Gravity (Dark Anomaly #1) - Marina Simcoe Page 0,4

work?” he asked, sarcastically.

“We’ll take turns!” someone excitedly shouted from the crowd.

Several growls supported the idea.

That would create a fuck frenzy that Vrateus wished to avoid—for the female’s sake, he realized with annoyance. Part of him wished the girl would have died in the crash. Saving her life seemed to be a nearly impossible task now.

Maintaining power over his people meant carefully balancing the often-opposing interests of different groups and species. If Vrateus kept them divided, he held control over all of them. The presence of the female now gave them a reason to unite against him.

The simplest thing to do would be to give her to them. Let them do whatever they wanted with her—fuck her or eat her.

There were over seven hundred of them, though. Most wouldn’t get anywhere near her before every trace of her ravaged body would be annihilated. Then there would be fights, murders, and more cannibalism.

Restoring order would take everything he had with no guarantee of success.

He rubbed his face. Running this place was exhausting.

A huge issue was that he had already stopped Crux. Letting the errock have his way now would make it look like Vrateus was giving in. He did not give in to anyone. For seven years, Vrateus had ruled with undisputed authority. He could not afford to have his decisions questioned publicly—even the decisions he hadn’t made yet.

He had no idea what to do with the girl.

“Yeah, so, who’s going first?” Naizu hissed, inching closer on his skinny legs. Saliva dripped from both corners of his lipless mouth.

“Me!” Crux stood over the girl, his fists raised to defend his prey. “I saw her first.”

“But you didn’t fight for her,” Krakhil, a dimo, roared.

“We need to pull numbers! Lottery!” The shouts came out of the crowd.

“That’s fair,” others agreed.

The air in the corridor was charged with lust and aggression—an explosive mix waiting for the slightest spark to detonate into violence.

“Fuck the lottery. I want her now.” Naizu dove for the girl, grabbing her ankles. His long black tongue slicked out, running over his sharp teeth.

She jerked back with a grimace of utter horror, letting out a panicked scream.

That scream...

It pierced Vrateus’s brain with memory, painful and toxic.

“Back!”

He shot. The bullet hit Naizu in the back of his head.

Thick greenish blood splashed over the pristine white of the girl’s bodysuit. The scream caught in her throat, turning into a gurgle of shock as the ognut dropped to the ground, dead, his head landing between her legs.

“Anyone else want to try?” Vrateus released the second gun from its holster inside his sleeve, wrapping his fingers around the smooth metal handle.

He had a laser gun strapped to his thigh, a knife hidden inside each of his boots, two swords attached criss-cross to his back, and a dagger concealed in its sheath at his chest. That was his light, every-day armament. Had he known there’d be a female on the new shipwreck, he’d have at least doubled it.

His crew stilled, those in the front shuffling back. No one but him was allowed to wear weapons of any kind on the Dark Anomaly. Vrateus was the only one armed. He had made sure of it.

“All right.” He took a pause, sweeping the crowd with his gaze to make sure all attention was on him. “There are seven hundred and forty-four—” he glanced at the dead body of the ognut. The girl had shrunk away from it, hugging her legs. “...forty-three of you. And only one female.”

“We’ll take turns,” Brel, a kreer, suggested again, only in a slightly less sure voice now.

“Seven hundred and forty-three, Brel. She’d be dead within the first hour if you all get on her at once. Most of you would get nothing at all.”

“We’ll space it out.” Krakhil elbowed a yourlu, shoving his hard-plated elbow into the yourlu’s soft shoulder. “Qen here wouldn’t mind waiting for his turn. Would you, Qen?”

Qen rubbed his shoulder with one of the three tentacles he had where a left arm would have been.

“How long would I have to wait?” he squeaked.

“Good question.” Vrateus shifted his weight to his other foot. “If each of you got her for a day, how long do you think those at the back would have to wait?” He paused for effect, not expecting an answer—math skills were not one of the strengths of his crew. “Almost two years.”

Groans of frustration filled the corridor.

“She can be fucked more than once a day,” someone grumped, disheartened. “Twice? At least?”

“That would still be nearly