Syrin's Mate Read online

  So, her currency had been lost, as were her dreams of leaving Singapore and starting over with a new life in the neighboring ghetto of Paris. Because now that they’d all moved to temporary housing, Boris, the elder of her three cousins, had claimed her as his. It didn’t matter how many times she’d thrown punches at him and screamed in his face how she hated his guts, how she had no intention of marrying him, and the thought of his touch made her want to vomit…he still kept her close. He watched her every move, determined to make her his wife and keep her a virgin until their wedding night. He’d told her he had new housing lined up, just for the two of them. Boris was marrying her and she’d be spreading her legs for him, cooking and cleaning for him, giving birth to his children, and that was that.

  The whole family seemed to think this was a terrific idea. Neighbors had the nerve to congratulate her, as if Boris Schulevitz was a great catch and how lucky for her that her future was now secured. Boris and Sara married, with Sara taking care of that asshole’s every need? Hugs and kisses all around!

  She’d give Boris everything and he’d give her nothing in return but physical blows and emotional abuse. For the rest of her life. How wonderful.

  Fuck. That. Shit.

  In fact, that turned into her new motto. Fuck this shit, and that shit, too. Because, with New Earth open and free from Hurlian rule, everything was different. Suddenly there were lots of off-worlders walking around Singapore, in the market, on the streets. Lots of new people.

  Everyone was even given a free food dispenser. Free!

  The whole vibe on the planet was different. Actual police were on the streets arresting criminals. Laws were being passed and enforced. Stores went up, selling things from off-planet openly and legally.

  And the number one blessing that happened after the Hurlian war—humans could come and go as they pleased. It was finally possible to leave New Earth to live and work elsewhere in the four sectors and never look back. Sara couldn’t handle the rush of sudden freedom. It was right there, so close she could touch it. After a childhood of being oppressed and demeaned, she was like, fuck this shit.

  “Fuck this shit,” she’d told her adoptive mother when the woman had raised a hand to slap her hard across the face for the one millionth time. Again, for no particular reason, just for being too slow, like had been happening since she was a small child. Her whole life was a series of fading bruises and healing scratches. But now Sara was taller than her aunt and stronger and…why the hell was she still taking this crap anyway?

  She’d sidestepped the blow, told her aunt what she could do with her asshole sons and her fucked-up rules and her bitchy comments. And she’d stormed out of that house of horrors for the last damn time, because now that the Hurlians weren’t in charge anymore, she could get off this fatal rock and take charge of her own life.

  Boris flew into a rage. He’d searched for her everywhere. Aunt Lucine falsely accused her of stealing from them, so Sara became a wanted felon on New Earth, the police becoming Boris’s extra eyes and ears. And conveniently, all three of her cousins were hired as police officers, which helped in their search.

  But again, Sara wasn’t stupid. She left and hid among a network of women who helped each other survive abuse, taking risks in order to provide the support needed so women and children could live free. Because of them, she managed to find transport off-planet. She’d left New Earth with nothing, just the clothes on her back and a tiny bit of currency. But that was okay, she had herself and a future of possibilities before her. This was all that mattered.

  Two planetary rotations later Sara ended up at a busy space station, trying to figure out what the hell to do next.

  She didn’t have much in the way of plans for her future, but she did have a few rules, not much, but some: No killing of innocents. No prostitution (if she could avoid it). And no hurting children. But other than that, whatever would keep her stomach full, a bed to sleep on and clothes on her back, she was game.

  Luckily, she’d been at the right place at the right time, overhearing a conversation about a crew’s need for a new computer tech. She pulled on her big-girl pants and offered her services, and next thing she knew she was working and living on a space ship. And then a year later this was the same crew she was with when they were all arrested.

  She was shackled and thrown into jail. There wasn’t a trial. Hell, even on a backwater like New Earth they had rudimentary trials with juries and lawyers and everything. But here, in sector three, she was guilty of some sort of trumped-up charge and going to prison for the rest of her life.

  The end.

  Two

  After the med intake, the guards separated the prisoners into two groups.

  Lizard-guy and the male with black horns were guided one way, and she and the Xylan warrior were escorted into a separate tunnel. They were led into a small room that Sara swore was nothing more than a storage room. The door clanged shut behind them.

  Two heavily armed guards shifted their legs into a wide stance and stationed themselves on either side of the entrance. Their eyes bored into the Xylan. He stood impassively, as if they were gnats to be ignored and this whole situation was no big deal.

  Shit, he was a badass.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  No one answered.

  Fine. Whatever. Sara shook her head and paced the room.

  The door slammed open and a new guard strutted inside. All eyes turned his way. He had the same four arms and red skin as the rest of the staff at the prison, but he looked younger than the two others. His uniform was fancier than theirs; they deferred to him. He walked straight over to the Xylan, crossed all his arms, his feet planted in a wide stance. “Syrin of Forty-Six,” he barked, his voice dripping with authority.

  Syrin? Hmm. So that was his name. Of forty-six? His last name was a number? That was weird.

  The warrior slowly tilted his chin down at the smaller male, giving the guard his full attention.

  “We know you’re a berserker,” the guard announced. “And we know you’ve killed hundreds of beings.”

  The Xylan’s eyes hardened.

  Her heart stuttered. What. What? The Xylan was a berserker who’d killed hundreds of beings?

  Sara took a deep breath, trying to not have a mini heart attack. Oh jeez. Well, that explained everything. That was why he was incarcerated. Now she knew why a Xylan of his obvious status was here, in a non-Xylan prison, on the edge of nowhere.

  A berserker?

  She was salivating over the most inappropriate male in the whole four sectors. Her body on fire by his mere presence, her eyes glued to all that was him.

  Because, of course.

  Of course, the male Sara wanted above all others would turn out to be exactly the male who was the most wrong for her. Nothing ever came easy for her, why would this be different?

  “I am here with a message direct from the warden,” the guard announced, then paused, as if waiting for a reaction from the warrior after this weighty announcement. When none was forthcoming, a frown formed on his face and he continued, “the warden asked that I deliver this message: He does not care who you kill while you are incarcerated at 149. Inmates killing other inmates is not monitored within this facility. You could kill all the inmates, as far as we are concerned, it will just make our job easier.”

  The other guards chuckled.

  “But, if you kill, hurt, or even lay a hand on a guard or anyone employed at this Detention Center—that is different, you will immediately be executed. Understood?”

  The Xylan listened, his face unrevealing.

  “All four of the prisoners we received today had detonators placed in their brains during med intake,” the guard announced. “This is the policy at our prison. All inmates have tripwire detonators that are impossible to remove.”

  Sara sucked in a sharp breath. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. No way. This made all of her plans for escape, like, ten times harder.

  The guard glanced at her
and returned his gaze back to the Xylan. “Again, if you lay a hand upon any employee of this Detention Center, that will be your death sentence. You are a berserker. No one on Xylan will monitor your execution. They will thank us.”

  A growl rumbled in the warrior’s chest.

  The guard walked up closer to the Xylan and lifted his chin. Sara’s hands fisted as she watched how the Xylan was being treated. The guard lowered his voice, “and you so much as breathe the wrong way in a guard’s direction,” he said, “well, maybe one of our hands will slip and might cause us to press the wrong button and accidentally activate that detonator. We can do what we want here. You want to survive this incarceration, you follow our rules. No matter what we ask. No matter how much out of your comfort zone. You do what we say, or you’re dead.”

  “Leave him alone,” Sara blurted.

  Yes, the Xylan had killed hundreds, but berserkers didn’t do that with intention. They were rabid dogs that needed to be put down. They weren’t cold-blooded killers. And she’d like to think that if he’d lived this long then maybe he wasn’t quite as harsh on the berserker scale as others in his predicament. She knew that usually berserkers were hunted and destroyed, for their own good and for the safety of others.

  Well, he’d been thrown in prison. There was that… But she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt; she couldn’t stand to see him treated this way. Not on her watch.

  The new guard strutted over to her and got in her face. “What did you say?” he demanded.

  They were the same height, but his aura of authority and those four red, muscular arms… She swallowed hard, forcing herself to meet his hard gaze with her own challenging look. Yes, the guard held her life in his hands, but…her whole existence from now on would hang from moment to moment. She could die at any minute, for any reason. Might as well go down on top, without any regrets for what she should have done, but didn’t. “I said, leave him alone,” she gritted. “You’re here to incarcerate him, not harass him.”

  The guard stared at her for a second and then threw his head back and cackled. He looked at the other guards who were grinning and laughing, like she’d just told the best joke that she wasn’t in on. “Female,” he chuckled. “All the guards here harass inmates. It’s what we do.”

  Her lips thinned. These males were exactly like her cousins. Her spine stiffened. “Well, then, you’re all a bunch of assholes, aren’t you?”

  The guard’s eyes darkened. He stepped close, grabbed her, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her upper arm. He pulled out a blaster and shoved it against her cheek. Her breath caught in her throat, her heart pounding in her ears.

  Holy gods.

  “Want to repeat that?” he challenged, his green eyes intense and eerily human-like. The blaster’s cold tip dug into the side of her face, forcing her head to tilt to the side. She bit her lip and didn’t move a single muscle. A bead of sweat ran between her breasts.

  “Yes, I thought so.” He pushed her out of his way, lowered the blaster and turned toward the Xylan. “We’ll put this troublesome female with you,” he declared. “Having the two of you sharing the same cell should prove interesting.”

  Sara swayed on her feet, catching her breath, and glanced up at the warrior. His brow was furrowed. He stared at her as if he were trying to figure her out. Well, he wasn’t wrong. She was trying to figure herself out, too.

  The guards laughed again, the three of them grouped together, chatting. They were staring at her, looking her up and down. She could catch bits of their conversation. Yeah. They were placing bets on her. On how long she’d survive in this place. In the Xylan’s cell. She looked away, disgusted.

  They were going to put her in a cell with the berserker. Great. Could this get any worse?

  Finally, they stopped talking and concluded their business. The head guard left and the other two moved forward and prodded her in the back again with an energy stick. “Walk, female.”

  She shuffled forward, following Syrin, the unstable berserker she was going to be sharing a cell with. The male who could lose his mind over nothing and turn into a raging maniac who’d tear her limb from limb.

  Her stomach turned into a pit of stone. Bile rose in her throat.

  What had she done?

  “Time to show you two your new home,” one of the guards chuckled.

  She slowly followed Syrin and the guard, gulping down quiet breaths. They walked single file down a series of corridors that all looked exactly the same. Her palms were sweaty, her mind racing, trying, trying to think of a way to make this all work out in her favor.

  How, how, how? How could she live with a berserker in a tiny prison cell and stay alive?

  Finally, they walked through two different series of locking mechanisms. She’d been watching every safeguard in the facility as they passed through intake, her mind calculating the effectiveness, the type of system 149 used and its strengths and weaknesses. She did this naturally now. A mind game she liked to play wherever she went.

  Doors shooshed open and the noise and chaos of prison hit her in the face. She gasped at the sudden onslaught of sound, smells and sensations. The inner workings of the prison, the areas where the guards and staff lived and worked, had been quiet, with whispered words and the soft clanking of metal.

  Here, it was raucous. Chaotic.

  Her eyes greedily scanned the area, taking it all in at once. The area was enormous, with an open-air section in the middle going down, down, down until it reached a bottom she couldn’t quite see but guessed it was a gathering area for the prisoners because of the deafening noise coming from that direction. They’d entered up high. She counted and noted they were easily five levels below them and maybe two above. Row upon circular row of open hallways with cell doors dotted in a regular pattern.

  “Rule number one,” the guard explained as they turned to the right and followed an open hallway, “this prison runs on a twenty-four-hour diurnal cycle. Lights are out for the sleep cycle. If this is not your natural cycle, then learn to live with it, it is not changing. You are fed three times per diurnal cycle and in order to receive nourishment you need to show up at the mess hall. If you don’t get there in time to eat, you starve.”

  The guard walked back and aligned himself with her. He leaned in close. Close enough that she could smell his hot, stale breath. She swallowed hard, trying to keep that bile down. “There are no other females on 149 right now. You are the only one,” he told her. “The guards have bets on how long you’ll live before the gang rape starts and you bleed out and die. The last female incarcerated here died after two diurnal cycles.” He looked her up and down. “But you seem strong and bold. If you stay alive for three cycles, I will win the first round of bets. The payout is very high. If I win, I’ll bring you a reward.” He smiled grimly.

  Her mouth dropped open. This place sounded like that survivalist show everyone loved on the black-market vid, Naked and Afraid: Planet Zero. But, like, ten thousand times worse.

  Another growl rumbled in Syrin’s chest.

  The guard frowned at the Xylan, then stood upright, all business again. They’d stopped in front of a cell with its door wide open. “Step inside,” the guard ordered, his voice crisp. “I will release your restraints once you are behind the line.”

  Sara stepped into the tiny cell alongside Syrin, her skin cold and clammy. A giant stone now seemed to be lodged not only in her stomach but stuck in her throat, too.

  The guard’s fingers flew over a string of lights and buttons on the band on his forearm. A bright blue, webbed wall of energy suddenly covered the entrance to the cell. The restraining bands on both her and the Xylan’s wrists disappeared. She rubbed her skin, happy for the freedom.

  She glanced warily over at the giant, hard-muscled inmate standing next to her. The male who had supposedly slaughtered over one hundred beings.

  He stood there, looking deceptively nice.

  Sara’s plan for prison survival was: 1) examine the sec
urity system to find weaknesses and a possibility of escape, and 2) find a protector immediately. Find someone who was a scary bastard but somehow still wasn’t as evil as the other inmates—if such a thing existed.

  This pretty much consisted her entire plan for survival. Not much, but it was all she had up her sleeve. She’d been prepared to give her body, her virginity to the being that promised to keep her safe. The whole thing sounded horrific, and extremely painful, giving her virginity to some male (of unknown species) she knew she’d despise, but Sara was a pragmatist—prison was going to be living hell and just managing to stay alive month after month, day after day—that would be a win. If she had to rut with some evil, disgusting male in order to live another day, she’d do that. Whatever it took. Grin and bear it.

  She’d survived her childhood. Survived the Hurlian war. Got out of a forced marriage and escaped her home planet. She’d even learned a whole new skill set, hacking high-tech security, and had been well on her way towards becoming the best at what she did, all in one year post escape. If she’d done that, she could do this, too.

  She’d survive this prison and break the fuck out of here.

  One step at a time.

  She glanced again at the Xylan and decided the scary inmate she knew was better than all the ones she didn’t. Really, any inmate she shared a cell with in this facility could turn on her and kill her at any moment. Just because Syrin was a berserker didn’t make him more dangerous to her than any other male in this prison. In fact, because he was Xylan, he might be her best bet.

  She took a deep breath and said what needed to be said. “I want you as my protector,” she declared.

  “No.”

  His smooth voice caused a flutter in her stomach.

  The berserker continued to stare straight ahead, studiously ignoring her. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

  She’d watched a reality show once that followed a Xylan berserker until the last episode, when he was hunted and gunned down by the Xylan Military. Berserkers happened rarely amongst a few of the main species in the four sectors, but Xylan berserkers were the most feared because they caused the most damage. Berserkers lost their minds when angered and killed everyone within reach. Babies. Loved ones. Rulers. Villains. Whoever was near and breathing, they were dead and it was a disgusting mess because they were slaughtered, by hand, torn limb from limb. Dismembered. And the worst part was that berserkers remembered everything they did later but were unable to stop themselves while it was happening.