To the Victor Go the Spoils

                                    

                                          
Chapter 2
                          
Broodmother life was… interesting to say the least. Keith had slept for hours only to wake up, still groggy with the aftereffects of sleep and sex, to the very real reminder he was now with children, with Kolivan nowhere to be found. There was no hiding the matter. One or two eggs would have sat inside him without anyone knowing but… god… this many, he looked like a whale dam close to term. He couldn’t even begin to count them all, loosing track after eight or so whenever they began to slip against each other. Easily fifteen if he had to guess.
                          
His center of balance had drifted drastically as well. Keith’d wobbled around the bottom of the hull where the octopus had left him, moving between beams like a tottering newborn taking their first few strokes. It had taken ages, probably hours before he could swim even close to his previous grace, moving maddeningly slow despite the frantic beating of his rear fin. He’d only made it halfway back to the opening in the hull when Kolivan returned, humanoid arms full of shrimp and kelp, whisked him back down and commanded him to rest and recover.
                          
The food had confused him at first. He’d been told by others of his kind how other species would take advantage of him, leave him for dead once they filled their biological imperative, how only the females of his own would hunt and return to him with food while he hid carrying their young. It was just how the ocean was, but Kolivan seemed to throw that thinking out the window. Keith had asked him once, the third time he’d ushered him back away from the wide openings in the old ship and urged him to eat.
                          
“What is the point in giving you my young if they're not to reach term,” was all he’d said on the matter, but Keith was certain there were other motives there. Kolivan’s remarks on treasures and collections had him wary, but he kept silent. They both knew he was not about to make a successful break like this, weighed down by eggs. Instead he took his time exploring the ship, sorting through the many collections of trinkets his mate had amassed. There were coins much like those he’d been caught collecting at the start of all this, human artifacts Keith had only heard stories of, swords and candle holders and forks and spoons, sculptures and carvings and looking glasses that reflected him as clearly as a placid pool.
                          
In them he could see the slow transformation of himself as the weeks passed by, how his arms and hips softened slowly from his domesticated life and the abundance of food Kolivan provided. While he knew the eggs would barely grow inside him he could still feel the subtle changes, their firmness changing as they grew inside their shells. Ever so often, after the first few weeks he could feel them shift on their own even when he laid still. His initial concerns had faded away over the first few days, replaced with something resembling fondness for them. Still, he couldn’t wait for them to hatch, to leave his body and finally, finally, let him stretch his fins properly again.
                          
Kolivan fucks him on the regular. The intent behind it seems to change with each passing month. At first it was to ensure his eggs are fertilized, massaging Keith’s cunt with his suckers until he comes around them, fresh seed washing from inside his womb and bathing them until he can give no more and he swears the clutch must be floating in an excess of his own fluids. Now, Kolivan is rutting up inside him, slow and teasing as he probes against the entrance to Keith’s womb.
                          
“Remind me…” Keith gasps between thrusts, “…why you insIST… on doing this?” His brain is halfway down to his hips already, making speech harder than usual.
                          
“I’ve told you,” Kolivan says, cupping and massaging Keith’s chest as he rolls the words against Keith’s nape, “I need to ensure they’re safe and healthy inside you. Were I to lay them free in the ocean I’d be doing this everyday, checking they’re aerated, not too hot, not too cold…” He probes up against the tight ring of muscle holding the eggs inside, testing it’s limits. It’s his smaller tentacle today, going to provide nowhere near the stretch Keith’s grown to love over the past few weeks as Kolivan’s emptied ovipositor fucked him senseless. “You’re not suggesting I stop, are you?”