“…What do you want to tell me, Wexxon?” Rachel seemed nervous as she drew her hand back toward her side of the bed.
And I smiled even wider, wanting to comfort her, my palm shifting down to her stomach. “I want to have your heart, Rachel. The same way I have your body. The same way you have our child.”
“…Have my heart?”
“I want you to glow the same way you do when you’re reading your books in the library,” I continued. “I want you to look at me the same way you look at Palqeet when she proves to be a good friend.”
“Wexxon…” Rachel paused for a moment as she stared over at me. “I don’t…I don’t know if I can.”
“You don’t know if you can give me your heart?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to…” Rachel started, her eyes welling up with tears as she spoke. “Wexxon, I want to give you every last part of me. But I…I can’t tell if any of it’s real.”
“What do you mean, my little warrior?”
“Is any of it real, Wexxon?” Rachel waved a hand between us. “Think about it. You were taken with me. And then, there’s all this stuff about a connection. The more I think about it, the more it just seems like basic Xelxar biology. I think our bodies just want us to be mates. I think there’s something in the air here that turns women like me into baby factories—”
Rachel took a shuddering breath before she went on. “This wasn’t going to be my life back on Earth, Wexxon. I was going to work until I was at the top of my field, and then, maybe, just maybe, I was going to settle down when I was older. But now? God, all I want to do is be your wife. All I want to do is have as many children as you want from me. All I want to do is make you happy.”
“You act as if it’s some kind of curse to want a family and a home.”
“I don’t know if you would’ve even liked me when I was on Earth,” Rachel continued, a small sniffle escaping her frame. “I wasn’t…I’m not a little warrior, Wexxon. I’m just a girl who walked into the wrong fucking room.”
“And now, you are here,” I said, resting my hands at her waist. “And now, you are mine. Or do you not believe in the concept of fate?”
“I don’t know.” Rachel faintly raised her shoulders.
“…Do you truly believe you won’t ever be able to give me your heart?”
“I don’t know the answer to that one, either,” she admitted as she shook her head. “I don’t know anything anymore, Wexxon.”
“Rachel—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rachel said while moving away from me on the bedsheets. “You can go now, Wexxon.”
“My little warrior, don’t push me away—”
“Please. Go.” Rachel sniffled again as she turned away from me, her chest heaving with a fresh sob. “Please, Wexxon. Just…leave me alone for a little while.”
“As you wish, my little warrior,” I murmured before I shifted away from the mattress.
And then I silently walked out the door, my heart aching behind my chest with every step.
Chapter Twelve
Rachel
So many different parts of me were aching for relief.
The incision at my throat begged for relief from the pain, its sting keeping me up all through the night. Everything between my thighs was begging for relief, too, visions of Wexxon roughly taking me popping into my head every other second. And then, there was my heart, it too pleading for relief, pleading for something that I wasn’t sure how to give it.
Because I wasn’t sure what relief meant for my heart. I didn’t know if it meant that my heart was yearning to go back home, or if it was yearning to seek out Wexxon in the night and tell him that I was ready for him to own as much of me as he wanted.
Maybe I wouldn’t know the right answer until I made the right move.
I tossed and turned in the bedsheets, my mind racing a million miles a minute as I thought about how I could’ve possibly escaped, how I could’ve found a way back to Earth. My time spent away from Wexxon was helping in that regard, my minimal understanding of the Xelxar language leading me to realize that there’d been a small section in the library filled with videos and audiotapes, the kind that were meant to teach children the basics of their world.
And that was how I learned that there was a black hole so close to Xelxar that it could’ve easily been reached with a spaceship. Once I’d learned about the black hole, I wondered if that was what’d taken Wexxon’s parents away from him, if they’d somehow accidentally made their way much too close to its rim, the meteors their final, fatal warning of their closeness.
And as I listened to more of the audiotapes, my brain running through so many possible scenarios, I wondered if the black hole was somehow what’d taken me to Xelxar in the first place. If there was a connection between its proximity and me waking up in the purple sea.
If I was able to get close enough to it, would it take me back to Earth?
Or would I die, just like Wexxon’s parents, perishing among the stars?
But it wouldn’t just be me that lost their life.
My hands moved down to my abdomen as I thought about the life growing inside me.
Could I really risk my child? Could I really leave my child?
I wanted to weep at the thought, knowing all too well what it felt like to be orphaned. And I had an awful feeling that if I tried to escape to the stars, Wexxon would be close behind me, both of us potentially burning up into nothing but stardust once we reached the black hole.
Maybe I was just trapped. Maybe I was going to be on Xelxar forever.
I tried to sit with the idea, letting it sink down into my bones, letting the potential reality wash right over my frame. And as I turned over on my side, my attention now on the furthest wall in the bedroom, I wondered if it was time for me to just accept my fate as a pseudo-princess stuck inside a castle she never wanted, the wife to a warrior who’d never given her any other choice but to marry him and carry his seed.
Just then, I heard the bedroom door cracking open, heavy footsteps soon making their way across the floor. And while a part of me hated how excited I was about the prospect of Wexxon slipping into bed beside me, his hands easily parting my thighs, another part of me welcomed the potential attention of his mouth and his cock. It’d be a fantastic distraction from my depressing thoughts, letting my husband, letting the man who’d forced me into marriage, fuck me into some state of whimpering oblivion.
But as I waited for Wexxon to reach our bed, as I waited for his weight to steadily rest against my chest as he pressed soft kisses against my mouth, something inside me suddenly set on fire.
Wrong.
There was something wrong.
I quickly sat up in bed, my eyes darting back and forth as they searched around the room. My heart raced inside my chest with the memory of Furlata, a would-be assassin in the night coming to kill me for taking what she believed she was owed.
And then, I felt it. A hand wrapping around my mouth, preventing me from making a sound. Another hand wrapping around my waist as it pulled me away from the bed, my feet kicking against the air. A second later and I felt something thin being shoved into my arm, too, reminiscent of a harsh needle, its contents spilling into my veins.