Page 4 of Beast Unburdened

And none of this was out of character either, I’d carefully cultivated this rebellious streak where I appeared too stupid to follow simple commands like kneel. In my cell, I acted territorial and aggressive without fail. They wouldn’t suspect a thing.

As the pain from the collar surged through my nerves, burning me from the inside out I found solace in holding the female’s gaze. I felt sorry for her. Sorry she had to witness my brutality, it wouldn’t help us build trust. Sorry she had suffered so much pain already and sorry she’d been ripped from her home with no way to return.

Five minutes I endured, aware that any less and they’d suspect I wasn’t really out. They were agonizing, slow minutes but I counted them down diligently. Then I let my eyes roll back, my muscles go slack so I thudded to the cell’s unforgiving floor. As the pain collar switched off I kept my eyes closed. And though it was hard, I stayed slack on the floor even as the bars to my cell lowered and they sent the female inside. Escape now was foolhardy, even if I could endure the collar’s pain, it did render me defenseless. I couldn’t escape with it on.

Then it was time to wait, for the female to calm and the Krektar to leave.

*

Abigail

They’d left me in the Beast’s cell just like that. No orders, no warnings. Clearly, they figured that the Beast would take care of the rest of their evil plan without further prompting. Not for a while yet though, as he was passed out on the floor. At least they’d dragged Farn’s body out of the cellblock.

For long moments I contemplated the scalpel in my pocket, courtesy of the slave doctor. Was it smart to try and kill the Beast now? When he was out? Would that actually save me from the horrible fate of rape and forced pregnancy? Could I even do something so horrible? Even to a creature straight out of a nightmare who’d killed without remorse right in front of me?

“Get a grip, Abigail!” I ordered myself in a soft whisper and I palmed the blade, getting up to kneel on the dirty floor next to his huge head. How did I even kill a creature like this? Every single part of him looked deadly. In the extremely meager light at the front of the cell, I could see how every defined ridge and valley of muscle cast shadows on his barely clad body.

His chest was heavy with thick pectorals, his abs were well defined and his arms roped and corded with muscle that even the thick, armor-like scales couldn’t hide. Gold bars glinted from his nipples which at least indicated his species bore live young, not laid eggs like many lizards on Earth. The groin area was thankfully covered by a scrap of cloth, a loincloth, no way to see how sexually compatible we were.

Then my eyes flicked to the ears hanging slackly down in his repose from just below the truly impressive horns. They were as long as my hand palm and while they were covered with scales, these were so tiny as to make it look more like gently pebbled skin. Even in the dim light, I could tell that the base color on the outside was a dark green with an intricate lattice of emerald lines crossing it, while the inside of the ears was the palest of green. They actually looked soft enough that I was tempted to touch.

I was wrong, there was a single place on his body that didn’t look deadly, his ears. They were heartrendingly pretty and endearing on a male his size. They made me remember the look in his eyes just before he killed Farn and the way he’d maintained eye contact all through the painful punishment of the collar.

Hadn’t I thought he’d looked calculated and intelligent? I felt like he’d made some kind of pro and con list in his head before he’d decided on killing Farn. It hadn’t been a beastly spur-of-the-moment thing, there was more in that huge head going on than just instinct. Though all the Krektar’s crude joking about my encounter with him on the way to his cell had certainly made me expect a dumb killer.

Sentient then, I decided, so I found myself sinking to my heels, losing my ready tension as I lowered my knife-wielding hand to my side. So far I’d carefully kept it angled away from the light so I hopefully hadn’t given it away to any guard who might be watching. I couldn’t kill a sentient being like this. Maybe in a fight, maybe if he was trying to hurt me; but not while he was passed out on the ground.

That was probably incredibly stupid. I had no chance fighting off this beast when he decided to come at me. But once the choice was made my brain brought up the look in his eyes as he’d convulsed in pain. Hadn’t that been compassion? Why would he look at me like that when he was the one in pain? Surely I’d interpreted that wrong.

His breathing was still deep and slow, he hadn’t moved a single muscle since he’d toppled to the metal floor like a falling tree. This was probably the only chance I’d ever have so against all wisdom I reached out a single finger and gently stroked it down the side of one ear. My breath whispered out of me on a sigh, wow that was even softer than it looked, how incongruous.

Then his eyes flicked open and unerringly landed right on my face.

I gasped, only just stifling a scream as it rose up in my throat. My entire body did the damned freeze thing again instead of choosing to flee or fight. It was like I was trapped in the deep emerald glow of that gaze.

A huffing sound came out of those huge, gold ringed nostrils and I struggled to interpret it. Was that a laugh? He still hadn’t moved otherwise, he was just looking at me. The suspense was killing me, I was struggling so hard to get my body to move, to back away. My thigh muscles were quivering from the strain.

“You may touch, tiny-female-of-the-big-hair,” he rumbled at me then, the corners of his mouth pulling up to reveal sharp fangs; though the expression clearly showed mirth.

All the conflicting emotions, all the horror and pain of the past hour seemed to bubble up inside of me then. Everything seemed to misfire all at once in my brain. A laugh came out, crackling from my throat until bursting forth far too loudly in the deadly silence of the cellblock.

Tiny female? I had never ever in all my life been called tiny. Of amazonian proportions at six feet, even I was taller than many a man I met and I’d given up on giving a crap about it years ago and happily wore my high heels and stilettos. Of course, compared to an eight-foot giant I would be tiny.

The hair though, yeah, I’d gotten that comment all my life. I was a virtual melting pot of various ethnicities. My mother had been Nigerian, my father half Italian and half Vietnamese. Yeah, I had enough mixed genes to not match with anything very much. Except for the hair, which was as frizzy as it can get, definitely inherited that from my mother’s Nigerian side.

Right now it almost passed for an Afro because the normal hair products I applied had long since stopped working and my favorite hairband had broken the morning of my last day on earth. Hence why I had two thick rubber bands making a valiant attempt to restrain the whole mess.

All the time while I laughed hysterically the Beast lay prone on his back on the floor, just watching me with what could only be described as a soft look in his luminous green eyes. When I quieted down he inquired softly, “Feel better?”

It sent me into another peel of giggles for some unfathomable reason. I was reacting like a complete lunatic. Until I suddenly felt something caress my bare ankle, then my laugh turned into a shriek. I looked down to find the tip of the Beast’s tail had curled itself around my leg.

Scrambling backward across the dirty floor I stared at the thing with shock even as I watched the Beast rise to a sitting position, his tail sweeping back, letting me go without a fight. The tip was bare of spikes for about a good foot and I watched as it lazily curled through the air, coiling, and uncoiling, clearly very agile.

There were growling sounds in the air; they came from some of the other cells though because the Beast was quiet as he watched me. When I made eye contact he nodded his huge head, horns tipping my way. “Easy female, I will not harm you,” he murmured in a soothing voice.

I had a hard time believing that but he didn’t move any more, simply remained seated with his back against the bars. His huge legs tucked close and his hands raised in a universal sign of surrender. I felt like my entire reality was turning upside down for like, at least the third time since I woke up. Was this guy not going to hurt me at all? Were the Krektar wrong about him?

When we’d sat like that for some time, without either of us moving the Beast finally spoke again in a very low and rumbling voice. “I’m going to move towards the shadows, if I sit out in the light too long the Krektar will get suspicious.”