Precious Sacrifice

Copyright 2014 Cari Silverwood

Published by Cari Silverwood

Editor:
Nerine Dorman

Cover Artist:
Thomas Dorman aka Dr. Benway on Deviantart and Facebook

Formatter:
Polgarus Studio

All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book only. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials.

This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To all my readers and fans who follow me from book to book and series to series despite my tendency to change the sub-genre of fiction that I write. Kinky steampunk, scifi, historical, contemporary dark erotic fiction, and urban fantasy have all called to me from time to time. As have the M/f/f BDSM-based Badass Brats series stories that I co-write with Sorcha Black and Leia Shaw. About the only common factor is the kinkiness of the stories.

Writing is only fun when I have wonderful readers to share it with.

Jadd is an Igrakk Warrior, honed like the sharpest blade, to kill and to command his men, but his conscience gets in the way. When punishment entails becoming a Preyfinder and trialing the Pet-creating drug on a human called Brittany, he plans to stay calm and do his duty. Until he falls in love.

A Preyfinder is trained to withstand hardship and pain, but Jadd would rather kneel before a firestorm than leave his captive, Brittany, to be stalked and killed. The choice between love and loyalty to his soldier brothers may tear him in two.

Queensland, Australia

The sky was turning gray and pinky red, the sun abandoning the day.

Past Brittany’s outstretched legs, the grass sloped down to the cliff. Dangerous there. Only last year some drunken party goers had toppled over. People thought the woman had fallen first, then the men when they tried to rescue her. She closed her eyes at the familiar pain of loss. But this was why she came. Some days she sat closer to the crumbly edge.

“Time to go home,” she muttered. As if anticipating the move, the sparrow that had adopted her hopped off her shoulder and flitted away.

If her sister, Talia, knew she came here, she’d think suicide was on her mind. It wasn’t. Life was. This all reminded her of why she needed to,
wanted
to live, despite Jason dying a year ago on a similar slope.

Some had said it was her fault. She couldn’t climb though, or abseil, not like Jason who was…had been…half mountain goat. Things had gone wrong. She’d screamed, tangled in the rope and terrified. He’d come to her aid and somehow, some fucking how, in a way no one could comprehend, he’d fallen, and he’d died.

Convincing herself that she wasn’t to blame had taken some doing. She shouldn’t have panicked.

She’d
felt
him die. Nobody believed her but she had. Being unable to help had destroyed her.

On a different planet in the Milky Way galaxy.

Jadd smiled crookedly, sad at the death of another city.

Columns of black, gray, and orange twisted upward from where the fragthorn missiles had struck. After the missiles hit, his Igrakk warriors had swamped the surviving enemy.

In the misted rubble a thousand meters below, he spied nothing more hostile than corpses and little avalanches of shattered buildings. Explosions wracked the structures that remained, spattering shrapnel on his armor. Stone on metal.
Ping, ping, pang
. It sounded pretty, like some alien musical offering from the native Pensk.

Once, he’d mingled with them, danced with them, and been welcomed. Their young had sat at his feet to hear his tales – all pretend, of course, part of his information-gathering mission. Though intelligent, they’d never attained space travel. They’d not suspected him, couldn’t comprehend he’d come from beyond their planet.

At one point he’d fallen silent, staring back at the rapt little faces. Such happy smiles. If they’d possessed cheek grooves, they might have been the children of his friends.

The situation had changed. The Pensk had been found to have no star-faring potential. If you couldn’t master space travel, the enemy would have you by the balls as soon as it found you.

First balls, next forcibly enlisted, third, they’d be fighting us. Jadd’s smile set in place. Hence they were being removed before they became a threat. Life had served them kak. In days, their planet would be a demolished and expanding ball of incandescent dust.

Below, a flurry of movement and a flash of blade made him focus. A Pensk woman slumped in death. Red blood soaked the dust. Iron-based blood, like that of all mammals, even these lesser ones. He’d executed seven invasions. People died, always.

He was so tired of death.

As a second woman bolted, an Igrakk warrior raised his blade.

Jadd barked into his comm. “Non-lethal pursuit, Ladet! Sheath that sword!”

But the sword remained bared. Desperation showed in the woman’s frantic, crazed movements.

Was the man’s comm out of action or was he ignoring the order? Ladet stalked after the fleeing woman, lazy if determined, his sword pointing earthward and trailing in his wake. The woman cowered as he stepped closer, his sword rising.

The wide brown eyes of the children. Their innocence.
He was so very fracking tired of killing. Inside him, something cracked.

He launched into a descending path. Dust spat from each ledge he used to ricochet down the building. He reached the bottom in seconds, the last of it in guided free fall. Like a hammer, his boot thunked into Ladet’s arm. The limb would be a mess, even inside armor. He kept going, driving downward. The force flipped the warrior, spinning him sideways.

As Jadd’s boot met ground, his armor’s engines whined madly, struggling to compensate for the impact. He skidded.

When he stood, he found himself the center of a ring of stunned Igrakk warriors.

So be it.
He’d accept the consequences.

The woman, her sobs frozen, peeked from between her fingers. At her feet lay her long knife – its steel stained with blood.

Oh kak.
She was armed. What had he done?

The hours dragged past. At the end of the day, their landing craft returned to the launch ship, synched hatches, exchanged air and men. Wounded were hurried away. Voices diminished. The ship’s corridor was deserted of all bar him, the clean-up bots, and a few patches of blood somebody had shed on the otherwise pristine metal floor.

Jadd’s mech-rifle weighed down his hand, the muzzle clunking as it met his leg. In the traditional greeting of the returning warrior, he knelt. He kissed his gloved hand, touched the ship’s deck. A message scrolled across his retina.

You are summoned to the commander.

With deliberate slowness, he rose. Ceram plate slid. Claws on his gloves retracted. The engines at his joints purred as they helped shift armor. He left his weapon for the armorer bots to collect.

Outer space was cold but the atmosphere in here was even colder. No one met his eyes as he limped the corridor. Landing on Ladet with the same leg he’d been shot in a month before hadn’t been wise. The injury was still healing.

When he stepped into the room, General Freyder fixed him with a stark look. The darkness of his cheek grooves signaled the seriousness of the meeting. On a large cushion beside the desk, his mostly naked pet kneeled. Her blond hair curtained her face and brushed her scarlet nipples. From the direction of her gaze, the woman seemed thoroughly fascinated by the floor. Jadd grimaced – doubtful it was so.

“I see you, Jadd Tekk.” The General leaned against the steel desk behind him. “You’ve maimed a member of your squad and a soldier brother and are to be judged for your crimes.

The room jolted. His heartbeat kicked higher. “I await your decision, sir.”

Freyder drummed his fingers on the desk. “I’m giving you a chance to redeem yourself. Your officer status is revoked. You’re assigned as a temporary Preyfinder to a mission investigating the suitability of a new lesser mammal race as Hunt trophies. We’re at the stage of trialing the nano-chem. You are to apprehend the first prey, then go through each stage excluding full submission. Follow orders to the last dot on the mission manuscript, and I will have you named a full Preyfinder.

Thoughts whirled. Preyfinder was a demotion, but at least he’d be alive. “Stop before full submission, sir?”

“This is punishment. The bond you’ll develop with the woman will be painful when you separate.” The bushy eyebrows inhabiting the general’s heavy brow ridge tweaked upward. To Jadd it looked like a pair of hairy bugs. “Our research shows she has zero future anyway. Ninety-nine percent probability plus. She’s going to die.”

He straightened, his gaze drifting to the general’s pet. The precise shade of red of her lips, areolas and her hidden labia would match the general’s cheek groves, and marked her as his. They meant him to mate with this human, to bond, but not to own.

“I can do this, sir.”

Partially bonded and knowing she would die. Cruel punishment. His best course was to stay distant. He’d failed his soldier brothers once. Never again.

“Time to pack up.”

The teacher’s voice startled Brittany and the charcoal line she’d been drawing did an unexpected jag to the left. She sighed, her lip twisting, as she glanced from the nude male model seated in the middle of the class to her sketch.

Damn. It actually looked better.

The teacher clapped his hands and slowly turned on his heel to include everyone in his speech. “Next week, we’ll try the reclining pose with cloth draped over the torso. Just to show you some new techniques. Thank you, Carl.” He smiled back at the model.

Charcoal pencils in hand, Brittany frowned at Carl, blond and bulked up like he took steroids. All those tight curves and hard muscle. The man gleamed.

No. She wasn’t into gleaming. Just rough, masculine, outdoorsy types who had confidence…like J—

“Shit,” she muttered.
Dorkus.
She stuffed her sketch pad into her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

Dark outside, but only just. Seven pm and summertime made for real late sunsets. Luckily, hairdressing let her have flexible hours. Leaving the salon at quarter to five gave her time to get here with half an hour to spare. That earlier cappuccino meant her eyelids didn’t, as yet, need toothpicks to prop them open.

Time to go home, rest her aching feet, and eat some instant noodles and smoked salmon. What should she watch tonight? Reruns of
Star Trek
?

“See you next week, Brittany.” Carl waved then dragged his t-shirt the rest of the way down his rippling six-pack.

She managed to smile back. At least he’d already put on his pants. “Bye!”

The glass door swung shut behind her with a
shush
. She sighed and hoisted the shoulder strap into a better spot. The front car park at the college had great floodlighting, except for under the jacaranda trees with their giant spreading, crazy branches, where she’d parked. Where, apparently, no one else from her class had parked. Or they’d left already.

Near-death experiences commonly gave rise to new phobias, according to her psychologist, Allan. His little lesson repeated in her mind.