by Lynnea Lee
Chapter 2
Only one guard managed to shoot. Sarah gaped at Kean, who reacted as if he didn’t feel it. Then it happened. One moment, Kean and his men stood there seemingly vulnerable, the next, their cheek creases unfolded, and their fangs descended from their half-retracted position. Their jaws unhinged impossibly wide, and they leaped on the guards before any further shots could be fired.
The younger male who held Sarah did not change. He simply protected her with his body, shielding her should any shot be fired her way.
“Do not watch, Sarah. It’s going to get ugly.” He moved to block Sarah’s view of the proceeding. “My name is Zake.” He smiled warmly down at her, a strange dichotomy to the carnage that was happening on the other side of his body.
Sarah couldn’t see the massacre that was happening, but she heard it. The sounds of cracking bones and skulls against marble floors, the splattering of blood, the slicing of sharp fangs into soft squishy abdomens, and the squelching of innards as they spilled out of their bodies and onto the floor. All these sounds were punctuated with yells and screams and the gurgles of last breaths in blood-filled throats.
Zake turned his head to peek. “Stars, that’s bloody! I’m itching to fight, but I’m supposed to be just watching this mission.” He smiled down at her again. “And I’ve got a pretty female to protect, so it’s a good consolation.”
Eventually, the sounds of fighting ended, and the only sound left was Gadrek sniveling and pleading for his life. Then, the sound of something sharp entering something soft and squishy, before a gasp. It was followed by a strange wrenching sound that Sarah couldn’t identify before a body hit the ground. Then, nothing.
Sarah pushed at Zake, but the young Tallean didn’t budge. She needed to know if Gadrek was really dead. She ducked under his arms instead and quickly sidestepped to get around him.
“Fuck! You’re quick,” Zake swore. “Come back here. You’re not supposed to see this.”
She ignored him.
Gadrek laid on the ground, his head tilted at an odd angle. Kean had twisted Gadrek’s neck. The bastard’s hands were clutched to his belly around the same knife Sarah had stolen before.
Against her better judgment, Sarah stepped around the dead bodies towards Gadrek. She toed him, but he did not move. Then she kicked him, hard. Nothing. Gadrek was dead. He was really dead! She resisted the sudden urge to pick up the knife and stab it into the asshole repeatedly. A moment of elation filled her before she reminded herself that she was not truly free. She now belonged to Kean.
Sarah turned to face her new owner and shrank back, terrified. The calm and collected male with the handsome smile was gone. In its place was a monster. Kean’s jaws were still unhinged, and his fangs long and gleaming with wet blood. His face was covered in crimson too, as if he had torn out a few throats. His white shirt, which had been crisp and clean, was now covered in gore. The worst was his feet, a piece of intestine still clung to his eight sharp claws from the last guard he gutted.
Kean took a step towards her, and Sarah backed away, heading back towards Zake, the only male in the room who still looked sane.
“Calm, female, Kean won’t hurt you. He is still the same warrior, and he has honor.”
Sarah knew it was true. Kean and his team hadn’t attacked until the first shot was fired at them. Viewed that way, it had simply been self-defense. Overkill, judging by the severed body parts littering the room, but they’d not been the first to attack, and they’d been unarmed. Though unarmed was not the best word. Kean and his team had been armed with their own innate weapons, their own bodies.
Sarah focused on Kean’s face and tried to calm. He did what he had to do. Also, he’d promised to protect her, and he had. He’d done her dirty work, stabbing Gadrek with the same knife she’d stolen.
As she calmed, so did he. She watched in morbid fascination as his fangs retracted so that they were only slightly longer than the rest of his teeth. His cheeks re-creased as his jaws reset and his mouth, which had hung open before, closed. He looked almost normal, aside from the blood staining his face and body.
He dug into his pants pocket and produced a…handkerchief? The scary killer carried around a handkerchief? Maybe he knew he would need to clean with it. He wiped his face and hands with it before tossing it to the ground. Then the bloodied shirt came off, and it too was thrown on the ground. But instead of his chest and abs, Sarah saw armor. The armor was singed where the blaster shot had hit him. He looked down to check the impact point.
“Still good.” He shrugged. Then he sent a rakish smile up to Sarah. “See, little one, I told you I’d protect you.” He gestured for her to come to him.
Sarah hesitated a moment, then realizing that Zake was right, and Kean would not hurt her, she stepped gingerly around a dead body and headed towards the now infernally handsome alien. Kean gripped her firmly and pulled her into his embrace the moment she was in reach.
“I came here to take control of all of Vosthea.” He grinned down at her. “It seems I got myself a bonus!” Then to his men, who were still all stuck in bloodlust, “Let’s get out of here before his males realized we took out their paycheck.”
Kean swept the little human female into his arms, the drive to protect and care for her overriding any other need.
He hadn’t wanted her to witness the carnage. And he hadn’t wanted Sarah to see him in bloodlust. Some humans found the look terrifying. But she had ducked under Zake and gotten an eyeful. She’d been afraid at first, but her terror had faded when she realized he was still himself, despite looking so feral.
She’d even come to him when he’d gestured her over.
“I can walk,” Sarah protested.
“I know. But you are mine, and I want to carry you.” The reasoning made sense to Kean, but the little female frowned at him. “We will be moving fast. I do not wish to fight the males who would one day be working for me. You will slow us down.”
That explanation, she accepted.
To avoid the bulk of guards at the front, Kean had instructed a shuttle to touch down on the roof for them. Gadrek had rarely used the landing pad there, and Kean knew it was not well guarded.
Letting his team lead the way, Kean followed behind with his female. Behind him, closing up the rear, was Zake and one other guard. They didn’t plan on staying long enough to expect trouble from behind.
His males swiftly dispatched any resistance they met. Kean admired and appreciated the efficiency of his team in action. Zharor, a close friend and his best guard, led the charge. These were his most vicious warriors. Gadrek had let his guard down, believing his own males had the advantage of being armed. But Kean’s elite team were walking weapons. They’d honed the ancient skills of hand-to-hand combat from their warrior past.
Fresh air and sunshine hit them as he stepped out onto the roof.
“Sunlight,” Sarah said with a small but awe-filled voice.
She reached out an arm, running her hands through the beam of light as if she could touch it. Her eyes squinted. It was only now that Kean noticed that her extreme pallor was unnatural.
“Gadrek did not let you out.” It wasn’t a question, but she answered anyway.
“Never. He locked me up in his room. This is the first time I’ve been out in months.”
Kean growled, anger filling his chest. He wished he had kept the bastard alive so he could kill him again. The asshole had deprived this defenseless female of so much. Kean had been raised Dominion before he made his own way in life. Even Dominion rules required slaves to be fed and watered adequately and given enough exercise outdoors.
“You are mine now. You will be fed well and cared for. I will take care of all of your needs.” Remembering the surge of arousal he’d sensed from her when he’d taken the knife from her, he purred.
The rumbling in his chest had the same effect as it had back in the room, and her cheeks turned red. She squirmed in his arms.
In a low whisper, just for her, he repeated, “All of your needs.”
Chapter 3
Four days later…
Sarah stepped out of the cleansing unit, preferring to towel dry than use the air-dry cycle. The air-drying irritated her skin. Besides, these high-tech alien fibers did an awesome job at soaking up water. She recognized it as the same fabric Kean’s handkerchief had been. No wonder such a small scrap of fabric had been able to clean him up.
She squeezed as much of the water out of her hair as she could before she sat down by the vanity. Her life had changed overnight, the day Kean brought her home to his compound.
After escaping Gadrek’s stronghold, they had returned to Kean’s compound to find it under attack by Dominion troops. The Dominion had ordered the attack at the same time they had ordered Gadrek to murder his guests. Kean, expecting such a strategy, had brought only his elite forces with him to negotiate and had left the rest of his army to defend the compound.
Kean had left her to shelter in his personal library, which doubled as a safe room in the event of an attack. Sarah had met a handful of women, both Tallean and human, who had been sheltering there as well. She had been glad to find out that those women were not part of Kean’s harem, but rather, they’d belonged to mercenaries Kean had hired to help drive off the Dominion presence. Sarah hated to share.
Kean had returned to the compound injured but victorious.
For the next few days, Vosthean affairs had kept Kean too busy to spend much time with Sarah. Having upset the balance of power in Vosthea, he’d had to work on maintaining control. He spent much of his time working, though he did manage to share the midday meal with her every day. However, they were usually interrupted mid-meal by some catastrophe or another needing his attention.
The rest of her time was spent wandering the grounds. Vosthea was a planet of jungles and forests, and his compound was no different. Whoever designed the stronghold had kept the most sculptural and ancient trees and had built around them. Even the indoor areas were filled with heavy, hardwood furniture and rustic details. Half the complex was outdoors, and there were indoor and outdoor routes to anywhere you wanted to go. Sarah spent most of the days exploring it. It was an incredibly believable facsimile of freedom.
After the initial shock at seeing Kean in bloodlust with his enemies’ blood all over his body, Sara justified Kean and his men’s action that day at Gadrek’s easily. They had been defending themselves. And after all, he had freed Sarah by killing her owner. And while Kean had teased at what he wanted to do to her body, nothing had happened yet. He’d been pulled away for something urgent every time.
Maybe Kean was just teasing and wasn’t really interested in her. She was too skinny, and there wasn’t much of her for him to hold on to. And after Gadrek had sold Chrissy, Sarah had taken a dull knife to her own hair. Gadrek had chosen to keep Sarah over her sister because of her crowning glory. He’d often paraded her around, showing off her thick dark hair, and she’d been eager to deny him that. She should have stabbed him with the knife instead.
Sarah had meant for the action to be an act of defiance, and it was. But now, every time she looked in the mirror, she thought of her lost sister. It pained her.
The gaunt figure in the mirror with the short, jagged hair and sallow complexion was a stranger. This was not the same Sarah who had walked out of her front door, arm in arm with her sister, to head to the mall that fateful afternoon. She didn’t know how long she had been living in Gadrek’s stronghold, hidden away from the light of day and deprived of social contact.
The two sisters had been sold together on the auction block as a pair since they looked almost like twins, though Chrissy was a year younger and had shorter hair. They’d dressed in the same outfit that day at the mall, enhancing the effect, and the males running the auction had given them matching colored shifts and sold them together.
At first, Gadrek had kept them together as well, as a novelty item to show off to his guests. But one day, Gadrek had taken Chrissy away. When Sarah got up enough courage to ask, he’d told her that he’d sold her.
This was the day Sarah’s life fell apart, again. Angry at Gadrek for separating them, Sarah had hit him where it hurt the most: she’d told everyone who would listen that he was impotent, which was the truth. Gadrek couldn’t get it up even if his life depended on it. That’s why he was such a grouch.
Her paltry standard of living had dropped abysmally low after that day. Gadrek fed her barely enough to keep her alive and locked her up in his room so that the only person she ever saw was him. The day Kean had demanded to negotiate was the first time Sarah had been let out of the room in months.
It was common to have a female slave kneeling by an official's feet during negotiations; it was a status symbol. And even in her bedraggled state, Sarah had been better than nothing. Maybe Gadrek had gotten used to the way she looked and couldn’t tell she was such a mess that she’d lowered his status instead of raising it.
Sarah’s standards of living had skyrocketed in the past few days. Kean had given her her own room with an attached bathroom. The décor in the room fit the rest of the compound with heavy wood furniture and metal details, and it had a rustic ski lodge feel. Everything was oversized and open but somehow still exuded warmth and coziness.
Her bed was big and soft, with fluffy blankets and too many pillows. The first night she’d slept in it, she’d bawled her eyes out. Sarah hadn’t been allowed to sleep on the bed for months, and Gadrek hadn’t even given her a mat for the floor.
Her short hair dried, Sarah went to her wardrobe to pick out today's outfit. On her second day at Kean’s compound, a sweet, older Tallean lady had come knocking on her door with an armful of clothes.
“Kean is too busy keeping everything under control to get you fitted for new clothes. But he didn’t want you to go without.” The older female had smiled warmly at Sarah, holding up the pile of clothes. “These belonged to my granddaughter when she was little. They should fit you while you put on some weight. “She’d taken a good look at Sarah and exclaimed, “You are just skin and bones!”
Nouma had bustled in like a mother hen and made herself at home as she hung up Sarah’s new wardrobe. She’d even insisted on trimming up Sarah’s hair so it looked stylish rather than like the hack job it was.
Sarah looked over the selection of sundresses and cute, athletic style outfits. Her new clothes looked like they belonged to a child. She was, after all, the size of a Tallean child, especially since she’d lost so much weight. But she was grateful to have something to call her own. After getting permission from Nouma, Sarah had spent yesterday afternoon removing all the ruffles from the dresses so she wouldn’t look like a five-year-old. Feeling particularly fancy, she picked out a light blue sundress.
It was still late morning, and Kean wouldn’t be here to attempt to share a meal with her until about midday. Attempt, because every lunch had been interrupted by Zharor, Kean’s second in command. And Sarah couldn’t even be upset because Zharor had looked so flustered and stressed each time that she’d felt bad for the male. The killing of Gadrek and the upsetting of the power on Vosthea meant both Kean and Zharor were working day and night to maintain order.
There were no guards outside her door, but she knew Kean had assigned guards to follow her at a distance. Sarah could walk around the compound as she pleased. The different parts of the compound were connected by beautiful gardens dotted with mature trees. And she kept catching Zake just at the edge of vision, but whenever she turned to look, he was never there, the sneaky male.
Sarah understood the guards were put there for her safety and not to reduce her freedom, but still, she didn’t like the idea of someone following her around. Her room was on the first floor, and instead of a balcony, it had a porch that opened to the garden outside. She usually left her room through the door to the inner hallway; maybe if she snuck out the back, she’d be able to fool the two guards who took turns
tailing her.
Poking her head out the window, she scanned her options and saw a copse of small trees and bushes just off to the side. She slid open the door to the porch and stepped out. Not seeing any signs of her shadows, she made a beeline for the thicket of greenery. Once inside, she stayed still, listening and watching intently, but still saw nothing. Success!
Of course, Sarah really didn’t mind her shadows all that much. She didn’t like having a tail, but she didn’t hate it either. She was treating this more like a game, something challenging to do. She didn’t have much to do all day and had to find ways to keep herself entertained. It was much easier to do that here, surrounded by people and nature, than alone in Gadrek’s room.
Kean had given her free roam of his sprawling estate, except for the south wing. It was where he took meetings and where he did most of his work. He had warned her that many unsavory types visiting the compound were relegated to that wing, and it wasn’t safe for a small female like herself.
So naturally, Sarah headed towards the south wing. She didn’t plan on actually entering the building. The central garden connected all the different parts of the compound in lush greenness, and Kean mentioned that the doors leading to the garden from the south wing only opened for those with key tags. She planned on staying in the garden and just peeking into the windows to see if she could catch Kean at work. She felt a bit like an obsessive teenager, spying on her crush.
Who the fuck was she kidding? That was exactly what she was doing. But she had good reason. Or at least she had a good excuse. She’d been deprived of social interaction and had latched onto the first person who had given her the right type of attention. It didn’t help that Kean was so damn good looking. He had an irresistibly dangerous air too, that lit her up like the Fourth of July.
Sarah knew what he did, who he was. Aside from owning all of Vosthea, now that Gadrek was gone, Kean was the infamous dealer of Euphora. Even Sarah, who had been hidden away much of the time, had heard of him. She understood that he met with criminals and crooks, and he was a criminal himself. And Sarah planned to stay far, far away from anyone he might be meeting.