fucking head off!”
“You do like to swear, don’t you?” the male remarked, but he didn’t seem at all afraid of V’s menacing growl. When V took a step towards him, he pulled a small device out of his pocket and pointed it at his chest.
“I don’t think so, my boy,” he remarked and pressed a button on it.
A bolt of pure agony shot through V’s entire body. It brought him to his knees, seizing his muscles and forcing the air from his lungs in a painful gasp.
After a moment, the agony ended as abruptly as it had begun.
V lunged to his feet and went after the bastard again. Again the horrible, all-encompassing pain took him down.
And again and again.
During the fourth bout of pain, the male spoke to him.
“We can do this all day, you know,” he said, in a pleasant tone of voice, as though discussing the weather. “You can’t win, my boy—not while I hold the Master Control to your Pain Square. So you might as well give up and listen to what I have to say.”
The pain stopped but this time V stayed down. He looked up at his tormentor with hate in his eyes.
“What,” he growled. “The fuck do you want with me?”
“Not much.” The white-haired male smiled pleasantly. “Maybe now we can finally talk like civilized males. Listen, my boy—I have a proposition for you.”
Eighteen
“As I said before, you’re a unique specimen.” The male who had called himself the “Glorious Leader” was pacing back and forth in the bare white room as V leaned against the wall and watched.
He had decided to suspend his attacks, at least for now. He was still enraged by his forced captivity but he wasn’t stupid. The male held the remote to the strange metal square on his neck, which was capable of electrocuting him with agony. There was no point in fighting as long as he has his finger on the button, ready to press it and take V down at any minute.
“You’re unique,” the male said again, still pacing. “You’re not affected by the hypno-whispers for one, which at first I couldn’t understand.”
“Hypno-whispers? Is that the fucking whispering that’s going on all the damn time here?” V demanded, glaring at him.
“Yes.” The male nodded. “They’re meant to make you more docile—they help our new breeders feel comfortable and accept their new lot in life. But you…” He looked at V and shook his head. “Well, you’re anything but docile, my boy, though we’ve been amping up the whispers delivered to your room for days.”
V shook his head.
“Whatever you’re doing, it’s not working. I can’t even understand them and my kind are good with languages.”
“Yes, well, I’ve had Kindred here before,” the male who called himself the “Glorious Leader” said, frowning. “And none of them were immune to the whispers. But after I had my NeverBreeders run an analysis of your DNA, I understood. You, my boy, are not pure Kindred.”
“And?” V crossed his arms over his broad chest and raised an eyebrow.
“In fact,” the male continued. “Half of your DNA isn’t even from this universe, which I found positively fascinating.”
V just looked at him.
“I think that’s why you’re immune to the hypno-whispers,” the male continued after a pause. “But you have other special attributes as well. For instance, the substance secreted by your tongue…”
“You fucked around with my stinger?” V growled, his hands clenching into fists. Goddess damnit! His stinger and the mating fist at the base of his shaft were the two most private parts of his body—but he was betting those fucking orange mutants had seen and handled both while they had him drugged on their table. The thought made him feel helpless and vulnerable.
It also enraged him.
A low growl rumbled in his chest and he could barely hold himself back from lunging at the “Glorious Leader” again.
The male seemed to sense V’s fury because he held up the Master Control again and shook his head.
“No, no, my boy—that way lies only more pain. Whereas if you’ll just listen to me for a moment, I think we can come to an equitable arrangement.”
“The only arrangement we can make is you letting me out of here before I rip your fucking head off!” V growled.
“That’s not going to happen,” the “Glorious Leader” said pleasantly. “Not for a while, at least. I won’t try to keep you here for life,” he went on. “It’s too dangerous to have a male breeder who doesn’t respond to the whispers in