Kitten

Red manicured fingernails dangled from a hand inside my food bowl. I flicked one cold nail. The hand didn’t move. It must belong to Karen, who had entertained in the poker room last weekend. The same Karen who’d once entertained the males in the beast compound. I’d seen her over there.

I glanced up at the tiny high window ten feet above me as if it offered me a memory of when I’d seen Karen at the compound. Rey and Jamie’s wedding night. “Ha!” I snapped my fingers. That was right. I remembered her from their wedding night. I hadn’t gone completely crazy yet.

Karen had called out Jamie about his mate. I should’ve killed her then for insulting his mate, but resolved to party on instead. Had I killed her, she wouldn’t have ended up inside Owner’s mansion after Jamie threw her out. She wouldn’t have ended up as my meal, and I wouldn’t have had to deal with the internal debate.

To eat or not to eat.

My stomach rumbled. I glanced back at the window. By my count, it was Friday. On Fridays, Willam Ghason, who made me call him Owner, shipped his wife off back to her parents in the community and opened his home to potential business partners. Some came with their wives, some came alone, all came for a poker game where they could sample Owner’s stock of captured women. The other females, tucked in soundproofed rooms ten feet under his mansion, were human. I was a beast bitch. It made me special. It made me the weekend flavor. Everyone wanted the beast bitch, though not for sex as they did with human captives. They wanted me to serve them on my knees. It was their way of saying fuck you to my Alpha.

I ate. They’d filed my sharp teeth, so it was exceptionally difficult ripping flesh with the blunt ones, but I managed only because I couldn’t take another beating. My body could take it, but my mind slowly slipped away each time I rebelled, each time I didn’t take from the hand that fed me. Not this hand. Owner’s hand.

I threw the bones back into the bowl. Footsteps sounded. Music to my ears. Maybe a rescue? One never knew. I scampered to the door and gripped the iron bars of my cage. Someone sniffed. These human women cried a lot, and I wondered if they’d dehydrate from the water spilling out of their eyes. “Shut it,” I barked.

They listened. Feared me. As they should.

Ah, I recognized his footsteps. I counted the steps from the very top to the bottom. One hundred and twenty-five. He entered our holding quarters and paused. My caged room occupied the east corner of the house. Where would he turn? Would he go right for the twin girls down the dark narrow hallway, or left for me? My palms sweated, my stomach uneasy after the meal. I chastised myself for fearing him and gritted my blunt teeth.

He stepped to the left. For me it was. I scurried back and into the middle of the room, dropped to my knees, spread them, and put my upturned palms on my thighs. I lowered my head and listened to the tech scan his retina. The dreaded cage lock clicked. I’d never thought I’d want to be caged like this, but now, when it offered me protection from the others who’d tried to come in uninvited, it was a good thing.

It didn’t offer me protection from Owner, my gatekeeper.

Polished black shoes appeared in my line of view. I knew better than to lift my head and greet him. I bent and kissed the tips of his shoes.

“What is your name?” he asked, his voice rough with need. Owner loved his weekends, especially Fridays. He didn’t visit during the week. Whatever food and water we got from Friday night through Sunday afternoon would be all we’d have for the week. I couldn’t be sure, but I believed during the week, his wife roamed upstairs, completely unaware of the females in her basement. Nobody dared scream to alert her. It was certain death. I wasn’t suicidal. I would survive him the same way I’d survived Alpha Nie’s prison when I was twelve. And I would escape the same way I’d escaped our home planet of Tineya. Alpha Beast would come for me. One day, he’d come for me. But not today.

Today, after greeting Owner, I intertwined my fingers behind my neck and squared my shoulders. “My name is Kitten, Owner.”

With his shoe, he kicked my knees wider apart while he wound the collar around my neck and snapped on my leash. “I see you’ve had dinner.”

“Yes, Owner.”

“Good kitty. A new client came in tonight. Wants to play a few hands of cards.”

“He will lose his money,” I said.

Owner smiled. “Yes, he will. You will serve him any way he wants to be served. He’s eager to meet a beast bitch.”

“Thank you, Owner.”

He gripped my jaw and yanked me up. I locked my eyes with his green ones, praying to Great Mother to give me the strength not to bite his face off. If my eyes paled right now, he’d cancel the party upstairs, and he and I would party down here. He’d tie me up and beat me until he tired. The weekend was long, and Owner kept in shape. He wouldn’t tire quickly enough, and I would go mad. I couldn’t slip. I couldn’t allow my temper to get the best of me.

His thumb swiped over my lips.

I followed up with my tongue.

“I love how eager you are. Every weekend, your eyes betray you. You think you don’t like what I’m giving you, but you love it. Shall I serve you the man upstairs this weekend? He’s big, would make a nice meal.”

“Yes.” Whoever waited for me upstairs could become my next meal.

He squeezed my throat. “Yes what?”

“Yes, Owner.”

“What’s your name?”

“Kitten.” I remembered my real name. Felicia of Wiedeg, the first battle-trained female on Earth. And I would get my revenge. “What’s his name?”

“John.”

“What shall I call him?”

“Whatever he wants to be called.”

“I can’t wait to meet him.”

“Let’s go.” Owner released my throat, spun around, and tugged my leash. I crawled behind him.

My cage clicked closed. Two cages next to mine were empty, but not the third or the fourth. As we passed the third cage, Sonia lifted her gaze from the floor. The seven months she’d spent down here reflected in her brown eyes. They showed a lack of willpower and hope, and matched the chain burns around her neck from when she’d tried to hang herself. Her lifeless eyes also went along with the multiple cuts on the insides of her wrists and thighs from the times she’d tried to bleed herself to death and failed. She kept calling herself a coward for failing. I told her she was brave for enduring and ordered her to shut the fuck up and think about her life outside, five years from now.

Five years from now, I would be mated. I didn’t know that for sure, but it was the second motivation I needed to get through the weekend.

The fourth cage held Alexandra, a kidnapped eighteen-year-old brunette with royal Spanish bloodlines. They would sell her to the highest bidder. Nobody had touched her since she’d been here, and I presumed she would fetch the highest price if she were sold as a virgin.

“Hey, asshole!” she said and rushed at the door. She gripped the bars, knuckles white. “Let me out of here.”

Owner ignored her. I winked. Soon.

We climbed the steps. My knees were scraped and bruised from the many months I’d been walking on all fours. They believed me an animal, a domestic cat without claws and with blunt teeth. Some days, I felt like one. Other days? Not so much. On those days, I feared myself, I feared I’d piss Owner off and he’d beat me to death, so I tried to behave.

I held my instinct to flee this place in check when we emerged into a foyer and his butler spared me a glance. Beside him was a door. A huge one from top to bottom, all decorated glass. The door was my favorite part of the forsaken house. The exit to the outside where a beast ship waited for me somewhere among the stars.

We passed the main living space and headed for the small, dark room. Male voices drifted from behind the closed doors. Owner stepped inside the room and closed the door behind us. The chatter died. I knelt with my bottom touching my heels, my right thigh touching Owner’s pants, and my gaze on the floor.

“There you are, Kitten,” Boris said. He was one of the two Men of Earth guys who’d declawed me, raped me, driven me here blindfolded, and sold me to Owner. “We’ve missed you.”

I winced at the sound of his voice but didn’t lift my head. These two had gotten quite a bit of money for stashing me here with Owner until my transport to Retreat, Texas. So now they had plenty to spend on poker games. They came nearly every weekend, and when either of them won, Owner would give them a cut of winnings from the poker game. Since my heat, the one that had reduced me to begging for Torrent but getting the Men of Earth, they hadn’t touched me in a sexual way. Perhaps the novelty of it had worn off.

There was another man in the room. He would be the one they ripped off tonight. Owner and the other two bet high and cheated in cards, then they’d split the profit. Only once had a stranger won, and he hadn’t collected his winnings. I knew that because Owner fed me the man the same weekend.

“What is this?” the new man asked.

“A gift for the winner. A rare jewel in my collection.”

Huh? Usually I served drinks and food during poker parties, which made the men who came here either nervous or excited. In any case, Owner wanted a distraction while they cheated. This was something else, though. It made me uneasy. I didn’t know what Owner had cooking upstairs.

Owner jerked my chain.

I looked up and squinted, adjusting my eyes to the lamp hanging low from the celling. It lit up the table. Boris was a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, small green eyes, and a small wiener. He wore a brown suit and smiled to show me his buck teeth. His buddy, Alex, wore a gray suit, no tie, and a pink shirt that contrasted with his tanned skin. He had long black hair he kept in a ponytail, and bushy eyebrows that nearly hid his brown eyes. He didn’t comment. A quiet, deadly human, whereas Boris was a loud, stupid human.

Tonight’s victim was a tall, broad-shouldered, dirty-blond man who wore a finely tailored suit and sported a watch from another era when human watchmakers cared enough to make such expensive things and decorate them with tiny golden crowns. With his back turned, I followed the watch on his hand as he grabbed his whiskey glass and sipped. He turned around and leaned on the bar, crossing one ankle over the other.

Our eyes met.

His were cold and gray.

Mine widened instantly. My heart thudded in my ears, and I emitted a soft whine as my mating instincts ignited. I bit my lip, trying to suppress my need to curl up at his feet.

Tonight’s victim was my mate. My human mate.