“Oh!” Rylee moaned loudly, as though to reinforce this idea. “The images…the thoughts…I must…must have time to process—to interpret what I have seen!”
“Yes…yes! We must have time!” I moaned in agreement, still clutching my head. From the corner of my eye, I saw the Emperor giving us a disgusted look.
“Very well—take them away to a holding cell for a time to let them recover. Bring them back to me in a few hours.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Captain Zernex barked, bowing his head. He scooped me up in his arms and I went as limp as rag doll, not even trying to resist. Another guard picked up Rylee and the two of us were carried out of the throne room.
FORTY-SIX
NATALIE
Ikept my eyes closed tightly so I didn’t see where we were going. I only looked up after the Captain of the Guards deposited me on what felt like the hardest mattress ever and I heard his tromping footsteps retreating. Beside me, I could hear Rylee stirring.
When I dared to peek, I saw we were in some kind of prison cell, lying on a cot with a plain gray mattress and surrounded by black metal bars. So apparently we were in the Tangellan version of prison, but at least we were alone—all the guards had left the room.
When I looked over at my cousin, I saw she was lying on her side, staring at me.
“Girl, what areyoudoing here?” she demanded, frowning. “You’re supposed to be safe, back home on Earth!”
“I’m doing the same damn thing you are—I was captured by the Commercians! I was sucked right through the mirror—yourbathroom mirror, actually,” I told her. “When I was looking around your apartment for clues to see where the hell you went!”
“What? How did you get into my apartment?” she demanded. “And when was this, anyway? I got back home—for a while, anyway—before I left again.”
“About a week after you went missing,” I told her. “Aunt Celia wasreallyworried about you so she called and asked me to go check on you. And remember, you changed the locks because of your ex, Phillip, and gave me one of your spare keys?”
“Damn…I completely forgot about that.” She put a hand to her head. “You must have gotten abducted right before I came back and then left again. So we just missed each other.” She shook her head. “Bad timing, I guess.”
“You could say that,” I said dryly. “Since I just spent the last six months living as a Blood Whore on O’nagga Nine.”
“What?” Rylee’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
Briefly, I explained about how Gumpas had bought me, decided I wasn’t a La-ti-zal and left me on O’nagga Nine where I had no choice but to sell my blood.
“But that’sallI sold,” I told my cousin firmly, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. “Until I met Vik’tor…”
“Vik’tor,hmmm?” Rylee raised her eyebrows at me in that way she does when she’s teasing me about a guy. “And who is this Vik’tor?”
“He’s really just a friend,” I said, though that wasn’t quite true.
I told her how he was a Baron and the richest man on the planet and how we had felt an instant attraction to each other the minute I literally ran into him.
“Oh, likePretty Woman!”she exclaimed. “Remember how we used to watch that over and over in high school, whenever I’d go over to your house on the weekends?”
I sighed.
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it, but it’s really not the same. I mean, Vik’tor and I know we can never be together permanently. In fact, he was about to take me back home to Earth when Gumpas captured me asecondtime using the same kind of technology the Commercians use to kidnap women from Earth.” I winced and put a hand to my head. “Well, notexactlythe same kind—it was a lot slower and it gave me a hell of a headache!”
“Tell me about it!” Rylee rubbed her own temples and frowned. “It gave me a headache too. But even worse, it seems to have screwed up my mental connection with my guys.”
“Say what? Yourwho?”I asked, thinking I must have heard her wrong.
“My guys—my husbands,” Rylee said. “I’m married—well, they call it ‘Joined’—to two men from Denaris. Their names are Drace and Lucian. They’re from two different clans and they’re both Alphas who got accidentally bonded together. When they first bought me, they wanted me to help sever their bond, but it turns out I’m a Binder so…” She shrugged her shoulders. “The three of us wound up Bound together instead. I mean, what can you do?”
“Wait a minute…wait a minute…” I was still struggling to process all this. “You’re saying you havetwohusbands?”
Rylee shrugged again, as though it was no big deal to be in a permanent three-way.
“Sure. That’s how they do it on Denaris. Although usually it’s an Alpha and a Beta who bond before they go looking for their perfect female mate—not two Alphas.”