The Tracker's Quest: (Forced To Serve #6) Read Free

return.
    Ji nodded. He had read females were kept in isolation until they were needed, but it was still unnerving to see proof of it in their most progressive urban area. The contrast with Rylen made him more appreciative than ever. One day he would show Seta the beautifully clad and smiling females on his home planet.

Chapter 2
     
    Seta lasted two days without food, but it was all she had managed. The dress she had been forced to put on was nothing more than a series of fabric strips overlapping each other, most of which barely covered physical essentials. The nearly transparent fabric chafed and was obviously not created to enhance a female’s comfort. Great slashes across the mid-section revealed delicate skin which hadn’t seen light in years. To be as modest as possible, she had buttoned her black weapon vest over the skimpy top even though Arghane had confiscated her laser weapon.
    Seta knew her father had only forced the clothing change because he perversely liked to incite a certain amount of lust in the males regularly attending to him in his court. Keeping them hungry for anything, whether it was food or females, allowed him to keep a tight rein on his all male staff. Only he—as their suzerain—had the power to grant them the right to indulge in meeting either need.
    She well knew her father’s fondness for using bonding lust as an incentive. Her first bonding experience had been with Chief Arghane’s predecessor. Arghane would no doubt like to have her father’s permission to indulge with her too. His predecessor had left massive bruises on her arms which had had angered her father into exiling the older male from both his canton and his employment. Her personal devastation over the sordid experience though had not caused her Ethos sire any second thoughts at all. Instead, her teary gaze over the physical humiliation and shame had incited a lecture on doing her duty and earning her keep as his offspring.
    Two weeks after the horrible incident, she and Rena had been promised to the merchant. A whole Earth year passed before that detestable male had raised sufficient money to pay the steep union price for the pair of them. He had been even worse to deal with than Arghane’s predecessor, frequently trading bonding use of them as it suited his whims. Long before she had acted to end his life, her Ethosian mate’s death had lived in her intentions. Now she understood it had been Zorinda who had given her the strength to actually take up the knife she had used to stab him to death.
    Wiser now from her many years of true freedom among more civilized beings, she saw the main problem on Ethos was males like her father who propagated the bartering system. His abuse of his power was to blame. Pondering her sire’s death seemed a good use of the dark thoughts running through her mind, but finding a way to ensure his ongoing suffering would suit her better. Death would just see him replaced in his canton with another, perhaps even worse suzerain. If that happened, there would be no reprieve for any of her siblings.
    No. . .the Ethos tyrant who abused her family needed to understand what it felt like to have another person controlling his fate. Only then could she contemplate sending the male who sired her back to the Creators. Until the time of her true revenge she would merely dream of his downfall. . .and plan.
    Seta found herself thinking about Rena, her spiritual dual-sib who had lived most of her short life feeling incredible shame for their abuse. In doing so, her determination grew stronger to spare the rest of the females in their immediate family. Her mother had died after bearing the Suzerain eight offspring, but several of her mother’s female siblings remained, as well as their unbartered offspring.
    She thought of the black mist swirling over the glass to cloud it while Arghane had watched her strip and reluctantly dress. The anger in her movements made her feel physically stronger and better able to