A delivery, Bertok had said, handing me off to Jirghogis in trade for what I assumed was space money. What the hell I was supposed to deliver and to whom, I had no idea. But I didn’t like the looks of this place.
I knew no one here. Hell, anyone I knew was on Earth, light years away. Besides, I was human. What everyone else in the place was, I had no idea. Some were even fucking blue, and I didn’t mean they were holding their breath. Some had horns. Some had faces covered with a strange rough fur that looked almost like porcupine needles. Others looked like walking reptiles—their eyes orange or yellow, and their pupils slit like a snake’s. When the nearest whipped a forked tongue in my direction, I choked down a scream and looked away. I would not give the slime-coated monster who had nudged me out here with the end of his pseudo-cattle prod the satisfaction of screaming.
But no. Just no. This was not okay.
I had no idea what planet Bertok had transported me to. Why he’d sold me to the creepy guy with slimy scales and the hideous tail or where Bertok was now. I didn’t have a clue why I was here. How I’d get off the planet. I didn’t have a weapon. Hell, I didn’t even have shoes.
But the desire burning in my gut was pure fire.
Bertok.
I was going to survive this, and I was going to hunt the fucker down and string his guts across the desert sands of Trion for vultures—did Trion have vultures?—t
o tear apart. He’d killed my mate. For that alone, he deserved to die. I was not a soft, shy, innocent woman. Bertok made a mistake taking me. I’d grown up poor, on the streets, scrapping with the gangs and the pimps and the drug dealers. I knew how to survive, how to fight, how to take care of my damn self.
This place was no different. Wherever here was. I’d hoped that the Interstellar Brides Program would be different. I had actually believed I could escape my life. The system.
Wrong, Zara. Way fucking wrong.
I had no idea how I was going to get out of here, out of this mess, but I hadn’t survived the streets and the rough life that went with it to just give in now and be a slave.
No fucking way.
This place, with rowdy, drunken patrons, was a shithole full of alien criminals. It took one to know one, even in space. Scum was scum, no matter what kind of skin, fur or scales they were covered with.
I laughed to myself. If these assholes only knew. I might be female, and I might be from Earth, and I might be tiny, but I was fucking fierce. I wasn’t to be handled carefully because I was a dainty flower. No, I had to be handled carefully because I was an atomic bomb.
Justice. I’d get justice for Naron. For myself.
I’d track Bertok down, slit his throat like he had Naron’s and then make my way home. It wouldn’t be the first time I had survived, despite the odds stacked against me. I’d handled and even tamed the streets when I was a teen. I would survive. Not just survive. Bertok was going to pay. For killing my mate in cold blood. For crushing the one and only dream I’d allowed myself since I was too young to remember dreaming about a different life.
“It’s time for you to go. Cerberus is here.” The creature holding the electric stick struck it along the hard, cold floor just a few inches in front of my feet, and I jerked back instinctively, trying to distance myself from the threat. When I looked back at him, his lecherous gaze was on my chest, a thick, heavy drool the likes of which I’d never seen from anything resembling a man, dripped from his scaly lips like he was drooling over a bone. So gross. His spit smelled rotten, like burned hair and sulfur.
I didn’t know what he was talking about or what Cerberus was.
When he poked at the ground again, I did not move. His grin turned to a scowl, but I looked away. I would not perform for him. Not fight or wiggle and shake my breasts for his amusement. Would. Not. The clothes were brown and heavy enough to keep me warm, but they were tight. Too damn tight. And though small, I was not a flat-chested woman.
The slimy auctioneer bent down and pushed a series of buttons on the stage. At once, the manacle around my ankle dropped to the floor, deactivated by whatever magic button he had just pushed.
I didn’t know who my escort was in this crowd, but I wasn’t waiting to find out. Not now that I was no longer shackled.
This was it. It was go/no-go time. If I escaped now, I’d remain free or die. If I let some escort take me, I was as good as dead. There was no choice. Now was it. I took a deep breath, let it out.
The scaly creature made the pokey stick sizzle again, but this time, I stepped back and grabbed it in the center, as far from the activated tip as I could get. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting me to fight back. Tugging hard, it ripped from his so-called fingers, and I spun it around like a fucking cheerleader’s baton then lunged. The crackle of the stick this time was against his flesh.
He bellowed in agony as I held it in place, probably not in the way the tool was supposed to be used. What-fucking-ever.
I shoved once more, then pulled back. He slumped forward in blatant pain. Good.
With a running leap, I jumped off the raised platform and into the crowd. They were smarter than the scaly one, for they made a path for me. Or, they made a path for the electric cattle prod.
I waved it in front of me, kept the path going. I’d seen people… beings, coming in and out from the far corner, so that was where I was headed. A corridor. A hallway. Somewhere, this place had to have a transport room. And if not? Well, there had to be ships out here. I’d steal one. Kidnap a pilot. Whatever I had to do.
“Stop the human!”
A blue female got in my way. Her? She was my escort? She stood in my path, eyes narrowed, clearly not afraid of me and eager to halt my retreat. “You Cerberus?”
“You will come with me.” She spoke clearly, slowly, making sure my translator thing had time to process her order.