He was gone and she was alone in her bed, but not in the room.

  Puffy eyes shut tight, Quinn felt the thrum of five separate minds—all focused, all devout, all dangerous.

  There was no time she could recall where ingrained impulse hadn’t sent her into a frenzy at the nearness of a remnant of Project Cataclysm. Yet now there was no bloodlust, no fortifying need to rampage. The thing she hated most about herself was gone, and where it should have been, lay only cold clarity.

  It was terrifying.

  Motionless, she could feel blood crusting her pulped nape, the minor sting of abrasions where the grate floor had cut her flesh a signal her sleep had been painfully short. With her genetics, physical wounds would fade completely in a matter of hours; it was her insides she feared would remain altered.

  The urge to shrink deeper into the bedding like a frightened child brought bile to her mouth. The salty fan of her lashes rose in a measured sweep; five imperial soldiers stood at attention. Only the largest dared to look at her. The male preened, eyes glowing against an impassive expression.

  Though he did not wear the armor of his order, woven into his long white shock of hair were the small metal disks of a highly ranked warrior. One of the most recognizable tyrants in the known universe, Karhl—Lord Commander of the Empire, and one of the most powerful brothers to Sovereign—stood in her cramped room.

  Having him for a warden... was bad.

  “Do you feel violent?” Karhl’s voice was oddly deep, similar to Que’s robotic vibration.

  Quinn blinked, the image of the male somewhat obscured by her hair. “And if I should say yes, you are to subdue me?”

  He answered at once, head bowing fractionally. “It would be my honor.”

  Gentle tone or no, the implication was not missed. Fear fresh, she imagined he too would mount her as Sovereign had, with four converts serving as living restraints—one for each of her limbs—so the Lord Commander might do his work and fill her with the same chemical soup Sovereign claimed was her salvation. Paranoid, she scanned with red rimmed eyes to reassess what her brain had calculated from the first moments she had returned to consciousness; she was outnumbered and ignorant of just how complex her entrapment was.

  “You remain distressed,” Karhl spoke again, drawing her attention back to his beautiful stone-carved face. “How may I soothe you?”

  The atrocities she’d committed were nothing compared to what the Lord Commander had inflicted on planet after planet. The man had destroyed whole human populations, committed acts of genocide against billions unwilling to convert. The knowledge didn’t stop her from hissing, “You could get out.”

  “I cannot.”

  Eyeballing the intruder, Quinn sat up, the fallen bed sheet exposing breasts still wrapped in the binding she’d performed in the night before. Unsure fingers traced over her damaged cheek while she tried to ignore the slippery excess of Sovereign’s sperm leaking from her body to wet the bedding.

  Watching carefully, Karhl spoke. “It was decided decades ago, amongst the greatest of us, that force would be an unfortunate necessity.”

  At the giant’s words Quinn let out a threatening growl, turning her aching neck so she might glare.

  Karhl met her gaze, undaunted, and continued. “We have conquered worlds full of pleasures to tempt you to us. You resisted. We sent dignitaries across the universe; you fled from your family. Aware of your reasons we worried for you, young one. Trackers, bounty hunters, all avenues were explored. It has been a century of alternate efforts with no result. Your rape… there was no other way to assure progress.”

  The kind of rape where the attacker forces pleasure so burdensome it stings worse than the humiliation of defeat? Lip trembling, Quinn clenched her jaw, choosing to stare at the wall when she found she could no longer look at the male. ”I am surprised you are not trying to find a nicer word to justify progress.”

  “As it evolved, did you not enjoy him? Several of your acquired former sexual partners claimed you preferred intense aggression.”

  That statement was incredibly unsettling. The pleasure had been compulsory. A base piece of her had reveled in it; a greater part had hated it. And the giant Lord Commander, with his piercing eyes and fair color, was aware; he’d been nearby throughout the entire coupling. Had her mind not been so distorted, so enamored with her ultimate prey, she would have recognized it then. “Did you enjoy the show?”

  “I witnessed your liberation. I watched over you, ready to intervene if it was necessary.” No judgment sat in sea glass eyes, only pride directed at her. ”You are powerful. Sovereign was almost unable to subdue you himself.” When the complement did nothing but earn him a scathing look, he rationalized, steady and unaffected. “You remain overwhelmed and understandably conflicted.”

  The Irdesian Empire was very powerful, they were on Pax, the byway was closed, and her greatest enemy implied something she could hardly bear to think of. “Do not presume to know me, Lord Commander.”

  Striking, large, and closing in, Karhl said, “I watched you rip a massive reinforced wall out of the ground with your psionics at Condor. You then threw it at a wave of Alliance soldiers, killing them all. Having just taken a bullet for you, I reached out to touch your shoulder, to help you. You threw me farther than the wall.” The frightening soldier—one who had lived centuries longer than she, who had fought the war against the Alliance and formed the Empire—stepped closer and put a hand where he’d tried to touch the child long ago. Thumb grazing her slave collar he asked, “Are you going to throw me again for trying to help you, Sigil?” Thick fingers curled under the too tight contraption and Karhl crushed the device. “Sovereign removed your true collar when he shattered your conditioned compulsion.” The crumbling metal scraps dropped bit by bit to land in her lap. “He did what needed to be done so you might understand your place in the universe.”

  Even as he spoke, warm hands capable of causing her great harm circled where the collar had reassuringly squeezed for the last decade. Automatically, Quinn gripped his wrist, wrenching and finding fulfillment in the grind of his bone. “Breaking my collar will summon Pax overseers.”

  Ignoring the discomfort, Karhl worked the pads of his fingers over the flaking scabs on her nape. Soft feeling wormed from the tender skin; angry thoughts muted. Quinn’s heart rate decreased. He spoke, “There is no angle we have not considered. You are blanketed by the Empire and safe here.”

  She knew better. No one was safe on Pax.

  “I will not hurt you.” Karhl’s instant pinch between her vertebrae fostered a shuddering impulse of pleasure down in her belly, a dim echo of the almost orgasmic power that had left Quinn stunned when Sovereign bit her the night before.

  Liquid fell over the sticky abrasions on her cheek. Nothing made sense. All the running, all the years believing one thing and fearing only herself when all along she should have greatly feared them. Wet eyes looked up at a monster she’d been designed to destroy. “I don’t understand.”

  “You were designed so light pressure between shifted cervical vertebrae three and four would induce calm. A Kilactarin trait highlighted with Sudenovan matriarch.” Karhl offered a deep mechanical hum. “Allow me to comfort you.”

  Her hand shot up to shield the vulnerable spot. Karhl acquiesced. Without the pressure from his fingers, Quinn’s stupor faded. Anger replaced it. “The bastard gnawed my neck bloody.”

  Karhl’s feelings were resolved, the man certain all had been done as it should have been. “A bite heightens arousal and subdues defense in an aggressive female. It was done out of mercy. He did not wish to give you only fear and pain.”

  Sovereign’s mercilessness was legendary, to hear him spoken of in any other way was iniquitous.

  Quinn edged out of the Lord Commander’s reach, placing the bed as a barrier between them. Upon standing, her thighs grew wet with more of Sovereign’s leaking mark, Karhl glancing down to view the shine of semen dripping down pale flesh. Had the emotions she sensed in him been reflected on his face, the warrior would have been smiling. But he didn’t; Karhl was expressionless, very Axirlan in his makeup, similar to her Que in all the wrong ways.

  Those humans with him were also unordinary, a caliber of convert Quinn had not been exposed to before. They had been altered, as if she could smell the Lord Commander’s contamination upon them.

  “These are my chosen elite.” Karhl answered, ambivalent to her scrutiny of his men. “A highly coveted rank few survive advanced levels of conversion to attain.”

  Hybrids? A dim reflection of the one they’d been altered to mimic. She edged further from Karhl and nearer to the closest soldier, finding limpid blue competing with the natural brown of the human’s eyes. It was more than brainwashing; the man had been altered on a cellular level.

  Karhl’s face remained impassive. “Human populations have been domesticated.”

  Quinn shot a nasty look at the man seeking to educate her. “Conversion or death? You wish for them to mimic you, when you are all far more greedy and violent than they ever were.”

  “Control was taken so strays might be advanced properly and renegades removed. Conversion progresses us all.”

  “And who are you to decide the direction of their evolution? You would kill off an entire species to create something to use...” frowning, Quinn turned back to the soldier, seeing the convert refused to meet her eye, “...as we were used.”

  “The Alliance would have stopped at nothing to hunt you, Sigil. Any cost; any loss of life. Whole planets would have been burned to ash if even a suggestion you might walk its crust had been made. Do not condemn us when your brothers have always offered feral humans a choice over annihilation. How else were you to survive?”

  The soldier’s face wavered in her field of vision, pressure building behind her eyes. Taking in the profile of what was still a young man, Quinn whispered, “Do you hear what he says? They would blame me for what’s been done to you?”

  There was no reply.

  Quinn snarled, “Look at me!”

  Karhl appeared directly behind her, his hand hovering over her shoulder as she stared, distraught, at his underling. “He is forbidden to do such a thing.”

  She pleaded, unsure why the soldier didn’t understand he’d been mutilated, “Look at me.”

  “You greatly outrank him, but Sovereign has overruled you here.”

  And there it was. Sovereign—everything boiled down to Sovereign. His very existence controlled her life no matter how far she’d run. “I refuse to be blamed for the state of human affairs. I cannot help what I am, and want nothing to do with your empire. I never did. I tried to leave you in peace. The same respect was not extended in reciprocation.”

  Karhl’s hand descended the final distance to softly pet a female that was confused, angry, and unwell. His eyes roamed over her body, seeing the swell of muscled thigh and hip, the dip of her belly, breasts hardly covered by pleasure slave’s garb. “You are a fully grown woman now, Sigil, with wisdom to temper your impulses, but still controlled by them through no fault of your own.” He delivered cold truth unflinchingly. “Understand that the noticeable effects of your mating will not last indefinitely. This uncertain freedom from your compulsion to kill us will return without further measures. With us, your family, so near and escape routes closed, how long do you really think you could resist your programing?” All traces of gentleness drained from his quasi-Axirlan face, Karhl growling just enough to earn her attention. “You would attack and he would force you again. It could not be helped.”

  Unsure which unsettled her more, the sense of devotion from the Lord Commander or the fear the compulsion might return after a short terrifying moment of freedom, Quinn shut down. “You think I don’t recognize the manipulation at work here? Sovereign is conveniently gone, a Lord Commander stands in his place so I might be calm and measured... converted before rage sets in for what was done and I kill us all.”

  “Your judgment is partially correct. But I assure you, young one, my goal is not manipulation, but pure assessment. It is my duty to confirm the compulsion was successfully muted. The proximity of Sovereign, and your reaction upon waking near the one who’d hurt you may have unbalanced my evaluation.” Without hesitation he admitted, “I also desired to have you to myself so that I might be the one to tend you. I wish to offer comfort you would not allow were he here.”

  His tone of voice was so like Que’s she responded to it, acceding, even knowing Karhl was not her companion.

  “I have bled for you. Personally sought you in every corner of the galaxy.” The Lord Commander was absolutely sincere. “Since your creation, each life I have claimed I took in your name.”

  The calm induced by his voice vanished when she found the will to look back at the man. Nervously licking her lower lip, she began edging towards the lavatory and away from the beautiful male with his oddness and unwelcome devotion. “I could kill your four elite soldiers so fast I doubt the last could draw before I shattered his spine. But you... you frighten me, and I cannot help but wonder if that was the very reason you were chosen.” Violence would not set her free, nor could she negotiate with his level of zealotry. “I must say his plan was well-enacted.”

  “My intention is not to frighten you. Once you are home and settled, you will find peace as Imperial Consort in our care. All this will seem as nothing.”

  Quinn moved a step closer the lavatory. “As a prisoner.”

  Karhl offered a nod. “Though I would prefer you viewed the arrangement differently, you are essentially correct.” He gestured for her to enter the target of her evasion and see to her body’s needs. “But your freedoms will increase as your healing progresses.”

  “How do you not understand? I was designed so Sovereign would desire me. That does not mean he should. I hate you all, yet never killed one of you.”

  Karhl followed her step for step. “Fifty seven of your brothers sacrificed their lives in search of you. Some you damaged. And you have killed three.”

  She had not known that. “Not on purpose! I don’t want to kill you. I fight to refuse enacting what I was created for; I just want to be. But you keep coming and some days I can’t stop.”

  “We know.”

  His calm infuriated her. “I have not slipped in thirty years. I have not told anyone what you are.”

  “What we are, Sigil.”

  She closed her eyes, feeling liquid run down her face. “I am not a sheep...”

  “Bathe as you desire to.” Karhl gestured towards the wash cubicle and did not avert his eyes when she stripped the sad remnants of her clothes.

  Never taking her eye from the invader, scrubbing until her flesh was raw, Quinn sought comfort in the knowledge that under the feet of her one-man audience was a grate which could be lifted—a passage she’d carved through air ducts, drainage, and metal sheeting beneath it.

  The preset timer ended, the chemical cleansing spray stopped, and Karhl offered her a length of towel. “Everything you require during the remainder of our tenure in this domicile has been provided, including appropriate clothing.” At the flick of his fingers one of the soldiers brought forth a quantity of fabric and handed it to the large Lord Commander.

  Quinn looked down at the beaded red silk, similar in shade to the length of streaming fabric she twisted in at Swelter, and found no pleasure in its beauty. Brushing past him, she moved to her cabinets to choose from things familiar.

  Karhl moved nearer. “Slaves garb is not appropriate for the Imperial Consort. Please wear the dress.”

  Her arms went through a length of worn robe Que had brought her from a Tessan outer world decades before. Sash knotted with an angry yank, she refused, and walked from the bedroom to seek food. Frozen at the gateway, Quinn found the wreckage and ruin had been cleaned sometime in her sleep. Her broken treasures were gone, erased. Her blood no longer stained the grates.

  Chewing a bit of torn skin near her nail, Quinn felt the weight of a hand settle on her shoulder again and flinched, unaware she stared at the spot where she had been held face down to the floor.

  A large thumb skimmed her nape. That was all it took for Quinn to double over, vomiting all over the ground.

  Swept up before she caught her breath, she found herself rushed back to the lavatory, her wet hair held back in the hands of her new keeper, the rest of her stomach contents splattering against the basin.

  Childhood years of torture she’d survived with more grace: electro shock training, bone breaking strikes from combat instructors who hit her as if she’d been full-grown, poisons injected daily to test tolerance and increase immunity... yet she disgraced herself while one of the most feared warriors in the Empire tended to her like the child he inferred she was.

  The bed came soft under her back, Karhl covering her body with blankets as he spoke. “Sovereign has been summoned. He will be here shortly.”

  She couldn’t see past the dark spots in her vision, curled up as the Lord Commander kneaded her nape. Then another was touching, enveloping her in muscled limbs, in warmth. Lips pressed against her temple, soft words were whispered in her ear, and the oblivion of unconsciousness arrived.

  The next time she woke she was dressed in the layered beauty of the beaded red silk.

  Chapter 6

  Surrounded by the scent of falling rain, Quinn smiled, breathing in time to the heartbeat under her ear. “How many years did I sleep this time, Que?”

  The thing she was cradled against stiffened. An exhale brushed her crown, lips followed. “Not years, Sigil. Half a cycle.”

  Drowsy eyes opened to find that in place of the snowy white bulk of her friend, tan sinew was pressed to her cheek. Sovereign’s bared chest served as her pillow, his jacket open, the skin to skin contact warm. Yet the rest of him was fully clothed—as was she.