Wyck had been raised with this motto hammered into his brain—the errocks are one large family. His father had died in the crash. The remaining errocks raised him, with Crux taking the role of his father.
As one of the errock family, Wyck had even gone against the captain’s authority before. Only a few weeks ago, Crux had poisoned Vrateus, intending to get rid of the captain. Wyck helped Crux and the others to bring the crew under their control. Had Vrateus and his woman not wrested back the power, things would’ve been very different right now. Nadia would’ve ended up in the errocks’ possession. In which case, she might be dead already.
He’d heard errocks fucked in savage ways. Ever since Wyck grew big enough for his cocks to get hard, Crux showed him plenty of videos depicting sexual acts. Crux accompanied them with even more graphic comments, describing the gruesome details no video had.
“If you’re that scared about upsetting your precious captain, there’re many ways we could cover it up,” Nocc kept talking while hugging Wyck’s shoulders like a brother. “We can let the kreers eat her after you and I are finished with her—”
“Hey! How about me?” Gler had obviously been eavesdropping. “If you’re sharing the female, I want some of her pussies too!”
“Human females only have one pussy, I’ve heard,” Trox chimed in, shifting closer.
“Just one? What a waste of a warm body,” Nocc spit through his teeth with disgust. “Anyway, we’re a family, Wyck, remember? Whatever one of us has belongs to everyone.”
“I don’t have her.” Unease crept up his back at the thought of any of his family coming near Nadia again.
“But you can get her. Let’s do it tonight. We’ll come in with you when you bring her dinner.”
“She’s in the glass room.”
“What?” Nocc winced.
The mention of the glass room made Wyck cringe inside, too. The way the clear walls exposed the open space beyond made his head spin. Terror had filled him at a mere glance at that crazy room.
The sensation was typical for errocks. However, the glass room didn’t seem to bother any of the other species on the Anomaly.
“Why did you take her there?” Nocc snarled, huffing a breath through his nostrils.
Wyck decided not to reply to that one. Telling Nocc that he’d obeyed the captain’s orders would bring nothing but more scoffing and mocking.
“You can get her out, though.” Nocc’s voice filled with new hope and promise. “Tell her she needs to go to the mess hall for dinner, then bring her over to my room. I give you my word, she’ll be yours after I’m done with her. I’ll also let you watch what I’ll do to her.” He smirked, glancing over his shoulder at Trox and Gler. “It’s about time, the boy got a real-life lesson on how to fuck.”
Gler didn’t seem amused. “To make the lesson worthwhile,” he growled. “I’d have to go before the boy.
“Not a chance!” Trox shoved him aside. “I’ll never go after Gler again. Remember what you passed on to me the last time? A piece of dead meat, unusable in any way.”
Wyck had heard about “the last time” before. Before Svetlana’s ship, the last time a spaceship with live females crashed here was over two decades prior.
He was too young to remember that night, but he’d heard plenty from the others. The errocks bragged often about the “great time” they’d had, though most of them admitted they’d been too drunk to remember much. Their accounts often contradicted themselves, leading Wyck to believe that a lot of what they said must be made up.
True or not, the idea of Nadia turning into a piece of “dead meat” sickened him. He hadn’t asked to be tasked with the job of looking after her. In fact, he’d tried to decline “the honor.” Now, that she was his responsibility, however, he refused to put her in harm’s way.
“She is taking the place of Vrateus’s woman in the mess hall.” He shrugged Nocc’s arm off his shoulder. “We’ll all get to see her naked, more than once.”
“That’s not what I’m asking you to do, boy.” Nocc stepped in closer. “Are you going against your family?”
Lesh released a warning hiss, and Wyck tightened the grip on his chain.
“That’s not it, Nocc.” He tried to recall some of the words Vrateus had used to convince them all before. “It’s a chance to use the female in any way you like, but only in your imagination. As long as it’s in your head only, she’ll last longer.”
“Are you protecting her?” Nocc scoffed, the expression of utter disgust distorting his face. “If so, your father must be rolling in his grave, laughing his head off, boy! Females are disposable. The Great Scodr changed his women more often than he did his clothes. He liked his females fresh every night. If they pleased him, he’d set them free on the next planet we’d come upon. Those who crossed him in any way were sent the fuck out the airlock.”
Gler roared with laughter. “The human with her one fucking vagina would’ve been tossed out into the space, for sure! The good old Scodr wouldn’t have put up with that.”
Nocc and Trox guffawed at that, too.
Wyck didn’t always find their jokes funny, and this one fell especially flat.
“Well, there you go.” He shoved past them, tugging Lesh along. “Father wouldn’t have approved of her, anyway. No need to bother.”
“Hey!” Nocc yelled as Wyck exited the spaceship. “We’ll make do with her. We don’t have the fine choice of females that Scodr had—”
“Exactly,” he snapped. Usually, he felt pride when hearing about his father, the Great Scodr, who once had a fleet of fine ships and led an army of free men, submissive to no law but his own. Now, irritation grew in his chest. “We can’t be like my father. We only have one female. If I let you have her, we’d have none at all.”
He didn’t pause to listen to their objections, heading down the corridor and away from the humans’ ship.
Vrateus was striding his way.
“How is she?” the captain asked quickly, passing him by.
“Good.”
Vrateus nodded, disappearing into the opening of the humans’ spaceship.
Wyck pressed his hand to the pocket with Nadia’s knife. He was not surrendering the weapon. He sensed he needed it more than Vrateus did.
WYCK
He took Lesh with him to the mess hall. The mahdi needed some food, too, and with the female in his care, Wyck now had twice the responsibilities.
Once there, Wyck quickly grabbed a few of the hard, round disks Svetlana called cookies, and stuffed them in his vest pockets, promptly leaving the room right after. There was always someone mingling in the mess hall, and he had no desire to answer any question about the new female or to ward off any more mocking comments.
Out in the corridor, he fed three of the cookies to Lesh, and popped one in his mouth. The sweetness of the pollen sugar covered his tongue with every bite, reminding him of Nadia once again.
The wound in his side ached, bringing to mind the image of her fighting him in the corridor. He remembered her fear-filled eyes. The horror and desperation in them reminded him of the look Lesh had when he’d found him. The mahdi would’ve died had Wyck left him behind nine years ago.