The collar felt like a noose as he tightened it around my neck, the little box and pins that would deliver incredible pain at the flick of a switch digging into my skin. He thought he truly had me under control now, and the show I put on to further strengthen that belief was one of my best yet. I bucked against the shackles, snarled, faked attempting to shift, and called him all kinds of names. He flicked the pain button, and agony shot through my veins and burned along my nerves.
I let him have that satisfaction, even though it was a kind of agony I’d never felt before. Blazing stars, was this what they subjected slaves and gladiators to? It was horrible—I’d rather get shot again—and actual tears stung the corners of my eyes as I blinked through the suffering. Yeah, I really didn’t want to feel that again, and Dimon’s expression said he knew it. Good.
“You’re going to behave now, are you?” he warned, smug, finally firmly believing he had the situation under control. I panted, letting my head hang low on my shoulders; an act that was closer to reality than I’d like. Showing weakness was never easy, and perhaps that hint of resistance was what sold the act to the pirate captain.
“Blazing stars, where did you get that thing, Dimon?” I asked as he began undoing the shackles around my wrists. He didn’t answer at first, but held the control unit to the collar firmly in his hand where I could see it. We were out of the brig, my boots silent behind his plodding steps, and almost at the hangar bay when he finally glanced over his shoulder. My skin prickled at the sight of the very sharp, predatory look in his black eyes. That was the Dimon I’d known five years ago, before he’d indulged in too much Peckana and Roka.
“It was at the bottom of a chest of trophies, can you believe it? I think it came with the raid we did on that Star Class Cruiser seven years ago. Remember her? The rich Asrai nobles with their pets and their fancy robes? We netted a fine haul that day.” I did remember that ship, now that he mentioned it. It stood out because it was one of the first times I’d run into our moral differences.
That ship had carried Asrai nobles, some of whom had their own household slaves. I’d managed to secrete them onto a shuttle and send them to the nearest safe planet, and Dimon had been pretty annoyed about that. One Ulinial female hadn’t survived the raid; used as a shield by her Asrai owner, and it had to be her collar I was now forced to wear. My stomach roiled with nausea at the thought, but I managed to hold onto my breakfast.
It was a good thing the hangar bay proved the distraction I needed. I suspected that much of what remained of theVidu’screw had gathered inside it. Guns bristling, and not all of them loaded with tranquilizer darts. Either a choice by Dimon, or he was beginning to lose control of the males. Those that still stood were definitely the tougher ones, the survivors. The ones fast enough to get out of my path when I’d started fighting yesterday. The rest of my plan didn’t hinge on killing them, though; that would just be a nice bonus.
Xathena wasn’t present, and I could not see Irena anywhere either, though I caught a faint whiff of her scent. When I scanned the crew present, I smirked with satisfaction. There were no other Ovters present, and definitely nobody small enough to fit the task of helping me steal the diamond. “Hey, Dimon,” I drawled. “Where’s that small second you promised me to help steal this diamond? I warned you it’s a two-male job.” Very purposely, I said male; I needed him to come up with using Irena himself.
He gave me a glare he wouldn’t have attempted before he’d snapped that collar around my neck. Then he waved the remote in my face and ordered me to kneel, an attempt to reestablish his position of power in this situation. I made a show of baring my sharp teeth, growling, and glaring, but when he shifted histhumb on the remote, I dropped dutifully to my knees. I’d push this, but not so far as to receive another jolt.
“You killed the male suited for the job,” he snarled in my face, his jagged, sharp teeth only inches from my nose. “But I’ve given that some thought, and why put one of my males in harm’s way when I have a perfectly suited slave around to do the job? Right?” He directed that at the crowd, who then began eagerly agreeing.
I saw the gears slowly spin inside the eyes of one of the more experienced males present, though. I was pretty sure it was a new face, a Kertinal with several notches in his horns to indicate the people he’d murdered. His amethyst eyes glowed as he boldly questioned Dimon’s plan. “One problem, boss,” he said in that typical Kertinal sub-harmonic voice. Boss was spat out with disdain rather than respect, which made this male a follower of Xathena’s upcoming bid to grab power. “That slave has been impossible to catch the past couple of days. Xathena…”
“Xathena is an idiot who failed her task!” Dimon snarled in fury, cutting across the male with a slash of his hand. I chuckled and basked in the chaos of the conversation, and in the way several of the males nearest my kneeling form shuffled a little farther away from me. So, so scared of me. I snapped my fangs, just to scare them a little more.
I hoped Irena was listening, and that she’d take this opportunity to let herself get caught. That hadn’t been part of my instructions, but she was clever. If she was listening, would she see, as I did, that it was the best course of action? It would take a lot of bravery to make a noise, to step out of hiding, and I could not guarantee that they’d refrain from hurting her. All pleasureat the currently unfolding situation vanished as I realized that. I could not protect her; I had to play my role with the slave collar. If it did get out of hand, instincts would take over, and I’d start killing until they dropped me.
My brave mate proved just how bold she was, and how much of her timidity and fear from before had morphed into a desire to control her own fate. She did exactly as I’d hoped, making a shuffling noise when using her had been mentioned. While most of the aliens here had nowhere near as developed a sense of smell as I did, many did have very good ears. They caught that sound and turned to look. It wasn’t very long before two jogged off and returned with Irena clutched between them.
They gripped her upper arms a little too tightly for my taste, so I memorized their scents and faces. If I had the chance, I’d make sure to remind them that hurting a female—especiallymyfemale—was unacceptable. They’d lose their fingers for this. Irena made it easier on herself by meekly letting them drag her along, her head lowered and her eyes wide with fear that definitely wasn’t fake.
“What was that?” Dimon said smugly in the face of the brazen Kertinal, and this time, the male backed down. Dimon was winning back the loyalty of his men, and I decided it would help our case if I helped that along. A clash between him and Xathena was much better than a solid victory for the Xurtal second. When they dragged Irena, without explanation, onto the shuttle, I followed obediently when Dimon ordered me to. That definitely made Dimon look good in the eyes of his men.
Chapter 17
Irena
I was so scared when they strapped me to the jumpseat inside that shuttle. Scared because letting myself get caught was so counterintuitive to what I wanted, but also scared because Flack’s plan to escape had just hit a huge snag. There was a horrible collar fastened around his neck now, and he acted defeated as Dimon ordered him to kneel on the floor of the shuttle. A slave collar. There was no escaping that.
Only too well did I recall the one I’d been forced to wear when I’d first been woken from stasis inside that auction house on the Yengar space station. It had felt like a fist around my neck, a constant, terrible reminder of how little control I had over my life. The pain that thing inflicted was so unbearable that I’d have done anything to avoid feeling it again. Then Isen had carved up my face, and the pain collar’s agony had paled in comparison.
What did this mean for us? Everything else was going as Flack had planned, but this surely threw a massive wrench into things. Those collars were impossible to tamper with. I’d been extremely lucky in that regard. The auction house had demanded an extra fee from the pirates to keep the one around my neck, and they hadn’t bothered. Not a strange choice, as there wasn’t really any place I could run, confined to a spaceship. They didn’t need to worry about escape. Not like with Flack.
Flack was forced to kneel for the entire flight down to the planet we were in orbit around. He kept checking on me, but only through his lashes, hiding that he was doing it. His eyes werefierce when he glared at everyone else around us. There were a lot of them; they’d turned out in full force to bring us to the planet. They all looked worried too, and I had rarely seen the crew of theViduso on edge. Did that mean they feared Flack, even shackled and collared? Or was that unease about the looming threat of the crimelord they owed?
It wasn’t until we’d landed and Flack was being dragged out of the shuttle that I caught an expression on his face that set my nerves at ease: a wink. He’d definitely winked at me from beneath a lock of silky white hair, hidden from view from everyone but me as they hauled him outside. That wink could mean many things, but it made me feel like Flack was telling me all was well. That the plan was still on. Ireallyhoped so.
I was escorted off the shuttle by Sil, one of the few crew members I still knew by name. He regularly got called out for being an idiot, and this time was no different. “No, not there—put her over here,” Dimon warned, pointing to a spot at his side. Being this close to the captain had rarely worked in my favor, so my heart rate spiked.
Like Flack, I was ordered to kneel, and I hurried to obey, my stolen pistol awkwardly pressing against my thighs where I’d bound it with scraps of cloth. I knew Flack had told me to hide it on the ship, but I’d felt better knowing I could arm myself and fight back. I never wanted to feel as helpless again as I had in the moments before Xathena had nearly struck me with her knife.
Dimon went into one of those far too long talks of his, rambling about what Flack needed to do and how this would save all of us. I tried to use the moment to calm my nerves and study my surroundings. It was the first time I’d set foot on an alien planet,and it wasn’t quite what I expected. So far, all I’d seen was a space station run by lowlifes and a spaceship. This was very different.
We were in a forest, and daylight filtered through the trees. Light that felt and looked much the same as that of the sun back on Earth. My skin warmed beneath the rays, and a soft breeze blew across my bare legs and arms. The climate here was like a warm autumn day back home, not unpleasant but a little brisk given how thin my dress was. I was suddenly cold, and I hadn’t been cold inside the sweltering, stuffy heat that filled theVidubefore. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be cold, and it made me worry over lots of new things. How cold would it get out here at night?
The trees didn’t have branches, but rather massive leaves a bit like a palm tree. They provided dense cover in the forest that prevented light from hitting the ground. In this clearing, though, the sunlight was pleasant enough to keep me from freezing. I shivered anyway, my skin breaking out in goosebumps. In the distance, a mountain loomed tall, pointing at the sky in one jagged peak. It was capped with snow, warning me that this planet definitely could get cold.
“You’re going to have to undo these shackles to let me steal the diamond, Dimon,” Flack taunted, drawing my attention back to the men in the clearing with me. Flack knelt proudly, eyebrow raised and blue eyes twinkling with amusement. Definitely trying to needle Dimon, and succeeding in getting under the captain’s skin. “And you’re going to have to restore my ability to shift, too.”
That made the whole clearing grow hushed, and the crew glanced uneasily around. They really didn’t like that, but Dimon still seemed unruffled. He held up the pain controller to the slave collar as a warning, a reminder. “I’m in control, Flack. One false move and I take you down with this. Don’t forget it.” Flack snarled, the response full of fury, but he didn’t lunge, didn’t fight.
