Wrage (Galaxy Gladiators #11) - Alana Khan Page 0,5
the truth, I must have been drunk out-of-my-mind.
“I have to pee,” she says as she wraps the bedspread around her and walks to the bathroom as if she owns the hotel. Her resemblance to Sibyl is striking. If I was a different male, I’d want to hurt her.
“I wouldn’t have bought you,” I call to her through the door. “I don’t believe in slavery.”
“Good,” she calls back as she pisses. “Cause you don’t fucking own me anymore.”
“You’re talking in riddles,” I roar, then notice it makes my arm throb. “And you burned me!”
I don’t know what she’s doing in there. I hear water running and then wait long minimas for her to return. She’s making me wait on purpose.
I get up, stalk to the bathroom, and pound on the door. “I demand to know what happened last night!”
She opens the door, her blue eyes wide in innocence, then sits at the little table under the window. She’s still covered in the spread.
“Drink too much to remember?” she asks sweetly.
“Yes.” I drop into the chair, put my elbow on the table and pierce her with my gaze. “Tell me.”
“First, you mercilessly heckled me. Remember that?” Her blue eyes are harsh as she looks at me.
“It’s hazy,” I admit. “But yes.”
“You said, and I quote, ‘Your owner should put you in a job where you don’t have to open your mouth except to suck cock’. Remember that?”
Drack. That was mean. Although I’ve spent the last fifteen annums among rowdy gladiators, I wasn’t abducted until I was fifteen. I know better than to speak to a female—any female—like that.
“I apologize.”
Her head whips toward me in surprise. I must have been a total dracker to her if my meager apology shocks her.
“So after our verbal hugfest, and after you evidently won a prodigious amount of money at the casino, you bought me. Then . . .”
Her blue eyes fly from mine. I know this look. I saw it from Sibyl. It’s what females do when they’re evasive. I wait.
“Then you mated me.”
“Mated in your language means dracked?” I ask even as a bolt of fear flashes through me. I haven’t felt that emotion since I ran into that stone wall fifteen annums ago.
“Mated as in mated. Married. Participated in nuptials. Tied the knot. Took vows. Got hitched.”
I stand to leave, then sag back into my seat and lean toward her, inspecting her face to determine if she’s lying. I don’t think so.
“You forced me? How?”
“Look at us! How could I force you?”
“We need to get divorced,” I say levelly.
“I couldn’t agree more.” She crosses her arms over her chest and nods.
“You said you’re a free female now?”
“A slave can’t get mated. You had to free me in order to mate me.”
At least I did one thing right. I can’t bear the idea of owning anyone. Even her. Especially her.
She grabs her clothes off the chair and returns to the bathroom, slamming the door.
“And how did you burn me?”
“The marriage ceremony included the Paragon ritual of branding.”
“You have one, too?”
She sticks her right arm out the door and flaps it. It’s a fiery mess of flesh. I can’t make out the design.
“Hurts?” I ask.
“What do you think, Blue?”
“My name’s Wrage.”
“My name’s Elyse, but it doesn’t matter,” she calls over the sounds of her shower, “we’ll be divorced in an hour.”
~.~
The Office for Divorce is located in a small room at the back of an obscure building on the mainland. We had to take a ferry from Fornication Island, then hover past state government buildings to this little outpost.
The male we needed to speak with was on lunch break, and we’ve been waiting in the beating sun for what seems like hoaras.
“I’m Analac, officer of the court for dissolution of marriages. I’m certain you must be in the wrong place,” he informs us.
“Oh, no,” Elyse insists. “Dissolution of marriages? That’s what we want.” She nods as if that explains everything.
She’s still wearing the low-cut red gown she sang in last night. Evidently, I didn’t buy her clothes from her former owner. I’ll give her some credits as soon as this paperwork is final and she can go her own way.
“My position is in name only,” the older man says. He’s a thin humanoid with wild gray hair and pale yellow skin. He looks ready for retirement. He leads us into his tiny office. It’s sparsely furnished and devoid of windows.
Just as I’m wondering who he pissed off to deserve this job, he says. “I’m the mayor’s