Breeder Read online

  “Rhett is the father,” I told them, keeping my voice level. “He wanted the baby.”

  Nad’s voice came from over my shoulder. “You want the baby to go back to him?”

  I wasn’t sure Rhett deserved to be rewarded with the child after what he’d done to me, but he was still the baby’s father. It was a Trad, who might grow up to be just like his father, but perhaps he wouldn’t, and he’d be more like Nad and Miko instead.

  “If that’s possible,” I said. “I don’t want it here.”

  “I can arrange that,” Ewa said.

  The weight of a hand was on my shoulder, and I caught a glimpse of strong, blue fingers.

  “Are you sure it’s what you want, Tara?” Diarus asked me.

  “I might have birthed it, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s fully Trad.” I shuddered. “It’s fully Rhett.”

  “Okay.”

  I couldn’t even stand the sounds it was making, though the crying had dimmed down to a suckle.

  “Please, just take it out of here.”

  “I’ll go,” Miko offered.

  “Thank you.”

  I waited until the door was shut again, and then I allowed myself to breathe, knowing the baby was no longer in the room.

  “Here,” Ewa said, approaching me with a syringe in her hand.

  I reared back. “What’s that?”

  “It’ll help you heal from the birth. It’ll speed up your recovery time exponentially and will stop you from lactating.”

  I grew cold at the idea of the Trad baby latching on to my breast. It would be like feeding a monster, just a continuation of its parasitic ways.

  “That was developed so we could get pregnant again more quickly, wasn’t it?” I guessed. I didn’t think the Trads would have developed something like that purely to make the women feel better.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “You’re a veterinarian. Why do you have it?”

  “I wanted to study its effects, even if I was only able to do so on animals. Is that a problem?”

  I shook my head. I wanted to feel like my old self as soon as possible, and right now my body felt ravaged. I was still bleeding, and my stomach was like a deflated balloon, my breasts heavy and swollen. “Not at all.

  She plunged the syringe into my arm, and I winced at the sudden sting of pain. It quickly faded, however.

  “You need to rest for a while. Give yourself time to heal.”

  Nad frowned. “For how long? We don’t know who’s going to be after us. We can’t afford to stay in one spot.”

  “At least twenty-four hours. That’s nonnegotiable, if you want her to heal.”

  Nad exchanged glances with Diarus. “We want her to heal.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I woke feeling different. For the first time in weeks, I wasn’t instantly aware of my belly and the creature moving inside me. I felt as though I’d been freed. Carrying the Trad baby had been like being physically joined to the enemy.

  A pang of guilt at my thoughts tightened my chest. I hoped the baby didn’t have any concept of me as it’s mother. I wasn’t its mother. It didn’t have any of my DNA, and I’d simply been used as an incubator. But it had been my heartbeat the alien child had heard since it first sparked to life, it had been my blood and nutrients that had nourished it and helped it grow. It had been my voice it had heard, my movements it had felt.

  I hadn’t even asked if it was a boy or a girl.

  No, I didn’t want to know. It was better that way. That wasn’t my child—it never had been. We were two different species, and enemies at that.

  I thought of the Trads who’d helped me. Perhaps not all enemies after all.

  Already, I could tell that my breasts didn’t hurt as much. They were nowhere near as swollen or tender. A tentative hand on my belly, my fingers splayed, reassured me that not only was there nothing moving beneath my skin, but it was also surprisingly flat. The injection to speed up my healing was nothing short of miraculous. While my body was nothing like how it had been before the pregnancy, I could see it as my own again.

  After Ewa had given me the injection, she’d shooed the males out of the room and then took me to a back room with a bed and a shower. She’d helped me strip out of my bloodied clothing and stand beneath the water, watching the red swirl around my feet. I’d felt strange—short of breath and hollow, as though my insides had literally just fallen out—but she assured me that was all normal. After I was clean, she’d given me some of her clothing, which were all far too big for me, but were still a blessing after I’d been forced to wear nothing but a flimsy dress since arriving on Tradrych, and some pads to wear for the blood flow, which she told me would stop soon because of the injection she’d given me.

  I’d been exhausted and in shock from the birth, and I’d curled up in the bed, and fallen straight to sleep.

  My thoughts went to the baby, and a strange emotion I couldn’t quite pinpoint twisted inside me. Though I was happy to no longer be pregnant, there was an empty ache in the center of my chest. I’d not wanted to even look at the Trad baby.

  No, it wasn’t my child. It had nothing to do with me. I’d been used as a glorified incubator, that was all.

  I’d said for the baby to be returned to Rhett. What the hell had I said that for? He didn’t deserve to have the child. But who was I to make that choice? He was still the baby’s father.

  I gave a groan and covered my face with my hands. I’d never felt so torn about something before. I didn’t want to feel anything for the child, or care about what happened to it, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d felt it move for the past couple of weeks, and I’d sweated and bled as I’d pushed it out of my body. I’d heard its first cries.

  The baby might not belong to me genetically, but it seemed I couldn’t stop myself from caring.

  A knock came at the door, and Diarus stepped into the room, carrying a tray of food. I smiled at the sight.

  “You don’t have to do that anymore,” I told him. “We’re not at the facility now.”

  He placed the tray on the end of the bed. “That doesn’t mean I can’t still take care of you. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay. I’m just trying to come to terms with everything. Do you know what happened to the baby?”

  “It was taken back to the facility?”

  “By Nad or Miko?” I didn’t like the idea of either of them not being here.

  “Neither. One of the other rebels came to collect it.”

  “Oh.” My voice was small.

  I still didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, but I was on the run, and I couldn’t be on the run and take care of a newborn Trad. The idea was ludicrous. But I still couldn’t help wondering if it had noticed I was no longer with it. Was it crazy to wonder if the baby missed me?

  I swallowed back a painful lump in my throat.

  I had to focus on what was ahead and not look back. The Trads might treat us human women like shit, but they took care of their own. The baby would be fine. It was with its own kind, and they’d look after it. The Trads had invaded an entire planet to make sure these babies were born.

  Pulling myself together, I swung my legs off the bed. “We need to go back for the other women.”

  Dawn and Avery and the others would have noticed I was missing by now. At first, they’d probably think I’d gone into labor, but once Kaja and Rhett and the others made it clear that they didn’t know where I was either, the women would all figure out something else had happened to me.

  But Diarus put out his hand to stop me. “Not yet, Tara. We have a plan, but you need to be patient, and you need to get strong as well. This won’t be easy.”

  “I’m already stronger. Whatever Ewa gave me yesterday is helping.”

  “You need to be patient.”

  I sighed and sank back in the bed. He was right. I couldn’t do much as one person. It was infuriating, but if I rushed back to the facility, I’d probably just end up ba
ck in Rhett’s clutches, and that was the last thing I wanted.

  “Eat the food I’ve brought you,” he said. “If you want to help, you’ll need to stay strong.”

  “Are you always the voice of reason, Diarus?” I asked him, pulling the tray onto my lap.

  “I’ve had to be. I wouldn’t have been able to stay undercover if I didn’t know how to keep my emotions out of play.”

  I risked a smile. “Does that mean you don’t have any emotions, or just that you’re good at hiding them?”

  He stared at me, his amber eyes appearing flecked with gold. “What do you think, Tara?”

  “That you wouldn’t put yourself in such a dangerous situation unless you cared deeply for what you were trying to achieve.”

  A flicker of a smile touched his lips. “Correct. Now I’m going to leave you in peace to eat. The two Trads have been fighting each other all morning to get to be the first to come in, so you can expect to see them shortly.”

  “If they were fighting about who got to see me, how come you were here first?”

  The smile stretched fully across his face, but he didn’t answer my question and instead turned to leave.

  That was how Diarus got in first, and how he got to spend time undercover. He flew beneath the radar, letting other people fight it out between themselves, while he slipped by, unnoticed. Nad was the tough one—the one nobody wanted to mess with—while Miko liked to act crazy. But Diarus was the one to watch out for.

  I focused on the food he’d brought me—some kind of pastry filled with a spiced meat and vegetables—suddenly realizing how hungry I was. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten properly, and of course, I’d used up a lot of energy in the past twenty-four hours.

  When I’d finished, Ewa arrived back to check on me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Much better, thank you.”

  “I can give you another injection, which will speed up your healing again.”

  A part of me felt like I should say no, perhaps feeling like I needed to be punished or suffer for my reaction toward an innocent Trad baby, but I shook the thought from my head. I’d already suffered, and suffered greatly.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  There was a sting of pain as she plunged the needle into my arm—a pain I’d barely even registered the previous day due to my shock, I guessed.

  She left me as well, but I wasn’t alone for long. A knock came at the door, and Nad pushed it open, Miko lurking behind.

  “It’s okay, you can both come in,” I told them, remembering how Diarus had told me they’d been fighting about who got to come in and see me first. I didn’t want them to be divided, especially not over me, though I didn’t fully understand why they’d be fighting over such a thing.

  Miko quickly stepped past Nad, nudging the bigger Trad with his elbow to get into the room first. I pressed a smile between my lips, and Miko threw me a wink.

  Nad rolled his eyes at Miko’s antics and then turned his attention to me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “I don’t know what is in that injection Ewa gave me, but someone should start selling that stuff down on Earth. I bet new mothers would go crazy for it.”

  Realizing how insensitive my words were, I clamped my mouth shut. Of course new mothers wouldn’t want the injection. They wanted to nurture and nurse their babies, not send them away without even looking at them.

  I couldn’t even ask how the child was. I’d sent it back to its father, and I couldn’t even start to process how I felt about that. If Rhett had been a good person, perhaps I wouldn’t feel so torn now, but he wasn’t.

  I imagined his shock when he was handed the newborn. He would at least be happy to have it, and not for it to be given to someone else, wouldn’t he? He’d cherish it and make sure it was loved.

  Miko took my hand. “It’s okay to feel torn up about the baby, Tee. This situation you’re in now”—he gestured around—“none of it is your fault. You didn’t ask to be pregnant, or brought to Tradrych, or even end up with us. You’re allowed to feel however you want to feel.”

  I pressed my lips together, holding back tears. “Trouble is that I don’t really know how I feel. I don’t want a Trad baby. I mean, I’m hardly in the position to be able to raise one, am I? But that doesn’t stop me worrying if it’s okay. I might not have asked to be in this situation, but neither did the baby. It never asked to be born, and especially not to a mother who never wanted it.”

  I guessed I related more to a day-old child than I ever thought I would.

  His tone softened. “You know that if you’d stayed at the facility, they’d have just taken the baby away from you anyway. It was never meant to be yours.”

  I sniffed and nodded. “Yeah, I know that. Thanks, though.”

  I appreciated that he was trying to make me feel better. I wasn’t sure anything could right now, though.

  Nad moved in closer to the bed. “We need to get moving. Do you think you can walk?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I can walk.” I was going to be able to walk a lot easier on this next stretch than I had on the previous one. I was almost ten pounds lighter and no longer in pain. “Where are we going?”

  “To the rebel meetup.”

  My stomach churned.

  I was going to meet more Trads.

  Chapter Seventeen

  They gave me enough time to wash up and change into another set of Ewa’s clothes. I had to cinch the band of the pants around my waist, and the top spilled over me in voluminous waves. I was happy to be wearing something more substantial than that clingy dress. I hoped I’d never see that particular item of clothing ever again.

  We made our way to the front door that led out and onto the street.

  “Wait, I have something for you,” the female Trad said to me. She disappeared for a moment and came back holding a cloak with a hood. “It’ll help to hide your face, but be careful. We don’t get many human women walking through the city streets. If people see what you are, you’re bound to get noticed, and then they’ll ask questions.”

  “I’ll say she belongs to me,” Nad said.

  “Word will have gotten out that she’s escaped, and that this one is missing, too,” she nodded to Diarus. “I’m assuming he came from the facility.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “So, they’ll be looking out for a Trad with a human woman and an Athion slave.” She pursed her lips. “You might be better to split up.”

  Miko shook his head. “No chance. We’re sticking together.”

  She shrugged. “On your own head be it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Thank you for your help, Ewa,” I said to her. “I can’t imagine having gone through the past twenty-four hours without you there. I’m sorry I gave you a hard time.”

  She offered me a rueful smile. “No harder than some of my other patients.”

  I realized her other patients were all animals who probably bit and kicked, and let out a laugh. “No, I guess not.”

  She leaned in and gave me a brief hug, the scales across her cheeks brushing rough and hard against my skin. I hugged her back, though I was still feeling kind of awkward that the other female had seen me at my most vulnerable.

  The men all bid farewell to Ewa as well, and we left, skirting down the side street.

  Between the low-rise buildings of Azarc and across the desert, I was able to see the walled city of Vrale. It had only appeared as a shimmering mirage to me back at the facility, but now I was able to see the size of it. It was a strange contrast of red sandstone from the desert and shiny metallic industrialization.

  “We’ll enter the city more safely if we use the tunnels,” Nad said. “Ewa is right when she’d said we’re going to call attention to ourselves.”

  I didn’t care which route we took, as long as we all stayed safe. Since I had no idea where we were going, I needed the others to guide me. The idea of being lost and alone in the city was terrifying, but at l
east now I no longer had the fear of giving birth hanging over me, and I was able to move more freely. I was nowhere near fully healed, but compared to where I would have been if I was a woman on Earth who’d just given birth, I thought my progress was nothing short of miraculous. Then I remembered the reason the drug had been created in the first place—so women could get pregnant again right away. I thought of all the others who’d give birth at the facility and then would have been handed right back to a Trad. It would be like stepping from one nightmare straight into another.

  I vowed to help these rebels bring down the facility, no matter what it took.

  I kept my head lowered as we walked, the hood of the cloak pulled up to hide my face as much as possible.

  We reached another entrance to the tunnels—this one a wooden doorway with a sloping passage beyond.

  “Quickly, this way,” Miko said. He stood watch, making sure we each got past without being spotted. He looked left and right, then darted in after us.

  It felt good to have my body back again, even though I was filled with guilt for even thinking it. I remembered what Miko had said about me being allowed to have screwed-up emotions about the whole experience, but I wished there was a way I could come to terms with it in my own heart and head. Though I’d never asked for the baby, and had been terrified of the mere idea of it when it had been inside me, now it was born, I worried for its future and felt guilty that I hadn’t done more to take care of it myself.

  Should I have given up my life to take care of a baby that I’d never asked for and that didn’t even share my DNA?

  I tore my thoughts from the child and focused on what was ahead. Perhaps the baby needed me, but it had someone to take care of it—its father—where the women still held captive back at the facility had no one. Those were the people I needed to concentrate on. They were innocent, too, and they needed me more. I still had no idea how I was going to help, but I’d do whatever it took to free them, even if it meant risking my own life.

  Footsteps approached up ahead. Someone was heading down the tunnel toward us.