Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Mercenary (3 page)

A Lyran with silver hair
though.

Something about that
didn’t seem right.

Kosen looked closer. She
hadn’t altered its colour. She was naturally silver haired. It
would definitely add to her price. He combed his fingers through it
and when he touched her cheek, her hair moved again, the tips of it
shifting as though a breeze had caught them.

When he went to touch her
hair, she spat in his face and lunged forwards, attempting to bite
him. He leapt backwards to avoid her teeth and glared at her as he
wiped the spit from his face. She was a passionate one. Nostra
would probably have to gag her at the auction. With a mouth like
hers, she was likely to lower her price by swearing or attempting
to bite anyone who tried to inspect her.

“
Don’t touch
me,” she growled and glared back at him. “Murderer.
Minervan.”

The way that she had said
those two words together made them sound as though they were the
same to her.

They were definitely going
to need to think things through before they reached the auction.
She might be worth a fortune, but she could easily lower her price.
Kosen sat back down on the crate and studied her closely. She
glared at him, her eyes never leaving his face even as his roamed
her body. Nostra was right to take a risk on her, but the fight had
damaged their ship and now they all had blood on their hands.
Before now, he hadn’t needed to kill anyone. It had brought back
memories of that night and the nightmare returned each time that he
tried to sleep. He relived every moment in vivid detail, a strange
combination of that night, killing the other passengers on her
vessel and of her.

“
If you eat, I
can leave.” He offered the pack to her again and she looked as
though she was considering it.

“
If you leave,
will another come?”

She was wary too.
Intelligent. She was clearly thinking ahead and concerned that
another with a more sinister objective than his one of feeding her
might come along should he leave.

“
No one damages
the merchandise,” he said, flat and emotionless. “It’s something
we’ve all agreed to and the punishment is severe enough to make us
all think twice.”

“
Severe?” she
said with a little frown.

He made a chopping motion
with his fingers.

Her eyes
widened.

The threat of having their
sexual organs cut off should they lower a slave’s value by any
means seemed enough to stop most from trying to get physical with
one. Most. Not all.

“
Now eat,” he
said and held the pack out to her.

She looked at her hands
and smiled politely. “I am afraid I cannot.”

He ripped the pack open
with his teeth, stepped up close to her, and pressed the opening
against her lips.

“
Eat.”

She opened her mouth. A
strange jolt rocked Kosen when her tongue peeked out to touch the
protein pack. It disappeared back into her mouth, coated in sticky
black liquid, and she pulled a face of pure disgust. Seeing that
she was going to refuse him again, he waited for her to open her
mouth and then pushed the pack into it. One squeeze and she was
gulping it down in a desperate attempt to stop herself from
drowning. He wasn’t normally so rough with the captives but he
wanted to get away from her before he experienced anything remotely
close to what he had felt on seeing her soft pink tongue sensually
stroke the pack.

When she choked, he pulled
the pack from her mouth. She glared up at him through her hair, her
eyes black and full of hatred. Good. Perhaps she would learn to be
more cooperative and then he wouldn’t have to be around her as
much.

Kosen checked the protein
pack to make sure that she had eaten it all and then pushed the
crate back against the wall of the small dark room. When he reached
the door, he stopped and looked back at her. She was watching him,
her eyes wide in the dim light. Her silver hair had fallen down her
front, cascading over the tight flight suit and spilling across her
cleavage. Her lips parted as though she wanted to say something.
Whatever it was, it would probably ruin this momentary illusion of
beauty before him.

This fleeting feeling of
attraction.

Closing his eyes, he
turned and walked out of the door. He pressed the panel to close it
and then his fingers danced across the pad, punching in a
combination of symbols that would seal the door to any but him. He
could easily justify what he was doing. She needed rest and as the
ship’s tactician and doctor, he had a right to lock her away. If
Sasue were to visit her, he didn’t know what would happen. Sasue
had a thing for innocence. It lured him like a Polaris moth was
drawn to fire and ended just as badly, at least for the
innocent.

He couldn’t risk anyone
harming her.

No.

He wouldn’t let anyone
harm her.

****

Chapter
3

The young man was back. He
sat in the corner, just in the shadows. Miali could make out his
silhouetted figure and the computer pad he held lit his face. What
was he was doing? A mocking voice at the back of her mind said that
he was probably writing down her vital statistics and figuring out
how much she was worth.

Was she worth the death of
all those people on her ship? Surely, it would have benefited these
people to sell those men too? It didn’t make any sense.

Unless their ship wasn’t
large enough to keep all of them captive. Her cell was small, the
walls on either side only a few feet from the tips of her
outstretched hands. It seemed a little longer than it was wide, but
not by much.

“
Are you
feeling better today?” the man said. He was looking at
her.

Her eyes met his. The
light of the computer screen made his skin pale blue. His black
eyes held hers. Every moment from their last meeting flashed across
her eyes—every brush of his body against hers. Her hair shifted.
She cursed it when the man’s gaze moved to it and then cursed
herself for thinking about the strange way that she had felt when
he had been close.

He stood and walked over
to her, reaching around behind him. His movements drew her
attention to his tight black flight suit and the belt that circled
his narrow waist. The suit left nothing to the imagination. He was
all lithe muscle, hard and compact. He pulled a device out and ran
it over her.

“
Where are you
from?” he said as he methodically scanned her body and then her
hair. It was behaving itself. She thanked Iskara and then cursed
again when he brushed his fingers through her hair and it reacted.
It hadn’t reacted to a male’s touch in years. Why did it have to
react to him, now, when she needed to remain incognito?

She didn’t like him. This
man had murdered people that she knew. He might have killed
Eryc.

“
Lyra,” she
said. It wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t the answer that he was looking
for either. He ran the device over her again and then frowned at
the display.

“
Not wholly
Lyra,” he said and touched the screen in several different places.
A smile tilted his lips and she stared at them. A warm feeling
settled in her chest as she studied the subtle curve of his lips
and the hint of dusky pink about them that darkened where they met.
Her hair shifted again, floating upwards. His look turned to one of
fascination and his voice lowered to a whisper that felt too
intimate. “Where are you from?”

Miali swallowed her words,
unwilling to tell him in case it made him realise who she was. It
didn’t seem as though they knew who they were dealing with. Whether
or not that was a good thing, she didn’t know. It was bad for them.
They would make less money. However, if they did know, that would
also be bad for them. If they were planning to auction her at a
market, they would need to announce that she was Lyran royalty in
order to get the best price. Any Lyran, Terran, Varkan or Minervan
army personnel in the area would come to her aid.

She looked up at the dark
ceiling and the pinhole of light. Would her family have realised by
now that she was missing? Her ship should have made it to Dliaer.
Her family would have been expecting contact from her. Normally,
she spoke to them every few days. It must have been almost nine
since her last contact.

Would the army come for
her?

Would her brothers
come?

Her father?

He would kill all of these
Minervans in a heartbeat to protect her, just as her two brothers
would.

She wanted them all dead.
She wanted them to suffer as her companions had.

Staring at the man, Miali
hoped that he could see in her eyes every ounce of anger she was
feeling. She hoped that he knew it was all for him. When she was
free of these shackles, she was going to kill them all. This wasn’t
the way she had imagined the universe. She had known that the slave
trade was alive and booming, but she had never thought that someone
would capture her and turn her into a slave. She had never imagined
how horrifying it was, and somehow she knew that this was only the
beginning. Soon she would face the markets and then
what?

“
I shall not
ask you again,” he said and tried to touch her.

She moved her head to one
side, desperate to avoid him.

“
Good. Then I
will not have to answer you.” Miali spat the words at him and
leaned back as far as the collar would allow.

His fingertips grazed her
cheek and sent heat sweeping through her. She cursed the way her
body reacted to his touch, as though it wanted to feel it, longed
for it. This man had killed her companions. The hands that he
touched her with had blood on them.

He muttered something
about her hair and scanned it again with the device.

“
Not Lyran,” he
whispered and tilted his head to one side as though
fascinated.

“
What does it
matter to you?” she hissed and glared at him. “Will I fetch a
prettier price if I’m a mixed species? Or are you worried that I’ll
be worth less?”

He frowned at her, his
eyes dark and holding a hint of anger. What right did he have to be
angry? He had killed her companions, imprisoned her, and intended
to sell her to the one with the best offer. If anyone had a right
to be angry, it was her.

His device beeped. He
looked down at it and smiled again.

“
Dazkaran,” he
said and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
“Interesting.”

On the screen of his
device was what looked like a DNA strand and information written in
symbols that she recognised as Minervan. It was a medical
device.

“
Are you a
doctor?” she said and he raised his head, his eyes meeting
hers.

“
The closest
there is to one on this ship. You’re part Dazkaran.” He took hold
of a strand of her hair and let it slip through his fingers.
“That’s why your body reacts so strongly to your
emotions.”

His look turned
thoughtful.

“
Sub-space
affects you because of this.”

She was beginning to
wonder if he was more interested in her as a science project than a
slave that could potentially make him rich.

She nodded. “It makes me
sick. Something which you and sub-space have in common.”

He smiled at her, as
though her words had no effect other than amusing him.

“
I thought so,”
he said and she concentrated on the ship. It was moving but far
slower than before. It wasn’t in sub-space. She gave him an
incredulous look. He had said that he was the closest thing to a
doctor on this vessel. Had he ordered the captain, that horrible
mountain of man, to travel through normal space?

Why?

“
You should
eat.” He walked across the room and came back with another
disgusting protein pack. The taste of the black goo had made her
want to retch and the texture of it had made it impossible to
swallow. She shook her head and kept her mouth firmly shut. He
wasn’t going to fool her into eating it this time. He sighed and
pulled the crate out again, placing it in front of her.

When he sat down, he toyed
with the pack just as he had done before. He seemed more patient
than the other man and a lot younger. He almost seemed too young to
be a doctor on any vessel, even one this small. Minervans aged at a
similar rate to Lyrans. He had to be close to her age.

“
If I don’t
eat, what happens?” she said.

“
To you, or to
your value?”

“
My value,” she
said, that word hard to swallow. Her father had always said that
she was priceless. How much would he pay for her? He would probably
give everything he had for her safe return.

“
It goes down,”
he said and for some reason that answer pleased her. What he said
next made her reconsider her plan to starve herself. “If you don’t
eat, the man you met, Nostra, will punish me and will send another
man to feed you. Sasue is the one of us most likely to resort to
violence to get you to eat. If that doesn’t work, he’ll probably do
things to you that could result in you losing your mind. It would
make you quieter at the auction but would probably lower your value
a little.”