Integration Page 6

  “Yes, Master, I’m me again.” He yawned, waiting for the reprimand that was sure to come.

  “Yeri, you need to stop calling me that. You’re free, dammit.”

  He smiled slightly at Lee’s words, predictable as they’d been. He stood, stretched once more, and padded toward the door. “Why bother with the pretense? We both know I’m yours.” His heart had belonged to Lee since the man’s birth, all those many years ago. The rest of him Lee had inherited upon George’s death and not just in the legal sense. Lee had pulled him back from the brink before Yeri could follow his beloved master to the grave. He stopped before Lee and waited.

  Lee’s hands felt hot and wonderful as they touched him, sliding over him in their usual post-mating inspection. Lee verified what Yeri already knew—nothing was amiss with him, physically. In his youth, he’d been able to hide injury or illness, but Lee was impossible to fool. His trained eye picked up the subtlest cues, his knowing hands could interpret the faintest signals of Yeri’s body. He’d given up even trying to hide any ailments from the man.

  Yeri gasped softly as Lee’s hand cupped his balls. Yeri was both sexually sated and sexually starved. Sated because he’d just fucked a dozen females over and over again until they’d come out of heat; starved because none of them had been human, and it was humans his body craved carnal knowledge of. It had long been the tradition for the stud to be put to the immediate use of their handler as they left the breeding chambers. It had been a reminder of place, of submission to human authority, but now, it was a reaffirmation of the bond between them. This time was no exception. Lee’s other hand hovered near his face, and Yeri drank in the scent of his human with relish. He bowed his head and kissed the back of the man’s hand then licked it, enjoying the perfect, sublime flavor.

  The focus was immediate, his world narrowed to encompass only Lee. The man’s other hand was now stroking his erection while he continued to bathe the hand before his mouth with his tongue. Lee let go of him. Yeri moaned softly in protest. His heart was racing now, his skin was too tight, and he wanted Lee with every fiber of his being: wanted to taste him, wanted to please him, wanted to be full of him. Lee’s hands rested on his shoulders and pushed downward. He obeyed the silent command, sinking to his knees.

  Lee’s pants were open, his jewels exposed, and Yeri nuzzled them gratefully, inhaling the strong musk of Lee’s sex and wanting more. Yeri’s tongue darted out to taste it, and after that first lick, he intently worked on tasting every molecule of that human male perfection. Lee stroked his head as he thoroughly licked the man’s balls and cock, he loved feeling those hot hands sliding over him, encouraging him.

  He slid the head of the fully engorged cock into his mouth and gave suck as he slowly pushed his mouth over the thick shaft. Lee’s hands shifted to the back of his head and pressed him forward. He acceded to the demand, swallowing Lee’s full length down his throat. He sucked it, lips sealed around the base of it, his nose pressed into the coarse curls of pubic hair so that he inhaled Lee’s excitement with every breath. His tongue played with the underside, stroking it and massaging it.

  Still holding his head in place, Lee began to roll his hips. Yeri bobbed his head in time to the man’s action so that the cock would first plunge deeply down his throat then pull back far enough for him to breathe, only to plunge back in a moment later. It was hard and fast, and Yeri reveled in it, loving the taste of the man and the feel of the hot cock in his mouth.

  Yeri brought his hands up to massage Lee’s balls, stroking them and squeezing them in their soft sac, begging them to give him Lee’s cum. Lee thrust deeply inward, mashing Yeri’s nose into his pubes, holding Yeri’s head in place as he shot his hot, delicious ejaculate down Yeri’s throat. Yeri swallowed and swallowed, but when it was over and Lee had relaxed, Yeri wished there’d been more of it. He loved oral, loved the taste and feel of his human. He was reluctant to release, but Lee’s hands were insistent, and so, he allowed them to guide him back up and into the man’s embrace.

  He rested his head on Lee’s strong shoulder and relaxed. Here, he was protected, safe, loved. Lee didn’t speak because words weren’t needed. They understood each other, understood one another’s moods and needs. Yeri still gasped as Lee’s tongue rasped over his musk glands, the shock of sensation curling his toes with its intensity. Lee’s arms tightened their hold on him as the man’s mouth and tongue bore down on his glands, sending wave after successive wave of mounting tension and pleasure coursing through him.

  Yeri gripped Lee’s shirt tightly as his knees threatened to collapse. Lee supported him, holding his body in place, but Lee didn’t relent. He tugged on one of Yeri’s legs, so Yeri obligingly raised it, wrapping it about his human. Lee entered him, sending a deep wave of hot pleasure outward from his core. Lee pushed him back against the wall and held him in place as he thrust deeply and urgently into Yeri. Lee’s hot, human hands dug into his fur, caressing his sides while the human’s mouth continued to ravage his musk glands and the man’s cock jackhammered into him.

  Orgasm struck rather like a lightning storm, traveling in two distinct strikes. The first originated from his skull, traveling down through his core and finally out through his extremities to exit through his fingers, toes, and the tip of his tail. The second originated from his groin and followed hard on the path of the first wave. Yeri sagged against Lee, gasping in the pleasure he knew Lee had felt as strongly as he but unable at that moment to bear his own weight.

  Lee held him until he got his feet under himself again then loosened his grip. He eased back far enough to look Yeri in the eye then gently brushed some stray bangs off Yeri’s face. The fingers tempted him, but he refrained from attempting to lick them, sensing that the man was satisfied—for now. “Hungry?” asked his human, ever the practical one.

  “Yes,” Yeri admitted after thinking about it.

  Lee turned him in place and gave him a gentle shove to get him moving then took a long step to catch up. Side by side, they strolled toward the dining room. Lee was sporting a mischievous little smile in addition to the amusement that strongly colored his scent.

  “What’s so funny?” Yeri wondered aloud.

  Lee held up a small bundle of cloth. “You might want to dress before we hit the dining room.”

  Yeri shrugged a shoulder. “Do we have company?”

  By company, Yeri meant outsiders, people who were not connected to the Lineage. Lee knew what he meant, but the man simply shrugged.

  Yeri gave Lee a semi-disgusted look, but he took the wrap and put it on. Even if they didn’t have company, he felt more comfortable covered. He just didn’t like having to admit it.

  “It was a wildly successful mating season,” Lee offered as they resumed their stroll. “You bred a full dozen, as did Vericho and Driandro. The new studs did well, they each bred ten females. Only seven females had to be put to their studs a second time.”

  Yeri knew that when a Breedmaster called a female bred, he meant that the female had not only been put to a stud but that she had tested pregnant after coming out of heat. A female who didn’t catch would go back into heat a week or so later so that another breeding attempt could be made, but Yeri didn’t recall seeing any of his females twice. Lee had told him, more than once, that he was unusually virile. He nodded as he thought about it. In nine months, sixty-six new Rovania would be born.

  “That will help,” Yeri mused. The number of living Rovania was low enough that he knew the Breedmasters were worried.

  “It’s not enough,” Lee replied. “Even considering that none of them will be culled or face death in the arenas or at the hands of cruel masters, it’s still not enough.”

  Yeri grimaced. The problem was simple on the surface but much more complex in the details. To increase their numbers, they needed more broods—and studs, too. There was a limit to how many broods a single stud could cover, after all. Artificial insemination didn’t work in Rovania because not only did the hormon
al scents need to be present to ensure fertility, the physical act of mating was required to induce the female to ovulate.

  To make a Rovani fertile, the Breedmasters had to trigger them via a series of injections. Yeri didn’t know what was in those shots, but he recalled that the process hadn’t been pleasant. But it wasn’t as simple as just selecting enough Rovania and triggering them. Heredity had to be considered, the major family lines of the race needed to be kept in balance, and broods and studs had to be genetically compatible, which wasn’t a given in their species.

  Young Rovania, those under the age of fifty, weren’t mature enough—physically, mentally, or emotionally—to handle the stresses of triggering, much less mating. According to the records Lee had shared with him, triggering young Rovania had been tried in the distant past and the failures had been heartbreaking. Not only physical breakdowns and deaths had occurred, but worse, in those that had survived, permanent insanity and loss of higher-level consciousness had been universal.

  The younger the Rovani, the less likely a successful outcome was. They couldn’t consider any Rovania under the age of fifty, and closer to a hundred was better. Before the massacre and their subsequent freedom, the Breedmasters wouldn’t even consider a Rovani for triggering until the century mark had been reached. This wasn’t all that unreasonable since the Rovania had an average life expectancy of three hundred years or so.

  The problem was that they currently had an alarming gap in their age cohorts. They had very, very few Rovania between the ages of thirty and ninety. The Breedmasters had already triggered all the surviving Rovania over the age of fifty, netting them three new studs and forty-six new broods. In the old days, only a few of them would have qualified as broodstock—the standards of the Breedmasters had been exceptionally high.

  Lee stopped in the corridor and turned to face him. Yeri checked his step as well, cocking his head as he contemplated his human.

  “The other Breedmasters are concerned about your decision to join the Space Corps.”

  Yeri had seen this coming. There was only one solution that he could see. It wasn’t ideal and would make his goal even more difficult to achieve, but for the good of his species, it had to be done. The Rovania couldn’t afford for him to retire from the breeding chambers, not until the young ones like Veloki and Tiatoki were old enough to be triggered, an event close to three decades away. “The broods will have to come with us, Lee.”

  Chapter Seven

  As he stepped off the shuttle’s lift, Veloki took a cautious sniff. The planet smelled strange to him. Nothing was quite as it should be. To his eyes, the grass looked like grass, the plants looked like plants, and the trees looked like trees... but his nose told him otherwise. His spinal ridge crawled with tension as the hairs stood on end in reaction to the perceived threat. He padded a full circuit around the parked shuttle. He saw no animals, but he could hear them and smell them, and again, they didn’t smell anything like what he thought they should.

  Will this be a problem with every planet we encounter? He frowned. Alien evolution would, of course, produce alien scents. His olfactory sense was telling him that everything here was hostile, even the grass under his feet, and he had no way to know if that was true. He reached the lift again. The rest of the team had descended now, and they were as uneasy as he was.

  “According to the records, the settlement was half a klick east of here. Spread out, twenty-meter separation, and head east. The marines should be coming in from the other side, avoid them. Take readings along the way.” Loki gave the orders to his team via telepathy, just like he had during the Q’Kathi War. The telepathic network that existed between the Rovania couldn’t be hacked, overheard, or interfered with. It had been one of their greatest assets in the war and remained one of their best-kept secrets. To this day, historians debated and wondered how the Rovania had coordinated their attacks without the use of communication equipment. Their ideas ranged from interesting and clever to far-fetched and ludicrous. A few had even suggested psi, but luckily, those had largely been ignored.

  The six Rovania quickly sorted themselves into a north-south line with the requested separation between them. Loki took the northern point, Mali the southern. Riko and Raki were in the center, putting Lyto and Tito in a position where they had fighter support on both sides of them. They headed east at a measured pace, taking readings of everything as they went.

  Loki found his unease increasing the longer he was on the planet. He found himself wishing they had chosen to wear boots. “What will this hostile, alien ground do to our bare feet?”

  “We need better options,” Lyto replied. “The boots the humans gave us limit our feet too much. We can’t climb or jump easily in them.”

  Loki hadn’t realized that he’d broadcast his thought, but he was grateful for Lyto’s logic. “It’s something we’ll have to work on,” he pathed back. He eased the staff out of the harness and held it one-handed as he continued to point the probe at everything in reach. He wasn’t even sure why he’d done it, but he immediately felt better having the weapon in hand.

  He remained alert, on edge, as they approached the coordinates of where the colony had been. The landscape appeared virgin, untouched by technology, unaltered by intelligent design. The stands of trees looked to have been there since the dawn of time, the brush and grasses appeared just as solid. But humans had been here, they had modified the land. He searched for any sign, any remnant that would show that humans had, in fact, been here.

  He slipped between two massive tree trunks, entering one of the many groves that dotted the area. The ground beneath his feet felt different than it had outside the grove. It was... springier. The air smelled different, greener, harsher, crueler. He stopped and glanced up. The branches laced together, enclosing the gaps between the trunks in a living canopy. He looked down, pointing the probe at the ground he walked on. As he’d suspected, it was mostly rooted underfoot.

  Some slight change in the air around him caused him to glance up again. Was the canopy lower? He eased back and bumped into a trunk. He turned, startled, for there shouldn’t have been a tree trunk directly behind him. Yet, there was. The gaps between the trunks was narrowing. He slid the staff back into its holder, replaced the probe on his belt. He crouched, studying the trunk.

  Loki selected his target and leaped, the powerful muscles of his legs propelling him nearly twice his own height. He landed lightly, using his hind claws to find purchase on the bark. The roughened palms of the fighting gloves also aided in climbing. He swiftly worked his way up through the canopy and out toward the edge of the grove. He leaped again, this time outward, and landed in the grass nearly ten feet away from the grove. He felt the soil between his fingers. He felt the roots of the grass moving, trying to loop over his digits. He pulled away swiftly.

  “The plants are hostile,” he pathed urgently. “Avoid the trees, and don’t stop anywhere for more than a few moments.” He padded forward swiftly as he received acknowledgments from the rest of the team. He pulled the phone from his belt. “Saki, you there?”

  “I’m here, Loki,” Saki’s reply was prompt and welcome.

  Loki repeated his warning and added, “Pass it on to the marines.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The phone clicked, indicating the channel was no longer active. He replaced it on his belt and took the probe back out, aiming it at the thickest clumps of greenery he could find. A scream that could only be human rang out from somewhere ahead.

  “Shit,” he snarled aloud. “Run,” he pathed. “Hostile territory, rescue scenario.” He burst into a full sprint, zeroing in on that scream. The others fell into formation alongside him. It took less than a minute to reach the source of the scream. Loki saw the marines circling a grove, a grove with only inches remaining between the trunks.

  “Riko, Raki, with me. Everyone else, get the marines back. Rysti, get the shuttle here now.”

  Riko and Raki joined him as the rest spli
t to either side. Together, they leaped upwards, catching the branches and slinging themselves higher into the trees. They slowed as they sought inward paths. The trees had blocked the ground approach, but they hadn’t done anything to limit the approach from above.

  “Found him,” Raki pathed. He dropped down out of the canopy a moment later. Riko followed him, Loki reached a different spot and also dropped down into the interior of the grove. The trees had trapped the man, roots looped over his feet and lower legs, branches pinned his upper body. He was still alive, Loki could still hear his breath and his heartbeat, but both were fainter than they should have been, and the stillness and silence of the man spoke to his lack of consciousness.

  Riko and Raki both had their spears out and were using the blades to cut away the wooden trap. Loki pulled his own staff back out, triggered the blades, and turned to keep watch. A low noise, something like a hum crossed with a growl, was his only warning. From the brush that now filled the floor of the grove, a thing that was mostly leg and teeth attacked him.

  Loki sidestepped and slashed down, nearly cutting the thing in two. It flopped to the ground, and five more of the things leaped out of hiding at him. Loki jumped, spun, and slashed, his focus narrowed to encompass only the enemy. He didn’t count the numbers, he simply killed them as they came at him. He sensed Riko and Raki joining him at some point, but the onrush of these things seemed unending. The three of them fought and killed, killed, and killed some more. Sometimes the creatures scored hits, cutting them here and there, but they were mostly easy to kill. It was just that there were so many of them.

  Eventually, the creatures stopped leaping out of the brush. The three Rovani waited, poised to renew the battle, the sound of their harsh panting loud in the silence that reigned.

  “They’re all gone,” pathed Lyto. “Come out of the grove now. The trees have opened back up.”