She was in the Imperial gardens. Jess blinked, her eyelashes wet with tears as she looked around. Curled up on one of the benches, she was well out of sight of the main pathways. How long had she been here? It couldn’t have been too long. Once her guards had discovered she was gone, all hell would have broken loose. She’d have heard the alarms.

She was glad they hadn’t found her though. Not in this state.

A shuddering breath left her as she realized tears still ran down her face silently. She was a fucking idiot. Laarn didn’t want her, never had, and he hadn’t claimed her until his hand had been forced.

Until she’d forced his hand, pushing and pushing him into a relationship with her. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. She’d hung around so he couldn’t help but notice her, mooned after him like some fucking love-sick teen over her first crush. Then, she let out a bitter laugh, she’d pulled the age-old underhanded female trick and gotten herself pregnant by accident.

Never mind that they hadn’t even had sex at that point. Oh no, she’d managed to find a sci-fi equivalent of the immaculate conception. Someone slap her ass and call her fucking Mary. Her hand shook as she shoved it through her hair, the elegant braid she’d put it into this morning long gone under Laarn’s hands at lunch.

The memory of their tryst earlier brought fresh tears to her eyes. He fucked her, sure, and he was good at it… so very good… and she’d even thought she’d seen something in his eyes, some sort of emotion. Her snort was bitter. Love. She’d thought it was love, hidden way back there. A love he couldn’t admit to yet, hampered by his warrior’s training or something. But now she realized differently.

He hadn’t wanted to bond with her, so what man wouldn’t make the best of a bad job, particularly a man who hadn’t had access to a woman for years? No wonder he fucked her with desperation. He was frustrated. Probably had the worst case of blue balls for a fucking century, so when he’d been forced into what amounted to a shotgun wedding…

She closed her eyes and groaned. Oh my god, how fucking stupid was she? No wonder he’d been putting off a bonding ceremony. “After the baby,” her ass. He didn’t want to be bonded to her at all, and with his knowledge of genetic manipulation… shit, he was probably already looking for a way to remove the bonding marks from his skin.

A wave of exhaustion and nausea washed over her. She’d made a complete and utter fool of herself. Chasing a man who wasn’t interested. Had never been interested. She’d convinced herself that he was shy or something. He was dedicated to his duty to save the Lathar, but he wasn’t shy at all. He never had been.

Casting her mind back, she tried to think of any point when he’d shown interest in her at all. And came up blank. Sure, of all the human women, he’d requested her the most often… she groaned again and let her head rest against the cool marble.

Stockholm Syndrome. She had a classic fucking case of it.

Steps sounded behind her and she jerked upright, grabbing the hem of her skirts to wipe the tears from her eyes. The last thing she wanted to do was admit why she was crying to anyone, to admit her failures and that she’d been a fucking idiot. A small measure of relief filled her as she realized the tread was heavy and male. A Lathar, thank god. She could fool a warrior… fooling one of her friends would have been entirely more difficult. Impossible. After all they’d been through, they could read each other like a book.

Her eyes widened as Saal came into view. A few days had taken care of most of his injuries but he still looked like a man who had been beaten, and badly.

“Shit, Saal…” She looked around in panic. “You have to go. If the guard sees you near me, he’ll kill you.”

“What I have to say is worth the risk.” He managed a small smile as he came nearer and sat on the other end of the bench. His movements were slower than normal and obviously painful. At her little look he shrugged. “None of the healers will touch me past ensuring my life is not in danger, so I have to heal the old-fashioned way. Slowly. To teach me a lesson.”

Her heart clenched for him as she took in the bruises on his face, one eye still nearly shut, and across his chest and body. He had to be in agony with the wounds Laarn had inflicted, but to then deny healing as well… a shiver hit her at her mate’s ruthlessness.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t know accepting help from you would make him do this…”

“No,” he interrupted her. “You didn’t do this. I did. I didn’t need to challenge him for you. I didn’t need to use you accepting my help as a route to issue that challenge, especially when you did not know our laws. It was a dishonorable move… a, how do you humans say it, a dick move?”

Her lips quirked a little, even through her sadness. “You’ve been talking to Kenna or Jane,” she said, recognizing the comment.

He nodded. “I was reassigned to Lady Jane’s protection detail. She’s… not you, but is pleasant to be around. I’m hoping that my compliance will stand me in good stead and I might eventually be granted permission to travel to your system. See Earth for myself.”

“Yeah?” She smiled, grateful for his understanding and the fact that he hadn’t queried the tears on her face or her red, puffy eyes. She shuffled more upright, smoothing her hair down. She must look a right sight. “Are you sure that’s because you want to see my planet, or because there are human women—a lot of human women—there?”

He grinned, ducking his head a little and looking up at her through his bangs. “It’s the women. You can’t blame me, not when I see you and the other ladies here… You’re all beautiful and any male would be proud to call you his own.”

She shook her head. “Word of warning when you meet more Terran women? Don’t go around declaring you own them… we don’t like that. It smacks too close to slavery, and we abolished the right to own another human centuries ago.”

He blinked, surprise on his face. “You think that’s what we mean? That by claiming you, we make you our slaves? Gods!”

Shoving a hand into his long hair, he looked at her again. The depth of the shock in his pale eyes would have been amusing if it wasn’t so profound.

“You really don’t understand our males at all, do you?” he asked. “The dream of all of us is to find a female to claim and call our own. A worthy female who will call the mating marks out of our skin for all to see… but it’s not the male who makes a slave,” he all but spat the word, “of the female, but the other way around. And willingly. Once those marks are on a male’s wrist, he belongs to her. Body, mind and soul. There will never be another female for him as long as he lives. His body, his cock, will never work for another.”

Her mouth opened but no words came out, the depth of her surprise was so great. Finally, she cleared her throat and managed, “What. Ever?”

Saal shook his head and then paused and frowned. “Maybe if she died? After years have passed? Usually bonded males whose mates die… well, they’re never the same, if you get what I mean? They often go berserk in battle, just keep attacking the enemy until they’re exhausted and get killed.”

“Oh my…” She really didn’t know what to say to that, but was saved from answering as large figures closed in on them suddenly.

Hard hands yanked her off the bench and she screamed, the sound cut off as a hard hand was slapped over her mouth. She carried on screaming, struggling like a wildcat while next to her, Saal bellowed with rage and fought back. But the dark-clad figures around them were too numerous and she watched in horror as they surrounded him. In his injured state, it was obvious any resistance wasn’t going to last long.

Her captors lifted her but she twisted and turned, trying to keep him in sight. She managed it just long enough to see him hit over the back of the head, collapsing to the ground in a heap. Lifeless. She didn’t stop screaming and struggling as they carried her away until something sharp was pressed against her neck.

Every cell in her body froze as she stilled, her heart pounding in her chest as a voice rasped in her ear.

“The price for you is dead or alive, Terran bitch. Your call.”

* * *

“I can bloody well feed myself, female. Give it here!”

Laarn chuckled at the growl from the general’s room as he and Karryl passed, pausing for a moment to get a glimpse into the “room” Xaandril was recovering in and biting back a small smile.

The big warrior was bed-bound, his shoulder and arm bandaged right the way up to the neck with movement suppressors in place, their bright blue lights winking in concert. He couldn’t have moved the limb to save his life, just the way Laarn wanted it while his body healed. Sitting next to him on the covers was Kenna, one eyebrow arched as she held out a spoonful of soup.

“And just how are you going to balance the bowl and the spoon without wearing it and burning yourself in the process?” she demanded. “Stop being a big baby and just let me feed you.”

Karryl whistled softly, murmuring, “Did she just call the Hero of the Nine Wastes a big baby?”

Laarn chuckled as they passed. “Yes, I do believe she did.”

“He’s a goner.” Karryl fell into step with him as they walked into the main area of the hall. “He just doesn’t realize it yet.”

“When we took the humans, we assumed they would be docile and biddable like the oonat. Seems the gods played a hell of a joke on us, didn’t they? The human women go after what they want, and they don’t stop until they get it.”

Laarn nodded with a wry smile, stopping by the main station to call up a list of the injuries logged in for treatment. They were the usual assortment of training injuries and one serious burn from engine fuel. Looked like the idiot stuck his arm against a running vent. The healer shook his head at such stupidity. Really, some males should be stopped from breeding.

Karryl’s smile was broad as he leaned his hips back against the console next to Laarn, his arms folded over his chest. “Finally realized you were hunted, brother? How do you feel about that? Of all of us, you were the one I never thought would fall…”

“Why not?” Laarn selected one of the open cases for treatment. “I’m a man like any other. A red-blooded male with all the usual drives and needs…” He slid a sideways glance at his friend. “And what makes you think I wasn’t the hunter? I had my eye on Jess as soon as I saw her on that base.”

And he had. One of the first warriors onto their command deck, he’d noticed her immediately. Kneeling with her hands on the back of her head in the middle of the mass of humans, his gaze had gone directly to her. It didn’t matter that there were other females in the room. His attention had been solely for her. She’d been clad in that gods-awful uniform the humans wore, the one that concealed the lines of a woman rather than celebrating them like clothes should.

Then she’d lifted her head, their eyes had met and he’d been sunk.

“Trallshit,” Karryl snorted. “You were running scared and everyone knew it.”

Caught. Karryl had always been able to see right through him.

“Yeah. But I came to my senses. Thank the gods she managed to get herself with child in my lab before that draanthic Saal could make a move on her.

“Speaking of…” Karryl nodded to the other side of the hall. Saal was in the doorway, one hand propping him up. He was covered in blood and unsteady on his feet.

“Huh.” Laarn raised an eyebrow. “Wonder who else he pissed off to get another beating?”

Saal staggered forward, his gaze latching onto the two warriors. “The gardens… they took the Lady Jessica,” he gasped and then keeled over unconscious on the floor.

* * *

Bundled into an oonat robe with a veil over her face, Jess was taken from the palace and hurried through the streets of the city below. She’d been into the city a couple of times before, but those journeys, in a comfortable carriage surrounded by guards and warriors, bore no relation to being frog-marched through the back streets, only able to get snatched glimpses of where she was through the thick material covering her face.

She tried to remember the twists and turns they took, and how many paces, but before long she was hopelessly lost. Through it all, the hard hand on her arm gripped cruelly, painfully, but thankfully there was no longer a blade at her throat.

But she could hear, and when they hit a crowded area she tried to struggle, opening her mouth to cry out.

Before she could, though, a hard voice said at her ear, “Don’t bother. All they see is a handmaiden, a slave. Scream all you like. They wouldn’t raise a finger to help you even if we beat you to death right in front of them.”

Tears filled her eyes as she realized that he was right. The robes rendered her invisible. The veil was something else, used for handmaidens whose features were presumably too non-Lathar to be palatable. Disgust rose. It was the Lathar equivalent of the human joke about putting a bag on an ugly woman’s head so a man could fuck her.

But it meant that he was right. No one would help her, even if she struggled or screamed. She’d seen the scenes themselves. Seen the harsh way some of the Lathar treated their slaves, like they were little more than animals. Not the K’Vass though. She’d never once seen one of their number raise his hand to the robed handmaids. Sure, there was no kindness but there also wasn’t cruelty.

They turned a corner and she stumbled on the dusty, hard-packed dirt between two tall buildings. The shadows were chill here and she shuddered in reaction.

“For draanth’s sake, keep ahold of her,” a voice in front of her growled. “She needs to be in good enough shape for the ceremony.”

She had to press her lips together hard to suppress her cry of pain as she was hauled upright again and half-carried, half-dragged along. What ceremony? What were they talking about? A bonding ceremony? Fuck that, they’d never get her to agree to bond to anyone, not even if they tortured her.

“Fucking waste if you ask me,” the guy holding her growled. “Prime bit of cunt. Why can’t they use a beamer to get the brat out, rather than cutting her open? That way we can all have a fuck before we kill her.”

Her heart stuttered. Holy shit… They planned to cut her baby out of her? Why? Her question was answered as the man in front of her spoke again.

“Because Dvarr says it’s a sacrifice to appease the old gods. They speak to him, have said the bitch’s spawn is the goddess made flesh again, and she’ll use the Terran women to enslave us.”

They were all fucking nuts. Fuck this. Jess started to struggle and scream.

“HELP! I’M TERRAN. THEY’VE KID—”

Pain flared over the back of her head and she staggered, falling to the ground as her vision darkened. Her body went sluggish, no fight in her as she was picked up. There was the sound of booted feet running and then a door crashing open.

“Bitch started yelling but I don’t think they followed us.”

Dumped unceremoniously on the floor, her veil was yanked off over her head. She was in a house, but not one like the palace.

Instead of smooth marble, this one had sand-colored walls surrounding an interior courtyard. Looking up, she saw the central part of the ceiling was missing, allowing her to see the blue of the sky above, but nothing that would help her.

A fountain gurgled in the middle of the courtyard, water cascading down to the small pool at its base. Sheer panels of floaty fabric fluttered gently in the breeze, their tails brushing the tiled floor gently. All in all, it looked like illustrations of the Roman villas in her automated teaching lessons as a child. She’d always thought they looked so pretty and peaceful—the exact opposite of what she was feeling now as those panels were pushed aside by a warrior as he strode through.

Swallowing her nerves, she scrambled to her feet, stopped from backing up by the two big men behind her. Looking up, her gaze slid over the familiar leathers and parted jacket of a Lathar warrior, and then into the hard, familiar face of the purist leader, Dvarr.

He smiled.

“Welcome to my home, Lady Jessica.”