I stop and wait, hating myself for the pleasure I’ll get watching her be punished, but then again, who gives a fuck about this reluctant princess?
Draden is dead. Ceres, blown up. Booty, damaged.
And she tried to spit on me.
I didn’t do a single goddamned thing to this girl and she wanted to spit on me.
So you know what? Fuck her.
She asked for this.
CHAPTER TWO – LYRA
The infamous bounty hunter, Serpint.
I’ve heard of him. Hell, every Cygnian princess has heard of him. His is the one face we never want to see.
I haven’t. Until now.
So ironic that I’m here, captive in the penthouse of Harem Station, and Serpint wasn’t the bounty hunter who brought me in.
It was a nobody. Not even an Akeelian. Just some dirty old hunter who was long past his day.
How did things go so wrong?
Forget that, Lyra. The only question needing an answer is… How will you get out of here?
I really fucked up. I really, really, really fucked things up.
I don’t even know if my sister, Nyleena, is still alive. She has no clue I’ve been taken. She’s stuck back on Bull Station, which, I have come to realize, is far, far worse than anything Harem Station will hand me.
This is luxury. Cygnian princesses are treated like the royalty we are.
Were. Since anyone outside Cygnian System is an outcast, Nyleena and I included.
Still. I could do worse than this place.
When we arrived on Bull I had a specific directive. Just one fucking task, Lyra, and you had to go all rogue. Now Nyleena is stuck there and I’m here. I knew I should not have trusted that old pirate. I knew it, but I did it anyway. And somehow I was stuck inside a cryogenic pod, transported here, and I woke up with the cyborg harem master standing over me, frowning.
“You don’t look like a Cygnian princess,” he’d said. Which is true. I don’t look anything like a Cygnian princess. But there’s a reason for that.
My eyes rolled up in disgust at the cyborg master as he made his doubts clear. As if this machine-man had any right to judge me.
So then I was hauled out of the capsule and dragged to the medical station where they poked and prodded me and did the “royal test.”
I’m so humiliated. So, so, so fucking humiliated.
He did it in front of the whole harem. And the customers!
Bastard.
I put up a good fight, of course. I am bound to the wall now because I have a bad attitude and a filthy mouth. I’ve already struck a curious customer who’d never seen the “royal test” in person, kicked the cyborg master in his groin as he came at me with his vibrating fingers, and spit on the infamous Serpint after all that degradation was over.
What the hell was I thinking?
I could play along. I should play along. Just be one of those pampered girls sitting on velvet cushions being fed bubbly wine and pink tushfruit.
But I am not the kind of former princess who just gives up and goes along. I am bound to this wall without clothing because I simply cannot allow myself to forget that my little sister is stuck back on Bull and I must get out of here at all costs and save her!
I don’t think anyone here gives a shit that me saving her is the only thing that matters in this whole galaxy right now, but it’s true.
So I must be strong for her. I must be smart. I must… oh, for sun’s sake. Why did I resist and be incorrigible? Why did I have to open my mouth and spit on Serpint?
Why did I let this happen to us?
We are both now doomed.
Serpint stops and stares at me for a moment. My spit didn’t actually touch him. Just fell on the floor a good foot’s length away from his well-worn leather boots. The cleaning bots whir into motion immediately, erasing the evidence.
He looks at me with his dark violet eyes and almost cracks a smile.
Almost. He doesn’t quite make it.
He just looks over at the harem master, who makes a face of disgust—one I’m already far too familiar with for being here less than half a spin—and starts walking this way. His fingers already transforming into the whip that has struck my skin several times already.
“I told you to be still and quiet while we figure out if you’re up to our standards, Lyra.”
I hate the way he says my name, his voice emotionless and hard.
There is no good reply to his statement so I say nothing, my eyes stuck on the whip growing out of his fingers. It’s longer now. And thinner. Which means it will sting worse than the last time.
“Hold up,” Serpint says, putting an arm out in front of the master as he approaches me. “This is no Cygnian princess.”