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  Lying flat on his stomach, downwind of the Hive, Varin frowned as he stared at the two huge insects guarding the black hole in the ground he’d seen Brynn entering in his vision. There they were—the sentries. He had one chance to take them out because, according to Jorath’s information, if he only wounded them, they would immediately release an alarm scent that would bring the rest of the warrior-caste insects running for the surface, believing the Hive was under attack.

  One shot, he thought and braced the blaster against his left forearm, which still ended in a mangled-looking stump. His hand was actually trying to regrow itself, which was why it looked so bad at the moment. His body had managed to regenerate the bottom of his palm and part of his thumb and forefinger, but nothing else.

  Varin wasn’t sure if there would be anything else and the parts of his hand that were regrown were weak and tender. He had found a pair of expensive Berathian driving gloves in the clothes storage unit of his stolen ship (the previous owner had really been quite the dandy) and put them on to cover the ugly sight.

  Not that he cared so much what his hand looked like—he just wanted to protect any vulnerabilities he had when going into enemy territory. At least when I shot off my hand, I took the damned obedience band with it, he thought wryly. Now if he needed to lift Brynn and make a quick get away with her he could be certain a bolt of pain wouldn’t hamper his efforts. So that was something, anyway.

  Brynn…he’d had another vision of her while he was landing his ship, being careful to leave it behind a low hill out of sight of the Hive. Someone was leading her over a narrow, steep bridge that ran across a pit of stinking death. Varin had been afraid she would fall but then she was safely across and standing in front of a small room that seemed to grow out of the wall. It pulsed with ominous light and he wanted to shout at her again not to go into it, but he had a feeling she already had.

  One shot, he thought again. I have to hurry—not much time!

  He narrowed his eyes and let his sixth sense take over—the voice inside him that pointed out an enemy’s weakness ruthlessly and efficiently. The one that had helped him win in the Arena for so many years.

  Large eyes, it whispered in Varin’s brain. Obvious target but it might not do as much damage as you’d think. Armored body—no help there. But look at the connections—the neck—the waist. They’re narrow—vulnerable. Sever the head in one shot and you should take it out before it can sound the alarm.

  Two shots, actually—he would have to shoot the other sentry almost before the first one dropped. Varin narrowed his eyes and took careful aim in the dim gray light.

  He thanked the Goddess that he’d been trained with a blaster, even though as a slave, he hadn’t been allowed to carry one. The old Master at Arms who had trained him as a boy had thought the king might change his mind one day. And besides, he had a soft spot for the baby princess—whose holo picture reminded him of his granddaughter.

  “She’ll need your protection lad,” he’d told Varin, clapping him on the back with one heavy, callused hand. “And sometimes a male needs more than a knife or a sword to do the dirty work of keeping females safe.”

  The Master at Arms had died some years ago—a fact Varin was glad of now, since the entire planet of Galen had presumably been overrun by the denizens of the Hive. But he still kept the memory of the old male sacred—he had been a kind of father to Varin, who couldn’t remember his biological parents, and his training was serving him well even now.

  Especially now that he had the insect sentries in his sights.

  “This is why a slave needs a blaster,” he muttered under his breath and squeezed the trigger.

  The first sentry’s head was knocked off and fell at his feet. The second sentry had only just begun to turn to its coworker to see what had happened before Varin fired again, severing the thin, narrow neck that held its bulbous head in place.

  As the two tall bodies crumpled to the gray, dusty ground, Varin rushed forward and plunged into the Hive.

  * * * **

  “Ahh…Now that you’ve received your first dose of Blood Honey, you should begin to come into Heat.” Sovereign X'izith leered at her, a greedy expression on his strange face.

  “Heat?” Brynn looked at him woozily. Everything seemed to be tinged in red—the edges blurry and distorted. The large insect worker that had dosed her was holding her up, since she couldn’t seem to support herself, but Brynn no longer felt afraid of it. In fact, all of her emotions seemed to have been blunted or dulled somehow.

  “Yes, my dear Princess—Heat. To get you ready for my breeding barb.”

  Brynn shook her head. “I don’t…don’t understand.” The Blood Honey she’d ingested seemed to make her thoughts as thick as, well honey and everything swam before her eyes in a very distracting way.

  “Of course you don’t—but allow me to explain while the Honey works on you,” X'izith said. “You see, it’s necessary to raise both your body temperature and your lust in order to make your abdominal cavity into a proper gestational area for the royal grubs. The Blood Honey will make you crave male fluids while forcing your body into a state of hyper-desire. In this way you will welcome my barb between your legs when I seek to breed you, rather than fighting, which would impair proper implantation.”

  “I don’t…I can’t…” Brynn tried to find words for the thought that was in her head—it was so hard to think with the Honey clouding her brain! “I don’t…want anything between my legs,” she said at last. Memories of the cruel silver club inside the deflowering chair made her shiver, despite the artificial warmth caused by the dose of Blood Honey the insect had given her. “I don’t…don’t want that ever again. It hurts.”

  Indeed, she still ached from the brutal strokes of the deflowering wand—still felt tender and violated inside. Never again, she told herself. I never want anything to enter me there again! Drugged she might be, but she was sure on that point.

  “You think that now,” the Sovereign told her in his buzzing voice. “But it will be a different story once the Blood Honey has had a little more time to work on you. It is all right—I can be patient.” He folded his arms and his filthy hands across his chest and smiled at her. “It will not take long.”

  * * * * *

  It didn’t take Varin long to find a marker. It came scuttling along the tunnel that led down into the Hive, its antennae scanning the air for new scents. Varin flattened himself against the wall, not wanting to alert it to his presence too soon.

  He’d already rubbed himself all over with the sticky muck that oozed from the floor of the tunnel to mask his scent as well as he could. Now he just had to get the marker to believe he belonged and spray him with its odor. The odor, Jorath had told him, was the key to getting into every other area of the Hive unchallenged.

  Varin jumped in front of the marker, just as it was about to pass him. It stopped its forward motion, its long antennae quivering, clearly uncertain about him.

  “Come on,” he muttered as it hesitated. If it decided he didn’t belong, it would run away, spreading the alarm and mobilizing the Hive against him. But if it sprayed him with the “welcome” or “belonging” scent, he would be able to go virtually anywhere undetected.

  The marker hesitated a moment more, then turned and started to skitter back down the hall it had come from.

  “No, you don’t, you little bastard!”

  Varin launched himself at it, landing squarely on its back segment. Abdomen? Thorax? He wasn’t sure what you called it but apparently it was the part the spray came from because a splurt of sticky clear stuff shot out of the marker and somehow hit him right in the face.

  “Fuck!”

  Varin spluttered and reached up to wipe the sticky goo out of his eyes. It stung like some kind of chemical cocktail—which was what it was, he supposed. He let go of the marker in the process, but it didn’t run away. Instead, it turned around and inspected him, running its feathery antennae out to “sniff” him, since, according to J