Prey (Dark Monster Fantasy Book 1) Read online

  A Dark Monster Fantasy

  by

  Cari Silverwood

  This book contains adult language and situations only suitable for adult readers.

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  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About Cari Silverwood

  Acknowledgements & Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Trader ship

  En route to Planet Dispora

  Her sister had managed to get herself signed up as the next female sacrifice on some backward planet. Had she been stupid, money-hungry, or just unlucky? It could be any of those, knowing Tiana.

  Mila settled back in her bunk and nudged the little vid player. So primitive to use this but the ship’s system would pick up most transmissions, and she wasn’t risking confiscation by sending it to her memory chip and playing it via her retina. She chewed off a nail and spat it out. The ship was efficiently run and another nail on the deck floor wouldn’t add much. One of the mech cleaners would pick it up.

  The file took its time loading into the player.

  She shifted her butt on the rock-hard bunk mattress. She should have been doing some odd jobs on this ship to help defray her passage fee but the Boogers, as she unaffectionately called the rat-faced race that ran this trading ship, were aghast at her history...when they dug it up. She was annoyed that they’d managed to find that. They’d refused to let her leave her room much at all.

  Just because she was a thief cross mercenary cross intrepid explorer of dead planets.

  As if she’d steal from them, or kill them in their sleep.

  Pffft. Mila blew the fringe of hair from atop her nose, rubbed her nose, then turned and bashed her pillow into something resembling softness.

  The screen on the player flickered.

  Buying this data had taken many days of negotiation and far too much cash. The Booger traderman had only released it because they were close to landing. He’d made her promise not to tell his captain.

  Fricking stoneshifters guarded info about them and their Planet Dispora as if it was precious...or deadly in some way.

  What was their weakness? Tiana had sent umpteen panicked emails to her on the starwebz. The gist of most was: I’m being sacrificed to a stoneshifter called Lord Zarblu. Help! ASAP.

  Normally she might have frowned, sent back a: Sorry, I’m busy.

  Tiana was often in trouble and she rescued herself ninety-nine times out of the one hundred when Mila hadn’t managed to arrive.

  Except...Mila swallowed, remembering...the last planet she’d been on had been one muthafucker of a place and not quite dead. The tomb she’d blasted open had contained a special alien something. It’d jumped her and infected her in spite of her well-made spacesuit, as if the thing were made of cheese. She couldn’t shake it.

  Hadn’t.

  The instruction manual that’d come with it had been quite unique. Not many diseases came with manuals.

  A shiver ran through her. The thing was slow growing but sent her chills, regularly. She held her splayed fingers before her eyes. There it was – the little fringe of black wriggling through her nail tips.

  No cure.

  “Well, maybe I’ll go out doing something good,” she murmured. This parasite-leech infection, whatever it was, could go to hell. She was in rescue-the-annoying-sister mode.

  Mila whacked the side of the cube-shaped player.

  “Play!”

  What did these stoneshifters do with a sacrifice? Sacrifice sounded bad, if she went by the dictionary definition.

  The vid began.

  Blinking ceased, as she took it what it showed. “Oh, fuck.”

  That? The size of the shifter’s male appendage was a problem. Dick was too insignificant a word. She needed a new one like lollapoloozaram-a-dam-a-dingdong.

  When these dudes shifted...they shifted.

  No sound but she could imagine the screams from the woman tied to the sacrifice table.

  In fear, her blood had crawled away to her toes.

  Enough with the jokes. She stared at the wall.

  Now she knew she really did have to get Tiana out of this.

  No wonder stoneshifters had an embargo on info escaping their planet. She checked the embedded metadata. The vid was dated four hundred years ago. Not current but the planet was considered backward on most civilization scales. It was likely the stoneshifters hadn’t altered what they did. And if they hadn’t, if Tiana was strapped to that table, she would be dead soon after.

  Here she was, a cash-depleted chick with one weapon to her name – make that two, if you counted Mister Ram – plus a one-piece suit that buckled up at the crotch as if designed for a synth-porno game, and a bad-ass attitude.

  Mila rubbed the middle of her temple and let her head flop back onto the pillow. Above, the ceiling was vibrating. The lowering thrum of the interplanetary drive said planet-fall was going to be within hours.

  This stoneshifter was going to be in so much trouble.

  Chapter 2

  The Overmaster’s Office

  The Arena Contractual Area where Shit Happens

  As the retinal text faded, Mila snorted. Whoever labeled the locations on Dispora must be terribly bored.

  She watched as the applicant before her was signed on to fight in the Arena. This was the end result of the mess Tiana had gotten herself into. With her fingers casually draped over her pistol butt and her hip cocked to the side, Mila aimed for the look of the nonchalant mercenary who really doesn’t give a flying fuckateer if she gets approved.

  However she’d done it, Tiana didn’t deserve to be sacrificed to this Lord Zarblu, the almighty whatever of Planet Dispora and owner of the huge fortress dominating the city of Noona. Zarblu the stoneshifter. Those dudes didn’t mess around when it came to mating.

  By comparison, even this Congan was nicer – this knuckle-dragging Andurian keeping applicants in line. He would be considered a gentleman in some streetwise, dumpster circles.

  The vid had given her enough facts that she’d felt nauseous afterward.

  So, stoneshifters ate or killed their mates if they didn’t live up to expectations and Tiana was to be Zarblu’s sacrificial mate this cycle.

  Once every ten years stoneshifters searched for a new mate. Knowing Tiana, he’d eat her just to drown out her sarcastic remarks. Elegant, intelligent, beautiful, and a pain in the ass – all those summed up Tiana.

  Also money hungry and cunning. But above all else, she was Mila’s sister.

  “Sisters are blood,” Mila muttered, knowing she was trying to convince herself. It’d easy to hop off-planet and pretend she had no family.

  After receiving several of Tiana’s frantic emails, she’d dropped her current contract, paid a penalty to the guild for the error, and scooted here.

  One could not buy a sacrifice, she’d been informed, or get them out legal
ly without filing forms that’d take half a year to be processed, and so here she was...

  Her last chance to do this without getting the local law officers angry.

  With the arena guard, Congan, looming at her shoulder, she approached Overmaster Lugo. Though the guard beside her seemed to be covered in gray, chitinous armor, this was his natural exoskeleton and he was naked. His flaccid cock brushed her upper arm, her hair. It was as naked as the rest of him and was a third the girth of her lower leg.

  Her grip on the pistol butt tightened, yet the overmaster bothered her more than any Andurian’s over-rated and over-exposed cock.

  Must. Not. Shoot.

  The asshole deserved it though. She’d seen what he did to his slaves.

  “The human wants to fight, sir,” the guard rumbled, his words piling up like gravel and sealing her fate.

  She had to do this.

  “You aim to free your sibling? Tiana, isn’t it? To win that grand wish from our Lord Zarblu?” The smirk curling the overmaster’s lip told her he knew precisely her reason. He’d have his slimy digits in the database of this backward planet’s spaceport and her last name and species would send up red flags. Being a mercenary wouldn’t help either.

  Alas, coming in on a fake passport would’ve had its risks. Big ones. This stoneshifter planet was picky as fuck about treachery and cheating.

  He plonked the heels of his boots on his desk, dug at his teeth with a long Bummerian dagger, then spat something red that squealed as it hit the grimy floor. It slithered away. She refused to follow the half-eaten creature’s trail with her gaze. The walls here were so discolored from lack of cleaning she couldn’t tell the original hue.

  “Tiana is such a prize. Not sure Zarblu could bear to part with her, considering how well her mouth must do what he tells it to.”

  Pig.

  Mila shrugged, tossed her plait over her shoulder. “Maybe I like to fight.”

  “Maybe. What an amazing coincidence that the wish from our Lord Zarblu would allow you to free her, if you win. If you even survive. Humans don’t belong in the arena. You have to pay, extra.”

  Dread sifted in her veins, black and syrup-thick, weighing her stomach with nausea.

  She couldn’t say no. He knew. She wrapped her fingers over the buckle on her skin-tight suit, taking reassurance from its solidity.

  “I’ll pay.”

  “Good.” His smirk deepened into a lascivious grin. “My guard there needs a fuck. You will do it now. One hour to the next fight. You’ve time.” He leaned back into his chair and crossed his feet at the ankle. The desk creaked and leaned askew but held. A golden lizard popped out from the front edge, ran along almost faster than eye could follow, then vanished beneath. “Now. You fuck now.”

  “What...what if –”

  With a wave of his hand, the overmaster interrupted her hurried and incoherent reply. “Nothing. What if nothing. You do what he wants. No questions. Then I will let you fight. If you lose and thus embarrass me, I claim you.”

  “I’m going to win, you know.” But her breathing had picked up pace, depth.

  He shrugged and picked at his teeth with his dagger.

  Had to do this.

  Delay was useless. She’d done worse in the past...maybe.

  She unsnagged the buckle tongue from the belt hole, undid the belt that ran between her legs, and unclipped two snaps where her gun holster clipped to her suit.

  The Andurian guard rasped, “Stop.”

  Coming from twice her height above, the command froze her as thoroughly as an announcement from a god.

  As the guard swung around to stand between her and the overmaster, fear raised the hairs on her neck and forearms. He came between her and the single light hanging from the distant, domed ceiling, between her and escape. If she did but try to reach the door...

  No. She could withstand this.

  Like the surfacing of a languid sea monster from the depths, his cock erected, pumped with blood from his vitals. Before, it had been a third the thickness of her ankle. Now, it became twice as big.

  From the swimming of the room and the iciness of her cheeks, she’d paled.

  The Andurian planted the V of his open hand over her neck and pushed her, overbalancing her and making her stagger backward. She’d surely fall...

  She thumped into wall with spine and the back of her head. In one grunted exhale, her lungs spilled the air she needed to survive.

  Spots danced in the gloom, though she clutched his wrist and plucked at it. He dragged her up the wall, muttering, “Mine. My job to take clothes.”

  Brought to a level with his chest, she wriggled, writhed a little, tried to kick. It was instinctive, for she knew what was coming would happen. She’d agreed. The skin on her back felt as if he’d torn it by pulling her up the wall.

  Reneging on a deal was bad – as in executable bad.

  For that reason she finally made herself submit while he stripped her. She needed those clothes as intact as possible for the arena. His grip shifted to her chest. Still hard to breathe, but possible.

  Gun, suit, boots, gloves – all fell to the distant floor before he grunted and took a moment to assess her.

  “Naked girl... Mmm. Is good.” His tongue came out and he leaned in close, sniffed her, then licked across, beneath her breasts, over both nipples, to her neck, to her lips.

  She shuddered but allowed it.

  More of a problem than his tongue was what pressed at her stomach. Fully as long as her thigh, she couldn’t imagine that inside her without it doing immense damage.

  The guard grunted. “You too short.”

  “Fuck yeah,” she croaked. He did have her about five feet up the wall. “Sorry about that. Knees hurt if you kneel? We should call it quits. Definitely.”

  He shook her, scowled. “Quiet, human girl. Need help to keep you on wall. Nails?”

  “No!”

  “Hmmm. Morgor! Morgor! Come hold girl!” Without letting her down, he turned her to face the wall and pinned her against it again. “Morgor!”

  Her breasts stung. Every shift of his hold abraded her nipples on the rough surface. She clutched at the wall with both hands, scrabbling, wanting to beg him for kindness but sure it would help her zero.

  Lumbering, heavy, boot stomps sounded somewhere behind her. The door slammed.

  “I am here, Congan. What you want?”

  Oh fuckitty fuck. She tried to calm her thoughts, and failed.

  “Hold girl for me.”

  “I get turn after?”

  “Not this one. I owe you favor.”

  The other one grunted. “Good.”

  She heard the overmaster chuckle. “This will be entertaining. If she doesn’t live, I claim the weapon.”

  Congan grunted. “She will live. Me not kill girls. I get to keep her if she can’t fight after.”

  While that clause was agreed to by the overmaster, all she could think was how she needed to be able to fight. Tiana needed her. Though the last time they’d parted ways she’d wanted to strangle her sister, family was blood.

  She was spread wide, still plastered to the wall but with an Andurian hand under each knee and pinning it at the height of her hips, opening her as far as muscle and bone would allow. One of them slapped between her legs, shoved a digit into her, maybe two, three.

  Even that made her keen.

  “Not... Not on purpose,” she gasped, feeling the head of Congan’s member probe her below. “Please don’t hurt me on purpose.” There, she’d begged. Fuck it.

  He laughed quietly, his mouth somewhere above her, her hair shifted by his exhalations. “I won’t but girls don’t walk for days after me inside them. You will curl up and go mmm, dream of Congan.”

  He tried to enter her and her cries and the severe tightness had him pausing.

  “Too small,” he said. Disappointment brimmed in his tone.

  “Could have told you.” She blinked away tears, shuddered in a single breath then another.<
br />
  “Got a problem?” the overmaster sang.

  “Too small. Girl too small.”

  With the flat of his enormous palm, his friend, Morgor, held her to the wall and she couldn’t, quite, see them talking.

  “Easy,” added the overmaster. “I got a box of clamps, cables, ties, retractors – all kept ready for just this situation. There’s even a syringe of speedo relaxin somewhere buried in there. Makes the bones supple in quick time. Anchor rings on the walls too. Take your pick. My gift as a happy little watcher.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  Metal scraped and rang, tinkled. Chain clinked.

  “Can’t have a little thing like her ruin my entertainment, now can we?”

  She heard the crunch of the Andurian’s boots, felt the coolness of liquid rain on her shoulder when Congan tested a syringe of some pale yellow fluid.

  “No boss, we can’t.”

  A needle plunged into one ass cheek and she whimpered at the sudden lance of pain.

  Whatever...whatever it was, it made the room swim again – warm, mellow, golden swimming. Things were clipped and tied, crushing, pinching, stretching her. She closed her eyes and smiled this time as something huge pressed at her, pushing, parting, cramming itself in, going deep, deeper, deepest.

  Shunting.

  Moving.

  Possessing.

  She couldn’t breathe and opened her eyes to the fullest, gasping, writhing, trying to move though she couldn’t, pumping upward, held there in that obliterating instant as the...

  The first orgasm hit her like a train.

  By the time he was done she’d lost track of where she was, felt herself slide down the wall to sit in a puddle of warm fluids. Her eyes registered what was there between her legs. No redness tinged it.

  She blinked, summoned her brain, kicked it into order.

  No blood? Plus. That’s a plus.

  Congan had spoken the truth. He’d even injected her with something she assumed was an antidote to the relaxin. Maybe her vagina would recover in a thousand years.

  Though...

  Down below hurt and felt as if she’d been reamed by an elephant...which she nearly had been. But...she was fine, she told herself, repeatedly. Fine. Slowly she dragged herself onto all fours. Congan returned and methodically wiped between her legs despite her slurred protests.