Page 39

Zyair

I was no stranger to pain.

As I had been netted before, I recognized my body’s protest to it. I preferred it to what was sure to come.

“I know you are awake, Zyair.”

The dialect was Drakonian, but spoken with a distinct hissing undertone that was pure Nirzkese. I took a deep breath, and opened my eyes.

As the sour, overripe stench hit me, I immediately regretted breathing through my nose. Instead, I sucked air in through my teeth.

I was once again suspended by my arms, but this time in a metal clad room rather than a cage. My wings and tail were strapped down to my body. Keeping my expression deliberately stoic, I sized up my adversary. “Hello, Brentoq.”

She grinned at me, revealing her needle-thin, pointed, feeding fangs.

There was nothing about a manticore female that was in the remotest sense visually appealing, and Brentoq was more gruesome than most. Taller than me, and almost as broad, her shoulders rippled with muscle above the scaled bustier .

With her flattened face this close, I witnessed how her pupils contracted both vertically and horizontally, forming an x in the middle of her pale-yellow gaze. Her shaved head sported a single long ponytail of white hair emerging from the top, exposing the thin membranes around her ears.

“I miss the matted look,” I commented. During our last encounter, three deliberately felted tufts had adorned her skull.

She hissed a laugh. “Simplicity is the latest trend.”

“Ponytails are useful for swatting.” I deliberately scanned the air around her. “I am sure your natural body odor attracts a fair share of bugs, even on a ship.”

She did not rise to it. I was sure, however, that I was on her shaftzing battleship.

“I am attractive to many things.” She trailed a claw along my chest while she stroked her other hand over the leather disguising her breasts. It was enhanced with scales…

My gut clenched. Not enhanced—they were scales. Those on both her bustier and the leggings encasing her huge thighs were reddish gold.

Raptor Clan dragon scales.

I fought to hide my reaction, but she caught it anyway, and her eyes glowed. “Your people make lovely clothing,” she purred. “Maybe when I am done with you, I’ll add you to my wardrobe.”

“Good to know you find us useful,” was the best I could do.

Her gaze dropped to my groin. “Oh, useful is not the word. You are scrumptious. Or you will be.” Her long tail twitched behind her, the bulbous poison gland at the tip appearing over her head.

“Although you do not smell as delectable as you did last time.” Her eyes glittered with anger.

“You’ve found yourself a female to fornicate with.

” She pushed her face right up to mine. “I will find her and drain her dry for taking what was mine.”

I squelched my surge of rage before she could sense it, and drink in its energy.

As her tongue flicked out toward me, another waft of stench made my eyes water.

My memory had deliberately erased how badly manticores stank.

They regularly rubbed their own urine on their bodies and in their hair.

It was their version of perfume—that and their copious gaseous emissions.

They also had an abysmal sense of smell, but they made up for it with the taste glands on their tongues. Their bodily secretions were supposedly rife with pheromones, which is why they reveled in them.

To the rest of the universe, they simply stank.

The tip of her tongue touched my jaw, and I pulled away. During our last encounter, she had outlined why virgins were preferred—the emotions resulting from her manipulations were particularly tasty without her victim having any past history to fall back upon.

I’d tasted the real thing, now. There was no going back from that.

I kept an eye on her tail, even though there was little I would be able to do if she decided to stab me with the shaftzing tip. While male Nirzk venom was designed to kill, that of the female was designed for an entirely different purpose.

She was contemplating using it. I could tell by the glitter in her eyes. So, I did my best to delay the inevitable. “Considering your hairy body”—I kept my expression deadpan—“do you not find clothing rather itchy?”

Her brows lowered. Calling a manticore hairy should not have been as insulting as her glare suggested—perhaps it was a female issue. I noticed, then, that she had also shaved the tops of her breasts.

I surmised no female wanted to be called hairy, not even a manticore.

The tail tip waved, and she expelled gas. Loudly, with her face revealing her satisfaction as her tongue flicked again. “You will be singing a different tune in a few hours.”

I blinked my watering eyes. “We have already been down that road, Brentoq. It led nowhere good.”

She grinned again. Not a pleasant expression. “Ah, but I have been practicing,” she said. And then, she moved aside, disclosing what her body had been blocking from me.

Only ten feet away, a Drake hung in restraints identical to my own. He was naked, and his body hung limp, as though drained. Which, judging by the fang marks everywhere on him—and I stress everywhere —was likely the truth.

It took me a moment to recognize Senaik.

When Brentoq approached him, he opened his eyes, and a chill swept through me. Because there was no sanity left within them.

She glanced back at me. “Your friend has been quite scrumptious. Drakes provide prime meat in many ways, but I seem to have broken him earlier than most.” Another toothy grin. “More an appetizer than a main course.”

There was a sound of gas escaping, and I winced. “You do not seem to be digesting him well.”

She snorted a laugh and then extended her tongue. “Noses are so limited. So sad you cannot taste him in my expulsions. He was— rich .”

“Please.” Senaik’s voice was barely audible. “I want more .”

“Ah, my pet.” She reached a clawed hand to cup his jaw. “I do not think you have anything more to offer.” Her tail waved above him, and his feverish gaze fastened on it.

There were those that spoke of the manticore lust with wonder. And even some that sought it. I did not know if Senaik had asked for this…

“Please,” he begged.

He certainly was asking now.

She sighed. “Very well.”

The tail moved like lightning, the stinger sinking into his shoulder. He groaned, but not in pain. He started to shake all over, and his cock, which had been as limp as the rest of him, began to stiffen.

Brentoq closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and extended her tongue as she fed on the lustful energy her venom sent coursing through him.

Frustrated sexual energy was ambrosia to female manticores.

They absorbed it like most species did desserts.

Only once had they milked that for all it was worth, did they use their feeding fangs to suck fluids.

Males drank only blood, but females had other preferences.

As their venom kept the male body in a continual state of arousal, the victim was caught in an endless loop of unrelenting lust.

I was sure I had only been unconscious for a few hours, and in that time, Brentoq had already broken Senaik.

She had held me captive for days , the last time.

I had been near death when my brothers had rescued me, driven nearly mad by lust. Somehow, I had managed to resist the rapture—in the end, she had not gotten what she had wanted from me.

I did not know how I had done it. All Manticores relied on the rapture to hold their victims in thrall while they used their fangs to drink. My resistance to it had been unusual.

By the madness in his eyes, and the concentration of fang marks in certain key locations, Senaik had not been as resilient as I.

A fact confirmed by Brentoq’s smirk. Her forked tongue slid over her needle-sharp fangs. “Drakes are so delicious .” She slid claws down Senaik’s chest. “Your friend will die with a smile on his face, begging for more.”

Senaik moaned and dry humped the air with a surprisingly rigid member. “Pleeeease…” His eyes were focused on her fangs. He wanted her to feed, for the rapture to bring him to culmination, even though it would not last.

Anger pulsed through me and I looked away, to the male harem members lining the far wall. “You always seem so hungry,” I pointed out. “Perhaps you should start breeding your males with more substantial equipment. And with better endurance.”

The males, standing in their own little cloud of aroused stench, stiffened. But if the statement had not hit home, they would not be so defensive. And maybe their females would not have to go hunting for their culinary satisfaction.

“No… wait, my perfect one. Please…” Senaik protested as she moved away from him and approached me. Close enough that her new burst of rank scent swept over me.

I nearly gagged .

“It takes ten manticore males to satisfy a female,” she hissed, “the way one Drake can. Our breeding program cannot keep up with the demand. Raptor Clan has recently provided us many fresh volunteers for it. Maybe when I’m done with you, I will keep enough of you undamaged to contribute.”

Breeding program? Her reference to my clan burned through me—but I had known that some would have fallen prisoner during that debacle.

The thought that they were treating them like livestock sickened me, and I fought to keep my lips from peeling back into a snarl.

“If you wanted more Drakes, your people should not have killed our females.”

The manticore shrugged. “You are a fine one to talk, considering the experiments your people are doing with the humans. Although I hear that you have finally found something that works…”

She had a point there. How had she heard about our success with the human serum?

I shot a look to Senaik, and her grin widened.

Her tail arched higher, and on another burst of pure stink her pupils expanded, almost covering the yellow.

“Time to get this process started. You have no idea how often I have dreamed of this moment.”

“Oh, I have dreamed of you, too,” I managed, but only by breathing through my teeth.

She stepped right into my space, and trailed her clawed hand over my pectorals, before leaning in to lick from my collar to my ear. “You want me. You all do, after you’ve had a few doses of my venom.”

“In my dreams,” I allowed my lip to curl, “my dragon shreds you.” I flexed my fingertips.

“Oh, that would so ruin the fun.” Brentoq’s hand slid down across my ribs as she paced around me. “Although I have fed on dragon energy. Your lust amplifies along with your body. But it resists the rapture. Too bad, there’s enough there to feed an entire hive.”

The comment confirmed that somewhere, the Nirzks had captive Drakes. It meant little at this point—not much I could do to help them.

I could not even help myself .

At the moment, it was all I could do to not crane my neck to watch her as she prowled around behind me, her tail lowering and swaying back and forth.

It fired every instinct I possessed, and I called upon my dragon scales—only a partial transformation.

My body lacked complete protection in my human form, and I could not maintain the scales for long, nor produce many of them while I wore restraints.

She knew it too, emitting a coarse chuckle as she came around and then back up beside me.

Even though I was prepared for it, her tail moved so fast I could not have dodged it even if I were not strung up from the ceiling.

Too fast to even see, it was a blur as it shot forward, the stinger at the end finding the bare skin between my scales and sinking deep into the muscle of my inner thigh.

I could not stop arching away from the strike, but there was no escape. The venom burned as it pulsed into me.

She pulled it out and leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “I want you nice and hard and aching for my fangs. We have seven hours until we get to Givnia. Four or five more stings will ensure your compliance. And then—I have invited a few of my hive sisters to share. They are eager to meet you.”

Brentoq paced closer to me, and she stroked along my wings between the metal bindings. I shuddered, but not with pleasure.

She interpreted it otherwise. Her tongue flicked out. “Soon, my pretty one. I hunger for the taste of you.” Her eyes dropped low in perusal. “You may no longer be a virgin, but you should, indeed, provide a feast.”

With a final long expulsion of gas, she left. I allowed my eyes to close. The venom was burning its way through my veins. I would need every ounce of my resilience to endure what was to come.

None of it mattered. Because Rhodes—he was not here with me.

And that meant he had escaped…