at the fuck?
If I tugged, the rings would rip right out. That wasn’t going to happen. The thought alone made my nipples harden. God.
I looked up at Bertok who loomed. “Just as a female should be. Naked. On her knees. Restrained.”
I wasn’t liking Trion all that much. How could I have been in Florida at the Brides Testing Center only a short time ago, and now, I had a dead mate and was a prisoner of a creepy old murderer who planned to sell me?
Had I been sent to Hell instead?
“You’re an asshole,” I muttered.
If he’d wanted me dead, my blood would be spilled beside Naron’s. He needed me alive and obviously unharmed. He didn’t want to rape me. He didn’t even seem overly interested in my body. Based on his words, Trion females were naked, and this kind of weird chaining thing was… normal. Kinky in some situations, but this wasn’t one of them.
Yeah, the testing was so fucking wrong. I had perpetual shitty luck, and it had continued into space. Wait. The match may have been just fine. Naron had been my match not this guy. Bertok was just an evil dick. But sand? Desert? Sooo not me.
“Rest.” He walked toward the tent’s entrance. “We travel to Sector Zero as soon as you are strong enough to transport again. You have a delivery to make, and you won’t do me any good if you’re dead.”
I remembered something the warden had said after my test, that once a bride accepted the match, she is no longer a resident of Earth but of the matched planet. I could never return to Earth. I just had to wonder if this was what she had in mind.
2
Isaak, Sector Zero, Planet Occeron, Abandoned Prillon Outpost known as Omega Dome
“There’s a human female, just arrived.”
“An Earthling.”
“Too weak for me, one fuck would kill her…”
“...she’s not for sale, fool.”
“Everything is for sale, for the right price.”
A very large male, possibly a Prillon and Atlan hybrid with a dark-red arm band pushed his way between the chatting outlaws. “She belongs to Cerberus.”
The voices carried from the back of the small, filthy room where I sat with my tech buyer. My ears had picked up on the words, the important ones. A human female was here?
I’d never known that to occur in all the time I’d been doing business here. I flicked a gaze to Ulza, for she wore the armband of Cerberus. She would know the truth of the gossip.
“It is true.” She sat across from me, smirked because she knew exactly what I was thinking. “A human female in Sector Zero. But they are wrong on one thing. She is not for sale at any price. She now belongs to Cerberus.”
I gave a grunt of reply, showing her complete indifference. Hopefully.
I looked down at the tech unit in my hand, confirming that she had kept her word, and the credit transfer for the latest batch of Hive implants was complete.
“You will keep your nose out of Cerberus business, won’t you Isaak?”
“Not interested.” Not only did I not want to become tangled up in Cerberus business, but anything involving Ulza from Cerberus? She was more dangerous than anyone else I knew. Killing Hive and selling them for parts? No problem. But even I had some honor left. And if Ulza’s words were true and the female in question was here in the outer reaches of Coalition-controlled space because of Cerberus?
She’d gotten mixed up in serious stuff. The question was how?
No. I had to stay focused on why I was here. Sticking one’s nose in other people’s business was a good way to die.
“Are you sure, Isaak? I wouldn’t want to have to kill you.”
“I’m sure.”
“I paid you as agreed. Now, I have business with Jirghogis.”