Page 9 of Hooded

In this case, I needed to show my little female what she was dealing with. Escape was one of my specialties in the dome, and the captain of the gladiator training hated me for it.

I sit on the floor, knees up and arms resting on them. I wonder if Maxym got out of the dome alive, beat the Bogarok, and freed Tatatunga. I shouldn’t care. I never cared. All I wanted was to forget.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

I could do with a bath. My feathers are stuck together with Bogarok goo, and the stench fills my senses when I’d rather be scenting her.

My fierce little female who was not only prepared to shoot off a limb, but she even used her ship as a way of putting me off my game.

She bested me.

I riled her, and she responded with the most beautiful anger. A balm to my soul. I want to push her again, see the look on her face, the twist of her pretty mouth, the darkening of her blue eyes. I want to see the streak of her long hair as she attacks me.

Vrex! My pants are impossibly tight around my cocks. I use one hand to shift their position, wincing at the state of the things. I’m not sure if this is normal for a male either.

Unlike the others, I’ve never mated. Not before the dome and not while I was there. It is a mystery to me. Which means I am unsure if having painful cocks is normal around females.

I was usually too busy hacking things to death to even notice them. Certainly the other human females I have met, the mates of my fellow gladiators, whilst soft and fragrant, didn’t cause my cocks pain.

Admittedly, had they done so, I know they would have been removed from my body. When a Gryn takes a female, she belongs to him and him alone.

No other males should get close.

I growl out into the cell. The noise reverberates back to me, rich and full. It is a good growl. It is one which would keep all males away from my female.

My little pulsar toting female. I lean my head back against the cell wall, tuning in to the electrical hum of her ship, of this particular place, listening to the threads which spin out, uncurling and detangling until I can grasp at them all.

I remember everything because I was altered permanently by the creatures who took me. Abilities which make me different, wrong somehow. Ones I cannot reveal. Ones which got me sent to the dome, permanently and without reprieve.

This cell cannot hold me either. Once I’ve tuned into it, all the security measures melt away. It’s so easy when my head isn’t filled with the violence and my body is calm.

“I’ve brought you some food.” Her voice is metallic on the comm as a tray is shoved through the feeding slot.

She hasn’t activated the two-way viewing port.

I look at the platter for a beat, then close my eyes, leaning my head back against the wall.

She hasn’t left. She can see me and she is watching. I feel her eyes on me.

So, I don’t move. And there is silence.

“If you want something else, I can get it for you,” she says after the long pause.

I open my eyes.

“Anything you want.”

I want to shake my head. Whoever this female is, she is possibly the worst bounty hunter ever. You can’t show force then offer kindness.

All it will do is allow a creature like me to take advantage.

“I’m Fern,” she says. “My name, I mean, is Fern. I’m a human.”

So much strength and so much weakness.

“Klynn,” I hear myself grunt, my voice working without my express permission, giving away something personal.

“Klynn?”

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