His Mate to Keep by Ivy Sparks

3

Merrit

I joltedawake out of a deep sleep. For a second, my head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, and I couldn’t pull my eyelids open. I swooned into unconsciousness again before I managed to drag myself upright.

Once I got to my feet, I made a run for it. I barreled full-tilt into something solid. Stars exploded in my head and I collapsed onto a cold surface.

My fingers groped over a smooth floor. It felt like glass, but that was impossible, wasn’t it? I forced myself to sit still until my eyes wavered into focus.

“Try to stay calm,” a deep voice told me. “You’ll only hurt yourself, and then they’ll kill you for sure.”

A wave of nausea made me retch onto the floor, but nothing came out. My head hurt terribly, but that voice was right. Running into walls wasn’t exactly productive.

I blinked and my eyes finally concentrated on the smooth white floor beneath my fingers. My gaze darted around me and horror sunk into my chest. I was in a glass pen surrounded by thousands of similar glass pens containing aliens from different species.

A monster of a man scrutinized me from just beyond a spotless pane of glass. He simply sat there staring at me, with his massive arms propped up on his knees. Dark horns protruded from his skull, surrounded by a mane of raven hair. His skin had the hue of a light wine, with intricate tattoos wrapped around his body.

He had an intelligent glint in his silver eyes and an intrigued expression on his handsome face.

Wait. Was this hunk of an alien intrigued by me?

He spoke to me in that calm, resonant tone I heard before. “That’s right. Sit still and use your brain. You understand me, right?”

I nodded. I had a universal translator implanted in my ear many years ago. I assumed he had a similar device.

“Don’t make any sudden movements here,” he continued. “The experimenters hate that. If you measure your actions, you’ll be able to live a relatively comfortable existence—as long as they don’t decide they have no further use for you.”

My eyes flew open. “Experimenters?”

“You’re in a lab, and you’re the experimenters’ test subject. One of thousands. The trick to surviving the experiments is cooperation. Staying calm.”

I hunched up into a ball, glaring at everything, including him. “They won’t experiment on me. I’m getting out of here.”

I scooted over to where I thought the robot tried to get me into this cell.

“What are you doing?” the beast of a man next door asked.

“This section of glass opened up earlier. There must be some way to short out the electronics and open it up again.”

He shook his head, his pointed horns looking heavy and deadly. “You want to leave that alone. If the sentinels see you tampering with the cell, they’ll make an example out of you.”

“Sentinels?”

“The robots. They’re controlled remotely by our experimenters, and they’ll punish you for misbehaving.”

Sentinel… That sounded foreboding. Still, I tried to put on a brave face. “You and the rest of these aliens might be content to play nice and be good boys, but I’m going to find a way out of here.”

“You’re human, aren’t you?” he drawled. “I’ve seen a few humans before when I worked as a mercenary, but none of them looked anything like you.”

I tried to discern from his tone if that was intended as an insult or not. He didn’t elaborate further, instead saying, “I used to be just like you when they first brought me in. I was loud and brash and bent on escape. I learned, though. And you’ll need to learn too, or you won’t last longer than a week.”

Those words caught my attention. I didn’t find any hinge or seam in the cell wall, so I gave it up and sat down across from him. “What species are you?”

“Kavian,” he replied. “My home planet of Kavius was destroyed not long ago. Maybe you heard about it… though maybe not. We were invaded, and I was one of the few who survived.”

Hope of a rescue tugged at me. “Do any of your people know you’re here?”

He shook his head. “As far as I know, all of ‘my people’ are probably dead. My parents were definitely killed by the invaders, and I have no way of knowing what happened to the rest of my family.”

“That’s terrible…” I looked away, his loss reminding me of my crew. Were they all dead too? I tried not to think about it. “Are the invaders the same people keeping us locked up?”

“No, the Ranxi don’t use technology like this, as far as I know. That’s who attacked my people. The Ranxi.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, not sure what else to say.

He cocked his head and peered up at the ceiling. “It’s fine. The memories of my home get fuzzier the longer I stay in here, and maybe that’s a good thing.”

I’d never consider forgetting my crew or the Starglider a good thing, but maybe in time, their memory would get fuzzy for me too. I didn’t want to think about it. “How did you end up here, then? If this place has nothing to do with the Ranxi.”

“I had nowhere to go after Kavius was destroyed, so I joined a group of mercenaries. But I eventually got captured by these bastards, whoever they are. The experimenters brought me here, and this is where I’ve been ever since.”

I cast another glance around the prison—or should I say, lab? The longer I sat here thinking my situation over, the worse it looked. “Who are the experimenters, and what do they want?”

“I have no idea. All I know is that they test our fighting skills. And if you’re smart, you’ll just accept that. When they first brought me in…” He trailed off.

“Tell me,” I urged. “Tell me anything that will help me get out of here.”

“When I first got here, I fought back. And the punishments for not cooperating… They were horrible. I learned quickly to keep my mouth shut and my head down. I learned to watch and wait and to play things their way. That’s the only way to survive.”

I scrutinized him a little closer. Every inch of his wine-colored body screamed, I could kill you if I wanted. Dark gray tattoos covered a powerful torso, and his prison-issued pants hugged tree-trunk legs. He was built to fight and kill, but his eyes and his voice revealed a level of intelligence I wouldn’t expect to find in a killing machine like him.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

In a flash, his silvery eyes snapped to my face. “My name is Xavier Ruger. And you?”

“I’m Merrit Ryder, chief engineer of the pirate frigate Starglider.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Pirate!”

I shrugged. “I used to be, anyway. I guess I’m not anymore.”

He huffed through his nose. “I’ve dealt with my share of pirates. Can’t quite say I love your kind, taking what isn’t theirs, instead of earning it.”

I shrank before the rebuke. I’d spent my whole life around pirates. On board the Starglider, we had a certain standard of honor. To us, being pirates was the best possible life. We looked down on the chumps who followed the laws and played by the rules when we didn’t have to.

Thankfully, his sneer had already faded. I think he knew as much as I did that our pasts meant little here. We were both prisoners now, and nothing more.

I slid back over to the corner and examined the glass wall again, changing the subject. “Do you have any idea how this works? I don’t see any mechanism to operate it. How does that opening appear out of nowhere like that?”

“There’s no mechanism to operate it. The facility is controlled by artificial intelligence and remote signals, and is entirely automated.”

My gaze darted around the lab while I wedged my fingernail into a seam where two glass panes met. “What kind of security does this place have—besides the sentinels?”

“Camera bots patrol the lab around the clock. They monitor everything. They’re probably watching you right now. I told you. Messing with the walls will get you into serious trouble. This isn’t the way you want to start your career here.”

At that moment, a section of the floor slid aside. It opened so fast that I couldn’t react. A mechanical arm extended into the cell and a cylindrical cuff whipped around and clamped onto my wrist.

“I told you,” Xavier muttered. “You better learn to listen.”

Despite his warning, I continued to struggle against the mechanical arm. The opening it had sprung out of might be a weak point. I tried to make my way toward it, but then a second arm pivoted into my view. Another cuff grabbed my other wrist, and together they wrenched me to the floor and pinned me there with my wrists spread on either side.

“Get off me!” I roared. “Leave me alone! You bastards! You have no right…!”

My voice echoed back at me. There was no one to hear me except Xavier and the other prisoners.

My life flashed before my eyes for the hundredth time since the Starglider was attacked. Would I die in here like so many others? Xavier must be one of the few to last as long as he had.

In front of my shocked eyes, a third arm extended from the wall, and this one glistened with a sharp needle. A clear fluid dripped from the end.

“No!” I shrieked. “No! You can’t! Let me go!”

I struggled against the arms holding me, but they didn’t budge a millimeter. I only hurt my wrists fighting them.

“Lie still and relax,” Xavier called through the wall. “Resisting will only make it worse. Show them you want to cooperate and they’ll back down.”

I only half-heard him, I was yelling so loudly. “Bastards! Cocksuckers! You’ll pay for this! I swear to God, I’ll hunt you bastards down.”

The needle hovered near my left arm. The cuff arm slid up to my elbow to push my sleeve out of the way and expose my skin. Then, with a sudden jab, the needle punctured my vein.

I screamed, taking in a breath to make more useless threats.

Too late. A burning sensation spread through my arm, and I felt myself spiraling into unconsciousness again. I struggled, but I couldn’t form words. Everything went black.