at the right time to stay alive. Now wasn’t the time.
“Kneel.”
I looked up at him, said nothing.
He lifted the knife to my neck, pressed the tip into the skin until the blade bit into my flesh.
Holding my breath, I reached out and grabbed hold of the tent pole beside me, carefully dropped to my knees, careful lest I slash my own throat. Once on my knees, the idea of giving him a BJ made bile rise into my throat. I would definitely throw up if forced.
Reaching out, he set the knife down on a table without taking his eyes from me, telling me without words it was close enough for him to grab. To kill.
With his hands free, he brought the collar forward and locked it around my neck as if I were a dog. I even had a tag, a heavy medallion hung cold and heavy on my chest. He then affixed the chain he carried to one of my nipple rings. I flinched, but he seemed to have no sexual interest in me. His hand moved to the other, affixing the chain to both, however he did so with the tent pole in between. My breaths quivered with my breasts, the chain swinging once he let it go. It was light and dangled only a few inches but… I. Was. Trapped. By. My. Own. Nipples.
What 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