by Alison Aimes
TAKEN
Book Two in the Condemned Series
Alison Aimes
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Epilogue
Also By Alison Aimes, TRAPPED EXCERPT
Also By Alison Aimes, BILLIONAIRE EXCERPT
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Connect with Alison Aimes
Books By Alison Aimes
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TAKEN
Run-away breeder Ava Davies only wanted to live life on her own terms. Now she’s captive in a labor camp deep within Dragath25’s core, a sweltering maze of caves overrun by brutal prisoners-turned-slaves. Her only chance for survival? Appeasing the leader of the most powerful subterranean gang: a man from her past with his own score to settle.
* * *
Two years ago, Resistance fighter Hunter Valdus and his men were sentenced by the Council to live and die as slaves. Now a beautiful, desperate female from his past has landed in his grasp. A woman who just might be the key to his crew’s escape and his revenge. All he has to do is keep her alive and at a distance until he can use her for his own dark purposes.
* * *
But raw, blood-pounding lust is a potent force. Forgiveness and love even stronger. And the best-laid plans can be laid to waste, especially on Dragath25.
* * *
TAKEN, Book Two in the Condemned Series, is an action-packed sci-fi prison planet romance that burrows to the deepest, hottest recesses of the globe to explore what happens when revenge and lust, redemption and love, collide.
1
She was caught. Taken.
Her arms pinned to the wall. Her legs, too. Limbs twisted at an impossible angle. No manacles necessary. Just the cruel indifference of spinning, plummeting centrifugal force.
Cadet Ava Davies struggled to get air past the terror squeezing her lungs. One moment she’d been hustling down a rocky cliff on Dragath25 with her guard, Pratt, at her side, her mind racing with excitement over her recent soil findings, and then…nothing.
She’d woken up here. To searing heat and ear-shattering screams. Her body flung into something hard, her right cheek slammed against what felt like a wall. Unable to move. A painful burn beneath her skin. Twisted bodies flashing in and out of visibility.
“Davies? What’s…happening?” The voice was distorted, but she recognized the speaker. Pratt. The soldier assigned to guard her while she collected ore samples.
He’d never warmed to her. Nor she to him. Still, right now, his familiar voice was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard.
“Not…sure.” It was hard getting the words out, the force of the drop driving her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “Other…crew?”
There was a momentary pause. As if Pratt was assessing whatever he could see.
“No.” The soldier’s single word was laced with despair.
“For…the…better.” She didn’t want the others in more danger.
First the crash. Now this.
A few moons ago, she’d risked everything and bribed her way onto the scientific mission headed to Dragath25. Then, her shuttle had been brought down and she, along with the few surviving crew, had been forced to run from the planet inmates, murderers and rapists marooned on the planet by the New Earth Council government.
Her crewmates had complained of hunger, and terror, and the cloying red dust that found its way into every crevice and rubbed the throat raw. But not her. Grime and dust didn’t bother her. The threat of death was as familiar as her own heartbeat. She’d lived for years on New Earth with clean skin, a soft bed, and ample food and never felt dirtier.
On Dragath25’s surface, yes, there’d been numerous dangers, but at least she’d been one step closer to finding what had brought her to the prison planet in the first place: freedom.
Now that had been taken from her. Again.
“Where…are…we?” Pratt’s bellow reverberated off the walls, ripping her from her dark thoughts.
She strained to turn her head a quarter inch and caught a quick glimpse of the material against her cheek. Dull gray. Rough. Like the metal back home.
Bile burned at the back of her throat. Maybe she was twisted, but she would have preferred unfamiliar technology. Anything that might suggest whoever had stuck her on this plummeting hell wasn’t human. Because while the possibility of encountering unfamiliar alien life was terrifying, she already knew how monstrous humans could be.
“P—pretty.” As if to prove her thoughts, the ominous earthly word issued from close by.
The next flicker of light revealed an outstretched hand near her nose.
Her gaze traveled outward. It was attached to a massive body. One covered in tattered scraps of fabric. One with the words 225 PROPERTY carved across the torso.
Her heart slammed harder against her ribs.
225 was head of the largest Dragath25 prison gang, his “property” a mob of rapists and killers exiled from Earth, who preyed on anyone unlucky enough to cross their path.
Sure enough, with the next flash, beady yellow eyes glittered at her with lust and the promise of pain.
It was a look she knew too well. One she’d encountered long before the crash and her time on Dragath25.
“You will do as you’re told.” Strike. Fire licked across her skin as he raised the birch cane, his gaze sharp with lust. His row of blank-faced scientists with their charts and instruments huddled behind, playing with their dials as they recalibrated the magnitude of the experimental technology he’d ordered shoved into her brain. Excruciating pain inside and out—along with horrific, humiliating forced pleasure. “You have been engineered to comply, Ayanna.” Strike. Strike. The punishment stick, well-polished and supple despite its advanced age, showed no sign of breaking. No matter how she prayed. But then again, Councilman Gregor Hollisworth took exceptional care of every possession he acquired, except for her, his new bride and breeder.
The lurch of the container smacked her back to the present.
She shook off the memory. Buried it deep. The past couldn’t touch her now.
Whatever happened next, she was no longer Ayanna Talis. No longer the reluctant fifth wife of the most powerful Councilman on New Earth. No longer the plaything of a twisted monster. No longer a bruised and broken pawn with no choice but to submit.
She was Cadet Ava Davies, a trained Academy scientist and low-level Council female whose proud, progressive parents had allowed her more freedom than most.
It was a bold cover—an expensive one she’d paid for with every bit of dowry credit stolen from her husband. But it had held up well these past two years. A
fter all, who would look for a runaway breeder, whose presumed value was between her legs, living among the most respected minds of the universe?
The giant’s outstretched hand twitched, his ragged fingernails stretching toward her. “Pretty…green eyes.”
Green? Her stomach twisted, a new fear taking hold. No wonder her skin was burning. The camouflage and eye dyes had lasted through the crash and the last few hellish weeks, but the extreme heat must be short-circuiting the cheap facial disguise technology.
She was exposed.
“Condemned of Dragath25.” A disembodied, nasal voice filled the hold, heralding a more immediate problem. “Each one of you has been embedded with a tracker while unconscious. You are now the property of the Council mining prison.”
Roars of protest shook the hold. Hers among them.
“Your sole purpose,” announced the mechanized voice, “is to excavate the veins of silver ore found in the caverns. Meet your quota of fifty kitloms per rotation and you will live. Fail and you will die. Descent will end in forty nanosegments.”
“And…you’ll…be mine.” The second comment was human and much closer.
Her gaze locked with Yellow Eyes.
From the way he looked at her, she didn’t think she’d make her quota. Frankly, she wasn’t sure she’d survive five metrals past release from the wall.
And, maybe, a tiny part of her screamed, that was better. Maybe dying fast would be a mercy. Because stuck down here, her chances of finding the ore that would destroy what her husband had put inside her had just been reduced to nil. And whatever hellish fate Yellow Eyes had in store, it couldn’t be as horrific as what the Councilman would do if he learned his runaway bride had resurfaced on his prison planet while searching for a way to gain her freedom once and for all.
“Get…ready…to beg…bitch.”
The taunt roused her like a slap to the cheek. No! No more begging. No more submitting.
If she hadn’t been searched before she was stuck in this hold, the small homemade spear Bella had insisted she carry was still tucked inside her boot. It might not be enough, but it was something.
Her rotations of folding without a fight were over.
Then a flare of heat licked along her insides, her center cramping—and the fallacy of her bold claim hit hard.
Her husband’s sadistic toy was busy working, the hormonal fever building, and she only had two pills stashed in her uniform pocket. The rest of the homemade meds were still in her hidey-hole at the crew site.
She sucked down a breath. One challenge at a time.
The container shuddered once more. The lights flickered and blinked out.
The hold lurched to a stop.
She tumbled to the floor, pain ricocheting up her wrists as her hands shot forward, saving her face from slamming into metal.
Around her, the thump of other bodies echoed.
She fumbled for her spear.
A meaty hand closed around her ankle.
2
Toppled by Yellow Eyes’ tug, Ava’s knees disappeared out from under her. She slid backwards over the slick floor, so fast floor burns singed her hips and thighs.
Lips compressed tight, she thought of what her friend Bella would do, twisted sideways, curled her upper body toward her feet, raised her spear—and struck with all her might at the crushing grip circling her boot.
With a roar, Yellow Eyes let go.
“Surprise, dunger beetle.” Not such a little mouse, after all. She scuttled forward on her hands and knees, dodging fists and feet as grunts and the smack of flesh reverberated in the dark. Her sole plan: find a wall she could throw her back against and disappear until the free-for-all ended.
Only before she could execute her strategy another wave of heat ripped through her, more vicious than the last. Panting, she clamped her thighs tight, her back bowing.
Dragath hell. The stress must have sped up the cycle.
Unsealing the thigh closure of her uniform, she fumbled for a pill.
Cruel hands tangled in her hair, yanking her to her knees and wrenching her head back. “You’ll pay for that, Council-bitch.”
Yellow Eyes had found her again.
She didn’t bother calling out for Pratt. With her camouflage and facial disguise gone, he wouldn’t recognize her anyway. Plus, chances were good her crewmate was in as much trouble as she.
Eyes stinging, she fought past the haze of lust, jabbing her spear up and around, hoping to hit her target.
Another body crashed into her side and she flew sideways, agony ripping along her scalp as the asshole gripping her hair held tight.
“Freeze.” A near-growl cracked through the hold and down her spine.
Everyone froze.
Bright light and scalding air poured into the hold. An awful metallic, charred smell as well. The echo of crashing boots making it sound as if an army was descending.
Instinctively, she shielded her eyes, but the light was too bright. Everything reduced to pinpricks of shifting black and white spots right in front of her eyes.
The silver lining? The ruthless fingers digging into her scalp loosened.
Jerking free, she scurried back on her knees, knocking Yellow Eyes off balance. He stumbled into the body next to him. A tree-trunk of a man who roared and shoved in return.
Seizing on the distraction, she skirted around two corpses with sightless eyes—thankfully, neither of them similar in size to Pratt—backpedaling on her ass as fast and far as she could until her spine hit the wall, a small target blocked by a sea of far larger torsos and legs.
As her sight returned, she risked a quick scan. No cameras. The rush of relief left her dizzy.
“Next to move will regret it.” It was the same deep voice. Lethal. Dark. Ice cold.
She curled into a tighter ball.
The sound of a scuffle regained her attention.
Yellow Eyes crashed to the ground, unmoving except for the slow rise and fall of his chest.
It was the only proof he was still alive.
“On your knees or you’ll suffer the same. Eyes on the ground. Hands on your head.” The sharp command drew her attention as the speaker swaggered toward the middle of the room.
Her breath stuttered in her lungs.
He was massive. Twice the size of Yellow Eyes. A beast from the depths—or her worst nightmares. His face concealed by a crude silver faceplate that looked like it had been hammered into submission and offered only narrow horizontal slits for eyes and the hint of a hard, square jaw. Leaving him faceless. Expressionless. Utterly devoid of humanity.
The rest of him, however, was on full display. His bare bronze chest stretched by slabs of lethal muscle that flexed ominously with every shift of the gleaming pickax in his hands. His biceps alone bigger than the hated rocks Bella had been urging her to haul around for defense.
And he wasn’t just wide. He was as tall as the trees of old. His cropped brown hair brushed the ceiling even though he stood with his body partially folded, his knees bent. Streaks of red and silver dust covered his body like war paint while around his waist was a tattered loincloth that showcased powerful thighs.
The only half-civilized thing about him was scuffed, worn black boots.
She risked a longer glance, her gaze following the trail of sweat that glistened on his skin, dripping from his neck to roll down the ripped ridges and valleys of his carved stomach, past a hundred nicks, scars, bruises and burn marks.
There wasn’t an ounce of body fat, an inch of give. Thin straps of sinewy leather crisscrossed his muscled chest, back, and hips, holders for an impressive array of primitive pickaxes, metal blades, and what looked like bleached bones. They swung against his skin like trophies on display.
He was raw, barbaric power—and totally terrifying.
One blow from him and she’d be dead.
Worse, behind him in a tight V formation stood a pack of at least twelve similarly armed, faceless giants almost as big and wide.
&nbs
p; And then she saw it, a flash of silver on the harness of the leader himself, one dagger among his numerous weapons, but unlike the battered, rusted metal of the rest of his arsenal, this lustrous blade almost glowed.
Her lungs seized. It was, without question, the ore she’d come to this hellish planet to find.
She’d found small traces of it on the surface. Not nearly enough to cover her fingertip, much less make a blade of the material.
She’d almost begun to doubt its existence.
But here it was. In abundance.
The key to her freedom.
The reason she’d come to this planet in the first place.
On the hips of a beast from the depths.
Nothing was ever easy on Dragath25.
Sucking down a bracing breath, she hid her spear lengthwise between her thighs and shifted to her knees, placing her hands on her head, terror and excitement thrumming through her veins in equal measure. If she survived what came next, she’d have to find some way to discover where he’d gotten it.
Not surprisingly, the other prisoners took up the same position.
Beyond the open doors, a terrible screeching erupted: “Taken, taken, taken.”
Who was out there?
“Exit the transport hold.” Indifferent to the chaos, the mechanized voice emerged once again from the ceiling offering instruction. “Incineration will occur in five metrals.”