The Alien King's Prey - Loki Renard Page 0,7

throne if not for the untimely and unfortunate deaths of his seven older brothers and their eldest sons besides. Their deaths were one of many subjects not to be discussed in Archon’s court. Some may call him a murderer and a tyrant, but they did not do it twice. They could not do it twice for having a lack of a tongue.

Most of the castle’s inhabitants had the sense to leave the king alone, save for one adviser who followed him up the stairs slowly on arthritic knees so he could shake a finger at the monarch.

“Truly? Not a singe girl chosen? Not a one spoken to, let alone sampled? This is an insult to every one of the twenty-four tribes who sent their most beautiful women to be presented before the king. There will be great offense taken. Wars could be waged.”

“Wars are always waged, and I have no interest in offense,” Archon growled. “Feelings are not a currency I choose to trade in. My mate will not come to me dancing and flirting. She will be conquered.”

“Sire complains that we have made it too easy for him,” Brimsley noted. “I could have had the girls set loose in the forest, or perhaps give each of them a shuttle and a day’s head start.”

“There is no sport in chasing those who wish to be caught.”

“So you wish to mate with a female who does not wish to mate with you. You eschew the well bred and willing for the notion of someone who will resist you?”

The old man shook with outrage and perhaps even disgust. Brimsley had served the royal house of Archaeus for as long as he had been alive. He was the son of the head maid of the old queen, she who had been dead for over fifty years, she who he regarded as being the last of the true royals.

The one who sat on the throne now horrified Brimsley. There would never have been one like him when Arasabella was queen. The royal house of Archaeus was once refined and genteel. Now, with a monster who had no respect for old customs wearing the crown, anything was possible.

“I horrify you, don’t I,” Archon smiled, not the least concerned by Brimsley’s judgement.

“Sire knows I have certain traditional opinions…”

“Yes. Sire does. But when it comes to my cock, Brimsley and where I put it, I have to want the female, and I find little appealing in one who is prepared to dance amid two dozen others in the attempt to get my attention. I will know the one I want when I see her.”

“A rather romantic notion for a monarch recently talking about taking women without their will…”

“I did not say without willingness. I said that it would be a conquest. One doesn’t stop the other from being true,” Archon replied.

Brimsley’s lips became very tight and puckered. “I confess, I do not understand you sire, not after three years. You are a very different king than your father…”

“Ah yes, my father, who chose females each and every year at the dance, and who bore sons who perished on the battle field because their flashy scales and bright fins did not do a thing for them. When I breed, it will be with a female capable of bearing me a son worthy of the throne.”

“There is a certain sense to your words, sire,” Brimsley conceded, reluctantly. “Shall I have a maid draw you an acid bath before you retire to bed?

“Yes. Why not,” Archon replied. He wanted to wash the lingering scent of two dozen perfumes from his body. He felt as though he had been utterly soaked in the stuff. Some of it was laced with pheromones, no doubt an attempt to chemically hijack him. Those females had come to be fucked by him, and they would have done almost anything to be fucked by him.

Archon had very different tastes. His women did not come to him because they were sent. The handful of lovers he had taken in the past were those he had clashed with. They were willful women, real warriors. They may have been able to dance, but they more often wielded weapons with lyrical alacrity. Archon liked brave, bold, dangerous women, and there was not a female among the dancers who fit that description.

“Anna! A bath!” Brimsley called for the bath maid.

The last female he would see that evening came bustling in with an arm full of towels. She had gray hair and