The matron tsked, soothing with a soft touch. “None of that, sweet girl. You know what that temper of yours does to him.”
Leaning into her soft palm, the girl dared to soak up the maternal comfort. Eyes drifting closed as unwanted memory burbled to the surface. Bruising fingers. The cut of sharp teeth and cruel words dampened only by the burning stretch of being mounted by a large male utterly unconcerned with the risk of causing damage.
“I hate him,” she whispered, voice a frail warbling thing.
The matron took a hiccupping breath, then wrapped her in a squishy embrace. Her cheek pressed to a generous bosom that had nursed dozens—she’d often wondered if this particular matron had been her bearer, or if the other female was just conditioned to be motherly after being forced to birth young she’d not been allowed to raise.
“Submit with grace. Please him as best you can, and I’ll have tea brewed and waiting for your return.”
Lips quirked in a watery smile, the girl nodded, following the matron to the dressing table.
Experienced enough to know what to expect of the next few days, the girl relaxed as the matron went about preparing her for Hadim. No matter what came next, being pampered was never a thing she could refuse.
For one such as her master—a prince wealthy enough to keep a large harem of breeding Hathorians—the event was little more than a chore.
Rough breeding without the messy Hathorian quirks despised by the Anhur males and their queens alike.
The matron held out a tall, thin glass filled with milky liquid. “Hurry now, while it’s still cold.”
Without daring to sniff the offensive offering, the girl set the vial to her lips and threw it back. Swallowed with a grimace, her tongue smacking the roof of her mouth. “Blehhh. Foul shit.”
A playful smack bounced off the crown of her head, making her ears twitch. “Don’t let the master catch you being so crass.”
It was a suppressant designed to ease the symptoms of a Hathorian heat, for when her people went into season, their instincts took over. Without that foul concoction, she’d be driven to build a nest. Mindlessly lifting her tail for a worthy male to catch her scent, to mount her in a nest of her making. And when she was ripe, her cunt would glisten with a viscous fluid known as slick.
A lewd, disgusting display unique to her kind. One that had gone out of fashion long before she’d been claimed by a large harem.
Hadim preferred his females tame, their seasons short, litters vast, and their teeth filed down to harmlessly dull Anhur replicas. That he’d left their ears intact wasn’t a gesture of kindness, but one meant to highlight their station as slaves.
Her heat cycles were engineered to last three days, though she was really only receptive to male attention for the first two. After her heat had set in, her blood would surge with a potent cocktail of hormones unaffected by the suppressors. Driving her to seek out a dominant male, her mind cluttered with a dense fog unbreakable by anything but time—or a thick, spurting girth of an Anhur male.
Generations of selective breeding had exacerbated that natural trait in the Hathorians,making a new subspecies disinterested in mating with their own males. Unnatural though that might have been, it was no accident. Only the most pleasing females had been selected to pass on their genes, only those who’d been unable to resist their season. Those unable to fight their most basic instincts.
“Sit here, sweets,” the matron said, fingers dancing through a section of fine, black hair. “The master requested braids.”
Swallowing her vitriol, the girl remained still as her hair was fixed. And when the matron handed her the end of one woven rope, she pinched it in fingers that did not tremble. Even knowing just how Hadim liked to use her braids as leverage, her stoic demeanor was tainted by the hormones flooding her system.
Already, she could feel her attention drifting. Her mind tracing the shape of a tube of lipstick. Recalling the scent of Hadim’s sweat after he’d gone into rut to match her season. The heady scent of an aroused male pushing all else to the background. And so she’d remain until the worst of her cycle had passed.
A mindless slit, begging to be filled.
She’d heard the other girls talk of their time with Hadim and knew she didn’t have it as bad as some. That she wasn’t a favored Omega, her season enviably mild, and her time spent with Hadim reduced to little more than two long days of terse obligation.
The matron handed her a pot of scented oil without making eye contact. And with deft fingers, the girl swirled her first two digits through it, turning her back to discretely slip those fingers inside herself and replace the lubricant she wasn’t allowed to produce.
“All set?”
Exhaling a held breath, the girl adjusted her skirts and offered a tight nod. Wishing she could refuse what was coming next.
Chapter 2
Once more made to stand and wait, the girl fidgeted at the foot of the bed in Hadim’s expansive rooms. Her sensitive ears flicking forward and back, her tail tucked out of sight.
The breeding quarters. Separate from the space where he slept, yet close enough to save him the effort of traipsing all the way down to the Harem like a commoner, his females were entombed in a vault.
They went tohimwhen they needed to be bred, waited to be serviced, then said thank you before they left. Eyes downcast.
Aching deep in her belly, driven by instinct, she’d come through the private entrance in the eastern corner, following the dimly lit path ascending from the Harem’s subterranean rooms. An Anhur tradition, keeping a jealously guarded resource in a vault. Making any who dared to covet such a treasure go through the dominant male himself—and to do that meant a fight to the death, for there was only one way into the Harem. One way out.
