Forever Caged
folder
+. to F › Ai no Kusabi
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
123
Views:
46,658
Reviews:
224
Recommended:
2
Currently Reading:
4
Category:
+. to F › Ai no Kusabi
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
123
Views:
46,658
Reviews:
224
Recommended:
2
Currently Reading:
4
Disclaimer:
I don't own Ai No Kusabi nor do i make any money from this fanfic.
Chapter 116
Disclaimer: I do not own Ai No Kusabi nor do I make any money from this fanfic. However, I do own all the original peeps I have chosen to invade the AnK world.
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Iason/Riki, Raoul/Katze, original characters and novel character pairings.
Parts: 116 of ?
~~**Forever Caged**~~
Walking around his room, Rio stretched his arms over his head and exhaled a low satisfied moan. Man, if only all his jobs could end with a nice nap in a healing pod. For all her royal riches, his mom was a cheap witch when it came to technology. The only time he was shoved in one of those things was when he was about to die. And their ‘bed’ was not nearly as high tech and flashy as the one he had been in. All his old scars were gone too. There was no evidence he had ever been in a fight, let alone shot, stabbed, or clawed from trying to kill someone. There were places he’d never been allowed in, because of his battle scars. Now they were gone!
Rio rubbed his hands together gleefully. Oh, the fun he would have—
“What are you scheming?” an amused voice asked.
Rio flashed Jared, who stood in the doorway, a crooked smile over his shoulder. “I don’t scheme, baby, I plan.”
Jared smiled, Rio’s wicked merriment washing over him, drowning his need for caution of what the blond was thinking of doing. “Oh?” he asked, “and does this plan of yours end up with you back behind these hospital walls?”
Rio grinned and shrugged. “No plan is perfect.”
Jared shook his head. “How have you survived all this time?” His wild, murderous, prince never ceased to amaze him. He had been gripped with worry and fear when he had seen Rio. His blond covered in blood, tortured, and yet the trauma did not seem to affect him. Jared had been warned that Rio might be suffering from delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, but looking at Rio, Jared was not so sure the blond was.
“By killing or maiming everyone that so much as thinks of snuffing me out,” Rio replied matter-of-factly.
Jared shook his head and chuckled. Stepping deeper into the room, he shut the door and sighed. “While we are on the topic of people you’ve killed or disfigured, because of your ‘treatment’ with the blowtorch, Landon will live.”
Rio tsked. “Well, we all make mistakes.”
“Don’t joke about this, Rio. Landon may be a criminal, but he is still an Elite.” Jared frowned. Baffled by how nonchalant Rio treated this, Jared stared at the blond. He should have learned his lesson when he attempted to kill the Onyx, Jerico.
“That douche is no Elite,” Rio said with a dismissive wave. “You know how many bullets it took to slightly harm that blackhead who hired me to take out your boss and Riki? Loads. Landon’s supposed to be a Platinum, and I took him down with a lead pipe to the head. A lead friggin’ pipe! Moreover, the bitch screamed like a gypped hooker when I slapped him around a little. He was no Elite.”
Rio paused, and then innocently looked at Jared. “I only hope the Onyx Elite’s death did not cause too much trouble?”
“He’s not dead,” Jared said. “You did not kill him.”
“Damn,” Rio whispered.
Jared ignored Rio’s grumble. Bloodthirsty thing. He had the Ruby doctor check to see if there was something chemically imbalanced in Rio’s brain, but the blonde’s tests had come back clear of any abnormalities.
“Landon, I’m tellin’ ya, is not an Elite,” Rio said. “I seen your body, and it is perfect. The kind of perfect that only you bastards can be because of how you were ‘born’. Landon’s body…”
Rio frowned, deep in thought. “Landon wasn’t. His face somehow got cut—”
“Somehow?” Jared raised his brows.
Rio grinned wickedly. “Yeah, his face somehow came in contact with the sharp end of a scalpel, so I—being the kindhearted person that I am—helped clean him up by wiping blood from his cheek. He had a freckle on his jaw that he covered with makeup. And that wasn’t the only one. He had other little moles on his chest.”
Jared froze. They may all have different personalities, but none of them were born with any kind of internal or external imperfections. Jupiter would never allow such a thing to happen, and she did not make mistakes.
“So,” Rio drawled, “he cannot be an Elite, and I can’t be punished for ‘hurting’ him. And even if he was an Elite, I can’t be held accountable for my actions anyway. I was clearly out of my mind from being tortured.”
“You strapped him to a table, cut him up, and then burned those wounds to keep him from dying for over an hour,” Jared said dryly.
“I was out of my mind with…fear?” Rio said. He walked over to his bed and lay down. Propping his head on his hand, Rio grinned. “Can’t condemn me if my survival instincts kicked in and shoved the rational part of my brain to the side, can you?”
Jared walked to Rio’s bedside, picked the blond up in his arms, and lay down with his prince snug in his embrace. Jared pressed Rio’s head against on his chest. His panic and fear had dwindled after Michael healed Rio. The crazy blonde’s strange cheerfulness had also shoved those disturbing feelings down. However… to hear Rio talk—regardless of the frivolousness in which Rio treated the topic—about what happen to him, those feels resurfaced. Jared despised the helplessness he had felt. It was unnatural. As a Blondie, nothing should make him feel vulnerable. If he were to think logically, the best way of eliminating those crippling emotions was to kill the baffling creature in his arms.
However…
“So,” Rio said walking his fingertips across Jared’s hard pecks, “are we gonna rub our naughty bits together? Never had sex on a hospital bed before.”
Jared smiled and flattened Rio’s wandering had against his chest. “Not here, no.”
Rio let out a loud, sexually frustrated, sigh. “You know, I don’t know whether to keep trying to kill you or start trying to rape you.”
Jared chuckled. “Rest, Rio. We will play later.” His blond was up now, but once the medication dissipated from his system, he would crash. He wanted his prince in his arms when that happened.
Rio grumbled under his breath and squirmed in the Blondie’s arms until he was in a comfortable position.
Jared held Rio tightly and waited—listening to him complain and talk about nothing until the blonde’s breathing deepened. Taking his cell from his pocket, Jared dialing quickly. He kissed the crown of Rio’s head tenderly as he waited patiently for the receiver to pick up.
“Yes?”
“Iason,” Jared said, “we have a problem.” Repeating the information Rio relayed, Jared disconnected the call, curled around Rio, and closed his eyes. If the blond was his weakness, then he wasn’t alone. His brothers had the same flaw as he did. And that was enough to permanently silence the voice in his head, telling him to let go of his prince.
oOoOoOo
Within the Healing and Recuperation pod, Orphe gazed down at his mongrel. When they arrived, Raoul had taken him by the arm, and forced him out of the room when the Blondie tried to examine Violet. The stark evidence of his mongrel’s suffering under unforgiving bright lights having almost triggered an overabundance of unfiltered rage, that he had nearly killed Raoul’s assistant.
Wandering the halls, Orphe had come across Marcus and his mongrel… He had listened as the Ruby doctor spoke to Marcus softly, as if one would to a wounded animal. His fear had been irrational when he discovered the mental instability of Marcus’s mongrel, all stemming from traumatic events of what had to be from his childhood or the beginning of his adult life.
Orphe, grudgingly, knew very little about Violet’s past. His mongrel playfully—if not scornful—would hint of his life before entering his. However, his love, on more than one occasion, said he and Marcus’s mongrel were together since their Guardian days, which meant they shared a similar past. Therefore, when he returned to the exam room and saw Raoul in the middle of transporting Violet to the treatment room housing an HR pod, Orphe had been adamant in his demands to be enclosed with his mongrel.
Now, Orphe wondered if he had been too hasty in his decision. Violet had woken in his arms not an hour after they had been sealed into the dimly lit machine. He had been startled by the shame he saw shining brightly in his lover’s beautiful eyes… Shame that had his mongrel turning his gaze away from his, something his defiant mongrel had never done before.
Should he had allowed his mongrel time to himself? Orphe’s face tightened and pulled Violet’s stiffened body closer to him, pressed his chest against his back. He wouldn’t allow Violet to run from him, not physically or mentally. He was his. No one would take him from him. He also could not allow Violet to wallow in sorrow—come to terms with it, yes, but not dwell.
His mongrel was a fighter. If he could not get Violet to lash out—to rant and rave about the injustice done to him. He needed Violet to get angry, even if he had to take the blunt of his mongrel’s rage.
“Do not turn away from me, Violet,” Orphe said softly, rubbing his chin gently across the top of Violet’s head. “Because no matter where you run, I will find you and drag you back to my side.”
Violet hissed out a breath and dug his nails into Orphe’s arms. “Let go of me.”
Orphe closed his eyes at the pain and self-disgust he heard in Violet’s voice. “No,” he said tightening his hold on him. Violet tried to force him away, but there was little point in his attempts. The pod left them enough room to lay comfortably. No matter how hard Violet fought him, there was no getting away from him.
V tried to relax in Orphe’s arms, but no matter what he did, he could still feel Landon’s breath on him—smell the stench of his sweat, as if it burned in his brain. He couldn’t breathe—couldn’t eliminate the feelings of being trapped. He knew Orphe’s arms were around him, but his mind could only remember the pain of the Platinum’s hands on his skin. The horrific invasion of that Elite’s body rubbing against his…and the agonizing violation of Landon moving inside of him.
His skin crawled and he shook with revulsion at the memory of the Platinum’s teeth biting, and his mouth sucking…his tongue licking him. The revolting pleasure Landon subjected him to against his will.
V fought to keep from vomiting.
If he’d been alone he would have gotten past this. If Orphe wasn’t in his life, he wouldn’t feel shame for what had been done to him. He had fought many in his day in Guardian—both mongrels and ‘caregivers’—to keep from getting violated. The first time he had met Riki, his black-haired mongrel friend had saved him from being raped* from an adult that should have been protecting him.
In the harem, he’d been trained for what Landon had done to him. How to cope if it were to happen. How to find ways of surviving something like that. However, none of his lessons accounted for Orphe.
“Let go of me,” V said again, his words thick and coated with shame. His feelings of unworthiness angered him. If it wasn’t for Orphe, these emotions wouldn’t be an issue. None of what happened to him was his fault. It wasn’t his fault. None of it.
“Violet—”
“Get the fuck off me!” V twisted violently in Orphe’s arms. He couldn’t breathe. He could feel every inch of the Blondie’s body pressed against his back, his legs tangled between his. He could feel Orphe’s biceps flex as they lock around him. He was trapped. He couldn’t get away. No matter where he tried to turn, he was blocked by glass on all sides, with no way of escaping.
He couldn’t breathe.
V gasped for air. His nails clawed at his throat until Orphe grabbed his hands and restrained them against his chest, his sight faded in and out.
I can’t—I can’t breathe.
“Violet?” Orphe loosened his arms as his mongrel slumped back against him. Maneuvering in the tight space, Orphe rolled him onto his back. He quilled his rising panic as he looked at Violet’s pale face dotted with sweat, his breath shallow.
Orphe slammed his hand against the circular glass wall. The machine shuddered and groaned, and the lights above and below flickered. He used only enough strength to activate the alarms, not wanting to break free and potentially harm Violet with shattering glass. He was about to strike the glass again, when he heard muffled curses. The glass rose with a hiss of compressed air, revealing the angered face of Raoul.
Cradling Violet to his chest, Orphe carried his mongrel out of the pod, laid him gently on the small bed in the far corner of the room, and stepped aside as Raoul approached. “He woke and began to fight me. I held him down to keep him from harming—”
“I told you this would happen,” Raoul said, his anger ringing clearly in his tone. “The events that lead him here is not something that can be taken lightly, Orphe.”
“You think I take the violation of my partner lightly?” Orphe asked, his body trembling with barely contained rage. “He needs me!”
“He needs to not be crowed! The damage done to his body is nothing compared to the psychological trauma he’s sustained. Pair that to his being a mongrel, what you are doing can lead to a full, and severe, psychotic break—”
“You are not telling me anything I do not already know, Raoul.” Orphe paced at the foot of the bed. He did not need Raoul telling him how to take care of his lover. From the very beginning, Violet pushed him away. Orphe did not want this horrific event to be another reason for Violet to put space between them, whether the mongrel realized he was doing it or not. He may be selfish to think these things and to want to stay glued to his mongrel’s side, but he would not allow anything to separate them, not Violet, not his violation, nothing.
Raoul sighed. “I understand—”
“You understand nothing,” Orphe hissed. He stopped his mad pacing and faced Raoul. “Katze is safe. His body pure from the vile touch of that dishonorable Elite. Do not talk to me about understanding, Raoul.”
“Be that as it may,” Raoul tightly replied. “You are doing more harm than good by overwhelming him with your presence.”
Orphe resumed his pacing, watching every move of Raoul’s out of the corner of his eye as the Blondie examined Violet. “What of his memories,” he said. “Were they recovered?”
Raoul drew a sheet over Violet’s body. “No.” The Blondie held his hand up, warning Orphe from approaching.
“Raoul—”
“I advised you to not look into his memories, Orphe,” Raoul said, “but I would not do the procedure just because I think it would do you harm from seeing them.”
“Then why?” Orphe demanded.
Raoul motioned him away from the bed, and toward the doors. “It did not work. There was an interference with the machines, and they could not be retrieved.”
Interference. Orphe bitterly stared at Raoul. There was no need for further explanation. They both knew what that meant. Jupiter. Their machines did not break down. They did not malfunction. Only she had the power to disable them, which meant she had a hand in what happened. She let this happen to his mongrel.
“I have informed Iason,” Raoul said, but Orphe could barely hear him past the roaring in his ears. “However, if the memory retriever continues to malfunction, we will not know the full scope of Landon’s plans.”
Orphe stiffened. Landon! “Has he recovered?” he asked, his voice calm, if not devoid of emotion.
Raoul eyed him for a moment before replying. “The damage Jared’s pet inflicted was nothing we could not fix. He was removed from the recovery room, and placed in a guarded holding cell.”
Orphe turned away and stared at Violet’s lovely face. The Blondie continued speaking, but Orphe ignored him until Raoul exited the room. He hadn’t just wanted to see the horror of what Violet went through. They had the technology—although it had been meant for something else—to experience sensations and emotions from a person’s mind. He had wanted to understand and go through the same thing his mongrel had gone through, so that Violet wasn’t have been alone in what had happened to him. An extreme measure, maybe, however, he was a Blondie. He would have been able to compartmentalized the emotionally crippling side of the event, and file it in the farthest corner of his mind. He just wanted to—
Orphe growled in frustration. None of it mattered anymore, because Jupiter took that option away from him. The only way he would get any answers is if he spoke with Landon, before Iason came down…
If he got to Landon before Iason, he could get his answers about why the Elite targeted his mongrel. Iason would seek to get Landon to talk about his lab in Ceres, and the illegal experiments he’d been conducting first. Without a memory retriever, how Iason would go about getting his answers could take days.
Striding to Violet’s side, Orphe tenderly kissed his forehead and tucked the sheet around his shoulders before leaving the room. There was only four holding cells Raoul could have ordered Landon to be placed in. Three were bring used for the mongrels they had brought back. The mongrels had not been in critical condition, unlike Landon, so Raoul would have placed them the farthest cells away from the pods. Which left one containment room two halls down from the nearest pod.
Orphe’s lips twisted in dark victory when he rounded the corner and the security guarding the door he wanted entrance to. The security detail straightened at his arrival.
“Sir—”
“Move,” Orphe ordered. The four guards looked at one another before looking back at him.
“I am sorry, Sir Zavi, but we can’t—”
“Remove yourselves from my sight, or I will remove all of your heads from your shoulders.” On any other day, having to repeat himself would have enraged him. However, Orphe felt nothing. He just wanted them out of his way so he could get through the door.
“Y-Yes, Sir.”
Orphe keyed in his code once the guards backed away from him, and waited with unbelievable calm as the door slowly slid open. Stepping inside, he blinked at the sight before him. Landon seated on a white sofa, reading a book. Considering the crimes the Platinum committed, he had expected the Elite to be stripped naked and chained, and kept in the dark, not to be draped with luxuries. The walls hologrammed with a sunny mountain view, the Elite richly garbed, with wine and a three-course meal plated on a table the Elite should have been strapped to.
He snapped.
His fury unchecked, Orphe descended upon Landon. His thoughts of everything he had wanted to say fell short the moment his eyes saw how the Platinum was being treated. Besides, what was there to say? What question could he have asked? This Elite’s actions was beyond forgivable.
oOoOoOo
Iason arrived just as the doors to Landon’s containment cell opened. He was not surprised at who appeared. After his phone call with Jared, Raoul had contacted him. His old friend gave him a detailed relay of everything, and everyone, under his care. Including the conversation Raoul had with Orphe.
He had come a moment too late to calm the hurting Blondie. Not that Iason could blame the Elite. Iason would have done the same if it had been Riki.
Orphe stared at him, the Elite’s face unreadable. Not that a question to what Orphe had been doing needed to be asked. The Blondie was covered in blood. It dripped from his clothes, hands, and face as he walked pass Iason.
Iason glanced through the doorway. The alerted med staff rushed in, and two of the three attendants immediately stumbled out, emptying the contents of their stomachs to the floor.
“Put him back together.” Iason coldly looked at the mess Orphe left behind. Turning, he said over his shoulder, “Death is a gift he is unworthy of. Should he die, so too will all of you.”
TBC…
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Iason/Riki, Raoul/Katze, original characters and novel character pairings.
Parts: 116 of ?
~~**Forever Caged**~~
Walking around his room, Rio stretched his arms over his head and exhaled a low satisfied moan. Man, if only all his jobs could end with a nice nap in a healing pod. For all her royal riches, his mom was a cheap witch when it came to technology. The only time he was shoved in one of those things was when he was about to die. And their ‘bed’ was not nearly as high tech and flashy as the one he had been in. All his old scars were gone too. There was no evidence he had ever been in a fight, let alone shot, stabbed, or clawed from trying to kill someone. There were places he’d never been allowed in, because of his battle scars. Now they were gone!
Rio rubbed his hands together gleefully. Oh, the fun he would have—
“What are you scheming?” an amused voice asked.
Rio flashed Jared, who stood in the doorway, a crooked smile over his shoulder. “I don’t scheme, baby, I plan.”
Jared smiled, Rio’s wicked merriment washing over him, drowning his need for caution of what the blond was thinking of doing. “Oh?” he asked, “and does this plan of yours end up with you back behind these hospital walls?”
Rio grinned and shrugged. “No plan is perfect.”
Jared shook his head. “How have you survived all this time?” His wild, murderous, prince never ceased to amaze him. He had been gripped with worry and fear when he had seen Rio. His blond covered in blood, tortured, and yet the trauma did not seem to affect him. Jared had been warned that Rio might be suffering from delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, but looking at Rio, Jared was not so sure the blond was.
“By killing or maiming everyone that so much as thinks of snuffing me out,” Rio replied matter-of-factly.
Jared shook his head and chuckled. Stepping deeper into the room, he shut the door and sighed. “While we are on the topic of people you’ve killed or disfigured, because of your ‘treatment’ with the blowtorch, Landon will live.”
Rio tsked. “Well, we all make mistakes.”
“Don’t joke about this, Rio. Landon may be a criminal, but he is still an Elite.” Jared frowned. Baffled by how nonchalant Rio treated this, Jared stared at the blond. He should have learned his lesson when he attempted to kill the Onyx, Jerico.
“That douche is no Elite,” Rio said with a dismissive wave. “You know how many bullets it took to slightly harm that blackhead who hired me to take out your boss and Riki? Loads. Landon’s supposed to be a Platinum, and I took him down with a lead pipe to the head. A lead friggin’ pipe! Moreover, the bitch screamed like a gypped hooker when I slapped him around a little. He was no Elite.”
Rio paused, and then innocently looked at Jared. “I only hope the Onyx Elite’s death did not cause too much trouble?”
“He’s not dead,” Jared said. “You did not kill him.”
“Damn,” Rio whispered.
Jared ignored Rio’s grumble. Bloodthirsty thing. He had the Ruby doctor check to see if there was something chemically imbalanced in Rio’s brain, but the blonde’s tests had come back clear of any abnormalities.
“Landon, I’m tellin’ ya, is not an Elite,” Rio said. “I seen your body, and it is perfect. The kind of perfect that only you bastards can be because of how you were ‘born’. Landon’s body…”
Rio frowned, deep in thought. “Landon wasn’t. His face somehow got cut—”
“Somehow?” Jared raised his brows.
Rio grinned wickedly. “Yeah, his face somehow came in contact with the sharp end of a scalpel, so I—being the kindhearted person that I am—helped clean him up by wiping blood from his cheek. He had a freckle on his jaw that he covered with makeup. And that wasn’t the only one. He had other little moles on his chest.”
Jared froze. They may all have different personalities, but none of them were born with any kind of internal or external imperfections. Jupiter would never allow such a thing to happen, and she did not make mistakes.
“So,” Rio drawled, “he cannot be an Elite, and I can’t be punished for ‘hurting’ him. And even if he was an Elite, I can’t be held accountable for my actions anyway. I was clearly out of my mind from being tortured.”
“You strapped him to a table, cut him up, and then burned those wounds to keep him from dying for over an hour,” Jared said dryly.
“I was out of my mind with…fear?” Rio said. He walked over to his bed and lay down. Propping his head on his hand, Rio grinned. “Can’t condemn me if my survival instincts kicked in and shoved the rational part of my brain to the side, can you?”
Jared walked to Rio’s bedside, picked the blond up in his arms, and lay down with his prince snug in his embrace. Jared pressed Rio’s head against on his chest. His panic and fear had dwindled after Michael healed Rio. The crazy blonde’s strange cheerfulness had also shoved those disturbing feelings down. However… to hear Rio talk—regardless of the frivolousness in which Rio treated the topic—about what happen to him, those feels resurfaced. Jared despised the helplessness he had felt. It was unnatural. As a Blondie, nothing should make him feel vulnerable. If he were to think logically, the best way of eliminating those crippling emotions was to kill the baffling creature in his arms.
However…
“So,” Rio said walking his fingertips across Jared’s hard pecks, “are we gonna rub our naughty bits together? Never had sex on a hospital bed before.”
Jared smiled and flattened Rio’s wandering had against his chest. “Not here, no.”
Rio let out a loud, sexually frustrated, sigh. “You know, I don’t know whether to keep trying to kill you or start trying to rape you.”
Jared chuckled. “Rest, Rio. We will play later.” His blond was up now, but once the medication dissipated from his system, he would crash. He wanted his prince in his arms when that happened.
Rio grumbled under his breath and squirmed in the Blondie’s arms until he was in a comfortable position.
Jared held Rio tightly and waited—listening to him complain and talk about nothing until the blonde’s breathing deepened. Taking his cell from his pocket, Jared dialing quickly. He kissed the crown of Rio’s head tenderly as he waited patiently for the receiver to pick up.
“Yes?”
“Iason,” Jared said, “we have a problem.” Repeating the information Rio relayed, Jared disconnected the call, curled around Rio, and closed his eyes. If the blond was his weakness, then he wasn’t alone. His brothers had the same flaw as he did. And that was enough to permanently silence the voice in his head, telling him to let go of his prince.
oOoOoOo
Within the Healing and Recuperation pod, Orphe gazed down at his mongrel. When they arrived, Raoul had taken him by the arm, and forced him out of the room when the Blondie tried to examine Violet. The stark evidence of his mongrel’s suffering under unforgiving bright lights having almost triggered an overabundance of unfiltered rage, that he had nearly killed Raoul’s assistant.
Wandering the halls, Orphe had come across Marcus and his mongrel… He had listened as the Ruby doctor spoke to Marcus softly, as if one would to a wounded animal. His fear had been irrational when he discovered the mental instability of Marcus’s mongrel, all stemming from traumatic events of what had to be from his childhood or the beginning of his adult life.
Orphe, grudgingly, knew very little about Violet’s past. His mongrel playfully—if not scornful—would hint of his life before entering his. However, his love, on more than one occasion, said he and Marcus’s mongrel were together since their Guardian days, which meant they shared a similar past. Therefore, when he returned to the exam room and saw Raoul in the middle of transporting Violet to the treatment room housing an HR pod, Orphe had been adamant in his demands to be enclosed with his mongrel.
Now, Orphe wondered if he had been too hasty in his decision. Violet had woken in his arms not an hour after they had been sealed into the dimly lit machine. He had been startled by the shame he saw shining brightly in his lover’s beautiful eyes… Shame that had his mongrel turning his gaze away from his, something his defiant mongrel had never done before.
Should he had allowed his mongrel time to himself? Orphe’s face tightened and pulled Violet’s stiffened body closer to him, pressed his chest against his back. He wouldn’t allow Violet to run from him, not physically or mentally. He was his. No one would take him from him. He also could not allow Violet to wallow in sorrow—come to terms with it, yes, but not dwell.
His mongrel was a fighter. If he could not get Violet to lash out—to rant and rave about the injustice done to him. He needed Violet to get angry, even if he had to take the blunt of his mongrel’s rage.
“Do not turn away from me, Violet,” Orphe said softly, rubbing his chin gently across the top of Violet’s head. “Because no matter where you run, I will find you and drag you back to my side.”
Violet hissed out a breath and dug his nails into Orphe’s arms. “Let go of me.”
Orphe closed his eyes at the pain and self-disgust he heard in Violet’s voice. “No,” he said tightening his hold on him. Violet tried to force him away, but there was little point in his attempts. The pod left them enough room to lay comfortably. No matter how hard Violet fought him, there was no getting away from him.
V tried to relax in Orphe’s arms, but no matter what he did, he could still feel Landon’s breath on him—smell the stench of his sweat, as if it burned in his brain. He couldn’t breathe—couldn’t eliminate the feelings of being trapped. He knew Orphe’s arms were around him, but his mind could only remember the pain of the Platinum’s hands on his skin. The horrific invasion of that Elite’s body rubbing against his…and the agonizing violation of Landon moving inside of him.
His skin crawled and he shook with revulsion at the memory of the Platinum’s teeth biting, and his mouth sucking…his tongue licking him. The revolting pleasure Landon subjected him to against his will.
V fought to keep from vomiting.
If he’d been alone he would have gotten past this. If Orphe wasn’t in his life, he wouldn’t feel shame for what had been done to him. He had fought many in his day in Guardian—both mongrels and ‘caregivers’—to keep from getting violated. The first time he had met Riki, his black-haired mongrel friend had saved him from being raped* from an adult that should have been protecting him.
In the harem, he’d been trained for what Landon had done to him. How to cope if it were to happen. How to find ways of surviving something like that. However, none of his lessons accounted for Orphe.
“Let go of me,” V said again, his words thick and coated with shame. His feelings of unworthiness angered him. If it wasn’t for Orphe, these emotions wouldn’t be an issue. None of what happened to him was his fault. It wasn’t his fault. None of it.
“Violet—”
“Get the fuck off me!” V twisted violently in Orphe’s arms. He couldn’t breathe. He could feel every inch of the Blondie’s body pressed against his back, his legs tangled between his. He could feel Orphe’s biceps flex as they lock around him. He was trapped. He couldn’t get away. No matter where he tried to turn, he was blocked by glass on all sides, with no way of escaping.
He couldn’t breathe.
V gasped for air. His nails clawed at his throat until Orphe grabbed his hands and restrained them against his chest, his sight faded in and out.
I can’t—I can’t breathe.
“Violet?” Orphe loosened his arms as his mongrel slumped back against him. Maneuvering in the tight space, Orphe rolled him onto his back. He quilled his rising panic as he looked at Violet’s pale face dotted with sweat, his breath shallow.
Orphe slammed his hand against the circular glass wall. The machine shuddered and groaned, and the lights above and below flickered. He used only enough strength to activate the alarms, not wanting to break free and potentially harm Violet with shattering glass. He was about to strike the glass again, when he heard muffled curses. The glass rose with a hiss of compressed air, revealing the angered face of Raoul.
Cradling Violet to his chest, Orphe carried his mongrel out of the pod, laid him gently on the small bed in the far corner of the room, and stepped aside as Raoul approached. “He woke and began to fight me. I held him down to keep him from harming—”
“I told you this would happen,” Raoul said, his anger ringing clearly in his tone. “The events that lead him here is not something that can be taken lightly, Orphe.”
“You think I take the violation of my partner lightly?” Orphe asked, his body trembling with barely contained rage. “He needs me!”
“He needs to not be crowed! The damage done to his body is nothing compared to the psychological trauma he’s sustained. Pair that to his being a mongrel, what you are doing can lead to a full, and severe, psychotic break—”
“You are not telling me anything I do not already know, Raoul.” Orphe paced at the foot of the bed. He did not need Raoul telling him how to take care of his lover. From the very beginning, Violet pushed him away. Orphe did not want this horrific event to be another reason for Violet to put space between them, whether the mongrel realized he was doing it or not. He may be selfish to think these things and to want to stay glued to his mongrel’s side, but he would not allow anything to separate them, not Violet, not his violation, nothing.
Raoul sighed. “I understand—”
“You understand nothing,” Orphe hissed. He stopped his mad pacing and faced Raoul. “Katze is safe. His body pure from the vile touch of that dishonorable Elite. Do not talk to me about understanding, Raoul.”
“Be that as it may,” Raoul tightly replied. “You are doing more harm than good by overwhelming him with your presence.”
Orphe resumed his pacing, watching every move of Raoul’s out of the corner of his eye as the Blondie examined Violet. “What of his memories,” he said. “Were they recovered?”
Raoul drew a sheet over Violet’s body. “No.” The Blondie held his hand up, warning Orphe from approaching.
“Raoul—”
“I advised you to not look into his memories, Orphe,” Raoul said, “but I would not do the procedure just because I think it would do you harm from seeing them.”
“Then why?” Orphe demanded.
Raoul motioned him away from the bed, and toward the doors. “It did not work. There was an interference with the machines, and they could not be retrieved.”
Interference. Orphe bitterly stared at Raoul. There was no need for further explanation. They both knew what that meant. Jupiter. Their machines did not break down. They did not malfunction. Only she had the power to disable them, which meant she had a hand in what happened. She let this happen to his mongrel.
“I have informed Iason,” Raoul said, but Orphe could barely hear him past the roaring in his ears. “However, if the memory retriever continues to malfunction, we will not know the full scope of Landon’s plans.”
Orphe stiffened. Landon! “Has he recovered?” he asked, his voice calm, if not devoid of emotion.
Raoul eyed him for a moment before replying. “The damage Jared’s pet inflicted was nothing we could not fix. He was removed from the recovery room, and placed in a guarded holding cell.”
Orphe turned away and stared at Violet’s lovely face. The Blondie continued speaking, but Orphe ignored him until Raoul exited the room. He hadn’t just wanted to see the horror of what Violet went through. They had the technology—although it had been meant for something else—to experience sensations and emotions from a person’s mind. He had wanted to understand and go through the same thing his mongrel had gone through, so that Violet wasn’t have been alone in what had happened to him. An extreme measure, maybe, however, he was a Blondie. He would have been able to compartmentalized the emotionally crippling side of the event, and file it in the farthest corner of his mind. He just wanted to—
Orphe growled in frustration. None of it mattered anymore, because Jupiter took that option away from him. The only way he would get any answers is if he spoke with Landon, before Iason came down…
If he got to Landon before Iason, he could get his answers about why the Elite targeted his mongrel. Iason would seek to get Landon to talk about his lab in Ceres, and the illegal experiments he’d been conducting first. Without a memory retriever, how Iason would go about getting his answers could take days.
Striding to Violet’s side, Orphe tenderly kissed his forehead and tucked the sheet around his shoulders before leaving the room. There was only four holding cells Raoul could have ordered Landon to be placed in. Three were bring used for the mongrels they had brought back. The mongrels had not been in critical condition, unlike Landon, so Raoul would have placed them the farthest cells away from the pods. Which left one containment room two halls down from the nearest pod.
Orphe’s lips twisted in dark victory when he rounded the corner and the security guarding the door he wanted entrance to. The security detail straightened at his arrival.
“Sir—”
“Move,” Orphe ordered. The four guards looked at one another before looking back at him.
“I am sorry, Sir Zavi, but we can’t—”
“Remove yourselves from my sight, or I will remove all of your heads from your shoulders.” On any other day, having to repeat himself would have enraged him. However, Orphe felt nothing. He just wanted them out of his way so he could get through the door.
“Y-Yes, Sir.”
Orphe keyed in his code once the guards backed away from him, and waited with unbelievable calm as the door slowly slid open. Stepping inside, he blinked at the sight before him. Landon seated on a white sofa, reading a book. Considering the crimes the Platinum committed, he had expected the Elite to be stripped naked and chained, and kept in the dark, not to be draped with luxuries. The walls hologrammed with a sunny mountain view, the Elite richly garbed, with wine and a three-course meal plated on a table the Elite should have been strapped to.
He snapped.
His fury unchecked, Orphe descended upon Landon. His thoughts of everything he had wanted to say fell short the moment his eyes saw how the Platinum was being treated. Besides, what was there to say? What question could he have asked? This Elite’s actions was beyond forgivable.
oOoOoOo
Iason arrived just as the doors to Landon’s containment cell opened. He was not surprised at who appeared. After his phone call with Jared, Raoul had contacted him. His old friend gave him a detailed relay of everything, and everyone, under his care. Including the conversation Raoul had with Orphe.
He had come a moment too late to calm the hurting Blondie. Not that Iason could blame the Elite. Iason would have done the same if it had been Riki.
Orphe stared at him, the Elite’s face unreadable. Not that a question to what Orphe had been doing needed to be asked. The Blondie was covered in blood. It dripped from his clothes, hands, and face as he walked pass Iason.
Iason glanced through the doorway. The alerted med staff rushed in, and two of the three attendants immediately stumbled out, emptying the contents of their stomachs to the floor.
“Put him back together.” Iason coldly looked at the mess Orphe left behind. Turning, he said over his shoulder, “Death is a gift he is unworthy of. Should he die, so too will all of you.”
TBC…