Breeder Page 7

  “Some place out of here.”

  Out of where? Did he mean the hole? Or was he talking about the entire facility?

  He took a step closer, fixing me in his dark gaze. I had no idea what to do, but I knew I didn’t want to stay in the hole, especially not with the chance of Rhett still hanging around. Nadeusz had giving him a beating, but I knew what beings like Rhett were like. He would come creeping back around eventually.

  I didn’t take Nad’s hand, but I stepped out of the hole and slipped past him

  “Come on,” he said, jerking his head in the opposite direction I’d come when I’d first been brought down here. “This way.”

  He was so tall, his long legs meant that one of his strides covered the same distance that took me several steps. He was also lean, where I was all baby bump and boobs.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, already breathless as I hurried after him.

  “Some place safe.”

  I followed him down one corridor, and then we turned down another.

  “Hey!” a male shout came from behind us. “Where are you going with the human woman?”

  It was a Trad I didn’t recognize—one with a curved nose and hard, dark eyes.

  “Velos!” Nad said under his breath, and then he turned to the new Trad. “She’s been in the hole, but she hasn’t felt the baby move for some hours. She’s close to birthing, and I can’t take the risk of another stillborn.”

  He frowned, his forehead ridging in lines of overlapping red and orange scales. “You could have taken the equipment down to her. Kaja would have overseen its use.”

  “There wasn’t time for that, and Kaja is busy with another female.”

  I had no idea if that was true or not, but Nadeusz seemed confident.

  “Take her back to the birthing ring then. I’ll come with you.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “I insist.”

  He pushed me ahead of him and then leaned in. When he spoke, his lips brushed the lobe of my ear, his breath gusting hot against my skin. “Play along.”

  I didn’t know what I’d managed to get myself caught up in. Where had Nadeusz been trying to take me? Could I even trust him? But he’d fought off Rhett on my behalf, and while he often acted like a total asshole, he’d had his gentler moments, too. I was too baffled to put up much of an argument.

  “I’m really worried,” I said instead, going along with whatever strange act I’d found myself in. “Normally it would be kicking me by now.”

  The baby had been as active as usual, and I forced the image of the dream I’d had, with the baby splitting the skin of my stomach to tear its way out from my mind.

  “Look how pale she is,” Nadeusz insisted. “She needs to be checked out. The hole was too much for her.”

  “Fine. Take her back to her pod. I’ll find Kaja.”

  “We’re going to have to try this another time,” he murmured against my ear.

  I twisted slightly, frowning. “Try what?”

  “Shh. They’ll hear you.”

  I wanted to ask who ‘they’ was, but I figured I already knew that. He meant the other Trads. Just what the hell was Nadeusz planning on doing with me?

  All the other women looked up in surprise as I was half pushed back into the birthing ring. They’d clearly been expecting me to be gone for longer, as had I.

  “Get back to your pod,” Nadeusz commanded, his tone hard and loud, just as I was used to hearing it. “And don’t cause any more trouble. Kaja will be here shortly, as soon as she’s available. Make sure you tell her what you told me.”

  He meant the story he’d made up about why he’d freed me from the hole. I nodded, looking down, frightened to meet his eye in case I saw something in them I didn’t like. Which was the real Nadeusz? This one now, or the one back at the hole? Though both versions were tough and violent, I knew which I preferred.

  Obediently, I went back to my pod and hauled my bulk back onto the bed. Nad reattached my bonds, securing me to the framework of the pod.

  “What happened?” Dawn whispered at me from her pod.

  I didn’t want to get her in trouble either. “Nothing,” I whispered back. “Just the baby isn’t moving as much as normal.”

  She gave me a half-smile of concern. We hadn’t asked to carry these Trad babies, but none of us wanted one of them to die inside us either. Okay, maybe some of the women did. When we’d first come off the ship, I’d witnessed one of the women plunge the handle of a spoon into her belly to try to kill the creature, but that wasn’t something I’d ever consider doing. Stabbing myself with a blunt object definitely wasn’t a good idea.

  Only a matter of minutes passed before Kaja bustled in with her trolley of equipment.

  “I hope you’re not wasting my time, young lady,” she snapped.

  “I’m... I’m not sure. I was worried, and I thought you’d be even more mad if I didn’t say anything and the baby died. What happened to Jennifer frightened me.”

  I noted Jennifer was no longer in her pod. I had no idea what had happened to the other woman, and what her fate would be now, but my heart broke for her. I hoped she was okay.

  Kaja’s expression softened. “Yes, well, we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?”

  The baby was fine, and she was about to find that out, but I didn’t want to ruin Nadeusz’s lie.

  Obediently, I lay back and lifted up my dress, allowing her to go through the process of scanning the baby.

  “It all looks fine,” she said eventually. “Baby’s heartbeat is normal.”

  “Maybe it was sleeping,” I suggested. “I just panicked.”

  “Hmm.” She pursed her lips at me, eyeing me suspiciously. “I guess we’d better keep you up here for the moment. You are close now. It should only be a matter of a day or so.”

  I pulled my dress back down. “Okay.”

  “Make sure you let me know if you feel like the baby’s gone quiet again.”

  I nodded and remained silent as she packed away the equipment and left.

  My stomach swirled with nerves. I was terrified of giving birth. But even though that should have been the main thing on my mind, my thoughts kept going back to what Nadeusz had done for me. Where had he been planning on taking me, before we’d been interrupted? It had felt like he was going to take me away from the facility, but how could he do that, and why?

  Everyone was looking at me, and I knew they wanted to ask me what had happened, but I didn’t want to answer any more questions. I was relieved to be back in the birthing ring and have the other women surrounding me, but right now I just needed to get some rest.

  Chapter Twelve

  Thankfully, that night passed free from bad dreams.

  In the early hours, another woman went into labor and was taken away. I assumed there was another Trad baby in the world this morning. I just hoped there wasn’t one less human woman.

  Diarus came around with the trays of food for breakfast. He lingered near my pod, and my gaze was drawn again to the scars crisscrossed over his muscular shoulders. The scars were lighter in shade than the rest of his blue skin, and raised and ridged. How badly had the Trads beaten him for him to have scarred like that? The Trads might have abducted and impregnated us women, but they hadn’t physically hurt us. Not yet, anyway, though I assumed the birthing process wouldn’t exactly be unpainful.

  “How are you?” he asked me, keeping his voice down so as not to be overheard.

  It was the only the second time he’d addressed me directly and initiated conversation, and hearing him surprised me.

  “Sorry?”

  “I heard what happened yesterday. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m okay,” I told him, keeping my voice down as well. “Thank you for asking.”

  His amber eyes met mine, and he gave a brief nod before handing me my tray. He put his head back down and carried on to Avery in the next pod over. I held the tray, watching him go.

  Someth
ing niggled at me. How had Diarus known what had happened? Was he talking about my reporting the baby not moving or perhaps that I’d ended up in the hole? But why did I feel like there had been more implied in his question? Had he seen something, and yet had kept his mouth shut? There was no reason for any of the Trads to have said anything to him—he was just a slave after all, and was no more important than I was.

  I forced myself to start on the food, though my attention was drawn to Diarus the entire time he was in the room, wishing I could ask him.

  From Nadeusz’s behavior yesterday, to Diarus’s today, I couldn’t help but feel like there was something else going on that I didn’t yet know about.

  As though it agreed with me, the Trad baby wriggled and shifted beneath my skin. Every day that went by, I convinced myself I couldn’t possibly get any bigger, and then I did, my skin stretching painfully thin.

  “I don’t think I’ve got long to go now,” Dawn whispered from the bed beside me. “I can feel that it’s moved lower.”

  I had that same feeling, that weightiness between my legs, as though my womb was threatening to drop out. I bit back my fear at the thought of the birth. It wasn’t as though we’d been given any preparation—no Lamaze classes here—and for once I was envious of Dawn and how she at least knew what to expect.

  “I don’t think I’ve got...” Avery started from the other side of my pod, and then she trailed off, frowning. “Can any of you hear that?”

  I sat up straighter, straining my ears for what she meant. At first, I didn’t hear anything, but then it came to me–a muffled roar, like a train approaching.

  “What is—” I started to say, but then the lights around us flickered.

  Worry spread through the birthing ring like a virus, the women all sitting up and looking to each other for answers we didn’t have. The roaring grew louder, and the lights wavered again.

  I frowned and placed my hands to the small table beside me. “The surface is vibrating.”

  Dawn widened her brown eyes at me in alarm. “What’s making it do that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  The lights flickered again, plunging us into complete darkness. A couple of the women screamed, then the lights came back on again.

  “Hey!” I yelled, for once wanting the Trads to come in. “Hey! What’s happening?”

  I didn’t think, considering the situation, that even they would be able to punish me for speaking out loud.

  Kaja came bustling into the room, shortly followed by Rhett and Zymunt. I bristled at the sight of Rhett, anger flaring inside me. He ignored me completely, as though the previous day had never happened.

  But I hadn’t forgotten his threat, or the strange events with Nadeusz after. Whatever was going on now, I would make sure I wasn’t left alone with Rhett at any point. He was dangerous.

  “Everyone calm down,” Kaja said, lifting her meaty hands in the air as though she were surrendering. “We’ve been hit by a dust storm—a pretty bad one, too. We’re safe in here, though. The building was built to withstand them. It might get a little bumpy for a while, so we just have to ride it out.”

  Frightened glances moved from one woman to the next.

  How bad were the dust storms here? I’d experienced them in Las Vegas, where the wind suddenly picked up and the power went out, and you knew you had to get inside, but I had no idea how things worked here. Would we lose power, too? I remembered the shimmering city I’d seen on the horizon. Would we be completely cut off during the storm? What would happen if there was an emergency? Did they have any backup here? I thought to all the high-tech equipment the matron relied on to monitor our pregnancies. Would any of that work if we lost power?

  I was used to being afraid most of the time, but now my fear stepped up a notch. The possibility of giving birth in the dark, with no equipment, to an alien child, was even more horrifying.

  “We’re tied up here,” one of the older women, Alison, called out. “What if this place collapses. We won’t be able to escape.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Kaja assured her. “Like I said, the facility was built to hold up against these kinds of storms.”

  Another woman yanked at her bonds. “Please, just release us in case something bad happens. We won’t go anywhere—we don’t have anywhere to go—but at least then we know we can run if a ceiling collapses or something.” Her expression was desperate, her skin pale.

  We’d all lived through the horror of the asteroid strikes the Trads had caused. We’d woken in the middle of the night to balls of fire plummeting from the sky, striking the buildings and turning them to rubble. We’d experienced the sheer terror of running for our lives while the world exploded, of hearing the screams of those trapped, and watching buildings collapse around us and being unable to do anything about it. I knew that was what we were all thinking of now—of being trapped in a similar situation while also being tied up and being unable to run. Going through that kind of trauma wasn’t something a person ever forgot about. Though my more recent experiences of waking up on a different planet, pregnant with an alien baby, and held against my will, had taken precedence in my mind as far as traumatic experiences went, I’d never forget the moment the first asteroid had struck. I’d been working, dealing out cards to those gamblers who would be playing the casinos until daybreak. At first, we hadn’t known what had happened—we’d just heard an almighty boom, followed by everything shaking. The chandeliers above our heads had tinkled, the cards slid from the table, the alarms on the slot machines that warned of tampering had all gone off. We’d all thought one thing—bomb! And, of course, our minds had jumped to terrorism. But then someone raced in, screaming about things falling from the sky, and our lives had never been the same again.

  I experienced a pang of longing for my friend, Camille. She’d risked her life to come and save me that day. I hoped she was safe and happy, whatever she was doing now.

  The lights flickered again, dragging me back to the present.

  “Kaja!” a male voice called from the corridor outside. “We need you.”

  “No, no, wait!” Alison cried. “Don’t leave us.”

  “You’ll all be fine,” Kaja said again, putting out her hand while already taking steps toward the exit. “You know I’d never risk letting anything happen to those precious babies.”

  I actually believed her on that part. She didn’t give a shit about us, but she did care about the Trad babies we were all carrying.

  “Just sit tight,” she told us, practically out of the door already. “This will all be over in a few hours.”

  The males Trads followed her out like obedient puppies, leaving us alone once more.

  Everything shook and rattled around us. The low roar continued. We huddled into the centers of our beds, unable to do anything about our situations. The lights flickered again and then went out fully. A couple of the women cried out, and we all sat there, waiting for them to come back on, but they didn’t. With no windows, we were in total darkness.

  “Everyone all right?” I called out, no longer caring that we weren’t supposed to talk. We couldn’t be expected to sit in silence in these conditions. I didn’t even care if I ended up back in the hole again, however much the idea terrified me.

  “I don’t like the dark,” someone whimpered.

  “Me neither,” came another voice.

  “Neither do I,” said someone else.

  “It’s just a lack of light,” I said, trying to reassure them, while fighting off my own demons. Images of things moving in the darkness, creeping and crawling, silent and deadly, filled my head. I tried not to think of what alien creatures might live inside these sand storms, taking advantage of the wreckage they brought. My imagination was my worst enemy at this point, and I knew the other women would be feeling the same way. The sound of people crying came from multiple points in the room.

  “Maybe we should sing a song,” I suggested. “Help to keep our minds off things.”

&nb
sp; Perhaps it was a stupid suggestion, but it was what people did when they were in a group and were trying to keep morale up, wasn’t it? One woman started to cry even harder, and someone else snorted in derision, but then a sweet voice came from beside me, and I realized Avery had started to sing. She had a lovely voice, and after a moment or two, someone else joined in, followed by another woman, until the singing filled the darkness and helped keep the ghosts at bay.

  I joined in, lifting my voice with the others. That song ended, and Avery moved swiftly onto the next. The way she sang made me think that it was something she’d done a lot of back home, and I thought she’d have been one of those people who’d been first up whenever there was the chance of karaoke.

  “Tara?”

  A voice, low and barely above a whisper, together with breath hot against my ear. I jumped, and clutched my hand to my mouth to hold back a scream.

  Around me, the thin, tremulous singing of the other women continued, masking the sound of the person beside me. I hated not being able to see a single thing, my eyes straining against the pitch-black. It felt like the darkness was pushing back on my eyeballs.

  The voice came again, right at my ear, and I jerked away.

  “Tara, it’s Nadeusz. Don’t scream. Don’t speak. I’m going to release you now. I’ll take your hand to guide you. You need to trust me.”

  What the fuck was going on?

  “Nadeusz?”

  I imagined the big Trad crouched right beside me, with his stern expression, pursed full lips, and eyes filled with flames. Somehow, the horns and tail had faded into the background for me. Though those characteristics were the thing I’d focused on when I’d first seen him, now I was picturing his face before anything else.

  “Shh,” he whispered. “I’m putting your sandals onto your feet.”

  Sure enough, I felt him slip them on.

  “Move quietly. I’m releasing you now.”

  The liquid metal that had been around my wrists for over a week now suddenly slithered away, and I was able to move my arms freely. My heart pounded, my mind spinning at this sudden turn of events. I didn’t know what was happening, but I had two choices—go with Nadeusz and take a risk, or stay here and await my fate. He’d helped me when Rhett had attacked me, and he’d attempted to take me somewhere then, but we’d been stopped, and he’d come up with some excuse. Was he using the darkness created by the storm to complete what he’d set out to do the first time?