Ninth Orb by O'Connor Kaitlyn

Author:O'Connor, Kaitlyn [O'Connor, Kaitlyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-01-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Eden thought for several moments that she was going to disgrace herself by throwing up. “How?” she finally managed to ask weakly. “You said their queens were virtually helpless.”

Liz swallowed audibly. “They pinch their heads off.”

Eden stared at her friend in disbelief. “You’re serious?”

“One of them asked me why we didn’t have pinchers--why we had hands instead. That’s how I found out. I told you the men have no value to them. If they don’t reproduce, the queen is considered well within her rights to dispose of them, or have them disposed of. Sometimes they merely use their weight to crush them to death and pretend it’s an accident. I didn’t say anything because I don’t know how to handle it and I was afraid--Well, you know how Ivy is. She’s liable to take it as good thing and use it to wipe her pazaan out. I wouldn’t put it past her to encourage everyone to do so and we could end up causing the war we’re trying to avoid.”

Eden’s mind was chaotic, but one thing became crystal clear to her almost immediately. Liz was right. “Does anyone else know?”

“I didn’t tell anyone. It’s in my notes, but ….”

“Delete it from your notes and omit it from your report. I’ll give it some thought and try to decide the best way to handle this. We’ll discuss this again when I come back.”

A sea of male faces greeted Eden at the exit to the safety corridor. She was distracted enough by the ‘food for thought’ Liz had given her that she managed to greet them with what she thought was a nice mixture of aloofness and politeness. Bracing herself, she glanced around at the men, wondering if all of them were ‘breeders’ except the small army of warriors standing at the rear, or if only some of them were. She hadn’t given it much thought, she realized. Baen had made it crystal clear, however, that the warriors were merely warriors, and not allowed to be considered for breeding.

Lucky them.

Enlightenment about their barbaric practices would certainly explain why the Xtanians had first received them with a mixture of excitement and fear. They desperately wanted a mate for themselves and at the same time knew that if they failed to ‘please’ they were dead men.

All things considered Eden had to wonder if their women simply disposed of the men any time they were displeased.

Maybe that was why they sometimes ‘accidentally’ crushed the life out of them?

It didn’t matter, Eden told herself, smiling woodenly as one of the men, one she didn’t recognize, bowed formally and asked if she would care to examine the meznooku they had designed and built in her honor.

She graciously agreed that she would be absolutely delighted and curbed the impulse to whirl around and run back down the safety corridor.

She was distracted by movement within the group as four men came forward carrying an odd looking contraption supported by poles that rested on their shoulders.

They set the thing on the ground.

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