Royal Recruit - Susan Grant Page 0,80

what to do with it,” she said.

“What did she say?” The younger warlord Rorkk looked shocked as he spun his eyes to his father. “I thought you said she was shy.”

“Let us see how shy she is,” the warlord said. Monster. Scourge of the galaxy. “Take off your clothes,” he ordered her.

Keira glanced around the bridge. Other men lounged about. Not a female in the bunch. No female battlelords. The thought of being naked and defenseless in front of them nearly dropped her to her knees.

But she was a skilled actress; she’d acted all her life, rarely showing anyone who she really was. Jared knew the real you. Yes, these monsters would not. To reveal her true self was to reveal her vulnerability and fear.

Opening her robes to their hungry perusal, Keira lowered her eyes and prayed to get through this night with her dignity intact. Before Jared had come and flooded her life with happiness and light, dignity had been all she’d had. It had served her well as a protective wall, one as high and as wide as those surrounding the Goddess Keep.

Rakkuu’s spawn slid off his chair. His uniform hid his hard little cock but arousal blazed in his eyes. “To my bunk, virgin goddess. My blushing bride.”

So they thought she was untouched, did they? The traitors on Sakka had done their jobs well.

As the men exchanged ideas on what could be done with her and how, she furtively searched the bridge, the corridor, and glimpsed into rooms visible from where she stood. Only a few guards remained, all of them rough-looking and mean. But there were many more on this ship, the flagship of the Drakken fleet.

Were there any believers among them? A ray of hope warmed her. The key was to see more of the ship. “I wish to bathe first,” she said.

“She wishes to bathe,” the boy said in a high voice, mimicking her regal tone. The men broke into more laughter.

Rorkk picked up a stick of some kind and gestured down a corridor leading from the bridge. Closing her robes, Keira walked ahead of him. Periodically, he’d jab the stick in her lower back and murmur what he planned to do with it once he got her alone. “Shall the stick take your virginity, Goddess, or shall I?”

She gritted her teeth, but somehow kept her temper under control. The vessel was far larger than she’d realized. She began to despair of ever escaping this ship. Her cycle was ripe for becoming pregnant. If the Drakken had altered anything in her blood to refuse Jared’s sperm and accept this creature’s, she’d conceive. She’d be raped and humiliated and made to bear children whose mixed blood would change the course of the galaxy. If she’d thought her life was stifling before, it didn’t come close to what her future would be like.

Yet in so many ways, what was happening to her felt familiar. Ultimately, others had always made decisions for her and had ever since she’d taken the throne as a child-queen, a terrified little girl trying to stay afloat in a sea of what she didn’t understand.

Look at you, weakling, doing the warlord’s bidding, pleading for a bath so you can delay the inevitable a little longer. You’re still that girl.

She was supposed to hold absolute and holy power over trillions, but here she was, a plaything for despots. What kind of goddess had no free will, no control over her destiny, no choices?

Not this kind of goddess. Her fear and anger transformed into power. She made her decision on how this would end.

She’d been a useless figurehead, no more than a breeder, and these men planned to use her in the same way. In that, they were no different than her people. She’d never really mattered, not the way she’d longed to matter, but this was her chance, was it not? Look at the sacrifices Jared had made. She knew he’d not taken his own life. He’d died fighting her fight.

In his honor she would continue it.

Yes, even if she died this day, she would have done something to help the galaxy, and all the believers.

That sounded frighteningly altruistic. Perhaps she was finally learning what it meant to be a goddess.

Her breathing quickened as she looked around for an opportunity. If you look, you will not find it. Let it reveal itself. The words came in the voice of her mother! As she opened herself to the power of the goddesses, lost memories