The Alien King’s Pet by Loki Renard

16Weird Biology

Dominax watched his pet slip into deep sleep as the doctor capped the needle.

“She needs to be trained to take medical attention, or she’s just going to become stressed every time we try to handle her.”

“I had barely begun to train her when she ran off,” Dominax replied. “And apparently, my brother decided to let me go insane looking for her rather than telling me where she was.”

“You told me you didn’t need my help.”

“That's no excuse, Darma. You could have told me. Not telling me meant that she stayed out there longer and got sicker than she needed to. You colluded with the human. You aided her escape. Darma, you could have cost her everything. Are you truly so bitter?”

“I helped you. And her. I brought her back to you. I could have put her on a ship and sent her anywhere in the universe. I could have sold her to the scythkin. They worship humans. They construct entire gardens to keep their humans in.”

“You could have. You didn’t. But just because you didn’t do something worse, doesn’t mean that what you did wasn’t bad.”

“Just tell me what you’re going to do to me, Dominax. Are you going to exile me? Execute me?”

“You are my brother,” Dominax declared. It was a simple declaration of fact, but it carried a great weight of implication. Family could never be harmed. No matter what. There were great dungeons beneath the city, designed to hold royal traitors who could not be killed because of their blood connections.

“I’d rather you threw me in the lava than lock me up, Dominax.”

“I’m not going to do either. You’ve obviously formed a bond with Katie, which is a good thing. And I am down a guard, thanks to Alf’s betrayal. So you will be her guard. When I cannot be there, she will be in your care.”

“So I’m to be a glorified babysitter.”

“Yes.”

Darma sighed. “Fine. That’s fair. You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

“So glad you agree,” Dominax drawled.

Darma’s smile broadened as he turned away. He had to know he was fortunate. Dominax was not given to mercy. This was, on the surface, very merciful. But Dominax intended to hold Darma responsible for any infractions associated with Katie. She would not be out of his sight or Darma’s for a very long time. If Darma thought that he was going to get off lightly, he was wrong.

Before they could discuss that matter in greater detail, the physician returned. He looked concerned, which made Dominax concerned.

“Your royal highnesses, I have something like a diagnosis.”

“Let me guess. She’s pregnant,” Darma said. It was also what Dominax was thinking, though he had more patience.

“No,” the physician said. “She’s not pregnant. She’s growing wings.”

Dominax and Darma looked at one another, expressions of amazement and confusion appearing on both their faces in quick succession.

“No fucking way,” Darma exclaimed.

The physician brought up a panel with some images. One of them was on the back of her shoulders, where she did in fact have a slight bump.

“I was worried that these might be some kind of tumor or other malignant growth, perhaps caused by exposure to our atmosphere without any kind of shielding. I took some ultrasounds, and there is no doubting it. Those are wing buds emerging from her scapula. I imagine the transition is not pleasant for a human at this stage of growth. Has she complained about pain in her shoulders?”

“No,” Darma said. “She’s complained about absolutely everything besides that. Although she did mention being achy all over.”

Dominax had to hold himself back from expressing his irritation that Darma knew her better than he did.

“Maybe they’re not causing her physical pain, but they are almost certainly putting her body through serious stress. She is mostly past the natural growth phase — though her brain will continue to develop for several more years. The human frontal lobe is not fully developed until twenty-six years of age.”

“So she has some time to learn to make less reckless decisions. Good.”

“Fewer reckless decisions.”

“Less, and fewer,” Dominax snapped. He was not pleased at this piece of news. It was another complication he did not need — and the news that she was not pregnant was also disappointing. He had hoped that some element of their trysts had survived the distance and the time and the mystery.

“We should inform the patient. Understanding what is happening to her will help her, I believe. My tests reveal the obvious, that she has been under a very great deal of stress for a protracted period of time. She needs to be kept quiet and calm. I also have something to keep her nausea under control.”

Katie hadn’t slept this well, or this long, in a long time. It took her a moment or two when she woke up to remember where she was and how she had come to feel so relaxed.

“Motherfucker…” she pushed back the covers and discovered that she was naked. She had no idea what the doctor had done to her while she was out, but nothing hurt, so that was good.

“No need to be angry, you’re fine.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She vented her ire at Darma, who was sitting in a nearby chair.

“I’m guarding you. That’s my punishment.”

She snorted and pulled the sheets up around her neck. “Doesn’t seem like much of a punishment.”

“Trust me. It’s plenty punishment.”

Katie guffawed.

“I’m going to tell Dominax you’re awake. He needs to talk to you.”

He got up with a swoop of wing, dropping a few small feathers as he left the room. She didn’t want to talk to Dominax, but she knew she wasn’t going to get a choice in the matter. The king had her back in his custody, and her free will had evaporated in the process.

It did not take long for Dominax to return, along with the doctor who had sedated her. She did not want to see either of them.

“We’ve been able to understand what is happening to you,” Dominax told her.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“You are going to be undergoing some physical changes,” Dominax said in the same tone the lady who had taught sex-ed at her school years ago had done.

“I’m not pregnant,” She denied out of reflex.

“No. You’re not.”

Her first reaction was a hollowing in her stomach, followed by confusion. “Wait. What?”

She’d been secretly certain that she was pregnant. Hearing Dominax tell her that she wasn’t didn’t really compute right away.

“The doctor has confirmed that you are not yet pregnant.”

“Then what the fuck are you talking about?” She looked from Dominax, to Darma, and to the doctor. None of them had expressions on their faces which told her anything at all. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Have you noticed any pain or discomfort in your shoulders?” The doctor asked the question.

“Uhm. No. I mean, not any more than everywhere else in my body. More my ass really.”

“If you’d like to sit up, I’ll show you something in this mirror,” the doctor said, producing the aforementioned instrument.

“What is happening?”

The sheets left her back bare, and when the doctor put the mirror behind her, and then Dominax held another one in front of her, she saw her back.

“Okay, what the fuck!”

Her shoulders were… bulgy and lumpy. Not hugely, but definitely noticeably.

“What is going on back there?”

“Would you like to break the news, sire?” The doctor’s voice came from behind her head.

“Yeah, would you like to break the news, sire!?” Her tone was much less respectful than the doctor’s and far more irritated.

“You’re growing wings. That is what the doctor believes. The growths on your back are the beginnings of wing buds. We see these quite often in the teenage juveniles of our species.”

“Wait. The teenagers? So babies can't fly?”

“No. The wings aren’t developed to a flying state until around thirteen years of age or so. Evolution did not favor flying babies in a lava world.”

“No. I imagine it wouldn’t.”

She was in shock. That’s why she was having an inane conversation about flying babies. Being told that she was growing wings, and then seeing the beginnings of that process taking place beneath her skin was, well, the more she thought about it, terrifying.

“How is this possible? I’m a human.”

“It means that your genes code for wings, but that in your natural environment those genes are not expressed. When the environment changes, different genes are activated. Humans apparently have vestigial wing DNA. This is quite a breakthrough.”

“So I am going to be able to fly?”

“Maybe. It depends how large they grow and whether you develop the necessary musculature to support wing function. Because your species is not usually winged, what grows might be more vestigial than functional.”

“But there’s a chance.”

“Yes. There’s a chance.”

“Wow,” she breathed. “Awesome.”

The king did not share her opinion. The last thing Dominax needed was a pet who could fly. There was nothing in the literature or human history about having wings, at least, nothing that didn’t have serious questions around it as to its veracity.

However, it did not take a great deal of research to realize that Katie was going to be a pain in the ass as a flying pet.

“Is there something you can do to stop the progress of the growth? It can’t possibly be good for a human to grow wings.”

“I don’t believe intervention would be wise, my king,” the doctor said. “If her body is producing wings, I think we have to accept it as the proper course of nature. The practice of wing docking has long been considered cruel.”

The doctor was not saying anything Dominax did not already know. But that did not mean he wanted to hear it. Once she had wings, she would be even harder to control — and what would she truly be? A human was a pet. A human with wings was practically a Homelander. She would be practically indistinguishable if they were feathered.

Keeping her as a pet would be considered, well, unorthodox in that case. The Homelanders were not in the habit of questioning their king, but the last thing Dominax wanted to do was encourage his citizens to start keeping one another. That never ended well.

And then there were more practical matters to worry about. Like worrying about her being able to fly.

Wings. She was growing fucking wings.

Katie wasn’t sure she truly believed the doctor. Sure, her shoulders had felt a little weird, but the constant nausea had been far more of an issue.

Even more intense than the whole wings situation was the fact that she wasn’t pregnant. Deep down, secretly, she had thought she was. It was the reason she hadn’t fled the planet. It was the reason she had stayed close and caused chaos and basically made it easy for Dominax to find her. Subconsciously, of course. She would never have done any of that consciously, because everything she had just thought to herself was obviously crazy.

But she was disappointed.

The thoughts of being pregnant had been terrifying, but she had felt so much less alone. A baby would mean she wasn’t the only human on the planet. She would have been the only human, plus .5 of a human.

She hadn’t actually lost anything, but she had lost the idea of a thing, and that made her sad, and made her cling to Dominax a little harder than was really wise.

Katie couldn’t even tell him what the problem was. She had been so vocal about not wanting a baby. It made no sense to now be mourning the loss of one that never was. But that was the human experience all over. Being caught in a state of constant contradiction, never really knowing what she wanted really. Or knowing one day, and then not knowing the next. It was all so confusing.

“There is some good news in all of this, my king.”

“Oh yes, what is that?” Dominax was already thinking about how tedious it was going to be to have to bar all the windows of the palace.

“My tests indicate that our species are reproductively compatible. Your initial attempts may not have been successful due to the changes taking place elsewhere in her body, but I believe in the future, conception is possible.”

That was good news. A smile spread over Dominax’s face, hope for the future, along with the promise of new life emerging from the woman he loved.

He looked at his pet, and saw a similar hope on her face.

No matter what she had said, or even yelled, she had been disappointed when the doctor said she wasn’t pregnant. He had learned to decipher her emotions quite well. She was full of them, constantly emitting one feeling after another. When the doctor confirmed her lack of pregnancy, her face had fallen and her eyes had gone dull. Now there was fresh fire in her gaze.

“Don’t get ideas,” she said. “Don’t…”

He swept her up into his arms, holding her tight though she squirmed and made faces of discontent at him, only to bury her face in his neck and growl…

“I might have missed you, but I’ll never admit it. And I’m out of here as soon as I grow these wings in.”

“One thing at a time,” Dominax rumbled back. “Plan your escape later. You are still weak for the moment. And you need to be taken care of while your wings emerge. Let me do that. Let me do something for you.”

“What?”

“Let me love you.”

“I can’t stop you loving me. But why would you love me? How could you love me? I’m nothing to you.”

“I missed you a great deal,” he growled in her ear. “There was not a day you were gone that I did not search for you, and did not fear for you. Please, do not run from me again, my pet.”

His words were sweet, but her strange captivity was not. “I can’t promise that. I can’t promise anything. I’m going to have wings. Who knows how else I will change here.”

“However you change, I will want you, Katie. More than want you. You are mine. You are absolutely, entirely, completely mine.”