by Roxie Ray
His eyes were focused, dead ahead. I half-expected him to glance over at me as I alternated between staring past him and at him…but he didn’t.
Ronan was a soldier. A warrior. The kind of person who only looked forward. Who never looked back.
I envied him for that.
I tore my eyes away from the scenes outside the hover-car and Ronan’s handsome face so I could start looking ahead too.
My future was at the palace, not with Ronan.
Whatever I felt when I looked at Ronan’s face wasn’t mine to keep.
The palace was…beautiful. A big part of me had hoped that it wouldn’t be, but it was. It should have made me hopeful. It should have made me believe my new life here would be as lovely as my new home was.
But in my heart, I had too much doubt now. Everything I’d heard about my husband-to-be told me he wasn’t a good man, let alone a good king.
If it had been ugly, at least it would have verified the way I felt.
“Loosen your shoulders,” Ronan said to me as we walked to the throne room, side by side. “Relax your jaw.”
“You relax yours first,” I challenged him. “You’re wound just as tight as I am. If I have to relax, so do you.”
Ronan and I stared at each other for a moment, then we both let the tension in our bodies go. It wasn’t easy. Ronan, as I understood it, had spent most of his life in the military. I’d spent most of my formative years in finishing schools where I’d get a rap across the knuckles with a riding crop if I didn’t keep my shoulders perfectly level and my back completely straight.
But after a moment, we were both doing a better job of playing our parts. We were supposed to be bodyguard and future queen, not two nervous peasants going for an audience with the great and powerful king.
“Announcing Alora Rosenvale, first and only daughter of Robert Rosenvale, president of the sectors, Earth.” Orion called my name out as the guards opened the doors of the throne room for us. “Accompanied by Lieutenant Ronan Moonsong of Moonsong Temple, her temporary guard.”
“Temporary?” I looked to Ronan, confused. I didn’t know why that word struck me so badly.
Maybe just because it meant that soon, I’d have one less ally here. I hadn’t realized that Ronan wasn’t going to be sticking with me. I’d thought his position was going to be a permanent one.
I didn’t like that. Not at all.
“Step inside, Your Highness.” Ronan nodded, directing me through the throne room’s doors. “Kali and I will be right behind you. You do not need to be afraid.”
I almost bristled at that term—afraid—at least, until I closed my eyes and listened to my heartbeat.
It was racing.
I was afraid.
Whether I needed to be or not…that was yet to be seen.
My eyes scanned the room as I entered it. My skimpy outfit left me feeling completely exposed to the eyes of King Brixta’s court, and unlike the warriors on the ship, these people didn’t even try to hide their stares.
Along each side of the black carpet that led to the throne, well-dressed lords and ladies regarded me with suspicion. I could understand that. Some of the older lords had likely hoped that their own daughters might someday become queen. Many of the ladies must have imagined themselves in the position I was in right now.
None of them looked like they particularly envied me, though.
It wasn’t jealousy I was seeing in their stares. It was something else— uncertainties about how my presence would change things here on Lunaria, maybe. Some looked on me with hatred. Either they weren’t too keen on having a human for a queen, or they thought I was just as bad as King Brixta was.
Not all of my onlookers were nobles, though. Many of those staring at me were women dressed as I was, with just as much makeup and just as few clothes on. Some were Lunarian. Some human. But their tops and pants were cut from worse cloth than my own were. They wore no metal or jewels, not even anything as simple as the glowing pendant that hung from my neck.
This was King Brixta’s harem, I realized. They didn’t look at me with hatred, they looked at me with sadness. One look back at them told me why.
All of them were bruised, even those who were visibly pregnant. Some were missing fingers, even hands and feet. Others had stitches across their cheeks and scars along their necks, like their throats had nearly been slit.
When my gaze met theirs, they turned their eyes to the floor.
Maybe that was for the best. When they stared at me, they felt sorry for me.
I was beginning to feel sorry for me too—but even more than that, I felt sorry for them.
“Ronan,” I whispered as I came to the end of the black carpet. The throne loomed before me, huge and intimidating…but it was empty. “Where is he?”
“I do not know, Your Highness.” Ronan placed a hand on my shoulder as he came to stand at my side. “I fear we are operating on the king’s time now. But—”
“Wife?” A deep, phlegmy voice oozed out from an open door behind the throne. It echoed through the throne room.
As it did, everyone around Kali, Ronan, Orion and me dropped to their knees and bowed their heads low.
“Is that my wife I hear?” A boyish giggle followed the voice this time as it sounded again. It was an eerie thing to hear—like a child’s laugh, only far too deep to possibly belong to a cub.
Slowly, Kali and Orion lowered themselves to their knees as well. It left only Ronan and me standing in the room.
“We didn’t cover this, Ronan,” I hissed at him. “Do we kneel as well?”
“You are the future queen of Lunaria, Your Highness. You kneel to no one,” he said.
“And you?”
Ronan smirked. “If the king wants me to kneel, he’ll have to make me.”
A heavy footstep came from the room behind the throne next, then another, then another. In the doorway, a huge shadow was beginning to appear.
This was the moment, then.
I was about to see the king I had come all this way for. The king I would spend the rest of my life with.
After all I’d heard of King Brixta and all I’d seen here today, I had very few hopes left about all of this.
But as King Brixta emerged, every last one of them died right there.
He was huge, with a belly that hung down over his pelvis like an apron and feet that bulged irregularly beneath his boots. He had no neck to speak of, just row after row of jiggling chins. None of that bothered me. I’d seen plenty of billionaires who donated to my father of that same build. As superficial as my attraction to Ronan was sometimes, I wasn’t repulsed by bodies. Some of those friends of my father’s had kind eyes and warm laughs, gave soft bear hugs that had comforted me during some of the worst parts of my childhood.
No, what repulsed me was the smell that came with King Brixta’s entrance. Stale wine and sweat, an unhealthy stench. King Brixta’s white tunic beneath his black robe was stained purple with spilled drink. His claws were long and twisted, the sickly yellow color of old earwax. There was no kindness in his beady black eyes, so unlike Ronan’s shifting purple irises—but there was something else there instead.
Hunger.
Eagerness.
And, as his gaze washed over my body…
Lust.
“Wife,” he garbled as his lips slid into a smile slick with spittle. He waddled towards me and raised one of his crooked yellow claws up to my cheek. “My, you are even more delectable than I imagined.”
Delectable. It was hard to tell if he wanted to fuck me or eat me.
Either way, I forced myself to smile back at him.
Play your part, Alora. Play your stupid, star-crossed part.
“And how handsome you are, my king.” I kept my voice soft as lavender fields still fresh with dew, warm and clear like a cloudless summer day. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Mm. Good. Very good.” King Brixta looked me up and down for just a moment more—and then, just l
ike that, his consideration of me was done.
On one hand, I wasn’t exactly about to complain about being out from under his lustful little gaze.
On the other…how was I supposed to turn the heart of a king who only looked at me the way someone might check out the specials on a restaurant menu?
The king turned to Ronan next and clapped him on the shoulder with fingers like overcooked sausages. “You did well, Ronan, my friend! I knew I could trust you to bring my female to me safe.”
“Of course, Your Highness.” Ronan was playing his part well too—though I couldn’t help but notice that when he called the king Your Highness, there wasn’t quite the same fondness in his tone as when he said those words to me instead.
“And Orion, you are looking well! Nothing at all like your no-good father, thank the moons.” The king chuckled as Orion’s face went a shade paler…and then, to my dismay, he turned his gaze on Kali. “Ah. And you, Kaliope. You are looking…mm. Delicious. How old are you now?”
“Seventeen, Your Highness,” Kali mumbled where she knelt. She kept her eyes down, and I didn’t blame her.
“Mm. Three more years until you can be mine as well, then?” The eagerness in his voice made my stomach churn with disgust.
“Four, Your Highness,” Kali corrected him. “The age of majority on Lunaria is twenty-one.”
“We will have to see about fixing that then.” King Brixta shuffled over to her and ran the tip of one of his claws along her lower lip. “A piece of fruit already so ripe should not be allowed to spoil, hmm?”
Kali said nothing. I admired her for her restraint. I had to grit my own teeth to keep from screaming at him to stay away from her.
She was just a girl. Not even old enough for marriage on Earth.
And as if all of that wasn’t enough to sour my opinion of King Brixta forever…
As he turned his gaze back toward me, a Lunarian cub toddled out from the rows of the king’s courtiers and harem members. The cub’s mother, a young Lunarian woman, stumbled forward with a bad limp and dove for the cub with her broken, twisted hands outstretched—but not quickly enough.
“Dada?” the cub cried out. They were just a toddler, too young for me to even tell if they were male or female. “Dada? Up?”
“Ugh! Get away from me, you nasty little—” King Brixta stumbled backwards, tearing his robes away from the cub’s outstretched hands.
“Dada, up!” the cub insisted. “Pwease up?”
Against my better judgment, my heart melted a little. King Brixta might have been a brute and a horny bastard, but even as he avoided his own cub…apparently, the cub still liked him enough to ask to be held.
Maybe there was still hope. Maybe King Brixta’s children had seen a side of him that I hadn’t yet.
That’s what I was thinking as the cub lunged for King Brixta’s leg.
The king snarled and kicked out sharply. With a wail, the cub was sent skidding across the throne room floor. The cub’s mother gathered them up quickly, but the damage had already been done.
The cub was crying and clutching at their small, chubby belly. I waited for the mother to lash out at the king for what he’d done, but she didn’t.
No one said a single word.
They all just looked away.
I didn’t want to marry this man. I didn’t even want to be in his presence. In the same room, the same palace…the same planet. I didn’t want to bear his children.
I certainly didn’t want to share his bed.
For twenty-five years, I’d placed not only my virginity, but my entire sexuality, on a shelf. I’d always known the fate of my life, my body, would lead me to a political marriage. I’d always hoped that it would at least turn into something I could live with someday.
I’d always hoped that my first time would be with someone I could love.
But King Brixta…
I could never love him.
I couldn’t even ever like him. Not now.
I clenched my fists, furious.
If no one in this room was going to stand up for a helpless toddler, I would.
“How dare—” I started. But before I could get any further than that, Ronan stepped in front of me, cutting me off.
“Perhaps the future queen of Lunaria would like to be shown to her new accommodations,” Ronan suggested.
He gave me a firm look that wordlessly said, keep your mouth shut. Or else.
“Yes,” I agreed through my teeth. “I’m exhausted. That would be…lovely.”
“Go, then.” King Brixta waved me away. Dismissed me like I was a pet lapdog who he’d lost interest in already. Instead, his eyes wandered over to a human concubine standing in the corner with her hands folded over her lap and her eyes cast down. Her hair was nearly the same color of red as my own. “You there! Come here. Come sit on my lap.”
As the concubine came forward, our eyes met.
Hers said, I hate you for not entertaining him longer.
Mine said, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.
But as Ronan drew me away from the throne room, no one said another word aloud at all.
“How could you let him do that?” I was furious as Ronan and I left the throne room—and I had every right to be. “How could you stand there and let him hurt a child like that? What is wrong with you people?”
“Alora.”
“What?” I spat at him. “What excuse could you possibly have?”
Ronan took me by the shoulder and pulled me into an alcove. When I opened my mouth to argue with him about it, he pressed a finger to my lips.
“Our ways are not yours, Alora. You must understand that. Our king has power. Great power. Brixta has sold breeding rights on Lunaria. That gives him more power than any king before him.”
“So? Just because he’s the cub’s father doesn’t mean he has the right to beat his child. And all those women—missing hands, missing limbs—”
“You are not listening to me, Alora.” Ronan shook his head. “If King Brixta controls every female on Lunaria who was not already wed when he took power, he controls the males as well. His guards seek to win his favor, in the hopes that they might be granted access to his harem. The king allows that from time to time. The lords dare not cross him, lest their wives be taken away from them as well—or their whole families could be imprisoned, killed. You have seen yourself what happens to his harem members when they fight back. To challenge his will, no matter how terrible it is…you simply cannot win.”
“Why didn’t you stop him, then?” I shoved Ronan’s finger away from my lips. “Are you holding out for access to his harem as well?”
“No,” Ronan said simply. His eyes were gray again. I could tell that this was hurting him as much as it had me. “But to anger King Brixta…if I knew that it was only myself who would take the punishment for challenging him, I would not hesitate. But there is never any telling who he will take his rage out on next. If I had stepped in to hit him when he attacked the cub, he very well might have had the cub killed just to spite me. He could have hurt Kali or Orion. He could have attacked Moonsong Temple. Alora…he could have hurt you.”
“I…” I didn’t know what to say to that. When Ronan said there was no winning here, he’d really meant it.
Our hands were tied. All four of Ronan’s and both of mine as well.
“Okay,” I said quietly. I felt so broken inside, there was nothing else to say. Nothing I could do. “Okay.”
I knew now that I was in over my head here on Lunaria.
And the worst part was, now that I was here, there was no way out.
“Here you are, then.” Ronan waved his hand across the intricately carved metal doors as we came to a room at the end of a long, cold hall. They separated sinisterly, like a head from its neck. “Your rooms, my queen.”
I knew what I was supposed to do. Walk through them. Leave Ronan behind. But…
I didn’t want to. I couldn’t.
Not yet.
“Wh
at will happen to you now?” I asked. I was stalling, and he must have known it. But I didn’t care. “Where will you go?”
“I will remain in your service until the wedding, of course. You will need protection still, and no other guards have sworn their allegiance to you yet.”
“And after?”
Ronan closed his eyes and hummed. “I will be reassigned, likely. I will no longer be needed here when your wedding day is done.”
“Where will you go then?”
“So many questions, Alora.” Ronan smiled down at me. His eyes were misty and gray again. It felt wrong to be happy about that, but it gave me a new hope.
That he didn’t want me to marry King Brixta either.
That he didn’t want to leave.
I knew I had a duty here; I knew I couldn’t change that. The women of Earth were depending on me to win King Brixta over, so that when Knox took power, the alliance between my home planet and this new one would be secured. Even if we only sent humans here who wanted to help Lunaria’s population problems.
Even if we sent no one at all.
But now that I had met King Brixta—now that I knew that the sacrifice I’d be making wasn’t just one of my heart, or my body, but one of my entire soul as I married someone without any soul at all…
It was still a sacrifice I would have to make.
But to make it…I knew it would tear me apart.
“The door is open, my queen.” Ronan held his hand out, ushering me inside. His Adams’s apple bobbed in his throat like he was having to choke something down. “Go on in.”
“I will. But…” I clenched my fists and stared through the door at my new room. It was lavish, luxuriously adorned. A soft, plush canopy bed hung with black drapery. A huge mirror framed with dark, ornately shaped metal. And just across from the door, a portrait of my future husband.
King Brixta. The man I was destined to marry. The man that, in an instant, I had gone from being uncertain about to outright hating.
“Is there something on your mind, Alora?” Ronan’s voice was soft and hushed. Like a private prayer.
“There is, yes,” I told him. I bit my lip as I tried to summon up the courage to say the words.