Page 2 of Bred By Fafnir

It’s naïve, wishful thinking.

That’s why everyone wants a human breeder.

We’re always compatible.

It takes a long time for me to move, to place one foot in front of the other on the dirt floor of my bedroom before I press my thumb to the biometric lock on the side of the package. It opens with a soft click, a sterile wrapped injection gun and a neatly folded white dress sitting inside the box. Two items, they seem so innocent, so normal, but they aren’t. They represent everything. The hell of this past year, a lifetime of not having much and watching Mom and Dad stress about everything. It’s a future for my family, one where they don’t have to ration food and can afford an actual floor in our home. One wherethey won’t forgive me for this. One where they’ll see it as another loss, another betrayal. It’s a future I won’t be a part of, but one I’ll risk everything for.

Agency housing is nice enough, I think. As long as this paring goes well, I’ll be moved up in the roster for the next one and the one after that. A career breeder isn’t exactly the life I saw for myself, but there are worse things than traveling the universe, living on other hopefully more comfortable planets.

It’s just a year.

One year before my match can send me back. If I don’t get pregnant, I can always come home. Sure, there will be shouting and silence, probably resentful glares, but I’ll be home.

My family gets paid either way.

But if Idoget pregnant, and there’s zero reason why I wouldn’t… I’ll never step foot on Terra2 again. My eyes dart to the door of my bedroom, keeping my breath trapped in my lungs as I wait for the sounds of home. Mom shuffling around, my sisters fighting, and Dad pestering mom, smacking her ass before being shooed away. Happy sounds.

Wedon’t have those anymore.

Buttheycould.

If they didn’t have to worry about money, maybe there would be more room for the happy sounds, even if they didn’t include me. Sure, we could meet on the space station from time to time, but my shuttle trips are funded by the agency, like all potential breeders; otherwise, the cost is… sickening.

According to intergalactic law, once a human is infected by alternative species’ DNA, we cannot set foot back on Terra2, so as to not risk damaging human genetics. One pregnancy and my family will have enough credits to set them up for life. Maybe two or four more alienbabies, and my family and I will never have to worry again. I can leave the agency and go…. Wherever I want. Do whatever I want.

All I have to do is break their hearts and mine, wear a pretty, long white dress with see through sleeves and a modest v neckline, take a shot, and get fucked by an alien.

“Seems simple enough,” I mutter out loud.

It's not so much a strategic choice to all but storm from my bedroom, holo message still on display hanging loosely from my hand. Nor is it well thought through when I loom behind Mom like a ghost in the small kitchen, willing the tears budding in my eyes to stay in place.

It's not probably the best way to make the woman you love more than anything resent you, to not give her a chance to turn around before you blurt out that you’ve been accepted to the Solar Breeding Agency and have less than ten hours before you have to board a shuttle and say goodbye forever. None of it is tactically wise, but I don’t have it in me to do it another way. It's too late now, regardless. The information hanging between us.

Mom doesn’t move, her tanned, worn hands frozen in the soapy sink, a dish in one and a cleansing bar in the other. I blink my eyes rapidly, determined not to cry, all the while fully accepting I will and likely sooner than later. When her voice comes, it’s like a whip, cold and tense. “So, it’s done then?”

“Yeah.” It leaves my lips as a whisper, disappearing within the silence as if it never came out at all. She knew. She knew when that agency rep visited Terra2, only a few short weeks after Dad died, that I’d listened a little too closely, I’d asked too many questions. The Oozarian looked at me like a juicy bit of meat hanging on a hook dangling inches from hisnot quite lips.

She’d gone into my room while I was at work, ripping up the holo brochure and leaving it in tatters around my desk.

She hadn’t said a word, but her meaning was clear.

Don’t you dare Lorena Morales.

I dared.

“I have only just lost your father, I can’t- “

“Mama, we needhelp.”

She whirls on me then, slinging water from the sink, her deep, warm brown eyes reddening with her tears. She’s holding her breath, a thousand words and arguments, screams on the tip of her tongue. My teeth dig into my inner cheek as my own tears stream down my face. I’m pleading with her, begging her to do it. To scream and yell and curse me, things have been so terribly quiet since Dad died.

“Then you will be the one to tell your sisters. Do it now. We will have dinner before you go.”

“You work tonight.” I remind her, my voice choked with emotion.

My damn lip trembles when the fire seems to fade from her eyes, the same broken type of acceptance I recognize settling in its place as she steps forward, barely bothering to wipe her hands dry before her hot palms land on either side of my face. “Mijita, work can wait.”

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