His Broken Human (Alien Overlords 2)

“Holy…”

Krush casts an amused glance at me as one of his suitoresses swishes her rear at him with a resulting flash of smooth blue cheek and a hint of the tight crevice beyond. There is very little in the way of subtlety here. These korabi brides are willing to do anything to get their king.

He is only feigning interest. I can tell because I know what he looks like when he is really interested. I am confused. These women, females, whatever one might call them, are the epitome of everything desirable. Several of them are announced as already holding high office or being accomplished in the academic arts.

Jealousy and female competition thicken the air. I am not the only woman in possession of a crush on Krush. The looks some of the korabi women are giving one another make my blood run cold. If I were to be on the receiving end of one of them, I would strongly consider fleeing the room.

It turns out that my sense of danger is not an exaggeration, or a projection. There is more than lust and avarice in the air. There is murder.

One female comes to replace another at the front of the display. I do not know how he is able to tell one from another. I am astounded by the feminine majesty of it all, to the extent they all seem to blend in a great panorama of lady things.

I glance up at Krush to see what he is thinking. Is he enchanted? Is he becoming obsessed with one or more of these females? Is he picking them out for a place in his harem? Or has he already selected one who will be his bride?

At the edge of my vision there is a flash of steel, just barely visible, and then a high-pitched scream. One of the dancers has taken her jealousy out on another and slashed her viciously across the midsection, her toned arm slashing back and forth once, twice, three vicious times. Blood arcs across the floor to the collective gasps of scores of scandalized korabi.

Krush leaps from the throne, and rushes to the aid of the slashed victim. I stay where I am, chained to his seat, left to watch as he tends to the wounded woman with an easy authority. Krush has seen action. He is one of the few korabi who volunteered to go off-world and fight in distant star wars. I see the expression of an entirely focused soldier on his face as he rips the cape from his shoulders and uses it to staunch the woman’s bleeding.

She looks at him with terrified gratitude. The cut was not playful, or merely for attention. I think I see innards. Krush is having to hold one of his potential brides together. The scene is horrific, and absolutely chaotic. There is more secondhand screaming. More than one of the ingenues faints. The competition was not supposed to become physical, but apparently there is someone who will do anything to be Krush’s bride. Though I can’t say I understand how this helps her cause. She’s on the run now.

“Capture the one with the knife!” Krush calls out.

By the time he has thought to issue the edict, the slasher has escaped in the crowd.

“Don’t worry,” he says, brushing the woman’s hair out of her eyes. “You’re going to be alright. Nothing you need has been punctured. Your wounds are superficial.”

She grips his hand, her blood smearing over his golden skin.

I should be horrified. Instead, I am jealous. Stupid lucky stab victim. Krush is so attentive to her, so concerned about her. I wish he would look at me that way.

These are the thoughts of an objectively bad person, but I've never really had the chance to develop the personality traits of a good person. Saving the others might have been selfless, I guess. Waiting to be the last one out of Megaris was probably brave. But right now, I am consumed with envy. I want to look away, be anywhere else than here. But I am chained to the throne. I can’t escape the chaos. I have to look at all the running korabi legs and watch Krush kneel next to a female who wanted nothing more than to be his.

“I’m cold.”

Those are the only two words I hear from her.

It is plain to me that Krush is wrong. Her injuries are not superficial. Her blood leaks across the floor in a slow but steady pool. She is dying, and nobody is saving her. Krush is applying pressure to the wound, but he has neglected to notice that she has been run through. The wound is not merely seeping from the front. It is running from the back.

I stare, unheard when I try to tell them. They’re not listening to me. They lift her up to try to take her to a hospital. There is a wet sound and a heavy impact as several organs which used to be inside her body slide out through the artfully made incision. This wasn’t a stabbing. This was an evisceration. An assassination.