by V. K. Ludwig
“You’re a slave?”
“No, sweetheart. Adora bought me from the slave market but set me free before they got around to cutting mine. I couldn’t afford the ticket to travel home, so I started to work here at Brot Adnak. Ten sun cycles later, and I never bought that ticket.”
“Yup, that’s Odheim for you,” Melek chimed in.
More Jal’zar females came and loaded food onto plates, their pearl-string panties and necklaces covering their breasts not hospital attire.
My cheeks heated.
What is this place?
I watched them, a heavy sensation settling at the bottom of my stomach. And over the edge of his spoon, Melek watched me watching them, almost as if he counted the seconds until I’d figure it out.
Priorities, I reminded myself.
“Is there a chance I could get a job here?” Did I shout that? Because everyone put their spoons down as if my words had come down like a fist on the table. “I mean, I need to find Grace and me a place to stay. That’s only possible if I make money somehow. We need food. Clothes.”
K’terra’s lips curled into a wide grin. “You would make a fortune here, human.”
“Shut up,” Melek snarled, staring at the Jal’zar as if he wanted to drag her over the table. Then his eyes wandered to me. Same look. “I won’t allow you to work here, Katie. What you need isn’t a job, but rest.”
“Allow me?” I let out a huff. “Excuse me, but who are you —”
“Here?” K’terra shouted. “What? Is this place suddenly not good enough for you anymore, Melek? It’s honest work.”
Melek dug his hands into his hair and strained the roots. “That’s not what I meant and suggesting otherwise is unfair. You know I’ve got great respect for you and the other females. Why would you even say such a thing? I just don’t want, you know, her to work here.”
I flung my spoon onto the plate with loud clanks. “You know what, I’m grateful that you saved my life. I really am. But —”
“If you’re grateful, why are you shouting at me?”
“Because saving my life doesn’t mean you own it or have any say over it,” I said, not shouting at all. “I work wherever I can find a job, Mel-ek.”
“You don’t need to work here, Ka-tie,” he said, cutting my name in two as if he owned it. “Because I already took a job as a healer here. It might be crappy pay, but I can still take care of you and Grace.”
“Have you considered that I don’t want anybody to take care of us? I’ve managed it without any help so far, and I intend to keep it that way.”
He leaned slightly forward, a grunt coming from his throat before he pronounced every word dripping with anger. “You. Will. Not. Work. Here.”
I leaned into the battle of wills, determined to win it. “Watch me.”
Adora gave a lazy shrug and shook her head, licking the gravy off her spoon before she said, “There’s more work around here than sex, Melek. I could use her behind the bar, or…”
Whatever fear I had breathed away only moments ago, now crept through the gap in my ribs and transformed into panic. That guy had dragged us to a fucking whorehouse. What if he wanted to put Grace and me to work over here?
That makes no sense.
He just said he doesn’t.
But what if he did?
I jumped up, shrinking underneath all those stares coming at me. “I… um… thanks for breakfast, Adora. Grace, would you please come upstairs with me?”
“But —”
“Now!”
Melek watched me stomp off, his nail once more dragging over his incisors, his focus lost in the grains of the table. He might have won this battle, but I wouldn’t let him strip me of what Kidan had failed to: my dignity.
Seven
Melek
* * *
“Well, that went great,” I snarled, pushing my bowl away, suddenly not hungry anymore. “By the Three Suns, what is wrong with you guys? A nest of torn limbs? Seriously? Whatever happened to our plan of easing her into all this?”
K’terra rubbed a finger over her fang until it squeaked. “It’s not like I lied. She would make a fortune here.”
My veins heated at her comment. “Can you hear yourself talking? She’s my fated one, and nobody will ever touch her again but me.”
“A fated one you apparently don’t want. You didn’t even tell her yet.”
“Once she’s ready.”
Adora leaned back into her chair. Each of her slow head shakes came with a brain-stabbing tsk, her lips pursing tight. “My, my, my… who would have thought I’d get to see a Vetusian who lost his faith in destiny. How is fate supposed to find you if you keep hiding from it?”
“She needs time to heal.”
“Didn’t look that way from my chair,” K’terra chuckled. “She sure told you how much say you have over her life. Which is, in case you didn’t get it, none.”
“It’s called minimization. She’s acting as if everything’s fine, suppressing whatever is really going on inside her.” I trailed my fingertips over the sutures Grace had helped me place on my wound. “Unfortunately, I have no idea what to do with this. I’m not a trained counselor.”
Something I had applied for a dozen times, but never received a training opportunity for it. Because I was too biased, they’d said…
“I could ask around for a counselor in training at the infirmary,” K’terra said. “They work for free in exchange for the experience.”
I let out a grunt. “The fewer people that know we’re harboring humans, the safer.”
“If I find a healer agreeing to work for free in exchange for the experience, perhaps he’ll keep his mouth shut for pay.”
I didn’t like the idea of too much exposure, but Katie’s confrontational behavior couldn’t be healthy either. “Then look for one, and in the meantime, I’ll figure out a way to pay him.”
K’terra and Adora sighed simultaneously, making me throw my hands up. “You can’t be serious, right? She will absolutely not work behind the bar. First off, she’s human. Second —”
“She could pretend she’s a humanoid droid,” Adora said.
“For patrons to grab her ass and stare at her tits right in front of me? Not going to happen.”
K’terra let out a laugh. “You sound pretty possessive for a guy who keeps telling us your Gaia link is broken.”
“I’m not possessive,” I said, the lie curling my tongue. “Think about it. How is she even supposed to breathe in a room filled with Vetusian males? Yesterday she attacked me with a book. Her pupils dilate whenever I make a step toward her.”
“Maybe it’s you.”
Adora slapped K’terra’s boots off the table. “Why don’t we let her serve the backroom? If she wants to work, let her do that. All patrons allowed back there have been with Brot Adnak for over a decade. Know how to conduct themselves. None of them will talk, but all of them will gladly pay extra to see a human female.”
“Are you suggesting profiting on my anam ghail?” When Adora only shrugged, I got up and carried my plate to the counter along with Katie’s and Grace’s. “What’s the media saying anyway?”
K’terra shrugged. “Nothing. About Katie or you.”
“Huh, that’s weird.” I grabbed a slice of bullhabou meat from my abandoned plate. “Perhaps they’ll handle it differently with humans. Or they might try to keep the entire case out of the media altogether. Who knows?”
“Or they might send bounty hunters after you soon enough,” Adora said. “Only a few lunar cycles after getting rid of Zavis. My heart is too big… too big, I’m telling you.”
K’terra let out a hiss at the sound of his name as all Jal’zar females did.
“I’ll go check on them,” I said. “And she is not going to work here.”
I dragged myself up the stairs, pain stabbing against my temples. No doubt, Katie had an opinion about all this, and I had a feeling she’d share it with me. And she did the moment I stepped through the door.
Katie stood at the center of the room with her arms crossed in front of her chest, her eyes burning fury-hot. “You said this was a hospital!”
“Uh-uh, that’s not how it happened. The way I remember it, you asked if this was a hospital, and I said kind of.”
I lifted my hand, but the gesture didn’t calm her at all. If anything, it pissed her off more.
“Kind of? Is this a freaking joke?”
I glanced around for Grace, but she must have been in their room. Out of the way before disaster struck.
“Look, Katie, I know this isn’t ideal —”
“Not ideal?” Her furious stare came like a slap in the face. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, Melek. I really don’t. You saved my life, and for that, I am grateful. But everything I’ve done the last fifteen years I did so she would not end up in a place like this.”
“I get where you’re coming from, but sooner or later bounty hunters will come looking for you —”
“Bounty hunters?” she shrieked, her gaze darting all over the place before she pinned me down once more. “You said we’re safe here.”
“The law can’t grab you here, but that doesn’t keep other criminals from trying to snatch you and drag you back to Earth for credits.”
She swung her hand onto her forehead and turned away, her breathing bursting frantically from her mouth. “This is a fucking nightmare. What did I get us into?”
“As long as we are at Brot Adnak, we’re safe, which is why I brought us here,” I said. “These people are like family to me.”
She let out a fake laugh and turned around, blue veins popping across her forehead. “Family?”
“What’s so funny about that?”
“Oh, did I give you the impression that any of this is funny? I am on a planet I’ve never heard of. Living in a brothel with my easily influenced teenage daughter. With bounty hunters after me. And the only lifeline I have here is you, a guy I know nothing about other than his name, and the fact that he calls a bunch of whores and their madam family.” She threw her head back and released a groan toward the ceiling, then turned her head toward me with pure malice in her eyes. “It makes me wonder what kind of life you’ve led.”
Ouch.
That stung between my ribs like a rusty dagger, and I couldn’t even blame her for it. Katie knew nothing about me, and yet I felt as if she’d seen right through me, down to the black marrow of my bones.
“Don’t call them that. Whores.” I said. “They’re pleasure workers, and Adora took me in and cared for me as if I was her own son when I was down on my luck. They’re good people.”
“I never said they’re not.”
“So, what are you saying?”
She huffed and threw herself onto the couch, clasping her legs tightly against her chest. “Did you know that children raised by single mothers are more than double as likely to be arrested for a crime? It’s three times for alcohol and drug abuse. Over sixty percent of female prostitutes were raised by single mothers.”
“No wonder you’re an accountant. You sure like numbers, don’t you?”
She furrowed her brow, but her hesitation didn’t last long.
“Yes, because they’re reliable,” she snarled, sinking her head into her palms as she rested her elbows on her lap. “There were three things I swore to myself I’d keep Grace away from. Crime, prostitution, and drugs. And you do that by avoiding the people associated with it.”
And there it was. The death blow to my heart.
It burst my main artery and made me bleed into my ribcage, fate’s cruel laughter extinguishing whatever hope had remained in the tiniest vessel of the muscle. Deep down, underneath that white fabric of my pristine uniform, I was all three of those things. I was a sgu’dal. A killer. A healer for whores, and at times I might even have been a whore myself.
For a moment, I wished she would have yelled it at me because it would have explained that ringing in my ears. The room turned upside down and inside out, like mirrors all around us, and the reflection of my past stared right at me.
Of course, this wouldn’t work out. This right here was proof all over again that our link wasn’t working. The department had called me inadequate, and she pretty much had done the same.
I got up, grabbed my healer pack from the dresser.
“Where are you going?”
“To prepare for my shift,” I snarled. “Like you mentioned downstairs, you need clothes.”
“What I need is a job.”
“By the Three Suns, what is it with you Earth females?” I asked. “The Empire said you’re beautiful, loving creatures, but nobody cared to mention how fucking complicated and stubborn you are.”
She jumped up from the couch and parked her hands on her hips. “Well, if I’m so complicated and stubborn, how about I work here so Grace and I can stand on our own two feet and get out of your hair?”
I flung my healer pack onto the armchair and rammed my fist into my chest. “I saved you!”
“And I’m grateful for it!”
“You don’t sound too grateful,” I hissed. “And you wouldn’t make it a sun without me.”
“Maybe not today. Perhaps not even in a week. I’m not stupid, Melek. I know we need you right now, but I won’t accept relying on you for one second longer than absolutely necessary.” She wrapped one arm around herself and pinched the bridge of her nose with the other hand, a long exhale stuttering from her lungs. “And I’ll pay you back, of course. For all the expenses you have because of us.”
My fingers itched so badly I wasn’t sure if I wanted to slam my fists into the wall or dig them into that waist of hers. Grab her hard until she understood that I would take care of her and nobody else. She might not have been my mate, but she was my responsibility. Could I at least have that?
I pointed at her knee. “Are you going to repay me for those nanites I put in there as well? Because I had to ask Adora for an advance to fix your knee.”
She glanced down at her leg, flinching a little as the realization settled down on her. “I had no idea. But, yeah, I’ll pay it back.”
I snorted a laugh. “By working behind a bar? Yeah, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”
“Then I’ll work somewhere else.”
I let out a scoff that had her clenching her jaws. “Sure, make it easier for those bounty hunters to track you down.”
The moment I grabbed my healer pack again and marched toward the door, she flung herself in front of it. “Okay, listen. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot. I’m sorry for hitting you yesterday, but Grace screamed, and I woke up and… I didn’t mean to insult you earlier —”
Was that an apology? Because all I heard was something screaming inadequate at the back of my skull.
“Get out of the way, Katie.”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest and planted her legs wide. “I will ask Adora for work.”
“I said it before, and I’ll say it again, you don’t need a job, you need rest. And I’m looking for a counselor for you because you also have to talk to someone.”
Something sparked at the back of her blue eyes. “So you’re deciding that for me now as well? I don’t want to talk to anybody.”
“That’s exactly the problem. You’re in denial over what happened. And because I’m not a counselor, we’ll find you someone who is.”
“Why am I even discussing this with you?” she asked with a shrug. “I will get a job, yes or yes.”
“Behind a bar?”
“Yes!”
“With dozens of Vetusian males gaping at you?”
She cleared her throat, her voice small after that. “Yes.”
I took a step toward her, bringing myself so close I could see every single goosebump sprouting across her neck. Her breathing turned flat, like prey playing dead.
“What if you put a drink in front of them, and you feel this?” I asked, trailing my fingertip over her shapely hip, her lips trembling. “Or if you lean over, and one
of them wants to take in your scent?” I dipped my head lower, hovering my lips along her neck, not touching, and yet she shrunk away. “What if they’re asking for a kiss? Nothing more. Only a kiss. Fake what it might feel like to have an anam ghail?” I trailed my lips over her cheek —
“Please stop. Please stop. Stop stop stop.” She threw her arms over her head, her face a mask of terror.
A trigger.
I immediately stepped away from her, my heart crumbling into pieces at how she transformed into the same female again I’d found trembling before me that day. Was that what he had asked of her? A kiss? To be his anam ghail?
“Step aside, please.”
She hesitated for another moment, but eventually moved, hugging herself so hard I was tempted to assist. Seeing her this fragile, this true to her current state did something to me. Something I couldn’t embrace because it would only shatter my heart.
I was drugs.
I was crime.
I was shame.
I was everything she didn’t want to associate herself with. All wrapped up with a weak link threatening to crack at any moment, sending me into another emotional freefall which might end me where all this had started.
And just as I stepped through the door, thinking that I left her behind an emotional mess, she snarled, “I will not stay in this place.”
“This is all I have to offer, Katie,” I said and walked away, the words which followed a mumble to myself. “This is all I fucking am.”
Eight
Katie
* * *
“Grace, speed can’t be negative,” I said with a tap against the math worksheet. “You need to flip this equation around to determine the speed of the boat.”
“Why do I need to calculate the speed of a boat in still water? Who needs that shit?”
She gave an exaggerated sigh and tossed the pen across the white living room table. An apologetic look followed immediately after as if I’d shatter in two at her reaction.
I couldn’t take how her eyes turned soft. The Grace I’d known would have rolled them, and for once, I would have preferred it that way. Perhaps other women could afford to wallow in that thing Melek called trauma. Not me.