Surrendered Read online

For a moment Lady Wraith’neck looked incredulous. When she saw Neh’sa was serious, her expression became one of defiant anger.

  “Oh? And how would you do that Neh’sanna? You have no friends in high places—not now that the Grande Dame knows what kind of illegal activity you’ve been up to.” She smirked.

  “I don’t need friends in high places,” Neh’sa snapped. “I have other resources. Have you ever stopped to think, Malisha, how many downtrodden, starved, and mistreated males come through my Mercy clinic on any given night? And how grateful they are for even just a little bit of kindness—a bit of care their own Mistresses are too busy or too harsh to give them? I believe we’ve treated slaves belonging to you many times.”

  Lady Wraith’ neck frowned.

  “I’m afraid I still don’t understand. Are you threatening not to treat my slaves anymore? Because frankly, I couldn’t care less. Let them die—I can always buy more.”

  “I know you don’t care about anyone but yourself but many others do. And the males who come through my clinic are appreciative—so appreciative, in fact, that if someone was to suggest they find a certain Mistress with an especially sadistic nature—one who has hurt several of their number over and over again, well they might just—”

  “Stop!” Lady Wraith’neck was wide-eyed with shock. “How dare you? I can’t believe you’d threaten me!”

  “I haven’t,” Neh’sa said coolly. “I’m just telling you what could happen if I feel Thorn’s pain and know a pain collar is responsible for it. I’ll be watching you.” She removed the key to Thorn’s collar, which she wore around her neck on a chain, and thrust it at the other Mistress. “This collar had better be replaced by one just as painless or I’ll know,” she said and swept from the room before the spluttering Lady Wraith’ neck could frame an answer.

  She didn’t look back at Thorn although she wanted to so badly her stomach twisted in knots.

  He’s gone, she told herself. Gone out of your life as surely as Heroth is. Forget him now, Neh’sa—all you can do is forget him.

  But somehow her heart refused to listen.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “I am pleased to announce that we have a new member of the Sacred Seven to help care for and protect the legacy of the Yonnite Library of All Knowledge.” Grand Dame Thrust’much’s voice rang out across the vast marble porch which encircled the massive building the Library was housed in. A crowd of Mistresses and their body-slaves filled the courtyard around the large building to overflowing. Apparently the investiture of a new member of the Sacred Seven was a prime social event.

  Thorn watched the ceremony unfold from the back of the porch in stoic silence. His back was a mass of bruises and welts and the rest of him was pretty fucking sore as well. Lady Wraith’neck had had some fun with him the night before. Fun from her point of view anyway…

  “Well, well. I’ve been wanting to get you alone from the first moment I saw you,” she purred the moment she got him back to her gaudy, overly decorated home. She didn’t bother with a formal living space Thorn noticed. Her entire domicile appeared to be dominated by dungeon equipment and accoutrements.

  She brought him inside and took him straight to an agony cross where she chained him up.

  “I may not be able to use a pain collar on you,” she hissed in his ear. “But there are so many more ways to have fun—don’t you think?”

  Thorn didn’t answer—nor did he cry out despite the various implements she used on his back and the rest of his body. This was more like what he had been expecting when he’d agreed to take the mission to Yonnie Six. It was comforting, in a way. Being tortured was something he understood—something he could withstand.

  Lady Wraith’neck’s touch didn’t cause him to react the way Neh’sa’s had. Through the entire session—which lasted hours—the fire within him didn’t even come close to the surface. She could do what she liked to his body but she couldn’t touch his heart or draw any kind of reaction from him—a fact which clearly irritated the sadistic Mistress.

  After hours of using everything she could think of on him, she threw down the bloody cane she held with a petulant curse.

  “This is ridiculous! How was Neh’sanna able to train you at all when you’re so clearly impervious to pain?”

  “Neh’sa trains… with love.” Thorn spoke with difficulty. Enduring the physical pain had enabled him to take himself away, into a mindless place where no thought was possible. Bringing himself back from that place required an effort.

  “Love?” Lady Wraith’neck scoffed. “What sort of nonsense is that?”

  “I wouldn’t…expect you to understand,” Thorn still spoke haltingly. “You have nothing but…hatred and cruelty in you. Which is why….Neh’sa will always be the superior Mistress.”

  “Silence!” Lady Wraith’neck snapped. “I won’t tolerate such talk, especially not from a slave!” She began to pace angrily back and forth. “What you need is a good jolt from a pain collar! Damn that Neh’sanna and her soft-hearted ways!” She glared at Thorn. “I don’t believe she really has a link to you. I ought to put a collar on you anyway and turn it up to maximum to find out.”

  “Do as you please with me, Mistress,” Thorn growled stoically. “But I warn you—Neh’sa does feel my pain.”

  He closed his eyes, trying not to remember the echo of his agony in her lovely dark eyes when he’d told her of his past. How she could treat him with such compassion after hearing how badly he had failed the only other female in his life he’d ever loved was beyond him.

  “That’s part of what makes her such a good Mistress,” he added.

  “Ridiculous!” Lady Wraith’neck raged again, but he noticed she didn’t make any move to put a pain collar on him. “I own a slave but I don’t really own him,” she went on to herself, still pacing. “I’ll never truly own the big brute until Neh’sanna is out of the way.”

  This got Thorn’s attention.

  “If you hurt her—if you so much as touch a hair on my Mistress’s head—” he began.

  “I am your Mistress now, you big fool!” Lady Wraith’neck stormed. “But don’t worry,” she went on. “I won’t touch her. Not personally anyway.”

  Her words troubled Thorn but he told himself that after the ceremony at the Library of All Knowledge it would be a moot point. As soon as she was invested as one of the Sacred Seven, he would be using Lady Wraith’neck’s print and retinal scan to help himself to the information on the Hive. He would transmit it instantly back to the Kindred Mothership and then he would leave Yonnie Six behind forever. And once he was gone, there would be no reason for Lady Wraith’neck to wish to harm Neh’sa. He hoped…

  As he stood in the cloudy atmosphere dome which housed the Library of All Knowledge and watched the ceremony of investiture, he thought that the multiple bruises and lacerations on his back and body were a small price to pay for not having to betray Neh’sa in the awful way he had been dreading. He was so glad he wouldn’t have to force her to use her print and retinal scan to get him the information on the Hive.

  Lady Wraith’neck, on the other hand, he had no problem using. Then, after he had transmitted the information, he would be on his way.

  Looking out into the crowd, he saw a reptilian form standing on the fringes. Greed’lick—his ride home.

  Catching the alien’s eye, he nodded once—All is going according to plan.

  The huge lizard-male nodded back. I’ll be waiting.

  There were some other males who looked like they didn’t belong in the Yonnite crowd as well. They didn’t have the downtrodden air of the males of Yonnie Six who were either owned and abused on a regular basis or were free but so poor and hopeless that they could scarcely hold their heads up.

  No, these males—there were three of them in all—looked…different. Thorn frowned. What were they? Not Kindred but not far from it either. Havok maybe? The genetic cousins of the Kindred race, the Havok had branched off years ago and had no need to call females as