Chapter Fifteen:

---

Dommik sat in the bridge, alone, his eyes and half his systems monitored the channels and spaceways around his ship. Each day that went by, heading deeper into alien territory, each hour they moved closer to Xan’Mara and to the solar system that heralded the Trentian homeworld, Xanteaus Trent.

They hadn’t run into any scout ships yet, but that didn't mean anything. He sensed in his mechanical gut that the aliens knew he had crossed their borders. They may not be as technologically advanced as the Earthians but they had their ways...unexplainable ways.

The Space Lords and Knights that protected the Trentian species had abilities that couldn’t be explained scientifically. The thousands of autopsies the Earthians ran on the dead aliens, showed nothing of their powers. No tech in their bodies.

It was either that or they had a better way of hiding it than his creators.

Peace treaties my ass.

He wasn’t afraid of the aliens, he was created for the purpose of hunting them down and killing them. That programming could never be changed. And it was always the bottom line deep inside, ready and waiting for the day when he needed to revert back to his basic self. Until then, he was a monster hunter for the EPED.

He was also soon to be a father.

Dommik scraped his hand down his face. Kat had no idea he released his nanocells, preprogrammed to impregnate her, deep within her womb. Cyborgs couldn’t have children but here he was, breaking the cybernetic law and jeopardizing his brethren's hard-won peace.

There was only one way to truly claim a mate in the eyes of a Trentian and that was a child. If she was forced to encounter any of them while in their territory, they’d not only smell him all over her skin–which should be enough to satisfy them–but also be able to sense the baby growing within her.

My baby. He slammed his fist into the console, crushing a series of buttons. It sparked and crackled, lighting up the area around it in a glow. Dommik placed his hand on top of the flare and let himself burn as the room faded back into darkness. He watched as the outline of his hand brightened into an orange halo and the smell of burnt flesh filled the room.

He wasn’t infallible and he would be the first one to say he wasn’t experienced at wooing a girl. This one he desperately wanted and that desperation marred his common sense.

Dommik clicked on the security feed and found Kat’s heat signature in her quarters, barricading herself within the only place she thought was her own, holing up away from him.

It had been days since he handed her the half-eaten plant, days since her eyes widened in shock and the weed hit the floor. He thought facing her fear would help her recover from her trauma but now he understood something else…

You can’t heal a human with the switch of a button.

Human’s didn’t have internal technology to cure them. They didn’t have a switch to turn themselves off.

He tried to comprehend what it was like to be fully human, to not have the security of metal and steel lining his organs, to not have another program to update his systems. He tried to imagine what it was like to be vulnerable, unable to improve one’s existence, unable to regulate one’s hormones. To fall victim to your body’s chemistry.

Dommik couldn’t imagine it. Even compared to other Cyborgs, he was less human, less humane and he had to fake it. Sometimes he was even successful.

All he could imagine was her.

Her pixie features and flushed body. Her moans as he sunk deep inside of her, mewing like a kitten or the curls that wanted to spring out of his grip and resume their freedom. Her nipples bouncing with each of his thrusts as he forced her tight pussy to take him, all of him. Over and over until her eyes hooded with exhaustion.

He saw her struggling, trapped within his web of ropes, with drips of arousal gliding down her inner thighs, bound, waiting, and needy, begging him for everything.

Dommik let his animal instincts take over his head, succumbing to the fantasies he so desperately wanted to make real. His unburned hand wrapped around the steel length of his cock while his other fried. His cum shot out onto the floor into a white puddle of unused seed.

Seed that should be in her.

“Fuck!” Dommik lifted his hand from the circuitry and watched his skin heal. He listened as the ventilation cleared the smell of his wound from the bridge.

He yanked out a tool kit from his back port and got to work fixing the machine, wishing he knew what to do about his fairy.

***

A chime on her door woke her up.

“Go away,” Kat yelled out, curling up tight into a fetal position, succumbing to the nausea that was trying to drown her. She smacked her lips and swallowed the sour taste of her breath.

The door whipped open. She balled up further under her thin blanket.

“Please go away,” she mumbled this time.

Her only covering tore off her as familiar hands, four of them, lifted her off the bed and into a cradle of arms. She knew Dommik had four arms but the initial shock of feeling all of them at once made her shriek.

“You can’t stay in here all day, every day. Face the fucking light, Kat.” Dommik set her on her bare feet.

She slapped at his chest. “What light!? What light? The only light on this ship is in the one place I don’t want to go! Unless you mean the alcove but that’s off limits to me,” she yelled again. “I hate you.”

Dommik hauled her like a petulant child to the lavatory. She dragged her feet. If you want obnoxious, I’ll give you obnoxious!

But her nausea swallowed her up causing her struggles to falter as she dry heaved. She felt the tug of her hair, held away from her face, and his arms rubbing her back as she coughed and gagged. When her fit eased and nothing but spittle was left on her bottom lip, Dommik walked her to the shower. Kat hunkered onto the metal floor away from the spray of water as it warmed up.

He stripped and got into the stall with her. “I hate you,” she said again.

“I know.” He sat down with her, naked. “I wish I could say I was sorry but I’m not. Talk to me.”

The water sprayed off him and landed on her, drenching her nightshirt. “How could you even have that horrible thing on your ship? Why make me hold it?”

“Because It’s harmless. The parasite was eradicated years ago, it can’t hurt you, it can do nothing to you unless you let it.” One of his hands brushed up against her lips, wiping her clean. Kat jerked forward and bit his finger. “Did that make you feel better?” He didn’t move his hand.

She let him go. “I wish it did.”

“Would keeping the plant a secret from you have made you happier?”

Kat held back her tears. “No.”

“Do you wish you had stayed in Ghost, far away from me, away from the secrets we shared?” Dommik’s voice grew harder with each question.

“No.”

“Do you regret opening up to me?”

Tears formed on her eyelids. “I don’t know.” She bent her knees up to her chest and watched as he grabbed something from outside the stall. He handed her a disk of medication.

“What’s this?”

“Something that will relieve your nausea and help with your cramps. Synthesized Ano Algae from Elyria. Take two a day. You’re suffering from a vitamin d deficiency as well, common for first-time space travelers. It will help.”

“Thank you,” she whispered and took it from him, gripping it close.

“Do you want to know a secret?”

Kat rubbed her eyes and was about to say ‘no’ again but stopped her robotic response. “Yes,” she whispered into the water.

“You’re an angel.” Warm, wet hands cupped her cheeks as he forced her to look at him. “An angel. You have to move on. You have a–”

Incoming sirens blared.

Dommik looked up and away from her, his sentence unfinished at the tip of his tongue. One of the Bin’s walked into the lavatory as he stood up, tense and straight. Kat felt cold under the hot water.

“What’s wrong? What’s happening?” His muscles bulged and his jaw broke off his face before reattaching. “Dommik?”

The siren rang once again. “It’s a hail. We have company.” He turned toward her, long hair against his white skin appearing like trails of oil on water. “Go to your room and get dressed.”

Kat climbed up to her knees. “What were you going to say before?”

His eyes flew over her body, prickled and glistening. Her body priming itself for his dominion. He could have taken her from behind, forced her to call him master, and she would have let him.

The moment passed.

“Stay quiet. They can’t take you away from me.”