Some of the aspasians came out of their rooms to see what was going on, but to Arin’s credit, he never tried to involve them in this business. Maybe that was because he knew it wouldn’t help him any. I didn’t want to have to turn him in, but that was my job. I couldn’t be a peacekeeper and let a criminal go free, even if I could keep an eye on him every day. And even if he’d never been a criminal before, being a runaway slave made him one now.
I knocked on Monroe’s door, and when he told me to come inside, I pushed Arin in ahead of myself. He stumbled, and I did help him up, but as soon as he was standing upright again, he pushed me away.
“He’s a slave,” I explained to Monroe as I forced Arin into a chair across from Monroe at his desk. Monroe was a fair man. I knew he’d see that having a runaway slave working for him would be a problem that had to be dealt with.
Monroe looked between us, then settled his gaze on Arin. “Is that true?”
Arin nodded. “It is. But I didn’t do anything. I was sold as a child. I’m not a criminal at all. There’s no reason this has to be a big deal.”
While Arin tried to get Monroe to believe him, I took out my holoscreen and kept trying to narrow down the possible matches to find him. “What planet are you from?” I asked him again.
“Lilliandri.”
I stopped searching and frowned down at him. He was staring at his hands. His shoulders were tense, this time because of how angry he was. “You don’t have a tail,” I pointed out.
“It was cut off. Want to see the scar?” he snapped at me.
I definitely didn’t care at that moment. Monroe simply shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. Arin, you’ve been an asset while you were working for me, but you understand that I can’t have a slave. Don’t you? If you get this slave business settled, you’d be welcome back, but right now if you’re still a slave, I can’t have you working for me. I don’t own slaves, and everyone here works for me out of their own free will. I know you do too, but it’s too easy for someone to make the connection between you being a slave to thinking that means that you’ve somehow been forced to work for me.”
I stopped scanning the information as I came to his profile. “You ran away four years ago. Your real name is Salindarin Nohasano. Born on Lilliandri, transferred to Chanta when you were five. Transferred to Intrana when you were eight. Discipline problems is the reason listed. And then your final transfer was to Solarium at twelve. Looks like you lived there until you decided to run away.”
He wasn’t looking at me anymore. The information was all right there, plain for me to read, and I understood it perfectly. I knew of Lilliandri, though I’d never been there, and I knew their only export was labor. It was a dry, desolate planet with no useful resources left to speak of outside of its people, and so yes, Salindarin, or Arin as he called himself, had been sold into slavery as a child. Likely by his own parents, or if not them, then it would have been by someone overseeing the people of the town he was from.
“When is your term up?”
He didn’t say anything to me. I looked to Monroe for help.
“Is there someone I can negotiate with to get you released? You would have to work off that money for me, but you wouldn’t be a slave anymore,” Monroe offered him.
It was a good deal, one I knew Arin should have taken, but he simply shook his head. “He wouldn’t agree to that. At any price.” Now he did look up at me. “Please. You can’t send me back there. Please, Resan. You can’t.”
Begging didn’t really work on me. After so many years spent as a peacekeeper, I’d become immune to it. “No. You have to go back and serve out your term if there’s no one Monroe can negotiate for you with. That’s how these things work. You’re a criminal. Don’t ask a peacekeeper to break the law for you.” I didn’t have to agree with slavery to be the one to uphold it. It was a law, like any other. And Arin had broken it. My code was just that simple.
Arin’s expression fell, and he turned away from me. “There’s no one who would consider a negotiation.”
“Then I’ll report you as located, and you’ll finish out your term. It can’t be that much longer, considering how young you were when you started. In the meantime, you’ll be under arrest until someone comes to get you. Just in case you try to run.”
Monroe sat back and let me do my job as I locked a pair of energy bands around his wrists. They would shock him if he tried to get out of them, but they wouldn’t do any real damage to him.
“These are—”
“I know what energy bands are and how they work,” he said, surprising me. Not many people did.
“Fine, then. Monroe, where can I put him for now?”
He gave me a level glare that told me just how unhappy he was about dealing with slavers and returning a runaway slave to them, even if this was the law. “In your room, I suppose. I’m sure it’s the only place you’ll feel comfortable having him. That way you can keep an eye on him and make sure he isn’t trying to escape.”
He was right about that. I wouldn’t be able to relax until Arin was back with whomever he belonged to. It wasn’t that I wanted to return a slave, but it was the law, despite how I felt about the circumstances.
“It’ll be over soon,” I told him when we were in my rooms a few minutes later. I set the door to only open from the inside if I was the one opening it, and then I released him from the energy bands. He wouldn’t have any way out of this room without me being the one to let him out.
“No, it won’t,” he said as he walked away from me and went into the bathroom. A minute or two later, he came back, this time with his neck wet and the brand fully visible. There were other marks around the brand, ones that I didn’t recognize. He took up the chair by the window and stared out at one of Wish’s many lakes while I sent a message off to Em to let him know what was going on.
CHAPTER THREE
Arin
I COULDN’T believe how stupid I’d been. The first time Resan had shown up in Asiq, I should have left. If I had I wouldn’t be in this mess now. And it was most definitely a mess.
“You can stop glaring at me now,” Resan said from across the room. “You only have yourself to blame for running away.”
I rolled my eyes. He didn’t know shit. “I was not staring at you. I wasn’t even looking in your direction.”
“Sure you weren’t.”
He was a moron, and he didn’t understand anything. I absolutely despised him, especially when he took his shirt off and started doing push-ups in the middle of the living room floor. “What are you doing?”
“If you’re not looking at me, then how do you know that I’m doing anything?”
I wanted to throw something at him, but his rooms were far too clean for me to find anything like that in them. Pity too.
“Do you miss your parents?” he asked me when I hadn’t answered his last question.
I pulled one of my knees up to my chest and continued to look out at the lake. It was better than looking at him. And I didn’t want to talk to him about my parents. I hated talking about them after what they’d done to me.
“Arin?”
Despite me refusing to answer him, it seemed as if Resan wasn’t going to let this go so easily. That sucked. “Why do you want to know about my parents?”
He stopped doing push-ups to be able to sit back on his knees. He shrugged. “As far as I can tell, you haven’t seen them since you were five. It would be normal to miss them.”
I glared at the lake instead of looking back at him. “How long were you a slave?”
“I never was.”
Exactly. “Then how would you know what would be normal for someone like me?”
He left me alone after that, and I was grateful for that break from him.
Eventually I did have to move before my muscles started to cramp up, and when I came away from the window, he was stretched out on the couch and looking at his holoscreen. “The windows don’t open, and the glass is unbreakable, in case you
were wondering.”
I hadn’t even considered the window as a viable way out. “You would have me tackled within ten feet. I know you’re strong. And fast.”
He stopped reading long enough to look up at me. “What makes you think that?”
Because everyone in Asiq who had ever been with him liked to brag about how freaking great he was, at everything. “Aspasians talk.”
That made him smile. “All good things, I hope.”
He sounded so completely full of himself. I decided to lie to him. “Your dick is small, and you make weird noises when you come.” At least he was no longer smiling at me. Then he surprised me by laughing.
“Seriously, you could stop being so pissed off about this. I’m not the one who ran away from my master. Your time has to be almost up anyway, so get through it and then go to whatever planet you want to. Or come back here and work for Monroe. I’m sure he’d have you again. He said what a good little aspasian you were. So when you’re done, come back and we won’t have to talk about this again.”
He didn’t know anything about me. Whatever he’d read on his holoscreen definitely didn’t tell him the whole story about me. If it had, then he likely wouldn’t be as ready to hand me over. I had to believe that about him. There was far more that he clearly didn’t know, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it either. He’d know soon enough anyway. There would be no way to hide that when my master came for me.
“I’m going to go lay down. Don’t bother me.”
He laughed at me as I went, which only made me angrier at him. I stripped down to just my black pants, and then I slid between his sheets. His bed was clean at least, even though he wasn’t like us aspasians, who changed our sheets a few times in a single day. The amount of laundry in Asiq had to be outrageous.
I tried not to worry about that—or anything else—as I lay down and closed my eyes. I knew what I was going back to, and I hated that I remembered it all so easily. Resan might have thought he was doing the right thing, but he was making the wrong choice here. Only, I had no idea how to tell him that. And since he’d already reported me as found, it didn’t matter anymore anyway. My master would come for me, and I could only stay in Asiq and wait for him to arrive. I silently cried as I lay there in Resan’s bed and waited for my life to come crashing down around me again.
CHAPTER FOUR
Resan
TEN HOURS after I’d taken him into custody and locked him in my rooms, Arin and I were getting ready for bed. Food had been delivered to us, there was a real shower, with actual water, in my room, and we weren’t lacking anything. Arin continued to look miserable, but I couldn’t bring myself to blame him for feeling that way. At least he hadn’t tried to convince me not to send him back to his master. I didn’t put it past him, though, especially not when he came out of the shower without anything on him and silently met my gaze.
“Go get dressed. There are some clothes that might fit you in my closet,” I told him before quickly looking away from him again.
“I’ve heard stories about you, from the others,” he said as he stepped closer to me. He was being bold and meeting my eyes. I didn’t expect it to last.
“Whatever game you think you want to play, stop it now. Nothing you say or do will get you out of going back there.” And I was having a harder time averting my eyes the closer he got to me.
He crouched down on the floor in front of me and slid his hands over the inside of my thighs. “I didn’t think it would. But I know what I’m going back to, and I want something else tonight.”
I refused to read into what he was saying. I didn’t need or want to worry about him after I handed him over to his master. “Get up and go to bed. It’s late.”
“Or….” He moved his hands to my groin and squeezed me through the thin black pants I was wearing. Everyone wore them. They were practically considered a uniform here at Asiq. “Please?”
“No.”
His smile slipped a little. I tried not to care. He got up and backed away from me, hugging his arms around his chest. He seemed to remember that he was naked at the last second and dropped his hands to cover himself up.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, before backing away from me.
“It’s fine,” I grumbled. Now that I was hard, I definitely wanted to take him up on his offer, but I really couldn’t. I was returning a runaway slave, and he was in my custody. That put me on duty, and I couldn’t enjoy pleasure while I was working. There were rules to be followed. That all seemed to dim when Arin began to cry.
Damn. “Get some pants on and come here,” I told him.
He nodded and unhurriedly moved to obey me. A few minutes later, he was out of my bedroom and dressed in the simple black pants, the same as me. Now dressed, though, he didn’t seem to know what he was doing or what I really expected of him.
“Come sit down here.” I patted the couch beside me.
He sat down, pulling his knees up to his chest, looking incredibly young and so very small. I didn’t know what to do or say to make him feel better. I doubted anything would help at all. So I sat there quietly beside him, and after a while he reached out and took my hand.
IT ONLY took forty-eight hours for Arin’s master to arrive on Wish to collect him I was glad to have my responsibility done, as Arin’s master messaged me on my holoscreen to let me know that he had arrived, but I wished there was another way. Arin hadn’t really even tried, though. Monroe had been willing to speak on his behalf and to negotiate a settlement with whomever he belonged to, but Arin had refused to even give a name. It was as if he wanted to remain a slave, despite the years he’d hidden his identity and how much he’d wanted to remain free before.
“Your master will be here in a few minutes to get you,” I told Arin as we sat in the little living room area of my rooms. He only nodded. He had barely said anything to me since I’d locked him in these rooms the first night. I was getting tired of his silence. “If you go back to Solarium, it’s beautiful this time of year, though I’m sure you already know that. It’s considered one of the top-ten paradises in the universe.”
“Not if you’re a slave on it,” he quietly said as he continued looking out the window.
He was probably right, but that wasn’t my call to make. He’d run away, it was time for him to go back and finish his service. Monroe had already said that once he was done he’d be welcome back at Asiq if he wanted to be an aspasian again. Arin would be fine. There was absolutely no reason I should have been as worried about him as I was.
My holoscreen beeped. Another message from Arin’s master, this time telling me he was in the lounge and I was to bring Arin to him.
I got off the chair I’d been resting uncomfortably in and came over to him. “It’s time to go. Your master’s waiting.”
He held out his hands to me without taking his gaze away from the window.
“I don’t think you need the energy bands for this. Do you?”
Instead of answering me, as I’d expected him to do, Arin simply shrugged and got to his feet. He hadn’t asked to take any of his things from Asiq with him, and so he just had on the loose black pants that all the aspasians wore and a shirt out of my closet. His feet were bare, but that wasn’t a problem on Wish where the grasses were always soft and the walkways were never too warm to step on without shoes.
Arin walked placidly ahead of me. He kept his head down and his mouth shut. I hoped, for his sake, that whatever time left he had in his service would go quickly for him, and that he could be out enjoying his own life soon. His profile hadn’t said how much longer he had, which was strange, but I figured it was just an error. Records were often missing bits and pieces of information like that.
When we got to the lounge, Arin stopped before leaving the hallway, and I pushed him forward on his shoulder. He looked back at me, and I was surprised to see the fear in his gaze before he quickly looked away from me again. There was an unfamiliar man in the lounge who came right toward us.
“Resan
, I take it,” the man said, offering me his hand. I shook it, then stepped back, clasping my hands behind me.
“Yes. Arin has been no trouble to me since I discovered his identity. I hope you will take that into account when you decide his punishment for running away.”
He laughed and wrapped a fist around Arin’s arm, yanking him against his side. It was rougher treatment than I would have liked to have seen, but I said nothing. When the man tried to kiss him on his mouth, Arin pulled away from him, but as I watched, the man grabbed his chin and forced his obviously unwanted affection on Arin anyway. After that, Arin stood still beside the man, all of his previous fight seemingly gone from him in one overwhelming instant in which he’d been shown just how powerless he really was against his master.
“Can you tell me your name? For my records,” I asked him.
“Bowman,” he practically snapped at me. He brought his hand to Arin’s side, slipping it under his borrowed shirt to touch him in a way that clearly made Arin uncomfortable if his pursed lips were anything to go by.
“And you’re his master?”
“Yes, of a sort.” Bowman laughed.
Arin looked up at me, meeting my gaze. I’d seen him happy, I’d seen him afraid, but I’d never seen him sad before, and seeing him as broken as he was right there, that one simple look stole my breath.
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