Page 46

Zyair

My grandiose plan to do the noble thing and feed myself to Brentoq had certainly dissipated like fog in the desert.

Fate was working against me. She gave me Princess Jazmin to start with. Then bonded her to all three of us.

Brentoq had further complicated my plan by only visiting me once in the last few hours to top up her dose of aphrodisiac venom.

She had paused long enough to taste my frustrated lust. Standing there, she emitted foul fumes while her tongue hung straight out and her expression reflected near orgasmic pleasure.

Unfortunately, she seemed quite serious about sharing me with her hive mates. After a few minutes, she returned her tongue to her mouth and stepped away, clearly intending to hold herself back from a pre-meal snack until we reached Xalcim.

Which added up to me being still alive, and hanging here like a piece of overripe fruit, as the battleship achieved orbit over Givnia. By then, I was hard as rock and no doubt emitting enough frustrated lust to feed an entire battleship of horny manticore females.

At least, I assumed that we had arrived at Givnia when the massive drive engines slowed, and then quit. The impression was bolstered by the increasing strength of what I sensed from Jaz and my brothers.

They were close. My heart accelerated. What they planned was dangerous. But I could not stop them.

They were at least as stubborn as I was.

The doors to my prison room slid open and Brentoq appeared amid her usual wave of stench. This time she was escorted by members of her harem, including the alpha. While Brentoq moved right into me, pressing her breasts against my chest, he glowered.

The sharp smell coming off him meant little to me, but I liked to think he was envious. Hanging like this, every inch of me was exposed. And at the moment, that was a lot. I met his gaze and raised a brow, daring him to compare.

His furred brows dropped even lower, and the pupils contracted.

Brentoq ignored the silent dick-measuring contest, although she rubbed her belly into me. I could not entirely hide the shiver of disgust. I no longer had any control over my lower half.

Her tongue flicked in and out. “Verrry nice,” she drawled. “I am sending you ahead to my stronghold, my tasty young Drake. I have a gathering of my hive sisters planned for later tonight, and it looks like you are finally ready to party.”

I schooled my expression to one of indifference, but I doubt it fooled her. It was humiliating to have such little control. I had done better last time. Bonding with Jaz had kicked something loose in me—now that she was a presence in my mind, my body wanted her, so badly that it ached.

It had the unfortunate side effect of reducing my resistance to Brentoq’s venom. I could only hope that my brothers’ preposterous scheme could get me out of here. Because if she offered the rapture this time, I was not sure I could withstand it.

Not with Jaz so fresh in my mind.

Brentoq stepped back and gestured to her alpha. He peeled his lips back from his teeth as he approached and raised his tail.

I eyed it, but I was now beyond even growing a few token scales, and was helpless to resist as it stabbed forward and down into my shoulder.

Unlike Brentoq’s venom, this was all about disabling in very tiny doses or killing in larger ones—even though he pulled it out again almost immediately, it scorched through me.

My body writhed against my bonds and my vision swam.

Yet my cursed cock remained ridiculously hopeful—the venom from both her and him worked together. Pain and pleasure, interwoven to create the ultimate torment.

Nothing, to a manticore, was without it.

The venom may not disable the key bits of me, but it wrought havoc with other muscles—the nerves misfired, contracting them in uncoordinated, agonizing cramps. As the males disengaged the hanging restraints and fastened my wrists into heavy manacles, my legs crumpled beneath me.

Brentoq waved the key in my face and tucked it between her top set of breasts. “Maybe if you’re really good,” her forked tongue licked her lips, “I’ll free you to do some groping of your own.”

Her stench alone was enough to make me gag, but my body had been pushed beyond any simple sensory discouragements. She and the alpha stood back as members of the harem dragged me from the room.

The alpha’s venom put my body in agony. Yet beyond it all, I ached for culmination.

The rage that burned along our mate link gave me something to cling to as the manticores all but carried me through the massive ship to the docking bay.

Xandros filled my mind with images of him tearing them apart.

Rhodes sent me a much more precise kind of disabling—starting from the groin up.

I hoped they would both get their chance. I had no pity for our enemy—there were few species as inherently unconscionable as the Nirzks. They deserved whatever hell we could rain down on them.

That thought, or rather the anger behind it, bounced back and forth along our matebond as I was dragged into the small starhopper that would take me to the stronghold on the planet below.

The Nirzks dropped me onto the floor of the hold, and stood around me, expelling gas in supposed triumph as I lay there.

They thought me fully incapacitated, which was not far from the truth.

I focused on wiggling toes and fingers, and got a response.

Closing my eyes, I gathered what strength I had for what was to come.

The ramp closed, and the ship took off. Jaz’s concern flooded through me, and then she focused on using her ability to help Rhodes and Xandros.

The two were definitely primed for action.

Once into the atmosphere, the starhopper’s descent was far from smooth—the wind howled around us, and airborne sand hissed against its metal skin.

Nothing, however, compared to the impact of something heavy, scaled, and extremely pissed off.

Enter, my brothers…

Even linked as I was, the power of their attack surprised me.

Unable to hold onto anything, I was flung across the open bay, and the Nirzks were tossed like dice.

One came within range, and I managed a wicked kick.

Far from my best effort—my leg was like a twitching log attached to my hip—but my aim was true.

I wrenched his head around and dropped him like a stone.

I had never been on the receiving end of a Drake assault. The entire ship jolted, the engines screaming as they attempted to compensate. I had no doubt the metal skin crackled with energy, but that first hit had been telling—the ship could no longer fly straight.

I stayed down, as much because I could not stand, as because I sensed it coming—the ship was struck again.

Xandros, this time. I knew it not from the link, but from the sheer brute force of what nailed the starhopper, driving it viciously downward.

The ship pitched and rolled. Trying to regain my feet in all this would be pointless, even if my muscles were not a mess from the venom.

My Drake recuperative ability was hard at work, though.

My body responded when I rolled across the floor and took out a second smelly Nirzk by cartwheeling my lower half into the air and snapping his neck with another swift kick.

I knocked the feet out from a third, wrapped my manacled hands around his throat, and squeezed the life out of him.

What he emitted in his death throes had tears streaming from my eyes.

Three down. Three to go, plus the bridge crew, who were currently engaged with piloting through my brothers.

One of those still standing was the alpha.

He advanced on me with tail raised and phaser drawn.

He tracked me with it, just as Xandros and Rhodes hammered the ship as a single unit.

The impact sent the big manticore flying.

He crashed into the wall and slumped to the floor, stunned, in an expulsion of rank fumes.

An explosion from one of the twin engines caused the starhopper to list violently, and begin to spin.

I sank my toe talons into the metal floor and launched myself at the alpha. His eyes widened as I landed on top of him, and he struggled to free his tail from where it was pinned beneath us. The stinger stabbed into my arm, and pain coursed through me as I fastened my fingers around his throat.

I summoned my talons. The ten wicked knives at my fingertips ensured that the Nirzk alpha would never sink his stinger into anyone again.

I yanked it out of my throbbing arm. Distinctive creaking sounds came from the ship’s hull, and the wicked spinning abruptly stopped.

I staggered to my feet, just as one of the two remaining manticores slammed into me.

As I grappled with him, the door to the landhopper was wrenched clean off its hinges.

Something rolled into the bay, transforming as it did so. Before it had finished, it was already sinking talons into the back of the one attacking me.

Rhodes.

He moved so fast it was impossible to track him—thirty seconds after he had blasted through the door, the two final harem members were dead.

The crew wisely stayed behind a locked door as they struggled to land the ship. Its plummet to the ground had been buffered by Xandros, who was strong, but judging by our continued descent, not strong enough.

Rhodes eyed the manacles. “Who has the key?”

“Brentoq,” I said through clenched teeth as the newest dose of venom scorched through me. “Cannot shift—too much venom in me.” With my muscles out of control, shifting would most definitely go very badly.

“Riding it is, then,” Rhodes said, turning to the door. “Form up, brother.”

Jaz sent a warning along the link. The distinctive crackle of phaser fire followed. With his talons sunk into the ship’s skin, Xandros could not dodge it completely, and I heard him grunt in pain as he got struck.

I was shaky, and embarrassingly aroused, but I should be able to hold on to Rhodes. His body was already altering back to his dragon as he flung himself out the door, holding onto the frame with lengthening talons. I clung to the wall, struggling to get my legs to obey.

A glimpse beyond Rhodes showed the city coming up with shocking speed—Xandros was losing his battle holding the ship aloft.

“Now,” shouted Rhodes. He brought his head as close to the opening as he could?—

I gritted my teeth, and jumped.