Stolen_Saving Setora_Book One_Dark Dystopian Reverse Harem MC Romance Read online

  “You’ll make a man happy one day,” Damien went on, seating himself on the edge of the fountain. “That has always been my hope for you. Now that you’re eighteen, that dream can finally come true.”

  A flutter went through my belly at this. Was that why he’d called me here? From my first day here, I’d been taught to wait and hope for the same future every woman hoped for but few ever got to experience; that a handsome man, a gentlemanly man of power, would make me the prize of his house. All women were slaves, but ones like me had the rare chance to become something more, almost a wife. While I’d be expected to bear lots of children, adding to the Clan’s numbers, I’d be given a place of honor, my children treated like royalty. Had Damien called me here because he’d chosen someone for me? One of his friends or a distant member of his esteemed family? That was the best any daughter could hope for, that her father saw a future for her with someone as powerful and worthy as him.

  The possibility of a new life, the start of a new chapter, nearly made me smile, but I kept it at bay, maintaining my composure. Excitement and a hint of fear at the prospect of meeting my future master awakened in me.

  “You have chosen for me, my Master?”

  Again, his eyes held mine. He patted the ledge of the fountain beside him. I lowered myself down to the cement ledge, and when he held out his hand expectantly, I gave it to him.

  For a moment, he didn’t speak, his thumb making strange, elaborate circles on the back of my hand.

  “I wish I could keep you here forever, my dove, but all birds must leave the nest.”

  “Master?” He wouldn’t look at me. With his gaze on my hand, I couldn’t read him at all.

  His other hand lifted, and as he finally lifted his gaze up, he pushed a lock of my hair behind my ear. His gaze followed his movements, not meeting mine. His smile was gentle.

  “I’m sending you to auction today, Setora.”

  Auction. The word punched me hard in the chest, knocking the wind out of me.

  “Master, no. This can’t be.” I snatched my hand out of Damien’s—or I tried to. His grip tightened, strangling. “I thought…you can’t. Please.”

  “Oh, come now, Setora. You knew this day would come.”

  I tried to pull free, to bolt, anything to get away from this man. This man who only looked like my master but couldn’t be him.

  Damien seized my wrist, his grip at once like iron as he jerked me to the cement walk in one move, forcing me to my knees.

  “I am not giving you a choice, Setora. You will be taken to auction tonight, and you will please your new master any way he sees fit. I’ve—”

  “No! I can’t—” Again, I tried to pull free, desperation tearing me to pieces. How could this even be happening?

  This time, his hand seized my throat. His grip wasn’t brutal, but it was firm, and the suddenness of it stole my breath. The threat there left no doubt in my mind, he would tighten his hold if I gave him a reason.

  “I’ve invested too much in you for you to ruin it all now. You’ve been on the docket for two years; investors have been swarming, eager to get their hands on you.”

  I grabbed at his hand, and he tightened it just enough to warn, pulling me so close his emotionless eyes filled my vision.

  “Do you have any idea how much your worth, Setora? Fifty thousand gold credits, enough to buy thousands of slaves. Nothing is going to ruin this day for me.”

  Maker, who was this man looking down at me with this deadly mask of command, this icy look of pure menace? Not Master. He wore his face, but this wasn’t him. Damien was a powerful man, a man who wielded his influence like a blade, but he was never cruel or violent to me. He’d looked on me like a daughter, often saying as much. This man gripping me by the throat now was the leader of the J’nai. A ruthless leader, evil and without compassion.

  “Master, please, let—”

  He laid his cheek next to mine, inhaling my apple-scented hair with the same anticipation as one might inhale some rare, exotic fruit. His grip left my throat, only to clamp onto my shoulder like an iron vise. Imprisoning me there.

  “The one who buys you is going to make me a very rich man, Setora. And then he’s going to enjoy you, morning, noon and night.”

  “No. Master, please don’t do this.” Hardly able to breathe, I huffed the words out, my throat closing on half-choked sobs.

  Damien said nothing, only brushed a soft kiss on my cheek—a kiss!—then released me and stood. I heard his fingers snap at one of the guards, but my heartbeat thudded so loudly in my ears, the sound came through muffled.

  “Is her room prepared and secured?”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard said.

  “Good. Take her to my maids for preparation.”

  Oh, Maker, this was really happening. An auction. I was being sold.

  Auction, sold, bought, these were the words every woman feared, the fate every female dreaded. Being paraded out, stripped and exposed before a crowd of men in the huge square of the Compound, all shouting out bids like they were buying a piece of livestock. Carted off in chains by who knew what kind of man, hungry to do who knew what to me.

  Auctions happened every day throughout every zone in the new world; they were part of life, and yet somehow, I’d fooled myself into thinking I’d be spared such a fate. I’d trusted Damien, looked up to him. Here and now, my own naivete made me sick to my stomach. He hadn’t looked on me as a daughter. I’d been nothing but a whore to him, livestock prepared for the selling.

  Betrayal sank sharp hooks into me, and I swallowed a sob, covering my mouth as I collapsed against the side of the fountain. My legs felt like jelly, too weak to stand.

  Two guards grabbed my arms and pulled me up. The awareness of my fate hit me then. If I didn’t run now, my life would never be mine, if it ever really had been.

  I twisted free, somehow breaking out of the guard’s holds. Perhaps they weren’t expecting resistance, because I was a full five feet from them before the pain came.

  Something wound around my neck—a thin leather whip like the ones all the guards carried on their belts. It tightened, and I choked before I was yanked to the ground. The cement walk slammed into me, then strong hands hauled me to my feet. One of the guards unwound the whip from around my neck.

  The guards said nothing, leading me back through the throne room and down the marble and gold halls to the slave’s quarters. A dozen more guardsmen patrolled the halls, uniformed men stationed at every door. There should have only been two at each end of the hall, but I saw at least twelve here. Ignoring them, I followed my escorts into the preparation room.

  When exactly I’d shut down, I didn’t know, but by the time I was in the custody of Damien’s maids, my brain had stopped trying to resist, stopped trying to rationalize what was happening. I stood in the middle of the cadre of maids, only half aware of them pulling off my clothes, pushing me into a hot bath, dunking me under.

  Far from being able to enjoy the bath, they seized my limbs and with an unpleasantly rough loofah, scrubbed every inch of my skin.

  Time slid by, but I had no grasp on how much. My thoughts drifted away so that it felt like I’d left my body, watching what happened to me from another place. I moved when they told me to move, turned when they told me to, but with all the awareness or will of one of those automatic robots people used to clean their houses in The Old World.

  Two maids waxed every inch of my body, ripping the strips off without any warning or cream used to help the burn. Silent, they combed my hair out and rubbed me down with some kind of cream. The cream probably smelled fantastic, meant to please a man or even act as an aphrodisiac to him, but to me it had no smell at all.

  Leaving me undressed, the maids led me into another room where a stone table with straps stood. I walked in, my movements automatic. Outside at the doors to the room, two guards stood, each with those whips coiled at their hips.

  As the door to the room closed, Damien’s voice drifted in from the hall f
or a moment.

  “Be vigilant, all of you. I don’t want any unwanted visitors. No one gets in here without the proper credentials.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And make sure our esteemed VIPs end up exactly where we want them to.” His voice was mocking.

  The maids strapped me to the table. Near the foot end of the table, hot coals sat piled in a wooden holder, a steel branding iron sticking up from them.

  A branding iron. Fear and horror slid off me, as ineffective as water off steel.

  Once I was tied down, one of the maids grabbed my foot and held it to the table while another took up the iron. The brand on the end of the rod was shaped exactly like the sunburst Maja had on her flank.

  I said nothing, did nothing, mind drifting even further from this place. I stared blankly at the wall across the room, eyes on the flames flickering on the sconces there while two rough hands trapped my foot in place.

  Burning hot steel pressed to the small hollow on the side of my ankle for an instant. White hot pain flared, jerking me from the protective cocoon that surrounded my thoughts. The smell of burned flesh filled my nose.

  I only half registered the feel of oil being applied to the brand on my skin, the oil numbing the pain some. Someone applied a liquid bandage to the wound, a see-through barrier that would prevent infection while still allowing perspective buyers to clearly see Damien’s mark on me.

  The stamp that would tell any would-be masters I was a well-trained slave, bought from a known, respected owner. Damien Vale, the most respected connoisseur of rare, beautiful things.

  Damien. How could I have trusted him? Looked up to him? Betrayal filled my veins, dark and caustic, but my face remained expressionless, closed off, without emotion.

  It didn’t matter how this had happened, or what would happen now. It had happened and there was no changing it, or what lay ahead. Not if I wanted to live.

  How much time passed between the preparation and the auction, I didn’t know. It could have been an hour or five. Whatever the case, next thing I knew, the preparation was finished, and I was standing at the doors, waiting to be led out to the auction stage.

  Totally exposed, not a stitch of clothing to hide behind.

  I turned my head, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the wall where the maids had dolled me up moment ago. My waist-length, pale lilac hair looked so thick and soft, shining like moonstone. My sparkling amethyst eyes were made to look bigger and seductive with charcoal. Plumper was added to my lips to give them a suggestive fullness. My womanly bits were hairless, my nether lips still pink from the waxing and bared for all to see. I hardly recognized myself, and I hated the look with its reminder of what my life had always been leading up to—a tool for pleasure, a tool for creating future life. My sole purpose from here on out would be to serve a man’s needs, to fill his nights with pleasure without care for my own, to only be looked upon as what my body was for, not for who I was inside. I hated myself for daring to think my life could be more, for forgetting there was only one life in store for me.

  Almost as much as I hated Damien.

  In that moment, my hopes and dreams trickled away, like precious water from a wrung-out sponge. Still, I felt nothing, nothing for the life I’d mistakenly believed was almost mine.

  “Perimeter secure. It’s time, bring her out.”

  The guard’s cold, clipped voice washed over me but didn’t penetrate. The maids pushed me toward him.

  “Welcome to your new life, slave.” The maid’s eyes sparkled. The others with her chortled.

  In the distance, Damien’s voice rang out from the garden, announcing the start of the auction and welcoming his investors. The doors to the garden opened, and the guards—six instead of the usual two any other slave would have had—led me down the walk toward a stage where Damien and his buyers waited.

  Why or how being led out onto the auction floor changed things, I didn’t know, but it did.

  If the moment when Damien had told me I was being sold had shut something down inside me, being paraded before the buyers now reactivated that same part of me. It was as if the moment I saw those buyers, I woke from some kind of stupor. It hit me what was happening, what was about to happen, and panic welled up, a warning stabbing at me to run.

  I snuck a covert glance about the grounds, at the crowd of investors and buyers filling the large garden area.

  Buyers from all over the world had come here, filling the courtyard with the low, excited hum of voices. Captains of zones near and far mingled with princes, many of them dressed in elaborate cloaks studded with precious stones or embroidered in gold. Kings of distant lands looked me over with an unsettlingly open appraisal. Huge, muscled barbarians in furs and leathers watched my every move with hunger that made me wish I could disappear into the cement stones under my feet. All of these men had invested fortunes in the hopes of owning me; not one would let me near the door if I tried, but they were the least of my worries.

  Never mind the guard detail escorting me, surrounding me at every corner and flanking the doors to the garden, a dozen more guards stood like statues, ready to leap into action at the slightest need. There were twice as many as usual. I wanted think it was just because I was a Violet, but no, there was more at play here. The hilts of swords jutted up from over shoulders, and whips hung coiled at their belts, carried by men trained to use them with frightening precision. No one there would kill me—I was worth too much—but Damien would find a way to punish me for resisting, repercussions that would be felt even when he no longer owned me.

  I tried to shut back down, to retreat to a place where the fear and hopelessness couldn’t reach me, but both gnawed at me, tightening my muscles, refusing to be shut out.

  The walk to the stage felt like the longest thirty seconds of my life. Melodramatic, perhaps, but I felt like a woman headed for the gallows. Was this what it felt like in The Old World, in ancient times when hangings were the norm?

  At the steps that led up to the stage, all six of the guards stood at the bottom, blocking escape so that there was nothing for me to do but walk up them. My knees weakened a little more with every step until I nearly fell on my face on the stage. Since the age of six, I’d been trained in how to walk, how to sit and stand as perfectly as any princess, and yet it seemed my brain had decided I had two left feet.

  At the last second, I caught my balance and took my place beside a podium at the center of the stage. At the podium, Damien began listing off all the wonderful skills I would offer the lucky man who purchased me, while the female auction handler stood at my side. The handler’s hold on my elbow pinched just enough to warn me in case I got any ideas.

  “Never again will you find a specimen this perfect, a true Violet,” Damien said. One of his hands pushed a lock of hair behind my shoulder, exposing the breast it had fallen forward to cover. “She’s innocent in every sense of the word, pure as the virgin snow on Mount Crite.”

  The murmurs from the crowd grew, the interest in the eyes of most of the men turning to open lust. Buyers fingered fat purses and readied money cases. Damien grinned at them.

  “This one promises nights of perfect pleasure for years to come…”

  While Damien went on about all the ways in which I had been trained to please a man, movement at the back of the audience caught my eye. Late to the party, two men had walked out onto the garden steps and stopped. Both stared across the room at the stage, eyes immediately zeroing in on me.

  Maybe it was because they looked so out of place, or maybe it was because one of them was so large, but whatever the case, as soon as I saw them, the rest of the world fell away. Damien’s voice became a muted hum, the crowd but shadows before me.

  Both men wore the elaborate robes of nobles, but there was a rugged look to them that no pampered lord would ever have. The big one was larger than any of the barbarians there, with meaty fists the size of dinner plates, layers of muscle making his robe look stretched almost too tight across
his giant chest and arms. The other, reaching to the shoulder of the first and still powerful looking, had the most glorious blue eyes I’d ever seen, like the deepest, bluest sky. Golden blond hair, pulled back from his face and held in a twine, fell down one side of his chest. When he saw me, they widened, like he’d set eyes on the rarest of jewels.

  Every other stare made my stomach twist and filled me with dread, but the way the one with those eyes looked at me set my skin on fire, making me feel exposed in a whole new way.

  Two other women were brought up, shown beside me. Maybe I’d been too focused on those two strange newcomers to notice, but it seemed like Damien didn’t put nearly as much enthusiasm on the other two slaves, both of which were stunningly beautiful. Both would fetch a good price, but it wouldn’t come close to mine. They were not Violets.

  The two newcomers didn’t even glance at them.

  “Bidding will begin shortly in the Throne Room,” Damien said, and the handler pinched at my arm, bringing me back to myself.

  This was perhaps the one saving grace about Damien’s auctions. Buyers at auctions like this kept such high stakes bidding an intimate affair; they wouldn’t think of doing anything as uncouth as shouting out bids and flashing their vast sums for all to see like the common city folk did at the daily zone auctions.

  “Take her to the holding chambers until the bidding is finished,” Damien ordered the handler as the buyers filed out of the courtyard. His eyes held none of the warmth I’d so often thought I’d seen in him over the years, if ever I had seen it to begin with.

  “Yes, Captain.” The handler, along with my entourage of guards who’d led me out here, walked me down the steps.

  Where had those two men gone? The crowd thinned out, headed inside, but I didn’t see those two strange men anywhere.

  I was led through the courtyard toward a side servant’s entrance where I’d disappear until the purchase was officially made.

  Halfway down the walk I’d been taken down upon entering, we had to sidestep around one of the last buyers to leave the yard. He turned, dark eyes locking on me, following my every move.