Chapter 82: The Royal Broodmare
The scent of crushed roses in the palace halls did nothing to mask the stench of fear and defeat. It was a cold, metallic smell, sweat-drenched wool and despair, emanating from the long, windowless gallery where they’d been stored. Our victory at the Pass of Echoes had yielded more than a shattered vanguard; it had given us raw material. Thirty-seven men, the remnants of a broken flank, now sat chained to iron rings in the marble floor. Their grey uniforms were stained with blood and mud, their faces hollowed by exhaustion.
Gena and I walked between them, the click of our boots on the veined stone the only sound. Our own warriors flanked us, watchful, their hands on the pommels of swords still crusted with dark flakes. I felt their eyes on me—not just the prisoners’, but our men’s. A possessive heat radiated from them. We had fed them from our bodies, drunk their essence in return, and the bond was a live wire humming in the air.
“They’re strong,” Gena observed, her voice clinical. She stopped before a broad-shouldered man with a gash across his cheek. He glared up at her, defiance burning in his blue eyes. “The Ashen King culls the weak. These are his hardy stock.”
“Stock,” I repeated, the word settling in my gut. This was different from the celebration.That was a communion. This was husbandry.
“They fought bravely. They deserve a choice,” Gena said, but her tone held no softness. It was the voice of a queen stating terms. She turned to address the gallery. “You served a king of dust and bones. He grinds you down to feed his stagnation. We offer a different service.”
A gaunt man with sergeant’s marks spat on the floor near her feet. “We serve the King. We don’t fuck traitor witches.”
One of our warriors, Rhys, moved, but Gena held up a hand. A slow smile touched her lips. She turned to me.“Mother. They’re thirsty.”
The quickening within me stirred, a sympathetic ache in my breasts. They were heavy, full. I met the defiant sergeant’s eyes as I began to unfasten the leather ties at the shoulders of my simple tunic. The air grew thicker. Our own men shifted, a low, collective breath being drawn.
I let the tigen fall. The cool palace air pebbled my skin, but the heat from the stares of three dozen men was like a physical press. My breasts, fuller now than they’d ever been in my old life, felt taut. A single, perfect bead of pearlescent liquid welled at the tip of my right nipple, catching the torchlight.
Gena did the same, her fuller breasts a more dramatic offering. The scent changed. The sour fear was pushed back, overwhelmed by that sweet, musky, profoundly inviting aroma. It was the smell of the war-camp tent, of life in the face of death.It was home.
The sergeant’s defiance wavered. His eyes, locked on my nipple, dilated. A tremor ran through his chain. “What… what sorcery is this?” he whispered, but it was a plea, not a challenge.
“No sorcery,” Gena murmured, kneeling before him. She brought her breast to his lips. “Just truth.Drink. And know where your loyalty should lie.”
He resisted for a heartbeat, his jaw clenched. Then, with a broken sound, he opened his mouth and latched onto her. His suck was desperate, starving. His body shuddered as the first flow hit his tongue. The effect was instantaneous. The hate in his eyes melted, replaced by a dazed, overwhelming need. He groaned around her flesh, his hips pushing up against the empty air.
“Release him,” I said.
Rhys stepped forward with a key. The manacle fell open. The sergeant didn’t attack, didn’t run. He followed Gena’s breast as she rose, crawling on his knees, his mouth sealed to her, sucking with a frantic, pathetic greed. A dark stain spread at the front of his trousers.
“See?” Gena said, her fingers trailing through his matted hair. “Your body knows its queen.”
Chaos, then. A hungry, desperate chaos. Men began to beg, chains rattling frantically.“Please! Let me… let me taste it!”
“I’ll serve!I swear it! Just let me drink!”
One by one, we went to them. It was a brutal, intimate baptism. I knelt before the broad-shouldered man. He didn’t wait for an offer; he lunged forward, his mouth closing over my nipple with a force that made me gasp. His tongue was rough, hot, working desperately to draw out the milk. As he drank, I felt the shift inside him. The rigid tension in his shoulders bled away, replaced by a pliant, worshipful ardor. He was being unmade and remade, his will dissolved in the addictive, heavenly fluid flooding his senses.
When I pulled away, a string of silvery milk connected my nipple to his lips for a second before snapping. He looked up at me, panting. “My Queen,” he breathed, the words sodden with devotion.
“You wish to serve?” I asked, my voice low.
“Yes. Anything.”
“Then you will.” I stood, and he remained on his knees, his face level with my waist. I loosened the lacing of my trousers, pushed them down just enough. My sex, slick and swollen from the constant quickening, was exposed to the warm, dank air. “Serve.”
He understood. With a moan of gratitude, he buried his face between my thighs. His tongue was not rough now, but fervent, tracing my folds with a worshipper’s precision before plunging deep. He ate me with a focused desperation, as if trying to consume the very source of the power he’d tasted. His hands gripped my hips, holding me to his mouth as he drank from this new, saltier fountain.
All around the gallery, the same scene unfolded. Gena had two former enemies on their knees before her, their faces buried in her cunt, their tongues lapping at her in a competitive rhythm. Another was clamped onto her breast from behind, his arms wrapped around her torso, his eyes squeezed shut in ecstasy as he suckled. The room filled with the wet, sloppy sounds of hungry mouths, the grunts of men, our sharp, ragged sighs.
The conversion was not gentle. It was a visceral takeover. Rhys and our other warriors moved through the gallery, unchaining men who were now pliant and begging. They didn’t need guards. They needed directives.
“You,” I said to the man between my legs, pulling his head back by his hair. His mouth was glistening. “Can you fuck as well as you lick?”
“Yes, my Queen. Please.”
I turned, bracing my hands against a stone pillar. “Then do it. Claim your place.”
He fumbled with his trousers, his cock springing out, thick and flushed. He positioned himself, and with a single, powerful thrust, he was inside me. He filled the aching, receptive hollow perfectly. He fucked me with a clumsy, earnest intensity, his body slapping against mine, his breath sobbing in my ear. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he chanted with each drive.
It became a frenzied assembly line of devotion. A man would finish, spurting his seed into my willing depth with a choked cry, only to be pulled away and replaced instantly by another, his mouth still wet from Gena’s milk or her cunt. They took us in every way they could imagine—from behind, on our knees, with me riding one while another fed from my breast. The marble grew slick beneath us.
They were learning their new roles through their bodies. Each orgasm they surrendered inside us was a vow. Each time they drank from us, it was a sacrament. Their former loyalties were erased, overwritten by a biological imperative more powerful than any oath to a distant, barren king.
Gena was on her back, one leg hooked over the shoulder of a man driving into her, while another knelt astride her face, fucking her mouth with short, deep strokes. She gagged, but her eyes were triumphant, staring up at the vaulted ceiling as she took them, owned them, remade them.
Finally, when the last of them had spent themselves inside us or across our skin, when the gallery reeked of sex and sweat and the cloying sweetness of our milk, a profound silence fell. The thirty-seven men lay around us, or knelt by us, spent, dazed, and utterly transfixed. Their eyes, once full of hate or fear, now held only a glassy, unwavering adoration.
Gena wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and rose, her movements fluid despite the spend leaking down her thighs. She looked over her new converts, a general surveying her troops.
“The Ashen King thinks he breeds soldiers in cold halls with shouts and rules,” she said, her voice echoing softly. “We breed them with warmth.With life. You are ours now. Your blood, your seed, your strength—it all flows back to us. And from us, it will flow into an army he cannot comprehend.”
She walked to a high, narrow window, looking out at the twilight. “He will come for his lost dogs. He will bring his real force.” She turned back, her silhouette dark against the dim light. “And you will be the first line of our welcome. You will fight for the mothers who fed you. You will die for the queens who filled you. And if you are very, very good,” she added, a cruel, beautiful smile touching her lips, “you might get to do it all again.”
A low, unified groan of anticipation vibrated through the men. It was the sound of perfect, hungry obedience.
I leaned against the cold pillar, feeling the new seed take root, feeling the unbreakable threads of loyalty tighten around us. We were no longer just rebels in a mountain pass. We were a cancer in the heart of his kingdom, and we were growing.