Genesis by Kaitlyn O'Connor

cities, and lost the technology that supported their civilization, they’d had no recourse except to fall back on their instincts for survival. In three generations they’d gone from a civilized people to barbarians using sticks, and rocks, and clubs to defend themselves and their territory, to exist.
    With no way to throw off the yoke they’d allowed the Sheloni to place around their necks, they’d become grimly determined to thwart the Sheloni in any way they were able and those ways were pathetically few--in fact there was only one thing they had managed that had had any effect at all.
    They’d refused to procreate. If they couldn’t prevent the Sheloni from enslaving them, from stealing their young to be reared as slaves, they could at least refuse to bring more slaves into the world for the bastards to use.
    That only worked while they still had the freedom to choose, though. Once the Sheloni captured them, the women no longer had control of their own bodies, or access to the herbs they used to prevent or abort a pregnancy.
    Many had chosen ritual suicide to keep from bringing a child into the world, and, when even that option was denied them, they had killed their newborns.
    And then the Sheloni had begun taking the infants.
    The females they destroyed themselves. They had tried to cultivate the males since those were the most useful to them. They had not been able to make the infants thrive, however. Without their mothers, the infants had grown weaker and weaker despite everything the Sheloni could do and died a slow death instead of the quick death the others had had.
    Deep down, Kole had known from the moment he first saw the alien females that the Sheloni had decided on a new tactic.
    And he had still been inexplicably drawn despite his certainty that the Sheloni would use them against the Hirachi , despite the strange coloring of their skin and hair, drawn particularly to the pink one with the strange reddish brown hair.
    It still fascinated him that these tiny beings looked so much like the Hirachi.
    It said a lot for the ruthless determination of the Sheloni that they’d searched the cosmos until they found a world that had beings so similar to the Hirachi .
    When had they found them? And were they, even now, systematically destroying their world as the Sheloni had destroyed Ach ?
    There was no chance that they would be left in peace, replaced by this weaker race of people, he decided. If the females were any indication, and he was certain they were, then it was doubtful the males would be as big and strong even as Hirachi females.
    They would not be as useful to them, therefore they were safe from the machinations of the Sheloni .
    Why take the females then?
    In spite of their strangeness, they were pretty creatures in a way--in the way that a flower was pretty--and just as fragile he was certain and virtually useless as slaves.
    The Sheloni could not think they could breed the Hirachi with these weak creatures, surely? Even if they did, the offspring could not help but be less.
    But any offspring, if it survived, would still likely be stronger than the female’s race.
    What would make the Sheloni think that the Hirachi males, who had grimly denied their manhood and shunned their own beautiful women to prevent bearing offspring, would not be able to resist these females?
    Maybe it was their arrogance? Maybe they thought the Hirachi were too stupid to realize that they would not introduce the females unless it was possible to breed with them? Maybe they thought the Hirachi males, having been denied access to any female at all for so long, couldn’t control their needs if a female was dangled in front of them? Especially if the female was not Hirachi and therefore could not breed more Hirachi for slaves?
    Unfortunately, once he had allowed those thoughts into his mind, he could not shake them. Partly, he knew, it was because denying his physical need for a woman was sheer torture anyway. The Hirachi