“Lucie, there is no work. He has done nothing for you.” Zaen moved into her line of vision and put his warm palms on her shoulders, staring down at her.
She peered up at him. “But I’ll be out on the street again if we can’t pay the rent. I’ll… I’ll have to live in my car. I’ve done it before and… I don’t… don’t want to do that again. If I don’t work, we can’t live here.”
She shuddered, remembering the nip of a cold winter night through car windows that offered no protection. Once it seeped into her bones, it took days for the chill to work out. She didn’t have a bathroom in a car. Or a kitchen. Nowhere to cook. The pain in her stomach was worse than the chill in her bones.
“That’s right, Lucie. Remember where you’d be if it wasn’t for me,” Grant said.
Kyel snarled. With a quick movement, he wrapped his hands around Grant’s neck. “Whatever it is you’re doing to our Lucie, you will stop.”
Grant smiled, despite the fingers locked around his throat. “I’m doing nothing other than what she already thinks of herself. You think she considers herself your mate? She doesn’t know how to let anyone close. In fact, she goes out of her way to keep people at arm’s distance. She’s nothing but a cold fish, incapable of loving anyone. You’ll never be able to mate-sync with someone like her.”
“Grant… how do you know about us being mates? How do you know about our mate bond?” Lucie asked. How could Grant really know about all those things? How could he even know who they were?
“You really are a stupid human,” Grant said. His lip curled as he sneered at her.
She blinked at him, uncomprehending. It was such a strange thing to say. People didn’t call themselves humans. No humans did, in any case.
“But… you’re human too,” she said.
Grant pushed Kyel’s hand off his throat. With no more than a twist of his fingers, he had Kyel on his knees, his wrist wrenched at an angle that bent his arm right around. Kyel’s face scrunched in agony. Juliran shouted and Zaen launched to his feet.
“No, you don’t. One move from me and I’ll take his hand right off. I can do it here. She expects it,” Grant said.
His eyes had changed. Instead of light blue, they were black. Not just black, but writhing with black clouds that seemed to go on and on forever.
She recoiled, fighting the whiteout in her brain. “Who… what are you?”
“You have the power to make me anything you want, human. You turned me into this boyfriend of yours, but you can make me more. So much more. If you help me, I’ll let go of this mate and let you go back to the palace. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To go back to their bed in the nice white palace, see their sister, their parents? It’s the family you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? Just let me out of here and I’ll take you there. I’ll take you all there.”
It was the voice! The same voice that had been in her head. It was still there. Only now, it wasn’t just a voice. It was Grant. And they weren’t in the palace. They were in her mind. Somehow, someway it wasn’t just a voice anymore.
“Don’t listen to him, Lucie!” Zaen yelled, and Juliran tightened his hold on her.
“Let them go. Please. Use me, but don’t hurt them,” she pleaded.
A cruel smile twisted his lips. “I will use you alright, but only you can get rid of them, Lucie.”
She looked between her mates, the men that meant more to her than her own life. “How… how can I let them go?”
“Lucie! Don’t listen to him!” Kyel said.
Grant crunched his wrist and he yelled in pain. The sound went right through her.
“I… I have to. I… I’m not your mate. Not your true mate. I don’t… don’t feel anything.” She held her hand over her aching heart. “Not the thing you said I’d feel. It means I’m not the one for you. If I don’t let you go, you’ll never find her.”
White edged her vision, seducing her with a tempting pull. If she went into the white, she could let them go. They would be free.
“That’s right, Lucie. Let it take you,” Grant said.
“He’s tricking you, Lucie. We know you’re our mate. We’ve always known it to be true,” Juliran said.
“I… can’t feel it There’s… no connection.” Tears blurred her eyes. She wanted it to be true, but she had to face the harsh truth.
“We feel it, Lucie. Listen to us. Not him,” Zaen said.
She let her eyes run over their faces, committing everything to memory. “No…”
“You will listen to us, Lucie. We are your mates. We will never do you harm. Listen to us and trust us,” Kyel said through gritted teeth.
“But she doesn’t trust you because she doesn’t trust any men. Shall I show you why? In fact, I’ll let her show you. Then you’ll know she’ll never let you in. Not fully. You’ll never mate-sync and I will always be here in her mind. Show them, Lucie. Show them why you can never be their mate,” Grant said.
“No!” Juliran yelled, but there was truth in Grant’s words. She needed to show them, otherwise they would never believe she wasn’t their mate. They would never leave and they would never find the real mate.
She wanted them like she wanted her next breath. They were caring, sexy, and considerate and thought that they loved her, but she didn’t believe it was true. How could it, when they didn’t know her? The best way was to show them in every, technicolor, gory detail. Faced with the truth, they would finally understand.
“Take them on a journey, Lucie. Let them see. Show them how unworthy you are. Show them how unlovable you are. Show them why they would never want you,” Grant said.
Yes, that’s exactly what she needed to do. When they saw the facts, they would thank her for saving them.
“We feel you, Lucie. We already know what’s inside of you,” Kyel said.
“How could you? I’ve never told you. You don’t know. I’m going to show you and then you will know the truth,” Lucie said.
She closed her eyes and gave in. The fog gushed over her. She was caught in complete whitewash and when it cleared, she stood, facing them three of them. Grant was nowhere to be seen, but between them was a scarred kitchen table and a dirty, cluttered kitchen.
A small girl sat at a chair that was too big. Her forehead came up to the rim of the table, but there was no booster seat for her to sit on. She tucked her legs under her and perched on her knees.
A man sat on the opposite chair, reading a paper. His clothing was dirty and crumpled, as was the dress of the woman cooking at the stove. Something sizzled in a pan, spitting drops of fat all over the floor. A skinny dog snuffled under her feet, licking up the drops of fat.
“My first foster parents. Or the first ones I can remember, anyway,” she said.
The woman rolled a couple of sausages on the man’s plate and then rolled one onto the plate of the little girl. She went to touch it, but was it too hot and the knife and fork too large for her. Then dog leapt up and grabbed it off her plate. Tears formed in the little girl’s eyes.
“That fuckin’ dog,” the woman growled, and then turned to the little girl. “Don’t think you’re getting another one. That’s all I have. Maybe next time you won’t let the dog take it so easily.”
“Or you’ll learn to live off scraps,” the man said.
“Scraps of food for scraps of girls,” the woman said, chuckling to herself. “I should be a poet!”
“Stick your poetry up your ass and shut up, would ya? I’m trying to eat,” the man said as he chomped through half of the sausage.
Kyel rammed his fist through the man’s face, but it slipped through as though the man was a ghost. Juliran took a step towards the child Lucie, but he hit a barrier and couldn’t get to her. Zaen’s fists clenched and unclenched and his chest heaved as he looked about the sad little kitchen.
“He was right. But I didn’t go hungry. Look,” she said.
The little girl walked past the dog and went to its food bowl. She picked up a handful of pellets and shoved
them in her mouth.
“Think you’re a dog, do ya?” The man laughed.
“Woof, little puppy. Woof!” The woman shrieked with laughter and the little girl took another handful of kibble and walked out of the kitchen.
“Lucie, let us take care of you now,” Zaen said.
They still wanted her, despite witnessing that. Sadness filled her heart. They could do so much better. Didn’t they see?
“I’ll show you more,” she said.
White light obliterated the room, and then they found themselves beneath the bleachers of a high school football match. Kids above them yelled and screamed as they watched the game, but the girl and boy beneath the stand weren’t interested in what was happening in the field. The boy was on top of the girl, who was half naked. The pants of the boy were around his knees as he pumped into her. His naked backside pumped up and down in the air as he slammed himself into the girl one last time before he slumped over her, panting.
It was moments before he lifted his head to look at her. “Why’re you crying?”
The girl’s soft sobbing couldn’t be heard below the screams of the crowd above them. She wiped her hands on her cheeks, and then tried to push his much larger body off her.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t want it, you little slut,” he said.
“I… only thought you wanted to… to kiss me,” the girl managed to say between sobs.
“What? A girl like you? Only interested in kissing. You’re nothing but a slut. Everyone knows it and now I’m gonna tell all my friends how you lured me down here and waited for me with no clothes on and your legs apart.”
He withdrew from her quickly and she jerked in pain. Her legs closed as he stood and pulled his pants up. “I… I’m a virgin. I haven’t slept with anyone.”
“That’s not what I’m gonna say. Who are they going to believe anyway? You? You better understand there’s two types of people in this world, Lucie, people like me who have parents with connections, and people like you—the losers of society. The fodder. You’re nobody. Just a little slut and not even a good one at that.”
He stormed away, leaving the girl to tug on her pants. She flinched and put a hand over her abdomen when she did her button up. She wiped her face, the expression too old for a girl of fourteen, and finger combed the dried grass from her hair before gingerly walking away.
“Gods, Lucie…” Juliran’s voice broke.
He went to reach for her, but she turned away. She didn’t want to see the pity she knew would be there in their eyes.
“Adam told everyone at school that he slept with me and everyone believed his story. I was known as the slut of the school and they didn’t care that he was the only boy that I’d had sex with. The thing was, I liked him. I thought he was different, but he knew. He saw what I was, and he acted on it. I can’t really blame him. He was right, though. There are two types of people and I’m the loser type. The type you really shouldn’t associate with.”
“Lucie, listen to us…” Kyel said, but she didn’t need to hear anything he would say. He would learn and understand. She let the whitewash take her away to another scene.
She was in her little red car turned house. She’d worked hard at a part-time job while she’d been at high school and had bought it before her eighteenth birthday. Just as well she did, because they day she’d turned eighteen, her foster parents had kicked her out. They didn’t get any more money after kids came of age. She could understand that. She had no intentions of being a financial drain. They’d made it clear what would happen and she hadn’t expected anything more.
She’d made friends with some of the people who lived on the street. She had it good. Not like some of them, the poor things. She had a car and some savings at least.
She sat in the back seat wrapped in a blanket she’d picked up at a secondhand store. Next to her was one of the street guys who had been nice to her. The snow had piled up on the windows. It was cold in the car, but she didn’t have the gas to keep on turning it on. They sat next to each other for warmth and it had kept most of the coldness at bay.
They’d talked about their future. She had plans to get a job and rent a condo somewhere. She had some savings, which she had with her, that she’d use for a bond. She’d already started looking and had yet to hear back from some of the places she’d applied to.
They’d fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder and she’d woken up to a chill blast through the open door. Her friend was gone, along with her meagre savings. He’d found it in the unoriginal hiding place of her glove box and left her with nothing. Not even a dime.
“That night I found dinner in a dumpster when my stomach was turning itself inside out with hunger until I discovered the local soup kitchen,” she said. “It was my own fault. I’d been told I was a loser, and I should have remembered.”
She lifted her tired gaze to settle on their slack faces. “You want to know why I never told you anything about myself? I have nothing to tell except this, one horrible thing after another horrible thing. How can I possibly have anything in common with you? How can you understand? I’m beneath you. So far, far beneath you. Now you know the woman you think is your mate. Lucie the Loser. Do you want to see more? I can show you lots of times this happened to me.”
Juliran was speechless. Zaen was pale and Kyel’s eyes bored into her. He uttered the words she knew were going to come. She knew because she expected them. “No, Lucie. We don’t need to see anymore.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lucie
She knew what they would say. What those in her life who knew her invariably knew. A hard rock settled in her gut and began to tear it to shreds.
She’d hoped they might be different.
She’d been wrong in the past and she was wrong again. Perhaps if she could read people better, she wouldn’t get herself into these positions, but they weren’t people. They were aliens. Royalty. They had standards too.
She sighed and took one last look at the three men who she would be overjoyed to spend the rest of her life with and offered them a smile. A weak smile, but at least she tried.
Kyel’s eyes gleamed dark and she stifled a shiver. Even with a look, he was a force. “We don’t need to see more of how you were the victim of ignorant and despicable people.”
Lucie frowned at him. “I don’t think…”
“You will let me finish.” His expression turned dark and he aimed a look at her she felt right in the center of her heart.
Words dried before they’d even left her mind. Her mouth eased shut.
“Now you will let us show you how we see you. Let us show you how you really are,” Kyel said.
White mist descended and thinned out to reveal all three of them pounding down a sleek metal corridor. What was happening? Every muscle in her body locked up in terror.
“Ease, mate. This is our memory. It cannot hurt you,” Juliran said.
The real Kyel, Zaen and Juliran stood to the side as they watched themselves in the scene. The real her stood opposite, while the action played out between them.
She knew where they were now. Even though she’d been half out of her head with pain and deprivation, this memory was etched into her brain. She wondered why they had to show it to her. Was it to show her how pathetic she was? How revolting she was after weeks spent locked in a cage without sanitation or enough food or water to feed a rabbit.
“Watch, Lucie,” Zaen whispered. There was something in his tone that made her open eyes she hadn’t realized she’d closed.
Her limp body bounced over the shoulder of the Reptile that had snatched her from the cage. She’d been in such pain. She didn’t know which part of her body hurt the most. She was so floppy, it looked as though she’d passed out.
Kyel rose a pulser and shot the Reptile carrying her in the leg. It went down in a tumble of limbs and her body skidded along the corridor. Zaen shot the other Reptile that had also taken her square in the middle of his back. Juliran ran to her crumple
d body, while Kyel strode to the Reptile’s prone form. His chest heaved with each deep breath he took and the pulser trembled in his tight grip. She’d never seen him so furious.
“You seek to harm precious females?” He kicked the Reptile in its side. The crack of ribs echoed off the walls of the corridor. It tried to scuttle backwards, but Kyel slammed his fist into its snout. Its head flew to the side. Teeth and a spray of green blood splattered across the wall.
Juliran hunched over her body, his hands fluttering as though he didn’t know where to touch her.
“Gods… what have they done to her?” His voice cracked.
She’d begun to think he didn’t know where to touch her because every inch of her body was covered with disgusting filth, but something in his tone stopped that thought before it had fully matured. She never heard him sound so anguished.
Zaen kneeled next to his brother. “There’s not an inch of her that’s not been brutalized.”
Kyel kicked the Reptile again, this time in its other side. “Is the other one dead?”
Juliran peered at the unmoving Reptile Zaen had shot. Lucie saw the floor through the middle of the hole in its back. “Yes.”
“Pity.” He sounded so in control, so monotone, but she could see the fury beneath his carefully forced control. “I was looking forward to treating it to the same attention they did the human females.”
“Especially to our mate,” Juliran said.
“Yes. Especially for how they treated our mate.” He glared down at the Reptile. “Why did you do it? Tell me.”
The Reptile narrowed its eyes on Kyel and made a huffing sound, as though it was laughing at him. Kyel brought his foot down in the middle of the Reptile’s stomach. The Reptile doubled around Kyel’s massive leather boot.
“There can never be enough pain I can inflict on you for doing this to her,” he said.
There was an explosion and the corridor shook and tilted.
“Kyel, finish it off. We need to get off this craft,” Juliran said.
The Erion Triad: A Negari Sci-Fi Alien Abduction Reverse Harem Romance Page 11
