by Renee Rose
Kept by the Zandian
Zandian Brides Book 5
Renee Rose
Burning Desires
Copyright © May 2019 Kept by the Zandian by Renee Rose and Rebel West
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published in the United States of America
Renee Rose Romance
Editor: Maggie Ryan
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book contains descriptions of many BDSM and sexual practices, but this is a work of fiction and, as such, should not be used in any way as a guide. The author and publisher will not be responsible for any loss, harm, injury, or death resulting from use of the information contained within. In other words, don’t try this at home, folks!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
From the Authors
Read the Zandian Masters Series
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About Renee Rose
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Other Titles by Renee Rose
About Rebel West
Excerpt from Conquered by the Alien Prince
Conquered by the Alien Prince - Taster
Chapter 1
Taisha
I can barely breathe.
If I don’t get out of this supply area soon, I’m going to die.
I can’t feel my legs and my lungs are on fire. I’m not even sure I’m on the right ship. This supply box seemed like a perfect place to hide when I escaped from my Ocretion owner, but once the ship jumped to hyperspace, things settled—on top of me.
Crushing me.
The pallet above me presses heavily on my chest, and my arm is stuck in an awkward position, fist still clenched around the syringe of poison. My pack of supplies digs into my shoulder blades. It’s pitch black and the air is thick and dusty. Only my panic and racing heart keep me going.
The engines thrum and I feel the vibrations in my body—is that the way a Zandian ship sounds, or was my pallet traded to the Falcon ship beside it on the tarmac? If so, I’m in terrible trouble: The Falcons are rumored to be even crueler than the Ocretions.
My mind swims and suddenly I see him in front of me again, the Ocretion guard I encountered as I ran toward the airfield and the starships: His warty thick hands squeezing my neck, his stink attacking my nostrils, making me gag.
“Trying to escape?” His hissing voice is full of pleasure. “We’ll see about that. I will personally oversee your punishment, human slave.”
“No!” My voice is barely audible as I gasp for air.
“The shock sticks will only be the start,” he says, relishing the words. Squeezes harder.
My vision goes spotty, colors flickering, and then I remember the syringe in my hand, to be used as a last resort, and swing my arm upward, hard and fierce, puncturing his thick gray skin.
Closing my eyes and begging the universe to save me.
And miraculously, a mere three seconds later—just like Leylah promised—his hands soften, relaxing like a flower at night. His whole body goes slack until he falls lifeless. A sack of bones and stench.
Suddenly light blinds my eyes. I hear voices, and my body shifts as they lift away the pallet.
I’ve been found.
The voice I hear is low, masculine, and deep. “What the veck?”
I don’t answer, as if staying silent will somehow save me now.
“Who are you and what are you doing on my ship?” He speaks in Ocretion and then repeats it—I assume—in a tongue I don’t understand.
I blink at the sudden light—the first I’ve seen in over two planet rotations. My mouth is dry with lack of fluid. Thank Mother Earth they’ve pulled the crushing weight from my body, so at least I can breathe.
I’m supposed to say something, a phrase I was taught, but my brain won’t cooperate.
Flashes of orange—is he a Falcon? Now all I see is the Ocretion in my mind, squeezing my throat. I scream and fight him off, my pinned arm shooting up, nerves firing. I stab wildly at the air.
“Get off me! Get away!” At least that’s what I mean to say. My voice doesn’t work, though, and the sounds come out like horrible squeals, like wheels without oil. My body starts shaking so badly I can’t control myself. My hand reflexively opens and the syringe is gone, and all of the sounds around me fade into the distance.
“Stars, I’m hurt! My arm. She poisoned me.” The speaker sounds more irritated than injured. Certainly not dead like the Ocretion I killed when I escaped. “Veck. It’s numb.”
Taut voices join in. “Stand by for med support.”
“Secure her and remove her weapon.”
“Assess her for danger.”
I cough and try to focus, but the sounds zoom in and out. Some being grabs me, moves me. I’m limp.
“She’s neutralized.”
“Get this pack on his arm immediately. Captain, tell us what is happening.”
And then that voice, rich and low. “It’s fading now. It wasn’t completely numb because I could still move my fingers. But I felt it. What the veck is in that syringe?”
My words start to return and I cough. Whisper, “I am a human.”
“Obviously,” one of the beings says drily.
“I request asylum.”
“Why did you attack me? Were you sent as a spy?”
That voice.
It’s not the cutting, nasty tones of an Ocretion. It’s… deep and sexy. He moves closer to my face, so close his breath feathers across my skin. “Open your eyes. Look at me.”
I force my lids open and blink, my eyes acclimating to the brightness of the corridor, and I scan my surroundings. The being in front of me is a warrior dressed in white garb, with a sword at his belt. His skin is an even light purple, and huge muscles stand out on his lean, tall form. Atop his head are two horns that appear more like appendages than the hard bone of a beast. His jaw is defined, square. His lips smooth and full.
Stars.
He’s breathtaking. Totally different from the Ocretion masters who owned me back on Romon-3. But I thrust those thoughts away—they’re the least of my concerns. The important thing is that he’s Zandian.
I chose correctly when I stowed away. If I play this well, I could save my life.
“I am a human,” I repeat. Then everything starts to fade. Before I lose consciousness, I make sure to repeat the words Leylah taught me, when she made me rehearse every syllable in his language. “I request asylum. I will do whatever you want. Please help me.”
Chapter 2
Taisha
“This is a good one.” Leylah’s voice is rich with pleasure. The old woman is like a grandmother to all the female slaves in my barracks. Keeper of oral history and human knowledge. The fire flickers on the hearth as her deft fingers use metal tweezers to prod and twist the skin of the serpent I beheaded this planet rotation. “Mature adult. I will get a good dose of venom.”
She gets up, makes an ooph sound, and shuffles to her cabinet. Her gait is heavy tonight. There’s something about her that seems off. Wrong.
“Are you feeling well?” I frown. She’s slowed down lately, having Keerah do most of her serpent work, but right now, she seems especially fragile.
“I am still kicking.” She smiles, her wrinkled face shining in the light. “Keerah, some help?”
Keerah ducks her head; she’s the shyest, quietest of all the humans here. Sometimes she gets pink even talking to those of us she regularly interacts with. But right now she’s confident. She shifts the cabinet, revealing just baked earth below. But in the wall, a secret compartment that matches the rough mud and wood conceals the secret stash.
Leylah opens it and comes back with goggles, proTek gloves, and a small glass bottle; things she traded for—precious things—at market. As our barracks’ mother she’s allowed a pass to go to the local town to trade for necessities for us, from time to time. When outlanders are on planet, she takes advantage to trade for things like this.
The Ocretion masters think she’s only getting sweets and clothing. They have no idea what we do when they are not watching. Of what we are capable, even in our servitude. These gaps in their ownership allow us to dream of the future.
Leylah pants a bit as she squeezes the head near the jaws. I watch, rapt, as the milky fluid trickles into the jar. When she’s done, she tosses the snake head into the fire, wincing as she draws her arm back. The delicate skull bones dissolve to powder in the furnace but the fangs remain, and those she will save.
“When it is mixed with the extract of the tellaflora plant, it creates the antivenom. So if you girls get bitten, we can save you. Keerah, do it yourself, now.”
Keerah puts on the second set of goggles, the ones that are hers, and repeats it with the other head, the one that Makina brought. She breathes audibly with concentration, her brow furrowed. Her fingers, younger and stronger than Leylah’s, are fast and sure in her pair of gloves. She mixes in the tellaflora and checks the color. Tests it using the litmus paper Leylah stole. “It’s good.”
“Store it. From now on, you own this supply. You are the master of the serpents here.”
Keerah’s eyebrows go up and she makes a little sound, but then she just nods.
Leylah looks around the room. “Is that clear? From now on, you listen to Keerah. You honor the secret with your lives, with all of our lives. We tell nobody about this work, or we’ll all suffer.”
We all nod. Love or hate each other, we are bound together in this. It is a secret that we will never give up. It would be like giving up air to breathe, this secret.
“You will respect Keerah with the serpent skills.”
Again, we bow our heads in agreement.
Leylah has taught us well. Each of us has learned something from her. Keerah, the potion to reverse snake bites. Me? I’ve learned all her tales, the ones that were passed on to her from other slaves, generation to generation.
“Good job.” Leylah’s voice is neutral, but I see the gnarls in her knuckles and shudder. She’s old, and I don’t like the way my bones feel right now—like something is wrong.
“You should be making a large batch of toxins so we can kill them all.” Rannah’s voice is dark, accusing.
She’s told the others what I did this planet rotation. How I saved an Ocretion young from drowning. She hasn’t spoken to me since.
Although we sit together, I feel remote. They’re judging me. Deciding what to think about me.
Leylah looks up. “We are not ready for a revolution. If we tried too soon, we’d all die. Right now, we stay alive and pass on our knowledge, human to human. We prepare for our one chance. If we take it too soon, we lose it forever.”
“But they deserve to suffer.” Rannah leans forward like she wants to fight.
“If that young Ocretion had died? You’d be questioned. Possibly tortured. She did the right thing.” Leylah coughs.
“They’d never know we watched.” Rannah shifts in her seat. “The adults were gone. But we’d know. And we’d carry it inside us like a flame. A victory. We can pass that down.” She narrows her eyes.
Leylah’s eyes shine in the dark, the whites bright. Her skin, nearly as dark as mine, is in shadows. I can feel her disapproval without examining her expression. She’s the one who teaches us patience, and fortitude. The ability to heal, not just in body but in mind.
“We are all doing the best we can.” Her voice is soft and full of pain. “Rannah-lei, that is all we have.”
“Well, thanks to her”—Rannah won’t even say my name—“now we don’t even have the pleasure of knowing their spawn is temporarily squashed. Instead, he grows stronger. In several more solar cycles, he’ll take one of us as his pleasure slave, and we’ll find her blood soaking the floors. You can thank her when you see that.”
She gets up and the chair screams, wood on wood. As she leaves the barracks, the door slams behind her.
She won’t go far. The perimeter of our slave area is guarded; we’re not allowed beyond the fence at nightfall. I imagine she’ll end up at the patch of wall-eck trees with their sour, bitter fruit that we turn into tea—the fruit that gives Ocretions a stomachache, so it’s relegated to human areas. Maybe she’ll sit on the scratchy grass below them, the stems that cut like a file if you run them the wrong way against your skin, because our tough work trousers are built to withstand the razor edge of the foliage on this rock. She’ll curse me and grow anger inside her.
I grow anger too. We all do. It’s only a matter of time before it metastasizes into something powerful and potent that will kill us all before the Ocretions do. At least in spirit.
We may share a secret, but little by little, our hate divides us from each other. It feels like either I or Rannah need to leave, so the rest of the group can be one again.
The others follow, and then it’s just me and Leylah.
I won’t cry, because that doesn’t help, but I sag in my chair.
Leylah clucks her tongue. “You’re stronger than that. Don’t you feel sorry for yourself.”
I straighten. “Suggestions on what to do instead?” I raise my eyebrows and try to smile, but it comes out crooked.
She smiles. “You come here and help me with this.” She glances around, as if to make sure we’re alone, then pulls out a small metal box. From her expression, I can tell this is something new.
Secret.
“What is that?” My voice is hushed, and I glance around, too, as if there are faces lurking in the firelight.
“This is a microsyringe.” Leylah puts the gloves back on and points to the cabinet. “Put on the other pair and come here. We’re going to load the venom into the syringes.”
“You are making a toxin.” I raise my brows. Stop in my tracks, the gloves in one hand. “Just like Rannah suggested.”
“Bring the other small bottle too.” Leylah points. “And yes. I am.”
I fetch the item. “What’s in here?”
Leylah uses a small dropper to transfer fluid from the second bottle to the syringe. She coughs. “Remember this.” She lowers her voice. “I used equal parts of the venom of the two asps you’ve gathered; one I altered with heat, one with a substance I distilled from the sour fruit of the wall-eck trees.”
She points to her little burner, set up with three coals. “The heat from this, you see?” She coughs. “It’s told that this combination”—she holds up a loaded syringe and examines it in the light—“can kill a full-grown Ocretion in three seconds. Just one dro
p.”
I whistle softly. “Wow.”
“That’s right. Of course, it will kill us even faster. So don’t let it touch your skin.”
“I’m not planning on it.” I draw away, still transfixed. “How do you know it works?”
Leylah clucks her tongue. “When you girls come back wounded”—she flinches and her eyes glisten—“there is sometimes”—her voice cracks—“Ocretion residue under the fingernails. In your core. I take that.” Her tone becomes hard. “And I test my serums. When I created a mix that made their blood dissolve and turn clear, I knew I had it. That is the way we tell. According to my information.”
I have learned that one does not ask Leylah from where she obtains her information. She tells if she wishes it, and even so, her answers are sometimes too cryptic to understand, involving augers and visions and whispers that only she can hear. Stories she was told as a child that she locked into her brain and saved until now, some of them.
I’m horrified and fascinated at once. “In their cruelty, they gave us the very thing we need to destroy them.” I reach out but don’t touch the bottle. “They would kill us all if they knew.”
“They will not know.” She sounds absolutely certain. In the moment, I believe her.
“Is that why you haven’t told the others?” I pause. “Or have you?” Leylah has a different bond with all of us. It’s not clear what she tells to whom. “You’ll tell Keerah… right?”
Leylah’s quiet for a second. “Something came to me in a dream, about you and the toxin.”
