It was always hot down in the breeding cages.
Once, Layla heard there had been a snowstorm outside. A collar trash brunette from across the cage stacks had spoken of it. It had lasted a whole week from what one of the guards let slip. Nothing of this could be sensed down in the breeding cages. Master Gerard, she knew, had probably made it that way.
The air was stuffy and still. It was so humid that Layla felt as if the air itself was water. She lay back in her cage, trying to spread herself out to cool. Sweat ran down her neck, her breasts, her belly, and limbs.
To her right, pale Molly, the Irish girl, was trying to fan herself with her own hands. She had such beautiful blue eyes, Layla thought. Staring at the girl’s pale, naked body was one of her only pleasures down here in the breeding cages. Until recently, they would kiss and finger each other. However, the Hataduri bitch in the cage to the left would give Layla dirty looks afterwards.
The Hataduri bitch was a problem. A Shang girl and a blonde had taken to pleasuring each, as well. Three sleeps ago, the Hataduri told Mean and Meaner. Whether they believed her are not, they gave no sign. However, they moved the blonde to a different cage in the opposite stack. That was the end of that.
Layla regarded the Hataduri girl. She sat crosslegged in her cage, head tucked down to fit against the cage. She stared into space, stopping every so often to lick her left breast - and talk to it. That, or she would reach up and stroke the right side of her cheek. Master Gerard had fondled her breasts and kissed her cheek. She imagined the moment again, and more besides, no doubt. Many of the breedery slaves day-dreamed. Those newer to their cage of escape. Those more accustomed of Master.
Layla’s mind went back to the last time Master Gerard had used her. How his cock had felt in her mouth. The taste of his seed. His hand clamped around her throat. How he forced her thighs apart with his knees before he entered her.
She moved her hand down between her thighs and slipped two fingers in. She could not please herself: the Hataduri would rat on her, and then her wrists would be cuffed apart to either side of her cage. But, if she was discrete, she could imagine how it felt-
In the cage above her, the slave girl retched.
Layla opened her eyes just as vomit poured into her cage. It splashed on her knees and shins.
“Sadina?” Molly crouched on one knee, grabbing her cage bars and looking up at the vomiting girl. “Sadina, are you all right?”
Sadina, the blonde with the blue-green eyes Master had played with while Layla had been put to the Wheel, said nothing. Then, she threw up again.
“Oh, Sadina!” Said Zana, the Shang girl. “This is wonderful!”
Soon, all the slaves were talking about it.
“I’m sorry, Layla,” Sadina wiped her lips with the back of her hand. Her face was flushed.
“It’s alright, Beautiful,” Layla reached up to the bars and took Sadina’s hand. The blonde squeezed back. The slaves called each other beautiful here. “You carry his child.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I am sure,” said Layla. “I’ve seen it before. I have been bred before, too. Once, by Master,” she bared her inner thigh for Sadina to see her breeding mark tattoos.
“Sadina, I’m so happy for you!” Molly reached through the bars to stroke the blonde’s hair.
The blonde smiled and kissed Molly’s fingers.
The Hataduri girl, Layla could not help but notice, was not smiling. Instead, she clutched at the cage bars, glaring at Sadina.
Layla looked away to hide her smile. Ha! You bitch! Would that Master never breeds you!
“What happens to me now?” asked Sadina.
“They will take you upstairs to the breeders’ cells,” said Zana. “It is wonderful there. You will be locked in a cell almost the size of this room - and it will be for you, alone.”
“No!” Sadina gasped. “Truly?”
“In that cell, you will be slept on hay.”
“What will my cage be like?”
“There will be no cage, Beautiful,” Zana smiled and shook her head. “He will chain you by your throat to a ring on the floor. It is quite long - you will be able to stand and walk several steps in any direction. Guards will check on you every hour, even when you are sleeping. If you call, they will come at once. You will be fed more. You will know when it is day outside from the light.”
“There is sunlight?”
“Yes,” said Zana. “Master will come to check on you, as well. He will touch her belly like this,” she put her hand on her own belly. “Sometimes, he will listen with his ear. He will be very proud of you, Sadina. Once you have pupped, he will let you have your child for two weeks. Then, he will take it from you and bring you back here. The guards will milk you to feed your child. Then, the child will be given away to one of Master’s allies. Their family will be joined with House Stone.”
“That’s wonderful,” Molly’s eyes sparkled in the dark. “I hope he breeds me too!”
“Oh, he has his eye on you,” said Zana. “He will pup you!”
Molly clapped her hands and cheered. Then, she put her hand through the bars to touch Sadina’s belly. “Well done, Beautiful. Master will be happy with you!”
“Well done, Sadina!” Said Zana.
“Well done, Beautiful!”
“Well done!”
Sadina smiled and began to cry.
***
An hour later, the guard the slave girls called “Mean” entered the breedery. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of vomit and walked straight to Sadina’s cage.
The blue-green-eyed blonde regarded her, her expression anxious.
“Ah, very nice!” Mean nodded and smiled. She unlocked the cage and drew her whip. “Out, Slave. You will be upstairs for the next nine months.”
“Yes, Mistress!” The blonde climbed out of the cage and knelt, palms on the floor, before Mean.
The guard fitted a leash chain to the blonde’s collar, gave it a tug to test it, then led the girl away. She crawled after the guard, her leash chain swinging.
“Say goodbye to your slut friends and slut enemies,” said Mean. “You are twice lucky, Bitch. I do not think he will send you back down here again.”
Mean locked and barred the door behind her. The breeding cages returned to almost complete darkness.
Layla put her hand on her belly, stroking it as she had done twice before.
She remembered how it felt looking down and seeing her belly swollen. How the first one had kicked! She remembered how Fogrim had kept her separate from the other slaves both times she’d been bred. How she would lie, chained at the throat, on a patch of straw between his weapons rack and the head of a cave hyena trophy. Fogrim had checked her belly every day. He’d given her meat-covered bones he threw her to gnaw on.
She remembered one time when his friends visited. That night, all the other girls were bathed, oiled, and perfumed before being locked into a room with nothing but rugs, furs, and jars of wine. Before Fogrim and his guests entered for their sport, he pulled her aside for each of the men to examine, their hands moving up and down over her belly. Their nods to Fogrim. His smile. That night, all she did was kneel in a corner holding Fogrim’s wine cup while the other girls were fucked, again and again, throughout the night.
How nice it had been to be a bred slave!
The bars of her cage seemed to close in around her. She had lost her chance, she realized. Gerard would not greet her. She was no longer anything special to him! She was just one of many girls, no better than common collar trash. No, Layla realized. She was worse than that. The blue-green-eyed blonde, Sadina, was trash, and yet even she had been taken for breeding.
Layla felt the smoothness along her left thigh. She peered at it in the gloom - her brand had completely faded. Her transhuman body had taken two years, but it had finally removed the deep branding scar she had been marked with0 back at the Red Water slave camp.
Gerard, she thought, didn’t even care enough to mark her again.
“Layla?” Asked Molly. “Layla, are you alright?”
“Yes,” Layla sniffed.
“Then why are you crying, Beautiful?”
“No, no. I’m just happy for Sadina,” she lied.
Molly’s expression of concern did not change. However, she asked no more.