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  I frowned. “Task? What kind of task?”

  “It’s nothing,” Diarus said, but he wouldn’t meet my eye. “It’s just a show of our strength, that’s all.”

  I hoped it didn’t have anything to do with the scars littering his back.

  One of the other Trads banged on the side of the transporter. “We need to move.”

  I sensed them all gather around me, a hand touching mine, another on my lower back, their glances filled with encouragement but tinged with worry. Nadeusz and Mikotaj didn’t like what was about to happen either, but we all knew it had to be done. This was all so much bigger than just my safety. There was an entire population of women being used as breeding machines, and an entire planet that had been half destroyed and then invaded. I wasn’t going to hide away and do nothing.

  This was a war, and I was going to fight.

  Chapter Two

  Aleksy grabbed me by the arm and shoved me toward the marketplace.

  Two of the other rebel Trads held Diarus between them and were following behind.

  I felt every step that took me farther away from Miko and Nad, and closer to my fate, the space opening up between us.

  How many women had been brought to Tradrych now? It was clearly enough that they weren’t able to keep tabs on all of us, or who owned who. Once the women had given birth, they were sold on, like I was about to be, or thrown into whore houses for other Trads to do as they pleased with. When they fell pregnant again, they would be transported back to the facility to give birth, and the process would repeat over, until the woman was either no longer able to carry their spawn or died. We weren’t far enough into this process for it to be happening in that cycle yet, but, if we didn’t do something, that was what would happen.

  We entered the marketplace, and I reared back at the heat and volume of sound.

  I’d never seen so many Trads in one place. The marketplace was a massive circular room with a curved glass ceiling. At one end, a stage took up a large portion of space. Above us were galleries, where people—the Trads with wealth at their fingertips, I assumed—sat overlooking the stage. The rest of the inhabitants of the city of Vrale gathered in a throng in the main arena. Vendors sold food and drinks out of carts they pushed between the Trads, or from crates strapped around their massive shoulders. They called their wares over the top of all the other Trads shouting to each other. It was like a wall of sound, and I wondered how there was any possibility of Trads calling out bids for the auction when they had to compete with this kind of racket.

  The others had said it was okay for me to appear scared, and I was thankful for that. I wasn’t sure it would have been possible for me to have looked any other way. My entire body trembled, right down to my internal organs, as I gazed over the massive crowd of Trads. They’d been intimidating when I’d only had to deal with them in small groups, but seeing them all here like this, hundreds, crowded among each other, was insane. That they were all male didn’t help matters. I felt their gazes alighting on me with hungry intensity. They weren’t only massive, horned aliens. They were male aliens, all of whom had been starved of sex for many years, and who knew they could fuck any one of us now, if the price was right. I was sure Aleksy knew what he was doing, but surely, he couldn’t be certain that Borys would be the one who’d bid the highest for me. What would happen if another Trad bought me? Would Nad and Miko come and get me?

  I wished I’d thought to ask these questions when we’d still been in the transporter. It was too late now.

  Aleksy kept me wedged hard against the front of his body as he pushed me through the crowd and toward the stage. I was grateful for his dominating presence, but I knew it wouldn’t last.

  Several guards stood in front of the steps leading onto the stage. I wondered what their role was. Was it to keep the woman on stage or to keep the sex-starved Trads away from us?

  “Got another one for you,” Aleksy called out to them as we approached. “Should fetch a pretty penny.”

  Their lascivious stares crawled all over me, and I tried not to shudder.

  Aleksy’s voice came hot behind my ear. “You’re on your own now. Good luck.”

  He shoved me forward, and the two Trad guards caught me. Immediately, their hands were everywhere, fingers pinching my breasts, a palm cupping my ass. I wriggled in their grip, but that only seemed to make things worse.

  “Get the fuck off me,” I hissed, but they laughed.

  Thankfully, the groping didn’t last too long, and they shoved me up on stage to be gawped at by all the Trads in the audience.

  Other women were pushed onto the stage, each of them with their hands bound with the same liquid metal cuffs. They all wore identical petrified, overwhelmed expressions I was sure was written across my own features. Some effort had been made with the women’s appearances, though most wore the same short, silver shift dress-style that I’d been forced into back at the facility. Just the sight of the outfits filled me with cold, stark horror, pinging me back to my time in that place. Would I be stripped of my elegant gown once I was sold and forced back into one of those terrible outfits? I shuddered with revulsion at the moment of the silky material against my skin. I suddenly longed for the shapeless outfit that Awa, the Trad veterinarian who’d helped me deliver the Trad baby, had given me. I’d much rather have hidden than be put on display, like I was now.

  I also understood the reason I’d been put in the corseted dress and my hair had been done up. I stood out among the other women. Borys was the Trad who had the most money and power in this place, and owning me would almost be expected. Of course, it was all surface stuff. Underneath the expensive dress and glamorous hair, I was no different to any of the other women here.

  I cast my gaze across them and locked eyes with a set of familiar blue ones. My heart stuttered, and I sucked in a short breath. Zoe!

  I hadn’t seen the younger woman since she’d been taken from the facility when she’d gone into labor and her waters had broken right in front of me. The waters had been tainted, and the matron, Kaja, had said the baby was in distress. She’d said that they had needed to make sure the baby survived, even if it meant losing Zoe, and I’d genuinely wondered if Zoe had made it through the birth alive. But here she was now, with no sign of the bump beneath her dress. I assumed she’d been given the same injection that Awa had given me after I’d given birth to the Trad baby—an injection designed to ping women’s bodies right back to shape after birth, making sure we were ready to be reimplanted with another Trad spawn soon after. The Trads didn’t want us spending months recuperating after giving birth before we could conceive again. They didn’t even want us taking care of the Trad babies. All we were needed for was to be baby-making machines to repopulate the planet, and if they could have a little fun while they were laying their eggs inside us, all the better.

  Zoe parted her lips, as though she was about to say something, but I gave my head the briefest of shakes. I didn’t know what Aleksy had said about where I’d come from, but I didn’t want Zoe to do or say anything that might give away that I’d known her from the facility. One thing I knew for sure, I couldn’t let them connect me with the runaway woman from the facility we’d been in together.

  All the women here had already given birth to Trad babies in order to be offered up for a second time. We must have all been pregnant when we’d arrived on Tradrych, or we wouldn’t be here at all. I realized I didn’t recognize the other women, however, which meant they came from different facilities, possibly in other areas and cities. I’d known there must be facilities just like the one I’d escaped from all over the planet, but my head swam at seeing the number of women here, all ready to be sold on again, and impregnated again. The magnitude of what we were trying to achieve was insane. How many women had been taken from Earth now? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? The facility was a mere drop in the ocean.

  But that was the reason I was doing this. They couldn’t keep bringing women if they didn’t have the faciliti
es to house them and the medical equipment to help birth the babies. We were going to break the system.

  Zoe’s eyes narrowed in confusion, and she glanced away. I didn’t want her to think I didn’t want to know her anymore, or that I’d blanked her out of any bad feeling, but it wasn’t as though I could explain things while we were on stage in front of hundreds of Trads. Shit. I couldn’t explain things to her at all. I’d made a promise not to speak a word of the rebels to anyone, and that included the women I knew. My heart ached. I didn’t want to block out my own kind. On the outside, it would look as though I had taken the side of the Trads, but it was completely the opposite.

  The level of noise that had been pounding against my eardrums since we’d first arrived at the hall suddenly dropped. Something had changed, and I frowned, looking around, trying to figure out what. I caught sight of Nadeusz standing in the sidelines, and he jerked his chin upward, as though trying to tell me something.

  I followed his line of sight up to one of the galleries running along the outskirts of the walls. Where one had previously been empty, a Trad was now standing at the balcony, gazing down at the stage. Other Trads fussed around him, offering him drinks and food, but he waved them away. He wasn’t as tall or broad as some of the other Trads, such as Nad or Aleksy, but I could tell just by his stance that he was someone important. His jet-black hair was slicked away from his face and cut short, his horns taller than any I’d seen on other Trads. He wore the silver outfit of most of the Trads, but a shimmering black cloak draped across one shoulder and fell down his back.

  Polityk Borys had arrived.

  Chapter Three

  Borys’s attention was focused on the stage.

  His gaze slowly traveled across the line of women. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and the skin on my bare arms dotted with tiny bumps, and I knew it had reached me. I froze, my feet suddenly rooted to the stage, every muscle in my body tense. My pulse galloped, and the thump of my heartbeat pounded in my ears, increasing my blood pressure.

  I had to lift my head so I could catch his eye, though every instinct in my body was telling me to keep down, to shrink into the floor, to do whatever it took to make sure this Trad didn’t notice me. Of course, that was the exact opposite of what I needed to happen.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to glance over to where Miko and Nad hid in the sidelines either. A big part of me wanted them to leap on stage and whisk me away. I knew this must be hard on them, too. They hadn’t rescued me from the facility only to hand me back to the enemy. Had they? Maybe that was the exact reason they’d helped me. Perhaps this whole thing had been orchestrated, and stupid old me had walked right into it by volunteering.

  You can still back out. You don’t have to go through with this. Except I did. I would never be able to look at myself in the mirror again if I backed out. All these other women standing with me now didn’t have any choice. They were going to be bought and handed over to an alien species to be used. I could help them—perhaps not today, but someday in the not-too-distant future—but first I needed to get through the auction.

  Sucking in a breath, I opened my eyes and lifted my gaze to the balcony.

  My eyes locked with his instantly. It was like a jolt to my system, a punch to the heart.

  I fought my desire to glance away and held his eye contact. Though I wanted to whimper and run, I made the corners of my lips curl in what I hoped appeared to be a hint of a smile. I’d been dressed to ensure he noticed me, but the rest was on me. I had to make him think I was different, that I was attracted to him, too.

  In a strange way, I was. He exuded power, and there was definitely something attractive in that, but at the same time, repellent. I already knew I had it in me to find the Trads attractive. I’d proven that much with my time with Nadeusz, and Mikotaj, and even Aleksy, too, though he’d never given me any sign that he might be thinking that way of me. Only a matter of days ago, I’d have never considered it possible to think of them as anything other than repulsive monsters, but now that I’d gotten to know them better, I saw them as who they were, not only what I thought based on their appearances. And I had to be honest with myself...being with Nadeusz in his Trad form had turned me on. I’d allowed him to push his tail inside me, to wring out an orgasm from me unlike any I’d ever experienced before, and I wanted to experience that again. I was curious now. What else would be different when it came to having sex with a Trad rather than a human? When I’d had sex with Rhett back on Earth, I’d never suspected he was anything other than human, so I couldn’t use him as comparison. I shuddered at the thought. But the others, however, well, they were completely different in my mind.

  Of course, considering my current situation, it might not be with Nad or Miko that I’d find out.

  The rest of the marketplace had fallen away, so it was just the two of us, staring at each other. My heart tripped, so fast I was dizzy. I swallowed hard and did my best to hold my nerve.

  Polityk Borys had seen me, that was for sure.

  A Trad suddenly stepped up on stage, breaking the moment. He was dressed in bright colors, which was unusual for the Trads from what I’d seen, and he held a circle of metal in his hand, about the size of his palm. He lifted it to his mouth, and his voice boomed across the crowd, and I realized he was holding a microphone.

  “Welcome to the auction. I trust you’ve all had time to check out today’s wares. First, we’ll be placing biddings for the male slaves. As always, we have a show for you.”

  Unease rippled through me. A show? What kind of show? I knew that ‘male slaves’ meant Diarus would be included. I’d lost track of him when Aleksy had guided me toward the stage.

  I remembered Diarus’s final words to be about how he’d make sure he got bid upon. Had he known this was going to happen and had prepared for it?

  We were hustled back, the guards pushing us women together to make space on the stage. I glanced over at Zoe and caught her eye. I wished I could speak with her in private and find out what had been happening to her since I’d last seen her, but that simply wasn’t possible. Had her baby survived? I had the feeling, if it hadn’t, they wouldn’t have allowed Zoe to live either. I’d witnessed how they’d blamed the death of one of the fetuses on the mother back at the facility, acting as though it had somehow been her fault. Considering the repercussions for tiny infractions such as speaking to one another or not eating a meal, I imagined the death of a Trad baby would not be taken lightly.

  Movement came from the side of the stage, and about ten chained males were dragged up onto the platform. My heart contracted as I spotted Diarus among them, his head down. I willed him to look up at me, but he didn’t. I knew he was protecting us both by keeping his head down. If there was any chance the Trads suspected we knew each other, they’d do everything in their power to keep us apart. Even so, I wanted to see in his eyes that he was all right.

  There were a couple of Athions among the slaves—I recognized them because of their blue skin, though some of the Athions were darker than others, ranging from only a hint of blue to a dark cobalt. There were different humanoid folks among them, but I had no idea what planets they came from. I assumed the Trads hadn’t only invaded Earth during their time. Some of the slaves were completely bald, tall and slender, with big, oval-shaped eyes. Others were short and squat with flat faces and skin that folded over around their neck, and ankle, and wrist joints. All of them were chained and had that beaten appearance of a person who’d suffered for a very long time and had little hope left.

  The slaves were lined up in front of the audience. I held my breath, anxious about what was to come next.

  One of the Trads stepped out from the sidelines and bent to unhook the liquid chains from the slaves’ feet and hands.

  One of the shorter aliens with the flat face took his chance. The moment his bindings were removed, he let out a yell, shoved the Trad hard, pushing him over, and then jumped from the stage. The Trads watching parted, as though to al
low him through, and I watched in muted horror as the alien ran. The Trad who’d been doing the talking—the auctioneer, I guessed—drew a weapon from the back of his pants. He aimed it at the escaping slave, paused a moment, giving the alien the chance to glance over his shoulder in panic at him, and then pulled the trigger.

  A line of red light shot across the gap the Trads had created and hit the escaping alien on the back of his head. He froze where he was and went rigid, his entire body shuddering. The light vanished, and the slave collapsed to the floor.

  A cheer rose among the Trads, and they closed back in around the body, as though it wasn’t even important enough to bother removing.

  I stared on in dismay and wondered what the hell I’d gotten myself into.

  Chapter Four

  Diarus

  THE MOMENT THE Dhalut had attempted to run, I’d known what the outcome would be. I’d seen it happen enough on Tradrych to understand the Trads—the bad kind, anyway—had little compassion or patience for anyone going against what they wanted.

  A small cry of shock from Tara had come from somewhere behind me, a sound she might not have even realized she’d made, and I did my best not to react to it, even though every instinct urged me to turn around and go to her and wrap her in my arms. Doing something so stupid would only break our cover, however, and it would likely get us both killed.

  I knew what was coming next and willed for Tara to restrain herself. Perhaps we should have warned her, but I feared if we’d told her too much, she wouldn’t have allowed this to happen. I didn’t think for a moment her refusal would have been because of fears for herself, but because she wouldn’t have wanted to see me get hurt. I hoped now we were here, with the crowd looking on and the threat of death so very close, she’d hold herself back for the greater good.