Bonding With the Beast_Kindred Tales_Brides of the Kindred Read online

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  “We want to thank you again, Commander Hail, for bringing us this valuable information.” Commander Sylvan nodded at him gravely. “And I understand you went through a lot to get it.”

  “Well…” Hail coughed into his fist. “It was not…our intention to get this information. It’s probably more accurate to say we lucked into it.”

  “There is no such thing as luck where the Goddess is concerned,” Commander Terex, who was also on the High Council, said gravely. “She had a reason for sending us this knowledge.”

  “But all the Chalombs really told us is what we already know from speaking to our new brother, Varin, the Vision Kindred,” another Council Member protested, nodding at a tall, silent Kindred with dark hair and pale bronze eyes.

  “Brothers,” Varin said, speaking up. “I know what I learned from talking to one who had studied the Hive and from invading their colony myself to rescue my mate, the Princess Brynn. But I was focused on getting her back and getting out safely—I can’t tell you how to defeat them if they attack again. Indeed—I don’t know if they will attack again. Brynn and I believed that Sovereign X'izith, their leader, was dead or as good as dead when we left him in his temporary camp on the Earth’s moon. But who knows what he or any of the Hive may be capable of?”

  “I believe them to be capable of anything if they get a chance,” Sylvan said, frowning. “And I say, we don’t give them that chance. They appear to be gone now but they may just be regrouping. Now, aside from what we already knew, the Chalombs gave us another valuable piece of information—the location of a repository of knowledge where everything known about the innermost workings of the Hive is collected.”

  “Yes, but that repository—the Library of All Knowledge—is located on Yonnie Six,” Commander Terex pointed out. “And we know from past encounters that the Yonnites will never willingly share information with us. They consider males to be inferior beings, useful only as menial workers and sex slaves to feed their sensual appetites.”

  “Yes…” Commander Sylvan took a deep breath. “Which is why I propose we infiltrate the highest echelon of Yonnie Six society with one of our own and get the information we need any way we can.”

  “You can’t be serious,” objected the head Priestess of the Sacred Grove, who also held a position on the Council. “I know in the past you have sent females to pretend they were part of Yonnite society but I must protest it in this instance. The Library of All Knowledge would be inaccessible to any female spy you sent—even if she played her part as a Yonnie Six Mistress perfectly. There are only seven key-holders to the place—the Sacred Seven they are called—who can even access the Library at all.”

  “Which is why we are not sending a female spy in this instance,” Sylvan said steadily. “Instead, we must send a male.”

  “How is that helpful?” asked Commander Terex. “When males are less to the Yonnites than the dirt beneath their feet? A male would be even less likely to be admitted to the Library of All Knowledge than a female.”

  “Unless he was intimately connected with one of the seven key-holders of the Library,” Sylvan said, frowning. “Unless he was the personal body-slave to one of the Sacred Seven.”

  “Are you proposing that we sell one of our own into slavery?” asked another Council Member. “Into a situation where he might be tortured, raped, or even killed at his Mistress’s whim?”

  “Though I am not truly a member of this Council, I must speak. As a former slave myself, I am reluctant to agree with such an idea,” Varin said, speaking up again. “The life of a slave even under a tender and considered mistress, as my mate Brynn was to me, can be nothing less than the torment of the Seven Hells.”

  “Nevertheless, if anyone has a better idea speak up now,” Sylvan said steadily. “I do not like the idea of sending one of our own Brothers into danger but I don’t see another way.”

  “Whoever he is, he must be unmated,” Commander Terex said thoughtfully. “Since his mistress will undoubtedly demand sexual favors of him.”

  “What if he is forced to have bonding sex with her—whoever his mistress turns out to be?” objected the High Priestess. “The Goddess would frown on such a thing, surely.”

  “You need not be uneasy on that account, Priestess.” Sylvan bowed his head to her respectfully. “The Yonnites do not believe in allowing a male to penetrate them. Although, from what I have heard…” He cleared his throat and shifted uneasily in his seat at the head of the council table, “whoever we send might well expect to be penetrated himself.”

  “Then whoever we send will have to be steadfast and strong—completely confident in his maleness to submit to such treatment without breaking,” the High Priestess said, frowning. “Though the Kindred are more enlightened than their male counterparts on Earth, I do not know of many who fit that description.”

  “I still want to know how you’re going to get our spy—whoever he is—into the service of one of the Sacred Seven in the first place,” Commander Terex said.

  “We know one of the Seven who is planning to be at an elite sale of Druvian artifacts at the end of this solar week,” Sylvan said. “We intend to plant our spy in her company there and have her leave with him.”

  “Druvians?” Terex frowned. “Weren’t those the ancient people who claimed to be able to travel from place to place in the universe in the blink of an eye using their magical E’lo stones?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” Sylvan answered. "But now that they have died out, only their E’lo stones remain. Though many scholars have studied them, they have been unable to unlock the secrets of the stones—apparently they won’t work for any but the Druvians. So they are considered nothing more than rare and valuable collector’s items.”

  “Items which this Mistress you are targeting wishes to acquire?” Terex asked. “But if she’s going to the elite sale looking for artifacts, how do we make certain she leaves with whoever we send to pose as a body-slave?”

  “Because there is a slave auction attached to the artifact sale. It’s held in the Toloth System and our target has already made a formal commitment to be there. Look…”

  Commander Sylvan made a motion with one hand. The lights in the large council room dimmed and a hologramatic image of a proud-looking female suddenly appeared in the center of the table. She had a waterfall of long, wavy black hair that fell to the small of her back, skin the color of caramel, and wide, almond shaped eyes of liquid black. Though she was petite, she kept her chin high and carried herself with an air of self-assurance and mastery that spoke of compete confidence in her own abilities.

  But it was not her face—which was lovely but stern—that drew a murmur of protest from the members of the Council—it was the way the female was dressed. She had on a tight-fitting black leather suit which covered her arms and legs completely and high black boots which reached above her knees. In the front, the suit’s collar opened and dipped low, almost to her naval, revealing the full curves of her breasts. In one hand she held a whip and in the other, a long, black cane with a wickedly sharp point.

  However, the one item of dress that drew all eyes was what the Yonnite Mistress wore strapped between her legs. A black leather phallus jutted up from between her thighs, long and thick and daunting. Hail, who was still watching quietly, thought it was at least as large as his own phallus when he became the beast. What male would willingly allow himself to be penetrated with such a contraption?

  “This is Mistress Neh’sanna,” Sylvan said, gesturing at the hologram. “She is one of the Sacred Seven. She is also revered in Yonnite high society as one of the foremost trainers of male slaves. She picks only the largest and the strongest males and breaks them down until they are completely loyal to her. Some say she doesn’t even use pain collars on them—though she has been known to use other…ahem, devices. She expects complete and unquestioning submission and obedience from her body-slaves at all times.”

  “You’ve studied her thoroughly,