Chapter 3
A deadly promise.
Wendy
Iwas starving, exhausted, my whole body was sore from being tied up to that damn tree and my clothes were now covered in dirt and mud.
Good thing they barely gave me any water and food, because the five times I had to relieve myself in the past two days had been humiliating.
The men had stared. Not that there was anything sexual about peeing in bushes, but these people obviously had issues.
The asshole who had talked to me the first night when I woke up had to yell that “they weren’t allowed to touch the goods” a few times for them to back off and leave me alone.
I didn’t want to think about what they would have done if a “buyer” wasn’t on his way to get me.
The more time passed, the less optimistic I was. I’d spent my first night dreaming about my husband charging to my rescue, picturing only a faceless man as I had no idea what to expect him to look like. But now? It was unlikely he’d ever find me.
Maybe he didn’t want to find me. Maybe, while I was excited about this whole project and eager to meet him, he had been somehow forced into it.
The man who had told me about the Zodiac Project had said that some of the twelves species were more reluctant than others…
With my luck, mine probably was one of those, and was happy I’d gone missing.
“I just received communication,” the leader of this disgusting group said to his men as they sat close to a fire a few feet away. “Her buyer should be here before the sun rises.”
Great. Here goes all my remaining hope.
“Boss…Are we sure it’s a good idea? I mean, the girl’s worth a lot, maybe we should have reached out to more people. You know, try to get more money or something.”
The silence that followed was charged and I didn’t dare breathe too loud.
“You think anyone could have outbid him?” the leader asked, his tone suddenly ice-cold. “She’s from Galleat. And she’s Asian.” My blood froze in my veins. “The girl is everything Alessio keeps searching for.”
Alessio…I’ve heard that name before. Not in a good way, but as a warning. All the girls in my colony had, but mostly my sister and me.
The man who had taken control of a whole system and made an empire of draining planets of their resources. The man who had built some sort of kingdom on a small moon, where most of the Galaxy’s wicked bastards all met.
Someone who was on my planet’s blacklist and who’s scarred face was printed and tapped everywhere for us to recognize so we could flee if he ever managed to set foot on our colony.
“But what if—”
“What if nothing,” the asshole snapped. “He’s paying us enough money to live like fucking kings, I won’t risk trying to sell her to someone else and pissing him off.”
The rest of the crew kept quiet. Me? I tried to get free from my damn restraint for the hundredth time since I woke up here.
I was being sold to Alessio. It was not the peaceful, sexually satisfying life I had signed for when I left my colony.
Not that I absolutely knew if my husband would have been able to keep up with my sexual needs, but the guy from the program had guaranteed that at least I would have been safe.
According to him, Gemins were known to be a protective, territorial and caring species, even though cold-looking at first. Alessio?
Not so much. The bastard was famous for being violent, disrespectful, and abusive.
In his mansion, he had a room filled with asian women in cages. And not just a regular-sized room, no; it was big enough to keep a hundred of them with enough space for Alessio to hold receptions within it.
Like the creepy bastard that we knew him as on my home planet.
And now, in just a few hours, he was going to add me to his collection, or worse.
“Boss!” someone said and I jumped at his closeness. “The girl is trying to break free from the ropes. Again.”
Shit. The leader stood and mumbled as he dragged his feet toward us. “She can try, but she’ll only end up with burned wrists. And then Alessio will piss me off because of the damned damaged merchandise.”
“I’m not some fucking merchandise.”
“Oh, but you are.” He grinned, stopping right in front of me as the other dude crouched behind, checking the abrasive rope tying my hands behind my back against the trunk of the tree. “I’m getting paid for delivering you, which makes you exactly that. And, Alessio—”
“Boss!” someone else yelled from the campfire. “I-I think something is roaming around.”
My heart missed a few beats. After two days, could some Gemins finally have found us? Or maybe some sort of predator? At this point, I’d rather be eaten than end up with Alessio.
The leader’s shoulders tensed, eyes scanning the forest surrounding us. “Check the perimeter. Shoot on sight.”
Shoot? No…No, no, no. “You can’t go around shooting species from a planet you don’t belong in, it’s—”
My head snapped to the side from the impact of his knuckles against my cheekbone, and my words died in my throat. “I didn’t ask for your damn opinion.”
The whole side of my face and neck hurt from the blow.
I’ve never been one of the tough girls—never had a reason to.
Tears rose to my eyes from the pain. The humiliation.
The frustration of this whole situation I had found myself in.
He crouched in front of me as the other vanished, following his orders and checking the surroundings for potential threats, and roughly grabbed my face in his hand to inspect it.
“See what you made me do? That bruise is gonna cost me thousands.”
It's not like I forced you to strike me, I thought but didn’t say anything. I wished I had the nerve to speak up. I didn’t have anything to lose, after all. If he killed me, it might free me from the hell that awaited me once Alessio got his hands on me.
But I’d never been used to violence and my mind and body were in shock from the sudden, unfamiliar pain.
“A good woman opens her legs enthusiastically. A perfect one does it while keeping her damn mouth shut,” he added, tightening his hold on my face as more tears streaked down my cheeks. He smiled at my silence. “See? Not that difficult.”
He shoved my head as he stood, the back of it hitting the rough trunk.
That was it. I was going to either die here or be taken away and die a slow, painful and humiliating death as one of Alessio’s pets, the very man I’d been warned against for my whole life.
Because he didn’t simply collect women, but only Asian ones.
And, before my family had moved to Galleat a couple of hundred years ago with the first wave of settlers, they came from Korea.
Well, at least my mother’s family all did.
My father was half Japanese and half German.
My features, however, had nothing European.
Which made me perfect for Alessio’s collection.
The leader of the group sighed, his arms crossed over his chest as he narrowed his eyes, scanning the trees around us.
It was dead silent. So quiet I couldn’t even hear his men walking around anymore.
“Where’s everybody?” he said through gritted teeth.
Maybe they were eaten by the predator lurking around, I thought. Damn, how I wished I had the nerves to say that out loud.
“I’ll take a look,” he added. “Don’t try running off or you’ll get a matching bruise on your other cheek.”
But the second he turned around my jaw dropped. My heart stopped. My stomach turned to knots.
I stared, wide-eyed, at the gigantic form holding the asshole by the throat with a clawed hand as his entirely black gaze scanned my face with a frown.
His dark, enormous spread wings fluttered behind him as his jaw clenched, and he tilted his head to the side, slowly turning his face to the man in his grasp.
He said something, the language unfamiliar to my ears. Shit, I don’t have that language in my translator database…But neither did the man who had abducted me because his eyes only widened, terrified and full of confusion.
“What?” he said.
The otherworldly man—probably a Gemin—sneered, looking back at me.
He took a step closer, pulling the helpless jerk with him and crouched in front of me.
He lifted his free hand and slowly brought it to my face, eyes settling on the spot where I’d been hit just moments before.
My eyes closed and my body tensed, anticipating pain. But it never came.
The pad of his thumb brushed over the bruise and our eyes met as I re-opened mine. He gave me a questioning look before moving his hand to point at the man he was holding with a firm grip.
“What—” Wait, can he understand me? “I-I don’t know what you’re asking.”
His shoulders slumped but he repeated the motion; caressed my bruise with a soft touch before pointing at the asshole trying and failing to get free.
“Are—are you asking if he did it?”
“Asae.”
A shiver went down my spine at the sound of his deep voice. It was calm. A deadly promise. I looked at my captor, his eyes wide as he tried to shake his reddish purple head at me, like if I lied it would save his life. But would lying save mine? No.
“Yes. He…he did it.”
It happened so fast I barely saw it. His head had been purple but mostly normal for a second, then the neck snapped at an odd angle, his eyes suddenly blood-injected and empty the next.
My heartbeat turned erratic as I jolted, arms shaking but fighting to get free from the damn rope. He had killed him without a second thought. Would I be next? And was it truly worse than being found by Alessio?
After two days, the Gemins had finally found me! Maybe…maybe that man wouldn’t kill me. Maybe he would take me to my husband, maybe—
I froze. His hand moved in the pocket of his pants, eyes not leaving mine. Was he searching for a weapon? Was my neck not worth being snapped? I…Shit what is going on?
When he pulled his hand out, it was closed around a small folded paper.
Well, not that small, but it appeared ridiculously so in his large palm and long fingers.
He carefully opened it, revealing not one but at least two sheets.
He picked one and lifted it in front of me, making my heart stop altogether.
Me. It was a picture of me and a lot of my personal information written around it. My name, my age, my planet of origin…Things I doubted he knew how to read.
“That’s—it’s me,” I said.
“Asae.”
He folded it into a tiny square and slipped it back in his pocket before moving out of my sight.
I jumped again, like a scared little cat would as his hand started to fumble with the rope.
Delicately at first, then with annoyed grunts when it wouldn’t give.
I started to freak out when he stopped for a few heartbeats, only to yelp when I felt his finger sliding in between the scratchy material and my wrist. The string snapped instantly and I jumped to my tied feet, hopping away from the tree.
His hand snapped around my arm and pulled me back to him, crashing my front against his.
And from up-close? He looked even deadlier than he did before.