Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Mercenary Read Free

forwards
against the collar while she had been unconscious. She screwed her
face up and then slowly opened her eyes. The dark greeted her, as
menacing and chilling as before. Staring into it, cold fear crept
down her spine. What would happen to her now? Where were the rest
of the crew? Where was Eryc? Were they really all dead?

    Her stomach had settled.
They must have come out of sub-space. In fact, she couldn’t feel
the ship moving at all. Perhaps they had docked.

    A bright burst of light
blinded her and she flinched away from the open door. When it
closed again, the pinhole light above her came on. She squinted as
her eyes adjusted to it.

    A man stepped under the
light, his black spiked hair and equally black eyes betraying his
species as much as his sharp teeth did when he spoke.

    “ Not a
word.”

    Another
Minervan.

    This one was young and
handsome.

    And he spoke
Lyran.

    ****

    Chapter
2

    Kosen approached the
female slowly. He ran his gaze over her from her heavy boots up her
slender legs to her ample cleavage and from there to her beautiful
face. She was a siren that could make any male’s blood boil. It was
exactly as their contact had promised them. She would fetch a good
price at the auction on Minerva Nine in four days time.

    Her silver hair shimmered
under the spotlight, glowing in a way.

    She was more beautiful in
the flesh than he had imagined she would be. He had never seen such
a figure matched with a goddess’s face and silver hair. There was
none like her at the markets.

    “ Food,” Kosen
said and showed her the small black protein pack in his
hand.

    Her nose wrinkled up and
she turned her head away. He frowned and then realised that her
tight flight suit was dirty. Whatever she had had in her stomach
was now down her front.

    With a sigh, he walked
over to the side of the room and placed the protein pack down on
one of the containers. He picked up a cloth and went back to the
female. He hadn’t expected that he would be cleaning as well as
feeding her but they had to keep her presentable. The smell of sick
on her might lower her value. He needed her to fetch the best
price.

    “ He frightened
you that much?” Kosen muttered and wiped the vomit off her clothes.
She struggled when he cleaned her chest. It didn’t stop him. Years
of working in the slave trade had taught him that she wasn’t really
a woman. She was an object that would soon pass from his hands to
another’s. If he saw her that way, he wouldn’t care what happened
to her.

    It was best this
way.

    Yet, he was speaking Lyran
to her. He was talking a language that disgusted most of his
species, even though a member of the Minervan royal family was now
the queen of the Lyran people.

    To him, Lyran was a
musical language.

    “ Cruskin
nyaaeso!” The female lurched forwards. Her rebellious actions only
served to press her breasts against his hands.

    They both
froze.

    She immediately shrank
back and spat in his face, as though he had touched her on purpose.
It was her fault for arching into him.

    A tirade of foul language
spilled from her lips. Lyran was beautiful sometimes at least. When
she spoke it, she said every word with so much venom that it
sounded Minervan.

    “ I said to be
quiet,” he warned and finished cleaning her. “I’ve never had a
prisoner be sick down themselves before. Try not to do it again. I
don’t think Nostra deserves such a violent reaction.”

    “ Nostra?” she
whispered, as though saying it quietly meant that she wasn’t
breaking the rules.

    “ The man you
met earlier.” Kosen couldn’t believe that he was talking to her.
Something about her made him respond. He had seen captives
frightened before but never to this extent.

    “ Not him,” she
said and he looked at her. Her dark eyes were only a shade closer
to brown than his were. They were wide and round, rimmed with long
thick black lashes. “Not sick for him.”

    She swallowed with a look
of discomfort. When he saw the red