She swallowed the bite she had taken in the interim while he was busy boasting. A younger son of a prince turned to piracy… Interesting. He was watching her so expectantly for any reaction that—oh, what the hell—she would indulge him. Obviously, he was eager to impress upon her his importance. She couldn’t imagine why. She was nobody, but if it would make the meal go faster, then she would bite.
“A prince, huh? Then why are you out pirating instead of enjoying a royal life?”
“It is a most incredible story,” he said, the flinty look that had been in his eye since boarding eased as he settled back in his chair.
He drew a small tube out of his vest and followed by removing a pouch. Dipping his fingers into it, he withdrew a stringy mass that smelled sharply of the spicy fragrance floating around the room and stuffed it into the tube. Leaning back, he lit a small triangular nub at the end and took a deep drag on it. As the smoke billowed out from his lips, his pink scales flushed almost red, he almost made her think of a smoking dragon from one of the tattered children’s book she had come across once in her youth.
“He publicly disgraced himself,” Azan said, her tone somewhat bored as if she had heard this story too often. “He was exiled from his homeworld and all of the Blaithari colonies with nothing but this ship and a small crew to pilot it.”
Egbor shot a dark look to the female, but he didn’t snap at her like Terri thought he would. He seemed more inclined to continue to smoke whatever was in the hollow tube than exert any effort into retaliating. He pointed one thick finger at her and sneered.
“Be grateful that I find you too useful and amusing to terminate,” he grumbled.
Azan grinned lazily at him, the first smile that Terri had seen on the female’s face, and it was almost transformative. Transformative in that it made her seem even scarier than she appeared at rest. The hard, lethal edge to her smile was disconcerting. That the captain met her gaze with a nonplussed expression confirmed that this was a regular part of their odd relationship.
“You do notattemptto terminate me because we both know just how hard I am to kill. I make a better ally than an enemy, as you once pointed out.”
He grunted in agreement and lifted a cup of some sort of dark, frothy substance to his mouth. Tipping back his cup, he drank long from it before setting it down with a hard tap on the table.
“Are you finished with your interruptions?”
“For now,” Azan agreed.
He snorted and turned his attention back to Terri. “As Azan said, I was exiled in disgrace. It was considered an embarrassment to my family and peers that I sought profit in a rather lucrative natural resource on my planet, one that we have an abundance of.”
Silence followed as he waited for Terri to play along.
“And what is that?” she asked.
Instead of answering directly, his expression turned smug and calculating. “Would you agree that there can be problems that arise when the population skews out of balance? When there is too much surplus of one that causes strain?”
“I can see how that could be possible,” Terri replied slowly. She had seen just how crazy and covetous so many men became on Earth when women were harder for them to find, and the way women were shared among them in some sort of weird desperation.
“My homeworld, Blaitharsha, has a population ratio of two to three females to every male. It put considerable social pressure on males to take in additional mates and provide for them. For some families, it worked out well, for others… not so much. Economic and personal strain that can occur among those not equipped for it. I decided to do our populace a favor. Unfortunately, my family did not think much of my endorsement and funding for relocating surplus females of the lesser divisions of our society off planet.”
Terri gaped at him. “Yousoldfemales to other species?”
“Ah, I see that you arrived at the same conclusion that my family did. Naturally there had to be some profit in the enterprise to keep it running. But each of them was sent to males who wanted them. When it came to light, I was stripped of all titles and permitted to take only my personal wealth, a small personal ship, and my flagship to live out the rest of my life comfortably in exile in space. Naturally, I did not leave without taking a little company,” he grinned at Azan, who stiffened, her lip curling in a silent snarl. “But I was otherwise set adrift into the cosmos to wander aimlessly.”
He took another drink and sighed in pleasure. “Unfortunately, having a loyal crew and a personal captive can only be amusing for so long. It is boring in space, and funds run dry if you like… indulgences,” he said with a smirk as he puffed on the tube again. “Needless to say, despite my shrinking funds, it did not take me long to discover that all these trappings that were provided for me could be useful.”
“You used it to attack ships, the way you got ours,” Terri filled in. “You’ve been playacting the stranded royal for a long time, haven’t you?”
“That I have, a role I play very well. But make no mistake, regardless of my noble birth, it does not make me a harmless male. Azan made that mistake, and I slit her throat and let her nearly bleed out until I had medical bring her back from the brink of death. I did this again and again until not even our medics could repair the flesh and her ruined voice, nor the scars that litter her body. I have claimed and branded every inch of her as my own. She thought she could get away from me and misjudged my strength and ruthlessness. Your mate, like so many other males, did likewise to their own peril. Now I possess you and your mate, and you are utterly mine until I decide to release you.”
He chuckled unkindly as her food churned in her stomach. She felt sick.
“Do not waste your sympathy on Azan. I molded her into a ruthless and cruel killer, surpassing even myself, I do think. And once that happened, this female from common stock I gave the most vaulted position in my crew. She is merciless, my Azan.”
He cast her a fond look, and the female Blaithari glared at him but didn’t deny him as he reached and ran his hand over her breast affectionately before drawing away.
Egbor’s humor faded as he recalled the food that wasn’t being eaten. Tucking his tube back into his vest, he gestured impatiently.
“Let us eat and speak of more entertaining things—like what we can expect when we get to the planet.”
“Jungles, vast rivers… and likely wildlife and predators lurking within both,” Terri muttered as she turned her attention back to the cooling food in front of her. She wanted to reject the food. To say that it wasn’t worth another minute in his company. She had gone days without eating before. The only thing that stopped her was the tiny life growing within her.
Hissing silently to herself, she grabbed a chunk of bread, slathered it with meat dripping with a gravy before taking a huge bite of it. It was delicious, savory, and juicy, but some part of her still had to choke it down as she forced herself to take another bite and another.