by Bex McLynn
Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Author's Note
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
EPILOGUE
Dearest Reader
Acknowledgements
Other Books
Thanemonger Excerpt
About Bex
My Rule of Names
Sarda
A SciFi Alien Romance
A Novella of The Ladyships
by
Bex McLynn
Copyright © 2019 by Bex McLynn
All rights reserved.
Developmental Editing by Chris Westwater
Copyediting by Lindsay York at LY Publishing Services
Proofreading by Christopher Barnes of Cissell Ink
Cover Design by Melody Simmons
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
To Mom,
As I raise my children, I fervently wonder how will I survive their journey into adulthood. Then I look to you, Mom, and realize that I won't. Because my childhood has made you one crazy granny.
I love you so much!
Bex
Author's Note
Sarda is a prequel novella of The Ladyships series. You do not have to read Sarda first. In fact, you might enjoy the story more after you've read Thanemonger. Sarda is a story from Elder Vedma's past.
CHAPTER ONE
Vedma groaned and rolled her head away from the light. Her first waking thought mirrored her last flash of irritation before she'd fallen asleep.
"Is this a test?" she moaned, voicing her gripe.
How could she have another test? She'd finished all her Athela Academe exams days ago—barely passed, but she damn well finished. No way she'd take another godsdamn one.
"Five more minutes," a strange voice said.
Five more minutes for the test? That hardly gave her time to enter her AthID into the terminal that would queue the test questions. Even using her technopathy to mentally interact with the terminal would cost her time.
By Unholde, she'd done it again, hadn't she? Fallen asleep at her terminal. Elder Megera was gonna be pissed.
Vedma squeezed her eyelids tighter together, trying to seal out the stabbing light and the blaring alarm.
"Hate tests." Her voice scratched, digging little claw marks into her parched throat as the words scrambled to get out.
Why was her throat so dry? Her stomach so hollow that it cramped and rumbled?
She shifted, her limbs heavy and stiff. Her bed felt like a metal slab, and her damn alarm clanged like a klaxon.
"Battle stations?" Again, that strange voice in her dorm room.
She hadn't had a roommate since her second year. Not after she embroidered cocks and anthers all over the other girl's dresses. Got her her own room and got her outta embroidery class. Win-fucking-win.
Besides, that voice sounded nothing like another prissy Academe girl. That voice sounded deep and thunderous. That voice sounded very much like a man.
Well, shit. Now Elder Megera would definitely piss her panties.
And whoever he was, he hoarded her damn blanket. The chill nipped at her so hard that her titties puckered more than her asshole. Whoever he was, he wasn't a godsdamn gentleman.
She flopped her head toward the sound of his voice and opened her eyes. It took her a few good blinks before her eyes focused, but she saw him, lying next to her.
Her mind skittered to a halt. The surface beneath her felt hard and cold, not the familiar cushioning of her bed and pillow.
Unholde take her. She had no idea where she was.
As Vedma just lay there, staring at the man next to her, her mind continued to snap and crackle, like a fire trying to ignite in a cold grate. He was Teras, like her, with turquoise praal running wildly over his golden skin. His thick black hair flared around his head and fanned out on the table like a dark halo. Stark crimson and black clade tattoos covered the backs of his hands and crawled up his neck. Clades, in and of themselves, never bothered her none. Her da and uncles were in a clade. Men used clades to form temporary alliances with other gangs of men or with a house, all without swearing an oath. But to be covered in clade markings—and she sensed that he had more since his sleeve cuff and collar interrupted the flow of the tattoos—meant he wasn't grounded in a house, but mucked about in the ever-shifting landscape of the dregs.
So, she was right. Not a gentleman. Probably an Unsworn.
Yet she was also wrong because he didn't have her blanket wrapped around him.
He only wore a silver skinsuit that molded to his form. The intellifibers of a skinsuit insulated better than a blubber-woven blanket. Based on how her body shivered, she didn't need to look down at herself to know she lacked some fancy skinsuit. Ech. Not the first time she had to do without.
Something wasn't right about all this.
She narrowed her eyes, honing in on him. She knew him.
Instinctively, she used her technopathy to mentally reach out to the AthNet, trying to access the societal registry. A void as voracious as a black hole sucked her request into nothingness.
That tugged her tits in a bad way. No AthNet access.
But she sensed the ship's alarm system, caught in an endless loop of calling out and seeking confirmation, so she muted the haggard little bugger. She now knew one thing at least. She was on a spaceship.
The resulting silence hurt just as badly as the alarm, her ears still ringing from the terrible noise.
The man groaned and shifted, bringing his hands up to shield his ears. Aye, the noise had torn at her eardrums too, but she used her noggin. Refused to limit one of her senses. Not when she had no clue concerning her whereabouts or how she'd gotten there.
"You," she barked at him, her voice echoing in the brightly lit space. "I know you."
The man froze as if he hadn't realized that he wasn't alone. Then, like flipping a switch, a smile bloomed on his face, his toothy incisor catching the light like polished caro.
He rolled toward her. "Well, good morn—"
Vedma got a mighty fine view of his broad shoulders and chest as he turned toward her and dropped out of sight.
Huh. She hadn't noticed that they each lay on a separate surface with a bit of space between them.
The man thunked on the deck with a nasty curse.
She shimmied to the edge of her cold slab and glanced down. "You all right?"
He sprawled there, face down on the deck. "I don't know yet."
Her curiosity got the better of her. "Is this a test?"
He didn't answer straight away. "No."
"Is this a clutch negotiation?"
His second answer came much faster "What? No!"
He started to move now, steadying his limbs under himself. He grasped onto the edge of Vedma's table, his inked hands much larger in contrast to her own, as he pulled himself to his feet.
"Gods, no," he heaved. "This is an abduction."
Vedma recoiled from him, precariously close to falling off the far edge of her own slab. "You've abducted me?"
Looming over the table, he frowned down at her, and his green
-gold eyes passed over her quickly. Dismissively.
"No." His voice croaked just like hers. "You have no notion of where you're at? You can feel drugs in your system?"
"Aye," she admitted cautiously.
"Same here." He let loose a resigned sigh. "Then we've both been abducted."
"Well, shit." Not a whole lot better than having to take another test. Or sit through another seminar.
She'd been at the Academe for over a decade, planning for the day she'd finally bust out of that front gate and never look back. She'd taken measures to leave there a free woman, mostly clutchless and definitely houseless. Clutch did her no good—she had no need for Teras Ero men—and she'd spent her entire life without the aegis of a house. Both would do nothing but waste her time, and she had shit to do.
Unfortunately, all her planning never covered waking up on a frigid metal slab, the victim of a kidnapping.
Kidnapped. A shit mound for sure, but she'd handle it. The Academe avoided shit in all its forms, which just boggled her mind. She'd rather be a shitkicker than someone who fainted at the mere whiff of it.
She looked about. Aye, it looked like she was on a spaceship. The air tasted recycled, and the inertial dampener calibrations were a tad too loosey goosey. They appeared to be in the maintenance bay of a small clunker ship. Clutter surrounded them. Tools were mounted haphazardly on the bulkhead. Spare parts, including Lassie android pieces, lay strewn about. This place had all the charm and comforts of her childhood home back on the mining rig.
As her eyes finished their circuit around the cramped bay, she came back to the man towering over her. Gods, he was a big bastard and so damn familiar, even with the orangish bruise blossoming on his noggin. Or perhaps it was the look he leveled at her that felt familiar. He was staring down at her with the mixture of befuddlement and disgust that most people plastered onto their faces when dealing with her.
"What?" She shrugged.
But she knew what. He thought she was a damn imbecile.
"That's it?" Incredulity colored his tone. A tone that clipped its consonants like every highbrow cockarse on Teras Ero. "That's all you're going to say?"
He thought her a backsystem simpleton. Fine by her. She never liked the snobs on Teras Ero, anyway. She refused to smooth out her accent, no matter how many times she had to repeat Athela Etiquette for Budding Beauties.
Besides, he overreacted, and she told him so with a dismissive wave. "I ain't gonna cheer or nothin'."
He took a staggering step back, bumping into the table. "Cheer? We've been abducted."
"By aliens?" she asked hopefully.
Sadly though, the ship looked to have the makings of a Gwyretti pipe, but a girl could dream, couldn't she?
Aliens wouldn't know she was an Athela, a woman with rare technopathic abilities that let her mentally engage with ancient Athelasan tech. Aliens wouldn't try to ransom her to a Teras Great House or to a brothel on Radost. Aliens might be willing to shuttle her out of the Tendex Worlds, hopping on over to the hunk of rock holding her da and beaming him aboard, too. Take them away from the other species—Kraai, Apinazeru, and Gwyretti—that would try to capitalize on her worth.
Aliens would just be curious little beings and a fucking gods-send in a moment like this.
Again, he just stared at her.
She had about given up hope that he'd answer her, when he released his breath and said, "No. The Gwyretti. We're on a Gwyretti ship."
Her shoulders drooped of their own accord, but she kept her damn chin up. "Too bad."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "Too bad?"
"Ech. Been through worse."
Feeling more awake, she slid off the opposite side of the table, away from the man who now eyed her suspiciously. Yep, she got that look often as well, when she would slink about the Athela dormitory. Took her years to improve her stealth maneuvering so that no one looked at her at all.
Well, time to rescue herself, and whenever she stumbled into scenarios similar to this, the results always ended up mixed.
Resigning herself to the inevitable blowback ahead, she stretched, popping her joints and loosening her muscles.
"Gods," she groaned. "How long was I out for?"
* * *
Dyr didn't move a muscle as he absorbed her presence. Never before had he seen a lady, an Athela, move like her. Sliding from the metal slab like a mythical sefura rising from a chaise, she stretched.
Only... she didn't do it quite right.
She struck him speechless with her gangly, disjointed contortions.
She didn't arch up onto her toes, pivoting just so, to display her shapely calves or her curved hips. Didn't raise her arms overhead, carding her fingers through her heavy locks to produce a cascade of silken black hair that would flow over the graceful slope of her shoulders and feather the tips of her upturned breasts. No coy smile curled her lips. No tiny incisor twinkled in the light with sensual promises. None of it.
Rather, she creaked and popped like his ol' da, just short of breaking wind, as her body pulled taut then snapped loose into a slouch. Her mouth erupted into a yawn that twisted her lips over her teeth in a crooked grimace. She scratched at her belly, leaving orange score marks over her fine-lined praal, and smacked her dry lips again and again. Hell, she even wiggled her damn toes over the deck's grating.
Unbelievable. It would appear that she started her days as a grumpy riser. She had him shaking his head despite its pounding throbs.
By Unholde, he hated the aftereffects of being drugged, and he must have been drugged to have no memories that explained waking up on a cold slab. He suppressed a wry chuckle. For one lust-charged moment, when he heard a sultry voice ushering him forth from slumber, he just assumed, like a cockmongrel, that he'd managed to secure company of the fairer persuasion. Instead, he came face-to-face with the Athela Anathema herself, Lady Vedma.
Oh, he knew Lady Vedma or rather knew of her. It tempered his mild panic to acknowledge that there were thousands of other souls whom he'd rather be kidnapped with at this moment. Aye, even some of his enemies made the list. Because being sequestered and unchaperoned with an Athela, even one as notorious as Lady Vedma, firmly remained the last place in the Tendex that he wanted to be.
His father would be so damn proud of him. Both law and tradition stated that an Athela in duress was harbored by the house that found her.
Unholde take him. He was doubly fucked.
He cast his eyes around the maintenance bay of the Gwyretti pipe, a shitty little ship that resembled its namesake—a narrow pipe that had all the spacefaring essentials crammed inside. The upper level contained the bridge, berthing, and mess, while the lower level contained maintenance, engines, and a modest cargo hold—all inside a narrow, circular hull, like a pipe. About as space-worthy as a drainage pipe, too.
Against the bulkhead leaned two cryo-bins, propped up head-to-toe in the tight space. Scorch marks and slagged edges marred the lids, clear evidence that the Gwyretti pried them open. A cryptic chill overtook him as his thoughts wrestled with the implications those two cryo-bins presented. That and his drugged-like sensations created a sinister picture. The Gwyretti specialized in salvaging spacecraft, not rescuing stranded spacefarers. Their crews rarely included a medic. If the Gwyretti did pull the Athela and him from those bins, it amazed him that he actually woke at all, and apparently with nothing worse than a parched throat, weak limbs, and growling stomach.
Inhaling, he accessed his technopathy, attempting to make contact with the AthNet, and encountered nothing. No lines of data streamed into his mind. A shiver passed through him. Never had the AthNet been inaccessible to him, not since he was a child and his talent had yet to develop.
Since all species in the Tendex based their advanced tech on Athelasan logic gates, he easily connected to the Gwyretti pipe's systems. A silent alarm reporting a hull breach ran nonstop.
Thus far, their current situation, abductions and Athelas aside, boasted nothing but untenable cir
cumstances.
Even worse? Lady Vedma, traipsing about in her underthings, had yet to demonstrate her understanding of their predicament.
Frustrated, he put his back to her and thus encountered more problems. As his eyes settled on the deck, his shiver in response to the lack of AthNet access ran ice-cold in his veins. His attention darted between a dead Gwyretti, so distinctive in appearance with his thick tail and iridescent frill and scales, and a skinsuit that had been sliced into ribbons.
His eyes snapped to Lady Vedma, who had yet to see the body, and trailed over the expanse of her skin with the best bits covered by thin scraps of fabric. Took him a moment to realize his own hands swept down his torso, gliding over the slippery insulation of a skinsuit.
Fucking Gwyretti. The bastards encountered a Teras woman—a true rarity outside of the core Dominion worlds—and they'd stripped her bare.
Swearing, he started fumbling with the seam at his neck, triggering the release of the intellifibers.
"Here. Take this." His words became white tendrils of puffed air, and his skin tightened when exposed to the chilled bay.
How had he not noticed her trembling? That she raised up and wiggled her toes because the deck must be frigid. That she stretched to pump blood and warmth into her limbs.
She just frowned and shook her head, as if declining a small offering, like fetching her a beverage. "Nah. I'm good."
"By Unholde, you are." He wrestled with the sleeves.
"Ech, keep your damn skinsuit. I'll make do."
"You're shivering."
"So?" She shrugged. "Been colder."
"You need to be covered."
He peeled the suit down his thighs, relieved to reveal a snug pair of shorts. His anthers, apparently fair-weather friends with his cock, tucked into his body to escape the cold.
"I got skivvies on." She went still and arched a brow at him. "Is this about my praal?"
"Your praal?"