Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 75260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
My hand lingered between my thighs, ostensibly for cleaning purposes, but I felt a sudden, powerful surge of arousal. I wondered for a moment if Mistress Orela had turned on the governor’s stimulation, but then to my dismay I understood that somehow the very idea of the device, and the memory of my master turning its suppression up, had amplified every sensation. Suddenly I desperately wanted to touch myself properly, to seek the release that had been building inside me since my capture.
My fingers pressed more firmly against the little bud, the tender, demure hood that covered the forbidden center of my need, and I bit my lip to suppress a moan. Just for a moment, I told myself. Just to relieve some of this terrible tension.
But even as the thought formed, I heard Mistress Nurana’s footsteps outside my stall, her shadow visible through the frosted glass. I jerked my hand away as if burned, my heart hammering with the knowledge of how close I had come to disobedience and its terrible consequences.
I finished washing quickly, focusing on mundane thoughts to calm my racing pulse. When I stepped out of the shower, towel wrapped around my body, I found the other women emerging from their stalls with troubled expressions and reddened cheeks that seemed to me to indicate similar experiences to mine in the shower.
“Dress quickly,” Mistress Nurana commanded. “The luncheon bell will sound in five minutes.”
The dining hall seemed an example of the controlled elegance Euporian design obviously favored, with a long wooden table and benches arranged precisely next to it. We sat together at one designated table, our schoolgirl uniforms making us look like a group of old-fashioned students rather than grown women being systematically broken down and rebuilt.
The food was simple, but nourishing—soup, bread, and fruit—served by silent staff members who avoided eye contact. As we ate, I found myself studying my classmates more carefully. We were all here for different reasons, but we shared the same expressions of bewildered humiliation.
“I never imagined it would be like this,” Palla whispered, glancing around nervously to make sure no staff members were within earshot.
“What did you expect?” Morandra asked quietly, wincing slightly as she shifted on the hard bench.
“I don’t know. Something more… civilized, I suppose.” Palla’s voice was barely audible. “On Hippolyta, they told us the Academy would be educational, that we’d learn useful skills.”
“We are learning,” said Lara, the woman from Euporia who had been mostly silent until now. “We’re learning exactly what they want us to learn.”
I found myself nodding despite myself. The Academy’s methods were brutally effective precisely because they stripped away every pretense, every comfortable lie we might tell ourselves about our situations. There was no hiding from the reality of what we were becoming.
“The worst part,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, “is how my body responds to it all. Even when my mind rebels, my…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, my cheeks burning with shame. Instead, I found myself plunging into a confession. “I have a governor… you know, the Prosperian thing? … down there.”
“A governor?” Trellama asked softly, her eyes wide. “The thing that tells your… husband… exactly what you’re feeling? Every moment of arousal, every spike of need?”
I nodded miserably. “Not my husband—my…” My mouth twisted to the side. “My master. And… you know… it lets him control me… down there.”
The thought that Mistress Orela or even Prince Hendren himself might be monitoring my responses even now, watching the data stream from my most intimate moments, made my stomach clench with equal parts humiliation and unwelcome excitement.
“At least you have someone who cares about you,” Palla said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “When we go to our Guardians’, that’s all I have. I’ll be handed over to complete strangers without a master to keep watch.”
The reminder of our impending assignment to Guardian couples cast a pall over our quiet conversation. I tried to imagine what it would be like—being examined, instructed, used by people I had never met, while Prince Hendren watched from afar like some perverted patron of the arts.
“Ladies.” Mistress Orela’s crisp voice cut through our hushed discussion. “Finish your meal quickly. You have afternoon lessons to attend.”
We ate in silence after that, each lost in our own anxious thoughts. When we were dismissed, I caught Lara’s eye and saw something there that looked almost like pity. As the only Euporian among us, she understood the system we were being fed into better than the rest of us. The knowledge in her gaze was more terrifying than anything the instructors had told us directly.
The afternoon lesson was galactic history, taught by Mistress Orela herself in a different classroom lined with star charts and political maps. I had always prided myself on my knowledge of interplanetary relations, but the version of history presented here cast everything in a radically different light.