Jes­sica whim­pered as their mouths and hands de­scended upon her. She tried to draw up in a pro­tec­tive ball, but they held her eas­ily, draw­ing her limbs out so she lay spread-ea­gled be­neath them. Her eyes locked on the mir­ror over­head, she watched two dark heads and a steel-col­ored one move over her help­less body. Hot, rough tongues tasted her skin, teeth oc­ca­sion­ally nip­ping the soft­est, sweet­est parts. They feasted on her slowly, rel­ish­ing ev­ery inch of flesh, ev­ery drop of mois­ture she ex­uded.

  Fear gave way to ex­hil­a­ra­tion. Jes­sica watched the mus­cu­lar aliens in the mir­rors take the wide-eyed woman, each po­si­tion they put her in more erotic than the last. The gi­ant Kalquo­ri­ans cov­ered the tiny fe­male with their bod­ies, their but­tocks flex­ing as they drove against her. They sat her on their laps, im­pal­ing her with them­selves. Arms bulged as they lifted her up and down, mak­ing her ride them. They flipped her onto her belly on the musk-scented an­i­mal skins on the floor, their groins press­ing against her but­tocks to make the pale mounds rounder, more pleas­ing to grip. They tossed her back onto the soft­ness of the bed, pin­ning her to the vel­vety sur­face. Male or­gans as thick as her wrists plunged in and out of tight pink flesh while the woman cried out in help­less arousal. Jes­sica watched the woman’s del­i­cate body ac­cept the de­mands of the im­pos­si­bly large males who worked and strained against her, watched her clutch the bed linens in white-knuck­led fists, watched her body clench in wild aban­don as she screamed with plea­sure.

  She watched it all as sen­sa­tion blew up ev­ery mol­e­cule of her own body over and over. She screamed in tan­dem with the woman in the mir­rors, feed­ing off the lus­cious vi­sion of her dop­pel­ganger’s ec­stasy.

  The sun­light beam­ing in from the open­ing in the cliff face shaded from golden to am­ber to tan­ger­ine as the day waned. At last the fig­ures on the bed un­tan­gled them­selves to lay limp with ex­haus­tion. Look­ing at the clan in the ceil­ing mir­ror, Jes­sica de­cided they looked like bod­ies tossed about by an un­kind wind­storm. She thought she might never move again.

  Their gasps eased. Per­spi­ra­tion dried. The sun­light turned red­dish-or­ange. Shad­ows stole into the room. The men each placed a hand on Jes­sica’s body. Cla­jak cupped a shoul­der, Be­vau, a calf, and Egilka buried his fin­gers in her hair. She still couldn’t move.

  Be­vau sud­denly sat up, his en­tire body on alert. He was on his feet fac­ing the closed door with­out Jes­sica see­ing him move. “Some­one is in our suite,” he said.

  Jes­sica glanced at Cla­jak, who shook his head at her. “It’s a Nobek’s na­ture to be on guard. Only those we know and trust have ac­cess to our rooms.”

  She re­laxed for a mo­ment then stiff­ened as the door opened. Her leaden limbs some­how found the strength to cover her breasts and sex as a woman of Ama­zo­nian stature strode into the room.

  The fe­male pos­sessed the Kalquo­rian col­or­ing and size. In her long, sweep­ing, sleeve­less dress, she man­aged to look fem­i­nine de­spite her mus­cu­lar arms and shoul­ders. Her breasts were large, ripe mel­ons; her waist tiny in com­par­i­son. Her dark face might have been pretty if its ex­pres­sion hadn’t been twisted in a scowl.

  The Kalquo­rian woman spied Jes­sica. Her eyes raked over the Earther’s body and she sneered, unim­pressed. Jes­sica snatched some bed linen to cover her­self with.

  The other woman’s voice, de­spite the growl be­hind it, was a grat­ing whine. “What is that do­ing in your bed?”

  Egilka eyed her from a prone po­si­tion, not con­cerned with cov­er­ing him­self or ris­ing. “This is Matara Jes­sica. Jes­sica, meet Matara Nar­pok.”

  Jes­sica man­aged to sit up, keep­ing her­self cov­ered. “You’ll ex­cuse me if I don’t stand and shake your hand.” Next to her, Cla­jak chuck­led and sat up too.

  Nar­pok glared at each man in turn. “It is one thing to have your dal­liances, but I will not tol­er­ate play­things in the bed I am to share with you.”

  Be­vau and Egilka looked at Cla­jak, who sighed and stood. Gor­geous with nu­dity, he ap­proached Nar­pok. To Jes­sica’s sur­prise, Nar­pok’s face twisted in dis­taste. She backed a step away, avert­ing her gaze to avoid look­ing at him.

  How could Nar­pok not gape at Cla­jak’s beau­ti­ful body? How could she not stare at all of the stun­ningly sculpted men? Jes­sica won­dered at Nar­pok’s re­ac­tion. The woman must be as frigid as most Earther fe­males.

  Cla­jak bowed his head to Nar­pok in a show of re­spect and stayed at arm’s length. “My dear, there is no easy way to put this, so I will just tell you – we have made Jes­sica our Matara.”

  Nar­pok kept her eyes averted. “I am not amused, Cla­jak.” As si­lence length­ened, she fi­nally faced him, her ex­pres­sion un­be­liev­ing. When he con­tin­ued to look at her with­out speak­ing, her shock turned to fury. “You don’t dare re­place me with an Earther!”

  Egilka also stood. His ex­pres­sion was the gen­tlest Jes­sica had ever seen. “We of­fer our deep­est apolo­gies, Matara. Our hearts over­came our prom­ise to you. We fell in love with Jes­sica, leav­ing us un­able to clan you as was ar­ranged.”

  “Im­pos­si­ble!”

  “We hope you will find a clan who will love and cher­ish—”

  “Shut up!” Nar­pok screamed at him, spit­tle fly­ing. Her fists clenched in rage. “I was to be em­press! Kalquor can­not be ruled by an in­signif­i­cant, pu­ri­tan­i­cal Earther slut!”

  Jes­sica couldn’t help her­self. “How can I be pu­ri­tan­i­cal and a slut at the same time?”

  Nar­pok turned in her di­rec­tion, her fangs show­ing. Be­vau’s voice was a low warn­ing to the irate woman. “Your anger with us is jus­ti­fied, but you will watch how you ad­dress Princess Jes­sica.”

  “Princess!” Nar­pok’s grat­ing whine turned into a howl. She launched her­self at Jes­sica.

  Be­vau caught her in mid-air while Jes­sica gasped and scram­bled back­wards on the bed. Nar­pok turned her fury on the Nobek, her fists beat­ing a wild tat­too against his flesh. She was big­ger than Jes­sica, but in Be­vau’s arms the de­posed Matara looked like a child hav­ing a tantrum.

  “My fa­ther will not stand for this!” she screamed as she strug­gled against him. “You won’t get away with steal­ing what’s right­fully mine!”

  Be­vau slung her over his shoul­der and car­ried the flail­ing woman out of the room, Cla­jak and Egilka fol­low­ing. Af­ter a mo­ment, Jes­sica trot­ted af­ter them, too cu­ri­ous to dress first.

  Curs­ing, Nar­pok was car­ried through the suite to the door lead­ing to the house con­veyance. Be­vau paused in the en­try­way and looked at Cla­jak.

  The Dramok nod­ded. “Scan and delete ac­cess to Matara Nar­pok.”

  Nar­pok looked up and screamed at Cla­jak, too en­raged for words.

  The com­puter-gen­er­ated voice an­swered with no in­flec­tion. “Scanned and ac­cess re­voked for Matara Nar­pok.”

  The door opened, and Be­vau pushed his for­mer fi­ancée into the con­veyance. The door shut be­tween them, cut­ting her howls off.

  Jes­sica looked at the claw marks cov­er­ing the Nobek’s back, and gasped at the even deeper bloody chan­nels sliced into his chest.

  Not­ing her dis­may, Be­vau looked down at him­self and shrugged. “I’ve had worse. Don’t worry, she can’t come back.”

  Jes­sica crossed her arms over her chest and shiv­ered. “That may be, but I’ve got a feel­ing this is far from over.”

  Chap­ter 15

  The Gov­ern­ment House was dug into the cliff next to the Royal House. It al­ways bus­tled with ac­tiv­ity, es­pe­cially when coun­cil was in ses­sion. Coun­cil ses­sions were open to the pub­lic; the Kalquo­rian code of a can­did and trans­par­ent gov­ern­ment was proudly held to. Still, Cla­jak had never seen the gallery so pop­u­lated. The Dramok prince read the ex­cite­ment of the cit­i­zenry even though he stood at the bot­tom of the cham­ber on the coun­cil floor it­self.

  Cla­jak watched the over­head glassed-walled gallery fill to nearly burst­ing with the peo­ple of Kalquor. Na­tives of the planet and Earther Mataras crowded the room over­look­ing the coun­cil cham­ber. The prince blinked, as­tounded by the num­ber of alien women in at­ten­dance. It had been some time since he had at­tended the Royal Coun­cil, since be­fore the first Earther Mataras had ar­rived on his planet. It was rare to see fe­males in the gallery. To­day there were al­most half as many Earther Mataras throng­ing the room as there were Kalquo­rian men. He thought most must be new life­mates to mem­bers of the Royal Coun­cil it­self. Over half of the body’s mem­bers had clanned the first wave of those fe­males brought to Kalquor.

  The prince had known how few the women on his planet were, hav­ing grown up with the aw­ful dearth of them. Yet it was see­ing these smaller fe­male ver­sions of his race that brought home just how close Kalquor was to ex­tinc­tion. The Earther fe­males were the Em­pire’s sal­va­tion. Cla­jak had never re­al­ized it with such pro­found­ness un­til this mo­ment.

  “A large crowd this morn­ing,” Egilka ob­served un­nec­es­sar­ily as he also scanned the throng above. When his head turned, his long braid whis­pered against the pur­ple robe he wore. A mus­cle jumped in his jaw, the only no­tice­able sign of ner­vous­ness he dis­played.

  “No doubt to see our con­flict with Pwal­dur,” Cla­jak said. He looked away from the gallery to check the wide steps of the coun­cil cham­ber. Blue-robed coun­cil­men gath­ered in small groups on the tiers, their heads close to­gether as they mut­tered amongst them­selves. The head coun­cil­man had yet to put in an ap­pear­ance.

  Zarl reached up from his hover chair to grip Cla­jak’s shoul­der, his face un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally stern. “You will be well ad­vised to keep your tem­per,” he told his son in a low voice. “Any show of anger will be in­ter­preted as im­ma­tu­rity.”

  Yuder added, “Don’t let Pwal­dur pro­voke you. Rag­ing at him will only aid his cause if he chal­lenges Jes­sica’s sta­tus as your Matara.”

  Cla­jak nod­ded. He also wor­ried about his short tem­per. Since ex­pelling Nar­pok from the clan’s suite, he’d been psych­ing him­self for the en­counter with Pwal­dur. He took com­fort that stay­ing rea­son­able would piss off the head coun­cil­man to no end.

  Of the six roy­als on the floor, only Be­vau seemed at ease. Re­splen­dent in his pur­ple coun­cil robe, the hand­some Kalquo­rian smiled, nod­ded, and waved to fa­mil­iar faces as they walked in. Cla­jak knew the source of the Nobek’s calm: Jes­sica was nowhere near the coun­cil cham­bers. What­ever Pwal­dur said or did to dis­credit her, she wouldn’t bear wit­ness to it.

  She’d sur­prised the clan by be­ing agree­able when they told her she couldn’t ac­com­pany them to the ses­sion. “Yeah, yeah,” she griped with­out heat, her eyes rolling the­atri­cally. “Poor lit­tle Jes­sica is preg­nant and she mustn’t be ex­posed to any stress, blah, blah, blah. Why don’t you just en­case me in a box un­til the baby is born?”

  “Be­cause then I couldn’t do this,” Be­vau growled, shov­ing his face be­tween her legs. Her shriek­ing gig­gles quickly be­came moans as his mouth and tongue feasted on her se­cret flesh. He’d kept at her un­til it was time to go. They’d left her limp and smil­ing on the bed.

  Egilka brought Cla­jak back from the sweet mem­ory. “I’m sur­prised Pwal­dur isn’t here al­ready to rally oth­ers to his cause.”

  Yuder snorted. “He’s had two days to do that. He’ll make a grand en­trance when he feels it’s most op­por­tune.”

  Tidro broke his pen­sive si­lence to say, “He loves play­ing to a crowd.”

  Zarl’s eyes lit up as a weary-look­ing but smil­ing Kalquo­rian ap­proached them, stop­ping to bow deeply. “Ra­jhir, how good to see you.”

  “Greet­ings to you, my em­per­ors and my princes.” The new­est coun­cil­man and first Kalquo­rian to fa­ther chil­dren in thirty years straight­ened.

  Dramok Ra­jhir tossed his head a lit­tle to fan his shoul­der-length hair from his hand­some goa­teed face. He took Zarl’s of­fered hand in both his own. He was a dis­tant cousin to the Im­pe­rial Clan, but as far as Cla­jak knew, Ra­jhir had never used that con­nec­tion for his own gain. In­deed, the man seemed ded­i­cated to ig­nor­ing the blood ties.

  “Our con­grat­u­la­tions to your most for­tu­nate clan,” Zarl laughed. “Twins! Such an as­tound­ing de­vel­op­ment!”

  Tidro beamed at Ra­jhir. “How are the babes and your Matara, my friend?”

  Cla­jak had al­ways found Ra­jhir to be some­what stuffy in his ad­her­ence to duty, more so than even Egilka. To­day how­ever, there was noth­ing aloof in the Dramok’s an­swer­ing grin.

  “All are quite healthy, thank you.” Ra­jhir’s glance in­cluded Cla­jak’s clan in his ap­par­ent de­light. “My princes, I have heard the glad news that you too are ex­pec­tant fa­thers. My con­grat­u­la­tions on your hap­pi­ness.”

  Cla­jak’s heart sank a lit­tle. He’d hoped Jes­sica’s preg­nancy would be a sur­prise he could spring on an un­sus­pect­ing Pwal­dur.

  Be­vau an­swered Ra­jhir’s smile with one of his own. “Do you have any ad­vice to share? We have no idea of what to ex­pect.”

  Ra­jhir chuck­led rue­fully. “Sleep now while you can, my dear Prince Be­vau. The in­fants wake ev­ery four hours, wail­ing to be fed.”

  “Ev­ery four hours?” Egilka seemed im­pressed and daunted all at once.

  “I don’t see how Earth­ers do it with only two par­ents. You wouldn’t think such tiny crea­tures re­quire that much care but—” Ra­jhir’s eyes widened to ex­press his shock.

  Chuck­ling, Tidro said, “I do re­mem­ber those days.” He gave Cla­jak a grin.

  The Imdiko em­peror and Yuder guided Zarl’s hover chair to­ward a two-tiered dais. There eight high-backed thrones waited, four on each tier. The em­per­ors sat above the coun­cil on the top tier. Cla­jak’s clan would sit on the lower tier, at eye level with the tallest step on which coun­cil mem­bers re­clined. The heirs’ tier jut­ted far­ther out, al­low­ing the princes to see and con­verse with the em­per­ors with lit­tle dif­fi­culty.

  Egilka looked at Ra­jhir with con­cern. “We hope your clan­mate Flen­cik will be able to at­tend Princess Jes­sica’s preg­nancy. He is the best physi­cian on all known worlds.”

  Ra­jhir straight­ened with ob­vi­ous pride in his Imdiko, the big­gest Kalquo­rian Cla­jak had ever seen. For all his size how­ever, Flen­cik was gen­tle for his species and ev­ery bit the ac­com­plished doc­tor Egilka pro­claimed.

  “I can­not an­swer for Flen­cik, but I know he’ll be hon­ored you re­quested him to be Princess Jes­sica’s physi­cian. I’ll have him con­tact you be­fore the end of the day.”

  “Thank you,” Cla­jak said. He was warm­ing to the el­der Kalquo­rian enough to ven­ture a ques­tion. “Have you had an op­por­tu­nity to speak with Pwal­dur re­cently?”

  Ra­jhir’s eyes were sharp on Cla­jak and his tone care­ful. “I am for­tu­nate to cross his path in­fre­quently.”

  The knots in Cla­jak’s shoul­ders eased a lit­tle at Ra­jhir’s choice of words. “I’m sure I will know his mind soon enough, but may I ask what you’ve heard?”

  “He will chal­lenge your de­ci­sion to take an Earther Matara over his daugh­ter.” Ra­jhir’s face was empty of ex­pres­sion.

  “No sur­prise there,” Egilka mut­tered. “What is your sense of the coun­cil’s mood?”

  The cor­ner of Ra­jhir’s mouth twitched. “Over half of us have taken Earth­ers into our clans. We know how en­tic­ing they are, my prince. No one faults your de­ci­sion, es­pe­cially since most of us have met Nar­pok and are not fans of Pwal­dur’s machi­na­tions.”

  “There are still enough coun­cil­men with­out Earther Mataras to give us a great deal of grief,” Cla­jak said.

  “Many of those not yet blessed as we are, are on the wait­ing list. Only about a quar­ter have not shown an in­cli­na­tion to clan Earther women, whether be­cause they al­ready have Mataras or are un­easy about mix­ing our races. Still, I know of very few who would refuse clan­ning the Earth­ers if they were avail­able.”

  A bell tolled, its tone deep and low. Ra­jhir bowed to the princes. “I will take my seat now, my princes. I be­lieve it is not the coun­cil you should fear so much as pub­lic opin­ion. Pwal­dur is an ex­pert in how to swing the masses who don’t know him as well as we do.”

  Ra­jhir turned. Cla­jak watched the Kalquo­rian stride pur­pose­fully to the steps, join­ing a group of coun­cil­men who loudly con­grat­u­lated the new fa­ther as he sat among them.

  Cla­jak fol­lowed his own clan to the lower tier of the dais, where he sat in one of the mid­dle thrones. Egilka sat to his left. The cen­ter throne on Cla­jak’s right was empty, with Be­vau sit­ting on its op­po­site side.

  When this non­sense with Pwal­dur is over, my sweet Jes­sica, you will sit by my side at Coun­cil where you be­long. Hope­fully, we can nip this in the bud to­day, Cla­jak thought.

  Ev­ery­one set­tled in for ses­sion, the last mur­murs of con­ver­sa­tion ta­per­ing away, the rus­tle of robes set­tling into an ex­pec­tant si­lence. Cla­jak’s gaze flicked mo­men­tar­ily to the gallery. Cit­i­zens pressed against the bal­cony, ea­ger to watch the pro­ceed­ings. Mas­sive float­ing vids faced the gallery, ready to trans­late the ses­sion in the var­i­ous lan­guages of the Earther Mataras.

  Above and be­hind him, Em­peror Zarl’s voice filled the cham­ber. “This reg­u­lar ses­sion of the Royal Coun­cil will come to or­der. Time and date will be noted.” Cla­jak heard the plea­sure in the Dramok Em­peror’s voice as he con­tin­ued. “We have al­ready of­fered our per­sonal con­grat­u­la­tions to Coun­cil­man Ra­jhir on the birth of a boy and a girl—”