Norlanian Brides Volume One Read online

  He’d promised to buy her a better house, but all that money was gone now. When he’d contacted his mother to tell her his news, she’d been furious.

  “You’ve killed us all!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They’ll take us to the Bordelayz. We’ll be forced to give ourselves to anyone who wants us. Your beautiful sisters, your brother, me…we’ll be ruined.”

  “Why would you be taken to the Bordelayz? I have been sending you deenars every lunar cycle to help pay your debts. I’ll be able to send you more deenars soon, you’ll just have to make do until then.”

  “I hope you’re happy, Paoli,” she snarled, evading his question. “You’re the worst sort of son. You take care of your own pleasure before making sure your family is taken care of.”

  Before he could respond to her accusation, she had ended the call. There hadn’t been anything he could do about the situation at the time. He’d had just enough funds to buy his and Kate’s freedom from the Bordelayz and pay for their stay in the community house for three weeks. As a requirement of their abduction, each female was required to stay inside for one lunar cycle after their arrival. Because his mother had refused to allow them to come stay with her and his siblings, he’d had to purchase a room for he and Kate to share at the community home. He couldn’t have sent his family any deenars, because he had none to spare.

  Thankfully, his best friend, Eden, had come to see him and offered him and Kate a place to live. The makeshift bedroom in the back of the workshop was certainly not what Kate deserved. She’d been through so much in the last ninety days, and deserved to be pampered and treated like a queen.

  He rolled onto his back and brushed a thick lock of blue hair out of his eyes. Like all Norlanian males, he had been born with blue hair. As a young male, he’d been on the path to starting a career making clothing. Now that he was free from being a brokah sex slave, he knew he could make good money selling his handmade clothing, but no one would buy clothing from a former brokah who still had blue hair. When males mated with their soul mates, their hair turned from blue to brown. Even though he felt as though Kate were his soul mate, he knew that if they ever did make love, his hair would remain blue because she wasn’t his true soul mate. In order for his hair to turn brown now, he would have to purchase an expensive serum and inject himself with it. Only then would his hair change color, and only after that would he be able to sell his clothing and earn money.

  The day before, Eden had encouraged him to explain to Kate that he wouldn’t be able to earn money as long as he had blue hair, since the blue hair of an unmated male combined with his status as a former sex slave branded him as the lowest of the low. If he hadn’t made the choice to sell himself into slavery for his family, his blue hair wouldn’t be nearly as much of a negative brand as it was for him. A blue-haired male of worth, like those in the military or who served in government offices, just meant they had not found the right female or gone on a soul-walk. But a freed brokah with blue hair was always seen as the trash of their society.

  He knew he couldn’t hope to provide a better life for Kate until she mated with him and his hair turned brown. Only when he was of equal status with other mated males could he really provide for her. But he wouldn’t ask her to mate with him. He wanted to wait until she came to him willingly, asked to mate with him because she loved him.

  It had only been a lunar cycle since they met, but he already loved her. He could only hope that she would eventually put aside her desire to go home and see him for the man that he was. A man who loved her no matter where she came from, and only wanted to see her happy and safe.

  Kate sat up and stretched. She looked exhausted, as if her sleep hadn’t been restful. Her skin was pale, her blonde hair dull, her eyes ringed with dark circles.

  “Good morning, Kate,” he said as he sat up.

  “Hi,” she said, the corner of her mouth curling up in a half-smile that seemed more like a reflex than a genuine smile.

  “Would you like to eat with Ashleigh and Eden in the main house?”

  “No, I’m not…very hungry.”

  He knew she was lying about being hungry. She was just so damn depressed.

  “I’m going to get something for us and bring it back.”

  She didn’t say anything, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. She looked small and sad. He wished he could hold her and take away her sorrow, but he was afraid to push her. Afraid she’d draw even further from him.

  He left the bedroom and went to the bathing room, showering quickly and changing into a fresh pair of trousers and a simple beige tunic. Eden and Ashleigh had given him and Kate clothes, for which he was grateful. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to repay Eden for all that he’d done for him.

  Leaving the workshop, he crossed the yard to the main house and knocked on the back door. They were now living in Polona, an artistic community with small developments of homes nestled among treed areas, as well as a park and a museum. The door opened and Ashleigh smiled brightly. “Good morning, Paoli!”

  “Good morning to you as well, Ashleigh.”

  “Where’s Kate? It’s time for breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?” he asked as he followed her into the kitchen.

  “Morning meal is what you guys call it. Where Kate and I are from, its called breakfast.”

  “What an odd word,” he mused.

  Ashleigh snorted. “Oh sure. As if there aren’t a ton of really odd words on this planet.”

  Eden stood and pulled Ashleigh’s chair out. “Join us, my friend?”

  “Kate said she’s not hungry, but I thought I’d bring her back a plate and try to tempt her to eat.”

  Ashleigh frowned. “Do you want me to have Sloan come see her? Is she sick?”

  “I think she’s just sad.”

  “Maybe I can come visit her later when Eden has his first class.”

  He nodded as he put two plates on a tray and loaded them with food he thought Kate would like. After thanking Eden and Ashleigh for the food, he carried the tray out to the workshop and found Kate still in her sleep clothes, sitting on the bed and staring out the window.

  He closed the door to the bedroom and put the tray on the bed, then knelt next to it. He wanted to sit with her, but, once more, he was afraid to get too close to her. He had no idea what she thought about him, and considering that most people looked down on people with his past, he wondered if Kate looked down on him, too.

  “Try this, it’s called esot,” he said, holding up a strip of meat.

  She turned her head slowly and the depths of sadness in her eyes made his heart hurt. “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Kate, please. It’s not good to starve yourself. You hardly eat. I’m worried about you.”

  “Worried about your investment?” she asked quietly.

  “What’s an investment?”

  “Something you paid for.” She blinked and tears welled in her eyes. “Are you going to take me back to that place? That…brothel?”

  “What?” He stood abruptly. “No, never! I paid your debt, Kate. The thirty days on-planet as required by the soul-walk company have been met and you’re free. You don’t owe me anything. I just want you to be happy and to not starve to death. Not because I gave money for your debt but because I care about you. I would never, never send you back there.”

  He reached for her, but his hand hovered just over her shoulder. He forced himself to ignore the worry that he might push her and rested his hand on her. She was warm, her skin soft. She shivered and he tugged a blanket from the end of the bed and dropped it over her shoulders.

  “Eat something, please.”

  She sniffled and rubbed at her wet cheeks. “Okay.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and lifted the esot. She took it from him and nibbled on the end. He’d never seen anything so erotic in his life, and he mentally cursed his body for thinking something as simple as her eating a piece of salty meat
was enticing.

  “It tastes like bacon.”

  “What is ba-kon?”

  “It’s made from an animal called a pig, and its meat is salty and really tasty.” She ate the piece in three bites and then she looked at the plate. He explained the items on the plate – sweet ronii fruit, nimoni bread, and halis juice. She tried the ronii and said she liked it, but it was too sweet. He was just happy to see her eating something.

  He joined her and they both finished their plates. She seemed a little happier, and he was glad. He put their empty plates on the tray and set it outside the room. He turned to ask her if she wanted to clean up and get dressed because Eden’s first class would be starting soon, when he heard a small grunt of pain.

  Kate, staring out the window once more, had one hand near her throat, the knuckles white with tension, and a small trickle of blood dripped down her wrist. In alarm, her raced to her and realized quickly that she was trying to rip the necklace she’d been given from the soul-walk company off of her neck. The chain, which appeared deceptively delicate, was made of special metal that was unbreakable, and the clasp was locked in place once the women were brought onto the ship.

  “Kate, please,” he said urgently, trying to pry her fingers from the chain that was cutting her skin. She let out a breath as he got her fingers loose and cradled her wounded hand in his own. Pulling her gently to her feet, he led her into the bathing room.

  “Take it off, please,” she whimpered, casting her blue eyes up to him as he rinsed her hand under the water in the sink. “I can’t bear it another second.”

  Inspecting the wound on her hand, he found shallow cuts across her fingers where the chain had dug into her, and he gently dried her hand and pulled a med kit from under the sink.

  “The chain is unbreakable, Kate, for all intents and purposes. But I think I can spring the lock so you can take it off.”

  Her voice was thick with tears, and for the first time since he’d been with her, she voluntarily touched him, pressing her uninjured hand against his cheek. “Thank you, Paoli.”

  He swallowed hard and nodded, unable to think of anything to say. Applying a thin coat of healing ointment to the cuts, he placed small bandages on them and then shut the kit. “You’ll be healed in an hour. Come into the sewing room, and let me see what I can do about the necklace.”

  She followed him into the room that would soon be his workshop, where he would design and create clothing for his people. He’d always been a talented artisan, making clothes for his sisters’ dolls when he was a young man and fashioning nicer things from the plain trousers that he’d been given when he was a brokah. When he was younger, he’d planned to go to school and become an apprentice to one of the well-known clothing makers in Kyvern City, but when he sold himself into slavery, all his hopes for the future had gone up in smoke.

  Kate sat on a small stool near one of the sewing machines and Paoli smoothed her blonde hair over one shoulder so he could see the clasp of the necklace. His fingers trembled as he lifted the necklace away from her pale skin. He took in a slow breath to calm his nerves at being able to touch her, even in such a small way, and he directed his thoughts to the necklace clasp.

  Gathering some tools, he began to take the clasp apart. His thoughts drifted to Kate and what she must be feeling right now. She had been taken from the only home she’d ever known and forced to stay here. She would never know what happened to her family or how they coped with her disappearance. It was fortunate that she hadn’t been raped by Dex, but if Paoli hadn’t been there in the Bordelayz, she might have spent the rest of her life within its walls, being drugged into submission and taken against her will for profit. He shuddered to think about her living in those conditions, and how even a short time in the confines of that horrible place had changed her so greatly. Her blue eyes were no longer bright with the fire of her temper, but had gone flat and sad. Her lightly tanned skin had paled from being confined for so long. And her once-lustrous blonde hair was dull and lifeless. The curves he had found so tantalizing on his short beauty were slipping away as she lost weight. He hoped that plenty of sunshine, freedom, and good food would help her spirits improve as much as her being in his life had changed his own outlook.

  The clasp came apart and he slid the necklace away from her neck. “There,” he said, as she turned on the stool. “Do you want me to keep it for you? I could turn the stone into something else for you, a bracelet or ring?”

  She shook her head almost violently. “No, thank you. I don’t ever want to see it again. Is it worth anything? Could you sell it?”

  “No, the tracker inside makes it worthless as it is. If you’re sure you don’t want it?”

  “I don’t want to ever see the necklace or gem again.”

  He nodded and put his tools away, then picked up the necklace and walked into the main room of the workshop where Eden held his art classes. Shelves and cabinets lined the walls of the spacious studio, and in the center of the room, chairs sat in two straight rows for the students he taught painting, drawing, and sculpture. He moved to the far corner of the room where a tall, white cube sat. The firin was used to bake clay sculptures to finish them. The temperature was hot enough that Paoli’s skin warmed just from standing in front of it. Using special tongs, he opened the firin and looked briefly into the depths, where red flames burned underneath a grating made of stone.

  “I thought the chain was indestructible?” Kate said quietly next to him.

  “It is. But the metal will melt and the stone will turn to ash. When the metal is melted, I can pour it into a mold and make buttons or a brooch and sell it that way. Is that okay? I can just throw it away, if you’d rather.”

  She lifted her face and looked up at him. “I’d like it to be used for something else.”

  He put the necklace in a stone container and used the tongs to place it directly over the grate near the back where the heat gathered the most. Shutting the door with the tongs, he turned to Kate. She looked so sad, so resigned. He was tempted to pull her into his arms and hold her, to stroke her hair and hug her tightly until all her worries and fears were assuaged and she could rest easily in his arms, but he knew he couldn’t do that. Kate had to come to him willingly and he wouldn’t take advantage of her emotional state. He’d find a way to make her happy, because he knew he couldn’t really be happy himself until she was.

  Until he saw Kate when she was brought into the Bordelayz in shackles, he’d never believed in love at first sight, but he did now. He loved Kate with every fiber of his being, and no matter how long it took, he would show her that staying here on Norlan, with him, wasn’t a prison sentence but something to celebrate. He wanted her love as badly as he wanted his next breath of air, and he held on to the hope that someday soon, Kate would love him and want to be his bride.

  Chapter 2

  Kate Mason stared at the firin. The necklace was melting. The symbol of what had started her on this horrible journey was going to be destroyed. There was something poetic about it. What she’d really like to do is shove that awful Dex into the Bordelayz for a week and see how he liked being told he would be forced to fuck whoever paid for him, and that if he didn’t do what the owner said willingly, that he’d be drugged or restrained. Of course, that would never happen. Dex was in the military and highly respected, even though he was a total jackass. At least he hadn’t really touched her while she’d been confined to his room on the ship that brought her from Earth to Norlan. He hadn’t forced her or raped her, he’d taken her “no” seriously, and she could be grateful for that small miracle.

  She missed her parents so much it was like a great ache in the center of her body. Paoli’s kindness helped to ease some of that pain, but she felt like she didn’t belong on Norlan and that she was trapped, a victim of alien technology and aliens that seemed to believe that just because a machine said a female was the right mate for a male, that said female should just roll over and spread her legs. Well, Kate was no such female.
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  Ashleigh had told Kate to think of the workshop as home. But how could she? Home was her parents’ house. She hadn’t had much growing up. Her mother stayed home and her father worked the line at a car factory, but the small house had always been filled with love. Even when her father got laid off and for a week they hadn’t had any electricity while he scrambled to find another job, she’d rested easily in the knowledge that they would always take care of her. It had been her dream when she was in school to find a way to pay them back for all that they’d done for her, all the sacrifices they had made so she and her brother could succeed in life.

  Her hopes had been resting on the new job she had just landed. But all that was gone now. According to Ashleigh, who had been abducted from Earth at the same time as Kate, although only three months had passed for them, conceivably years had passed back on Earth. She hated to think about what her parents were suffering, wondering what happened to her.

  The day her world had changed forever had started innocently enough. She walked into the First Bank of Townlin, where she had just started working as a private banker. The promotion had brought a nice pay increase, which had allowed her to finally save enough money to put a down payment on a home. She was only twenty-six, but she’d saved every penny she could since she first began working for the bank as a cashier at eighteen. She had scrimped and saved so she could buy a house big enough for her parents to get out of the house she’d grown up in, which was too rundown for them now. Her dad, with his bad knees, couldn’t handle the stairs, and her mom’s allergies were exacerbated by the mold and dust in the old home. The bigger paycheck on Friday was going to give her exactly enough money to buy her dream house. It was a modest new build that had been built on speculation and sat empty for two years when the owner’s funding fell through. The builder had gone bankrupt and the bank was desperate to get rid of it. It was perfect for her and her parents, with a big enough yard for her beloved dog Boomer, who had been living with her parents because her efficiency apartment was too small.