I had a good job and a comfy apartment, and I still am now.
“She’s got that look in her eye,” Kronos sighs.
“Can’t we just stop the illegal human trade and be done? I know the aliens doing this are doing it with human help. Here’s what we need to do. We need to go back to Earth and we need to hunt down the people who are supplying wild caught humans to aliens. Oh, my god! Okay. Here’s a plan. I go back to Earth and I go to the contaminated ground. And I get myself caught. And then I’ll be inside the smuggling ring, and I can bring it down from the inside out.”
Boss snaps his fingers and points at me. “That’s pretty much what you said on the day before the day you went missing.”
“Did you guys try to stop me?”
“Of course we did. It’s a mad plan. Getting caught as a wild human doesn’t get you any closer to the people enabling the alien trade.”
“Okay,” I say. “So. I must have gone to Earth to execute that idea and they must have wiped my brain when they realized I knew too much. They could have killed me, but I bet they wanted to test their tech on me. See how well it would work. And it did work. Until you found me. Which means…” I stare at Boss. “They might be looking for me now? I might know too much. They might have had me under surveillance.”
“They might. They won’t find you.”
“But what if we let them find me?” I open my eyes wide. “What if we let them get me, and then we see what happens. We can get them, if they get me.”
Kronos, Sharp, and Boss all exchange looks that I can only describe as concerned. They’re the sort of looks people give each other when they like you a lot, but they think you might be losing your mind.
“You’ve also suggested this plan before,” Boss says. “About four years ago.”
“But this time it could work,” I say. “We must have messed it up somehow. You must have not known where I was.”
“We did not know where you were. We knew you’d run off, and that was it.”
