A lewd, disgusting display unique to her kind. One that had gone out of fashion long before she’d been claimed by a large harem.
Hadim preferred his females tame, their seasons short, litters vast, and their teeth filed down to harmlessly dull Anhur replicas. That he’d left their ears intact wasn’t a gesture of kindness, but one meant to highlight their station as slaves.
Her heat cycles were engineered to last three days, though she was really only receptive to male attention for the first two. After her heat had set in, her blood would surge with a potent cocktail of hormones unaffected by the suppressors. Driving her to seek out a dominant male, her mind cluttered with a dense fog unbreakable by anything but time—or a thick, spurting girth of an Anhur male.
Generations of selective breeding had exacerbated that natural trait in the Hathorians, making a new subspecies disinterested in mating with their own males. Unnatural though that might have been, it was no accident. Only the most pleasing females had been selected to pass on their genes, only those who’d been unable to resist their season. Those unable to fight their most basic instincts.
“Sit here, sweets,” the matron said, fingers dancing through a section of fine, black hair. “The master requested braids.”
Swallowing her vitriol, the girl remained still as her hair was fixed. And when the matron handed her the end of one woven rope, she pinched it in fingers that did not tremble. Even knowing just how Hadim liked to use her braids as leverage, her stoic demeanor was tainted by the hormones flooding her system.
Already, she could feel her attention drifting. Her mind tracing the shape of a tube of lipstick. Recalling the scent of Hadim’s sweat after he’d gone into rut to match her season. The heady scent of an aroused male pushing all else to the background. And so she’d remain until the worst of her cycle had passed.
A mindless slit, begging to be filled.
She’d heard the other girls talk of their time with Hadim and knew she didn’t have it as bad as some. That she wasn’t a favored Omega, her season enviably mild, and her time spent with Hadim reduced to little more than two long days of terse obligation.
The matron handed her a pot of scented oil without making eye contact. And with deft fingers, the girl swirled her first two digits through it, turning her back to discretely slip those fingers inside herself and replace the lubricant she wasn’t allowed to produce.
“All set?”
Exhaling a held breath, the girl adjusted her skirts and offered a tight nod. Wishing she could refuse what was coming next.
Chapter 2
Once more made to stand and wait, the girl fidgeted at the foot of the bed in Hadim’s expansive rooms. Her sensitive ears flicking forward and back, her tail tucked out of sight.
The breeding quarters. Separate from the space where he slept, yet close enough to save him the effort of traipsing all the way down to the Harem like a commoner, his females were entombed in a vault.
They went to him when they needed to be bred, waited to be serviced, then said thank you before they left. Eyes downcast.
Aching deep in her belly, driven by instinct, she’d come through the private entrance in the eastern corner, following the dimly lit path ascending from the Harem’s subterranean rooms. An Anhur tradition, keeping a jealously guarded resource in a vault. Making any who dared to covet such a treasure go through the dominant male himself—and to do that meant a fight to the death, for there was only one way into the Harem. One way out.
Hadim’s bedroom.
She’d only ever gone through that door once.
Skin aching with a mild fever, she grew damp but not wet. Needy yet repressed. And no matter the sickly scent of repetitive breeding that hung heavy in the air, the lips of her shorn pussy had become sticky with the rush of hormones pumping through her blood.
Heat.
The all-consuming urge to be mounted and stuffed full. To be knotted by an Anhur male, stretched and stimulated until the inflamed gland inside her was compressed. Until it was drained of every last drop of fluid—the swelling forced into submission by a thick knot—she couldn’t rest. Couldn’t sleep or eat or do much of anything that wouldn’t result in being mounted by her captor.
Her master.
The instinct was strong. Unavoidable.
Bred into her kind over a thousand generations to be more pleasing to an Anhur male. More receptive. To take more and take it deeper, she was genetically predisposed to be ready for him at the onset of every new cycle. Her scent modified to emit pheromones utterly irresistible to their masters.
He’d swell first, she knew. Triggered by her pheromones, his sack would fill with chemicals, pumping truly homicidal levels of testosterone through his blood. In an inexperienced male, that urge would drive him to take a female or die trying. Issuing challenge to any foolish enough to get in the way of his claiming a chance to breed—willing or not. Rejection was merely an obstacle meant to be overcome. Fighting to the death over breeding rights a common, honorable way to die.
But in an experienced male like Hadim?
There were no challengers to Hadim’s harem.
They were all dead.
His living male siblings were either subservient or uneasy allies, unwilling to challenge the named Heir to the Karahmet throne. Even Hadim’s sons were still on the tit, banished, or kept well under thumb.
Guts twisting, the girl fidgeted where she stood. Wishing she could bolt from these rooms and find a male—any male—to ease the ache pulsing inside her. Any but the one she’d been promised to since before her birth.
“It’s time to let the boys battle for a girl of their own,” came a female voice from the hall. “Give them something to distinguish themselves.”
The door swung open, revealing Hadim and his wife, both dressed in ceremonial, gold-plated armor. Their hair groomed and doused in scent-neutralizing oils common amongst the upper echelon of Anhur society. Acutely aware of the advantage they had over her, for to disguise their scent—and all that went with it—was to hold power over those who couldn’t.
Averting her eyes, the girl cringed back from the dominant pair, star-struck by the imposing figure of the statuesque Anhur female Hadim had taken as honored wife.
Samina.
A celebrated warrior, mother of royal bloodlines, and a trusted adviser to the king—she was everything the smaller female wasn’t. Everything she’d never dared to hope she could one day be.
An Anhur queen.
“Don’t ignore me, Hadim,” Samina drawled, slipping out of her over-cloak, tossing thick, sandy hair over her shoulder.
With a snort, Hadim pulled at the laces on his throat piece, discarding it in a careless heap. At ease in his private quarters despite the scantily clad female waiting patiently to be acknowledged.
To be bred.
Stripping off his bracers, Hadim took his time in responding. Head tipped in her direction, just for a moment. And then he scowled at his wife. “Our sons don’t need their mother to coddle them soft, Samina. Do you intend to put their cocks in for them too?” He laughed. “If the brats think they’re old enough to start collecting a few bitches, they can damn well fight for it. Like I did. Like their grand-sire before me.”
Samina shucked her heavy breastplate, cracking her neck with a deep sigh. Beneath the protective layer, the swell of a heavily pregnant female. “I’m not coddling them. They’re plenty old enough, my love, and you know it. Besides, if you give them only one between all six, we shall see which has the most promise.” She offered a smile, lips teasing and playful where they crinkled at the edges. “You need to name an heir,” she said, easing into a plush chair, hands draped over her swollen abdomen. “It’s long overdue. Since we lost Sinadim—”